School Committee Meeting 6-22-2022

001not a big deal welcome everyone to the regular meeting of the cohasset school committee on june 22 2022 we are in person in the uh cohasset learning commons and we are also virtual on zoom and facebook uh you can participate with chat and zoom please use the q a feature uh on facebook you can watch and listen only you can also stream this live on cohasset143tv so we are everywhere you want to be so um we'll call the meeting to order and then we will go through a roll call if you are present please indicate so by saying present mr carr president mr keaney president mr mclaughlin president mrs st president and i mr dial and present as well so we have a full unanimous school committee meeting for our june 22 committee and now

002i guess we will lead the pledge allegiance um there's one there and one there so pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right thanks everyone for joining we have a slightly different agenda format today we're going to see how it works um from the public always interested in feedback uh on agenda structure how we're running meetings uh what we're seeing so please be forthright with that feedback um i also want to take a quick moment to recognize even though we did a little bit um vice chair mcclellan for his selfless service as chair for the past year at least while i was on the committee and he set an example that

003i hope i'm able to somewhat follow so uh thank you very much vice chair uh mcclellan for your service chair or deviate from so with that we'll move into public comment as you know public comment is reserved for those agenda items where we are not covering material and the public wishes to comment and bring things to the committee uh we may or may not respond directly to that but it can help us inform future agenda items and things that we can discuss at future committee uh meetings so uh dr scollins i believe is monitoring public comment do we have any public comments all right giving it two beats uh we are good with public comment so in a revised agenda item what we have done is front loaded a little bit the invited guests so

004that our invited guests don't necessarily have to sit through um some more mundane committee business and with that i will uh turn it over to dr sullivan do you want to introduce our invited guests absolutely my pleasure to but i would actually ask because i have principal mills here to introduce our invited guests as both our middle school excellent little school teachers so um principal mills if you want to do the honors sure so uh this is uh our spotlight on cms and uh really in may we finished up mcas and we realized well there's about six weeks left in the school year and i'm so proud that the my you know the faculty didn't um downshift but actually the opposite and went into overdrive planning activities right up to the last day of school

005and i printed off my june calendar but between field trips and field days speakers about civil rights um grade five step up day we had our spring arts concert last week a student organized student teacher organized juneteenth rally yesterday um the sustainability showcase and you know busy right up to the end with the night of the 29th our eighth grade dance um there's been a lot that you could cast a spotlight on it's at cms it's been really exciting but i think that you know one of the most outstanding uh events we had was june we had a field trip to boston and it was a collaboration between our eighth grade ela teacher john emilia and our eighth grade civics teacher aaron ryan so they're here to present the field trip that they brought the

006whole grade on uh on the ninth and tenth so yeah thank you thank you thank you for having us thank you thank you can talk about our field trip all right so um this actually was initiated by students which makes it even um more special for us we were finishing up to kill a mockingbird and they were very vested in the justice system we had a lot of discussion about the justice system um and they when they learned that the public can attend a trial they said please please we go can we go so i said well we'll look into it and um i i learned that the mostly federal courthouse had a discovery of justice program that they welcomed students particularly students in eighth grade that were working on their civics requirements and this

007really tied in nicely with what they were working on is civics and aaron and i had been talking for about three or four weeks about all the overlap in our curriculum and we were sharing essential questions and we were discussing um with one another what we were doing in our classrooms and the students were making those connections and then all of a sudden they asked can we go to a courthouse so um we investigated yeah and um the mowgli courthouse had a program yeah we had to be somewhat creative because the program only allowed 60 students at a time so we had to break the class in half that's why we went on the 9th and the 10th and we got even more creative i'll have um mrs ryan talk about that but so basically

008um we once we identified the courthouse program and we knew that they were learning and working on civics um we thought it would be great to go to the state house the same day so to talk about all the branches of government and to really get to experience what we were talking about in class every day and we really had a unique experience with this particular class because both donna and i had the privilege of working with them in sixth grade and then you know the floor kind of fell out at the end of their sixth grade they went right into the colvin year in their seventh grade experience and it was time to get off of campus in the eighth grade we really wanted to make sure that they had a moment where they

009could go out and experience learning and our idea was to go into the city a great resource so many resources close by that they could connect to their curriculums both in ela civics and research actually right here in this room that they were doing um so if you um so yeah so after the tom robinson trial um for to kill a mockingbird the students had analyzed the guilty verdict and the factors that limit the legal system's ability to deliver justice uh they showed tremendous interest in learning more about the justice system and asked if we could visit a courthouse they were also at the time working on speeches we had analyzed um atticus's closing argument they were working on persuasive writing and writing their own persuasive speeches that were centered around if kind of issues

010of justice that were important to them and the speeches were amazing so they were really just kind of into persuasive arguments and the justice system and then topic three they were learning all about the institutions of our government so they were learning about the three branches and it was very much focused on the federal level and then we started right as this field trip right before this field trip was happening started looking more at the state level so it was really exciting to be able to witness the judiciary but then also have this opportunity with the state house to see the executive legislative functioning too so it's really like all three branches in one day that's a win-win win for civic so we were very excited about that and i said you know it's one

