001one moment and you miss brendale you're all set have a good meeting Scott all right I got it I got it okay I would like to call the February 13 2023 school committee meeting to order the Scituate school committee is committed to providing an environment of respect during meetings we ask all members to interact in a polite manner even when there is disagreement we value the participation of our community and want all participants including marginalized and minoritized communities to feel welcomed and respected we ask our committee members and all who participate to commit to these standards to support and respect our community as always public comment will be available both in person as well as on zoom and community members can also email me at nbrandolini sip.org with any questions to start the meeting I
002just have a brief statement to read dear Scituate Public Schools families and staff effective today February 13 2023 Michael long has resigned from the Scituate school committee Mr Long's personal reasons for resignation do not in any way pertain to Scituate Public Schools or his work as a Scituate School Committee Member we want to thank Mr long for his service to the community and the district as the Scituate school committee remains committed to its core values of providing a quality education to our community's children we will work appropriately with the town in Billing the state vacancy I would like to invite Dr Dutch to say a few words regarding the school budget and the structure of how the school budget is run the school committee's role here just to be clear is one of budgetary oversight
003Dr Dutch thank you uh I understand that certainly folks might have some concerns as it relates to the financial matters in a school district and they just wanted to reassure the school committee the public and uh anybody else who would have interest that access to funds for the school district are not available to any individual school committee member or the committee as a whole there are multiple processes in place that would prevent that including signatures required for any funds to be expended or withdrawn from any accounts those include three school committee members my signature the superintendent signature the town administrator's signature and the finance director for the town so it is virtually impossible for that to happen for one person thank you thank you very much appreciate that clarity this time I would open up
004public comments for anyone who would like to participate I'll also check in online anyone in person wishing to participate can come right up to the table so you know it in person as well as no hands raised virtually okay we'll carry on with our student Representatives Emma Rydell and Victor Valdez the show is yours just Victor unfortunately yeah so Emma is sick today and I don't really know what that means but hopefully she's watching on Zoom this past weekend over 40 student delegates attended a conference in Boston for Model United Nations special shout out to the awarded delegates Ruby Shaw Jonah Rydell Nikolai bokovic Savannah garabedian Jane Ryan Allison mcgurty Beth McCune and Anna Kelly this is one of our best conferences yet congratulations to all involved students taking Action Against Racism has been beginning
005each day this month with an announcement celebrating a black figure or accomplishment students and teachers are enjoying this daily learning experience Happy Valentine's Day the best buddies Club met after school in the cafeteria to celebrate Valentine's Day and a birthday after school students met in the cafeteria for some snacks and mingling music played in the background from Miley Cyrus to Grand Funk Railroad the request line was open students painted some beautiful pictures on canvases for the first 30 minutes and the group made cards and sang Happy birthday to an IXL student whose birthday it happened to be they finished off with some quote epic bingo games February break is quickly approaching students have just four days of classes before taking the whole next week off I encourage all students but especially seniors to take some
006time to rest and prepare for March where we have not a single day off from school this Thursday 30 Juniors and seniors will be heading down to Ecuador in the Galapagos Islands for a school trip students taking Spanish or environmental science we're especially encouraged to join but everyone attended attending is looking forward to the packed itinerary we're very excited after covet to begin offering trips like these again students can look forward to the Irish Exchange trip in March a trip to France over April break and more to come in the following years District leadership held a focus group on the strengths challenges and opportunities of the SPs system meeting with parents several teachers and then a collection of students from Gates and shs Emma and I both attended and it was a great way for
007students to share their thoughts in a repercussion free environment and I think a lot of good things were said congratulations to the high school math team who is currently first in the South Shore league and are now heading to playoffs over the weekend the wrestling team made great strides in the division three South sectional tournament EJ Moskowitz and David Murphy will both move on to the state championship as well as Sarah Mclaughlin who is only the second female athlete in Massachusetts history to win a wrestling sectional championship counselors will host Junior College workshops on Wednesday the 15th and Thursday the 16th in this Berry Library all juniors are invited to attend now I remember these events last year and they were extremely beneficial as a stepping stone into the tumultuous journey of applying to college
008in conjunction with mass insight and applied practice Scituate High School facilitate mock exams in advanced placement language and literature classes this Wednesday these tests provide valuable feedback guiding students and teachers to a successful testing experience in May all enrolled students are expected to attend and finally the GSA is holding a movie night this Wednesday in this very library and will be screaming screening Paranorman that's all I got for you today that was a lot but if you have any questions I'd love to answer them thank you Victor I think we're all super happy to see and hear that you're heading out there and traveling school-based Adventures very nice absolutely um yes I was given the statistics and I was so beyond confused with the different um like lengths and things uh but I am aware
009that the high school sectionals they did very well for the swim team uh congratulations them as well I do apologize for not having those stats in front of me full disclosure I'm going to swim here so like I do I know the school has a new um we have a new record so can I um because I do want to give credit to those swimmers um it is in the um the 200 free relay the uh girls broke a Newton they leave a new school record is this page Buckley made Lynch Mackenzie Gilmore and Megan Nelson um the time was 1 45 23 which was 0.75 faster than the 2018. thank you very much for that Amendment it was a part of the sensitivities again right I would have ran out of breath I think
010if I had added that but thank you for that just came in for us congratulations girls thank you we appreciate it all right leadership report superintendent Burkhead and assistant superintendent Driscoll and director of diversity Equity inclusion Gmail Adams all right thank you a guest was not on your agenda but um Amanda Preston Sakari from public Consulting Group it's also here tonight right uh just a little context um way back when I was interviewed for this position three years ago almost three years ago about three years ago a lot of the communication that I received was about what are we going to do to make sure that every child is cared for a lot of respected and treated um because if they were your own child and I think that's been our goal we've gotten here
