Masconomet School Committee - 11/17/21

001try to recite it back section 16 b are we let me know when we're recording some days all right sorry so oh couple dusty versions [Music] sit there and just not going to be here today it's the wrong joe what happened to uh turn the box for joe joe's name today i had one they just became i'm very happy you're in the wrong table yeah i know everyone's like this is what happened okay i definitely knew that was my name okay that's right well i'm gonna call uh i'm gonna call our meeting to order at 702 today is wednesday november 17th we are here for the massachusetts regional district school committee meeting um and one of our members is absent today because of a work conference some scheduling uh difficulties so joe champa won't be

002here today everybody hear me all right at this volume okay so today we're getting the system again with the uh mics to the uh screen but for us within the room we need to really speak up to be able to hear one another so i'll do my best if you can't hear me can you please like give me like interrupt and get me each other as well so that we can all make sure we're not missing each other okay so i do have some remarks first happy spirit week it's been a fun week at moscow and i just have to acknowledge that as our fall sports season comes to a close it's been such a great season lots of um awesome recognitions and achievements we still have two in at states with varsity cheer this

003weekend but in field hockey which is playing in their quarterfinal game as we speak they're starting right now if i get a little distracted checking text it's because i'm expecting updates from people so um i'm going to give myself permission to do that to just check the score um so good luck masco field hockey we're cheering for we're sending you good energy um all right so um just sending them good luck and i just want to also thank our fall athletics community for a great example of citizenship and appropriate behavior amongst our teams and spectators i do want to take a moment just to address something less exciting that was brought to our attention regarding some school school committee members and administration who attended the recent m-a-s-c-m-a-s-s conference one individual emailed us with concern that

004masculinity attendees did not wear masks at the event citing a protocol founded on that they found online that included a mask requirement masc has advised me that they are posting a public apology because their protocol was not clear and not consistent for this privately run optional hybrid event among other things they noted that the location of the event did not require indoor masking for vaccinated guests we definitely saw no signs about masks posted anywhere in the host venue while we were there um but i want to reiterate that as school committee members when we are in public school buildings and obviously administration i'm speaking for our committee we respect and follow the known rules and deci guidelines which currently include wearing a mask in our schools such protocols are clearly communicated to all who enter

005our buildings our committee has not voted on any decisions about masks in school when it comes to matters of public health in our schools our district continues to follow the guidance from deci and from public health officials the priority is for school to be safely conducted in person high vaccination rates and our masks have been advised so that schools can provide in-person instruction to all children of all ages with varying needs so far that seems to be working before i leave this topic i do want to point out that several people also reached out to me to express concern that there were social media posts and discussion about it that seemed to go against masking out's values it seemed that those social media posts attempted to publicly shame individuals in our community based on unfair

006claims and that's not okay it's a bad example if someone has a specific question or concern related to the school committee we invite them to contact us directly by email or phone as the appropriate process we're right here most of us are parents uh you can talk to us you do not need to talk around us so that's a little psa to the public we simply ask you to be civil when you address us but leaving all that aside i want to emphasize that by and large i've noticed a lot of positive energy in our district in fact my college student came home and said moscow seems hype this year so that was a positive uh feedback to hear but this includes during our meetings where we have had respectful interactions this whole year it

007seems that generally at moscow we put decency and respect for our shared community first our children are watching and they learn from this it makes a difference so i'm thankful for that all right opening to public comment i see we have one member from wait maybe not sorry i didn't recognize you irene it's dr duran i haven't seen you in a long time so i don't see any other members from the public here at this time so i don't need to do my little public comments field i think we can move right on to item d our negotiations update with tasha which is really quick we um are i think we had announced this at our last um meeting that the union had finally agreed to come to mediation with us and we have now

008three dates set up starting on monday um with one of those three dates being up if needed because it is the following week after monday it's the following monday and we're not sure if we'll need it because the idea is that if we go to mediation we will need to come back to the committee with any changes to our proposal so um we have three i think it's two mondays in a row and then there are three mondays in a row so we're really looking forward to that and um are hoping that we can get the teachers a contract uh within those three weeks so that's it any questions fantastic thank you um all right lindsay it's great to see you here um congratulations on your volleyball season coming to a close uh so we

009have your update up next um i think the microphone yeah for your audio you might need to thank you excuse me okay hello everyone my name is lindsey fyman and i am now my senior class student advisory board member i hope you're all doing well and that you've been having as interesting a week as the students have since it is spirit week today's everything but a backpack day proved itself a bit inconvenient we can't wait for adam sandler day tomorrow student spirit week was hall decorating which took place yesterday and the pep rally will be which will be next wednesday people have showed up with their school spirit with energy only brought on by a pandemic another event brought back from pre-pandemic times was the senior halloween dance which had great turnout the senior class

010officers are now selling tickets for the senior snowball in more positive news fall athletes were thrilled to get back to the regular sports season and winter athletes look forward to the winter sports season as well furthermore a continuation from last year's senior class representatives taking on open projects that will occur throughout the year the proposed projects include fundraisers in partnership with the dcf and mental health awareness where students will propose initiatives to state reps although students have on the most part not complained about wearing masks the one complaint is mask break we understand that a mask break is required but as weather gets colder students have begun keeping their masks on for warmth during these breaks or congregating during the bathrooms many students are wondering if it would be an option to stay inside like

011in the cafeteria to opt out of a mask break despite this one concern everyone is glad to be back to almost normal and we cannot wait for more activities to come thank you thank you lindsay does anyone have any questions i do can i i i don't mean to put you on the spot but just about the mask freak i think would they prefer to be inside wearing a mask and just having a break than outside yeah because we go outside and just like keep them on and huddle because it's really cold because they actually keep us warm there's no requirement that you have them um but where for supervision issues we're trying to get everybody to go outside or be together but i think it's something you want to talk to uh dr carabas

012about and see can work out all right anything else thank you thanks thanks lindsay thank you um middles yeah middle schools dr mcmanus nice to see you it's been a long time it has been alone first one this year i think it is first one how did he get this far into the year i know i don't know tricky things yeah okay so anyway um thanks for having me back here it has been a while it's good to see everyone this is the middle school update first one of the year so our general update um it seems like september was quite a while ago which it was we're already coming up on um thanksgiving so i won't dwell too much on the beginning of the school year but overall students have settled in well to

013the school year we've seen a lot of excitement and energy in the middle school in the past several weeks couple of months and things overall have been going well the trimester end is actually coming up on december 6th so just a couple of weeks away and that will be a good first indicator of student achievement for us to take a look at with grades especially as compared to last year i would say that overall the atmosphere and climate in the building is definitely exciting and positive this year students are happy to be back happy to be back in the building every day with all of their classmates and no remote learning so that's been going quite well knock on wood we've had a very low case count in the middle school of covid cases this

014fall so that's been that's been great uh students have been very good about wearing their masks and masking in general so i've been pleased with that some of the challenges that we've seen this fall sel social emotional allergen learning is still a major focus because students are expressing anxiety and stress um we are still in the middle of this pandemic obviously and although things have um definitely been less restrictive this year have noticed that and i know that dr duros and mrs bullard are going to talk a little bit more about that during our presentation tonight and we're also accelerating learning to help close the learning gaps uh that in students incurred during the pandemic and um teachers have been noticing that and they're you know working in different ways to to help students accelerate

015their learning and close those gaps that developed over the past year and a half community outreach right now has been very active student council is working at full capacity this year uh which has been going very well we just wrapped up a fall coat drive at the end of october and we donated hundreds of codes to a community organization that was that's based in lowell we just launched the thanksgiving food drive which benefits um chi-town food pantries um and that's a team competition for something that's called the canley cup and unfortunately i don't have a picture of the canley cup but it's kind of like the stanley cup built out of the hands it's pretty neat um they already have hundreds of food donations um all piled up in the lobby of the middle school

016that the student council actually um signed up for a bus on wednesday next week and they're going to be personally delivering the food items to the different food pantries in the tri-town area that's led by mr zortsis so thank you to him and to the student council for organizing that so that's been going very well they have some other initiatives coming up that we're looking forward to as well climate culture back in september we did project adventure and team building day we did two separate days one day for the seventh grade and then one day for the eighth grade we received extremely positive reports from the students it was broken up into three different sections each day so one was led by the project adventure facilitators then we had a team building activities in the

017gym that was actually led by our own staff and then um we watched the movie luca which is a pixar film about believing in yourself and being true to yourself and we then we did a large group discussion afterwards and uh it went really well kids expressed um gratitude for having it they got to know their classmates well you have to remember with the eighth graders some of those students were not in school with each other for most of the year up until april when we had when most of the students you know a little over 90 of them came back so just to be able to have that time to get to know classmates that some of them didn't really know well from last year at all in the eighth grade and then to

018bring the seventh graders together as one unified school um was great worked out really well uh got your tickets that's a big push you may remember me talking about this last year where we catch students in the act of doing something good um whether it's helping out a classmate a teacher exhibiting good citizenship whatever it might be we've already had two drawings of gotcha tickets for a prize so the way that that works is approximately every four to five weeks we hold a drawing at lunches um for a gift card for a local business and we just picked 10 students from each grade who earned a gotcha ticket so they were automatically entered in drawing and they got a five dollar gift card to dunkin donuts um to you so that was pretty neat and

019then the first one we did um we did a drawing back uh at the end of september as well so those have been going well we've been piling up gotcha tickets students are really uh taking to it and and enjoying the competition back uh at the end of october on that friday before halloween we did a halloween costume competition among the teams and each team picked one costume winner who came down to the main office and we took pictures it was posted um in my blog and in the newsletter and they got a little treat um when they came down to the main office so that was really fun students and teachers really got into the day and everyone expressed um just a lot of excitement for it and i um i won't call out

020the teacher's name but somebody dressed up as me which was fun and everybody had a good time with it so and then student council is planning some spirit activities coming up uh like you heard lindsay talking about the high school doing a spirit week they plan on doing a spirit week as well coming up and uh they're talking about wanting to do a dance in the spring outdoors similar to what the high school just did so we're looking at some different possibilities for the school year the pitt committee the pandemic impact transition team which is a faculty-led committee is planning various initiatives for climate and culture this year including teen time on select friday afternoon so students wouldn't go to their normal classes and instead it would be devoted to team building running a citizenship

021workshop we plan we're planning an in-school concert with uh the chorus and concert fans there's one coming up in december that we're going to do that um i was talking about today with randy and then some other team building initiatives as well so we're looking at really being diligent about planning that specific time for students to connect with each other and that idea of camaraderie and fostering that sense of belonging and spirit in the school so we're putting some some definitive time into place for that here are some fun photos those are the halloween costume winners over there on the top left corner you can see that kids put a lot of time and effort into their costumes on the bottom left there that is miss wescott's seventh grade science class and their classroom pet

022gecko kids were actually using the microscopes to look at shed skin from the gecko last week so that was pretty neat um up on the top right that's our stem class and they had to build uh electric cars and they were racing them out on the tennis courts one day and then down in the bottom right that is the uh that's the eighth grade art class and they were making clay sculptures of um little monsters right around halloween so there you go that's it happy thanksgiving anyone everyone any questions yeah all right um you mentioned i think on page three about accelerating learning to help close the learning gaps incurred during the pandemic um can you can you give us an idea of how that's being done way to put me on the spot there

023bill [Laughter] it's it depends on the on the classes i would say probably the place based on last year's mtas scores where we noticed the biggest gap was in math um and so teachers they're they're moving forward with with the concepts that they need to teach this year for seventh and eighth grade but instead of um you know maybe moving as quickly through the material they're taking more time on in each unit to make sure and ensure that there's understanding for students i would say that they're providing more extra help after school than they have in the past maybe you've noticed that with your own kids um so that would be an example for math uh i'd say for instance in english they would probably have to spend some more time on their writing this

024year and really developing those writing skills um especially because there's more opportunity to be in front of the teacher in the classroom and writing conferences or something like that so just off the top of my head that's okay that's good i mean the obviously we've heard lots about over the last you know throughout the pandemic concern that parents had about this gap and and constantly asking us and you know the uh the superintendent what was being done about us when i saw that bullet point i just wanted to you know hear for myself and for others to hear just some of the things that we're doing to actually accomplish that yeah yeah we also have our other tier two supports in place like our title one teacher and identifying those students that you know need

025additional english language arts learning in school and that's a class that students would take and that's that started up so that you know those are that's another support that we have and we had that prior to the pandemic as well but you could probably make the argument that there are a few more kids this year that would need those services in other years okay awesome thank you i presume also bill that we're going to hear more when dr duros bill if i can just add that our title one program has been really enhanced and expanded this year in regards to the frequency of what uh the classes would be because at one point we were seeing you know you know students that eligible students maybe once a week but now we have it in the

026cycle three times a week and it's a class so we've kind of ramped up that to work on those writing skills and and those reading skills thank you what that class is i just want to make sure i get it for the next title i don't want to okay thank you great thank you that's a federal grant yeah i'm a specialized specialized reading and writing instruction okay oh okay thank you that's helpful so yeah and we'll probably hear more later in the students okay yeah thank you matt teacher is a full-time teacher she also teaches um public speaking in addition title one but the majority of her class load is title one okay thanks good you good terry yep that's good that's right yeah good clarifying they're always good um can i ask are you