011thing yeah it's one thing to see it in a textbook too it's another thing to be standing in the senate looking up at the dome i mean so we just thought let's make sure that they're witnessing this um all of these institutions in action can't get better than that also to actually meet representatives and we have to give a big um shout out to captain rudy who also helped um organize and set up what possible meetings we could have we did meet with the chief with the chief of staff i remember on friday but it was really wonderful that they actually got to meet some of the representatives representatives to whom a lot of them are writing their letters right now based on their research projects so it's just a really great way to wrap

012up their cap their civics action projects so initially we had the entire field trip planned um everything was lined up for all of our stops and um john came to me one day and said we cannot get buses there's a bus driver shortage there's a bus shortage we can't get buses um so i went to erin and said we can't get messages she said we're still going we're going so you want to talk about how you creatively solve that sure so actually thanks to one of our students um bella collins her father runs a trolley tour um called mobsters and lobsters which i thought was wonderful so it was like you know the solution sort of fell from the sky and she said you know i can ask him and see if he's available for

013us and so we called and he had two trolleys for us on thursday but not enough trolleys on friday so again we're getting one of these like a little bit but not all the way and maybe this thing's not going to happen so then we kept thinking how can we potentially use more public transportation and that's how we landed on the hingham ferry for friday so and again we have to thank all of the parents that not only drove to and from the hingham ferry to make sure that the drop off happened we all got on the boat on time but then also the parents that offered to you know carpool and all the things that went into that the logistics of that planning so um probably moving forward we thought because we learned so

014much from this the trolley got a little bit stuck in the morning commute so that took a while to get into the city whereas the ferry was just flying you know in about 30 minutes and then our kids on friday had to walk from the mowgli to the state house which was about a mile and then from the state house we had the sort of power walk to get the ferry home and that was another mile so of course they're troopers amazing kids no complaints right they were amazing but maybe in the future what we'll do is ferry in and out and then pick up the trolley and trolley around the city so in doing this we learned what works and so we're hoping as a legacy you know for future years we'll be able

015to fine-tune and tweak some of these but it was a great learning referred to the one by land two-by-six all right um so the mostly federal courthouse discovering justice program is designed to make sure that students are well equipped with the knowledge skills and desire to build and sustain an equitable democracy the leaders of the program when we got into the mowgli courthouse were amazing talking to them about the justice system they made available to our students four federal judges who spoke to them i think for about 30 or 40 minutes um about the justice system and the kids had really great questions from their civics class from to kill mockingbird trial they ask excellent questions they even talk to them about the architecture of the building and how the glass side that slope is

016meant to represent the fact that everything is open and transparent and that that glass is leads into all of the courtrooms and then students um really were like paying attention to that and really interested in the architecture um and then my group um not every group had this experience but my group did get to sit in on a criminal trial it was the last of the varsity blues trial um with the college cheating scandal and they were fascinated because it was all about education and they were talking about um georgetown university and the admission process and all of that and um they really lucked out that they got to sit in on a criminal trial that was relevant to them um they even they all giggled when the judge came and said all rise you

017know the whole process was amazing so it was really great these are just some pictures here so you can see in the courtrooms we were lucky too we got into the u.s court of appeal the panel courtroom and that is uh very rare that people get to go into that once that was really neat to go into the panel room and see only where the court appeals where all the judges are sitting there's no witness stand or anything there so it's really it's a and then we went to the state house and they had another wonderful tour for us that wasn't just showing us the architecture of the building but then more of the historical legacy because there's so many it's like a museum when you walk through there um and then they also were

018able to bring us into some of the sanctuaries so we got to go into the house um and i know your students got to kind of there and all the seeds we were there a little bit literally we were hooking it so we had to do almost a speed tour but yeah um it was really just great we got to see the magical cod that's hanging from the ceiling there's just some really wonderful things that i think the passive flag yes the classic flag they pointed out the classifieds a lot of things they weren't expecting that were really wonderful and then a group of our kids got to meet with senator o'connor in the house chamber so talk about an unforgettable experience and we'll make sure that we reach out to them earlier to make

019sure that all those bookings can happen where we're on their schedule but you can see here some of the images of the kids in the house i know we were able to actually go into the senate chamber because they weren't in session at that point so it was really beautiful stand up in the dome and yeah it was just a really great day overall and um kathy sweetie had arranged for each student in the eighth grade to receive two official citations so every single student in the grade got an official citation from the senate that marked in the history books that they attended and visited the state house on that day and then the house of representatives offered them a citation um congratulating them for fulfilling their civic responsibilities as an eighth grader so that

