MRSD School Committee Meeting 10/12/2022

001hello everybody um welcome to the October 12th regular school committee meeting um we are going to enter into uh executive session to conduct strategy relative to the Master Association executive session purpose three I have determined that holding this discussion an open session may have a detrimental impact on the district's bargaining position the committee will return to open session after the conclusion of the executives second um I need a second second and roll Caldwell uh Zoe yes yes um yes Melissa yep Tasha yes uh dropper yes Joe yeah Daddy yes so we will return to in session in approximately 15-ish minutes you're good thank you let me know when you're like the first time we finished early from an executive thanks thank you okay welcome back everybody well um lucky everybody I have no remarks today

002um so look at that we're right ahead of schedule I love it if anybody in the audience have any comments for us nice to see you all here we're just squeezing along okay um highly motivated um as uh everyone on our committee knows we happy okay has everyone in our committee knows um Terry had to resign um we have and she was our vice chair we have um thank you very much to the Boxford uh crew who um had I don't know seven interviews um a lot of interest in somebody joining us um from Boxford and they work diligently to get all those interviews done really quickly and selected Chris bolzan um to join our committee uh Chris is on our way to Geneva right now doing a really she's volunteering for like a world

003rocket club something um sounds really amazing so she hopes to share it um with the um with the committee with Masco when she gets back so unfortunately she was unable to come to us that she's signed in sworn in and um will be with us for um our next meeting she also has offered to take Terry's Place on the anti-racism subcommittee and we'll see what else we can throw her into as things go but what is left open is a position for a vice chair so I would entertain a motion for um somebody I moved to a point Melissa Ogden as Vice chair for the remainder of our school year hey second there's a second on that is there any comments on that so are we moving away from each town getting there phone here

004just on Earth yeah I mean well can I like say why yeah um I think that I ideally I probably would have been thinking about Boxford but I I think the vice chair position is best held by someone that's been on a committee longer and we have two relatively new members and um from Boxford and the vice chair usually becomes the chair in the following year and my term ends this year so it seemed to me that probably boxer wasn't the best place to pull from so I kind of based that based on people's experience and and willingness I did ask Melissa because as you guys know it takes even more time to be Vice chair than just being a regular school committee member and also about you know that's not a unique circumstance you

005know eight years ago it was you know Middleton's turn to have a chair and the vice chair who was from Middleton at the last minute chose you know not to run and then I came on and the committee made the decision to continue with the outgoing horse from Boxford you know to do you know a second consecutive year so it's nowhere in our policies you know it's kind of tradition that doesn't always you know work to the benefit of the committee but there's also something that might be open to discussion as we look at our goals um because stuff like this does happen so um that was a good question anybody else have any comments about this but the only other thing I would say is I feel like just based on the eight years

006that I've been on the committee that the town the vice chair of the chair is from doesn't necessarily I don't see it influence any decisions that much to tell you the truth so um I think in the past I thought it might but I have seen no effect on what town you're from affecting how you and eight years ago there was you know no widespread negative oil no negative ramifications from that rotation not being you know continued so I don't think people really care and in summer I think it's a nice meet formula to keep it even or whatever but sometimes it doesn't work right I don't know if I'm like for keeping it or against using it and as a general rule just because it is like performance the you know what I'm trying

007to say um okay so let's um vote on Melissa as Vice chair and this can just be everybody's hands up yeah all in favor say aye aye any opposed any any sentence I didn't vote so yes vote for yourself okay okay never mind then are you voting for yourself I'll vote for myself okay um okay thank you Melissa for agreeing to be a vice chair and uh moving on um yeah that's Raquel our student Advisory Board rep welcome thank you um hello everyone as you know my name is Raquel Rave and I'm the student Advisory board at large thank you for allowing me to speak tonight on behalf of my peers I'm more than happy to announce that this year has been off to a great start students are incredibly engaged regarding clubs Sports and

008other outside of school activities while it is hard to come to terms with the fact that this is my last year of high school I'm looking forward to working as a member of the student council to make this a memorable year for all students especially our seniors but we did not do though we do not yet have an official Student Government the rest of the exec board and I are encouraging more students to join and become an active member of the school community Council interviews start tomorrow and we are very excited to meet all of the new potential members last year many students informed us that they wanted a homecoming dance this fall fortunately we were able to host one the dance had a great turnout with about 350 people attending it was enjoyable to

009see all our grades come together and have a great time overall students are continuing to show their perseverance and are striving to achieve their goals I look forward to working with you all this year thank you and have a great rest of your night thank you um the reason that there's not a student government yet because it's not time in the year yet or is this normal or abnormal yeah it's normal if we've just been a little bit backed up with like how many applicants we've got but now we have like all of our rep interview packets done so we're just working does anybody have any questions that's my question yeah the same question I had okay well thank you very much so as I told you earlier feel free to stay and participate you

010know leave if you need to but we would love you to stay and hear your voice um okay the youth risk behavior survey presentation and Student Services report so this is a hefty um bit of information we are looking forward to receiving um I say hesitantly as I'm you know concerned as to adult will say but um my colleague um Nicole Gregoire Ellis isn't here yet she we were looking at that 745 in May because we're here so early we're early yeah so do you want me to maybe um throw some stuff it's how about I don't know if we go to H can we go to age okay no thank you thank you see what happens when people are early and when they put when they put Pines on it pros and the cons

011[Laughter] there's a memo from me to the school committee and the packet um I'm just gonna read it and then we can go from there any questions so our current student transportation services contract with nrt bus Incorporated expires on June 30th 2023 I would like to proceed with the procurement through five-year contract however the applicable applicable stat statute States that unless authorized by a majority vote a procurement officer shall not award a contract for a term exceeding three years therefore I'm requesting your approval to proceed with the procurement of a new five-year contract for the for student transportation services the new contract will be procured in collaboration with the tri-town school Union during the fall winter of FY 23. and Jeff Abby got this approval or are they doing that as well they have and

012Steve and I have um been working together over the last few weeks and we're ready to go so um the plan is to release the bid package um two weeks from Friday assuming the committee approves authorized me to proceed with a five-year contract otherwise I I can do a three-year and the idea with a five-year is just that it's more beneficial to less you typically get preferred pricing on a five-year bus contract um that's my experience in that regard to approve this I actually wrote a motion pursuant to CLC 30b I am not a lawyer I'm going to start over pursuant because we have time mgl chapter chapter 30b section section 10 12 B the school committee authorizes Jeff Sands assistant superintendent and chief procurement officer to procure and enter into a contract for student

013transportation services for a term not to exceed five years in the second second this is the motion second motion group over here okay all um so it costs a second it just went at home um all in favor of the five-year contract say aye aye any opposed okay any extensions no okay so this passes um with full approval from the committee thank you Jeff for working on that for us thank you I now um suggest that we move to item K voting to approve side letters with mass economic Teachers Association well let's that you need more um we're gonna just want to move them up we're gonna just uh explain what they are or Mike is going to do that two side letters that we uh negotiated with the masconomic Teachers Association these are in

014effect changing the contract of the CBA uh one is regarding new stipends uh stipends for student clubs and this is adding new clubs to the stipends uh as outlined that appendix B of the uh the teachers contract so we'll be adding the rocketry club the ace Club The Poetry Club The Debate Club the dance club do the contract um so now Zoe what was your motion to approve that yeah all the ones and do we have a second second oh Dominic got you I know you were nodding edit um all in favor of this um adding being added to the contract say aye aye extensions thank you very much now we have a second um edition the second side letter is regarding uh payment to uh teachers for class coverage and this changes article 9

015section one paragraph nine page 20 of the collective bargaining agreement uh so beginning in the 2022-2023 school year teachers that are signed to a cover class for a teacher who is absent uh the remuneration will be 25 per class for a period of 36 minutes 34 dollars per class for a period of 49 minutes and 47 dollars per class for a period of 68 minutes uh and this is uh because of the new schedule for this year um but the contract language that's currently there it does not work so and again this is teacher filling in for uh substitutes during one of their Freer walks so do I have a motion I'll move whoever's making a motion to accept it and Joe's seconding it all in favor say aye aye um hey thank you all

016very much um and where are we at I am going how about we um move down to the consent agenda I just jumped all over yeah as long as there are no objections to changing it's fine what can we do like these School committed goals or something because if we have like 20 minutes until our schedule about 7 45 so okay yeah let's do something yeah okay anybody oppose that yeah either one um so yeah let's let's do our goals um did everybody get my email today I don't know if there's any way to um you can put up like a sec I think we have it oh I think um Sally for um and taking good notes for us uh during our Retreat um I hope everybody felt that that was a helpful process

017as we workshopped through um through what we felt what kind of action items we felt could support yeah okay thank you um yeah uh supporting the leadership's team's goals um I was able to concentrate them into three main goals that hopefully made sense um that hopefully makes sense and so we can just kind of go through I guess I'll I'll read them and then we can discuss each one um Mike is gonna put them up yep there we go Okay so the first goal was to create an environment of success for the district superintendent and the school committee um to do that action items included negotiating a contract aligned with committee goals and options to create a successful outcome for the superintendent to assist in with delegation of responsibilities to prevent burnout of our leadership

018team to determine accountability methods to evaluate and measure success approve a budget that supports schools of both school committee and superintendent and to celebrate and continue measuring to celebrate and therefore continue measurable ones does anybody have any discussion about that I got a comment um for the third one determine accountability methods to evaluate measure success had written down a few other things are a little bit more detailed than that in terms of just adding to that success of students in a systematic manner to drive School decision-making school committee decision making I know we talked about having some systematic database methods for evaluating Student Success that can be shared with us so that we can drive better decision making around budget and things like that what is a what you have in mind well literacy would

019be the first thing that comes to mind so you know if what are the methods for figuring out how kids are performing um MCAS is one way of looking at it but there's plenty of other interventions that can be used um and then say for instance uh a certain group of kids were found to be consistently performing poorly that was really to us because there's more Staffing that's needed maybe there's different programs that might be needed um so I think the discussion that I remember from the retreat was that you know kind of emphasized the need for some systematic data collection so that we can make informed decisions I guess how to support the district um I I agree with what you're saying I guess that I'm I'm at are you wanting us to put

020in like more assessments as a district to get that I I don't know that I would be in favor of adding more standardized testing then the interventions regular red interventions it could be a lot of different things but I think what we talked about was getting away from anecdotal and looking more at kind of systematic things to give to the committee to consider if things need to be adjusted if you know to make better budget decisions for things that are going to help our students bill yeah um then I guess I would ask the administration to correct me if I'm wrong but I I guess don't we already do that and whether whether or not it's it's we're using it as well as we can is another issue but um my understanding was that we're

021measuring the heck out of things um so I if there if if there's something lacking then you know let's let's let's talk about that but but aren't we doing a lot of that now I think there are not a lot of wholesale measurements okay so MCAS is really the one that we have that we look at as a leadership team and we're going to be looking at what the department has soon and then we have other pieces like you're going to hear about the youth risk behavior survey tonight those results and so there are you know those are those are the kinds of ways that we're actually measuring so it sounds like there may be opportunity for um again diagonal or alternative not do wholesale measurement like that and it hasn't been a tradition here

