MRSD School Committee Meeting 6/23/21

001that mean we're ready okay all right i'm sure it's a roll call vote for that okay all right thank you all right i'm going to call to order the wednesday january 23rd 2021 massachusetts regional district school committee meeting we are streaming this meeting live and recording it the recording will be posted on the masco website we're actually going to begin with an executive session so i moved to adjourn into executive session for the purpose of discussing strategy relative to collective bargaining with the mass economic teachers association and paraprofessional association executive session purpose number three i've determined that holding this discussion in open session may have a detrimental impact on the district's bargaining position the committee will return to open session at the conclusion of the executive session second by silly second second i'm going to

002do a roll call vote bonnie dominic yes terry yes pasta yes silly yes yes tasha and phil thank you so it's unanimous all right we're moving yeah we're going to so we expect to be back around 7 45. good morning this you ready great thank you okay well welcome back everybody uh we just finished our executive session and now we're going to start our open meeting um i do just want to add that one of our school committee members in demarco is joining us via the zoo link that i'm pointing to just so everyone's aware of that everybody else here is live and in person i have a few remarks i'd like to make tonight first congratulations to all of our eighth grade students who are celebrated monday in a ceremony outside under the tent

003we're excited for their move to the high school this fall and we thank them for all the adjustments they made over the past year and the continued resiliency that they have demonstrated and congratulations to all our students who had their last day of school on monday uh next i would like to formally welcome our newest school committee member dominic kasan massimo dominic is representing the town of middleton our committee and we look forward to working with you thank you and lastly uh i also want to welcome the look back for in-person attendance at our meetings the last day of school on june 21st which was monday the district's temporary coven 19 policy the public access was lifted and the building is open for public attendance once again excellent and uh no masks are required i'm

004going to move on to comments from the audience so as we return to normal in-person comments from the audience i just want to summarize how public comment works public comment is not a discussion debate or dialogue between or among citizens a school committee rather it's intended to offer our citizens an opportunity to express their opinions on issues of school committee business while we typically won't respond to citizen comments or questions posed at this public comment period the chair may answer or request an answer to a question if we think it would be a quick way to respond further if someone brings up an issue that falls outside the purview of the school committee i would direct uh citizens to the appropriate person or body so that they could um get the information that they need

005so with that i see that we have a large group here tonight we also have a lot on our agenda so i'm going to ask anyone that makes a or that would like to make a comment or ask a question to please keep it till no longer than one minute so that we can hear from everybody who has taken the time to come out here tonight also overall i've set aside 15 to 20 minutes for this public comment period so please help us use this time wisely and lastly as always we absolutely respect your voice and want to hear it and we expect that all comments will be given in a respective manner so the way it's going to work since we haven't done this before anyone who would like to make a comment um

006if you just raise your hand and then i will pick on you i guess and send you up to the uh that elevated table there um that's just the best way for tj to get a view of you for the live stream and we can all hear what you have there's a microphone up there there's yes you don't even have to worry about the microphone it's already there and you don't have to touch it um so if we if anyone has a comment that they would like to make all right i'll start with you and karen thank you and if you could um just we know who you are karen but if you could introduce yourself and say where you're from sure good evening my name is karen miller i am a uh high school

007biology teacher here at massachusetts massanoma educators want the school committee and dr harvey to come back to the negotiating table we care about our students and this institution as a whole we are here to implore you to engage us in conversation centered around teaching and learning please come back table and talk to us thank you my name is carol crispo and i'm from topsfield and i just wanted to make a comment um i did see the changes to the anti-racism policy today and i wanted to just take one step back and i know that was based on the resolution the resolution that was passed last october which does reference the black lives matter movement as well as the phrase not all lives can matter unless black lives matter that being the base of the policy

008makes me uncomfortable and is against christianity some of the references in the resolution and i and i did i did have a little time to review some of the changes but i was going to ask for one in particular the word equity the word equity sounds like equality but under critical critical race theory it has become its functional opposite equality means equal treatment of all americans under the law crt's equity demands race-based discrimination because systematic racism has produced disparities between the races and because the system will only deepen these disparities by rewarding the wrong criteria so that's just some research that i've done myself and i would really like you to consider taking some time to rework the policy a little bit thank you thank you carol hi i'm bill hunt i live in tufts

009world i say hi to all of my friends and i mean that as friends this is my first time i've ever been to a school committee and i'm i've got to say in friendship that a minute to make your views known is like having almost no time to make a views no man i don't think it's fair or particularly open that having been said i will go quickly and say that i agree with what the previous speaker said about equity this is critical race theory i think if we go and take a look at school systems that have introduced critical race theory we have seen that that the results of those school systems have gone down they haven't gone up masco is a terrific school system with a lot of success by a lot of

010its students and i'm talking about even people you haven't heard of who are own insurance agencies or newscasters or stuff like that this is not the way to go we should all decry racism we're not in favor of it at all but this resolution is infused with code words coming straight from critical race theory you can all we're all educated here you can all do your homework but i suggest to you this is the wrong resolution i'm sorry to be here for the first time uh tonight but i just found out about this yesterday and um i've come here to express my uh my urging to you all uh not to pass it i apologize for not having been to an earlier meeting i just found out about it and um um and please don't

011pass it if we we can all go on record as being against racism we can all introduce some some things to the curriculum if we feel it's necessary to teach about it that's great but um but this is crt and that's all it is and then one last note i i've done my homework and i see that it calls for hiring these outside experts before you pass a resolution that says let's hire outside experts to to talk to us about equity or anti-racism see what they cost these folks charge six figures and i question to you whether whether we need to spend six figures on outside experts when we can draw an analogy from what to what happens uh software world when a piece of software gets too expensive then then we just go out

012and hire somebody else to make the same software work for us for less money and i'm sure in this hotbed of education in which is new england we can find somebody else who'll create a program rather than hiring one of these profoundly expensive so-called experts thanks okay thank you bill and um [Applause] also i will add we always welcome letters uh from people so if you feel you didn't get to say everything you wanted to say you send a letter to me i will share it with the entire community sorry i didn't see you standing there hi i'm amanda lamonte i live in boxford i'm also here to share thoughts and questions regarding the equity and anti-racist policy that you are considering and i'm encouraging you to hold off on voting for this policy until

013there is more transparency regarding its implementation in our schools the policy begins by mandating that the school's curriculum incorporate many perspectives and voices including diverse representation and authorship however the remainder of this policy seems to be in direct contradiction to that goal as it focuses primarily on one ideology i hope everyone is united in wanting to stand against racism and that our conversations are more about how we do that anti-racism pedagogy is one perspective i would like to understand why the school committee is writing a policy specific to this line of thinking rather than including others as well when you say anti-race and pedagogy experts i am wondering if you have specific people in mind or specific qualifications is this pedagogy evidence-based and has successfully brought communities of all identities together somewhere and if so

014where is that one of the leading voices in anti-racism is imber ex kendi his work poses many interesting questions that can and should spark conversation however he states early on that quote the only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination the only remedy to pass discrimination is present discrimination the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination end quote can the committee or the schools answers what types of discrimination they would find acceptable and appropriate in our schools another leading voice in anti-racism robin d'angelo states in her book white fragility quote a positive white identity is an impossible goal white identity is inherently racist white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy end quote i would like to specifically know how kids as young as 10 we are talking about middle school

01513 if we are talking about high school will participate in conversations that suggest a positive white identity is unattainable how does this blend with goals of supporting social emotional growth why is it beneficial for a white child in the process of discovering their identity to wrestle with a theory that poses they cannot possibly have a positive racial identity how does a child of any other race befriend a white child if that child is deemed inherently racist it's important to stress neither of these authors can or should be reduced to a few lines from their work but if the if this is the ideology being put forth by the school committee as policy i think it's important to address these statements amanda are you close to wrapping up i can wrap up and i'll send the

016rest by email that would be great great um so i'd like to know overall how do you define racism in this policy are you utilizing a colloquial understanding that involves the intent to do or say something intentionally harmful or hurtful or is your definition the anti-racist perspective from d'angelo that racism is a system of prejudice plus power this definition theorizes that only white people can be racist because white people hold power is this the definition that the committee is relying on your duty as a school committee is the education of our children and therefore i'm asking for far more transparency as to why you've committed to this ideology over any other or over a policy that incorporates multiple perspectives this policy welcomes a diverse set of voices as long as those voices are informed by

017one perspective it's contradictory i again ask that you hold off on adopting this policy and take more time to solicit voices from the public perhaps during a school year that is not overshadowed by pandemics i would love to see a policy that welcomes an array of perspectives and a true and open dialogue about race thank you for your [Applause] time my name is tom egan and i'm from topsfield i urge the school committee to table their vote on their anti-racism resolution until the fall when state guidelines will be set by commissioner riley and that and urge the school committee to wait until we have a public forum to discuss these guidelines critical race theory is an outgrowth of critical siri which was developed by the frankfurt school in germany in the 1920s their goal was

018to promote marxism on a global scale independent of any political body karl marx planned to disrupt populations by promoting f envy fear and hatred then pit people against each other these methods were used by lenin hitler mao zetang and other tyrants of the 20th century causing an estimated 160 million deaths it does not matter what you call a policy you can call it critical race theory or you can give it a nice benevolent sounding name the ideology that i have heard which was implemented in masconomic for the past 18 months seems to use the same marxist speech designed to design to fragmentize communities this is especially evident in the senior freshman mentoring program is it true that students have been taught based solely upon their skin color that some of them are racist and oppressors

019have others been taught that they and their families are and will always be victims of their neighbors unable to advance in a society rigged against them i've heard students have felt pressured to take certain social political stances that conflict with immorals and with their religions i've also heard some masconomic students have spoken among themselves and to their parents they've let others know that several several of them are afraid to speak up against this indoctrination because they fear retaliation from their peers from their teachers and from their administration the mere accusation of being a racist or a bigot especially on indelible social media can bar them from college or from employment but this fear runs deeper than only the students who might defy policy there are parents who are afraid to come to this meeting because

020they also refer retaliation they also fear losing their jobs or fear being harassed by their neighbors why is this fear so prevalent will there be retaliation for questioning the school committee will someone report us to the police for questioning policy like they do in communist nations i urge you again to table your vote until the fall when the community has had ample time to discuss this matter fine hi my name is paul liu i'm from boxford i have two school-aged children i am first-generation american born chinese growing up i experienced isolated instances of racism but here's a news flash most people of all races experience this there will always be ignorant bigoted people in the world my knowledge of myself was more important than their opinion of me now having said all that i find