020was really special for them to get those citations absolutely so afterwards uh we did want to talk to the kids so that we could learn as much as possible for future years we did do a survey uh with a likert scale we asked the kids about uh did you enjoy the field trip and 100 of them gave it was pretty good all the way up to the right was like extremely you know good it was like a positive experience for all the kids that responded so we're really happy about that we also the next slide asked kids about what sorts of things did you like and some of the quotes it was just open-ended was that they liked that we got to explore and learn new things and we got to see a court session

021live seeing the state house because it was very beautiful and historic the opportunity to sit in a courtroom and learn about what happens in court learning about judge gordon who was one of the four federal judges we met the trolleys that we used to get up to and back from boston they loved being able to walk around the city was a really positive thing we learned how learning can impact uh our future lives a lot of the kids left saying that uh saying that they had a profound interest in the law uh and that they would like to pursue it and some of the kids in my group said that they'd like to be a judge someday um talking to the judge they really like because she told us her story and how she became

022a judge i thought her story was very interesting being able to sit inside courtrooms and take a quick look at a court case everybody gets to see a court session um like a case in action and honestly one student said everything about it it was very cool and informative that's great so we're really happy with that that we have really positive feedback from the kids and we both want to thank john because he was really instrumental in supporting us throughout this entire process and was there was present um both days thursday and friday making sure this thing was successful and that all of our you know uh lou says we're tied up it was great yeah our logistics were quite complicated he was there making it was the logistics guys so it was excellent thank

023you pleasure great wonderful so i don't know questions from the committee from the committee to mr carr how often do you all do something like this each class goes once a year or especially first time we've ever done this we hope we'll establish a tradition yeah congratulations it's terrific yeah thanks um my son is still talking oh good yeah i i just uh that he took the bone you know he's just been whistling to go to school lately and uh i think it's because of all the activities and coming up i mean you basically this is the first graduating class of the new middle school it started in sixth grade with my son's grade and like you were talking about earlier he missed so much and from sixth to eighth grade i was just looking

024at a picture from my son two years ago he's like this now he's it's amazing from sixth to eighth grade and these kids definitely lost a lot of that to see to see this was such a breathtaking for as a parent and to see him just whistling out to school he just appreciated every moment of it so thank you thank you thank you and to you your creative that's that's really stephanie thank you thank you thank you thank you paul paul's family offered to carpool with many kids i absolutely love these sorts of things i i would love to see us do more of them um because they uh i think they're still inspiration i mean you see some kids that they want to get in the law and judge me to get a check

025one day and um i think it helps different types of learners visualize things you know certain concepts that maybe um don't come through as strong and maybe uh you know sort of full or verbal method in the classroom and it's really important to have that experiential based learning i think and so i'm glad that we've started to bring that experience to our students it's um it struck me as you were discussing the challenges you had um but also in sort of conceiving the trip itself that this is exactly this is a great example of the type of thing that um that we could benefit from the community resource guide that i think so a school committee goal um this past year we didn't actually complete it um i think it will probably continue is to

026develop i forget what exactly we call this sort of database where like that we know which families have which experts you know are experts in which fields or have businesses in certain fields that can offer resources to the students so uh in that situation maybe we would have people involved in transportation we would know that the monsters and lobsters tour was owned and operated by one of the parents we would be able to go right to them um or um [Music] for example uh there are many people involved in law in town and you know you might have had a connection to say the united states attorney's office you'd be able to have a discussion with the federal prosecutor including the judge or maybe the united states marshal as well in that building um or

027maybe even someone um more conveniently placed than the mobley courthouse though it is a beautiful courthouse and there's an awesome discovery of justice program but um the supreme judicial court in massachusetts is actually right next door to the state house um and you never know if someone may have had a connection there um to one of the one or more supreme court justices they'd be able to see the actual rome of the supreme court massachusetts and then walk right across streets so i mean there's i'm just giving examples of like you know all kinds of a whole host of ways that that we can improve upon um various experiences for learning experience for the kids but this this like made me think about that because it was so clear that that we could have benefited

028from that and that's true we did we happened to anyway but um so hopefully we can we can develop that um so thank you so much for for doing this for them i mean it looks like they had an amazing time it's like 95 percent of it was you know it was great so thanks so much thanks for having us thanks for supporting us yeah don't forget the interview okay no um thank you and i love that you've persevered through all of the challenges that came your way it seems like we have a soldier's face to launch this in the past few years and uh you guys can give up so that's awesome and i love that your friend is the person um and i just i hope you continue it i think that any

029opportunity for a field trip should be taken it's so important like i said to just get off campus and go see the world and we'll apply what everyone's been learning so they're lucky you can't see us thank you um i i'll just offer a slightly different perspective i mean obviously the field trip was a great success and i can tell by the way you told the story that you even had fun uh learning about it um but i think this is another area where we can highlight i think one of the great assets of our district and that is our teachers i mean no one said you have to go to a field trip it's not on your your your performance and no one certainly said you have to do it and find buses and