022to do that do other districts do that some I mean it's it's usually more prevalent in the elementary levels I mean that's that's the trick I don't get Dr karabatza so I'm trying to think of you know there really aren't a whole lot of high school assessments um that are you know standardized and easy to implement yeah you know you know it's to Tasha's point you know where we spend better part of two weeks administering MCAS um you know we don't want to do that again uh you know PSAT scores SAT scores I'm trying to think of other other ones that we do we do the PSATs today for example yeah I'm only aware of one that's sort of a college readiness that you give at night you'd give to a subset of random ninth

023graders and then you give it again at 12. MWR yeah um it's expensive and when you're a 12th grader and they're forcing you to take a test to demonstrate growth in some skill area it's really hard to get students to take it seriously so oftentimes the data is hard to interpret so that's the only one I'm familiar with that actually monitors some level of growth in a certain skill area rather than criteria um I mean I I think it could there are ways to get at that um I think we would just if we would have to think about how we wanted metric things internally and have some consistency which is kind of discussion that's going on going with curriculum development right that might allow us to think about the tools we're using to measure

024growth instead of something like success different for different students so um but I agree I don't think there's any there's no nothing really off the shelf a little bit but I guess if I I wasn't I wasn't saying you should use a certain system this is languages best practice there should be database decision making that should also Drive our communities decision making to support the success of our students or the growth I like growth better and RTI is what comes to mind for me I mean there's internal systems that you don't go out and buy something but you know there are internal systems that you can create that measure growth or a lack of growth um and therefore could inform Staffing decisions or maybe you need more support in this particular area or you don't

025so it was more just around the language of having that as a general goal um so if we change success to growth in that line um to evaluate and measure growth is there something else that you would just add I would have added growth of students in a systematic manner to drive school school committee decision making yeah database decision making um I'm cool with that for one growth of students say it again growth of students in a systematic manner to drive school committee decision making okay so that sounds great I'm just not sure but um existing information is collected that can be shared with us so that we can make better budgeting decisions so I mean and maybe this is a conversation for later like do like what would the administration like maybe this gets

026to Mike's needs and the curriculum area but I guess if you could help us what data can you give us to help us make benefits that's something we have to do some do some thinking about and Jeff kind of scribbled down you know measuring how many students get to see all of a literacy I mean there's lots of different things we can do if it's just going to be you know take some time to brainstorm how how many different ways we can look at this okay I just want to make sure that it's that we are in agreement that this isn't something that the school committee is going to come up with how to measure like we're going to look to you to provide us the information that without making it too onerous for you

027guys exactly yes and I think for the Strategic plan did not get done because of yeah so my Hope was that there is existing information and it's not necessarily something that's normally shared with us that's what I'm that's what I was thinking when we came up with them we would give us Trends and ideas yeah the needs are however you've had your hand up well I was just thinking along the lines of like we're gonna have that information once the curricula is more more in line how they're doing that over PD and I think we can take like okay like all US history is doing this well or not um so I think once the curricula is in line right this isn't something that's the class necessarily going to happen this year but it's kind

028of like a line to move forward as the curriculum is set so what data point would you be looking for example like a mission term a midterm across the classes should be somewhat equal if the curriculum's the same of the classes like that's just like yeah sorry I don't know I was just thinking if there's different things being taught in different classes you're not necessarily going to get that unless the curriculum is the same we sort of did this when we rolled out the academic success Center and the idea and that Center and the sort of tier 2 interventions that are happening there maybe are not receiving um special ed services or have access to special ed services then we use data to help you know how many kids are out of school obviously with

029a little bit more cover driven but so I do think I think your point is you're just articulating a lot of what we already we may not have metrics that we're sharing every year with you and if that's something we can think about but we a lot of what we try to bring to you is data based not just asking for something without sort of data and something behind it so I think it's just articulating something and I think you're right that there are things you know the global diploma the concealed by literacy yeah um there's a lot of that's just the World Language um but there there are definitely things we can look towards we have Civics projects now that are part of the framework so those are other projects where we could how

030many more kids are becoming more active like there are metrics I like that to be thinking going forward as especially with all these new initiatives to to see what they were what they're going to be okay any other yeah um I can when you wrote that one though when I first read it I I love that you brought it to Student Success or student growth but when I first read this I thought you meant like success of the the faculty and the staff that's what you meant to wake Patty read it I'm just wondering because the following bullet about approving a budget that supports everything right I feel like almost what you're saying could go under that more so that we're not crossing the line as far as what's our responsibility and what's us supporting

031your responsibilities um as Administration and faculty does that make sense it does um and then my second comment was just I I also I like the idea of having measures and having what our decisions come from the data that's being brought to us but the way you phrased it sounds very academically focused and we are we do get our student services presentations periodically and other measures of the success that are not solely academic and some of the things you just mentioned about the involvement in the community and applied learning skills and um and so forth you know those matter too so I just want to be careful about two laser focused on defining those terms versus in this goal we're approving budgets that support these goals based on measures that are presented to us or

032the custom of the words you used so some of the smart oh fatty said a minute ago yeah so the words determine accountability methods to evaluate and measure growth of students in a systematic manner to drive school committee decision making I don't think that that is against what you just said okay yeah it sounds better academic I think yeah yeah some of the discussion I felt was veering that way so I just wanted to make sure that we were all saying the same thing yeah awesome I think we also because we are because of our roles in our in our lane that we're in we also have to determine methods methods to evaluate successive our committee and the superintendents so I don't know if that's something that we just need to because we want we're

033working to create an environment for success but what does that look like for um I think we're getting towards what success in the district might look like look like but what's successful us as a school committee for um Mike so I don't know well the title says it's the success of the district the superintendent and the school committee yeah right so I think cover all of those things perhaps we need a bullet in there that you know how are we going to determine whether um determining the success of the school committee might be under number three um yeah because I think I believe there's no policy on it but there's a there's a dollar for evaluating right we are supposed to evaluate ourselves I don't recall ever um doing that anyway that's just a thought

034so do you think that number one as it stands was is good and then Melissa we can maybe add something about discussing uh evaluation and number three for us that sounds good to me yeah we'll discuss it when I get to number three yeah okay so we're all yeah the only thing I would throw out if we were really wanting to do this rigorously this would be a substantial process by which we would either establish you know metrics for each one of these goals or uh Milestones or just check mark did it happen or not I mean there's there's a lot we could do if we rigorously wanted to use these goals the effectiveness of this school committee um since I think we have that cut kind of time and two perhaps we should have

035been doing this for many many years but we haven't so let's take some baby steps with this um let's just give ourselves the leeway that you know at the end of the the school year we'll do qualitative and quantitative where it exists um look at this and see what we achieved and what we didn't and as we move forward refine that and get a little more rigorous about it sounds good okay so number one got a check mark off that um your your co-worker isn't here yet she's here oh Santa can't do everything pause yes yeah let's take a possible that's all right with everybody you don't think we could bang the others out in a couple minutes I want to introduce the people what we're doing in the interest of time it was a

036few less slides we made some handouts with some of the basic numbers demographics things like that if you want to refer back to them while we're talking you want to get out of the presentation that eight things we'd want to get out of the presentation this is actually more just some backup for the data yes um whoops I'm sorry this is breaking it too far away so for everybody at home um the tri-town council um every other year um Behavior survey and they are here tonight um and Nicole Greg Morales um Nicole McGregor Alice to um give us the um the highlights of this year's survey and see where things are speaking for our students thank you guys both for being here all the supports that's done for us speaking of measurable I just wanted

037to thank People's United charitable foundation for funding um part of the administration of the myrbs for grateful yeah oh yeah the packets that we gave just talking a lot about numbers so it can be helpful to sort of have that to refer back to I know you've all had a chance to look at um the actual reports already um there's a whole lot of detail in there it's going to be it's really hard to summarize just 10 or 15 minutes so we're gonna do our best and if I talk too fast please tell me to slow down feel free to chime in with questions um and um you may know Meredith has this background data for me as well so if anything useful information we could do we go um there's a connect button oops

038there's something it's always the tech that takes us down let's just stand right there a microphone because I wonder whether people at home yeah that was Patty who made that option I everyone always goes to that corner how long will that will that reach I don't know over there it's right I mean I can if I'm here do you think it will pick it up definitely I can hear you okay oh I can be pretty loud okay I can bring it out okay okay yeah do that that'd be great foreign ER though oh I wanted to have the pointers so that some of the things that I could show is it just that I'm too far I can't make it work all right I'll just do my best um okay sorry so um the youth

039risk behavior survey was most recently given in Fall of 2021 in November just before Thanksgiving um so the data that we're getting tonight is from is from last fall you could Advance it you've got it all right um some of you may have seen this graph from us before but we just like to quickly touch on a lot of people have questions about whether the data is actually valid we hear a lot about all kids lie on the survey this is a great tool um that is used in doing this sort of presentation all the time where you look at our data year on year so you can see here we've got graphs of just one kind of one point the 30-day use rates for these different substances from 2010 all the way through 2021

040and something interesting that you notice aside from the fact that use rates are trending down which is obviously a positive is the shape of the graph like if you notice even though they're separated a little bit the shape of it is sort of that check mark kind of shape um if the youth were all sort of making it up as they went along and everybody was lying on the survey you'd expect to see much more wild swings year on year so this is a tool that we use to really um be able to look at it and say okay yeah they're they're pretty accurately self-recorded next slide next slide please um very briefly we talk a lot about Hope and concern as we go through this kind of information because we do see we see

041grid points and we see bad points um the great news is that a lot of the the risky indicators are very small numbers of Youth but we always like to go back to the fact that these are our kids still you know even one percent represents five youth for the Middle School eight for the high school and is you know as we get into five and ten percent you're talking about classrooms full of kids so making sure that we're just sort of thinking about the real people behind the numbers side this year we're going to show you some data you've seen the um the agenda that we sent out with the reports we were able to get some new information from our survey evaluator this year and we asked her to look at um youth

042who received special education services so we just kind of use the category IEP to to kind of keep it simple we looked at several different categories of race ethnicity and we also looked at sexual orientation and for that because the numbers were so small in a lot of different categories we have straight and then we're calling it The lgbq plus because the transgender was included in a different question that we didn't have analyzed here um but so that kind of gives us just a little bit more information all right next slide please so we really wanted to have this information just to get a better overall picture of sort of what is happening with all different kinds of students at Masco Middle School and High School it helps us to think about and inform future

043programming um but we also have talked a lot about using a great deal of caution in how we use this data because for one thing it does represent very very small subsets of students here um and it's just a snapshot in time you know it's that one day that they took the survey and we need to think really carefully so that we don't unintentionally reinforce stereotypes or create more challenges for a lot of these youth so again of course so the numbers are small we still are looking at it because it does represent real teens in our community next slide please so um the first thing we're going to talk about is substance use and perceptions could you advance right so one thing I want to mention about graphs as we go through this this

044makes it look like the numbers are really high but I want you to notice the scale of the graph so this only goes up to 40 at the maximum and I did this so that I can enlarge it enough that you can actually see the differences here um so just keeping that in mind as we go and there are different ones throughout yes it's important to look at the scale because in some cases I had to enlarge it quite a lot to show um variance so the good news is that you can see the dark dark blue lines all the way to the left of 2021 and as you can see in every category pretty much except for the the prescription drugs which was already very low um the line is lower than it was

045in 2018. so it use 30-day use rate has gone down across all of the substances as of the time of the survey was taken um we use this 30-day in the past 30 days information for most of the work that we do because it's the most reliable indicator of kind of regular use as opposed to just asking have you ever because somebody might have you know taken a drag off a cigarette once and said oh well yeah I did you know but this would not be a good indicator of regular use okay next slide we um want to also note that as a general Trend and this is pretty Universal but most use rates go up as youth age so you can see for all of these categories it's quite low at age 14 and