021that this notion that our society and institutions are systemically racist to be a vile disgusting ideology i have lived and grown up in one of the greatest countries in the world a place where through hard work and determination one can achieve almost anything a place where i took the words out of our beloved dr martin luther king jr to heart judge not by the color of one's skin but by the content of one's character the policy proposed that the last subcommittee meeting destroys all of that based on four key points number one the mere mention or singling out of any race makes this proposal proposal inherently racist it seems to be exclusively promoting an anti-white message yet there is no explicit mention of other racial or social injustices around the world what about the weak

022were concentration camps in china what about the 100 plus million people who have died in the name of communism what about all the murdered white farmers in south africa these are just a few examples point number two who gets to decide what are the current systems of privileged power and ideology this seems very subjective and could lead down a dangerous path where other voices are censored or silenced number three regarding equity versus equality equal outcome instead of equal opportunity destroys ambition and betterment of self it celebrates victimhood rather than achievement and it leads to higher dependence on government number four this proposal is divisive it will lead to teaching children to hate others based on the color of their skin most of our children are pure in heart and just see people not skin color

023this proposal intends to pollute and corrupt that purity while laying blame and guilt at the foot of people who are not responsible in closing i still remember the many stories my parents told me during my youth they fled communist china and literally left all that they held dear in the dead of night what kind of malevolent force would make them do that what i see here today if i am if allowed to pass will inevitably lead to the same things my parents had experienced not too long ago although this policy does not mention critical race theory it leaves the door wide open to adopting its ideology as you encounter revised versions of this policy that just tweak language know this critical race theory may be packaged in sheep's clothing but it is worn by the

024cultural marxist wolf on its march toward communism thank you for your time [Applause] thank you paul i'm kathleen escarpato i'm from topsfield and i'm here first of all to follow up on the prior speakers who've all remarkably articulated what i wanted to present but i'll go forward anyway i'm here tonight to reiterate the request i've made by email and before the subcommittee meeting last week that we hold a public forum in the fall before any further action or decision is taken on the anti-racism policy a public forum can be held in the fall and should be held in the fall especially this is especially important in light of the fact that there have been changes made to the draft policy which were only i believe just placed uh in the school committee website today and

025the fact that the recording of the june 14 subcommittee meetings were also only just posted today i believe that the community members parents students need the opportunity to fully digest this to determine what their concerns and questions are regardless of how they end up deciding in their own hearts in the end how they would want you to vote everybody all voices in the mascot community community need to be heard now i would also just add that i know that there's the school committee has been working i think they said for 18 meetings uh regarding this policy i understand these meetings were held at the most convenient time for the school committee in the afternoons when working parents unfortunately could not attend now i believe that the mascot uh parents need the opportunity to have this

026community forum at a more con a time period in the evening when parents will be able to attend i also want to return to a more pressing matter i believe because there is no pressing need to determine or to decide on this anti-racism policy tonight however there is a pressing need to address the learning loss that has been caused by the last year and a half of covid i repeatedly requested and i know other parents have as well what the plan would be going forward to make sure that this learning loss is mitigated i have never actually received an adequate response um i know that there are parents that are concerned that the summer program that's being offered this summer is also inadequate that lots of students have either failed or had far below average

027uh grades and uh where and there's not a full and robust program in place for the summer to address that learning loss i request that further before this school committee addresses any uh teacher pay raise which i fully support my teachers i think that we our teachers go far and above um in their credentials and their experience but i think that we need to address our students needs before we address the future pay raises thank you hey there my name is julie cave i live in boxford i'm a mother of two i think there's one thing that everyone can agree on here tonight maskel has a problem the last school committee meeting i watched something has bothered me a student came spoke to this committee regarding training he received before he spoke he mentioned the

028reason he had not come forward earlier he feared retaliation by the school my initial thought was surely the school committee would look into this few days later i attended the subcommittee meeting during this meeting a student was asked uh sorry the student asked the chairs if there would be a support process or a safe place offered for those who have experienced racism at moscow this led me to wonder why would she ask for this could it be that other students fear retaliation now that's two students that have come forward from different ends of the spectrum with the same problem after the subcommittee meeting i had many parents reach out to me to discuss the chastising of parents at that meeting as well as my idea for a proposed statement i suggested to be added to

029the policy to help clarify the policy and ease the worries of the parents i encourage those parents to attend this evening and speak their minds however like many times before i was met with comments what if they don't like what i say what if they take it out on my child what if they don't care once again fear of intimidation and retaliation has silenced voices that should be heard i stand here tonight to speak for those parents and those students who are too afraid to speak for themselves i want to make you aware masculine has become divided we have our school committee against our parents our parents our students versus our teachers and for those who are afraid to speak up they stay silent i asked the school committee to take pause look at the

030cycle that we are trapped in you can sit here and steamroll past the parents and their concerns and pass this policy or you can take pause break this cycle and work with these parents who have come forward to rewrite this policy and build a better mascot for our students because we are one and we are masco thank you [Applause] thank you good evening everyone my name is denise segan i'm very nervous a bit frightened to be standing up here my husband will probably say that i never speak up i'm very quiet but i have two children that live here in top field and i'm very worried very worried tonight and for our future and for our children's future i respectfully request that the vote be tabled until the fall on the anti-racism policy until the

031guidelines are put in place by state commissioner riley and a community forum can be held i just found out about this a week and a half ago uh yeah i work full-time yeah i'm a busy mom i have two boys i think i'm on top of my kids i know i tried to be i didn't know anything about this until a week and a half ago why is that why has it been no transparency i sent out emails some of them were answered some were not why why i think i expect an answer a good answer maybe what i consider a good answer is different from what you consider a good answer i have several questions and concerns who will decide what ranks of privilege have power has anyone thought about that i know i

032have our family is devout in our faith we do believe that god has a divine plan in all of this what if you are teaching an ideology that is not based on our family's religious beliefs what guidelines protects our family my children your children i'm very nervous and scared to be here tonight speaking like this in public it's not something i usually do i never do this and i am concerned for any retaliation that might be against myself am i going to be called racist because i came up here to speak all my children face any type of retaliation i pray they don't i pray none of your kids do they happen to speak up in a classroom or perhaps just have a simple question because they're just curious perhaps they don't know something perhaps

033they haven't been exposed to something maybe because their parents don't know doesn't mean they're not good parents perhaps they haven't been given that information isn't that we as the parents are the kids first teachers i think all of you teachers do a phenomenal job i give you credit this past year and a half has been difficult for everyone everyone we as parents we're the first teachers and i respectfully again request that this vote be tabled until we can have a community forum thank you lots of people here tonight but i'm i'm pretty certain there's a lot of parents just like myself that probably did not know about this they probably still don't know about this thank you thank you hi uh my name is freda i graduated about two years ago i still i have

034a sister that graduated this past year and one that's about to enter her junior year um i'm going to be honest i'm not sure what i expected to hear when i came into this meeting um and i got to say i had to i had to go into the bathroom i had to take a beat um the first day i came to middleton right because i moved here in fifth grade um a crowd of students just crowded around me right i moved here from a very diverse and i moved from albuquerque i moved from a very diverse area into majority white town and all these students crowded around me asking me questions like do you speak african asking me super insensitive questions in that fifth grade i was like okay we're in fifth grade i

035understand that some people may not know you know they may they may have never met a black person before they may have never met someone of my skin color before but in that same year i had kids that knew things like slave jokes and would say the most awful things like saying you know things that are clearly debunked about like how my body works and things like that and i quickly came to understand that okay i'm gonna have to adjust to this when i was in high school i have heard the n-word multiple amounts of times i have had students tell me that michael brown deserved to die you know guess what i'm trying to say is that [Applause] i apologize it's been a while since i've been up at the school meeting what i'm

036trying to say is that i think this is a really important policy i strongly urge you to go back and reread the policy and and think about kids like me right because i completely understand not wanting your kids to feel guilty for something that they may not have done i completely understand not wanting your kids to feel hurt to feel uncomfortable i understand that my parents also don't want me to experience negative emotions but i have gone through so much racism at the school right and it's not because you're it's not because anyone's kids are bad they just didn't know and i think that my teachers have done a really awesome job teaching us about the history of racism and how our country was developed and teaching us about current events but this policy one

037does not dictate what students are what what specific curriculum they're going to learn but it's going to give the teachers that i so deeply care about a way to better link the history and the current events that formed the system of racism that i had to deal with and sure maybe no one called me the n-word and sure maybe no one said oh i don't like you but i've had people touch my hair without asking me calling it rope literally we literally got into the boston globe because a team of football players were singing the n-word on their way to or back from a football game that's a problem and it's not just a mascara problem it's an across america problem right so i've heard the term critical race theory being thrown around a lot

038your kids are not going to be learning critical race theory critical race theory is a specific framework that is being taught in law schools you're not going to be your kids are not going to be taught that but they are going to be taught how america came to be why there are systemic problems that certain races face specifically black people specifically asian people specifically people of all races look i i don't want my sisters to have to deal with what i had to deal with after school i don't want anyone to have to deal with with what i had to go through i i still think about some of the things that kids have said to me even now even two years after i've graduated from moscow i know you don't want your kids to

039be uncomfortable i understand wanting to protect your children but spare a thought for kids like me who had to deal with the racism that your kids intentionally are not inflicted on me thank you freedom my name is lily elwood and i would like to voice my support for the anti-racism resolution and also for my incredible friend freda i worked with my friend sydney and freda last summer on pushing the school committee to come up with a resolution like this i graduated from in 2019 and i strongly believe that my class and everyone who has come through or still attends masco would benefit from more anti-racism in the curriculum when i was in school as frida mentioned the football team made the paper for shouting the n-word as they sang on the bus and that was

040only one of many incidents of racism that occurred during my time here at my senior prom that song was banned but on every other song that played at that at that prom that included that word the kids still screamed it at the top of their lungs this school is not an exception to the racism that exists out in the world i want to thank my amazing teachers for doing the best that they could to fight against racism in the classroom and to educate their students and this resolution would allow them to continue the great work that they're doing to make their students feel safe and to feel included this is about making a better more conscious school that works to uplift voices that have been diminished in the past this is about making sure that

041students understand the need for them to take responsibility for their words and their actions this is about teaching history as it was not as a whitewashed version a better mascot is one where the students are educated about the realities of the world and this resolution is a concrete step toward that thank you thank you time for a couple more um we're already approaching the half hour mark go ahead hi everyone my name is sydney i'm a boxford resident and i also graduated masconama in 2019. i'm here today to one thank the school committee because as lily had said a year ago we came to you and we asked you to take action on this and today you're sitting here ready to vote on what you've created and we are so grateful that you received our

042needs and you contemplated and planned and critically analyzed how this policy would be framed and it took a year and that was a long time um and so when we talk about delaying this further i definitely am a little bit concerned because here a delay just seems like a denial and it seems like something that might never come to fruition and i want to stress that i am a political science student who is pre-law and the first time that i ever heard of critical race theory was earlier this year in my race law literature class at my catholic institution it is not something that is likely to be taught in our public school district here in massachusetts but the policy outlines that maybe the humanity of peers in our school and our com people in