011and I think we talk often talk about the importance of social emotional learning and its impact on children and we do a really good job here focusing on that the question becomes how do you measure that we measure academics with MCAS and tables things like that so we wanted to have some information but we also wanted this to be inclusive um in the process to include our whole community and bring this as a unifying event where everybody would have a voice talk about equity in our schools what does it look like what do we think our our opinions are we so we also thought to be unbiased is to have an outside group coming and do that so that we would have an outside perspective and some suggestions and feedback that's what we're here tonight
012to do so Amanda's here tonight to present Mr Adams and Ms Crystal and I are here to assist if there's any questions added from the committee um we may need to answer that man they can't School related so that's why we have a mini committee here but I do want to thank um Camille and ideas for all their work this is several months in the making appearing weekly meetings I want to thank Amanda ECG for all their hard work and I also want to thank all the people that participated students our community our staff our families there were focus groups different surveys a lot of information and tonight we're going to hear a summary of what that is and then this week typical of any presentation of a school committee we'll follow this up with
013a complete report that will be in more detail for the community to have access to this right and just a final note we'll use this information and setting our goals and also this information will be used in the strategic planning process which is up and running now as a data point for um our work with setting goals and Division in school in the next five years great thank you so much people Everyone um it is great to be here in person um as superintendent just shared my name is Amanda Preston Safari and I am a student consultant here with PCG um and I have been leading uh this team through the work of we all here in Scituate for the last uh six months seven months something like that now and so it's great to
014be here to be able to share um some of the results that that's saying so uh this presentation is really meant to uh make sure that folks are aware of kind of how we went about this study um and then share what we ended up developing were three priority recommendations and along with those priority recommendations sharing some examples of the types of findings um that we that we had that led to those recommendations um knowing that there are uh expensive uh additional data and findings and recommendations in that full report but wanted to give you all the uh kind of overview summary of uh to this evening okay so go ahead so to start off with just how we approach this equiotic framework we want to lay uh we like to lay out foundations we're
015all kind of speaking the same language so to start off what is an equity audit in general um we're really looking at uh the policies programs practices of Pacific Public Schools from an equity lens um and a couple things that we called out here in in this slide one is really understanding the concept of equity itself so if the idea is um that there are a bunch of folks who you choose uh equality is that everyone gets a pair of shoes Equity is everyone getting a pair of shoes that fits them and so the equity audit is trying to figure out what size everyone is what everyone's needs are um and and how those shoes are going to fit and so trying to help kind of frame what this Equity versus a quality conversation is
016that we hear a lot um and as a reminder uh this report and audit is a snapshot of Scituate right now um in the conversations we had in the data we saw and is meant to be a tool to help you all move forward and not a um kind of comprehensive um statement on uh more longitudinal study so wanting to keep that in mind as well and uh how we as a firm kind of think about educational Equity is really thinking about the individual perspective every student every individual in the district's uh experience and prospective matters with of course um an eye to uh students who are historically marginalized or treated with low expectations for any uh number of reasons but really try to keep in mind as we're looking at these findings and these
017recommendations that we really value the individual story and voice of uh students and and staff here in situated so we're thinking about what we looked at over the course of the last uh six or seven months or so we had five uh Focus areas for this Equity audit that were developed in partnership with the Scituate team um and those are leadership policies and practices family and Community engagement professional learning student outcomes and access to Advanced learning opportunities and Human Resources policies and practices and within each of those Focus areas we have these kind of broad diving research questions so asking ourselves questions within each of the Focus areas um that that guided how they're trying to get at the equity lens within that area um so you can see these uh questions here know that
018these are kind of The overarching Guiding questions and of course um we went much deeper than than these um kind of broad questions in the actual course of the study so how we went about this study so that you know where kind of this all came from go ahead so in trying to get a holistic picture of equity in Scituate for these Focus areas we looked at several different sources so um when talking to folks in the community we had uh we helped 10 individual interviews with you all members of school committee with District leadership um we uh offered nine Community focus groups with families students teaching staff other staff and school leaders um and we had 64 individuals participate in those focus groups and then uh the district distributed an anonymous feedback form to
019the to the community after these focus groups and we received 82 responses to that feedback form um most of them were very detailed and and extensive as we're able to really um get a lot of information from those as well and then uh we started off this whole study um with our data inductive request so really uh trying to look at both publicly available data we took a lot of uh data from Jessie's website and from scituate's website as well as internal data sources such as um professional learning offerings uh Staffing and other things resources data um and so really uh dug into both the qualitative and quantitative uh data sources for study another piece that you're going to see uh in the full report uh although not in this summary is what we're calling
020the strategies analysis at a glance and uh what we wanted we developed this to help folks understand um very quickly uh where kind of Scituate uh was fell on the spectrum of having these evidence-based strategies towards Equity so what you'll see in the full report are examples of core practices that the district could have or could be doing um that can help them meet their Equity goals and then uh to what extent we observed them in Scituate over the course of this study and so again um as we as we went out here a no designation doesn't mean that it necessarily doesn't exist or is it happening it just means that over the course of this study we didn't see it um and so as you're looking at the full report so see that and