046it goes up a bit each year until they hit 18. we like to look at age rather than grade because you can have such a mix in ages in each grade so that can kind of mask things a little bit so by using age we're able to see a little bit more clearly these Mark um cut off marks and one of the things that's most interesting is we're looking at it is you can see for alcohol use it is the most common substance use it has the highest use rates and interestingly jumps about 10 year on Year from age 15 to 18. it's not something that we necessarily know why but it is just something kind of interesting to note as we go all right next slide please okay so here we get into our

047our crosstab populations so I know that this has a lot of information on it um so I just wanted to kind of show you how I categorized it so we have the race pieces are sort of these cool colors we have our lgbq plus and straight are kind of these warm colors and then like the red and pink are are special education space so they're sort of grouped together so that we can try to look at them that way um one of the things that came up in this was you can you can see very clearly in the race category for both marijuana and alcohol that kind of teal blue line for our Hispanic Latino youth is considerably higher than the other um race categories we don't have the numbers on vaping because there was

048a problem with the slide itself but we're still trying to work out with the evaluator so I'm not sure for the race categories on The Vaping we only have those for the orientation and for the a special education um and I I have a stupid question yeah absolutely there's bis so we sorry we had that labeled in our um in the report we had several groups that had very very small numbers of Youth so when the evaluator was looking at it together she combined those races into one category and we were debating what do we call it what do we call it but it's it's our black students our indigenous students and our um Southeast Asian students so that's where we got the bis but it was a very small group for each of those

049so to separate them out it wouldn't have given us very informative data and it also could kind of single out students a little bit too clearly thank you what percent of the 843 High School youth are Hispanic um that should be it could really be skewed If the percentage is low and right exactly so we have that in the charts that we gave you on the table um if you look at the last pages I believe it's like 7.2 60 of the kids 61 60 kids so that's yeah so this is where we have it yep so you can see on that the breakdown of how many kids it is but also what percentage that makes up of the Masco population that we put in there so again like we said they are small numbers

050of Youth but they are a distinct category and we wanted to make sure that we're looking at what's going on for that population and you're measuring it the Hispanic youth it's the percentage of Hispanic youth that are using not this right Hispanic of Masco so that would be eight oh it's a mess are the youth at Masco so the the youth who self-identified as this pathetic Latino and right and that's the percentage of of the Hispanic Latino youth at Masco right Saturday exactly which is a higher which is a very low it's less low number of students a low number of students it's a a higher percentage of those in a within an ethnicity group exactly exactly yep exactly 18 kids yeah why the difference between Asian and Southeast Asian and the bis because they

051um in in categories they were given in the youth risk behavior survey to self-identify they were separate categories yeah so just um so Southeast Asian includes um youth who identified as Cambodian Vietnamese Laotian or Thai and then Asian was Asian American Chinese Japanese Korean or East India that's how how it broke out you have any more questions okay next slide please so our Middle School um as you can see here our scale is even smaller so even though these might look like big lines we're going up to 10 of the youth in the middle school so I had to make it really big so that we could see the differences and so obviously the positive news here is that the vast majority of overwhelming population of the Middle School are not using these substances um

052and you can see here where alcohol and vaping are two of the higher categories you can see that both of those have also decreased and The Vaping in fact have I mean it's a small percentage anyway but you know since it was one of the big concerns that we've had for the last several years it was nice to see those numbers go down in the reports the significant changes are noted but you have that information okay um next slide uh one of the big things that we like to talk about is the actual use rate and the perceived use rate so you've probably if you've been with us for a few years you've heard this before but um we we look at how many youth report okay I am using the substance or I have

053in the last 30 days and then we ask them how many of your peers do you think are are using these substances and you can see here these yellow lines are the actual use the yellow bars the actual use you can see how small they are um and then the red bars are are the average of perceived youth use so that's any anybody who answered I think that my peers use it more than zero days a month um anybody who answered that is included in that perceived use category and so you can see by quite a lot um for both the high school and the middle school those red bars are much much higher than the yellow bars all right and next slide please and so we also were able to look at this year

054our adult conception survey which we send out electronically uh we sent it out in January this year it was open in January February um it was a very small number of adults from the community that responded we only had 263. um unfortunately but we still want to look at the data that we've collected of course and we found very very similar things happening with the adults in the community right so we have again the yellow is the actual use and so we asked the question to the adults a little bit differently we asked them what percentage of our youth do you think use these substances and we gave them interval categories 0 to 10 10 to 20 20 to 30 percent and on up so what we did is we looked at the interval of

055the correct use so in the case of alcohol would be between 10 and 20 so these greens perceived correctly they said yes we think it's between 10 and 20 but the reds are the ones who said nope we think it's more than that and these Blues you can see there's not very many of these the dark blue is that they're um under perceiving so there was very there was very little of that alcohol being the only category really where that happened at all but again you can see huge differences between those are perceiving correctly and incorrectly next slide please so why does that matter why is misperception a problem well perceiving correctly is something called a protective factor and we'll talk more about those later on in the presentation but it's important that the youth

056know most of our peers are not using it's important that they hear the message from their parents and um you know people adults they come in contact hearing like most most kids aren't doing that and it's so much easier to join the crowd right for especially for teens if they know that the crowd is making good choices so that is why we try to make sure that we're working on correcting these misperceptions so again as I mentioned in the beginning we like to look for for kind of nuggets of Hope and concern um so where we looked here we do have some concerns because obviously as we talked about the percentages who are engaging in these behaviors represent real Masco youth right so even if it's one percent there's still some kids right they may

057be struggling they may be experimenting whatever so we know that there is an area of concern there and an area of Hope is that we know that most masculine youth are choosing not to use substances and engage in risk behavior Behavior right so that's a kind of a nice takeaway from this next slide uh we took a pretty close look this year at physical and sexual health and well-being and in the interest of time we're going to only talk a very small amount about weight I'll mention that afterwards because there were some concerning things that came out there but a lot of very significant changes in the area of sexual behavior this year that we wanted to make sure that we call attention to next slide please so at the beginning we look at it

058and say we had about 10 percent less of the high school youth engaging in any kind of sexual activity um at any point in their life 10 less than in 2018. so the number went down significantly from 31 percent to 21 percent um she found no difference she being our evaluator found no differences across male and female um and with older youth more likely to be engaging and active than younger um we ask about whether um alcohol or drugs played have played any kind of role in their last sexual encounters how the question is asked um this number went up significantly from 2018 from 19 it went up to 19 from 12 so when we think about that 19 it's around 20 it's about one in five um encounters where this was the case and

059again older youth were more likely than younger to report this the other area where we found a significant change was the amount of high school youth who reported that someone had had sexual contact with them against their will went up from 13.7 percent of those who reported that they had ever been sexually active all the way up to 33.7 percent so a third of the youth who have been sexually active have indicated that they have been um forced to have sexual contact against their will um and if you look at it as overall population of Masco it went from 4.3 percent of the youth here to 7.2 and then girls were five times more likely than boys to report this uh the number of responses significantly dropped from previous surveys yes because that is there

060any reason to think that that is impacting these and other numbers it could be if people who have they could be depending on why they've self-selected out of the survey um we had a lot of parents opt youth out we had some youth that just chose not to take it it could certainly be affecting some of the numbers um depending on who they are and what their experiences are the ones that did not respond and that's something that our evaluator looks at when she's she's analyzing the data is looking for significant change statistically significant changes because not every change is significant because it is dependent on the population and you know we can't we cannot from from this necessarily determine why we can just see that it's happening and just know that there is there

061is some concern here with such a huge change from a previous cycle is there any way to know anything about the people that chose not to participate demographically you know age-wise um let me go back and look [Music] as many as they were in years past high school was higher high school middle school was lower okay yeah I mean we can follow up on that um you'd be what would you be curious about finding I mean I I don't know I mean you know the percentage of in the high school or respondents what was lower I'm just trying to see is there anything that links those opt-outs you know together you know that might then lead to some impact I don't know that there's anything there I don't know that you could make such a

062determination but there's got to be a reason why so many more opted out than three years ago yeah and that it was something that our evaluator noted that that might be interesting to look into that being said see I mean that is an incredibly large increase I mean it's at least two and a half times um so I I wouldn't expect that a change or a drop in in the number of participants throw such a such a material difference in in that outcome I wouldn't I'd be shocked if that was the case could certainly change it somewhat it's unlikely to bring it all the way back down to where it was it could have increased it too if there were more it could also if it could take it might not have one share right

063absolutely okay next slide please so the other piece of this is we do ask about Dating Violence specifically as a separate category and so we asked them in the question have you ever been heard physically sexually or both by a date and that so they can check off any of those categories so I tried to sort of look at these and again bring the numbers look at them compared to what we just talked about um so that number also went up it's pretty much doubled from 2018 so six percent of Masco youth indicated some form of Dating Violence compared to 3.4 percent in 2018. so about double girls were significantly more likely than boys to report having been hurt sexually um and so that actually came out to about 9.2 percent of Masco high school

064girls so not this at this point we were not just looking at those who had been sexually active we were just saying of the girls how many have reported this so 9.2 percent so we're talking about just about 10 so 1 in 10. um and in our crosstab populations at Masco average like we said is six percent who are um special education youth it's closer to ten percent for um our non-straight use use 16 Hispanic Latino was the highest among the racial groups also with that 16 16.4 percent um and then we also looked at the number of respondents who report being hurt sexually or both physically and sexually is equal to about a quarter of Masco High School youth reporting ever having been sexually active and then the number was higher again in these

065crosstab populations for special education it was closer to 36 percent um for a non-straight it was about 66 a Hispanic Latina for about half 50 percent so if I'm reading that correctly more than a quarter of those kids that are sexually active have reported that they were either sexually or physically and sexually and sexually harmed I left the physical the physical as its own category because we didn't have another subset for them but I wanted to look at those who said that they've been sexually active and see how they were affected by these two categories so either sexually or both so just to make that I guess more real to me because that sounds you know quite alarming what what number does that turn into sexually active um it was sort of it was pretty

066shocking to us so we felt like it was important to make sure that we include it and call attention to it because something is going on that's different right than it has been in the past so one certainly you know alarming behaviors but one in four kids that are sexually active are being armed during it 25 well I mean I think it's another valid point if that was 600 then bloody hell we needed on that nothing else right um but this is pretty pretty you know certainly pretty critical but I wanted to just put it in context absolutely all right next slide please so again some points here from this category as I mentioned we eliminated the slides on weight just to try to for time um but we've thought that it would be useful

067in the future to sort of look at some inconsistencies that came up regarding body image and weight loss a little more closely to determine what's going on especially among the girls um because we had when we were looking at it we said how do you feel your weight is you know are you overweight are you underweight are you about right more than half said they were about right right so we would expect them when the next question to say what are you doing about your weight to say you know stay about the same or I'm not doing anything about it but more than half said that they were trying to lose weight among the girls so even if they feel that their weight is about right there are still a group of girls that feel

068like they need to lose weight so something to take a look at so then again going back to our hope and concerns regarding the sexual behavior obviously for concern we have significantly more Masco youth reporting sexual or Dating Violence in 28 then in 2018. so something to look into and then as far as hope you know there is the good news that 10 less are engaging in sexual activity than in than they were in 2018 so we have less that are kind of putting themselves in these situations so you know areas of Hope is there any reason to think that the definite you know people perceive the definition of sexual activity was different it was spelled out yeah we um yeah we we Define sexually active in the same way as the last survey yes