027seeing one of the classes was outside have you seen like i was wondering if that was going to be sort of uh one of the things you keep from pandemic times having more outside classrooms yeah um i i think especially when the weather's nice teachers will take their classes outside as appropriate i know that this fall a lot of the science classes were definitely outside because they could take advantage of campus and you know different um they were looking at some trees or different i don't know whatever they were doing outside but i know that they were out there um and then with stem class you know just taking the students outside for you know the electric cars to run them on the tennis court instead of in the hallways was it was a lot

028easier so yeah i would say so all right anybody else thank you so much okay welcome back keep up keep it up all right thanks i'm guessing you might need to put your screen up i will at some point through this so if i might oh i'm in [Music] don't need sam that's fine all right so first off over the past several weeks we've heard stories in the media about multiple allegations of racist and homophobic conduct committed by high school student athletes from across massachusetts the conduct by student athletes from danvers georgetown duxbury and xvarian brothers just to name a few of the schools involved in these allegations is completely unacceptable and has no place in our schools or in our society what's even more troubling about many of these stories is the reported behaviors

029of the adults involved who through their dereliction of their responsibility to properly supervise these student-athletes or their unwillingness to intervene and address these behaviors allowed this toxic culture to perpetuate unfortunately the pervasive nature of these stories shows us that we have much work to do in creating the schools and the society that we would like to have i want to reiterate our commitment to ensuring the mass economic regional school district is a learning community where all members feel safe respected and supported in examining identity navigating difficult topics developing critical thinking and listening skills gaining perspective and engaging in thoughtful discussions that improve emotional intelligence growth mindset empathy care and compassion over the last several days i've had several conversations with our athletic director mr john delanes regarding how we are ensuring our culture is both

030positive and inclusive for all students and staff we've discussed our ongoing training for staff and students and our procedures around the supervision of our student athletes our work towards ensuring a positive culture includes requiring all of our coaches to complete the national federation of state high school associations or nfhs training programs on implicit bias and bullying hazing and inappropriate behaviors we're reviewing expectations for locker room supervision and for student behavior and that happened during a meeting actually today with all of our winter sports coaches we're reviewing the massachusetts anti-hazing statute with all of our student athletes and that's done on a team by team basis and after that's done coaches are required to submit uh an anti-hazing form to the athletic department attesting that this review has occurred and then the northeastern conference the nec

031our athletic departments from the conference and student athlete leaders uh held the diversity equity and inclusion training uh this past september 25th at swampscott high school and seven student athletes from massachusetts were in attendance for that training finally any student or staff member who experiences or witnesses any acts of intolerance harassment or bullying is encouraged to report this to a member of our district leadership team uh individuals who must wish to make an anonymous report can also do so through our state safe school hop helpline at www.safeschoolhelpline.com and that's that's a link is available on the district website so it's been a tough week for uh massachusetts high schools it's up a month also pretty appropriate um tomorrow night the tri-town council is supporting sponsoring a talk on called conversations on race this will happen

032right here at 7 30 tomorrow night in the high school library uh lisa mcdonald is a speaker and she's the director of equity compliance at mass bay community college where she serves as the institution's title ix coordinator and affirmative action officer uh in this program we'll look forward to exploring the question what can i do as it's a question many of us are asking right now perhaps you've asked yourself or perhaps you've asked this question of others the program provides participants with an opportunity to discuss this exact question listen to different perspectives and better understand the implications of intention versus impact this question may have and the resources book recommendations and takeaway materials will also be offered um and to you there's a registration uh requested prior to attending and that's on the tri-town council's

033uh web page and i'll actually put it in my blog post as well all right let's see if this works like i'll share moving on to our cove accounts see there so uh so for the most recent um totals or accounts um we're up to 31 student cases 31 cases in a total for the september october and through this through today in november um as you can see with you know the numbers are we're pretty high in september we're high relatively high in september at 18. uh dropping off in october uh we're only halfway through november and we almost have as many cases of october so that trend is not encouraging it's not doesn't seem to be going in the right direct direction uh as you look at this this one's case cases by week

034i can see that you know down towards the end of october we had a zero week which was fantastic um we're still down in reasonably manageable case numbers one and three for the last uh two weeks um but again you know we would like to keep it down in that one two zero uh range so we'll see i mean this is kind of in line with what we're hearing about another you know in massachusetts overall another increase in case numbers so um so you know we've tested you know it's all testament's day i don't have my the chart for it but we've tested uh close to 100 uh individuals at this point or we've run a hundred tests uh we've had one positive still in the testing today that's been it um for high school

035you know it's the good nice thing is you know going back to phil's statement earlier there's only been three middle school students who have actually you know had had a positive um covid result um yeah well for since september they said that and i went ahead and had the chart up and i was looking at i was like wow it's only three um which is which is really great so um you know and that's that's what we're looking at as you can see you know even with those weeks of three you know we're doing our contract contact tracing and um while we're identifying lots of close contacts because of how we're operating in the building we'll get into these numbers in a minute most of the students are vaccinated and therefore exempt from from any

036uh testing requirements so that's actually uh last three weeks got cut off there so then one three one three and then three over the last three weeks there are vaccination rates um you know we're we're holding right there at 78 percent um it hasn't moved very much uh over the last month and we really moved from you know 77.75 to 78.05 over the last four um reporting dates so we're still two two percent below uh the number needed for even uh applying for a waiver with deci uh and as you know as you can see that as it's creeping along i don't know how by the time we get there it would likely be january at the rate that we're moving so um seems like everybody who's gotten immunized or vaccinated has at this point

037who wants to has gotten it so questions on your numbers do we know whether the new cases are vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids or is that data not available it's it's part of our conversations it's a mix yeah i think mostly that kind of mostly vaccinated i'm trying to think about it you know there's other breakthrough cases yeah most of our not most of the kids are vaccinated anyways so i mean it's most statistically statistically yeah most of the cases are in the high school and most of the high school kids have vaccinated so high school you can see there's 79.87 vaccinated so but the numbers are so small and small actually could be the unvaccinated yeah right that actually would be good to know lindsay has a question how did the high school evacuation rates

038go down from october i had the same question we added a student the denominator changes right you add them delete a student and then if things remain the same then it points to paying close attention you really do i said it was like how do we go down but students move in and out i mean we have people that so those numbers you know the denominator is not always the same and especially if the student that leaves is vaccinated then it can have a bigger impact so i'm going to play devil's advocate here i have to ask some questions this whole 80 i mean does the commissioner have this legal authority legally does he have this authority without doubt he has the authority because when the state was under a state of emergency we all

039i mean that's a different story but the state is not under a state yeah i have to go back and look he he ju he did give the rationale over what authority he has to do this i'm trying to remember it was in the he says he has the he says he does and there's the board of education elementary and secondary education who's his governing board voted to give you know voted to affirm that so i just want to know because that's i mean you know it's just these arbitrary numbers that are out these numbers that are out there the 80 why 80 percent why you know i mean it's it's just constant numbers that we're all flooded with two weeks to do this the next thing you know here we are i think i

040was what is it like 691 days since this all started it's been a while wait what are you talking about two weeks to do what i'm just saying just ever since the beginning it's always you know i didn't understand and isolate phases all right well the 10 days to do this 14 days two weeks to slow the curve now 80 i just where does this come from and i don't know where you get these well i think that they've said that that was from the herd affinity number from from the beginning that one's been fairly eighty percent i mean he he's he's stated that all of these things come from his medical advisory board yeah i mean i would think that right because yeah wondering about the rationale for that number i mean i would

041go to jesse's website and explore there i mean the um yeah there has been a very close partnership with the department of public health with desi so you know even on our calls that we've had he's brought in doctors from dph to you know to explain things all along the way and they've actually established a special advisory board that advises the department of education made up of folks from the department of health uh public health as well as you know the area hospitals mgh beth israel all those places yeah there's not a shortage of really elite medical uh people in this area right uh we're really fortunate for that i don't know i think i think masking bothers adults more than it does kids i was stuck behind a bus today which is always so

042fun and i bother me too when i'm driving it amazed me because like the kids would get off the bus and i like feel like if it were me my mask would be the first thing off and they just kept walking with their masks on and i was like aren't you guys like i mean like one out of like a group of five would take it off but it was just i don't know like to me it would be like that it'd be so dramatic i agree but to that point that also scares me though because they're just so used to it that they're not like i don't want this to become my child's every day like what they don't even think about it that's kind of scary why why yeah i don't want this

043to become part of their life as long as there's a pandemic i'm i'm just saying i want them well you understand what i'm saying we're all working toward the goal i would think yeah children you know there are downsides to language development and social development to not be able to see someone's mouth so i would think we're all in agreement yeah being sure that goal as soon as possible i would hope once but i don't think that it's like seriously hurting them right now i think they're you know i think that kids are adaptive and they they learn other ways find out later that's all you know and i'm asking about it i have a hand yeah i just have a follow-up question i can't remember if you've already updated us on this but the

044open meeting law complaints that we received beginning last year and through this summer are they resolved and like how do i know that we turned over the follow-up to our school attorney when do we hear back on what's going on two that are still open and i don't i guess we would just hear if the complaint was found valid and we did something we had to do something right so we have yet we have not heard of any substantiated complaints so two were closed meaning that were there four all together or children yeah there was four and there were two two that were closed out two cause that means it wasn't a valid it wasn't agreed that it was a valid complaint it was that the so the way this works is the complaint technically

045is making the complaint to us we make a response to the complaint and if the complaint doesn't feel the response is sufficient they can then push it with the attorney general all right okay so in two cases they did they the timeline the time for pushing it to the ag's office has elapsed and so those complaints are dismissed and then the other two cases are still going yeah it was the request they requested the ag's office to look into them look into it okay thank you all right still not done here we go one more all right uh also we're gonna need to know is uh the kindness friday is november 26th that the tri-town council joined the ttc the tri-town rock band and community volunteers to spread kindness tri-town council will be collecting gift

046cards of all amounts to share with families in need throughout the tri-towns and beyond as part of the community assistance program all cards are welcome and appreciated but market baskets stop and shop target walmart and cvs are preferred also in collaboration with community partner the community giving tree uh ttc will be collecting packages of diapers all sizes uh and baby wipes so please stop by the ttc office at seven grove street uh the red station building and enjoy the music of the tri-town rock band uh take home your own decorated kindness rock and some other crafts um and for more information you can also go to the ttc website uh next one up it's with mixed emotions uh that i'm announcing that assistant superintendent for student services patti bullard is retiring from her position effective

047august 31st uh 2022. uh patty has spent the last nine years as the assistant superintendent for student services of max economic uh in her time here she has proven herself to be a tireless advocate for our most vulnerable population of students uh patty has also been an invaluable member of my executive leadership team over the past three years and i'm sure that's really so you know firmed up her decision crazy couple of years uh her guidance and insight have helped us navigate this most difficult of times and so on behalf of the entire masconomic community i'd like to thank patty for our service to the district and uh hope that she bankrupts the pension system thank you mike you're welcome fortunately the the next part of this is we have to launch a search for

048patty's successor uh and that's gonna start uh the beginning of december in the next couple of weeks uh with the advertisement of the position uh per mass general law uh chapter 71 section 59 the school committee ultimately appoints an assistant superintendent uh at the recommendation of the superintendent and so the timeline i've put together is to have a recommended candidate presented to the school committee at our march 2nd meeting he's spending there'll be more news about public interviews and um the like as as we get into this process is there a search committee that's put together uh we're still working on that putting together the search committee who's good who's the do you know who's going to lead it yeah no no uh it's bill and uh mary jo right they're going to lead the

049interview committee um so mike would with that timing and it's august 31st is your retirement date would there be time for overlap over the summer depends on patty it's not patty it's the summer she has vacation time too oh right now got it so i think yeah i mean there will be time where they're both both people will be working sometime that patty can meet with her successor to uh to kind of hand things over okay i like that you use the word successor rather than replacement because i don't think nobody's replacing patty that's right uh and also i want to wish good luck to our field hockey team i haven't seen any tweets yet or anything so um block tonight in burlington one minute it's one one once okay cut the half oh at

050the half yeah oh wow that's fast is it that still one nothing at the house one on one let's say one one you're ahead of me my my reporter is behind oh thank you wow um a lot um yeah i gotta just reiterate we've been so lucky to have you patty so we're gonna really continue to be here as well i've enjoyed it a lot even with mike here and i i have to mention that if anybody here has not seen the triton rock band and you're around on friday after thanksgiving stop by there because they're so fun to watch or listen to it's like you cannot believe sad you see them um thank you anything else questions all right so patty you're on along with dr dora thank you for coming in or come

051staying i'm not sure if you lost and came back your student wellness report there's not anything that's pressed though i just tell you right it's a mix so tasha's asking me while we're waiting tasha was just asking me a little bit about the triton rock band that i just gave a plug for so just in case anybody doesn't know what they are it's a it's a band that was initiated by a spofford pond teacher um that has monty students with special needs working with students that are in the music department at moscow that perform and they get together so it's like a it's this great sort of buddy system type of thing and it's just super fun [Music] thank you for the players again okay i think we're ready um can i just ask one