021the last piece of kind of analysis background is the risk ratio analysis many of you may be familiar with this Jesse um uses these uh in their public reporting as well um so when looking at student discipline as well as in the full report you'll see looking at uh special education and IEP assignment rates we use this risk ratio analysis what this tells us is if I am one student what is the risk of me Amanda receiving a disciplinary referral compared to any other student in Scituate and so the reason why we use this risk ratio analysis especially in um districts similar to situates where uh certain demographic populations may be very small um individual uh for example disciplinary referrals could massively skew a finding if you're just looking at it from a proportionality um
022perspective and so the risk risk to analysis really gets us about that the last piece of the methodology um starting off with just a little context you can go ahead to the next slide one thing that I wanted to emphasize now and that you'll see um in our in our recommendations as well is that one thing that came through loud and clear throughout this study is this District's commitment to equity work um a lot of folks talked about um a lot of favorable steps towards Equity the lit teams um the tides clubs uh the work that the district has done to hire a director of Dei to expand the support for um Boston scholars in Scituate as well as some other programming and so wanted to really make sure that from the beginning we were
023calling out the clear commitment that we saw the positive steps that we saw um and as you can see on the bottom here there's a strong desire from almost everyone we spoke to um to improve in this work not necessarily knowing how or or where they may be at at the moment but that desire to improve and to really focus on this work was very clear throughout the study um and this is these are characteristics that you all know already but uh have them in here kind of as context just um the uh districts demographics as well as how they compare to neighboring communities um as you can see here we've pulled uh Cohasset Norwell Marshfield Hingham Hanover Rocklin so really just um looking at your demographics and the demographics of the area as a
024whole just as some contextual data so priority recommendations so there are three that we've identified both um from our team and then also in conversation with the leadership team um that we recommend uh focusing uh for immediate implementation when it comes to uh leveraging the work of this audit embedded Equity actions and goals Equity aligned professional learning plan and data-driven systems and strategies for human resources and what you'll see in the coming slides is we'll talk a little bit more about these three recommendations and have some examples of the type of findings that we um used to develop them so number one embedded Equity actions and goals you all are currently in the process of developing a new strategic plan so this is actually the perfect time to be able to reset and build equity
025into every step of this District's work and so ensuring that Equity actions and goals are explicitly included in the development of the district's new strategic plan and so having that Clear Vision that common language actionable measurable goals that Center equity in every element of a thing um I'm sure that scituates uh strategic plan as well as most strategic plans have a kind of equity goals in them we recommend taking this opportunity to make sure that Equity is a goal within all of the um areas of the Strategic plan um and so you're really having it um explicit and clear throughout the plan so that um there's that common understanding of what you're doing and where you're going and how you're getting there and for some example of findings uh of that that built-in that tie
026into this goal um one of them this idea of lack of clarity on the district's Equity vision and plans as I said um earlier it was very clear to everyone we spoke to that there's a commitment and a desire to do this work there was a lack of clarity on what that actually means in Scituate um stakeholders didn't know kind of what the district's Equity Vision was if there was one or had different ideas of what it was um and there was a lot of messaging around a desire to be more Equitable but but uh not really clear on how to do that or a consistent messaging on how um a lot of conversations about well-intentioned themes and Communications of intentions but folks uh lacked a deeper Clarity on goals and what it actually looks
027like in Scituate um and families in uh both in the feedback forms and in focus groups uh expressed a desire for goals around Equity so they could really understand exactly what the work um was and how it was being measured um and staff shared a challenge around advocating for Equity work and being a champion for Equity work without them clearly understanding what the goals and actions to achieve those goals were um so that's an example of some of the related findings that we have tied to this this priority recommendation um the next two slides uh were we debated back and forth about about um how to bring these and we wanted to end up sharing them so that leadership understands um what what needs to be um tackled in order to really move this work
028forward um we heard as I said we heard a lot of positives around the work done and the mindsets in the district and we also found that Community mindsets and a lack of understanding of equity um are barrier and uh these were some themes that we heard across focus groups um as well as in uh responses to the feedback form uh there were several uses of racially charged derogatory terms to describe bypop community members including using the word bub um many comments uh expressed that Equity work is separate from and kind of detrimental to Quality academics and so that's a mindset shift that I think who really needs to to move in order to uh have build that buy-in for the new strategic plan and goals um similarly uh Dei work takes time away from
029issues that affect our kids and so there's some examples of um the ways in which by Fox students and Boston Scholars um are not seen as as our children from some Scituate stakeholders um as well as you know claims of self-segregation therefore the district shouldn't worry about it um uh and along those same lines you know by pop students and community members using racism as an excuse uh to get away with not following rules as well as a really consistent denial of any Equity issues in situate because those stakeholders haven't seen it or experienced it or heard it themselves um so therefore it does it does not exist um on the flip side the comments about Reverse Racism and just and uh discrimination against white people and people with with conservative ideologies um and that
030because Stitch was not very diverse Equity efforts aren't needed and are just manufacturing issues so we understand that these statements um are harmful and hard to read we made the decision to share them so that you as the district leadership and the community as you're building this new strategic plan have a complete picture of of what needs to be kind of recognized and worked with in order to move forward with an effective plan okay next priority recommendation an equity aligned professional learning plan so this is ensuring that this is a kind of broad professional learning plan that ensures that equity and cultural responsive processes are embedded in all learning across the district and so this would go along with the priorities and goals for Equity that were determined by the district um and would allow