069that didn't change yeah do you want to do a time check I just I know I'm sorry yes sorry and yeah if you want me to skip some sections because I know these guys have a lot to go through too so we're learning a lot how far into it are you where are we um yeah you got what these are shorter but okay these are shorter sections but there are four more okay keep going okay all right so bullying and teasing this one we really synthesized down short next slide please um so overall we found that um what we felt was most important to look at really when the bullying and teasing was um especially with these crosstab populations right so we were looking at the overall averages you can see middle school and high

070school um we have about a quarter of Middle School youth um my numbers didn't print out on the other one but it's um closer to what about 13 or is the high school average so a little bit higher in Middle School than in high school and then looking at our crosstab populations you can see in middle school we only looked at our youth with special education um programs and you can see that we had closer to 42 of those youth experiencing bullying or teasing in the past couple of months compared to four percent of the general population and compared to 21 that reported that they were not receiving special education services and so then you can see that again here at the high school obviously there's a lot more categories here and it's a little

071bit harder to look at but if you um you look here we've got our average at the top we have our our non-iep and our IEP reporters you can see this line is significantly longer than those not um and then we have you know with the race categories we have white here at the top and you can see them all of the lines um interestingly except for our black indigenous Southeast Asian students all of the other ones are higher than the white students and then again same thing here we've got our straights and our LGBT plus again that line is significantly longer reporting um that they had been teased or bullied in the last couple of months um next slide so again here um concern on the bullying and teasing front um our concern is

072that some of these particularly the special ed non-straight non-white youth appear to be experiencing disproportionately more bullying and teasing compared with the general Nasco population that's an area of concern something that we need to look at and as far as hope in the high school at least overall bullying rates appear to have been decreasing since 2016 they've gone down year on year middle school they're very close to the same year on year it's slightly creeping upwards much more significant differences in high school next slide another one we'll touch on briefly is technology and social media obviously this has been another area of concern that we've talked about a lot the next slide please so again here we want to just point out a couple of key points Daily Tech usage probably not surprisingly has increased

073substantially since 2018. we had covet in the middle of there right where everybody was on screens all the time because they had to be um but we asked them specifically about non-school use of screens and so more than half of the Middle School Youth and about three quarters of the high school youth report three to five non-school hours daily on screens screens include TV in the definition did we include television yeah watch TV anymore Netflix that's probably in there I don't know but like spending three or four that much time on Instagram versus watching Netflix I feel like there's like a much more concerning there can be different we did ask there are questions that you can see in the report we asked specifically about social media and how often they check social media um

074so it wasn't terribly surprising in there most check it either one to two times a day or one to two times an hour or several times a day those people did not admit to checking it every 10 minutes or so but um those are kind of our numbers in the middle um as far as checking social media um the other thing that we noted is that we put cyber bullying we weren't sure whether to put it you know kind of bullying teasing kind of fits in the screen um and the social media piece um so we decided to put it here the trends have increased only slightly from 2016 to 18 in the high school but a bit more of an uptick in that in the middle school went from about 12 to 18 have

075experienced cyber bullying in the past couple of months so again areas of concern rates of cyber bullying increasing since 2016 a little bit year on year um but as far as an area of Hope one of the things that we found when we looked at um the social media piece and we asked them how does it usually make you feel when you look at social media does it make you feel better does it make you feel worse does it kind of in the middle um one of the things that we thought was interesting is that very few indicated um strongly that it made them feel worse they were like tiny tiny percentages so despite you know a lot of concerns about social media and our worry about that affecting mental health and all of those

076things it was somewhat encouraging to see at least small numbers of you saying wow um and just to answer your question the tech the tech usage includes any digital device which includes Hulu and Netflix as well as Xbox games thank you okay next slide please I'm going to touch briefly on protective factors next slide so we talk a lot about protective factors and the work that we do um so what are they so these are things that help influence young people toward making healthy decisions about substances about their health and about risk behaviors there's a strong correlation with the 40 developmental assets um where basically the more that you have the more likely they are to thrive and be successful okay so as far as successful how they've managed interpersonal conflict do they have healthy

077relationships Etc um so we're gonna just quickly touch on a few areas that we know have a strong effect on this um specifically we'll talk a little bit about developmental relationships this is basically that it's really important for youth to have supportive adult relationships in their lives um whether it's parents family whether it's coaches Scout leaders teachers um mentors whatever that it's that leads towards these support assets so having more of these people in their lives helps increase um positive outcomes and then another big piece is that they feel valued by the adults around them we ask them that specifically do you feel like your teachers value you do you feel like your peers value do you feel that adults in the tri-town value the youth in our community and that leads towards empowerment and

078self-esteem and all of those good things um and then we also look at things like do they feel safe do they have adults that they can talk to about problems um are they doing constructive things with their spare time next slide please so a couple of things that we wanted to bring to attention here were that are particularly the youth on IEPs and our lgbtq plus youth um and all Races other than white show lower rates of feeling safe at school except for the Asian youth so it was interesting we asked them do you feel safe at school we don't qualify that like say how or anything like that just do you feel safe um and so all of all of these different categories came up as feeling less safe um they also tend to

079have lower um participation rates in extracurricular activities right speaking to constructive use of time and things like that um and then another question that we ask is have you talked to your parents Guardians caregiver about a whole host of different topics so about different substances about sexual health and behavior um and things like that and it was interesting in that basically 50 or more report not talking about any of these topics with their caregivers and you know take that with a grain of salt it could be the teenagers going now I don't think I ever heard that one before you know and maybe you parents feel like they have talked to them um or maybe they're really not but we know that from the research parents caregivers Guardians talking to their kids about these things

080is a protective doctor we know that it's really important for them to know where adults in their lives stand on these different things and it does help them make decisions even when it feels like they're not listening oh um so an area of concern that came out was that only about half of our high school youth feel valued by tri-town adults in the community um that and again these graphs are all in the report so that was an area of concern and what are what are we as the tri-town um putting out there I guess for our youth that they're not feeling valued and then an area of Hope is that our special education and lgbtq plus populations have really strong feelings of support from adults teachers in the Masco community community in the school

081they report much much higher instances of having caring teachers and things within the school so they do feel very supported here next slide mental health next slide please so this is my segue I'm very excited at the end for you guys next slide okay so um again we tried to slim this down there's a lot of information that I'm sure that you've seen in the report um we asked the youth about problem stress and we Define that for them you know what do we mean by problem stress we mean like does it actually make a problem for you in your life and it's ongoing persistent you know we said periods of some stress are normal like tests or a sporting event or things like that you should feel some stress in your life but this

082is like ongoing always feeling stress um and what we thought it came out most here was looking a little bit at these cross tabs they're very hard to tell the difference but the green parts are kind of the most interesting to look at so those that feel that they are always under this problem stress and you can see that the groups that have the biggest green bars that feel it always are lgbtq plus youth are Hispanic Latino youth are multi-racial youth um tend to have much higher instances of that and you can see here in the middle school where we were looking at our youth on IEPs they have a larger green bar there for always feeling stress next slide please sources of stress was very similar to what's been in both 2016 and 18

083and it's pretty much the same in high school and middle school school work their own expectations of themselves and friendships are kind of the largest areas where they feel stress from next slide we wanted to look at a little more closely here are the mental health Trends year on Year from 2014 onward so we asked um a question about depression and we defined it for them as feeling sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that is so so sad that you stopped doing your usual activities so we can see here um the top graph is Middle School bottom one is high school you can see that blue line for use reporting depression it goes up year on year particularly in the Middle School graph you could see it

084went down a little bit from 2014 to 16 but then has risen steadily since then among our high school youth um other categories that have that have really kind of risen since then are self-harm and consideration considering suicide so these again these numbers are small when we're looking here looking again at scale we have up to 20 and up to 30 to show the differences but it's still there the differences are enough to be significant next slide please back one uh so again areas of Hope and concern so for concern that the stress depression and depression related behaviors contain the climb since 2016. and Aries hope is that we know that tri-town adults are very aware of these issues um we've talked about it a lot you guys have talked about it a lot we

085heard about it as the top level of concern in our adult perception survey so we know that people are aware and working really hard to implement action plans that will support and educate Our Youth and the adults in our community and um you're going to hear a lot more from from these guys following um following this should I stop here yeah yeah that was awesome by the way thank you very much for that does anybody have any uh questions we have like a couple minutes for questions before we move on to next student services anybody no I got all our questions out with Jeremy oh if I could make a point yes you know every I think it's I think it's a shame that we have to try to rush you through this um I

086mean I went on this committee a while and what I I think this deserves not a full school committee meeting um or a retreat or something like that I mean this this is really really important stuff and the fact that we have to rush through it because we have you know other things on the agenda you know always makes me sad because I I want to hear about all this stuff that I want to hear about what we're doing about all this stuff and it's hard to do that you know under these circumstances um when you had a question I I echoed the exact same sentiment so I'm hoping that the conversation doesn't stop here so actually one of the things that we we didn't quite get to and I'll just mention briefly we um

087have a lot more steps going with this still so we're going to actually meet with a group of Youth next week we're going to give them the data we're going to let them really dive into it take a look pick out areas that they see like what jumps out at them what are you concerned about because they're living in the trenches right so they're going to notice a lot of things here um and we want them to sort of bring their concerns to light and then we're going to continue to work with them through the end of the year um to kind of hone those and um get it ready to present to the community so we will be having a larger conversation about this in December it's not officially on the calendar yet but

088we're working on it where our youth are going to take the take the stage really and present a lot of this data and then kind of host some tables where they can talk about more specific areas with people from the community community so we really want to get a good turnout for that because we think it's not important for just it's not only important for the school committee to hear this it's really important for everybody to hear this because you know as we know all kids are our kids right we all have a responsibility for raising in our community so bringing people together to talk about it is really important and the only second part to that was at some point I'm curious about where transgender youth fall into this I know that you meant

089noted that but just maybe further discussions right and so that's definitely something that we put on for our next survey cycle for sure we want her to pull that piece for it that this year was just as separate questions so we wasn't able to parse it completely so but yes so that's that is something that we have on the horizon Trevor and um is this support public it will be American okay yeah it will be so right now you guys have it we wanted to present to all of you first and then it will be made public under the map website as well as the tri-town council website Patty yeah I don't really have a question but just thank you for all the information um I guess it's just a statement of concern I'm echoing

090what other people are saying but I when I looked at the report that we've looked at earlier today just the cluster of concerns are seemed to me very interrelated when you look at the depressions on the rise self-harms on the rise suicidal ideations On The Rise Tech use is up amount of sleep is down source of stress is school work as the primary expectations of self it's just it's a really bad pattern we're in and I know we're not unique to the culture yeah but um they don't seem unrelated it seems like everything is very much related so I really hope we can find some ways to support these kids and I think that what's really nice to see is that the trend in prevention activity of what we're doing you know what we're seeing

091is that a lot of people are really looking more at the underlying conditions that can lead to substance use so people are paying a lot of attention to the stuff and is this the first time that you're working with the youth directly on this this will be the second time yeah so we did that in 2018 it was the first time we we did that and it was very well received we had a very small turnout but but it was very well received the youth did a fantastic job presenting they did a quiz show oh and then they they were available to talk at the tables and every single person that left went wow like it was really great to just sit down and talk to them and hear their experiences wow what a great