052question before you guys start does that and it's actually more for is it michael does that podium like move like closer to us or is it kind of stuck there it's just kind of hard to hear you guys are gonna have to shout yeah or you guys can just yell sorry you know how i like doing that that that wouldn't be considered yelling right there i know so thank you everybody and thank you to dr doros for co-presenting with me tonight on the state of student wellness tonight we're going to try to answer for you who our students are what does the data reveal about our students and what supports are available to our students so who are our students during the covid19 era this is a slide that should be familiar to most of

053you we shared it with you last year when patty and i presented basically when we're looking at our students we have compartmentalized them into four categories category one is academically achieving and coping appropriately category two is academically achieving but struggling in silence category three struggling academically but accepting help and interventions and category four is struggling and academically and not accepting help and interventions and if you recall from last year we're working with all four categories the most difficult category to identify is category two because if they're academically achieving and their attendance is great and all of the typical variables that we look at for you know at-risk behaviors are not flag markers the best way to for us to identify this particular cohort of students is for them to self-identify through extensive observation or feedback

054from their parents caregivers or guardians so what does the data reveal about our students so when i look at student engagement and participation i was looking at certain criteria attendance discipline referrals for special education and referrals to the student support centers in past presentations grades was also a variable and um because grades closed or had to be submitted on monday i didn't have that data in a timely manner but i think today um irene kind of pulled up some information that we can share tonight not on a slide but we can share so we'll get to that so for attendance if we look at the first 43 days of the 2019-2020 um pre-covert school closing school year at the middle school our attendance was 97.5 really good the same 43 days to start this school

055year our attendance rate and percentage is at 95.8 percent at the middle school so slightly about 2 less at the high school similarly the 2019-2020 school year the pers attendance rate our percentage was 96.8 and this year starting the same time period it's 94.8 percent so our attendance i don't think that's significant and i think it's still with good attendance percentages but it is down a little bit okay so then i looked at this discipline and the reason why i looked at discipline is because that's student behavior so we're looking to see if kids reengaged reconnected came to school felt you know good about playing school again so back in 2019 2020 the high school and this is the during the period of september to november so the beginning of the school year the high

056school had 15 incidents 15 offenders which resulted in 13 in school suspensions two out of school suspensions and distinct offenders so there's actually 10 students so there was students that had more than one incident so of those 10 distinct offenders eight of those students were general education students and two were special ed students during that same year and um period of time the middle school had one incident with one offender and it did not impose an in-school suspension or a school suspension and that was one student and the student was gen ed then you go to our 2021 year so now this was our school year that we started remote then we went hybrid then we came in person but not a hundred percent so kids really weren't in school a hundred percent so as

057you think or imagine um our discipline numbers were significantly down so in the high school we had three incidences three offenders two in-school suspensions one out-of-school suspension there was actually three students they were all janet's at the middle school we had zero incidences now this year the beginning of this school year from september to november at the high school we've had 77 incidences seven offenders which resulted in five in-school suspensions two out of school suspensions they were actually seven students two of them were gen ed students and five were special ed students now the middle school during the same period time got seven instance seven offenders that resulted in seven in-school suspensions the distinct defenders so we're talking about five students that may have had one or two incidences and then there were four of

058the five four were gen ed students and one was special ed student so again the reason why i thought this might be good information is that we're seeing and i and my theory for the middle school numbers being higher is that our current seventh graders really haven't been they were graders so you think of the maturity level their social skills anti-regression things like that and so i'm thinking that these five students may have had a little bit more difficulty integrating into school with pro pro social and appropriate behavior so i i'm thinking it's more immaturity and the regression of some of those skills so i thought that we're going to have a real uptick in special ed referrals over this covid period so i thought i chart out the referrals by school year and so

059going back to one year before the covid which was fy 19 and we had a total of 42 special ed referrals that year and fy 20 it was down to 23. so we're thinking we had the school closure we weren't you know i'm thinking that was a little bit lower then at fy 21 we're up to around where we were in 19 and currently in fy 22 to date we've had 23 referrals one quarter in so i think we're going to be a little bit higher but not the spike that i imagine we would have and i attribute that to our teachers our staff our programs our services i really feel as though we really did a great job keeping kids and as on track as possible so if there are gaps parents and teachers

060are not thinking that it is a disability situation that we need to refer the student certainly there are some that i as again i said given this data i'm assuming it's a little bit higher than normal but not the spike i imagined it would be so then i charted this percentage of students on ieps over time so over the last 10 years so in fy 11 our percentage of students on ieps was 11.8 in fy 20 we're up to 16 percent i think costa will like this our percentage is up but our total enrollment is down so when i look at the actual number of special ed students we're actually even since i've gotten here and we've always been around 300 to 325 special ed students so our actual number of students on ieps hasn't

061significantly increased but the percentage of our compared to our overall enrollment has gone up what that means is for a teacher a classroom is that there are more students on ieps now so we say one in well actually this is kind of a lower rate i in my last chart i've got 19 so the level of need of our students in the classrooms has grown and those who need accommodations modifications and specialized instruction so then i looked at students on ieps with an emotional disability and i charted this from fy 13 up to present time and fy 13 4.8 percent of our students on ieps were identified with an emotional disability in fy 22 20.59 percent of our students on ieps have an emotional disability so we can see a real climb and that's not

062unique to masco not to the state not nationally but it's it is clearly an increase so i do want to say i'm sorry it is an emotional disability um anxiety depression um primarily those are those are the two and manifestations of those yeah and that are affecting their academics not just they're anxious and it's not affecting and not typical anxiety it's it's clinical depression right or it might be affecting their participation even that category that hard to identify category yeah it could their academics might look fine but it might be not if they're on the neighborhood they won't get the money academic i'm not a fair i apologize yeah academics can be fine by emotional disability yeah yeah okay pretty common i know it's pretty common that's yeah it's usually it's sometimes the overachievers and

063those who are so nervous about not getting all a's and being all in ap classes and the stressors that start as stressors and then manifest into something more um just to note that this does not include our district students so five of the twelve uh district students with emotional disabilities have been outplaced within the last year so um that is something that they required a more intensive therapeutic environment than what nasco provides looked at our middle school our student centers and in three areas over the three years of hospitalizations referrals and students receiving direct services in the student support center so in the middle school you just switch the slides so it goes with what you're saying that's my thanks that was for a job that wasn't come on now i got lost in the

064presentation paying attention to the fights um so in the hospitalizations in 2019 20 the first 60 days of school so again we're talking pre-closure he had three hospitalizations at the middle school in 2021 the first 50 days we had one currently in the first 30 37 days of this academic school year we've had four hospitalizations and we've had additionally we've had four students that needed to be evaluated but not necessarily hospitalized so referrals for the student support center at the middle school in 1920 the first 60 days we had 30 in 2021 the first 50 days we had 33 and in 2122 our first 37 days alexis gave me the number 34. she actually emailed me today and said the number is actually 48. so oh we've had lots of 48. and can i just

065uh is that and i'm assuming that the reason that the number of days is different is because we asked you to do this report earlier this year than you had done the last two years did you say that and i missed it she didn't know i don't know i missed it too right so it's trending higher pretty higher that's significant if this number is it's not the right number um the direct uh gen ed students that are receiving investment council services in 1920 in the first 60 days they were zero in 2021 there was in the first 50 days there was 10 and this year so far in the first 37 days there were 16. and additionally um 53 students on ieps are receiving school adjustment counselor services and 19 are on 504s so the

06616 aren't on any plan no plan our high school student support center again similarly for hospitalizations referrals and direct services and 2019-20 for semester one we have six hospitalizations 2021 semester one we had 11 and the wrong dates were there it's for 21 22 quarter one we've had 13. we've had additionally seven students that have been sent out and evaluated but not necessarily hospitalized referrals to the student support center in 1920 for semester one we had 11 20 21 for semester one we had 18 students and again for 21 22 i'm sorry i had the wrong dates there for quarter one so that's this year quarter one we've had five so the trajectory if we look at that five and go back to 1920 it looks like we're halfway like quarter one quarter two so

067we might be probably even on that um but if we look at the direct school adjustment counselor services in 1920 and september 1 there was 114 2021 semester one 105 and then this year again that was the wrong date 21 22 for quarter one we have 138 students reserving receiving direct services so of those services 106 are direct services so what we talk about when we say direct services that's when the school adjustment counselor is meeting with the student one-on-one providing those counseling services and 32 are receiving a consult so that means on that grid the school adjustment counselor is checking in with the teachers the nurses the counsel the school counselors and supporting the student in that way in regards to any accommodations or supports or strategies that student might need okay oh so

068yeah let me try so i'm going to ask irene she got some great information so i want her to share that with you sure so we don't have a slide for this information as patty mentioned we did pull it up this morning and so one of the points of interest typically whenever we're looking at grades everyone wants to know how many failures did we have um sometimes i think that's not the right way to look at it because i tend to be an optimistic person so we should look at how many a's and b's and c's we have but we all we do look at how many failures we have and so this year for quarter one we had a total of 60 failing grades and the number 60 is representative of about 45 individual

069students we had 21 f's in the ninth grade 16 f's in the 10th grade 13 fs in the 11th grade and then 10 f's in the 12th grade so although 60 sounds like a large number we did award over 7 000 grades for quarter one so in relation to the seven thousand grades 60 is a small percentage we also were interested to see how does this quarter relate to previous quarter ones when we started off the school year so we went back to as far as 2018 2019 which was well before the pandemic we had 120 f's for quarter one for the school year 1920 we had 116 fs and then during the pandemic last year quarter one which was a little bit of a quirky quarter because we started late and so on we

070had 221 s so in relation to prior years if we were to compare it to a covered year last year obviously it's significantly lower but then if we were to compare it to our average is about 50 percent uh less for quarter one so that was something that was just an interesting you know fact if you were curious about a's and b's and c's and d's i have that information too i would just have to go get my laptop that's the question as far as the f's are there any similarities in the subjects where they're receiving those grades it's pretty it's yeah it's across the five course typically so english math science social science and foreign language i took a look at that too because i was interested to see is it mostly one particular

071subject but it was equal okay no preference to one area in particular yes can i ask you guys about the hospitalization rate which is to me somewhat alarming can you talk a little bit about what you think is driving that and if there's anything we can do to help prevent it from increasing even more so we're going to be talking a little bit about supports in the coming presentations do you want us to talk about it then or did you bump it up now i'm going to see if i didn't really hear it after they maybe um no that's totally fine i just didn't like that is a very high rate right like alarming it is alarming i just wanna because i didn't hear that in the presentation okay yeah yes thank you well i

072had a related question which i don't think is in the slides but um i was wondering if there's a way to look at um uh i can't remember whatever the term was that cost to athletes define but people who are not in ieps who are having emotional distress is that something that's recorded and that we can find that we can get a rate on that or because i think in this presentation it's just people on iep's right no okay sorry right so the student support center which will talk about okay sorry so these are people who made themselves known to you through the support center yeah so you'll see you'll see in the next couple of slides we'll be able to explain a little bit where the support center falls thank you all service audit

073okay i think that i think will help to explain sort of how the identification happens okay because you don't have to be part of the student support center to um to be incorporated into those numbers okay thank you that answered my question any student can access the student support center okay so it's a gen ed initiative um so obviously the students on ieps have additional supports as well yeah um and but the gen ed students have other supports and we're going to talk about tier one tier two okay thank you sorry i think it might be helpful just going back to the hospitalizations to put in context what would warrant a student to have a crisis evaluation what the criteria is based like the basic baseline just so folks kind of know the level i

074think for some students they're they're expressing um sis like you know suicidal ideation or they're not safe they're expressing that they don't feel safe um primarily that's kind of what the telltale that tells us you know we need to have the student evaluated to make sure um what i do know and you probably know this patty as well is that the the hospitals the emergency rooms have been inundated and so students are waiting in the emergency room for weeks for a bed um or a placement and and or they're if they require like a inpatient they're waiting a long time and if they're sent home then that becomes really difficult for obviously for the family as they're waiting for beds or waiting for a partial program and then they return to school so now we

075have to have a re-entry and have a plan as well um so it it's it's been a it's been a little bit complicated and just to add to that i think just highlighting the set the kids that are screened out that aren't being evaluated are it's a higher from not least and you can confirm this with your experience from my experience but a higher threshold so a student that might have been screened and evaluated in central hospital two years ago they're being told go because they're triaging at much higher level need than that so i think that's even scarier for a school because then you know the students coming back how do you keep them safe how do you know they're going to be safe in a large environment like that and many times as

076well another piece of that is that um for having outside therapy and therapists they are overwhelmed in that capacity too so many students that really need that service um parents are struggling with that as well so right so the school is sometimes the only place they can have an access point to somebody to talk to right because those therapists have such wait list now they're all overwhelmed how do those yep how do those numbers compare to you know nationwide figures among students oh i think i think that's comparable it's it's a national issue and we'll be again in a few other slides we'll be talking yes coming so we'll be talking a little bit about how we measure that i think how we compare it to even if you go back to just the trend

077line of students with emotional disabilities the north shore superintendents were having this conversation with our legislative leaders four years ago yeah that the the number of kids prices let's see it going [Music] joe's pointing to his phone i mean yeah everybody's giving it to their own kids social media i mean but we're i i remember remember meeting with bruce starr and and brad hill that we did up at whittier uh tech it's gotta be four or five years ago on this very topic um so this isn't you know i'm not trying to minimize it but it's what we were seeing before and i think endemic has just exacerbated the whole thing and just to answer your question one of the tools that we use is the youth risk behavior survey which will be implemented again