043our community and people across america will be recognized through education and through awareness and this comes from race religion sexuality it's about equity it's about diversity it's about learning and understanding who we are and what role we play and our teachers they've already done so much work and i'm so grateful two years out of masco to now recognize how impactful certain books they chose were or certain lessons that they planned our teachers do this work already and we're so grateful for you and we really recognize it when we leave and this policy is going to allow them to feel confident in their classroom when they're delivering these lessons that when you leave moscow you realize really matter because not the whole world looks like our school our towns or even this room right here um

044so i just want to echo both frida and lily's voices and once again thank the school committee for all the work that you have done in response to us over the past year thank you good evening everyone i'm patti bernhardt and i'm representing boxford as a parent and fellow educator um i will be running for school committee and hopefully sitting in that table in a very short amount of time so i just want to share with with everyone um the concern and the the thoughts that i had on the anti-racism policy um so i think i'm just going to read the email that i wrote the committee um so that everyone can hear i wanted to reach out as a follow-up to joining your last anti-racism subcommittee meeting as you know i'm running for the

045boxford seat on the school committee with elections around the corner i look forward to working with all of you in the near in this new endeavor as a parent and educator i felt compelled to email you regarding the development of the anti-racism policy from asco as i know this has been a work in progress in an area of discussion throughout the year i have some experience around this topic and would like to request consideration of some ideas i'm voting upon how this policy will actually look for over 20 years now which makes me feel really old i have been working in the capacity of a psychologist as well as the school administrator in both public and private school settings to identify and to support students diverse learning and social emotional needs across grades kindergarten through

04612. so i know a little bit about this topic in addition i was the recipient of the city of new reports peace prize back in 2008 through the commission for diversity and tolerance based upon my work researching overseeing and implementing one of the district's first bullying prevention programs my aim has always been to ensure students do not feel excluded and or targeted in any way based upon their race their gender their political affiliation their sexual orientation and or their diverse learning or social emotional needs i'm thinking about the development of the new policy and a few thoughts on the matter wondering if it would be more encompassing to call in a policy for diversity tolerance and inclusion rather than anti-racism alone it seems that this would allow for a much broader scope to reach and

047hopefully to protect more kids from feeling isolated targeted and or unaccepted by others for a variety of reasons within the masco community also i would respectfully ask the committee consider adding explicit language in the policy to ensure that whichever curriculum or literature is chosen by the mask of staff that it does not promote any teaching that would make students feel guilt or discomfort due to their race or their sex and talking with other parents after the last subcommittee meeting i know this has been brought up many times and i entirely support it there's so many there's so much literature out there and there are so many curriculums out there to choose from some are great they do a great job promoting inclusion understanding different perspectives tolerance diversity and some that completely miss the mark and

048that could be considered promoting divisiveness in their approach and although i'm aware the committee's role is not to pick the curriculum it is the role the committee to create a policy that drives what is chosen and implemented by the staff and the administration your thoughtful consideration of these ideas is greatly appreciated as you look to finalize the language thank you thank you patty [Applause] it's 3 35 i'm going to close the public comment period i'm sorry i understand he's a student chair i'm going to um finish with this speaker and then we're going to go on to our agenda i understand there's a lot of people that probably have something to say and we've heard from a lot through email but we do need to allow time for us to do our business i i'm

049not trying to cut anybody off but that is the intention of having a limited public comment because this is not a forum it's a public meeting go ahead all right i'm going to start by engaging with each of you i want everyone in front of me whose school committee members to raise your hand if you believe you're racist seeing no one for those of you who kept your hands down you clearly didn't sit through the training i sat through the adl training i had to sit through taught me for 18 hours how the color of my skin made me racist no matter what i did i would always be racist because of the color of my skin this leads me to believe that you actually have no idea what you're voting on today and that

050leads me to request that you either hold off on this vote or so you have a better understanding and you actually know what you're voting on the problem with masco is not a race problem it's the fact that this committee has politicized this school year so much and you were able to rip my senior year away from me you kept this school shut down for months because you wanted your personal agenda pushed you allowed the school to come after me and my title for endorsing someone rather than the incumbent school committee member you're starting discussions about changing the name of masco and now this just another attempt to divide us this school committee does not believe in the first amendment and has allowed my rights to be attacked since eighth grade this is an issue

051worth addre that is an issue worth addressing not this do you know i'm gonna tell you a little story i got one detention through my six years of high school and it was the one day i wore a trump t-shirt to school and it just so happened i was in 8th grade 2016 i wore a trump t-shirt to school i had the door to my classroom slammed in my face and the teacher wouldn't let me in people tried to come to the door and open it and she stood in the way i stood outside the class and everyone else in the class was looking at me through the little glass pane watching me excluded from the entire class she proceeded to attack me about my t-shirt once i got into the school into the classroom

052you have teachers in this school with black lives matter flags hanging behind them in the backdrop for their online classes you have teachers in the school telling kids that donald trump doesn't believe in democracy you have kids in the school a lot of kids in the school who write their essays to fit their teachers political ideologies instead of their own you aren't allowed to think freely in the school and it disgusts me i do not care what your political ideology is but you have to understand that all these things i'm listing out are far from being okay i will never send my future children here and if this passes today many families will follow suit the school continues to drop in state rankings and instead of addressing the issues we're spending time on this i'm

053a white male and i'm not racist masco is not a racist place so don't make it one the color of my skin does not tell you anything about me you were all pushing your own agendas and we the people of the tri-town are sick of it if any middleton school committee member here tonight votes yes please do not be surprised when a recall election pops up because i will find a way and i will recall you and i will gladly take your seat thank you trover all right we're going to move on to uh change gears and move on to the student advisory board update with felipe richards hi olivia hi i'm olivia richards of freshman class sab um despite all the challenges this year that we faced we still managed to keep students involved

054we were able to complete many initiatives for example small town hero awards which celebrated those in the tri-town who have gone above and beyond this year persevering through the pandemic thank you for working with us this part excited to continue it in the future um many students and peers talked strongly about that they felt that at the end of this school year they had many tests quizzes and major projects that felt kind of pushed to the end of the year and we understand that this year was very abnormal and we kindly asked that it suggested to keep major projects tests and assignments spread out throughout the quarter students responded with much excitement after discovering that next year will be completely back to normal however there were things that students did enjoy from the days of

055the pandemic at moscow such as outdoor seating during lunch it'd be really great this could continue through the years to come additionally the short mass breakout side is another aspect that students enjoy spending the time outside to get a mental break while also getting the opportunity to have a small snack for your next class is found to make students feel energized and much more productive as they continue through the rest of their day possibly having a regular outdoor break for students would be something that could be beneficial for everyone thank you for your dedication to the students this school year and listening to the suggestions we have made thank you olivia does anyone have any questions for olivia all right thanks for coming thanks for having me all right thank you very much all right

056next up is the middle school principal report with phil mcmanus welcome phil good evening everyone my last school committee update of the 2020 2021 pandemic school year so let's get started so to wrap things up this year um we celebrated with some end of the year activities and we had a 7th grade field day in an 8th grade field day for the first time in quite a while and i have to say they were a great success teachers were instrumental in planning the two field days we had quite a few activities outside around campus which i'll get into in just a minute and both grades really enjoyed the two days that they had we also lucked out with some incredible weather last week so that was that was uh outstanding we also as you know

057held the eighth grade moving on ceremony under the large uh seniors graduation tent out on the field that went really well as well we had great attendance and uh it was a nice way to end the school year and honor our students um for their accomplishments in eighth grade so for the field days like i said teachers were instrumental in organizing it they really did all the work around it and planning the activities um sorting through all the logistics working with each other to organize the various activities for the teams hold sign-ups for students it wasn't set activities for each team or for each student students could actually choose what types of things they wanted to participate in so it really it really worked out well so we had stations situated around campus that included

058kickball ultimate frisbee sidewalk art rock painting and all kinds of other games we also had a student tug of war in the afternoon after lunch as well as a faculty versus student tug of war which the faculty won both days seventh against seventh graders and eighth graders i was a part of that i tried to recruit dr harvey he didn't want to come over [Laughter] um we finished the day with yearbook signing and richie's italian ice so uh kids really enjoyed the whole experience one of the things that we heard um loudly from students that during the last week of school and during those days they wanted time just to be able to hang out with each other and spend time with each other so outside of the activities in the afternoon that yearbook signing

059time the italian ice they were able to spend time with each other under the tent and just enjoy each other's company and be social that is something that really was lacking this year especially during lunch time when they were separated in field house and um they didn't have the other types of social gatherings that we normally would have in a regular school year so we would able to bring back a little bit of that at the end of the year here we had great feedback from the students and the parents and we'll definitely look to keep this as an end of the year activity for the grades moving forward we've already done all the legwork anyway so that helped out eighth grade moving on it took place um on monday as i said june 21st

060under the tent we recognize 262 8th graders this year many of whom are staying here at moscow for high school some of whom are going to high school elsewhere the program included remarks from jackie bazazi who is the incoming student council president and also from our incoming high school principal uh dr mary jo carabassos so that was a nice way to welcome our students to high school and officially recognize them as the class of 2025. mcas update this was the highlight of the school year we were so excited to be able to take in um grade 7 and 8 completed math and ela tests and then grade 8 also completed their stem tests remote students were able to complete the remote testing after working through a few technical glitches which i have to give a

061big shout out to ryan king and ben hodges students were able to successfully finish the test from home so the first time the mcas was ever held remotely and um it worked out fairly well it'll probably be knock on wood hopefully the only time the mtas is ever held remotely uh the mcas as i've mentioned in the past does not count towards accountability rankings for this year it will only be used as a benchmark for student learning um and i also mentioned that the state and dusty said they plan to have the scores out in a similar time frame to past years which means raw scores available to administrators late this later this summer and then um the regular scores coming out sometime in the fall so we will look forward to that so positive

062challenges this year um to wrap things up just conducting the mcas the end of the year both in person and remote i mean we went right up until the beginning of june with the mtas usually uh we're done well before the end of may um so that was a bit of a challenge because you're also planning for the uh end of the year activities teachers are trying to wrap up the curriculum especially um with the pandemic and the different pacing of classes this year it did make things a bit of a challenge that way uh one thing that helped with it is we only had to give one mtas per subject area instead of two we're also planning for fall 21 in seventh grade orientation we have some staff members who are going to be

063working on some of that over this summer and i'm also working on it this summer as well and then we are continuing to plan curriculum and prepare for teaching and learning in fall because there's a lot of work to be done with that so looking forward sel supports create a sense of belonging and partnership among students and families is a major benchmark of the acceleration road map that desi released um within the last few weeks we're going to be doing quite a bit of work on that we're looking at existing benchmark testing i don't mean existing in the school but existing programs to accurately assess student math and reading skills in the fall student services department and i have already discussed some of that and we're going to be evaluating some different programs this summer