031for educators to go deeper into areas where they want to um or need to learn more um really thinking about holding high expectations for all students and and having that belief that every student can succeed helping all staff in the district understand implicit bias and what that means and the way that it shows up when uh in things like recommending students for advanced learning courses uh or referring or science assigning students IQs as well as including all staff who are involved in hiring and evaluation implicit bias and and this idea of equity focused learning uh comes in in every area of work and so wanting to uh have the district create this professional learning plan so that it's able to be embedded across the districts and again a sample of some of the related findings
032here that helped inform this priority um really wanting to uh offer in more more formats and different levels of learning um uh staff members really wanting to understand what their goal was in learning around Equity um and then not all uh Personnel are participating in Dei trainings um we know that you know mandatory trainings can can get tricky um but thinking about uh who needs to be learning certain topics and things like that is something we really encourage the district to to dive into and talk about this with this plan and then some additional findings there's a perceived uh inaction and implicit bias from from leaders and staff um those mostly came from uh students and student focus groups that we have uh there's also perceptions across stakeholder groups that the culture of discipline is
033perceived as as punitive especially for historically marginalized students um and almost every stakeholder we spoke to about this expressed a desire and need for training around equity and Recruitment and hiring um so really understanding what that looks like and just to share some of the uh risk ratio analysis that we've done um especially around the finding of uh punitive perception perceptions of the punitive nature of discipline um some district-wide uh risk ratios that we determined around discipline referrals so this is um any discipline disciplinary referral collected in the Massachusetts school safety discipline report as you can see here Bible students are 5.64 times as likely to have received a discipline referral as any other student in Scituate there is not any disproportionality across uh gender identity in Scituate so you can see here uh students
034with an IEP are 1.94 times as likely to have received a discipline referral as any other student in the district and uh student low-income students students who are eligible for pre-introduced lunch program are 6.05 times is likely to have received a disciplinary referral than any other student in the district so um these these risk ratio findings um supported with the uh kind of qualitative findings from Boca scripts uh helped uh inform uh that recommendation around training similarly uh this was a uh this is a uh proportionality analysis of advanced access to Advanced learning opportunities and what you can see here is bypass students students with IEPs and low-income students took the SATs and completed Advanced coursework at lower rates than their peers um in 2021 at the high school so again looking at kind of
035proportionality around access and referrals to um Advanced learning and the final uh priority recommendation is around Human Resources uh strategies so really encouraging the district to develop systems um and strategies that use data to guide the work of recruitment hiring and retention in the district goals and targets around equity and Workforce diversity um and monitoring progress towards those goals um tracking the demographic information of all applicants from the point of application through the interview and hiring process that's not something that the district currently tracks um the district does have demographic data collection measures for stack but we encourage adding more uh for example staff holding additional language fluency being an important piece of Workhorse diversity as well as tracking the retention and advancement of Staff members by demographics and disaggregating and Reporting on that data
036to uh track that progress towards the goal set what you can see here are some sample findings um the on the left is the proportion of students teachers and paraprofessionals administrators and other school and District staff by race there's all bypoc on the far left Asian black or African-American Hispanic or latinx and two or more races and then white and then what you see on the right is a gap um is a visualization of the Gap there and so looking at the percentage of students who are enrolled who identify um in these racial groups uh compared to staff teachers and paraprofessionals administrators and other staff what you see on the far left is the gap between all black students and all bypass at that uh staff members so you can see those gaps here um
037and there is a commitment to diversifying the district's Workforce that we saw and we heard um but there's a lack of clear Transparent Language and expectations for what this looks like in action for example one staple to respond to Shared when I'm looking at a candidate pool I'm not at all looking for diversity I'm looking for the most qualified candidate um and others Echo this uh and this uh idea that uh diversity and quality are incongregate in Congress is something to address through um training and and language and Communications um and there are uh there are kind of one-off efforts to include equity and diversity um in hiring and recruitment but it's not consistent and it's not as systematic at all um and the only retention strategy mentioned uh during interviews and focus groups um
038involved quote retention through benefits so well the things that are offered to staff and and not necessarily an intentional focus on retention programming um and then as you see here as I mentioned before there's no district-wide system or protocol in place for documenting or tracking applications or interviews and so there's no way to even see um if there are places in the process where certain candidates are um falling out or or whatever it may be um and then again the recommendation around staff language we'll see as another important measure of diversity um again having a clear standard process in the district around hiring and recruitment um a lot of hiring uh is independent by School uh and they're not aware of how their colleagues approach it um and so there's this lack of this Focus
039um and Broad systemic way of managing this as a district um and of course the recruitment reach the district has and continues to experience challenges of recruiting educators of color um I do want to be very clear this is not unique to situate this is a challenge across the country absolutely across Massachusetts um but it is absolutely a finding in in this audit as well um as we wrap up tonight want to just share a bit more about the full Equity audit report what you'll see are deeper dives into each of those Focus areas the way it's structured is for each of these Focus areas there's strength to build on positive things that we found throughout our Equity audit that we really think scituate's doing well and can grow with um that strategies analysis at