078this year i'll talk about that with patty in in a few minutes but we've been using that data since 2010 in order to assess at-risk behaviors obviously it's one measure that we use so when we've been looking at the data we're always pretty comfortable for some elements we're below state and national and then for some more at station and national levels and then for some were slightly elevated so i remember for a few runs of the yrbs we had slightly elevated um suicidal ideation and so as a result of that we implemented the signs of suicide program here at masco and then we also implemented professional development called typical typical or troubled which is a professional development that was available to all of our staff in order to be able to identify uh students with

079underlying anxiety and depression and be able for the staff to be able to try and tease out what some of the comments the students were saying that would fall under the developmentally appropriate sort of spectrum of things and what would be flags for concern so that way we could call in the intervention team and then put some interventions in place so it's definitely as dr harvey was saying something that is not new unfortunately i think that the pandemic has has just um exacerbated things and brought things more into the spotlight so more so there's more reports out there about all of the statistics and more um resources but there's also a greater need so even though there's more available there's also more people meeting what's available and so then it makes it again the resources

080are scarce so it is hard to get referrals to see therapists even here at masco all of us are you know contacting our contacts outside of school in order to be able to help families try and get in with someone sooner so that way there isn't a six-month wait before they can see a therapist and in order to be able to help the students because it is difficult to try and make make these connections because we're not the only district that requires these um services i have a question um for a given counselor in having worked in a school and and service kids on iep's five or four times could you speak up yes yes my question is um just to have a more concrete picture of of kind of the level of need and

081the level of support and demand on staff for a given counselor right usually you have a role of you're supporting general ed students through counseling capacity as needed your five or four kids your iep kids on a on average what is their case one someone who needs to see a counselor for their social or emotional meeting so we're going to do that we're going to okay i was just wondering like just a general average of we can i can incorporate that in patty could do the score i can tell you what was that the number was 138 that was receiving direct or consult we have three school full-time school adjustment counselors at the high school thanks for we'll go over all of that can i just ask before you move on you just talked about

082that um professional development that was available to everybody was that highly attended yes it was okay this was about what was it four years ago definitely before the pandemic okay we held it in here and everybody had come thanks okay all right all right so i think this is where we started so our uh question that we're going to be answering now is what supports are available to our students so in order to be able to better explain the supports that are available to our students it's best to examine them in light of them falling into three tiers so tier one consists of supports that are available to all of our students tier two consists of supports that are available to students that require um that just have a slightly higher level of need and

083then tier three supports our supports for students with the highest level of need and intervention so what do tier one supports include tier one supports include teachers so all of the students core and elective teachers are part of their tier one support team at the middle school we have teams um and those teachers are part of the support each student has a school counselor that follows them either two years through the middle school or four years at the high school they have our school nursing staff that are available to them they have opportunities for engagement either through excel programs over at the middle school community service opportunities or at the high school through sports extracurricular and community service involvement in addition to that all students have access to after school help monday through thursday and

084all students if they are considered um if someone identifies them as having a concern have equal access to be brought to our student support team and we have two student support teams one at the middle school and one at the high school each student support team is comprised of the assistant superintendent the assistant director of special education services chairperson of the special education department i'm involved the school counseling staff school nurses school adjustment counselors school psychologists behavior specialists trying to think if i left anybody else out at both middle and high school and so any one of us that have a concern about a student this is where we bring the student to life and this is where the process begins to unfold as to the type of interventions and supports that we would be

085examining for that particular student so we meet on a weekly basis so there's an opportunity to review the student every week and then to provide an update the following week so that way we're tracking the students from september all the way through june because we meet beginning the first week in september through the last week of june when uh we have exams the tier two supports as i mentioned are available to students that require just slightly a little bit more help and so this year we're excited at the high school to be launching a new pilot program it's called the academic success center i'm not going to spend too much time right now because i'll be talking about it in the next few slides and then finally the tier three supports those supports include students

086on ieps who have the learning center at the middle school academic support at the high school students on 504 plans and then students with social emotional and mental health specific needs that have access to the student support center as part of our tier one intervention system as i mentioned school counseling services are available to all of our students school counselors are responsible for the academic social emotional and college career planning of each of their students roughly at nasco the school counseling caseload at the high school is about 200 195 to 200 to per counselor and at the middle school it's about it's roughly the same what's important to note because our presentation is on the state of student wellness i'm going to focus more on the social emotional aspect of the school counselor's role so

087with regard to social emotional concerns the cap the school counselors are the first line of defense when it comes to identifying and addressing social emotional needs of our students because all of the students have a school counselor and so we make a connection with them in the seventh grade so that way they know that we're partnering up for seventh and eighth and then again with ninth through twelfth grade so that way they know if they have a problem they can go to their teacher and if they don't feel comfortable meeting with one of their teachers all of them can come down to the school counseling office and i have to say students at mass were pretty great in that regard they utilize the school counseling office in a variety of ways as a safe place

088as a place to come and just take space uh as a place to come and vent or to share their concerns to cry or to be happy whatever it is that's going on with them they do use the school counseling department very well and i have to say i'm very pleased with that i've always been happy that um the school counseling office of both the middle school and house and high school was very welcoming for students but i was particularly excited to see that um the students didn't forget that in light of cobit last year when we had all these you know restrictions of how many people can be in the office at the same time and all of that so it was really great to see that everyone just went back to normal with

089regard to that particular aspect health services are also part of our tier one so we do have um two full-time nurses up at the high school and um a full-time assistant nurse and then one nurse and an assistant nurse at the middle school our nurses are available to all of our students in order to help with any urgent needs that they have helped to monitor their chronic medical illnesses assist with the onset of any symptoms during the school day this the health services office is also another place that's considered sort of a safe haven a safe space for our students so they go there to take time to take a break uh to have a little snack to get checked if they're not feeling well the nurses offer those types of supports to our students

090they offer them information about um nutrition physical activity general well-being and then mental health support as well one of the models that we implemented at masco eight years ago nine years ago i think nine years ago nine years we've been here nine years ago we implemented a partner system so when students um express any suicidal ideation and they go to a staff member the staff member if it's not a school counselor is responsible for bringing them to the school counseling office or the health services office once the student has been safely transported to either one of the offices depending on which office the counselor or the nurse will call their counterpart so the nurse if the student's with the nurse they'll call the school counselor if the student's with the school counselor they will call

091the nurse and they will meet together to do a joint assessment of the student so if there's also a school adjustment counselor that the student is working with the school adjustment counselor will also be involved in doing the assessment and so that way we have an opportunity to meet with the student all three points of view are coming into play and so when we're talking to the student we're able to you know make an assessment and then screen them and make the necessary recommendations like if they do need to be uh scraped at a um in a hospital or if they need to go see their therapist they need to be dismissed or if they need to go to an emergency room as soon as possible so that's the process that's involved that's worked very

092well here at masco and it's a process that i've shared with the north shore um guidance directors that has worked very well for us over the last nine years so that way at the end of the process no one staff member um you know there's a triangulation so we can all sort of put the data together and make sure that we've made a good decision for each student tier two interventions i mentioned the academic success center and i want to focus on it it is a pilot program as i mentioned for the high school and we're excited to be launching this program it's um it's being currently we have the program uh being run by one paraprofessional at the high school our middle school model is a little bit different i'll be talking about that

093in in the next few slides the academic success center the purpose of it is to provide short-term opportunities for students who have missed school for a specific amount of time in order for them to help to help them to get back on track with their assignments it's it's meant to help them to practice some self-advocacy be able to identify what their areas of needs are and any barriers to their success while students are in the academic success center they have an opportunity to acquire some strategies strategies that are being focused on in the in the academic success center involve academic expectations so understanding what the teacher is requiring of the student time management organizing and planning prioritizing their work dealing with procrastination test and study prep as well as dealing with any test anxiety the

094academic success center is uh is available to students that fall into a particular category so it's a pilot program staffed by a paraprofessional this year overseen by the student services department and in order to gain entry into this short term program it will depend on on a few criteria one is that you need at least four or more absences in one month the absences have to be related to either a short term or a chronic medical leave covet exposure or covet related quarantine so that's why we piloted this program at the beginning of the year we had um you know students that were out either because of covid or quarantine we've also have had students that have been out on medical it's very important to keep the student support center and the academic success center

095separate the academic success center is for students with medical leaves and we are not including mental health as part of the center um in order to gain entry into the center obviously we've identified the student because they've been out because of x amount of absences we've made sure that they fall into the category of either medical or covert related they meet with the school counselor we set up the expectations and the plan introduce them to the academic success center have an introductory meeting they start attending the academic success center during a study hall or an elective block and they have an opportunity to stay there for a short amount of time two weeks maybe three weeks we reassess halfway through into a progress and then help them to transition out in order to transition out

096of the academic success center a student must have a plan preferably they've already implemented the plan and completed at least 80 percent of their work are on their way to completing at least 80 of the work so far we've had about a dozen students transition into and out of the academic success center and we've gotten positive reviews so we're really excited about continuing with this pilot program this year and finally the student support center which is our tier three intervention for our most needy students the student support center looks different between the middle school and the high school in the middle school the student support center is staffed by two school adjustment counselors and a teacher in the high school it's staffed by three school adjustment counselors and a paraprofessional the middle school does not

097have an academic success center because they as part of their student support center they have a teacher who's able to do a lot of the executive functioning types of pieces and support the school adjustment counselors with that at the high school because we don't have a teacher associated with our student support center it's more mental health focused and so we have the three school adjustment counselors and the paraprofessional school um the student support center is available as patti mentioned to students who have a direct service on their iep or access to the student school adjustment counselor through a 504 but it's also available to all general education students because it is a general education program students receive crisis management daily check-ins an opportunity to take tests in a private setting adjustment counseling organizational support the

098student support center also houses our in-school suspension students because we view the behaviors that led to the in-school suspension as an opportunity for them to learn and grow and not simply as a discipline matter so that's why they spend their time in the student support center and then finally the high school version of the student support center also has the opportunity for some of our students that are doing some of our online uh programming through grant alliance have an opportunity to um take that online course while they're in the student support center just so they have some support and guidance from the staff there so what program supports and partnerships do we have at massco first with professional development um we have our members of the massachusetts partnerships for youth we've been partners with mpy

099for i want to say six seven years now through massachusetts partnerships for youth each year we have five in-service workshops that are provided specifically for masco this year we have scheduled the five in-service virtual workshops for our delayed openings so in october 4th for delayed opening we had a workshop on creating a trauma sensitive classroom december 6th is scheduled for a workshop on anxiety and school performance february 7th a workshop on caring for ourselves is caring for our students march 7th a workshop on executive functioning and april we're going to have a workshop on students with high functioning autism additionally each month i receive an email from mpy with a list of additional workshops on a variety of topics that i send out to all districts that any individual any teacher staff member can attend

100it's an area of interest or something that they want to acquire more knowledge or skill we are also members of the salem state collaborative project the project has been for over 35 years the salem state collaborative project has worked hard to provide member districts and schools with high quality low-cost professional development examples of pd that they provide this month there's a workshop on executive functioning in the classroom another on starting strong with sel another on supporting unfinished learning and math these workshop opportunities come out of the central office through jacqueline voldock and those come out monthly to all district staff we also partnered with research ild and we participated in an executive functioning pd series last year we're exploring their smart curriculum which is strategies motivation awareness resilience talents success the mission of the research

101institute for learning and development is to empower students to understand their own learning profile so they can develop the persistence and resilience they need to succeed in school and in life we also have our shack our school health advisory council irene and i have co-chaired that council for about two years now and that is in collaboration with tri-town council cpac and the coalition it's comprised of counselors nurses um mike parents parents assistant principals i'm trying to think of those who come to me so a variety of folks and we set goals for the year and to develop supports programming professional development and workshops for our students parents families staff and community this year's goal is centered on sel and mental health phil talked earlier about the pit the pit committee was developed last year to

102address the needs of our students as they impacted as they were impacted by the pandemic we recognized that our students were suffering from lack of academic consistency and various social emotional strains that the pandemic posed the purpose of the committee was to look at this year's approach to learning and supporting the whole child within the school school building and community and i think phil went over a couple of their ideas for this year they met on monday and we talked about spirit days a mentoring program structured monthly team time citizen workshops et cetera nasco connects was established last year by the teachers and counselors at the middle school mascot connects is a camaraderie group that promotes student spirit and well-being and school climate and then finally we piloted an ef skills class at the high

103school that's taught by our language-based learning specialist but through recommendations from eighth grade teachers we have i think nine or eight ninth graders that are taking this skill building class and they're working on self-regulation attention task initiation organization planning and prioritizing time management and cognitive flexibility and is ef executive functioning executive function thank you so finally we're ending with what's coming so what's ahead for all of our students so this friday we will be offering in partnership with and in sponsorship from the tri-town council the youth risk behavior survey to all seven through twelfth grade students during their first period class as i mentioned before we've been offering the yrbs since 2010 every two years we were supposed to do it last year but due to the pandemic it was postponed the yrbs is an