030then find boats and then find all this stuff so i just want to thank you for all the work you put into this and how much you care to give the kids experiential learning and it's not lost on me or this committee that you guys really go above and beyond so thank you for doing that obviously the kids loved it and it's inspiring to them and it's you know rounds out on education and so um i want to just uh express appreciation for that thank you thank you absolutely and also the collaboration is very inspiring so that's wonderful to see as well so thank you very much have a great night and thanks for watching thanks for having me thank you thank you so much all right so we have we have next invited guests

031uh yes we do mr sweeney and mr four so um i can probably mr scott like to choose i guess sure yeah here we have uh george sweden who's the department chair for our health and wellness department and mr ford both our coaches and the board um is one of our oldest teachers in the ninth graders hey everyone hello thanks for having us tonight and um so we're just gonna do a quick overview of what's going on in the health curriculum and this year kind of starts the or ends the year that we started freshman wellness four years ago so this graduating class is the class that had um has had the most health uh here at cohasset in in you know as long as i've been involved probably ever and with that with the

032addition of mr ford's wellness class and then i have them as sophomores and seniors um we've seen our trends in the youth risk behavior survey come down in almost every category across the uh across the board and whether it's um relationship abuse or whether it's uh vaping and whether it's alcohol or drugs we've seen a trend in the right direction um so we can only hope and uh certainly mr ford and i and mr scott this noise believe that that could be health uh health induced there by the amount of help that they've had um not to mention what a great senior class and i mentioned in class night how respectful they are of one another and how uh how respectful they are it seems in the community and the school um i've seen it

033in my own class and i'm sure mr ford has too and hopefully these are the things that we're reinforcing by having more health and things that the parents are reinforcing at home we know that specifically through all the data the more the things are reinforced to our teens the more they tend to use those those techniques um in their young adult life so you know let's let's hope and i and i believe that these are the differences that we've made um so again this is the first time um the scene graduating seniors have had three years of health and mr ford is going to tell us a little bit about what happens in the freshman wellness class and then i'll finish up with what's going on in the sophomore and senior classes thank you for

034give us the opportunity to present this tonight um what we all five years ago we were in a transition phase i was transitioning out of being an athletic director for 18 years and we were also noticing we were really in a situation where we're looking at use risk behavior surveys we're seeing that there was some troubling trends here in town and we wanted to add more health to the curriculum kids had health in the middle school in different units and they had it in 10th grade and obviously freshman year is probably the year they need help the most um so uh torah and i started talking we pitched to mr scott and it was it was an easy pitch he certainly supported it right away and we got the support from the administration to create

035a new course called freshman wellness and the whole idea was i go back to 32 years ago when i was a student teacher at newton south and had a freshman wellness course that wasn't just phys ed it was absolutely the opposite it was all kinds of great classes relying on health around substance abuse around mental health so i started just tora and i started thinking about we spent the summer planning the curriculum and we really focused on three main areas health education social emotional learning and fitness and nutrition and the health education piece is really the core of the class makes it happen the curriculum begin the whole i begin it with some the the course with some goal setting and social emotional learning activities but then we dive right into mental health the entire

036month first month of the course is focusing on mental health particularly coming out of colby the kids we all have learned a lot more about mental health and it's something that we can talk about nowadays more and just giving kids the the skills the idea of what are protection factors what are risk factors what do they do if they feel like they or somebody they know is in trouble um so mental health is really debate i tell them it's the foundation we build the whole course off from there we go into understanding diversity we start talking about what makes people different how do we respect the differences in people gender stereotypes gender identity sexual orientation racial and cultural diversity and we weave that all around social justice we really talk about you know what what

037what type of community are we going to have here is this going to be a school they're going to be here for the next four years we're going to respect each other um from there now that we've built this diversity that they do a whole project on they're they're so what social justice means to them and they pick the topic that means a lot and then they present that to the class in multimedia forms and then we go into bullying prevention so now that we've built the foundation of understanding what do we do to prevent disrespect what do we do to prevent harmful relationships what do we do to prevent you know the whole concept of bullying in schools so now that they understand what kids are going through with mental health issues what kids

038are going through that don't feel part of a nation or feel left out or feel like they're they're being discriminated against now i think there's more understanding of why bullying prevention is important um we tie in social emotional learning the whole time goal setting journaling we do a inspirational social emotional learning curriculum called believe in you um which is really great because you know i show my video every week they do reflection writings on it and then the second semester second term we dive right into substance abuse we talked about the freshman i built the foundation for him as a sophomore teacher i really focus on the four gateway drugs alcohol you know vaping and tobacco marijuana and prescription drugs so we build that foundation the kids understand what a gateway drug is using our

039data from safe harbor and youth first behavior surveys that we have we know that the first use of alcohol and drugs really in this community spikes between freshman sophomore year it jumps up dramatically so the fact that they're getting this information now and they're not judgmental ways you know i tell them they have to make their own decisions but these are the facts this is what happens if you do use drugs and alcohol so we spend the majority of the second term on substance abuse and then all the way along tying in fitness and nutrition with all of this so they're not the classroom all week obviously it's a wellness class so at least once or twice a week we're getting out into the gymnasium outside and we have this really great program that we