040a glance table that we talked about as well as of course opportunities for growth there are an additional uh there are 25 total recommendations in the report that's a lot there's a reason why we focus on three priority recommendations for immediate implementation these additional recommendations are things that we think the district should talk about consider think about for the future think about building into some of those larger plans or if in the case of focusing on uh certain chapters or areas of expertise maybe teens will dive into some of those specific recommendations but really wanting to emphasize that those three priority uh recommendations that we talked during the beginning I think our uh are the most important for immediate implementation there are also additional uh analyzes and data visualizations there are data visualizations um around
041MCAS uh outcome gaps as well as risk ratios around IEP assignments and more so there's a lot more there we just wanted to um to wrap this up by by sharing that we recognize the tremendous amount of work that um have the district has already put forth in this Equity work um we really saw and felt this commitment to achieving educational Equity um by the district leadership by school committee um and we believe that uh you're ready to begin implementing this you have the capacity um you have the expertise um and we're really excited to see um you know where you all go from here especially as you're developing this new strategic plan and vision for the next few years in Scituate thank you all so much okay thank you very very much um anyone
042from the committee want to start their questions I'm imagining there are many sure I'll start I have a couple of questions and a comment um I guess I'll start with the comment first and I mean I want to thank you all of you for your work and your continued commitment to this important work um and I I appreciate seeing the data because I think it's just really good for us to have things to look at and not just speculate on what we think is out there I guess I want to say to our community to our bipoc students and families and transgender students I just want everyone watching who will either watch this now or later that I believe you but I believe your story I believe your narrative I want to hear more learn
043more and I think the school committee I don't want to speak for everybody but I think we all believe what you're sharing in this report and so I just want our community to hear that because I think it's really important and I think we're committed to that works that's the first thing I cannot speak to all the equity work as eloquently as you and of course Mr Adams can I can say from an academic achievement and academic success standpoint that there is so much research being done now about the power of the collective intellect and the importance of having diverse and multiple perspectives in a space when our students learn there is there are neuroscientists doing work around cognition and I don't I'm sorry I'm getting on a soapbox but I'm kind of ticked off
044that the research is showing that we can go beyond what's in our skulls by leveraging the value and brain power of other people in the room and so we are doing our kids a disservice if we return to the traditional that's not what the world looks like and I'm just so glad and it's really important um that we're doing this with our students so I do have a question so I'll be I'll stop now um two two questions one is I know I appreciate that this is a snapshot and that it's not longitudinal with that said can you speak a little bit to the quality of the data right in terms of how you're feeling about representation what teachers students parents Etc yeah absolutely so that's always a a tricky piece of this work because
045um we are not able to to go in and you know interview every single every single person um in the district what we do really emphasize uh when you're we're looking at the things that we hear in focus groups and we're looking at the things that we receive in uh surveys or feedback forms is this idea of um this idea of the importance of the concept of Holiness um and the idea that if a marginalized person is sharing a story then that is valid and that is true and important and what one one of the things that we always make sure that we do when we're looking at um developing recommendations from these Equity audits is not every as you'll see in the full report not every finding has its own recommendation because we know
046that as a district you cannot um base every action off of each individual story that you hear but what we try to do is share every finding that we hear and to try to tell the story and paint a picture of a certain area in the district and so um if we're hearing from from one student um an experience with a teacher who felt like they um they couldn't speak up when that student was being bullied for fear of staying the wrong thing and then we're hearing from a family member um that they had the same uh the same experience with another District we're not saying that every single teacher in Scituate doesn't speak up because they don't know what to say or they're scared that they're going to say the wrong thing but that
047we heard a couple individuals who are brave enough to share their stories that tell enough of a story to say this is something that to to have a conversation about something to have some training about have some Communications about because folks don't have this language it's not saying that no one has the language it's saying that we had a few folks share these really harmful stories and so we're not able to make the kind of statistical claims that we would want to for say a research um paper or or you know deeper study but we are able to uh say that these are true stories happening in the district and so that's where these recommendations come from that's helpful so it sounds like you're doing some like triangulation essentially so and and I will just
048add I mean especially the discipline work that you did that's consistent with research that you see across the country so we're not unfortunately unlike others the only other question I promised my colleagues I'll stop um you know when you do research I'm sure as you do lots of these projects when you finish you're looking back and you're like oh I wish I had asked and so I'm wondering like what other questions should we be asking ourselves like what did you learn from doing this work yeah I think that especially as you're getting into priority recommendation number three uh which is around the systems around HR um I I wish that I could could go back and dig into it especially because is that's kind of my background I spent five years as the Director of
049recruitment for Boston Public Schools um really working towards Workforce diversity in Boston and so hearing some of the things that came out and the findings we had like oh I just want another interview with those three people um but really trying to understand um the capacity for some of this work around Recruitment and especially around retention and around staff development and uh community building around um staff members or staff members with other historically marginalized identities um really what what is is is possible there because I think that there's a lot possible um that uh just you know have either didn't come to the surface during those conversations or hasn't really been um kind of sussed out yet so that was the kind of area that I I wish I did back in thank you for