104anonymous survey it was developed by the cdc and massachusetts department of elementary and secondary education as well as the massachusetts department of public health partnered up with the cdc and they are offering this survey to middle schools and high schools across massachusetts the survey measures youth attitudes perceptions and choices regarding a variety of safety and health related behaviors and then the results that we receive from the survey their group results as i mentioned they are anonymous they help us to identify strengths weaknesses normative behaviors perceptions and misperceptions among our youth as well as aid us in preventing and planning our educational efforts and so we're looking forward to receiving the results of this year's data sometime in mid to late january esper the screening behavior brief intervention and referral to treatment that is also another

105massachusetts legislature act that was enacted in march of 2016 in order requiring all public schools in the commonwealth to engage in substance abuse screening and education here at masco we screen all of our 7th and 9th grade students on an annual basis since 2016 we were part of the pilot program we did not do screenings last year as the state had put them on hold so this year we're planning on screening our 7th and ninth grade students sometime uh in the winter and spring uh freshman program so the school counseling department as uh might be familiar to um some of you that when i presented on school counseling services in the past offers a theme-based program at the high school and at the middle school specifically at the high school freshman focus on transitions high

106school expectations and opportunities which will be happening now in november specifically what we're covering we just actually began the program this week and it's done in small and small group sessions as well as individual meetings with students it runs november and december for all of our freshmen we're looking at reviewing how reintegration into full in-person learning is going with the students reflections on quarter one uh differences between high school and middle school uh school environment and culture what expectations there are at the high school and opportunities available to them what is self-advocacy what is the role of their school counselor we talk a little bit about academic advising and planning the role of social media and its impact on their social emotional well-being a little bit on time management and organization just carrying over from

107the eighth grade program and then we talk a little bit to them about different resources that are available uh to them on blackboard our sophomore program happens in the spring it's our career program the world of work career and self-exploration junior program begins at the start of second semester so the end of january and it carries us into all the way through the beginning of april vacation it's post-secondary planning graduation and beyond and the senior year program started even before school started and is carrying us into um up to january 1 january 15th metacognition and sel i wanted patty and i wanted to highlight this today our seventh and eighth grade um school counseling program delivers a specific program called metacognition learning how to think so it helps students to be reflective about their thinking

108about their learning and helps them to understand the five cognitive processes of remembering organizing prioritizing planning and checking and how they can incorporate different strategies into enhancing these strat these these skills which are executive functioning skills and how they are able then to make the skills mature as they develop from middle school into high school the program is uh consists of experiential opportunities for our students in order to learn the soft but essential transferable skills that they're required to have in the workplace once they uh finish their schooling by first applying them to their academics and then making connections with real world problems our seventh grade program includes lessons on organization flexible thinking and study strategies and our eighth grade program consists of monthly lessons beginning tomorrow on organization note-taking study strategies time management flexible

109thinking prioritizing and listening skill development so how to be an active listener what we're excited about this year is this metacognition program has morphed to include an sel component so thanks to one of our middle school counselors mrs jessica goldberg she engaged in the curriculum project this summer where she was able to enhance the existing curriculum and expand our lessons in order to include castle's five sel competencies including so uh self-awareness and self-management responsible decision making relationship skills and social awareness so jessica developed um new lessons uh doing to incorporate metacognition with empathy decision making social awareness and relationship building and as i mentioned we will be starting this program uh tomorrow and it will go monthly through the school year for our eighth grade students our seventh grade students already began their transition groups

110last week okay and so our acceleration academy so the acceleration academies help to accelerate the learning of students most affected by the coven 19 pandemic through engaging standard standards aligned lessons in the sr3 grant its funded acceleration academies will provide after school academies and ela and math at both the middle school and high school as well as summer acceleration camps school mental health leadership institute we have applied to bring a cohort to participate in the school mental health leadership institute in partnership with the reni center and the massachusetts school mental health consortium this program will train us to develop the capacity to act as both clinical and mental health leaders and change angus agents to build comprehensive mental health systems in our district through a series of trainings and cohort based discussions we will acquire

111and exercise a new set of skills to help us set an active vision for change and then finally identifying a mental health universal screening tool this is something that we reviewed last spring when patty and i met with all of you and our two school adjustment counselors alexis costas and kristen duffy was with us and so we're just carrying it into this year basically what we're looking to do through the school mental health leadership institute and our partnerships with the mental health consortium the various pd offerings that that we're doing is to have a common language of sel that's going to be available to our masconomic community both in school and outside of school be able to frame what the sel expectations are and and like i said have this common language so students understand

112what is typical of certain developmental milestones and then what is atypical and also to be able to offer professional training and development to our staff people to do the same so our goal is to have a comprehensive mental health program for students in grade 7 through including the universal screening tool in order to address the mental health needs of our students the reason that it's called the universal screening tool is that because is that it it's going to be offered to the entire student body and so we'll have a baseline in order to be able to measure what the needs are of our students so there's a lot of screening tools out there and we're in the process of researching them and making sure that we pick the one that's most appropriate for us using

113the screening tool obviously we'll have properly trained staff who will be able to administer the tool but it's also important for us to have in place a system for referral and follow-up when the screening identifies a problem and also to be able to access both school-based and community resources appropriate to on the students and then finally mental health literacy that's something that's very important and patty and i have discussed this in in different groups that we belong to mental health literacy is providing our teachers and our school staff with information and training necessary to notice some of the mental health needs of our students so that's something that where we want to do in tandem with the sel language so a common language and then literacy to go along with it in order for everyone

114to be aware and to be able to assist our students so we're just as a final note today i i too took part in the massachusetts youth partnership program i did one that was offered through boston college and it was on integrated school system support for students it was a wonderful presentation and basically it was they take a holistic approach not just looking at academics not just looking at mental health but rather like i said looking at the student holistically through academic social emotional health and family connections and so that's something that um the student services department it feels strongly about both looking at the internal and the external factors that influence our students academic social emotional states let's have a quick question i i know this came up at some of the cpac meetings

115and and i think it's relevant to a lot of what you presented um i love that you're talking about it looking forward to think about trainings for all staff general ed and regular ed to have a common language and common base knowledge i just i i think i just worry with three school adjustment counselors it's about 46 kids to a caseload that just says everyone needs to be kind of working together and have some knowledge of you know kind of when kids are at risk or or worse um have you guys ever talked about like looking at into becoming trained as a school is like a trauma-informed school i think that's where we're starting the conversations now and i know that at the middle school i know that they've they've done some of that but

116i think as a district that's where we're starting i think um being part of this cohort this institute i think that's where we're beginning and i think that when we think about our current programming and and what you'd like to do to looking forward long term we want to build a comprehensive program and so i think this is a start going to you know be participants in this this institute and um you know partnering with um you know i met with the school adjustment counselors today in regards to um kristen duffy leads the sel committee and so we talked about what that's going to look like this year and maybe we should wait to run that meeting until we start the institute and see how we're going to build strategically a comprehensive program here so

117we're looking just to piggyback on what patty said so what we're what we're trying to do is we're trying to use what we currently have so we have this the shaft group the school health advisory council that's interested in sel we have tri town council one of our partners that's interested in seo so what we're trying to do is we're trying to create an integrated program so that way we don't have these just one-off events or one-off opportunities that's not part of a thematic structure so through shaq patty and i have just been discussing uh the goals for the school health advisory council which are sel but sel is broad as all of you know so what does seo mean what does it look like so for us the um what we're tasked with is

118coming up with a common language and then being able to decide what indicators we're going to be focusing on and then training our staff on the common language the indicators and then training all of our constituencies so our parents and our students so that's one of the steps that we're taking the second step is the um institute that patty was talking about there's also another opportunity that patty and i are going to be um looking into to see if we if we will qualify it's called supporting staff to support students s to s collaborating to develop group mental health services in schools so that's something that we're interested in again using the resources that we have in order to maximize the opportunities for our students so we're trying to be transformative in nature with regard

119to student roles and response staff roles and resources so this particular um opportunity looks at how you can bring group programming to the school instead of all the individual one-on-one pieces i just wanted to mention that just as well um i just wanted to um clarify with the mental health universal screening tool you were saying that that's something that you're going to be giving to every student which is not anonymous which will help you understand the baseline of where each kid is at some social emotional so that is the basic premise of the universal screening tool so not anonymous you would identify the student you would use something there's a lot out there like the basque three israelites that qualifies as a you know screening tool and so we would want to make sure though

120as i said so you have a trained staff that's administering it right that's how to do it and then what it says want to make sure that then whatever the results show so the school district needs to be ready in order to be able to support the student with whatever those results are because now you're screening everybody every single person that helps get that that upper right corner kid yes that would be yes okay and that is not happening yet because now you're trying to figure out what makes the school has the right tool and the right the people are ready to receive the information yes and then also contract with our community-based resources right because not everything can be done in the school depending on what some of these screening tools are going to

121show students also need support outside of the school so we want to make sure that if we have one that's a little bit on the higher end that maybe was in category two academically achieving but struggling in silence so they're not receiving any of these other supports we're ready to go and not say oh good luck you know you have to wait six months here and to be evaluated you need 12 months at children's and you need this or that so we want to be able to have you know a nice a nice resource for them so that's the process that we're working on that seems that seems really i mean to me this is like like a critical tool that you you know so that you can find all the children but that seems

122kind of a utopia that you're going to have the resources available for all these kids that are needed needing it so it's like how long is that expected to take so that's why it's important that's why we're doing these these trainings these pg opportunities because we're not looking for everyone one child needs one therapist right right maybe they need a support group maybe they need a specific type of program maybe they need something that's enrichment to help maybe the student is confused and again this happens with a lot of the students that i work with even personally is that they they're having difficulty understanding their anxiety and how it's on a spectrum right typically versus anxiety gone awry and so when they come in and they're upset because of the breakup i'm like that's normal

123but i'm very upset and i'm crying i understand but that's normal because you just found out that you know you just broke up with your person and so that's rough especially as an adolescent right and especially if it's the first one so some of it is the developmental sort of you know growing pains um because of the way that society is i know you pointed to the cell phone maybe they you know they google a lot i think that they're missing this at some some not all some are missing the normalcy aspect so they'll come down and they'll say to me so do you think i need a therapist after they tell me what the problem is the problem doesn't warrant a therapist the problem just means we just need to talk it out and

124then they'll say oh i'm going to talk about it with my parents too and then we'll check in again the next day and then the next week it's a it's a it's a typical adolescent challenge and so that's another thing that we want to do is to be able because because my prediction is that not every single student in grade 7 through 12 is going to need the intensive service right they're not going to need the one-to-one therapist outside of school psycho farm like the whole kit and caboodle they're just going to need different types of and an opportunity to understand what is typical of their age we had melissa had her hand up for a while and then costa when you were going through the ben and carol what's incoming what is coming it

125occurred to me that there may be some gaps in there because of covid so i particularly was thinking the transition for our current 10th graders so was the programming last year adjusted because of maybe not completing eighth grade in the normal fashion or and starting and you know not having the school counseling program the school counseling program despite covid we ran it last year it just looked different so aspects of it were virtual because we had you know remote students when so we were remote or we were hybrids so we ran it it looked different and actually what happened was when you know one good thing came out is that we were able to digitize everything and to make a lot of resources available to students on blackboard whereas before it was paper copies and

126folders and they would you know take home now they have easier access to it so you did have a full year of normal programming last year i think i didn't understand that but it just looked different it just looked different now we're going into the classroom seeing everybody in person so it's back to what it used to look like two questions one on the students on ieps with an emotional disability are you saying that those the emotional disability is the reason they're on the iep or are they on an iep for a different reason by also having an emotional disability they're identified as a student they're they're found eligible because they have an emotional disability that's the category of which they've found we found them eligible okay the other question yeah the failure is you

127know in the first quarter is the grading as rigorous now as it was two years ago or has the rigor abated some in light of code i don't think any major changes have been made to the grading from prior to coverage and today i know that mary jo is having conversations about grading in regards to what is what is the best practice in grading um you know we talked we've talked about exams we've talked about things but nothing very very initial yeah initial i think that would have any impact on the grades for the show careless so i just have a question a lot of this great programming kind of relies on our teachers and our staff so can you talk a little like they're obviously also going through the pandemic and probably have a

128lot of stress and what are we able or what have you done to help them out i noticed one of the pd classes that you mentioned was caring for ourselves is caring for our students which sounds awesome um but are there other supports or even like counseling that our teachers can receive if they reach out that's employee assistance i think that is that a different language yeah that's a whole different student services wouldn't have anything to do with so i would okay but if our staff are very stressed it it's definitely going to affect our student wellness so do you know what we're doing well they have access through our health benefits program to you know a program administered through our benefits package but i have no idea okay so there's nothing it's it's just

129part of their health insurance correct yeah right but there's nothing that i think what we do have though is such a great collaboration and support mechanisms and i think i think i know that teachers can go down and if they have a concern about a student or a concern about you know something we access one another i think that um i don't know how to describe that but it's a real collaborative kind of collegial environment and you know i think things like i was going to talk about halloween you know things like um so trying to do things that build spirit and camaraderie among the faculty so the high school this year did for the faculty did a competition on dressing up for halloween which was absolutely over the top got more people involved than

130ever before even patty was dressed up as a ninja turtle um oh my god no and it was you know those are the kinds of things that we're we're doing this year under some you know new leadership in the high school that i think are still continuing to go and the middle school was part of that this year too um you know those are the kinds of things we're trying to do um i think the it's all you know these things are all great but you know keep asking me having 12 hours of all-district professional development time is just not enough to get everything done that we're we're talking about that's what we have so hours at school year 12 hours in the year of common time you're saying of common production for gen ed