040we bought out of necessity during colby because we were in lockdown we got to find a way for the kids to stay active it's called platform and it's amazing it's it's an app it's a it's a program it's a whole written curriculum it's something where kids can do fitness at home they can do fitness in a gym they can do fitness outside and so i the first semester we build a whole face a base of introduction to fitness fitness concepts and then second semester they get to choose their fitness so they can do strength training they can do yoga they can do dance fitness mindfulness you know fitness anywhere i mean kids get to choose what they want to do and it also has a unbelievable written curriculum on nutrition which they just finished with

041the kids this week so all of that you know kind of is the whole wellness wheel if you want to call it that kind of tied into one and then we've added probably this convention this year into the curriculum with the with the help of the cf so mr sweeney was in the gym with me with all our freshmen the other day doing little ropes elements with the kids so that all ties in and i really don't teach a traditional physique class that i i taught for almost 30 years here we'll throw pickleball in there or something that the kids really love but they're more excited about now fitness and working on their own and and understanding some of these pieces and then we finished up a little bit of first aid and cpr this

042week and next week so now that's that's it that's the course uh after mr ford finishes up with you know the drug the outlaw piece it's reinforced sophomore year um some of it is a lot of it is actually project-based um things where they work together in groups and uh and research a lot of the details about drug and alcohol abuse across the country and even in our own area we look at our u.s stats we look at world stats we look at south shore stats we look at other use behavior surveys from other towns and kind of see you know where we line up and are we doing a good job are we doing a better job and luckily the last couple years we our trends are going down so that's what we want

043to see this winter i was fortunate enough to go to a conference in dc drug and alcohol conference dc miss noyes and i went with the good graces of safe harbor support and they sent us down to that conference which was fantastic i brought a lot of information back from that some lessons that i actually taught right away as soon as i got back the first day was exciting and um and i think that was uh you know well received by the kids um as far as our some of the speakers that we bring in with the relationship information um because when we're discussing diversity and scl we have to tie in relationships so we bring in a presenter called annika wright and she's with one love which is a nationwide and even reaching beyond

044the united states into other countries one love is a support system for teaching kids how to treat one another how to navigate relationships um mostly and and quite a bit on uh romantic relationships and how to how to work with that um she talks to the kids a lot about how to set boundaries refusal skills respect uh we talk about consent we have uh very direct discussions about that and then senior year she comes in with a curriculum that is more based on kind of telling the kids what's going to happen in college and your relationships are going to be more intense because you're going to be a little bit older and again we review consent um and toxic behavior and relationships in college control where partners may try to control you and in different

045scenarios because you're away from home now and you're on your own in college and you know can your partner or will your partner um try to control you in different ways so we teach the kids about red flags in those situations and what to look for how to set those boundaries early know what you want out of a relationship and it's not always easy especially if it's the first time but we give them plenty of resources and information to to kind of guide themselves through those those things that will happen as they get older so um we're kind of i i've really enjoyed this we've been doing it for about three years now and one love has been a tremendous partner here at cohasset so i'm hoping to continue that we also have uh five

046kids i believe five kids are gonna be ambassadors with one love um so they they're involved in the foundation so they're gonna also help out here around um and may go into mr ford's class next year so my kids that had one love as sophomores are going to learn from the one love foundation how to talk to underclassmen about relationships and things like that so they'll be juniors talking to freshmen and we like that oftentimes because sometimes when it's the teacher talking you know they're in a class but when it's a a kid that's the captain of their team or a colleague i mean a kid that they look up to um oftentimes they'll they'll hone in on those kids and i think that would be helpful next year and then just capping it off

047um again you know that incredible grant that we got for our climbing wall and and all the low elements um you know from the cef we started project adventure this year i got all the fourth quarter seniors on the rock wall this year with the ones that wanted to climb which was about 90 of them um and then uh the sophomores all did the low elements so they'll be ready to do the climbing wall next year and uh the end mr forrest grew on the uh we did three lessons on the low elements which is really exciting and that is all team building um it's not team against team it's how this whole group could could solve a problem and how can we do it together and what techniques can we use and your freshman

048out of all of that kind of figuring out you have one person you know suggesting this and one person's suggesting that then they put their heads together and they try to figure stuff out so that was really exciting and i'm just uh glad the project adventure is going to be part of our curriculum moving forward in a much fuller way um than the last couple of years we've got a lot of workshops the whole staff has been trained in it and so we're kind of ready to hit the ground running in the fall with project adventure being a big part of our curriculum so looking forward to that i guess any questions from anybody on on our broad brush carr this is really wonderful um do you so when the kids come up here to