064that we hope to bring in in the fall to really truly evaluate where students reading um and math skills are at and then we are also looking at grade level team wide events slash programs to support community building social growth and team unity and we hope to run uh two days in the fall one for seventh grade and one for eighth grade that are focused just on that and then we'll support those programs with smaller events and initiatives within the classrooms throughout the school year so in closing my first year is masco's middle school done i couldn't be happier we're definitely looking forward to a more normal school year and continuing this important work in the fall and we um i would say you know our big one of our big focuses next year will

065be continuing to support student social and emotional growth and development um as we have a new group of seventh graders coming in and supporting the current um rising class of eighth graders so thanks for your time you definitely seem a little bit lighter tonight like a weight has been lifted yes it is uh it's good to be finished congratulations on finishing thanks coming back i plan to yes does anyone have any questions besides heckling no philly um if you're gonna cover this then i don't need to answer it but the question is you mentioned about the benchmark testing for math and reading and i just wanted to see if we could expand a little bit more on how that's going to be utilized we're in the very early stages of planning that so i really

066don't have much more information to share with you but i think we it wouldn't it would be something that we would use for all students to assess where they are it wouldn't be targeted to any specific group of students i mean it would just help us to know where the students are at so we can that'll instruct our teaching and learning in a baseline of where everybody's at in those two key areas we feel much bonnie just thank you for um the emphasis on sel and community building it's great welcome thank you phil okay welcome thank you a great summer thanks okay next up is the superintendent's report with mike park so first up as we wrap up uh 2020 2021 school year we want to uh recognize our retirees this year uh we have

067para professional effie chigas high school principal peter delany speech and language pathologist mayor paul mcginn special education program chair christina stoll mathematics department head denise tenante and para professional elizabeth thomas they are all retiring at the conclusion of this school year uh i would wish them the best in their retirement and i hope collectively they bankrupt the uh pension system [Laughter] uh next uh talk about summer programming so while we're winding down the 2021 school year we're getting ready to start summer programming our credit recovery summer school program will be open to students who need to replace credits loss due to academic performance this program will be offered remotely this year it's the first time and we've realized that we can offer remote classes we think uh this actually might be a kind of a

068one of the good things to come out of all this that teachers can do their classes remotely and student you know from home or from wherever and so can our students guidance staff will be in contact with students who meet the eligibility criteria for the credit recovery program we also have our extended school year program that will be in place for students whose ieps require summer tutoring or more extensive programming this extended school year program will be in person four days per week for six weeks this summer we also have assistant superintendent for student services patty bullard and our retiring mathematics department head denis senate have submitted a grant proposal to the department of education uh under the summer acceleration academy grant program uh and the program that we're we're putting in for is a

069mathematics acceleration academy unfortunately the grant does not provide us an option for english language arts at the middle and high school it's only at an elementary level for for ela per the department of elementary and secondary education masconomet is eligible for a total of 29 500 in funding the program that we're proposing will serve a total of 48 students composed of rising 8th grade and rising 10th grade students the current plan is to run this academy during the first two weeks in august there'll be two one-week sessions and so students will be in groups of about 12. so it'll be great small group intensive instruction and again for this students are invited to attend based on predetermined criteria um that we've outlined in our grant proposal um phil also just mentioned the acceleration roadmap documents

070um so we'll talk a little bit about that that these were released by the department of education in early june uh they're a planning template for school districts as they approached the 2021 2022 school year documents are built on the philosophy of acceleration where to quote this document all students receive access to grade level work with targeted scaffolds to make it accessible so this approach is in contrast to remediation where students mainly receive work better suited to earlier grades and it's based on the misconception that they must master all past concepts before accessing grade level work and so the acceleration roadmap provides three priorities for schools as they put this plan into place phil just talked about one of them fostering a sense of belonging and partnership among students and families the second uh priority

071is continuously monitoring students understanding and so as teaching is going along over the course of the year teachers will be monitoring understanding that's where we're talking about some of those benchmark assessments that we're looking at um and then using that information to ensure that great appropriate instruction just in time scaffolds uh for students when they're needed and so making sure that if there are holes in order that students have in their understanding in order to teach a new concept that we're actually baking that into the instruction that's going on next year so our department heads have been working to develop a district plan that follows this acceleration roadmap they've had department and appeal plc meetings that have been dedicated to sharing information between grade level teams uh regarding the standards that were taught that were

072taught over the last year we also held a meeting with our department heads the seventh grade teachers and curriculum personnel from the tritown union to discuss the curriculum that was taught to the incoming seventh graders while those students were in sixth grade uh and the triton unions actually shared a pretty extensive document uh that outlines the standards that were taught last year in sixth grade so that our seventh grade teachers have that available uh so using the acceleration roadmap as a guide we've developed draft district goals for next year and we've been developing activities to meet these goals and so for example um one of the things about talking about that's building that sense of community we're developing programming on building relationships uh including programming or faculty on mindfulness in the classroom and project adventure

073activities for our students that phil's been working on actually for the middle school for next year our department and ted's also conducted a survey of the faculty regarding their levels of comfort with looking at student work and using the scaffolding techniques that are necessary for accelerated instruction to see if where we need to give teachers additional support we've also committed to have approximately 25 faculty members complete curriculum work over this summer those hours i think we're up to we had 750 hours budgeted we're close to over we're over 700 hours committed to those faculty members over the summer on curriculum work and these funds came out of the general operating budget for our summer curriculum projects so a lot going on even though we're we're winding down thank you any questions i do too i

074know um i just wanted to sorry expand a little bit on the summer so i understand that we've always had some math programming correct isn't that something masculine we've had some nerve programming right yeah denise would always have like a math camp okay does that contain do we know do we know if that's continuing i don't think that's happening um so but this uh the i know the question was raised and i we did follow up on it last meeting so we're just repeating what we said last time this grant do we have a timeline on the um what did you call it for the summer you're getting a grant getting a grant that you applied for a grant for summer acceleration academy yep do we have a timeline on that so we submitted the

075grant i know like i know that's the statement um we submitted the grant already we're waiting for the approval and you did everything you need to do yeah we submitted it on time if it was due last week or the week before it was two last friday but we had it in before that okay and then families can can expect that similar to the criteria you had all year for like the the five-day option earlier it's very awesome criteria like that um the teacher's recommendations in regards to that set criteria that is very similar to what we looked at uh for the in-person fund day so the kids most at risk okay and having more most difficulty that would be transiting back in so we're looking at like some of the kids have been remote

076you know the entire time so we get them back in the building at least for those two weeks and so so that's the more higher risk function and then my understanding on this roadmap the acceleration roadmaps is more the general population for everybody coming in september we're treating that as like we're all together making sure we use the initial beginning part of the year to bring everybody to where they need to be uh no not really it's it's so i mean just kind of thinking about this on a practical standpoint the state's not going to rewrite the frameworks documents for seventh grade even though there was a pandemic even though there was a pandemic they're just not going to do it they're also not going to rewrite the mcas as well so those standards that

077they normally expected everybody to know and be able to do at the end of each grade are still in place so what they're talking about is this idea of acceleration where you are looking for those gaps in knowledge that are essential to learning a new skill and using you know using assessment to identify them and then structuring scaffolding in place around your instruction to make sure that kids get those other pieces right so for the general so for the more high-risk population there are we're working on some more options but for the general population it's more of a approach to the coming year to address anywhere anything yeah and could you clarify for me um when do we expect to hear whether we receive the grant that's what i just asked do we have a

078time do we have a date on it i think just sometimes they upon receipt they'll kind of approve it but we haven't heard anything we haven't heard anything but the assumption is that it'll be yeah i mean it's time to actually when if you go on tessie's website there's a spreadsheet with every district in the state and a dollar amount that's next to their name so i you know it was if you apply on time i'm out next to hours okay so so if you apply on time i'm assuming the expectation is that we'll get it but you're going to get like an entitlement you know it's it's i i see it as an entitlement grant so just like the other grants that we receive annually this is a new grant that they put together

079and funds that they have right so they have the funds and as i said they've allocated okay i think it was they looked at it it was 10 of the grades that they were going to serve and it was 500 per student for that for that number so that was the formula that they used to get to that five so as i said they've gotten the money from the federal government they've allocated it on a school-by-school basis so i'm pretty sure as long as you're asking for it on time you're going to get it and it was prescriptive in in the sense of it was rising 8th graders and raising 10th graders that hadn't been designed right the target audiences and in the map right yeah and that was that was the problem that was

080the thing when i read it and said there's no ela thanks for submitting that and getting that goal it was fun working with denise who did you work denise denise that's her swan song yeah uh she's going to teach summer school too [Laughter] hopefully she always does i like the idea of scaffolding that concept i just feel like everybody's arguably a little behind and yet everybody has to move forward and that sounds like in theory a good way to do it i guess we'll have to keep a close eye because if we do find out there's way too much scaffolding needed then i think we'd need to be assessed that's what we're planning to do is assess in the beginning of the year and then periodically during the course of the year just how the

081kids are doing and progressing okay anyone else all right thank you mike um next up is the timeline for the superintendent's evaluation you don't have anything on this thing i i had asked for this to be put on the agenda um so we evaluate the superintendent annually and last year we it was a little bit delayed because of the beginning of the pandemic but the way it worked is mike did i call it a self-evaluation but you you pull together evidence of how you've addressed your goals and then each school committee member had the opportunity to read through that and evaluate mike using the rubric that was done during the summer i believe you did you got something to us in july and then we had to get everything to tasha the outgoing chair and

082tasha summarized it and we discussed it in the late summer september september okay so fun so we have to somehow work that in i just want to get it on everyone's radar i don't know if you're ready to commit mike or if you've had or perhaps i could request that you take some time to figure out when you would have time to do that evaluation and let us know and then we'll build a schedule off of that okay um yeah i guess that's it um i just wanted to make sure it didn't fall off the radar basically um i know we will get it done we'll make sure it gets done right and that was the reason for having to go forward with having the outgoing chair collect all this say that again we're going

083to have to go forward with a moving chair collecting all this up oh um i was thinking that if you guys don't want to do that i'm more than happy to have somebody else okay so that was it for that one i would just say that it might be i mean you said it was delayed last summer because of the pandemic and i think we're a little bit behind this summer because of the delays in the elections so we haven't reorganized to your point of who's in charge like we organized this the entire school committee about two months ago right no a month ago about a month ago so you know that's that's also a factor in the timeline being a little bit and the pandemic all together okay um yes i'm well aware we