131hours for six six month days over the course of the school year that's it if i could since it's relevant like that was sort of one of my questions was you list it off i wish it was written somewhere like all the options at those times are those one of is it is it like you choose this one or this one or this one or are those ones you listed pd sessions that everyone's going to it's a choice so i think how december 6th is going to run is we're going to have different options that will be really pertinent and valuable for i think we've captured in those those options that mike put together for instance we have meg smith our language-based learning specialist putting together a presentation on how to support struggling learners students

132and so i think that's going to be great so that might be something that a lot of teachers are going to say gee i want to i want to go to that i want to get some strategies some takeaways of how to support me in the support me so i can support others you know um and get some strategies and have that like back and forth discussion um so there's gonna be some options and what interests folks i do know that i mean i'm not keeping track and there's no way i could but when i blast out all those pd opportunities a lot of them some of them are during the school day but others are in the afternoons and whatnot so a lot of teachers are accessing those on their own time too so

133um because they some some of them really want some of this information so and some of them have given me feedback that they've attended and it was great you know whatever it is but um so i have a question would it ever given that you're kind of moving toward which i'm so happy to hear you say you're moving towards kind of a theme of kind of common language being able to identify kids being sensitive trauma sensitive moving in that direction would it ever be a possibility down the road to have certain trainings that are mandatory for everyone because i do wonder sometimes i think we self-select what we think we need but it's not always what we need um and i think we've all been guilty of that right so is there ever a time

134in the future that certain topics of trainings would be mandatory for everybody it definitely could as i said the thing we're dealing with right now is this really really long list of things we need to have time for training on and just not enough time yeah so patty said we put together a schedule for the next one which is december 6th and you know so we have mass partnership for youth doing anxiety and school performance but then we have three different sessions on a software package that we just invested a lot of money in and that our english and social studies departments are going to want to learn how to use uh we have another software package that we bought about it's called formative and it's for assessment got to get people trained on that

135patty put together a program um on strategies for struggling students definitely valuable uh mary jo carabazos is doing a session on rethinking grading definitely but this is all going on at the same time in such as two hours and they're all valuable yeah and those thinking next year and no sessions yes yeah and we had and then on top of that we actually have hours per year a session where teachers who are co-teaching you know we're a special educator and a regular educator working together they have zero time in the schedule to actually do any common planning and so we also don't have sessions for that going on and this is all going on between seven at 7 45 and 9 30 on uh on december 6th in the morning that we just don't have

136enough time to do all these things so this is like an old problem this isn't a this isn't just because there's so much new to learn and it's one of the reasons that mike and his team have been looking at the schedule you have one version of the schedule where there's like yeah in a perfect time like for world will be a pd time every every week every week in the afternoon which is by the new contract it's very clear that we need something like that which sounds like it's needed and i guess the reason i just bring this up is i think the stakes are i mean all these things are important but it's not a matter of if it's when there could be a tragedy here so do we want to be the

137ones to say we weren't being preventative or do we want to be saying i wish we did this so i don't mean to sound you know kind of cryptic about it but could it be something that you know we're looking ahead to next year i mean it sounds like we need more time and that would be good in the world working on creations i know but i guess like this is highlighting when you're practicing with it you know we've been voicing this for years i mean this is not uh this leadership institute that we're talking about is i think seven or eight so many hours and one at a time so you know the leadership institute just in itself that we're talking about at least six sessions maybe more yeah you know that are two

138plus hours each yeah right you know if we don't we just you know to get so we're gonna pull teachers or counselors from their their day jobs you know which is working when i'm working with our students to be able to go to these trainings because that's the only time we have available and you guys are going to be substitute teachers those days if i'm not in the course man we have so many people right that are right i mean that's and that's the other piece right now where we have no subs so it's that's why i have volunteered you guys dominic i have a question how comfortable are you with knowing that the students know what is there available for them like how how can we get that feedback from the students so that

139they know what is there maybe maybe maybe it opens a door that they wouldn't more they wouldn't usually be comfortable opening you know what i mean like is there a way to so word of mouth is very powerful so culture it's sort of like whenever we get a new student here and we give them the tour and we explain a little bit about mass the masco way one of the things we always tell them is how accepting how expected it is they stay for after-school help because they might be coming from another school where maybe that's not popular maybe it's only for the kids that are struggling maybe it's only for the kids that are in trouble here it's just the way of the land it's always the building is always full someone's doing something

140they're singing they're doing art they're just at some place they're staying in the library until four when it closes so it's except it's expected like i said and acceptable and so that is what helps us the same holds true for like accessing the school counseling office and the nurses office for example are two go-to places because they're part of our tier one supports it's something that maybe on the first day the freshmen won't know which technically they do because they present to the on orientation day and i tell them they're two places to go if they're lost or worried or need a snack or anything even though we're not supposed to do snacks because of allergies don't tell the nurse don't tell the nurse that's where they're supposed to go so so i feel very

141confident to be honest with you that they have this type of information and when they don't know we're also the way that the buildings are set up it's just strategic that way the school counseling office and the nurses office are right up front from buildings so it's very helpful it's very it's very welcoming and so so um that's been something that was refreshing to me when i came to masco 14 years ago and it's something that we've been able to perpetuate so i just think it's part of nascar culture if there's some kids this year they're a little bit uncertain it would be the seventh graders obviously because they also had that gap and the freshmen and even the sophomores so that's why it was important for us to make it known to them um

142because the sophomores weren't here some weren't here last year freshmen were definitely not here and of course seventh graders the same thing so just to follow up so there must be like signs somewhere that that announced these supports and services right yes so last year we had our um we so we have it available like posted rather you know around the building we share it on instagram for the students that you know follow us follow us there that have our uh supports for students so the supports for students whether they're academic supports like extra help or tutoring or whether they're um supports for mental health needs well and i think sometimes it's not always do you know the location where to go it's the stigma attached to walking in and asking for that right right

143right it's a culture it's a climate like you can do that and not have a stigma right and that's what i think is is you know special about this particular story i mean just because those offices that you mentioned you know you see that you see them populated you see people coming in and that doesn't mean that we're reaching everyone there might still be those few that don't have that courage and i'm just wondering is there a way to get closer to that information to get closer to that because i quickly read through this survey it's 87 questions and it's it's it's it's you know a lot of areas but it's nothing which survey would you did you look at the youth risk behavior survey it's 87 questions anything from what type of drugs have

144you been exposed to china i didn't even know what i don't think i don't have a question though about if they know does it have that no not well it asks about being comfortable it asks right so that one's the that one's a state survey so they're great questions so it's a little bit it's a little bit different right so how we get at the students knowing what's available to them is through their school counselor so all the memphis school counselor and the school counselor is required to meet with the student okay at least one full hour meeting once a year at a minimum so in addition to all of the programming that's happening so some students come down on a weekly basis but some students are like i don't need you you know i

145don't need anything i'm good i got this if i need you i know where you are they at least get that one meeting a year and so it's through these interactions that they know so like i said they'll they'll know the nurse's office they'll know the school counseling office you know to go to and then a lot of students will might have a coach or they might have an advisor through activities that they'll go to and then that's how that information you know gets gets funneled so do you see any benefit of maybe a more finite personal smaller survey that has more to do with what's here in this school to our kids what would the purpose of the survey be what would we be getting just just like a climate survey yeah just to

146get a a more comfortable feel that what you're saying what you know how you feel about the system and how it's working you know is accurate or you know you you know what i'm saying just so we can reach those because we we know there's those kids that like bill said they're not going to go they might know where that office is but they might not want to walk in that door maybe there's a different way to approach them or to get to them that might be the screening tool maybe no it might be that um that is sort of what you're looking for in the screening tool that's probably one of the things you would want to capture is just that like on a scale like i i know where to go my comfort

147level and and approaching i mean the favorite is like some other questions that we want to ask how do they feel make them part of the process how do they i mean not too big but how do they feel about balance how do they you know this is their this is their community you know if they feel like they own it and control it the more they're going to care about it so i don't know just thought we also have the panorama survey that we could customize to get that fun patty panorama panorama that we could yeah i mean you clearly do collect a lot of information this has been i mean it's getting late so i'm just mindful of that and i feel like we could there's so much here obviously we could keep

148going on and on but i think we're seeing that you're doing the work and i think if we have more questions we can always ask but um overall i'm just so grateful that we have a team in place like this and i think i just have to emphasize that the points that were kind of brought up about the to your point it's it's a matter of everyone who's engaging with the students having a sense of how to identify if there's a child who might not be coming forward and that involves training and that involves time and so whether it's something that people have been talking about for a number of years or whether it's something that we're recognizing right now it's an important thing for us to all be aware of as we're talking about

149our plans for the district i love your vision for sort of the holistic um just looking at it all big picture all the time that's great great did you have so i'm just gonna say i'm putting in the blog that yeah people to really encourage people to read your report and also to reach out to the student services center and if they feel like their student could use some support at any time so that's a great idea terry i mean i don't know how many people read this it's not a blog but feed it call that can't and let us know if there's ever something that you need to pass through them to that you need help more help on more support from us on thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you

150thank you thanks all right um it's time for jeff to thrill us with some with some enrollment now let me give you some no doughs from rabbitoh having a good time right now oh my god remember those things yeah that was no it's hard to like dating important conversation um think about timing we're on yeah the folks at home right my glasses fog up when i put them on so so we wanted to provide the committee with a brief update on uh on october 1st enrollment um so we uh we actually certify our enrollment data several times throughout the year uh with the department of education but the october 1st enrollment certification uh which was provided to the department of ed about two weeks ago is the most critical from several perspectives the first is

151it's kind of a cornerstone of the calculation of our of chapter 70 funding 71 funding for the following fiscal year's budget and we also use it to um partly apportion our succeeding years uh operating budget uh in the spring uh so as you can see in this first schedule i provided an eight year history of total enrollment this isn't resident enrollment and the top section is grades 7 through 12 which is masco and the bottom section is for informational purposes only it's information that our friends from the ttu has have shared with us so i thought i'd uh share it with the committee as well as you can see in the october 21 column to the right we've got a total enrollment as of october 1st of students which is down 2 percent as compared

152to the same period last year or 35 students and um over the last five-year period we're down 187 students or 10 percent um so we're consistently seeing a modest decline in our student enrollment like if you can flip the chart the next chart um that i'm sharing a similar setup uh it's a breakdown by grade by town of our october 1 2021 data so in the first three columns you can see the enrollment by grade for boxford the next columns middleton uh topsfield and then a subtotal of our total resident student enrollment and then we've got 14 students that attend masco that aren't resident students uh two are faculty children and then 12 are choice in students which gives us a total of the 1692. and then if we flip to the final chart which

153was shared with our member towns through their town administrators i think on november 1st november 2nd this schedule actually takes the resident student enrollment as of that date certain october 1 2021 and then calculates a proportional percentage that we actually use in the apportionment of the operating budget in the springtime and fy 21 the calculation has changed somewhat as you all know uh through town meet the three town meetings last spring the town town meetings voted to approve an amendment that the school committee put forward so instead of well historically one year proportional calculation uh for fy 21 it's actually a two-year so i've taken the two-year and then calculated the percentages based on the two-year average 23. for 23 but using 21 data so in that bottom right hand corner you can see the

15436.7 36.73 for boxford the 34.42 for middleton and the 28.85 for topsfield those are the percentages that i'll use in apportioning the operating budget come the springtime and it with the amendments that were passed last spring it really this here really shows you how that averaging really benefits because of oxford where had a 0.79 increase instead of a 39 correct 0.39 tops field 0.93 instead of 0.46 moving forward you know the variance from year to year will become smaller and smaller which yes i think helps everybody the the other thing to nice is you know your enrollment is going down it's likely to keep going down the seventh grade is smaller than the 12th grade and we usually lose some students between 8th and 9th for a variety of you know reasons the pipeline it

155in the ttu looks pretty robust though i was surprised by i think our numbers are up yeah by some of the numbers they're not that it necessarily translates years later in tamasco but they're all ev every grade is between [Music] 275 and uh 268 and 280 already right you know very even you know in each of the great elementary grades the enrollment's pretty even yeah do we have an idea or a hypothesis why the enrollments i'm sorry petty i can't hear you on the decline do you have ideas of that's we know it's demographic of the whole north shore yeah okay getting older and you know the communities are getting older and they're having fewer children so it's just not getting older it was fertility oh me neither is there a scale do we see

156this is it like a 10-year i mean any any um data that that says we should see it pick up in two years or down here i mean i mean this is what you're looking so when you look at this chart you can see what's coming up yeah the elementary schools um just just you know the demographic trends in massachusetts is that the population is getting older and they've they've already had their children and that you know they're not having more kids to replace uh into this you know so it's you know typical of the demographic trends across the country where people young people are moving south for the better weather and you know not settling younger families are going other places nobody's having five kids nobody can afford to live here anymore nobody can

157afford that somebody can afford something around the house so they can afford it not as many immigrants although the kindergarten rates look like they were there oh sorry no just saying that the kindergarten rate kindergarten had a 13 bump but last year last year that was an anomaly but kindergarten is not required so that's one of the things you gotta remember so last kindergarten is not mandatory first grade is right last year when people looked at the option of you know zoom school for kindergarten they just said i'm going to homeschool my chat i'm not going to enroll in this year and so that bump that 13.2 increase is reflective of oh school's gonna look more normal this year i'm gonna enroll like i want my child yeah but i was just looking at like