049the ninth grade stuff are you feeling that they are prepared from our other schools are is this like a shock to them is it but i think it's very timely to get up to high school and i think it's very much part of that transition are you feeling do you have any thoughts i wouldn't say um you know our our freshman i mean our uh middle school wellness is uh six seven eight so they're getting the foundations of the sixth graders you get the seventh grade and eighth grader um i don't know if it's they're gonna have the shock more of of what their you know some of their friends might start suggesting and doing and experimenting with so you know they're probably in mr ford's class when a lot of this is going on

050or then in my class so that's why i think our focus is 9th and 10th grade before they start using so but i don't know about shock i think it's more just getting to come out of their shells and being willing to talk about these things they they look at me so it's like what are you talking about like why are you saying this you know why you why like you even start talking about diversity and they just they clam up at first you know when you just keep putting it out there like this is what this is real life this is what we're going to talk about in this class and it's okay to express your opinions you have to do it in a respectful way you know and just just to get them

051to begin to talk about builds a foundation for the topics that he's going to talk about and go deeper into sophomore and and senior health but it's it's just something they didn't have before like there was a huge gap they would show up the software in fact i took a couple sophomore classes at times for you when your schedule was falling it was that was the shock that's when they didn't have a freshman health program and they were sophomores and they had no clue you know uh sometimes it's too late for them not that at that point i think peer pressure is probably the biggest thing that they deal with you know seventh and eighth grade there's some peer pressure but you know to do what you know to you know knock on somebody's door

052or something like that whereas then when they get the night in 10th grade the peer pressure is going to be for many different things so i would think that would probably be the biggest thing so we're lucky here in cohasset the pure influence being what you see compared to pure you know peer pressure being okay do this do this um i think we have our influences are going on the better side then the not better side so we can only hope through pure influence and less kids using less kids partying that will continue okay hey mr crowd we do have um some health uh education at arterial too yeah so it that said my son has really gone well with this and i gotta say like the transformation from middle school to high school they

053do a good job because there is some introduction to weights and because in sixth seventh and eighth you really don't want children doing weights you kind of want to do their own body weights a lot of sit-ups chin-ups those are all good but now as they get older they can start hopefully using the new equipment we get in the gym content and we get a lot of ninth graders advocating for that which is great um yeah i mean especially like introducing to fitness like when someone looks at someone and they're big and strong we all look like oh that guy's in the best shape of his life but we don't know that we don't know if he can touch his toes we don't know if he can run up the stairs we trained 88 firefighters

054and the biggest guy came up to me and listened i and we worked with the for three weeks and yeah he started running and working with his daughter you know and we just got hungry now these are the things especially with journaling journal is so important because especially that you can start like measuring how your success is right for the first time you ran on the treadmill and you ran for like a minute you know you got half of your coffee the next time you get two minutes well guess what it takes 21 days to film a habit so if you can form that i know i'm preaching required i mean like it's like if you form that habit and that now you've got a healthy lifestyle for it and i also want to give

055you guys anybody that some of the things that we're working on as a administration too we're working on uh nutrition as well uh we're going to form a subcommittee based on nutrition in mexico so well we're so glad that we could work with you and move that forward because again this is this is so important to mental health like you said in social emotional learning it just ties in everything to that and now the other thing i want to mention is that you know my concern is after school right so i i coach basketball we have 30 kids in our basketball and i coach a sea turtle okay they started off with two wins and we ended up with seven wins in a row and tied for first and it was unbelievable to see these

056kids just step up but i don't know if any of these kids are going to make the best but i told every one of them they got a better shot than anybody else right so we got 30 kids 15 kids make the basketball team what happens to the other 15 kids right they don't play there's no basketball for them by the time they get up into seniors we get three kids in the whole school so what uh uh i i was talking to a coach over there in um whitman hanson and they have a program that they let the kids play on sunday because they don't make the team play a pickup and they put a little league together similar to what we do in the summer i coach some of them do you see

057some of those programs and how we can build some of those programs lacrosse or anybody because there's nothing worse as a parent to see a kid and these aren't my kids that i'm talking about and a lot of kids don't even get to play right so they you pay the 200 400 bucks whatever it costs and the coaches don't play them and i think it really sits on their mental power right so if they could and the other thing that the coach had brought up to me is that you don't really see a kid like you pick him in ninth ninth grade right oh yeah he's on the team well guess what he grew it's two feet that you didn't know about he's one of the best basketball players out there and you never really

058give the kid a shot because you already got your team settled so these programs that i'm talking about you do you think you could support some of those programs to get some of the evidence well i mean we've already support fitness but i think that's more of a question maybe for mr scott and uh this noise about where the direction of extracurricular stuff goes but um i mean i think ron and i support fitness all the time but i think project adventure also is one of those things that will get kids to learn strengths that they may not have had before so maybe you could get stuff from a team but they become a rock climber or they become you know they start attracting right and so i'm we're kind of hoping that that's that's