084haven't reorganized the school committee so next one is the fy 21 budget forecast um normally this would be presented by jeff sands our assistant superintendent of finance and operations um but jeff something important that he had to do tonight he got called away so mike is going to present dj can we put this on the screen yeah can you do you want to join the call i don't have my screen i have to find the link oh i lost the internet it's on the agenda do you have it in that teacher i have it here oh why don't you let me get on here mike yes i did it's refresh yeah i just accessed it i just didn't look did you access that recently no i i just did the from the um from the

085website did you just put it up there don't me too yeah just okay we'll pull it up this is from what we said sorry about being blind it's like seeing here and there but i can't read this i don't know which way i want to look at it there we go okay let's up to the next one and there we go so uh jeff has sent along his pro preliminary year-end forecasts um he says the closing process just began a couple of weeks ago in early june uh and the plan is to complete our closing by the end of july as we all know the fiscal year ends on june 30th and our annual audit will start in august early august right after the year end closing is finished and right after that we will

086submit our 21 excess and deficiency certification to the massachusetts department of revenue by the end of october as repeated and part of that process is we have a pretty extensive um spending report that we have to turn into uh the department of elementary and secondary education uh that goes right along with our access and deficiency certification and so jeff sends along the good news that we're currently forecasting the district to end this fiscal year approximately 229 thousand dollars favorable to our budget uh we'll take a look at this in the next slide but as well but we're forecasting revenues to be positive 178 000 uh we're looking at our offer operating costs i'm sorry revenues forecasted to be unfavorable by 178 000 our operating costs are forecasted to be favorable by 275 000 and then

087finally our offsets and this specifically to our title one fungi funding uh was uh favorable value 132 thousand dollars and we used that to offset um salary expenses uh in our student services areas and so the again the good news and we remember going back to september when we first started having these discussions uh jeff doesn't believe that we're going to need to use any additional excess and deficiency to balance our budget uh for the current school year um so that's the good news i mean really what it what kind of helped that was 775 000 in grant funding um that we received from the federal government over the course of this year that paid for masks and signage and proctors and all of the other pieces that we needed um you know extra decks

088and furniture all of the other pieces that we needed to to get through this school year um were you know the the federal funding that we weren't expecting um carried us through this year we roll this up tj here jeff sent the balance sheet [Music] i have to get my glasses so i can actually read this so this uh state aid would break that down there comes right off of um the cherry sheet and you can see so those numbers were lower um than what we would actually had anticipated especially in chapter 70 and in the transportation reimbursement um looking on the local receipts there's a big decline in interest income and that's because interest rates are pretty much zero right now um and so the uh you know interest that we used to earn

089on having our balances uh in the bank are just not making anything anymore you can see there so there's a you know a 45 000 drop relative to what we had budgeted um the other one that's uh jumps out is that the local receipt and fund transfer is in there's a 59 000 uh shortfall and that is lost revenue from our food service program um basically we weren't charging for food you know for lunches all year it was a federal federal program that was underwriting the cost of the food but generally our um contract with our food service provider actually brings us in revenue um that just wasn't there this year because they were not they weren't bringing any money in either and so that gives you that total income um shortfall of 177 458

090and then looking at the total general operating expenses that's down the bottom section of the page uh where you can see we're 275 000 to the good and that is because you know we just didn't spend in our discretionary accounts you know things like paper and uh books and you know all the other things that we you know didn't need because we were operating in you know primarily a hybrid or a remote environment for the year um that would we would have normally spent uh we did not um so that gives us that 229 000 projected uh positive variance for this year so anybody's any specific questions i can take them down and i can get you the answers jeff sends his regrets full food services next in september yeah yeah so right now everything

091is planned on being back to normal in september that's what we're told there's no requirements on no distancing requirements for lunch which is a big piece of it and then the other piece was that as i said the federal government was underwriting the the cost of student lunches so and that's not expected to continue in this fall i don't know if it is or not okay because it's still gone doing it now yeah they were doing it through the end of this year but i'll find out if the uh that they have that they are okay any other um questions on the forecast for the year i find that when you have a favorable forecast you don't get me i love it it said we were talking about this in september it's not what we

092were expecting so yeah um one small piece of good news okay all right um so we're gonna move on to the second reading of policy section a foundations and basic commitments um we actually did the second reading at our last meeting and we pulled out a few policies that we asked for some further changes up so um melissa's gone we have three policies we have adda we have and that one we had discussed and agreed to delete the section on relying on previous suitability determinations and that's found on page four eight um so the any motion tonight will be to accept ad policy ada as presented which includes the deletion of that paragraph on the next policy is i'm sorry i have to scroll down i apologize the wellness policy adf um and we had

093pulled that one because we needed to define uh since we no longer have director of health services we just had to find the appropriate title for that person and thank you costa for um telling me that there's a typo in the leadership paragraph so we changed all um references to directors of health services to assistant superintendent of student services or their nominee so any motion to accept this policy will include the changes to due to just that to substitute assist assistant superintendent of student services or their nominee invasive directors of health services and the last one is the full deletion of policy ae which is commitment to accomplishment um and it starts with the statement that the school committee accepts ultimate responsibility for all facets of school operations and actually against massachusetts i think it's

094a good idea to uh delete that um that provision so and like a rogue does mask also yeah a mass doesn't have a corresponding that is a moscow um policy that was stuck in so it there's no corresponding mask policy which is the massachusetts association of school companies okay does anybody have a motion like to make a motion to accept the policies as presented tonight um the three policies with the changes that melissa was there second okay did you say to approve the policy you said that those three right right we did the others of the law yeah right that's correct i just didn't hear the word approved okay yes and to see if that was in there i don't know if i said it but that's what i missed and melissa seconded it okay

095and is this a real caller you have to do a roll call so i'm going to do a roll call vote if you agree to accept these three policies kristin i'll start with you yes okay joe yes bonnie yes dominic yes terry yesterday yes yes bill yes thank you all right so those policies passed unanimously thank you for working on them jackie dorothy okay all right now we're going to move on to the second reading of the equity and anti-racism policy and tasha is going to take us to that um so i like some of the people who spoke tonight also don't like speaking in public i like speaking i like talking not really great about speaking in public so i have my notes that i'm going to read so that i can make sure

096that what comes out is what's supposed to come out and etc um just bring us up to speed and i know i did this at past meetings but i do want to just give a little rundown of where we're at and why we're here and why we're discussing this last summer a group of alumni and current students came to us uh to speak on behalf of uh current events that spurred them into coming to our school and asking for mexico to do better for them we've heard from some of them today we've heard also through emails lots of them who are um who wanted us to work on making masco better and doing better for them so with that last summer we decided to put together the anti-racist subcommittee um to with the goal of

097supporting the effort as we knew that maska was already doing stuff so our our timeline was we met and formed the subcommittee last summer we started meeting right away in the middle of a pandemic when yes there was lots of other things that we were meeting on um and we got right to it over the course of the year we met 18 times our first part of our work was to um go on and pass a resolution that was started by masc the mass association of school committees and we made it more masco friendly and did that on october which was then sent to the entire community uh with a note in there that we met on mondays afternoons we received like i said this petition from alumni with 900 plus of them we received

098many letters from students we had presentations from um clubs we received lots of feedback on it um we discussed over the course of the year many relevant topics um many just became discussions and not necessarily decisions because we felt that they needed to have further discussion and we've always asked for feedback on that three clubs came and spoke to us with pages of suggestions and stories of their experiences at moscow we talked to the masc president about doing a policy we also had a presentation from peer leaders as to how they have been incorporating some of these things into their um lessons we have the listening sessions from the community relations we got feedback from cpac we had collaboration with policy subcommittee we did a first read last time and we received a good amount

099of feedback um now for the adjusted second week so that brings us to today with um [Applause] without so this policy is an outgrowth of the resolution that we passed in october um since that we had the meeting of our anti-racism subcommittee on june 14th which had about 30 people in attendance including questions and comments and um as of now including the comments that we've received tonight um we've had about 50 people making a comment on this policy which um i don't know how many you got on your policies but that's a bit of them that's a good amount to come from so we are happy that the community has felt it is important to comment on this i would say that um of those 50 people that have commented about 70 have been in

100favor of what we are doing with this policy um of that half about half of the people that are in favor of moving forward with this policy don't think it's enough so i just feel like it's a really good indicator that there are definitely people that are against it and i understand the fear for it but i'm hoping with my writing that i'm going to speak for a few minutes that we can help explain our intentions and uh the way that we have now embedded all the feedback that we've been receiving into this to make it a better policy than what was shown at the last meeting um okay so in the interest of being thoughtful transparent responsive and reassuring some of the suggestions that have been incorporated into this revised draft okay a first

101a bunch of important general points for clarification it is crucial to understand that this policy is not new complete it is not a new complete classroom curriculum this is not a change at all it's a support for the curriculum that's already being taught which is based on the frameworks of all subjects and principles directed by desi this policy isn't about peer leading or any specific programming between the peer leader groups or any of the other students this policy is not mandating any specific materials or program this policy is not about embedding critical race theory little explanation the word anti-racism is very important in this policy because it works to build awareness and understanding of systemic racism in order to actively reduce and remove factors that lead to the damaging repercussions of racism that negatively impact

102everyone in our society several of the concerns we have received express the fear about critical race theory and while the definition of whole of the whole theory is in 100 clear our understanding is that especially the especially and especially problematic part of it is that it seems to encourage targeting people based on skin color and makes them feel either guilt or ashamed because of the color of the skin or sometimes their gender or any other identity trait so if we're going to work with this definition of critical race theory this policy does not reflect or support any of those things the intent of removing racism and promoting inclusion is not to be divisive the intent is instead to support people with diverse intent identities to better work together the intent of this policy is to

103improve support for an environment where people's unique identities and differences are appreciated aspect of community learning and problem solving and that actively improving our systems improves the quality of life for all diverse people so let's begin the review of the policy as we have it right now there's the premise at the very beginning with a slight change okay so if you're looking at the policy which you know what would it be helpful yeah i could be up there up there sorry pj mine i have to just supervising tj you do an excellent job not seeing it yet let's get back to supervisors there we go thank you tj cool okay so the first section like i said it's a premise um the mascot regional school district is committed committed to embedding inclusion diversity equity and

104anti-racism make the acronym idea all aspects of education and learning for our students faculty staff and community some people have asked us that we please include in our umbrella or title the words inclusion and diversity so these four words inclusion diversity equity and anti-racism that are already in the policies intro have been reordered to make an acronym idea that's easy to say and we all like acronyms using these four words throughout the policy make it overall more inclusive itself and may make it more palatable to name it the idea policy it was all suggested also suggested that we add something in the policy about the intent not being one that encourages devices no divisiveness or guilt for certain identities so we um heard that and we realized that we essentially already have that in our