092job so we're really excited to do that again one last point I just wanted to thank I was looking at the high school document and on page 22 it says Under The Heading of behaviors that contribute to violence and the second bullet point in the past 12 months um were you in a physical fight right right and for boys that percentage was 18.9 percent that that just seemed shocking to me that nearly nearly 20 percent within the past 12 months have been in a physical fight it's just I don't even know what to say so the workshop that you it was in the cafe a couple years ago with the same format yes so we can all go into that right so that'd be great I mean that would be you invite your friends and

093I think it would be my guess is it would mean a lot to those kids to see a lot of us there um and others and inviting others from the committee and I didn't I kind of I think I laughed out loud and I want to make sure it was clear that wasn't what you were saying it was because what you were saying was a lead-in to what I think is our staff following up with what you just said like what can we do for these kids and it sounds like I know we are doing a lot of things there's a lot of good work going on we're just grateful um we're grateful to be able to communicated with you and we've been having these conversations and and sharing and presentations for for months because

094we've had the data for a long time thank you very much for your partner and we appreciate everything that you're doing and getting the data and sharing it with people that will be speaking to us now so thank you thank you could I give an introduction to who's going to be speaking tonight um the Strategic and mental health strategic plan that you're going to hear a little bit about tonight is actually mesconomics response to the Mental Health crisis that we literally just heard about we know that's existing as a result they've created a comprehensive School mental health system that's the outcome that's the goal tonight we actually have four of the Pioneers who put um this together and we have Kristen Duffy and Alexis Costas who are School Bus counselors and we have Brad Denton

095who's the assistant director of special ed and then we have Julie de Matias am I saying that correctly thank you who is actually a school counselor but in this year she's the acting director of School counseling [Laughter] you did a great job last time you don't want to be parked with them you want to use the laser thank you everybody for having us uh I'm Brett Denton thank you um I know that data is sometimes heavy um but I think it's important for you to hear it it's really important for us to hear it and it will be important you know in a few weeks uh in the community can hear it so um kind of a dovetail we're not really in response to the to the Y RBS we were starting to sort of

096get this moving um for the last couple years um I know Patty had used to come here and present and it was always kind of um you know alarming as we were putting those presentations together of where we were defending um but we've created the Strategic action plan um with the goal of creating the mental health system um so you can go to the next slide um just a little bit of the back story it just seemed like you know as that data was probably developing and after every you know alarming situation in the high school of the middle school or tough day tough week you know a group of us were getting together and sort of debriefing you know the situations and trying to determine you know what what can we do better what

097can we do to to support the kids at Masco so that we can kind of ease this this burden um you know here's our committee I'd be remiss I know Patty and Irene are not here this tonight or this year but they were huge um you know pieces in in the celt team which is our social emotional learning leadership team that we created and they were huge in creating the comprehensive mental health system so I just want to make sure that they um they get credit um thank you um so as we created the the social emotional learning leadership team celt I know it's a mouthful um but we we identified a mission of our group and finally we're going to use this to guide our work which was you know to create the comprehensive

098mental health system so we can sort of broaden um our supports that are offered to students in the district um we identified our vision I'll read it just in case I don't see it but the vision was that students will acquire skills to manage the social emotional and academic challenges to successfully engage in their education by creating supportive trauma-centered learning environments throughout our district and with explicit teaching and learning students will develop self-awareness resiliency emotional regulation social awareness relationship skills self-advocacy and responsible decision making next one please sorry so that's me that's you so prior to the pandemic we were having many conversations around the need and the students need and what we were seeing within all of the trends throughout middle school and the high school there were conversations that the clinical team myself

099the other adjustment counselors were having with student services around what you know what's going on the kids are really struggling how can we help them how can we support them um of course the pandemic did not help any of us at all and so we spent a lot of time going through the data with self in terms of what was going on across you know the nation and and what we looked like in compared to everyone else and it seems as though we are kind of right there with them on Trend um unfortunately so when we're talking about so I I'm not gonna I can read it but in terms of the Surgeon General report that went out in um 2021 um indicated that one in five students um or adolescents face significant mental health

100conditions throughout their school years so when we're here at macconomet we're talking seventh grade to 12th grade that's a long developmental time period where they're going through many changes and there's a lot going on in their worlds so these mental health conditions that they're experiencing during this isn't always purely just a chemical response to their world I mean there are there are other things that impact their living so there's pure relationships there's things at home things that the school district does not have control over but we are with these students you know during the day all day long and so we are here to support them and so with that Kane the understanding that you know with the trends of um suicide which is scary when you're thinking about it being the third leading cause

101of death in children ages 10 to 14. and um the second leading cause of death for children 15 to 19 that's those are big numbers and so we as a district um it's imperative that we do this work with and it's not just about students who have a mental health established mental health condition um we were looking at the whole District um in all of the students even students that have not been identified as having any issues bubbling up with other concerns and the the data and the research really supported what we were seeing um again in in 2021 in October the American Academy of Pediatrics and Psychiatry they all stated that it was a National Emergency it's it's a epidemic that is impacting all students across the nation so next next slide yeah so

102thank you so as Alexa said you know it has been declared a national Mental Health crisis of our youth and the question is when we take a look at the the statistics and the data that Alexis was talking about like well how is that impacting our youth right so within masconomic so what we're looking at here are the student support center statistics now I know Patty has been here Time After Time After Time talking about our student support centers talking about the rise and increase in numbers of students who are needing and requiring mental health supports and and getting hooked up with school adjustment counselors this is an eight-year trajectory that we're looking at and you can see the the top line is a high school and the bottom line is the middle school and

103you can see that each year it's just going up and up and up and up um I apologize that our last number on the high school for whatever reason we couldn't figure it out it is 141 we know the number it just it wasn't popping up on so we want to highlight that we have a lot of good supports at Masco and one of the things I like to highlight is that masconomy is a little bit of an outlier with the um the fact that we have actual clinicians that work as school adjustment counselors not all not every High School does our school adjustment counselors are licensed social workers we're lmhcs we are licensed mental health clinicians um so as time's gone on we are seeing this increase and we just kind of keep like

104adding more people kids right because more kids more kids need it if we can move to the next slide please it kind of leads us into like what are we doing right how are we going to address this issue and help more use as opposed to just waiting for things to Bubble Up and then help folks you right so the goal of South and what we're here to really talk about is presenting a comprehensive mental health system that we are looking to build within masconomic so starting so Alexis and I have been part of an organization Massachusetts school mental health Coalition for a couple years now that has been talking about a lot it basically what it is is it's a bunch of different different Massachusetts districts that are coming together to talk about the

105mental health what are different school districts doing what are things out there so we've been part of that for quite some time and this Comprehensive Mental Health System keeps coming up coming up coming up several of us Alexis myself and a couple other administrators last year also joined the mental health Leadership Institute what was really about how do you start building a comprehensive mental health system within districts and the question really is like what does that look like and that's kind of what we're here to talk about tonight is the idea behind it is that we can start implementing supports and services and proactive measures to all students at different tiers I think we've always done a really really good job of addressing our tier three kids our kids in the highest need our question

106is and our goal is to start building our tier one services and supports so that we are getting less kids that have to hit tier three that we have a solid foundation that we have services and supports for kids in the mid that right that aren't necessarily hitting that tier three but need something else other than just you know a pop-in they need to learn some skills so that's kind of what we're here to talk about tonight this is the actual definition I don't necessarily need to read it what a comprehensive mental health system is but that's what we're here to kind of talk about and what people look like at Basco next slide please so the work that we've done is founded in the collab so it's the collaborative for academic social and emotional

107learning we call it Castle we use Castle all the time I'm sure everybody has at one point or another heard of that so and so what we found was not like I was speaking to earlier in terms of the mental health piece our goal is to support all students in building the skills that they need in order to prevent them from struggling immensely with these outside stressors that we don't always have control over and trying to adapt and control certain things that we can within the school district but the Baseline is to help them to develop the skills of self-awareness self-management responsible decision making relationship skills and social awareness so Castle was developed in 1994 and it's a very structured research-based data-driven way of integrating skills taught skills direct taught skills to students at the

108foundational level in order to give them all that they need so that when they do come across or up against stressful life events which we all experience at one point or another they have the skill base to do this a lot of times we see the students that struggle with social relationships and again this was prior to the pandemic I want to emphasize that but also now especially after the pandemic social relationships are really challenging and we know that lacking social relationships impacts you know feelings of withdrawal feelings of isolation when you aren't feeling like you're able to connect with others then you do tend to experience feelings of anxiety when in social situations feelings of depression with that because you don't have the skill base so the work that we're doing with cells through

109cells through the comprehensive mental health system is based in the castle model which is all data driven next slide and so by approaching the foundation of these of these ideas and allowing us to embed it into all of our students we will see a greater impact in all of them yes social emotionally but also academically and as community members because Studies have shown that those who participate in an sel-based curriculum do see an improvement in the classroom and when we see students see an improvement in the classroom we see them wanting to come to school we see them becoming engaged in school and that goes outside of the walls of astronomic afterwards there it starts in the tri-town it builds from the tri-town into the North Shore into their adult lives after they leave us

110so it's really important that we do Focus this work on every child every student from the ground up as opposed to the ones that are coming to us presenting with concerns or struggles and issues that they may have and by meeting them all at the ground level we can next slide please days when we look at the tears that we have for students that tier three level stays the smallest top of the pyramid right it's not bubbling up and becoming larger than tier one and tier two so tier one our foundational supports that reach all students stem from the school Counseling Services remembering that every student in this building middle and high school has a school counselor from the moment they walk into this building our nursing Services we have trained nursing staffs High School

111Middle School that work with them to do different screenings um one that you see up there right now is our expert screening which is our screening to brief intervention in response to treatment with substance abuse we work with our Wellness department on the signs of suicide we have weekly meetings with our high school and middle school support teams so those are our hist and missed meetings that occur every week we have our leadership team that needs to come together to talk about students that we have concerns about and what we can do to support them in classroom General and such and then what we have implemented also now at that tier one level is our cell team our self committee creating this Comprehensive Mental Health System the SEL curriculum that we're working with um Alexis

112and Kristen have done an amazing job getting the foundation going to work with our teachers so they can be doing um the the work with us um through the PD that we're doing on Wednesday afternoons for faculty um and then also mental health screenings if you will so the ones that you see that are bold those are ones that we have added if they have one star their new supports that we started in place last year and then the double stars are ones that are upcoming supports that we're working towards this year and future years so the thing I'd just like to ask one quick question um so listening to this this sounds fantastic but the first thing that pops into my mind is is do you do you all believe that you have sufficient

113funding and support to actually do all this stuff and if and if at anywhere along the lines that's not the case please point that out to us we will all right so here's the thing about this right so when we take a look at this this pyramid and the three tiers right now this is what this is what we're striving for the Comprehensive Mental Health System some of the pieces we have right now some we started last year some that we have double starred right now are things that are up and coming supports some of these things are going to take years for us to really really get up and going and we are very cognizant about the fact that we don't want to rush and pull things out and unveil things and throw all