059part of uh opening up different avenues for kids right and just a response out of the wall like is that i'm an athletic director for 18 years here you can get the nicest fitness center in the world but if you don't also build in the ability to staff it and keep it open for the kids it's a museum it's it's like the old sofas that were in your grandmother's house that were covered in plastic right no one's going to use it right so if you if you don't if you guys if you do build a facility that you're talking about you also need to build in how is it going to stay open how it's going to be open to the public what's the access going to be for kids because it's useless because they

060can't use it we can use it in our class that's great right but what you're talking about is what it should be used is used right all the time like a community center actually the police officers can use it more police officers in the building more firefighters in the building so i i i know we're working on this but at least at least two to six yeah yeah it happened staff yeah great and i and i think there's also ways to to get to fund it would be to maybe you know sell memberships something that you know this is this is a whole random thing but honestly if i could know that my child from three to five was involved in pickup basketball and i can come pick them up i think that would be

061wonderful i think i agree there's a lot we can explore and grow i mean i'm proud that our after-school admission programs are growing you see the it's growing at the middle school it's growing deer hill that's all feeding into the high school our stipended positions are very healthy and robust but i think you're right i think there's a particularly as we move into um more up-to-date fitness centers and potentially new building at some point but these are these are places that should be community centers yeah and i i i also want to add too because the wellness community is that we we recognize that there was a food graduate so there's going to be a vending machine that's going to give kids fresh sandwiches that's going to be the start of next year so i

062think that ties into your whole nutrition because we're talking about the kids yeah cutting that gap down don't go five hours eating right would it be exactly exactly if you want to it's like your body's a garden disposal too you don't feed it and then if you stuff it all with food it's gonna you're just gonna get slower and it's gonna slow you down please can't go there yeah my kids can't use it and that's crazy i don't know where it's going so we'll thank you for all that you do yeah i'll try and be as quick as possible um i um this is an enormously uh important uh increasingly enormously important facet of education um all throughout primary but especially secondary school i have um two primary questions i had for you related to

063um first and foremost um exposure to the pitfalls of digital and i use lacquer phrase so i don't think it's a resource but digital resources like you know social media apps things like that um that that um terrifies me in a word those things like the fact that like kids are growing up with that and they just they can just irreparably damage them to themselves in some ways before they even get a start i wonder is there any exposure i don't think i caught in any of this yeah we did the bullying prevention piece i do a whole piece on the dangers of sexting and inappropriate messaging part of that bullying prevention curriculum is that and then you and then we back it up to everything we just learned about diversity so if you're going

064online and you are saying something that's making fun you know calling out someone's part of a marginalized group and it's all tied together you know and if you're doing things that are inappropriate online and then he runs with it when he gets down to his is correct we do a fair amount with the whole unit on on digital responsibility and stuff like that generally unfortunately there's always a current event about this so you know that's a good thing how it goes it's a good thing um you know as long as not too close to home right you know sometimes it happens uh you know close but um because we've had you know it's just the way kids are wired they're just they're gonna they they don't understand that this is a social platform that their

065phone is a social platform 24 7. everything that they put on it is out there to see and um you know that's uh that's a maybe a story for another day but um and that's what i'm hoping that you too can make them understand we also get that in a lot of other areas the digital literacy and computer science frameworks right and i was going to say it starts when they're really small and all when they're working on their devices and they have the technology and then as we grow our technology program it's it's it takes a village with that because it's so kind i know what you know this but your question's a really good one just i just want you to know it's interviews listening that it is a it's more of a

066holistic complete curriculum than just in a couple of health classes that's really good because they know what's right or wrong i think my my role is now this is the consequences you know all the way from what happens in school or every college admissions office has a kid working for him right now it's looking through your your social media you apply to the school so if you want that on your social media but that's worth a deeper look and as we as we only are how we're how we're actually looking at those standards i think i think that could be a future conversation okay that's did you that's good because just gonna add to the uh cms uh we uh we have the policy where your phone is away for the day is what we

067always say we always explain to kids that you know this time during six seventh and eighth during the school day it's more important to be connected with one another be in the moment uh you know even in cafeteria certainly in the class the hallways um so they they live it with us the fact that you can live with your phone put away for a whole day so um as they get older and they they you know in high school have the judgment um and the maturity to make those decisions it's just a policy with us all right all that kids feel that we're adequately approaching us this stuff is can be very detrimental to other people and very different to yourselves well yes and i i think adequately i think it's it's constantly upon all

068of us to try to make sure we're staying with what's happening out there and making sure that we're doing that in a in our curricula and i think there's a there's a good point being made about you know the times when you don't use your device and there's there's a lot of thought around when you should and shouldn't and then there's also the thought that you need to learn how to manage it as well um so i think you know we have great educators who i think are doing a nice job sort of working that through and i do i do think middle school is a there's a time when you know the responsibility may have not has not caught up with their uh you know ability to access information so i think that's a