105policy ib on academic freedom which states amongst other things in the present presentation of controversial issues the teacher has the following responsibilities one of which explicitly says to ensure that the opinions expressed does not promote hurtful actions against other individuals or group in groups in the community so to present this sentiment in a positive way since we don't like to put negative words into policy the sentence that we suggest which is written and read at the end of this is this should be done in adherence to policy id on academic freedom such that positive self-worth is supported for all um again that was policy ib that's written there okay the second paragraph then says there are three complementary components necessary to achieve these goals curriculum experiences and professional development it's important that each of these

106occur in this is in many ways the whole point of the policy that these three components foster the highest quality most for both robust education the content and materials used in general curriculum the experiences which can be enrichment such as speakers projects field trips programs activities and the professional development which will help all teachers staff administration and school committee be trained by professionals not only about inclusion diversity equity and anti-racism but also in facilitating any discussions that touch on these topics in order to be culturally responsive and guide conversations in a positive way then we go into section a which is about the curriculum um you see the first part states the district's curriculum and activity must holistically represent the world's many perspectives and voices including the works of the work lives and contributions of

107various marginalized identities including or such as bypoc lgbtq plus women disabled people etc in various fields such as stem business government arts literature music sports activism and more the intent here is that the best way for diversity and inclusion to be represented and especially essentially normalized is to use diversity in the materials that are taught this is part of why we use the word embedding i-i-d-e-a in the intro because it's not always a point of discussion and often doesn't even need to be pointed out it's just an intentional effort to include marginalized identities in the mix of voices works and lives that we are used in teaching the section was rephrased a bit to say marginalized identities first followed by examples such as bypoc lgbtq plus and based on suggestions that women disabled people etc

108was added to represent major categories in a diverse range of identities the intent is not to imply a checklist of specific identities to be covered in every class but more of an emphasis on holistically representing the world's many perspectives and voices list of subjects in this section also has a similar intent as they are listed to represent various fields to support an intentional effort to ensure that certain types of identities are not only linked with certain professions or are only featured during certain chapters or certain months the intent is that the variety of different identities fields and connections would support the curriculum being overall very holistic the last part of section a still about the curriculum says and must be informed by pedagogy experts in inclusivity diversity equity and anti-racism and include the history of

109oppression injustice resistance and counter counter resistance education activism and legislation as well as current systems of privilege and power so the intent here is on understanding and thinking critically about history and our current systems around us now and how to use the guidance and knowledge of experts in teaching idea to ensure that we are not unwittingly unintentionally reinforcing racist or inequitable systems through our curriculum and teaching the intent is to support moscow in empowering all students with deep learning and critical thinking skills the importance of practicing making these connections between different pieces of time and different occurrences from the factors that make them happen to the sources being used to tell the stories we learn from so that we understand the systems of history and now and don't allow oppression and injustice to repeat themselves

110now or in the future the previous policy draft only listed anti-racism pedagogy experts but for consistency it now says keep making you have to say this word i know experts in inclusivity inclusivity diversity equity and anti-racism this is also significant because it helps the policy overall to be more inclusive itself based on feedback during our subcommittee meeting we decided during the meeting to remove the word ideology from this very end of this section while the intent was to mean the part of critical thinking is understanding the belief systems behind actions apparently this word ideology also generates some fear today in relation to critical race theory there is some concern that this is referring to a certain ideology that people worry is being embedded in our children's mind so in an effort to avoid triggering those

111fears and because the word is not essential to understanding the intent we decided to remove to simply remove the word ideology and end with just the understanding of current systems of privilege and power which are an important part of seeing the system around us two other edits in this section white supremacy and racial the word racial before oppression have also been removed so simply using the word oppression also covers these and the policy is best expressed in broad terms to be inclusive as possible of the kind of history and context that will help deepen student learning section b it is about experiences mainly because experiences are essential they're essentially our best practice and we all know that being engaged in active learning makes our understanding and comprehension go deeper it states that the district must

112provide our students and community the experiences necessary to be aware of thoughtful active participants in a diverse global environment comprehend the repercussions of racism respect and celebrate differences strive for equitable and just systems and work with all members in humanity to serve the problems that plague our communities country and world the intent here is to support our education by not just embedding the idea in the content of the materials being taught but also through enriching it with experiences such as guest speakers and presentations various programs engaging activities field trips and connections extent outside of our school the essential purpose is that when our students are out in the world i need to be after participants in society and therefore they need the experiences to draw upon that to prepare them for that they'll be better

113prepared for the diverse global environment when they understand it not just intellectually or academically but by engaging in experiences that inform their comprehension and therefore their confidence to actively work together on solving problems this was exactly what was said to us by our alumni last summer as a policy the objective is laid out but it's narrative explain some policy examples for implementation um one edit that we made here sorry i don't know what i was just saying um during our subcommittee meeting is that at the end we changed the phrase from work to lift up all members of humanity to work to read now work with all members of humanity the phrasing better captures the incentive to get up togetherness as the goal um concern was shared that lifting up could imply that certain types

114of people are above other types so simply using the word with improv improves that message and also helps with the fears of the critical race theory and divisiveness uh the intent of that we all we need to get work together with all types of people to best solve the problems that all are affect all of us in our communities country and world another edit that we put in was in some of the wording in an effort to reflect what we are working towards as opposed to against so we are striving for equity instead of instead of strive for equity dismantle racist and unjust systems that was changed to strive for equitable and just systems again speaking about the positives as we like to do last section and i'm almost done about professional developments because it

115is important to acknowledge that we are all perpetually learning and be active in providing the training that will lead to the highest quality learning and education it has the keywords again rearranged and reads the district must provide professional development development discussions and self-directed learning on inclusion diversity equity and anti-racism and conversation training to all faculty staff administration and the committee the intent here is to ensure that we're all here working together in our understanding of these topics using shared definitions of keywords and gaining guidance and practice and how do these have these difficult conversations it's not an easy topic to discuss but they're part of the world experience no matter what avoiding them doesn't help us learn so we want to support the most effective way to have these conversations the hope is that this

116will help us all avoid unintentionally doing harm to the trust and collaborative spirit that essential is essential and working together so i hope that that helped explain how we have taken a lot of feedback and put it into here um and i you know i'm gonna leave it there for any questions thank you for walking like that tasha it was very helpful we have received a lot of feedback and i appreciate how you've addressed it does anyone have any questions or comments yeah um so thanks tasha um and i i want to applaud everyone who came out tonight and has come to meetings to speak about this issue and who's written um to us and i think the um you know i understand why these changes have been made i kind of wish they hadn't

117been but um so be it um i think i'm on the policy subcommittee and when when the anti-racism committee came to us initially and said that thought this needed to be enshrined in policy i was kind of unsure why that would be necessary it was like why do we need a policy that says this and the the passion that i've witnessed from the community on both sides really got me thinking harder about that like why would we need to do that um i think you know this is this conversation here is a microcosm of a conversation that's happening all around the country um this we're at an inflection point we've had inflection points like this over our history and i am convinced that we have a response i have a responsibility to try to make

118sure that um we enshrine in policy the um expectation that our children will be given the broadest worldview possible and that's why i support this um i wanted to also comment that despite the you know and i again i applaud everyone who comes out it's hard to speak in in public like this and it's hard especially if you feel that you're you know in a minority and you're not being heard i get that um i by my count i think you talked to tasha about comments that we've heard in public meetings by my count we've received a lot of letters over the last two weeks i could be someone may correct me if i'm wrong but by my count we've received um four uh 39 letters 10 of them were opposed either well either asking

119us to delay implementing or not implement at all um and 29 of them were asking us imploring us to implement a policy like this and one of those included 61 students so not to mention that yeah there were 61 students on one of those those letters so you know that's like 90 people supporting 10 people not supporting and i know you know the numbers are maybe slightly different from public meetings so those are current students or students their current graduated class of 21. um you know these conversations are going on everywhere it's happening in the company that i work for um i work in an industry that's very white we're reckoning with this so um i just don't i wanted to say those things because i think they're important and i would like to support

120this measure i think it's very important so as also a member of the policy i took some time this week to look at the policies because that's what i do because they're ingrained in my head um so i want to say that we have a duty when we take an oath to become a school committee member we have a duty we have to we we swear under oath that we're going to fulfill our faithful duties and our duties are twofold they're promulgated by massachusetts general laws that's set forth and they're also in our policies our rules and regulations and supporting all students is what we are supposed to be doing that's our policy to make sure that all our students are educated that's not all but it's an all statement and i really feel that

121all of our students need to be and feel safe supported and empowered and we heard from some students today one who happens to be a woman of color and i think that we are really being we really need to listen to those voices because they are telling us how they feel and we have to recognize that and we have to believe them we can't say no but we are dealing with um we are dealing with a society that has not always listened to them and um our duties and our i i also went back and looked at when some of our policies were were set and one policy two policies in particular have been happening for over 40 years and they have to do with academic freedom which was which was passed in 1973 wow

122and goals for setting policies relating to students which date backs to 1975. and um it says in part that the school committee and staff shall work together to establish an environment conducive to the very best learning achievement for each student through meeting the following goals regarding regarding students and that includes to provide an environment of reality in which students can learn personal and civic responsibility for their actions through meaningful experiences school citizens to to provide in every way feasible for the safety health and wealth for our students to promote a welcoming school environment for families so children can be successful and i think that we would be remiss if we didn't hear the voices that are telling us we don't feel welcome and it's our duty as a school committee again to make sure that

123all our students through our policies need feel safe supported and empowered can you do you know what policy number that second one was um yes it's j j a and did you say reality civic responsibility and yep to provide an environment of reality environment of reality okay so man make a comment yes um that's impressive that you found that because i i do feel that that's what this is about is you know the real world like it's when when people fear these conversations my first thought is that they are happening wherever in the world so students are exposed to these uncomfortable conversations and so to me that's why we need a policy that's going to inform training that's going to support these conversations so you mentioned that we heard from a student who had felt

124unwelcome we also heard from another student and i don't know if he's still here oh here yes who who had felt uncomfortable for a different reason and i think that was a problem i think this type of training would hopefully not make that sort of thing happen that should not have happened and i feel the policy is geared towards of populations that are majority um you know that are bigger groups of of more consistently discriminated against populations but the the process of how we work with our students and what this policy is the way i read it trying to do is supporting everyone to work together so that question that trevor asks mr the ball said when he said are we racist i mean the answer is sometimes sometimes yes sometimes no so i'm not

125going to say yes every day when i'm working not to be you know not so those are just that's why i feel like you need us we need to have support for our staff to be able to support our students through these uncomfortable conversations and to have our students be informed and how to support one another throughout all of it um and just one note i that sentence in the very first paragraph where we added this should be done in adherence with policy ib and academic freedom such that positive self-worth is supported for all i i did consider that our we have you know we're gonna have some turnover in our uh committee and christians this has been a year-long process we have a sitting we have a full committee well every seat is full