050all um the hard work I just kind of have a comment about um the results because it's clear like we all know we want to do this work but it's we also we have a lot of work to do in communicating what the goals are um to the community to staff to you know other members of the um the city of public schools um because it's you know it's reading some of the comments it's clear that there's a disconnect of you know the Dei work that we're doing is to make kids feel safe and it's important for them to feel safe because it helps them learn so the comments about Dei taking away from learning is it's not true and I think we have to do a much better job of educating the community and
051how important this work is um and I think to piggyback on what Dr murkowski was saying is I think it is very very important for people to speak up when they experience racism or marginalization because there are people you know like the comments they show that if people don't hear about it they think it doesn't happen and it is happening because I've been on the side of this table having parents say their kids don't feel safe and there's nothing more helpless um there's no no more helpless feeling than having you there's nothing you can say there's no response but I feel like this this work will will help that so thank you that much um additional insight into um to add from my prior committee members I've said I just like to thank um bill
052in the district for pursuing this audit because it is something that's been a hot topic for the last several years and and um we always you know say it's out there or say that we have concerns I think this helps the word I really want to use is this helps quantify what we're after uh we never really had this data uh we had anecdotal evidence um we had individual stories but now this is um Quantified and people our stakeholders can see um some of the results of the questions and the results so that's really all I want to say I'm thankful to the district that we're able to do this um thankful for you and all your efforts um and thankful that the community can now see um what our efforts of Dei are about
053um I'm interested we haven't seen the um the full report yet hasn't committee so just so let everyone know so I'm looking forward to seeing that full report um and I just think it's a great uh initial step and as you said I think it is perfect timing that um this coincides with our five-year strategic plan that's literally I think was kicked off last week or two weeks ago so this is perfect and this will be entrenched in those goals so thank you thanks so much just a quick question about uh when you did the focus groups the 64 participants was that an underwhelming number or sort of on par with the District of our size in terms of sample population that participated and just a lot of the common threads that were in there
054are not um uh not necessarily new Trends or quotes that I've heard so I'm just curious in terms of our sample size here if you felt that was representative enough or that gave enough sort of I think that we definitely would have loved to have uh more folks attend the folks who attended were incredibly thoughtful and gave great information and shared a lot of stories with us that um we very much appreciated we ended up um actually adding a focus group after coming down um specifically for um Boston Scholars after hearing some stories and uh analyzing some data and so added on an additional focus group there to make sure that um there were a lot of folks who were sharing stories kind of on behalf of Boston Scholars and Scituate and we wanted to
055make sure that um this that this report was not speaking for someone who hadn't spoken and so we um worked with with the team to to add on a group just to speak with them I think that the addition of the feedback form after the focus group app and focus groups was really helpful um lot of folks who were not able to attend as as you saw we had a lot of responses um to that and I think that that helped us feel um more confident in the kind of stories and anecdotes that we heard in those conversations because so many of the uh comments that we received through that uh through that form aligned with and kind of dovetailed with a lot of things that we've occurred in the smaller focus groups as well
056but I don't you in our experience of doing Equity audits in District similar this was not an anomaly this is not abnormally low um or anything like that we would always wish to talk to him that's true um and just in terms of threads of you know areas of focus and addition to bipaw community other places of growth for us like lgbtqia classes supporting those students and families and staff members and neurodivergent staff members students families how does that tie into that I kind of don't see that those threads coming through yeah absolutely so um part of the professional learning plan as well as the goals should absolutely be focused not just on by talking and and other racial demographics um what you'll see in the full report especially around um student and family engagement
057there's a lot of findings um around uh students who are members of the lgbtqia plus Community um and their experiences as well as um perceptions from staff around handling issues related to um lgbtqia plus community members and and children and so those are further in the uh broader report um and something that I think absolutely the equity professional learning plan is intentionally um Equity focused and not race only bogus it's about professional learning like obviously I'm raisin and ethnicity is a focus within Equity but um especially this day and age a lot of people associate Equity with just Grace and ethnicity and that's not the case at all um and want to make sure and I know that the district T knows this because we've had lots of these conversations um that this Equity uh
058Center professional learning plan um is about much more than than just uh racing at the stadium thanks so much as as my colleagues had said a great um greatly and yeah very eye-opening in some ways eye-opening and uh a great sort of component of building Upon Our strategic planning thank you um Mr Adam just curious from your lens the Dei director sort of how this process felt for you guiding us through it if that works no it does work um no I'm appreciative of the process I'm appreciate you to appreciative of that happen I am remaining optimistic and looking forward to the journey that we have to continue thank you so much so much celebrating student learning social studies history with Mr Steve sweat department chair and Megan Gregory literacy curriculum coordinator awesome yeah just
059a quick announcement before we move on to this item just wanted to be sure that everybody was aware I don't know if this went out um prior to our meeting but um there's a few items that have been postponed until the March 13th meeting Pro stairs agenda item as well as the boys club volleyball at Scituate High School has been postponed just wanted everybody to know that thank you foreign examples of the experiences and projects at the elementary level the elementary level we're really focused on making sure that social studies is an engaging for kids that we're not only teaching content but really focusing on those skills that students need to build in the Elementary grades so they're able to be successful when they reach middle school and May School for social studies included investment