15819 and 21 those are you know 270 75 versus back in 14 it was in the 30s so yes there is an inc taking out 20 because of what you said yeah they're they're con i think kindergarten enrollment was down by 60 000 students steve statewide last year last year so because people looked at it and said right i'm keeping like i'm gonna keep my child you know out of zoom kindergarten yeah kindergarten through six in the elementaries this year is 1937. two years ago was 1944. right you know last year was 18 months thinking you know that's a covered impact of your parents choosing to do something else right so this is on our agenda so we're up to date we know what's and what we're doing with the assessments i'm just going to

159take the opportunity to mention that this is the the first page is the one i've used before if you look at the trend sometimes people think the enrollment decline is people leaving moscow but it when i whenever i look at these numbers over the past 10 years i have ones like older ones too it's fairly consistent there's kind of little bumps but it's generally a fairly consistent dip from eighth to ninth and other grades are like pretty insignificant that's been happening for a really long time so sometimes there's this talk about people running for the hills and there's no evidence of that in our enrollment data and this chart helps me to show that by actually using data and math wow um that was for anyway just thought i'd mention that so i think we're

160good on this i think we can move on to reviewing the census data and our membership so it was also outlined in the uh regional agreement like it's attached articles one a and one b of the original examiner there the committee uh is supposed to review the results of the most recent census right after this census is done and assess the uh apportionment of seats and ultimately what would have to happen is any change would have to come through an amendment to the regional agreement because the agreement right now spells out that there are four seats for boxford four seats for middleton and three seats for tops too what i've done here is uh on this chart is taking the 2010 census which is you know obviously where where we have the seat apportionment that

161we have now uh we've updated that with the 2020 census information and by percentages the seats would not change based on the population split between the three towns it's getting close but it did not rise to that level of the change of a seat okay so it's based on the town population instead of the student population found population this is the portion of the seats there's you're going to review and it'll be reflective of the uh yes taxation of the towns everyone's okay i think we should take this opportunity to look at the overall size of the committee before 2010 census was 13. large number dropped to 11. 11 is a large number if we were to go to a nine-member committee three members from each community and weight the voting by percentage of population

162then the population would always be reflective of the votes um and you know essex tech uses proportional voting because they have 17 communities and if you try to have you know people to balance it out it'll be like a 200 member committee which wouldn't work um what do they have they have 17 members one per town just one per community but their vote is drastically different the salem rep has a lot more voting power than the middleton tops of the oxford rep so their vote counts for more yes than their top sales persons both right so and also you know in the federal census the jail population is included which to me [Music] seems to be is unfair in apportioning voting rights because our involuntary residents are not do they get to vote i'm not

163assuming they're involuntary taxpayers so how many are there yeah but how many yeah really how many are there at the jail yeah i mean in april 1 2020 which is the census date there were 980 which was about 300 less than normal because that was at the beginning of the lockdown they weren't taking new prisoners and they were releasing prisoners early you're saying that middleton's number in the 2026 census should have been more around 9 000 rather than that if you take out the 980 it's 87.99 so if you used that number the middleton's population is 37.3 percent oxford 34.8 topsfield 27.8 and then if each of the communities had three members the three each middleton member would have twelve point four percent voting power box for eleven point six fossil 9.2 sounds like a

164lot of math it won't it wouldn't change think about how many six to five votes have there been in our in the 10 years um i don't even know yeah but there was one you know in in a budget cycle where you know the hagen universe had proposed you know adding some of buses to make some of the boxford runs well i'm sure budget's different right budget requires two thirds two thirds i'm thinking we're all gonna look at each other but this was an amendment since there were 65 votes and as i can't right now with 11 members he needs eight votes to pass and so if the middleton or the boxford reps voted in unison the budget fails if you did this proportional thing the same would be true because middleton and bloxford have

165more than a third of the population so nothing really changes it just makes a smaller committee that is will could be more effective and efficient and you have one lesson nope let's go ahead finish if this was proposed for may 22 to take effect in may 23 the timing is right because in may of 23 two boxford seats and two middleton seats are up and each of those communities would be dropping a seat and i think it would avoid having pitting incumbents against incumbents because i think at least one of the incumbents in each of the two communities would not be running good question um i personally think this is an intriguing idea and and you know want to explore it further but i i am i correct in assuming that if it too would

166require that the regional agreement be modified yes so this is a does that make it more it's now a big deal to make that happen uh i would think that after the experience of last year it would be a smaller deal since they have gone through that and they can see demonstrated evidence that we have what we have proposed is working for them yeah i mean this doesn't really change you know anything about how much power each town has see that i totally say i so i'm i'm behind you i'm just not i'm not sure i want to deal too much with it tonight but whatever i got to do to move this ahead i'm i'm definitely all right are you on the policy committee nope who is awesome good look at it that's what

167we did last year was that the policy committee took the lead on the amendments we weren't going to meet would we need to first put that if we don't come first would they explore it first or would we need to as a committee decide if we want yeah we need to decide if we want them i mean if we think it's a good idea i have a suggestion first you got to decide if you think it's a good idea then if the town liaisons have just some conversations with their respective towns you know it might be hell no way we don't have no interest in that then you know that's a dead issue but if we don't get any initial resistance then the policy subcommittee can have a more formal uh discussion with town representatives

168i don't see a particular downside from any particular town really matter tops so the benefit would be having a smaller more efficient school company that i mean the bigger the committee yeah okay less efficient it tends to be well more work divided amongst more hands i mean as it is right now there's a lot of people i don't know who that feel like they're on a lot of committees so if you reduce the number well then there will be the uh also be a reduction of need for committees subcommittees because part of the reason for subcommittees is to give people more of an opportunity to express their opinions so some of the subcommittee work can just be eliminated by just having the committee talk about it once instead of talking about it twice once that

169the subcommittee at the committee i feel like this proposal would be it would be fixed for the next 10 years based on we don't redo the population count every year no and and then is it every 10 years the federal sentence is every 10 years so and if this is you know adopted then in 10 years you just run that calculation and the percentages change you know whatever they change that's about it that's that's not sure i was looking at it they do it by student enrollment so you would have to make sure you know that that's clear that the census is what you're going to use numbers it's the federal census less the you know involuntary population i don't want to i don't i have no idea and i wouldn't want to talk about

170this right now but i mean do prisoners have the right to be represented by their local government i don't are you arguing to include them in the middleton number though i have no idea i don't know they're in middleton they don't know they're not middleton right now okay [Music] the decisions made here impact the taxes of residents they don't pay taxes in middleton why should they become that yeah i'm saying the way you would figure out how to figure out who goes would be to pick the right timing to only have one seat to go for yeah i mean if it's a year that one that you know middleton and box would have one seat well then you don't elect somebody but then you get two people off and then uh you know in in

171a year then this way after it happens every town would elect one seat from every town would be up every year i think the big i mean crossfield doesn't really matter so can't hear what you said oxfield doesn't it seems like it wouldn't affect us right so much now so i think the bigger issue would be selling it to boxes because you are those towns are losing just a verbal voice yeah at the meeting right yeah yeah horrible voice that's not proper english um is there more i just i'm confused about how the voting having a percentage vote yeah how that works well that's weighted voting you have if that's the essex north shore language they add actual votes yep so a boxford in in that scenario a boxford member's weighted value of the vote

172might be worth 1.2 of a vote versus a topsfield vote verse equal to 1.0 it's just recorded i guess that's what i'm trying to understand like so you record the minutes and say 3.7 votes but you know 5.3 votes they did what rounded it by and it's by student enrollment but if you have 26 to 75 student students you get an additional vote get it to your your talent practical terms to make a decision with a nine-member committee with proportional voting it will still take five members to agree to something because there is no combination of four that will get you more than 50 percent the three middleton reps vote in unison that's 37.33 one box for rep joins them that's 11.6 percent 48.93 so four cannot make a majority and then yeah okay i

173just would need to and then the other question i have is the um idea of doing it by population or doing it by enrollment is that something we would be deciding or is that enrollment i would i would encourage you not to do that will will not happen or not that's too much dominic so in that scenario your power your voting power it's different changes all the time no every year every ten years every time 10 years okay you're only going to redo it only based on that on that one census moving forward okay but if if you can never get to a majority with less than five why bother doing the whole waiting thing leave it as five nine votes nine member committee that accurately represents the population because in actuality it wouldn't though

174oh you're just surrounding percentages in there to pretend it is but in reality it's still five to four but eleven is is greater than nine right so that's that's what it that's what this would accomplish we would have a nine member committee as opposed to eleven but doesn't do anything doesn't add anything yeah one for one it makes you feel better that the towns that are taking away a member get more percentage but it doesn't do anything it has actuality use in this instance if the percentages were much different than it could but right in this case is there any legal reason that you're for that from here i'm sorry any like um what's your motive doing the percentage smaller committee and one of the reasons you know to do the percentages because right now

175the four boxford reps or the four middleton reps if they vote in unison can defeat the budget if you just have a nine member committee with equal voting rates that can't that that doesn't happen and that is something that in some people's mind is a benefit do you want to take away no no pounds ability basically emotional voting you keep that possibility yeah the possibility isn't really it has never happened that i've seen yeah you know that on a close vote right that a the representatives of a community vote as a block but for people some people in town government especially preserving that possibility is something that they would want to keep even though it's in practical terms it wouldn't happen there was one time in my ten years that a budget was defeated initially

176seven to four vote the votes came two for middleton one from oxford one from topsfield so practically you know the individuals on in this committee you know come you know have different perspectives right based on you know their knowledge not on what town they're from yeah but town government i think likes to have that possibility i know topsfield does it's a good case against your point no no no even the way and wait i'm just saying you said there's so many different they're so different voting addresses that concern yeah with weighted voting with weighted voting that would give middleton the ability to still reject with three votes and the other two towns would not have the ability it would give one town the ability to do that while the other two could not that's what

177would happen well right now one town oxford and tops or middleton can defeat the budget and after this you know because both of those towns have more than a third that possibility is still there so that's the pain doesn't change so classy you've been on school with me for a long time right like for a while prompted by you observing that this amount of people seems inefficient i guess i'm just curious as a newcomer uh not to put you on the spot and not exist it starts with the general i'm curious well uh position that a larger committee is harder you know to work with than a smaller committee you know whether it's a school committee or any other committee because you got more schedules to coordinate you know more things you know to talk

178about you know in the in the town administrator land you know they talk about you know if you have a five-member board select board your meetings will be sixty percent longer than if you have a three because everybody's gonna talk a certain amount of time so just larger committees are more inefficient there's all you know so that's what i think that was one of the reasons that they went from 13 to 11 after the 2010 census i wasn't around on the committee as far as that decision but 13 people trying to debate and everybody have a say so let's talk about six you need to think about what our so is there like emotion here are we just it sounds like maybe middleton and boxer people should be talking to their people yeah i feel

179i agree with you i want to just check in on timeline like i know it took us a few years to get the district agreement to change for the would you it took us a second it wouldn't make sense let's just say you have to have a foreign article already by february so the actual work of changing the policy last year didn't take multiple years like it happened took time to persuade the community so the the policy work okay maybe before i got the back end took time as far as getting banned from the towns but the um policy changes didn't wouldn't take you guys that long melissa um feasibly i'm trying to decide like four meetings but it was tough spiel i think that was more complicated than this is yeah it was four

180different amendments that's okay well i don't know well a big amendment you know wrapped around the fact that how is it gonna impact me and you know have to run different scenarios and all that this is i think much clearer and you know from the initial conversations of the box you know from oxford liaison military liaison it could kill it right there if oxford says we have no interest yeah so as far as our committee is there anybody who like wholeheartedly objects to exploring this so it feels like we like you said a liaison from especially boxford and middleton need to check in with your towns to get a sense of if it's worth moving forward on and then i'm wondering just as far as efficiency whether from there they talk to the policy subcommittee

181so that you could actually start looking at what that would look like before bringing it back to this committee for further action possible action i would suggest that maybe tops will talk to them also talk to their people just so that top still doesn't do we have to it doesn't they're really no net loss but i really don't think that would be a problem for us to do yeah we can um handle that that what are you guys do you think that that sounds okay i mean you just got to make sure you give yourself enough lead time to get the language drafted by the time the warrants closed which is usually february yeah and i don't are boxford in middleton having later meetings again this year or that session okay i won't be in

182here melissa what did your next closer for the meetings later this available [Music] before our next school committee meeting i will have an answer from middleton pasta can i can you tell me when so that i can come with you for that uh it may not be at a formal meeting and i want to i want people individually you know but you know if there is a gathering i will certainly i'd like to be part of it too do you have a way of um kind of doing like a summary that like at a glance summary of a summary like writing something that just kind of helps to capture what you're saying tonight because i mean it's the first time a lot i think a lot of us are hearing this idea so just something

183now that we've discussed that process reflect on and then be able to accurately a written version to other people what you're proposing he sends it out do not respond to it yeah just what we discussed here sort of in a written version so that we can refer to it yeah this is a reference yeah it wasn't an act on and then don't respond and and i will send you the calculations yeah that'd be great okay so i would like to that to happen so the you guys as towns you can talk to each other but officially melissa lee's is to officially be melissa lee just to topsfield carolyn liaises to boxford natasha lees is into middleton but if your town wants to coordinate whatever you want to coordinate that's between you guys and just um