126um and our current box of representative has been through us this process with us i think she deserves a voice but i did appreciate that our very likely incoming uh box of representatives shared this feedback the way i read this is it's a positive framing of the same concept of when we say that positive self-worth is supported for all the way you explain it is it's sort of taking the idea of we don't want anyone to be have guilt or shame imposed upon them based on their identity the color of their skin or their gender um i see that as a positive framing of that um so i appreciate that that edit i appreciate the people julie also brought that up at the subcommittee meeting like i appreciate people who brought those things to us

127tasha i have a technical question just what are we calling the policy just um i think that i like the idea of calling it the idea policy can i make a quick comment on that sure um so i love the way the the language is in the policy and i like the concept of calling it um the idea policy this is probably coming from my special ed background everything every time i hear idea in this context i think of the individual with disabilities education act and i know that generally speaking if you're not coming from a special education perspective that you're not going to jump there but because we are in the educational system i have no problem with leaning leaving the order but i was actually going to make a suggestion that we not

128necessarily use that as the acronym and if the committee doesn't agree again it is more my niche so i hear it every time but i hear the the difference between what is a federal law and our idea of calling it the idea policy so can i just respond quickly to that we have also um we can mix up the letters in another way and call it aid a-i-d-e the only problem with that that we had discussed a bunch of times is that when you put anti-racist before it you're kind of seeing anti towards every successive word so it would be anti-racism um a inclusion diversity equity so i i'm happy to make this the the aid thing but just i know joe wants me to come but on this point we didn't make up the

129acronym idea right i mean that is an acronym that exists i don't think so what the for the id it's usually like individuals with disabilities no not that but isn't there okay okay it's like we're doing ideas training yeah that's what that actually does not stand for the same thing okay sorry okay yeah but i have a proposal that we just use the actual words in the title policy i don't want to get bogged down by an acronym i think this is important okay good all right joe had a comment no yeah just a question if the policy is approved how's it going to be implemented will it be a policy that's filed or is it going to be part of the educational system where there are classes and it's learned and either way with

130all the talk that was done today would it truly matter to push this to the fall to get more information more people involved and uh you know work a little bit more in the details so two-part question so i mean with all of our policies they do end up being filed but the idea that we felt really that it was important that again hearing from what we had heard from the students last year ones who had been through the system who some of them were getting some of this education that wasn't necessarily in the textbooks because their teachers took an interest into it and they were bringing in you know history of um like black rights i think uh it was in one of the emails that's not you know not just talked about during

131black history month or women i've often discussed how one of um my daughter's teachers really had interest in women's rights and so in history it was always women women's history was brought in because in a lot of the history books they don't talk about women so the idea is that it shouldn't just be from one teacher that has that interest but it should be part of everybody teaching this to all kids so it's not just some kids but it's it's all of them receiving it so as as you know um and to you know um you know say it again to the community our our responsibility is to do the policy where we're supposed to set the goals as to what we want the administration to do and then we turn it over and we

132say mike these are your orders and and it would be up to him and administration to implement it but again it's not a specific policy um it's not a specific curriculum that we are engaging in it is we just want to make sure that all kids are seeing other sides stepping outside of themselves trying on different shoes and walking in them um and of course the teachers who have been asking us for this for years to give them professional development on this that they can handle the these conversations that are coming so that oh in terms of pushing it back i i i feel like what we have talked about also as a subcommittee that there are lots of opportunities that we want to engage the community with about different topics um on this but

133this is a like this is a huge topic to kind of start engaging in community forums on we i would love to have a conversation about um stuff that the students are working on and then have them presented to the community and we could you know talk about that specific item or we can bring up a documentary that everyone's seen or do a book read or something but um i i feel like the time is now because again it's the end of this year's committee of as to when kristen's been involved in this since the beginning i think i feel like it's kind of a fair thing i don't know if other people have other fish to fry and fall too i mean like coming out of a pandemic other stuff i would just um

134remind committee members that one of our responsibilities as elected representatives is to set policy and why we certainly want to hear from our constituents about their views ultimately we've been elected to establish policies we we don't make decisions by a general vote every time we do something we've been elected to meet deliberate research we have all been at this table in these meetings and much more involved i would say than most not all but most people that pop in and out depending on their availability um so i think it's very important that we understand that um our position uh we are responsible for establishing policy and having a forum for every decision we make is not the way the school committee is constructed legally um so i would add that to the conversation um and

135i would also can i also i like just for another analogy joe cause i i understand you're saying like what does this mean once this is if this is approved like what happens i mean it's it's somewhat similar to the academic freedom policy there isn't instantly a rapid change or you we don't none of the kids take academic freedom classes but it is an important reference tool for teachers and students and the community to know what the basically what the framework is for what's going on in the school and it's the backbone and then they take it and we trust them um that and we know that our teachers are great and the leadership and that they will work together to do it um in the way that we intend and then it's our job

136to keep an eye on them um quite frankly and specifically you to make sure that it it doesn't it doesn't veer from what the intent was here which i think is a very positive inclusive intent i also just wanted just one last point of that like terry said and i spoke to it as well and that while there are some people that are asking for it to be um postponed and and we've definitely heard that um i've also heard from many people who are saying you know thank god it's finally happening you know a few of them were happening today but it's a year and this has been a year to get to this point for them and um they've been waiting for it to happen since then so just one number that i don't

137think you mentioned during your earlier statement tasha i think there were 900 people who signed the i think it was like 9 40 something 940 people who signed the statement asking for this last year right so just thought i would add that dominic i tried to i'm a little sorry if i'm a little nervous but you know in the past couple months i've tried to stay on top of the current issues and yes they've been working on it for a year but it's a year like no one's ever seen yeah everybody's just getting the chance to come back to reality to society to be part of all of this so does it make sense if it is pushed back and please don't don't take this as i i know i can i i realize how

138important it is i believe wholeheartedly in it um there's definitely things that we can do to make our children's lives uh you know in school better always that's that's never going to end but you know giving the community more of an opportunity and a voice is only going to help this program succeed because we'll have that much more backing and i don't know maybe that's all they're asking for is just a you know a voice you know at the table but it's just it's a year like no other we've never i i hope we never see anything like this again compare it we have no precedent and i think that that's really an interesting point because we as a school committee have been tirelessly at work as a school committee on school committee things since

139last you know since this happened where we didn't have like our normal cycle our normal break in the summer because of the pandemic we you know have been trying to get all the kids back in school safely all year long and make sure that they were educated to the best that we could given that and that this came out to us and that we still met weekly for a few months then every other week none of us have any extra time we're all working parents we don't get paid for any of this you know and we all had kids at home dealing with being remote school during their you know whatever year it was for them that was important um we still felt that this was super important to happen now and not to push

140off until another year that this this took that kind of a height of importance because that many people had talked to us so i understand that maybe not everybody has been tuned into this even though you know we've been talking about it all year i and i would love to engage the community on a continuous basis about this but as carolyn i think you said it really well that this is our job you know do your job is to create policy so um and let's talk about other things in the community next year including this stuff bonnie um so two things basically i wanted to say i love the additions um that were made with the feedback from the community um especially the word inclusion you know i feel like this it's helping to capture

141a little bit more of what the original intent always was um it was always in there but mentioning inclusion more throughout the policy um really helps to emphasize that there is there is no intent to be divisive i mean we all understand our teachers are amazing they understand that you know having people feel validated i think people feel welcome having an environment that is positive is the best way for everyone to learn and so you know it's just i can't say enough about how how upsetting it is to hear the fears that people are saying and how much i wish we could reassure people that that is not the intent that um that the intent is to is to build build bridges and um foster communication and trust and learning for everyone and with that

142lens and what you were just saying about community the other thing that is in this in this policy it does refer to the community and um i feel like this policy it says it at the at the introduction um that we're commit um that we're committed to embedding this in all aspects of education and learning for our students faculty staff and community so i feel as though this policy opens that door and like you said as our students are learning our students are of the community like they are the members of the tri-town who attend moscow um so they you know as as they are learning it's important for us all to be supportive of that and go on this journey together so i feel like this policy does invite more discussions that will inevitably

143happen in our community in a positive way ideally from the students you know i love the idea of having more students giving presentations sharing having discussions so that we can all work on these really important steps together thank you bonnie uh kristen's been waving her hand over there thanks caroline um so first i wanted to just briefly address don nick's comment um about about waiting for time so as has been stated multiple times uh tonight we have been looking at this policy um for the course of our year and we have had a lot of meetings about it and at every school committee meeting we have had updates from the anti-racism policy about the progress and the resolution and the policy drafting itself and so these comments have not been made in a vacuum while

144we have been busy busy with covet and the pandemic and everything else that has been on our plate all year we've had a lot of community engagement with our meetings over the course of the year because of the concerns regarding kovid and so it is not as though this policy drafting process should come at great surprise to members of our community i recognize it's a highly controversial conversation um it makes people uncomfortable and i think that that's good people need to be uncomfortable this is not an easy topic but it is something that deserves attention and um and consideration and our students deserve to have their voices heard and so on that note i'd like to move to accept this policy i would like to ask the chair recognized yeah i know um i'm sorry

145that's not the way that our meetings have run historically bill there's a lot excuse me i did have another comment i mean can i after we have a motion so or that is does anyone want to second that i will flash this second did it okay yes um first of all i would ask the superintendent to investigate uh this this occurrence of during the adl training um a a student being told that he was a racist um i think the the the community and the school committee need to have a clearer understanding of precisely what happened um the next things that the you know it's clear to me that um the public comment the emails our meeting tonight um that some people look at this this uh policy and they see good things they see

146inclusion they see diversity uh they see anti-racism and other people look at this policy and see targeting and guilt and divisiveness and and i asked myself um will time change that and and and i'm not so sure one of the other roles that i i have in life is to be um elder at a baptist church and one of the sermons that i preached recently which i won't do now was about how it uncomfortable conversations are necessary and if you really love someone if you claim to love someone then you can't foot around the uncomfortable topics frankly they they're not to be feared but they should be embraced um and quite honestly the i think that as if we adopt this policy i think having continued community discussions about how it actually implemented would be

147would be very worthy um but i think the policy itself i think i think should be moved forward and accepted okay so we do have a motion and a second any other questions before we vote uh just you know two things with you know the past year and the cove you know it allowed for you know remote meetings and at some of our meetings we had well over 300 you know people attending in fact we had to get a bigger zoom license and as was you know mentioned you know before an update from this you know subcommittee was always part of of the agenda the other thing that we've seen tonight is that our policies are constantly being reviewed so you know adopting you know a policy is not the end of the road it