114these things out and then be like we don't have the resources we don't have the supports we're not ready for them but we've started it and we started the ball and now we can't stop it right so we are being Alexis and I in conjunction with self being very thoughtful about okay so the SEO curriculum that is something that is again going to take several years to figure out there's lots of different curriculums out there there's lots of different um means that we can do this you know which curriculum are we going to choose is it every teacher that does it but when we talk about SEO curriculums we're talking about specific targeted targeted lessons ideas that teachers are embedding within their classroom Target out those Castle goals targeted at the self-management the relationship building

115things like that so these are things that are going to take us time but we are working on and we are very dedicated to when we talk about the universe of screening we're talking about Universal mental health screenings where we start screening students 7 through 12 maybe once twice a year to get a baseline of where are our students on anxiety and depression as well as use that as a feeder as to okay so some of these students they seem to be managing with our Terror level with our tier one supports these are students who maybe need our two-tier supports let's put them in a CBT group we can talk a little bit about what that is or are they tier three supports so that again is going to be a slow roll up because

116when we start doing things like this we want to be thoughtful about it we want to make sure we have the resources and supports in place in order to support the students when we do it and it'll be a really good sense of data as well as to data points of when we can come back and say Hey listen you know we're really struggling in this area maybe we do need something else or we want it we need to you know this that or the other um I think we have a lot of good resources here and I think we can be effective with the resources that we have um using what we have using what we have I mean first for one thing Alexis and I are doing PD for all faculty on Wednesdays

117through those cohorts right so they're getting a lot of PD on we did mental health disorders today we're doing trauma-sensitive classrooms we're doing the integrated experience and de-escalation stuff SEO in the classroom so we are using a lot of our internal resources to do a lot of this yeah and we've already we with a when you're seeing the areas that are starred once those are areas that we've done pilot groups or the academic success Center so if you're looking at tier two Services we're always around and available and then the CVT groups those are things that we've already started small level pilot program groups where we are running the groups and we're monitoring the data in what we're seeing in terms of progress and in looking at the curriculum and saying is this what we

118like do we like the way it's presented do the kids find it effective in in being able to gather our own internal you know get our finger on the pulse internally to see if these are things that we want to use so far we've found that they're what we've been using is actually pretty successful and we really like the curriculum um but we don't want to make any promises about that quite yet right so we're just kind of trying to feel it out and then the academic success Center um Julie can speak to was created last year um ultimately it worked with a lot of students to help with their transition back to school last year my absences um whether that was health related related or whatnot um and we found that giving them the

119support towards working towards getting caught up in the classroom just allowed them to feel more safer and more comfortable coming into the building and being prepared to um you know face the school day if you will and that programming has now transitioned to building um yes helping them academically but also working on Executive functioning strategies and skills with them we have teachers in there who are um working towards helping study skills organization time management um self-advoc advocacy going to talk to their teachers so they're able to build the groundwork there so they can feel like they can be best prepared for their lessons for their schoolwork and we have it's about a six to eight week model that we have students kind of transitioning in and out of it so it is not a necessarily

120a long-term goal it's more to provide these skills assess where they're at and see whether they're ready to move on to implement them on their own or if they need more time to to work towards that so while you're talking about that can ask a question about it when I don't know if it would be for like later in the year when you're looking at data um but I'm wondering if there's been any there's any data that correlates um being absent or dismissing early or um arriving late and participation in the academic success Center because it sounds like the kind of thing that might help a kid be in school who might otherwise be avoiding it no we definitely attendance is a big piece of it and so um looking at students that have been

121absent for an extended period of time why might they be absent in approaching them on trying to find ways to get them back in the building um so that they feel like they have support here to manage what it is that they know so I'm just wondering if you'll notice data trends that shift since you've implemented it you know what I'm saying yeah it's not just full absences but also just like tardies and things or kids that I might be avoiding it's still such a new program that we're that's what I'm saying so as you're passing it it'll be interesting to look at I don't know if you could correlate them or not but if there is a way to correlate them it would be interesting to see them and then our tier 3 was

122pretty established it's been established we've been working diligently in that area for quite a while so and I think that's kind of the point is we've been working really diligently in our tier three for a really long time and we have really good supports there and but we've gotten to a point where it's just we've got to kind of we got to start here right instead of just doing it obviously the foundation and and I think we do a lot of these good things I just think we can always grow and we can always do better and do more and clearly the not just masconomic data but the National Data immigrants to mental health and struggles is increasing so we have to we have to increase our supports in those areas and based on the

123yrbs data we will be taking their data and bringing it back to the celt team and working through some of that uh you know the new data that we're receiving and being able to kind of address and assess yeah I mean I think we started like it is just a strategic plan so there is a lot of sort of you know we feel like we've mapped out the first year plus but there's definitely you know a reflective phase and when new data becomes available I think that needs to get folded in um I think another thing that we have you know Bill to your point about sort of what we need we've got a lot of what we need you know when has stepped in for Patty and is 100 on the same page as

124as sort of the group I think both principles um and the department heads are you know definitely involved and engaged in sort of making this work so it's it's really important in that sense that it's you know kind of like everybody's buying in which is based on what we've heard tonight it's going to be like an all Hands-On deck right type of effort so awesome and being that Kristen and I are providing PD on Wednesdays for each cohort through throughout the year they will be receiving all sorts of information with regards to the data and the mental health needs of art not just our students all students but also how scl and implementing these um you know best practices throughout their classrooms and throughout the days will improve the students feeling good feeling connected and

125feeling successful any questions well if I could stand up I would stand up and like applaud you guys because I just think like this works [Applause] I really feel very strongly about that um but and like I have so many things I could comment on but just one thing that's just really nice to see is um so everything's nice to see but you know we've worked hard last year on a new contract that allowed to have a new schedule that allowed for PD and so it's it's just nice to be able to see the consequences come to the point where you are using that time like extremely valuable like Sam sounds like that's like an important part to building your tier one supports um so thank you for everything that you do and questions I

126got a question um so we're great you've got the professional development that's happening what's your um perception of how the faculty are um responding to it are they enthusiastic about this or are they so we've had two meetings yeah that's fine today was the second meeting okay it's kind of heavy it's not stuff they're gonna chew about yeah well so I will say that I um I definitely put my feelers out and I ask for feedback I oh I'm forever asking for feedback so after each PD I've asked numerous various teachers like what are their thoughts I want your honest opinion I want to know you know feedback in order to gauge kind of what we're doing so we can meet where they're at right their need is because they may feel oh I get

127this but I would like to know more about that and that sort of thing and so far after the two meetings right the early days has been very um positive and they are very um gracious and they are very grateful for the information and so we'll continue right now we're just doing the first cohort then I'll do the second so um we'll move through them nobody has thrown any Tomatoes yet so let us know which was my biggest fear so we're good so far I think it's I think it's important to recognize who started jumping here in the Alexis and Kristen put this whole program together with Brad and Julie and Patty and when we might be forgetting um on their own and they're the ones delivering the PD so it's calling delivery PD which

128I think is really helpful because it's folks that you're working with on a daily basis here at Masco we're not bringing in you know two SEL Consultants right so I think it makes it very meaningful for everyone here at Masco and I think for Mary Joan us you know I wanted to speak for Mary Joe but it's really helpful for us to be able to call up Alexis or Kristen and say you know hey this is going on today and we always show up with snacks so that's the best that having it all on under one umbrella is really um helpful because I think that a lot of the dialogue last year was kind of like what are we throwing at this to sort of you know Band-Aid things and now having the self having

129done all of this work to kind of put all of this under one umbrella so when someone comes with a new initiative or somebody comes with a speaker or somebody comes with can we do x y and z trying to figure out does it fit under the plan is it does it support the plan is it an add-on that we're just not ready to add again whether it's people you know our our academic grit to handle the work or uh time and so I do think that this idea of having this system and trying to build it from the ground up in the long term will allow us as a school Community to to think really intentionally about the things we're adding and how we're adding them and how they add in support of and

130not in conflict with so I think that that's probably for me the the work that they did last year actually to kind of set the stage for what's starting to happen this year is you know it's the beauty of the work that they did um and and I think it speaks to one of your goals which is just to have you know making decisions to support budgetarily um you know there's going to be a lot of data here about growth and about you know um uh related to this especially in kids coming to stay in school and being more productive and active and engaged in everything foreign I just want to ask well the slides both of them be shared to us for like are embedded in the agenda or maybe for our summary notes

131to be able to attach the slide deck be helpful I think it'd be great absolutely those definitely will thank you the wirebs will be in the future action plan in that email because I believe I got it today okay I think somebody sent that along today I didn't know just this slide just whatever was shared yeah yeah yeah yeah okay Meredith and Nicole are those ready to be shared now or so we just have to take the one internal until after right yeah that was mostly just even thinking even if it's just the slide deck it's just nice I don't know whatever we see to be available yes um I loved it thanks you guys thank you all right and thank you thank you [Applause] size foreign Julie were presenting um this whole idea of

132social emotional skills being proactively built you know through intention um and what we know is that social emotional skills are built through play as well and we know that the culture of childhood has changed over the last 50 60 years and kids have less time just the nature of of schedules and and and whatnot kids have a lot less time to self-select how they want to spend their time so that's something that we're looking at as an agency you know thinking about root causes and thinking about you know the the skyrocketing anxiety and depression and how that might correlate to you know the hours of free play declining so we have Dr Peter Gray from BC coming who is a an evolutionary evolutionary psychologist he's coming next Thursday I think we've we've papered you um

133digitally with with flyers and then we'll also be screening the film chasing childhood which asks these big questions um around social emotional Learning and Development and um how we can continue to support our kids so thank you thank you thanks Meredith yeah those were I think I I bumped into your the email about it to everybody earlier so we give her more plugs later too on that note why don't we turn it over to our superintendent's report I know right we can do it I'll tell you the cheaters just the hour all right so first off an update on strategic planning so uh in this school year we're going to be engaging in an aspirational Community conversation to redefine what success should look like for our students and schools and to enable the practices that

134will be able to District to realize that vision uh with excellent Educators and tremendous Community Support massanomet has a tradition of high performance we strive to both honor that tradition and also prepare our students for a rapidly changing world postcovid we must embrace the idea that schools may need to look different than we remember programs must become increasingly Nimble and the mental health and resiliency of both children and adults is essential I heard that tonight for sure uh during this 14-month engagement we'll ask what competencies and it attributes should the mass economic graduate demonstrate what programs and systems are in place to ensure they are prepared for Meaningful work and citizenry where are there opportunities to start stop or accelerate programming to continually evolve and adapt to a changing student profile and world what is

135our culture and process for planning and all this will review and revise our vision craft a shared plan for how masconomic might balance Personnel programming and policy decisions over the next three to five years we'll be deliberate and thoughtful in developing a plan that is both a guide and a tool for measuring future performance and progress we welcome everyone's ideas in this uh all interested parties especially students will have opportunities to share their perspectives and suggestions uh whenever possible we will utilize surveys and focus groups to amplify our many voices we will prioritize regular Communications collaboration and shared problem solving during this process a team of Faculty School leadership and community members will serve as the organizers data collectors authors and co-leaders of this work together they will direct and inform the process guidance by

136an outside facilitator that will explore and craft your strategic objectives and initiatives find consensus and make recommendations for planning Communications leadership and resources final document will be completed by November 1st 2023 uh and it'll as this goes on my blog there's actually a link for people to register and get updates about the process as it goes along so to receive communication yes for uh updates and actually uh conversations about focus groups and things like that so so it'll be a link to register people can provide an email address and we'll create a mailing list based on that I'll give you an update on our pilot schedule so last week our scheduling task force met to discuss feedback uh that members had received regarding the pilot schedule for for this year among several topics uh the