060questions considering sources um looking at primary sources being able to synthesize information across multiple um information um so really building those beginning social studies skills and research skills we also like I think it's more about picking it up okay um and also um some of the examples we have here I want to make sure that it's fun in elementary school um we have borrowed each maps from Bridgewater State University to give our second graders who do an in-depth study of math skills um some experiences to really put their skills to the test and be able to you know walk west and find a coast and um some really exciting opportunities um in second grade and kindergarten we highlight classroom citizenship and kindergarteners we're focusing on getting to 100 acts of kindness before um tomorrow which
061they have accomplished and at the secondary level um first of all I'll say that we celebrate social studies every single day every single classroom you know and uh and students know that and they feel that and it's part of the culture of how it is work I think in addition we're excited about the Civics uh showcases that are coming up to do classroom level ones and then I'll be whether it's district-wide and then we're also making plans to go to the Statewide one as well so excited about the Civics project excited about um having all of you and and us getting a better sense of what to do and how to continue to uh to make those uh really valuable important learning and citizenship uh skills kids will be learning things the other thing worth
062mentioning is the history Honor Society each year a couple students are are inducted and they are chosen not for their GPA but but for their love of history and their interest in connecting history uh to current events and what's going on appreciate history Honors Society we have two new electives that we'd like to share with you on the AP Human Geography is taught by Richard Kerman Jackie and Joe uh Nazareth will be talking about human geography which is a whole year AP course which is over to sophomores Juniors and seniors Kristen Emerson uh supported by Jackie Kenny we'll be talking about Celestial election uh in the women's history that we're also very excited at this point I'm going to turn the microphone over to Instagram um let me I'm just going to give you a
063very very quick snapshot of me and why uh my background sort of goes right into AP human geography and then I'm going to tell you just a very short step about the course and then Joe's going to talk about the course that I actually like to know um so before I became uh a high school teacher uh I spent 22 years at the Coast Guard essentially driving post and going postcard uh Cutters around the Atlantic Center on the argument between the Antarctica to explain um which what is very which was very very important to are some of the teaching of AP gives you know I just said example of that this was in fact probably about 1993 we sort of the postcarded how to reception report while it's got a report called right after the
06417th of June had been some dissolved CIS and so Glasgow the East Coast there and it's called most sparsely populated yet at the same time there's a Russian nuclear submarine base but I was trying to be able to understand of like how can you understand this place and the people that are actually there so when I found out that we were going to teach a to the Human Geography I just jumped at the opportunity because this course I think I was actually avoiding my entire life um we teach it we start with traditional geography and that's sort of the where are things and what's better uh and then you start getting into the so what what really a human geography is so what piece of that it's called why is where because really to be
065able to say how do you connect all the dots um and by that I mean land climate resources Culture by culture that's ethnicity language religion politics and economics to understand why things happen the way they do why do people react the way they do why do they have the political structures they do and how do all those things interacts and systems um to be able to explain about it but um so uh understanding that I personally just love Maps I think it's absolutely um maybe a little Drive perhaps um so in teaching the class we start with maps where we departure Maps very quickly to try and make their class as engaging as possible to use um current research that news uh arcgis electronic tools videos projects posters games all sorts of stuff just to
066be able to say get kids and understanding and engagement with how the world connects so with that I'm going to tell that joke tell you actually however hello everyone uh I'm Joe masre I'm a senior here at citric High School uh first thing I would like to emphasize about AP Human Geography is that it is not a traditional history class we're learning about why places develop and change depending on a lot of related factors for example we learn how population and agriculture relate as well as connections between culture and agriculture politics and land use and much more not only do we learn that everything relates to everything we dive in deeper and focus on understanding the complexity of these relationships for example recently in our agriculture unit my classmates and I were assigned different roles
067roles in the food system I was a grocery store another student was a pathogen my friend was a chicken and other students took the roles of many other things in the system we then tossed a ball of yarn back and forth between related parts to fully understand the complexity and connection between them you can see kind of an action shot of really really ironic on my last major today eventually the yarn showed that the food system is a web instead of a linear progression he was just say this was a very fun class and pretty eye-opening as well uh the main thing I would tell someone thinking about taking this course next year is that they need to be ready to take a broad view of how the world is connected and how we can
068understand the influences that drive people and countries to certain behaviors if I could share one thing I learned from this class is that where people live their culture and geography is so much more complicated than anyone could imagine and diving into these relationships and connection is what makes this course so interesting and important in understanding the world around us as well thank you thank you um I'm Kristen Emerson for 22 years I was a child so this is one of my only job I don't have a cool background like that um sorry uh but while I was at uh Gettysburg College getting my undergrad I took a course called women's movements in the United States and learned about a number of things that have never been mentioned in my history classes growing up and I
069absolutely fell in love with that class I fell in love with what I learned and I've been really trying for the last few years to share that information and then excited with my students and I was finally able to do it in a very specific format um in our women's history class that debut this year I have two goals of the course and that's for all students who attend to see and hear how women are both represented and omitted uh in history and for all students to understand that they can add to others understanding of women in history and women's history itself um we don't have any AP structure or anything so it's organized into units exploring things experiences and history in things like art Sports politics and we end the year with a big
070unit on activism and how women have been involved throughout especially American history in that sense so um we don't throw balls of yarn around um could be procedure services so are created by both men and women to see the visual differences and to understand the historical context uh in our unit on Sports students analyze the impact of Channel 9 through both recent news and they interviewed their family members who were uh usually in school right before or right after Title Nine which hit 50 years last year uh which helped them understand the impact on their own lives and at the end of each week students reflect on what they learned that helps them understand what has and has not changed for women in history uh but what has not changed yet this is kind of