148will it will be reviewed and in due course and in this policy you know bill's you know suggestion of looking at how it is being implemented you know sooner rather than you know later i think it would be you know also be a good thing i would have preferred a simplified policy but the end result is one that i support so i'm ready to vote yes okay silly yeah um just in case there's anyone who's still thinking i just there's three quick points that i want to point out one is i'm fairly certain let me know if i'm wrong but i don't know anyone at this table that had even heard about critical race theory when we started this process so i want to just we in fact anyone who emailed the committee saying they

149were against critical race they received a response stating that this is not critical race theory and was never intended to be we are not a law school we are a middle school in a high school so i just want to be very clear that's not what we're supporting here with this policy number two the black lives matter organization has never been called out anywhere in either the resolution or the policy there is a sentence that does not connect to an organization we have also clarified that and it's disappointing to me that when we do respond the community is not relaying our responses to your friends and to one another for some reason um the next point i wanted to make is that the deci does have guiding principles for administrators and teachers that includes this

150sentence that one of the focus one of the guiding principles and focus indicators because we were the commissioner rally was referenced several times in comments uh one of them states that we should be promoting culturally responsive which by the way culturally responsive teaching is also crt so if you ever accidentally see that just understand it might mean something else culturally responsive anti-racist teaching and leading practices that disrupt patterns of inequity and systems of oppression against black indigenous latinx asian and multi-racial communities we also i feel that this policy supports our district in being able to follow this guiding principle from desi by supporting everything that they would need in order to adhere to that and finally in some of the letters that we received from the public those 29 letters that you mentioned um a

151couple of them did mention that most private schools and very high achieving districts are already have things like this in place in fact they have entire departments devoted to it so we're not uh some people some of our letter writers inside um you could say that we're behind on this so i just wanted to mention those things as another thing to consider for anyone who's still thinking about it um as we take our vote okay all right i'm going to do a roll call vote um i will begin with kristen yes joe no bonnie yes dominic no terry yes pasta yes silly yes i'ma yes melissa yes tasha yes and bill yes um i do want to just say that i feel really poorly that you know friend uh felt the need to threaten about

152school committee members in his town taking this vote but i just want to say that i'm doing this because i know that this is the right thing and i am again i i feel bad that i am upsetting people for that okay all right so that was an um approval by majority vote no i'm sorry all right i'm going to move on um so the policy just passed by majority vote according to our policies on policies um if um normally our uh policies or if our policies pass unanimously it's just one vote if they pass um by a majority uh we have to have a second vote in another meeting and if it passes by majority then then it is officially the policy so we will have one more vote on this at our next

153one thank you thank you everyone for your hard work um thank you and for making the statements that you did i know this is a tough subject and i'm proud i am proud of everyone who came and everyone around the table for tackling it and expressing how you feel about it because it um it's not easy for anybody even though even those that are most comfortable talking in public which is definitely not me okay thanks carolyn all right all right i'm going to move on to subcommittee reports or most of our subcommittees are winding down um but i just want to check in with them all community engagement bonnie i've not met last meeting um all right um so next up is the negotiation subcommittee we are not winding down i'm going to provide an

154update about um how things are going on our negotiation um with the mass economic teachers union uh we are currently as you know uh negotiating a uh three-year contract with them to renew the contract that we're in now that ends at august 15th so now is the time so i i do want to say that our school committee administration and teachers all share a common commitment to education and the well-being of our students and our school committee values our faculty and really wants a positive relationship with our teachers we have developed priorities as part of this contract negotiation process that reflect the things that we've heard from our teachers what they've been asking for and our intent is to leave the table at the end of these negotiations with all parties feeling they have what

155they need to be successful so i do want to take some time to kind of i've done this in the past but i want to get into it a little bit more outline what our priorities are so everyone's aware of what the school committee is trying to accomplish in the contract overall as i said our priority has always been to come to an agreement that will provide our students what they need to recover from the pandemic what we want is more flexibility in developing a daily schedule that addresses issues of student stress and workload and meets dese regulations regarding structured learning time the district needs this increased flexibility of scheduling um we need to increase excuse me the flexibility of scheduling within the current six and a half hour work day that we have we're

156not asking for any change in the start and end times of the day those are you know outlined to the minute in the contract uh the length of the teachers work days we're not asking those to be changed at all the increased flexibility will be used to incorporate a wind block and increased professional development time the wind block as many of you know was a super positive development of the remote and hybrid learning schedules that we had to struggle through this past year students and teachers found it helpful to meet students needs and we are committed to maintaining it given the success that it had in this pilot that we had for it we are also prioritizing that increase in professional development time that i mentioned um teachers are always asking us for more professional

157development and this type of development is integral to us achieving vision 2025 we need time to plan for that again our proposal allows for more time for that without changing the length of the school day so in order to provide opportunities for teachers uh to enhance their training and education um we have always provided tuition reimbursement to them and i just wanted to mention that as part of our initial offer way back when we started the negotiation process we offered to increase the per course reimbursement rate for classes that teachers take from 200 to 500 per course provided a certified transcript was given to the district just to demonstrate that the course was taken after eagerly accepting this offer the union leadership asked for an additional increase to six hundred dollars per course to cover

158the cost and time involved in obtaining a certified transcript i just wanted to outline that as one of the items that we've been going back and forth with them on um where we have left it is that in exchange for this flexibility that i keep discussing um we have offered a six percent increase in base salaries over the three year term of the proposed contract the union's leadership demand is a 14 and a half percent increase over the same period clearly that size of an increase is far out of reach of our town's budget and it's it's unsustainable and uh frankly it's unheard of especially in a district where average teacher salaries are among the highest in the region so after five months of negotiations on this contract we feel we have made no progress

159on these important issues and we feel we can't afford uh to wait any longer um using the current process because it's just not being effective we want to be able to make these changes to help our students as soon as we can we don't have a lot of time we've talked about them coming back in the fall and how we're going to try to get them all back on track and having this contract settled will be an important piece of that and we believe mediation is the best way to accomplish that that is where we are at right now we have requested uh mediation as i mentioned in our last meeting and right now we are waiting to hear back on how that process will work tasha do you have anything i'm not sure i

160hit on everything today anything to end oh i think you got it you did a very good job all right thank you all right um i think we're all set with the anti-racism subcommittee update no you don't want anymore i think we're all set with policy all right and then anything from the liaisons all right i'm gonna move to the consent agenda who's the approval of the june 9th 2021 meeting minutes warrants of one million five hundred and fifty five hundred and forty five thousand nine hundred and thirty eight dollars and eighty-nine cents signed since january ninth and accepting a science award in the amount of 200 dollars to accept a second um i have a question about the um minutes all right um can i pull those out yep pull them out and we'll

161do a vote on his consent agenda i'm gonna do it by roll call kristen yes joe yes bonnie dominic yes terry yes pasta yes silly yes amios melissa yes yes yes all right on the minutes is it a quick one or should we pull it for next time no it's a it's a quick one just on the negotiation team subcommittee report um i think it's important to put in there when on the priorities that part of the impasse was due to the request for the 14 increase i think that number oh okay i know i definitely said that yeah 14 14 and a half sorry you want to add after at an impasse based on i don't know how we add it in um and maybe after acknowledgment of the significance of the cost of

162the contract and that that you know what let's do this can we just come up can we give some language and then just review it quickly at our next meeting yep but then play around with it right now but that's that should be pretty straightforward thank you for catching up i think i just got it because i didn't see it before but i think the dates between number three and four were transposed ours meeting with math was supposed to be july 13 oh okay well this is why yeah this is why yeah jackie was confused yeah so those dates need to be switched okay all right so we'll focus back at our next um not july okay not switched but yeah they're wrong anti-racist numbers do you want me to ask them to can you

163guys email jackie we have it on tape oh that's right how can i forget okay all right um i'll talk about that next or better yes i won one more um zilli brought up earlier how we're a little bit behind because of the delay in the elections as far as our normal schedule and we do need to provide time for um reorganizing the school committee after the boxford election which is tuesday of next week so i wanted to talk just about me a sec before you jump on me possibly having a short meeting to accomplish that and to have the second vote as well on the um i wanted to call now you have to say all the words um the policy we discussed tonight um the meetings that we have on the calendar right

164now for july 21st and august 25th we're set aside specifically for that important ideas training for school committee members and i i those are pretty lengthy meetings and i don't want to add it to that that's i think initially that's what was my hope um so i maybe the best way is to do a doodle well like outside of this to find another date i can't admit unless you want to pick do you have a date of 14 i mean it's a proposal 14. well we still are allowed to have remote meetings correct i'm just going to ask them to do it no no we are yeah so and i know we're trying to do the ideas training in person so if i'm going to be so bold as to ask for another meeting i

165i would probably make it remote just because i know people are trying have a summer so how about july 14th depends on the time it would be the normal seven o'clock time o'clock remotely i can do it okay what day the week is on wednesday okay we'll make that official we'll post it that we're going to have a short meeting on july 14th and then the following wednesday we'll do the ideas training so you got like one week off so to confirm the we would be reviewing like doing another vote on the um policy and doing the reward yeah that's what it's for yeah because i then you'll have the full complement of the new members and if it's if the chair agrees we might that maybe maybe there'll be a that form that we

166fill out every year after the box for election that form that people and say what they're interested in yes for um the subcommittees get rejiggered as part of the reorganization too and we ask for um every committee member's preferences like their first and second chance to try to accommodate them that's what it's always talking about that's a tradition as well so we'll shoot that out before that meeting uh it will make the meeting uh more productive and short yes what would happen if somebody wins the election they actually can't make that 14th no okay hypothetically hypothetically that remotely even what about the seven did you ask for this something i thought you just said i didn't what about the seven of july i can't make that you cannot no i don't need you sorry okay

167we don't need to then [Music] how about the 13th yes it's seven yeah it's a tuesday remote oh yeah it's fine can you do that hi okay 15. how about the 15th it better worse we're getting closer i don't think we're getting further away well i i understand that i i think it's going to be difficult to find a date that works for everybody yeah we i would we need to have it before the 21st holiday okay this is fun sorry all right let's do it the 13th at i can't oh you can't all right so then i'm i'm going to put it back on the 14th i don't see a solution that gives us more members attending i just say something i can explain in private why i can't believe that okay all right

168well let's go with the 14th everybody you can plan for that right new little time yeah maybe we can work on the time but i will um also have like the 20th kristen well are you guys done chatting about the calendar yeah we are okay so before i uh do my last official business as a school cootie committee member i wanted to say thank you it's been a pleasure serving with all of you and with that i moved to a journey oh kristen we are going to miss you we're going to miss you kristen yes absolutely thank you so much for all that you did i know your beloved hockey team is happy to have you home all right may i second it yes you can second it we gotta roll call it bill you

169want to go first yes tasha yes yes yes yes terry dominic yes bonnie joe yes and kristen yes all right thank you good night everybody we're all set you