137group discussed the benefits and drawbacks of longer periods of instruction a fixed predictable Monday to Friday schedule the use of mbach and the m-block scheduling software uh Wednesday early release and staff development time and in general meeting time in the schedule the group is currently developing a survey for students and faculty regarding the new schedule and plans to administer this these surveys during the last week in October as a group we also decided that we needed to come to a decision regarding the schedule for the 23-24 year by February of 23. we want to try and get this sort of settled before the scheduling process so we avoid some of the issues that we had this year but Chris Thompson so we're moving along the schedule looking pretty good we're actually going to meet again

138I think 20 next yeah the 20th 28th 28th yeah sooner than that okay what do you mean by the end of the month yeah in the meeting with the next two weeks to put the schedule put surveys together and we'll have them out the uh last week in October I'm just ask the clarifying question yeah who would the survey be before students and students and faculty be separate surveys for for both groups I heard a little bit about this tonight but I want to provide an update on our staff development work uh so last Wednesday October 5th we began the more structured part of our staff development programming for this school year uh for this year each teacher has been assigned to one of three cohorts and each cohort will participate in three 10-week sessions

139on curriculum revision alignment and documentation social emotional learning and diversity equity and inclusion I work on curriculum revision alignment and documentation will be done in Department teams and will be led by our department heads the social emotional learning session is being led by Kristen Duffy and Alexis Casas two of our school investment counselors and our diversity equity and inclusion training is being conducted by staff uh from the initiatives for developing equity and achievement Institute or ideas so we said we just started this um it'll be 10 week sessions so we're in week two um so just starting out you don't have any data sorry I've been attending the uh the social emotional learning sessions and they're great that's the date I have um I think they're really informative and and you know exactly what we

140need is a first step to start this work so uh today was our PSAT day so we had a lot of different activities going on um so today all 10th and 11th grade students took the preliminary Scholastic aptitude test or the PSATs uh this exam was approximately four hours long um because of the need to maintain a quiet testing environments for students taking the PSATs we needed to plan alternative activities for students in Grade 9 and 12. uh the College Board does not offer the PSATs on the weekends anymore um which has been a a challenge I think for every school to try and figure out how to manage all this where you know we're not built to kind of segregate the building in certain ways uh to for a testing environment um so for

141today we had grade nine students uh spend the day thinking about the themes of inclusion belonging stereotypes and persevering through participating in an in-school field trip presented by Mr Patrick kogan uh Mr kogan is a Lynn native who outside of his professional career trains and competes in marathons and triathlons he speaks to audiences primarily young people about pushing oneself and overcoming adversity Mr kogan has uh friedrich's Ataxia which is a neuromuscular disease that affects mobility and the use of his the use of his legs and he speaks directly to his story story as he lives a meaningful life uh it was a great presentation I actually got to sit in this morning um you know it was really uh really moving to see um you know his positive outlook and the message that he had

142for students about you know you know even he comes up and says things could be a lot worse um so you know be thankful for what you have um following his presentation students uh spent time in the athletic in the field house doing some class bonding activities uh meeting their class leadership team and then they returned to the auditorium uh to watch the movie If I Had Wings uh the students were given a prompt as a writing assignment uh to get at the themes of the movie that will be completed uh in their English classes uh tomorrow or Friday I just ask a good question sure this is the first time ninth grade has done something like this rather right I feel like they haven't had I feel like they had the day off we're

143not supposed to do that okay so this is the first yeah it's not okay to tell students that you don't come to school and encountered as a school day right so we're doing things in-house I actually have to get the General topic it looks like perseverance same yeah same idea similar themes is what they saw in there listened to in the morning uh and then grade 12 students uh we're encouraged to use this day for planning their post-secondary opportunities uh this included visiting schools exploring Technical and career options and or a job shadow uh students could also use this day to complete their community service hours by spending the day in service uh they were also able to access their school counselors and teachers to work on post-secondary planning in the high school library uh

144so the library was open during the day for seniors to come in and work on college essays and applications because November 1st is coming fast all right so that's I'd love to update on today uh this weekend we have uh Chicago at the high school there's our fall musical um so the theater company invites you to come see the production uh performances will be on Thursday October 13th tomorrow night at 7 pm they'll be on Friday October 14th uh at 7 pm and then Saturday October 15th 2 P.M uh tickets are 15 for adults twelve dollars for students and uh ten dollars for students for seniors and children uh buying tickets in advance is highly encouraged as they were sold out performances for last year's musical um last year and Friday night I believe they

145were turning people away at the door so um so in in my blog post tomorrow I have a QR code that you can scan to buy your tickets online yes and then we have a couple of tri-town council events we wanted to talk about first one a Meredith just talked about is what is play uh and this would be uh the talk is called what exactly is play why is it so crucial for healthy development and it's with Boston College research Professor Peter gray and this is on Thursday October 20th uh from 7 to 8 30 and the massacre Auditorium uh there's more information and Link in a link to register will be in the blog post tri-town council is also presenting the film chasing childhood and in today's world of structure stranger danger and

146helicopter parenting free play and Independence have virtually disappeared from childhood giving way to unprecedented anxiety and depression uh now compounded by two years of the covert pandemic in chasing childhood psychologists activists and leaders of the free play movement work to bring back the untold benefits of a less curated life for our kids and teens that can lead to Stronger foundations and healthier life outcomes uh the film or tri-town council is going to do is have the film allow people to either view it online uh or to participate in a live viewing live showing in the film here in the auditorium on Thursday November 3rd at 6 30 uh in the evening and then at eight o'clock following the film there'll be a discussion group uh here in the cafeteria and there's also a link to

147register to either watch the film in person or at home and then to take part in the discussion groups uh we have uh the tri-town public health departments are holding covid-19 vaccination clinics uh here in the masconomic cafeteria uh on Friday October 14th and Friday October 21st from three to six uh there'll also be a link in the blog on how to register for those vaccine appointments and then finally some events that are coming up uh in the high school October 17th is financial aid night which is presented by the Massachusetts educational Finance Authority uh at 6 30 in the auditorium on October 27th the high school will have a Halloween dance on November 4th the quarter first quarter ends coming fast and then November 11th that Friday uh no school uh an observance of

148Veterans Day uh at the Middle School uh October 14th on Friday is the midpoint of the first trimester uh October 27th there'll be a presentation for students uh by Essex North Shore Technical School and then on October 27th excuse me the middle school will be hosting their parent teacher conference night High School had theirs actually last night so so that's uh what I've got going on today excellent three questions for me well thank you let's go back to our goals [Applause] um okay all Mike set up on the board I'll just start reading so the second goal was to enhance our community relations okay so these ways to do that and action items are fostering ways to hear Community feedback um the listening sessions um Thai listening sessions to the previous meeting topics host monthly

149small meetings with member towns with the superintendent and and school committee members um providing snacks and lunches for teachers at PD um liaisoning or liaison to work with the towns regarding budget Capital plans ensuring that there's no surprises oh anybody have any comments um I know we talked about at the retreat possibly sending towns um our agendas to post on their websites I don't know where that would like it could tie into ensuring no surprises but I just want to like if we were to try to do that I want to make sure it aligns with our yeah goals I think that would be liaisoning I think it's also a policy there's also the policy allows it if it's on the mass economic website the policies yeah that's state law yeah what's what so so

150there's there should only be one official posting place for the agenda and that's the masconomic website per our policy state law state law develop a meeting one should there be a link on the town website yeah we could send a link to the town website that says this is where our public system can't be more notice there's really as I said there has they can we can push give them a link to send them back to the public meetings page or the website because that's the official place the official Place Trevor maybe the way is for each Town liaison or whomever one person from each town is to take a look at their town website and see what's on there for Masco already and maybe it's just links um I don't even know is that

151only Oxford has much about Masco so the they have the quarterly newsletters that we started providing blurbs on the school yeah links but like to the actual website I think yeah it's probably different I just asked Topsfield to update their website foreign again was it a link to the yeah nothing was happening our information because our information it was the link to the website a number of things I would just say that the logistically um we know that the mask website will be up to date our yes will committee membership is up to date the agenda's official postings are you know meeting the requirements of law so the more and we kind of are even on Facebook doing it is tricky like we always try to make sure that people know this is the official

152place the more other places we go the more we risk people misunderstanding and thinking you know relying on relying on the staff of each town hall to make sure they're doing it considering this would be because that conversation I think is maybe why Melissa looked at and we saw how outdated the Topsfield website was with Masco info you're starting to rely on staff from other departments to maintain something that's our responsibility but to Carolyn's point we should think about whether the best Avenue is just to make sure that the town website is very clear about directing people to masco's website I guess my point is I just don't like feeling and like if it's state law at state law I just feel like we're one step removed from the towns like and that's a very

153bold clear example of how and like for the Middleton website if you click like I want to be subscribed to like anytime an agenda's posted for this board I get notified yeah and we're not aboard of the Town that's I don't understand our distinct in that yes or a private entity link to our information could be on a newsletter absolutely yeah they'll do and that's why I said it's probably best to say you know under the public meetings tab on the mask and on my webpage is where you find yeah the meeting postings because you know to I think Carolyn's point and zilly's point you know so we send it to three different places and one person you know posts it and somebody else does not and we're gonna we get an open meeting law

154complaint because we didn't follow you know a procedure that really isn't the procedure Trevor you're because we masked Topsfield I think has something like that too I think the easiest thing would not the easiest but the most logical solution for that would be if there's a way that people I don't know if there's a capacity for mascara to have that where people could sign up to have something so how how we did it in Topsfield last year was that especially for Budget meetings every time our agenda was officially posted we took them meeting materials and the agenda and forwarded it to our our liaison on the fincom and the board segment a liaison each liaison did that yeah but yeah I think that it definitely follows in that yeah um lines is just to be

155communicating back and forth with the town but I like getting to be on just the thin comms and the um so should we change that to regarding budget Capital plan regular updates or things like that yeah regular updates budget regular like regular business meet is that would that suffice regular business meetings periodic updates I like periodic updates because we started doing that in box for going to their meetings regularly okay regarding periodic updates comma budget Capital plan and where to find mask information explanatory about yeah it's kind of hard we really have to get ourselves in their faces because we are kind of off on the on the side and they all focus on the elementary schools and then Masco is this big you might have a Terry thing over there that takes a lot

156of our money so that yeah I mean it's a good point I think we need to do whatever we can so that they know more about mascot personalize it yes I mean you know there there's you know a difference between you know communicating and having information accessible to like select boards or fincoms and just citizens at large they're kind of two different things that are equally you know important but require different strategies you know for doing it you know select boards and think comes are a finite group and you know you can have access to them whereas the community at large they've got to be you know encouraged to pay attention to what happens here because 35 percent of Middleton's budget comes here right so like when we're talking about doing these small meetings with

157the number towns like those really need to be advertised I think to to the town not just to the mascal community but to the townspeople and unfortunately every town does it differently and unfortunately we don't have like the tri-town transcript anymore because I think that you know you can put things like when when Topsfield we just did coffees just the Topsfield and they'd post it on their news on their the news the town news on their website on try John cartridge it wasn't a public meeting it was just a coffee yeah we asked them if they could post that there and they did and that would be something that if someone had signed up get notified every time the website posts anything yeah like they would have gotten that I don't know a lot of