071how we like to find it um Jackie was one of the inaugural studios in the class and I'd like to tell you about that now hi um I'm Jackie Kenny I'm a senior care and I just always understand I actually performance history and overall I was a really big fan of the class because it's a lot different than most history classes because not only are you learning about people and what they did you're also learning about why they were admitted from the history we've learned and why you haven't learned that book about them before now and I think that's just really important to talk about and also the class is pretty flexible in a sense and it really focused more on interacting with each other and have a lot of discourse about women in history
072obviously and Congress included a women in activism project we did at the very end of um the quarter in which groups each picked an activist movement and had to focus on women and how they were part of the movement and how most of the time they were leading the movements such as the temperance movement which brought about Prohibition which first of all I didn't know much about let alone the fact that women were the ones leading the movement and really taking charge and making it into what it was um I found that was a pretty common theme in history how women were often the leaders of such big revolutions and movements such as the French Revolution but they're really pushed aside and they drove their male counterparts um but yeah I think if I were
073to I really recommend the class to anybody who wants to take it because I think it's really important to learn about and yeah thank you very much thank you all so much we appreciate you being here tonight and I don't know about the rest of the school committee but I'm a big fan of student voice and hearing from you all directly and what you enjoy and what you find challenging or what the things you can grow on um always has value here we welcome you to come back anytime um questions comments anyone or excuse me oh is there more oh good that's all right we just had a couple things that we're looking forward to um turn around at the stem coordinator and I have been um hosting some family information nights um at 10
074A.M Wednesday during the school so it um parents are homework and I started working from spare a half hour um we'll be talking about our science social science curriculum um that would be um that's going to be sent out um via an app so we can add them to that [Music] yeah I would just Echo what um Nicole said in the bill I feel like this is a new model for more presentations that include students to Showcase courses because I think it's a great reminder of why we're here so thank you to all of you foreign just to hear the way uh the enthusiasm coming from the students and how it's something new and exciting and that's the whole key to learning like if you happen to be excited about it and have to like
075it and have fun learning it and I feel like that's you'll retainer more information for us yes definitely yes I think it's somewhat consistent with the theme tonight of our review of Dei I feel like at least the women's history class for sure is is part of our effort um right but it focuses on maybe something that wasn't accessible or or talk before I think it kind of is in line with that and then I love that I love the real world stores I think it is fantastic I like what Mr Magic said I just um for high school kids to learn about kind of how the world Works to some degree I think it's really important a big takeaway um because kids always like why am I taking this why am I taking calculus
076I'm never going to use that or why am I doing this I feel like you're doing real life realize real life things and learn they could carry you um thank you all so much actually great we have this Nest here we have the fy24 budget which aggressively on through uh Workshop any herring of Productions superintendent on their world tour here we are uh next step in the phase is our vote if anyone has anything if not I will entertain a motion um Dr Duncanville if the financial forecast committee comes back with the revised budget relative to additional or less stage funds we'll come back and have to revote this number correct yes if they come back either way um less of an appropriation or more of an appropriation uh we would have to revoke him
077I just want to just wanted to yeah make a motion to approve the fy24 budget and the amount of 48 million 936 533 dollars with Revenue the amount of 45 million 141 067 from the town of Scituate and three million 795 4555 will Rants and revolving anything else all in favor aye two sets of minutes to approve here one from December 19th another from January 9th 2023. any questions or comments about those followers I will entertain a motion on minutes I make a motion that the school committee approved the December 19th 2022 minutes all in favor aye I make a motion to that the school committee approved the January 9 2023 minutes second all in favor aye warrants no warrants for tonight um correspondences we do have two correspondences tonight oops that's what I'm thinking
078thank you uh we did receive this nice correspondence oh okay Brethren Natasha spirited uh oh hello everyone thank you for coming we much appreciate it this was such a lovely letter that I wanted to read it out loud uh Dear Mr Burkhead SBS school committee and select board members we are writing in support of the important work being done by geneal Adams in the DVI program within Scituate public schools and Beyond in this short time this position has been in place we've brought more acceptance and inclusion into all aspects of our community this education is extremely valuable as our town becomes more diverse and helps our students understand the wider world this work helps us to be understanding compassionate and kind humans we are particularly impressed that Mr Adams does not limit his educational opportunities
079to the classroom or school day that has opened up avenues for many others to engage and learn his personal approach in reaching out through library programs the freedom team and in connection to the town's Dei Advisory Board is so important for developing an equitable and inclusive atmosphere in our town this helps us that this helps to remind us that even when we disagree we can offer stability so those with differences can be free of Confrontation or ridicule Janelle models his behavior wherever he goes as both members of the St Luke's social justice group and residents in the town we encourage the school committee and select board to be mindful of the important contributions being made and the work that is going on we hope this position will be a permanent part of our school district
080and we hope that Mr Adams will be supported in his role for many years thank you so much appreciate this great and another correspondence that we received with these adorable and very creative well done Valentine's Day projects and if you had competition um but we very much appreciate this this is awesome and thank you WAP attack School students so nice we needed that right without further ado any other business that may probably come for the committee before we close out here future agenda items yeah that you wanted to bring up all right I will Mr gain a motion to return motion to adjourn at 7 17. second all in favor um