184fyi for me i i have actually a meeting with the fincom and the board of selectmen but i won't have like both of them until our 15 our meeting on the 15th um okay i have a consolidated answer for you okay we presented everything in january last year to the three downs all together for policy okay all right so uh i think we'll move on from that if it's okay um if i'm not appropriate i'm always like worried that i'm forgetting a vote or something um so we just masd conference report we just let it something we don't just do and then never talk about again so um four of us were there yes four uh carolyn tasha and myself from the school committee and mike as with the superintendents um and i'll just quickly

185mention that the delegate assembly that i went to that we all voted on the resolutions all of those resolutions did pass there was only one that had a significant opposition and that was the electric buses but they it did pass in the end after and the other one that had a bit of discussion was about mascots um i i didn't ask any questions i'm not sure if that goes anywhere what impact it will have for us but just letting you know those all passed um anyone who attended is there anything from our workshops that we went to that you want to give a snapshot i'll give a quick little thing though first of all that had nothing to do with any workshops just from the camaraderie of being amongst other school committee members which is

186really uh interesting this is my second time going last time i only went for like a day or something uh one night one day but um it was just very interesting to me how bad some school committees have it out there right now in terms of being attacked and um it you know made me really appreciate where we are because um what we've experienced has been minimal compared to some other districts from some interesting people that we randomly sat with um so that was heartening um one uh workshop that i attended that i really felt uh was interesting and you know i've talked to mike about it as something i'd like to for us to explore is it was on communication and it basically was about you know setting a plan for communication like what

187is masco's message and then making sure that we um come back to that message with every piece of communication that comes out so if our message is you know the health wellness and academic success of our children or something like that that make sure that that's really like the point that everything comes and and flood communication it should be emails from the district it should be social media it should be you know multiple social media facebook is different than the twitter world and and um i don't know it just and there's like audits that you can do to see how you can better do your your communication and then get a plan and i thought it would be something um personally that felt like short money to do a lot of impact at some point

188thanks so that was what i really enjoyed we don't have i mean this is just sort of if there was i have a bunch of notes but i'll spare you i mean so my favorite thing i heard i went to one on uh community engagement and it was actually a quote from amy poehler and that character she plays in the town government parks and rec parks we got parks and rec which is [Laughter] what i hear when people yell at me are people caring loudly that is perfect don't take anything personally people just really care loudly and the kids the kids that we heard from oh my god what was that um oh at the lunch amazing there was a program that looked at kids during the pandemic and interviewed however many kids over six

189different high schools and uh two of them came and spoke and were they ever impressive beautiful souls even that one i would i would agree with like your your takeaway tasha i felt like a lot of it one was like oh we're just like everybody else everyone else has been through the ringer and everyone else is dealing with a lot like all their students have the same like that's that video could have been our kids and uh and the other is just that we actually don't other places have it a lot worse that was the other takeaway i got but i would incur i've gone just twice now and i used to think like you had to be crazy to take time out of your schedule to go to a school committee conference but i

190both times i've gotten a lot out of it so i would recommend that in your tenure you guys try to hit it like at least once um because it it's it's very interesting it is interesting helpful afterwards all right you go back to your return so we'll move on to subcommittee reports terry is there one for community relations there's a quick one we've met twice since our last school committee meeting we're meeting monthly uh we decided our first meeting that we were going to have uh an open community conversation for the first third of our of each meeting um and that we had our first one last wednesday and it went really well we had a number of people there um two people raised topics for discussion it was all very you know productive conversation

191and for our next there are a number of things going on in that community if you have questions about you can call one of us but um one of the next things we're doing is inviting count representatives of the councils on aging to come to our meeting in either december or january just to sort of open the conversation and i know there's already stuff going on with the councils on aging but yeah it's it's so far so good and great is very productive and efficient and we talked about some great things and i think the community appreciates the idea of having that kind of just open forum that's happening i know i know maybe we do sometimes but yeah um i think it yeah it was good good start thank you thanks that's awesome all

192right budget that's me um we started off by um reviewing the budget calendar which was basically a snapshot of uh our committee calendar and um we put in two uh dates to have a date in january where hear from the department head something that we have always enjoyed in the past and talked about coming up with some good pointed questions to hear about what they've been doing not just how everything's great um kind of really looking into stuff that they need and then also in february having another date but with our townspeople coming in it um that would be after the budget had been um had come out already so i felt that that would be a good thing for them to come to us as we typically go to them and that's not to

193say that we wouldn't still be going to them but just another opportunity to discuss our budget with everybody um that'll be open to the public yeah well all our meetings are open to the public yeah when you save them come to us do you mean like the finance committee the finance select board um town administrator whoever is officiating in towns um then we got into a conversation about athletics i feel like there was something in between there um so right um okay so right now as most people know let's just back it up over the past year uh zilli ran a group with some uh respectful parents on athletic fees and um a lot has been done to be looking into them a lot comes a lot of the uh people have always been looking

194at this tool that we have which is a a tool to come up with the fees that is not a budget they're different and we've been using that to assess the fees the fees right now are uh 55 of the approximate cost of to run a sport is paid by the families and 45 percent is paid by our operating budget or everybody in their taxes um since mike and jeff have come on board they too have realized that um our fees are higher as as as the meetings last year showed with this little working group with zilli and i was in that as well and and they have realized also that our fees are high they're about 50 higher than um all other districts and uh obviously that's something that we would like to do

195something about um so in terms of lurking into options that how we would reduce fees um i'm going to just take a side so now mike and jeff are working and paddy and the elt in general are working on putting together their budget for the year and as we had talked about in other conversations this is considered the superintendent's recommended budget they recommend they see all competing um necessities for the district they look at it they put it together in what is considered a reasonable increase from last year and um and then presented to us and then we do with that you know what we do so we approve it or we say no we don't so sometimes things you know that they felt was important just didn't make it into the budget because other

196priorities were more a priority um last year they had uh suggested and put in i think it was a matter of fifty thousand dollars but that didn't make it into the final budget and i know i and i think silly after coming from all these meetings we felt like oh yes we definitely need to do something um about athletic fees but then when you're faced with a crisis of cutting a team and the committee was very much not in favor of that you know obviously priorities uh become different so this year again um they're looking at ways to reduce the amount that parents are paying for their kids to play sports because we all know that it is one of the essential tools to for kids mental health for those kids that play sports that

197is it's an important part of who they are so they're looking at putting money in to hop to hopefully you know reduce fees by somewhere let's say 50 over the next two to three years that's uh you know a hope that they have at this point which is when all the hopes happen and then they get to the place where they compete with each other can i just ask when you say within two two three years you mean what do you mean increase three years or over time like over two to three years so decreasing the fees incrementally over the next few years families fees to families therefore increasing the cost to us as because right now if we have a million dollar budget let's just say it's let's say it's 60 40 and the

198fees are paying 600 and we're paying that we being masco are paying 400 the only way to reduce those fees is for masco to pay 500 or 600 or 700 and therefore the families are only paying the opposite is there a split that we're we're driving for like a percent split that that what's that what's that sweet spot it's like fun is a lot less than where it's at now i know i know i know yeah i think we're too early in the process that he quoted numbers or anything like that but yeah what i would say is that i think we all agree that the rates are exorbitant and that it's something that we're looking at closely and when it will incorporate into our recommendation if we think from an administration's perspective we can

199afford it so so to a point you've made before about other things as far as you know uh you know the right way to do it is a lit you know a percentage every you know in every one of these first three years process to that but until everything comes together over the next six to eight weeks we we won't we won't know right and a recommendation is only that it's a recommendation so and even if it's if it doesn't make the recommendation but it's at the back of the binder of things that were considered but didn't make it in it's up to us what we do correct and so i i hate to quote any numbers at this point it's very early it is way to make it sustainable exactly exactly right because we

200have to balance the needs of the district with the ability for our members member towns to afford our operating budget right and that's one of the things that we kind we keep at the forefront of our mind when we put our recommendation forward to you so it's way too early to talk about numbers though but the idea the amount that fees bring in though is about five hundred thousand five fifty five fifty so that's i mean i know you're not going for free athletics but that's the and max mine if i do like the 25 like can i answer them so uh just a quick question i think um you said you you know you've compared and our fees are much harder than the surrounding towns what about our costs our costs for athletics higher

201than other than surrounding towns so it's simply a structural it's simply a structural sectional it goes back to when the decision was made 17 years ago 20 20 20 20 years ago now and the and where other towns however else they did it they if you looked at your costs they might have had the um feeds covering 25 where we had ours covering like 60 to start off with so a few years ago we reduced it to 55 however our fees went up because we added a lot of stuff into the program at that point like coaches so in terms of reducing costs to athletics you can cut programs like not have you know a jv a and b team um you know not have the smaller teams that don't have lots of like things

202like that that you don't want to do you want to have every kid who can play play um personally that's my opinion um or we can do something like this where we're putting money in that's a predictable amount rather than other ways that are less predictable depending on like family caps and stuff like that that that's harder to for us to measure year after year um and jeff made the point that it's also like the complaints right now or the issue right now is that it's across the board which is why this feels like the right first i agreed with them yeah and when i when i did the deep dive last year to your other question actually both your questions like when you look at comparable districts with comparable costs that have a lower

203fee they tend to be covering closer to like up to 25 to 35 of their costs through fees versus ours so that's the that's where the difference is and just because it was started this way it's hard to come out of right because there's the money thing so um we talked about um four different ways um to reducing the fees so uh one is the reducing programs two is increasing the operating budget so like the two things that we just talked about um there's also a um talk about setting up a private fund kind of like mef is to academics you could have a private fund that's supported that people could donate with their own money and that could support whatever it wanted to whatever that the people who oversaw that private fund wanted it

204to whether that was scholarships or towards program or um and that's something that would not involve us that would be a community-led program and then um you also can people if they wanted to if the community wanted to put in an override like some kind of a warrant they came up with the exact wording for three towns and said let's infuse 500 grand into the athletics budget and let the town people vote and see if that's something that they want to do that again is not having anything to do with the school committee that's something that the private community can do but um i don't think that this is a necessarily fully unanimous thing um you know in terms of reducing fees and how to do it amongst us but i believe that it will

205definitely i believe there's a lot of support for it and i know that our community has a lot of support for it from the people that we've heard from it's whether the people who you know are paying taxes without athletes or paying taxes without students feel it as well so we would always need our community to be in support of this in terms of supporting an operating budget that has an increase etc and i think it goes as you said along with the overall wellness of our students which is what we started the meeting talking about and this is part of that yeah and you made that point and i think that was very good well i think that our district has really done a good job at um the non-academic programs that we run

206our israeli and program important pro band is really important all these clubs are really important and for each kid that gets to do whatever it is that they feel is important to them i think it's more important now than ever for them to be doing them and have full access to whatever they want to do we really learned that over the last 18 months sure have so much so sure have so anyway it was a it was a good um a good conversation productive conversation and it will continue in a few months when we're back here so i i thank mike and jeff for you know looking at that as well as as us thinking about it thank you sorry that was longer no no i think it was an important update though the next

207one will make up for it so that's you bill next up anti-racism subcommittee yes a very brief update we haven't met i'm trying to organize one for seems like next week is uh since it's so short is unlikely so my hope will be the week uh after that all right thank you stay tuned and policy no update at the moment but you'll hear from us next time apparently sorry yeah well all right um and then i changed we've changed this last line to be liaison updates so that way if there's anyone who's liaising to any of our partner groups um this is just an opportunity if there's an update we're not going to go through every single thing so if there's any other updates from anyone that we don't already kind of know i can

208i can give a couple of what we talked about at the subcommittee we had so i connected with um president of the um speak up a little yes i met with one of the student leaders we talked about how we wanted to know if how the small town hero awards worked and whether the student body felt like it would be important or would they be interested in continuing that tradition and the overwhelming answer was yes they want to keep the small town hero awards in place for this upcoming year um they essentially the students and their their student advisor run the whole program and we just are there to support it and communicate about it so that would be and i think she said march they'll send a survey out to the community uh to

209parents to students and etc um and then they can nominate people on that shared document and then um they'll start the process of kind of uh nominating and selecting people for the spring for maybe may or june so that was good and then i i'm also now communicating with the cpac regularly so we had our initial gretchen the leader of that group we had a great conversation and then she joined the community relations subcommittee and i think it's going to be a good good connection going forward thank you thank you yeah those are good relationships thank you um all right we're almost there you guys consent agenda no anybody have any need to break out the minutes or from that i can i do it all at once oh sorry that's not very efficient with

210me uh i'll oh all in favor any opposed extensions i didn't read them out but that's written we can all read i want to make sure we thank mef for their grant they um are providing some really wonderful things that our district needs and um just a reminder that their purpose is to really um support innovative new things and not uh replacement costs so the fact that they're helping us with a little bit of both this time is awesome but the 3d printers and all of that good stuff is going to go a long way uh all right any other oh i guess i have to move to adjourn into exactly am i doing that we don't need to we don't need to we don't need an executive session so i will entertain any other

211emotions i would make one to leave to adjourn a second second 30 seconds all in uh needing a journey i don't think we need to vote for executive obsession i even needed to have herself