158people do that um but it's a it's a tricky thing for us because I was just trying to see other Regional maybe we'll just see what other Regional Schools if anybody else has anything that's different different from what we do and see if that can give us any ideas on the Middleton page you mean you know if you go to boards and committees you know you'll get in like on the fincom you can get agendas Etc there is a masconomic regional school committee tab when you open it up it just lists the four members from Middleton and a link that takes you to the appropriate place on the Master website that you can see agendas minutes Etc yeah I would say that the blog was an attempt to try to do a little of what

159you're talking about um but because you and we just something that the community relations committee needs to look at because right now you can't sign up for notifications the way that blog is set up but we could take it off site the way Mike's blog is set up where it's just you can sign up to get vlogged you know but that's all of that is stuff that would rely on us and it can't be that count on it to be sustained forever it depends on who's here the only thing that's officially by law required is what Jackie posts on the website so as long as we've got that down we're covered anything beyond that is is us going taking an extra um Step Beyond above and beyond as a service to people and we just

160have to make sure it's clear that that's not there's nothing official about that it's just a community it's bonus so to keep to you know wrap this up um adding that in regarding periodic updates um budget and capital plans is this number two look okay updating committee efficiencies and school committee policies so that will be continuing to continue policy updating with masks reviewing policy and procedures dealing with school committee members including the size of the committee term renewal time frames recall Provisions all may require a review to review of The District agreement um reviewing protocols and procedures for conducting the meetings as you can see we've tried at a number of times on it today just to see how that works um and then also adding the sustainability policy questions about and I ask um

161there's nothing mentioned in here I think it's under number one perhaps but we talked the capital plan came up a number of times I felt during our Retreat and I don't see exclusively reflected here um should it be or is it sort of inclusive of well Capital plan our goal or my school yeah well but I mean one of our goals is to support the process so we talk about approving a budget that supports goals of the school committee and superintendent it could just be under there I just have to mention it because it was something that I I heard kind of right during the retreat the priority enough times that I didn't know if you wanted if anybody else wanted it do you think saying approve a budget and a capital plan or um

162or operational and um supporting the the the supporting Mike and I think we when we talked about it we said it wasn't a goal for this year because it was right it's a multi-year thing correct well the capital plan is for this year the well the the Strategic plan the capital plan will be presented this year it will be carried out over several years a long time yeah so um could we maybe say supports goals and then parentheses operational and capital investment both Square you oh fourth bullet number one approving operating and capital plan that supports yeah okay approve a sorry say it again operating and capital plan that supports I mean couldn't we just put another bullet that specifically States support the administration and the development and delivery of the Strategic plan and the

163capital plan yeah I think both do the same and I think when you can clearer does to me okay sorry approved okay budget I would love for say that again the fin comes just to see that not only these guys committing to doing the capital plan and the Strategic plan but we're putting our names on it too then it's got to get they'll say that again the way you said it was good I'm sure [Laughter] what was it what was the first word the superintendent Administration in the development and how about the elt yeah support the elt in the development to develop a strategic plan and capital plan no that wasn't in the development s support the elt and the development of the Strategic and capital plans I think development and completion ah yes yes

164basically means we want to make sure funding comes through the other end execution I like execution completions well let me get my thesaurus open just kidding yeah and that's that's fine I mean it's uh we're not putting a date on it okay so I think that sounds good right together do we need to vote on these we do need to vote on these well can we just sorry but on three can we add something about reviewing our progress against our goals we had talked about self-evaluation I just think like I know that I think Trevor pulled up last year's goals what we were working on this year's goals and I was like oh yeah we never really looked at them again I think maybe we should do like a mid-year progress report and then a

165no I know and you we did Mike's goals did we do articles and then a um year-end like and as part of a school committee meeting like in January 10 minutes and then April review hour progress towards meeting our goals towards eating the goals midterm and end of year and the year before the next election like so we have these same numbers okay um so I've made those changes do people need to see them in order to um vote on it or stuff that I put in yeah I didn't know if we had to repeat that we had to review it again is she editing no it's not that's not the same if we can see it up there and where can you be okay with Mike and then Mike and throw it up there

166can I do that yeah okay and while you're doing that let's do the subcommittee do it somebody Melissa why don't you check out talking about some okay we have a policy meeting on the 21st from 11 to 11 30 to 1. we assume um we will be presenting section J sections at our next meeting hopefully um we'd finished some start the process Vlog section um and then we hope to start on Section k for the next meeting as well so we've done pretty good I think we've we've moved through a lot of them so so like I I think we're making good Progressive okay um and we will be having monthly meetings with Dorothy and as long as you can questions on budget I mean on policy um okay how about um community relations nice

167we haven't met yet but in keeping with the goals I was going to email the subcommittee tomorrow to see us next Wednesday works for our meeting following this one and I think the consensus was in person so we'll make that up a little shift from last year so we'll be in touch and I know um we had talked about you know you I know I don't know if that's going to be a listening session or not but also just talking about you know how you want to be running like the um meeting notes that we update and just figure out that whole thing the whole process that we have a better process for it Shifting the first 20 minutes to thinking of it is listening but more reflection for the community like reflection on things

168we talked about this week right I like that um okay so oh sure I don't know maybe it's not enough figured out sometimes it's sweet okay so hopefully there'll be a meeting maybe before the next school committee meeting oh definitely okay the next week or so so if you want it posted for next Wednesday Jackie needs it by Friday 48 hours before right so that she has time to post it questions by Monday sorry yeah same yeah because we need to give her a day speaking of processes and procedures um okay so budget I don't think there's anything going on with budget right now anti-racism though yes with uh Christine agreeing to join our subcommittee we've now got a representative from each town and I'm seeking dates when she will be returning to the area

169so we can to Dominic uh of course uh determine when we can meet as quickly as possible okay um no new negotiations or we already discussed oh updates that's good any liaisoning updates just skin technical Topsfield to update their website apparently it was successful so we're good is um Turf up gonna be part of these oh yep that's something to be I mean we might be able to start um uh uh next week yeah writing it out specifically um Trevor and I met with um a few of the folks from them weeks ago then before my surgery um and we talked about having monthly meetings in the future so we kind of are going to have you know regular um meetings in between company meeting dates um so I know you had talked about interest

170if you want to come on board as well we decided our next meeting is next Wednesday at four um awesome Mike will be here from the school and have you talked to John D is coming in having a principal we're considering having a principal and and so that will be the um so we'll have uh possibly three members of the committee a few members of the administration and a few members from um from the uh Thrift Shop committee and we will form a task for us um I know that Jeff has engaged with stantec to update their performing yeah the three cost analyzes that were in the feasibility study I'll have that by the end of the month and that that because that was done in 2019 and of course it's not 2019 pricing unfortunately

171anymore um and I think a conversation that will be had at that next meeting will be we have a bunch of questions that have been asked and we should determine whether that goes back to um very done or whether we feel like as a as a task from these questions can be answered um by our community because I know we have people who can build a spreadsheet to manipulate some numbers and we might be able to do it ourselves rather than paying for further information so I think that that's kind of where the task force should start off the questions that have been asked that I have put together um and this is a question for me is um you know there's what we have now for Fields there's this Turf proposal that comprehends like

172converting everything to Turf and my question is what are the Alternatives in between because there's three different proposals I know but what I'm saying is who's working on the let's refurbish the fields as they are and make them all flat and green and nice for instance as an alternative all I've seen in those presentations are right this is what it costs to maintain a turf field this is what it costs to maintain grass fields the question I have is what does it cost to restore the fields we have back to a nice level flat surface so because that yeah in my opinion might be part of the final solution that's a bad term um right now the final solution sorry nobody else um Germany with that go ahead but that's not where I was going

173sorry I guess it's just um so I'll have a lot of that in the capital plan will it be well because for example I'm getting pricing to resod Fields eight and nine yeah which are the two fire soccer fields um I'm getting pricing to put irrigation on fields one two three and four which aren't currently irrigated it's the current football field what's that consider that's two that's field two yeah no irrigation there no permanent irrigation no when I was you know I was at a soccer game today there and looking at the field and you can see like just you know a depression in one corner for instance right yeah and so a lot of that will be captured in the in the capital plan I'm developing along with phase one and three of the

174feasibility study which are Turf and phase two is a complete redo of I'm going to call the Stadium Field down down there field two what are you doing it and on the um track not con there's no contemplation currently to convert that to Turf um for a lot of different reasons so I think there'll be a lot of information that you're used to seeing and a lot of information they haven't seen before come late January it'd be good to hear that alternative information too just in life concerns and the News hazards and environmental considerations thank you for that um but great the turf up we'll just be talking about Turf because the name is and that's what they're fundraising for right like they're an outside group that are fundraising specifically for Turf yeah that's the

175reason because the funding is coming from a different Source a different Source but it's important for us as a leadership team and a committee to be looking at things well beyond that scope which includes what you're talking about so I'm I've been working out for months awesome yeah yeah great thank you that's great another little preview into what's coming in that Capital plan um so okay so thank you for reminding me that all right um and that is our subcommittee uh consent agenda we have um the approval of the September 7th and 21st meeting minutes we have warrants of um 2980 000 and 1.99 which are 20 warrant set up and signed since September 7th 2022 thank you to Dominic and Bill for signing um we're also accepting a 250 check from the Boxford Historical

176Society for the art Department thank you to them for that does anybody need to pull anything from this consent agenda and hearing nobody needs Pony thing do I have um if I make an emotion to really just do I make emotions no somebody else okay this only makes a motion to approve it I second it and Carolyn seconded all in favor say aye aye aye any any Nays or abstentions that [Music] um so we got everything right so they are up on the um right now creating an environment for Success district superintendent and school committee negotiate a contract online with committee goals and options to create successful outcomes for the superintendent assist with delegation of responsibilities prevent burnout of our leadership team determining account determine accountability methods to evaluate measure growth students is a systematic

177manner to drive school committee decision making approve a budget that supports goals of both schools committee and superintendent support the elt and the development and execution of the Strategic and capital plans celebrate and continue measurable ones I'm sorry to do this um the next to last bullet instead of execution I'm actually not comfortable with that because execution of the capital plan means that we have funded it and we're actually building things so that should say development and delivery okay okay all good okay moving on to two do I need to read them no okay can everybody see I feel like um faster ways to receive I mean it's not hearing just means okay Chris you say something foreign [Laughter] is it really just about us getting feedback or is it about a dialogue but to

178dialogue engagement right like Foster ways to engage in the community and dialogue engage in community dialogue engagement faster ways to engage in community hello yeah or just engage with our community that's taking away though that I think I was thinking Community engagement and dialogue okay I don't know I don't know qualitatively if I didn't understand on the words and actually doing it right yeah let's not Foster dialogue with Community to improve the ways to engage yeah to take ways to engage away temperatures Foster Community engagement yep okay that's good other ones yes going on to three updating committee efficiencies not doing worshiping during meetings um I think we it's good is this more direct somebody else want to move somebody want to make a motion to approve the make a motion to approve what I

179see on the screen any extensions can you send the final version to everybody and it will be attached to our agenda okay so at that point where are we at a little bit behind I make a motion to enter into executive sessions accept strategy relative to bargaining with non-union Personnel um superintendent Harvey executive session purpose number two I have determined that building the discussion in Open Session may have a detrimental impact on the district's bargaining position if the committee will not return to open session after the conclusion one second yes okay Billy yes pasta yes yes yes yes you are elt