069very very appropriate time as is elementary to be really mindful of it of course you have to be natural in high school as well but i think maybe protective is the word yeah okay and my second issue um has to do with um sort of more um gender related issues i guess gender sensitivity for like a better phrase but it sort of encompasses a few different things and and uh because i i have a personal concern um you know i don't think just in the district but but certainly in our district and not really just for the reasons i just i want to make sure our both genders our you know all genders and non-binary folks are sort of integrating one another in a very healthy way so that we don't have that maybe more

070antiquated approach where you know females have this role males have this role especially from a sexual perspective and um i i wonder if there is is there any ever any gender specific or and i know sometimes you have to even be sensitive with that because you don't want to single anyone out it may not identify with a particular gender but i do feel that on the whole sometimes discussions can be more um valuable if you are having them in a within a group of people that sort of identify the same way especially when you're talking about so for example i think that like uh males in our society i think you know are taught to sort of suppress emotion uh if you're a guy you really try not to cry in public something like you

071know just an example what i'm talking about um and then i think you know women uh you know or not women but females i i see especially the criminal courts are are more often victims of like domestic violence because they may be more susceptible to their partners you know leaning on them on a physical is there so you get into these these issues that maybe you do okay but part of the understanding of diversity communities you know i start with gender stereotypes we talk about gender roles talk about transgender issues lgbtq issues like you'd be surprised the kids in this generation are far more comfortable talking about than we are they they could have what you just expressed to us they couldn't express to us in 30 seconds it's shocking almost how comfortable they are

072expressing now sometimes they don't express it appropriately and that's kind of our role is to set up a forum so they can talk appropriately and express things appropriately and and they understand what's right wrong now i mean they've been exposed to it we you know we're learning on the on the fly as adults where they're this is all they've known so you don't feel like there's a real need to actually segregate them into different groups they can have these constructive productive discussions of things okay and the one love program um you know especially we're focused on sexual health right is there any aspect um of that program slightly uncomfortable topic but i think it's necessary to dress like um especially with like internet pornography at this point in time like i think that people's exposure

073to first sexual you know first exposure to sexual conduct is a lot different than it was when we were all kids right because of what's available to them is there at least some acknowledgment of that sort of purple elephant in the room and like how that's not real and that's not what's expected of you as an adult and things like that is that is there any is there is that part of the most so see one love with does talk about um all different types of relationships okay um uh i don't think annika's expertise is is discussing pornography and stuff like that um i show a video a hard hitting documentary called by the bystander uh to the seniors and if i send the bystander discusses breaking down misogynistic behavior misogynistic thoughts misogynistic comments and

074uh it's a it's a one hour like i said pretty hard hitting documentary and then we have another full day and a half uh to discuss it we go in groups first and discuss about how what you thought about that um there is mention of pornography and how it affects kids and how it affects people and then going to college and you know what is reality and when there's studies that especially males can be adversely impacted by so we um you know we we definitely put them on the spot there have great discussion about it um and there is in the video the talk of the uh fraternities and the kind of bro culture thing and um so we have some pretty in-depth conversations about that and i will say that our seniors are very

075forthcoming in the discussion they're not afraid and um and and they kind of say say what they what they want to say and and i think it's good because it opens up for some really good conversation and uh where what the boys responsibility are in this in this situation and what the women's responsibility is uh calling out their uh boyfriends or same gender whatever it may be um to say that's not cool to say that or that's not okay or that makes me feel like this and um and the boys to call out their their pros and uh their behavior as well and be the one that can step up and say it um maybe you don't and in the part of the end of the video not longer but is do you hear it

076and not agree with it is one thing but are you willing to say something to your friend about why it's not okay and so we talked about that and they also in the video at the end give skills about how to say something to your best friend about you know i i didn't really appreciate what you said they already didn't think of school so um yes it's it's it's part of the curriculum so it's good to hear well thank thanks for both yeah it's not a comfortable situation it's not very uncomfortable but it's uh but it's just relevant and it's necessary and i think the kids our kids are just so good to you know talk about things like that and you'd be willing to talk about they need to do that's great to hear

077that you're having this open you know candidates for them thank you both seniors are almost too honest good though but that's a good thing because they're going off to college it's my it's my lab because then i might you know then i go to soccer i was like okay i heard that that's good no it's a good thing all right thank you um um thanks guys um it's great to have two of my teachers here right now um i i just love how this curriculum has developed and evolved right since you had it and um that's appropriate that has changed right now this year um it's just really great i just feel like you're focusing on the whole child and really helping our community as a whole by helping kids feel empowered to have these

078discussions and to get to know kind of who they are and what they can do and what they can access and you know physically emotionally um so i just have a real quick question um and it's good that you're both tackling these uncomfortable subjects and i make it less uncomfortable over time as you deal with them um but certainly for people at the school committee it's it's it's hard um but uh mr ford you mentioned uh in your discussions you know getting kids comfortable to talk about these things i guess do you have any i don't call them tactics but any sort of methods by which you make sure that people feel that they're in a safe space that they can reflect their views as opposed to feeling like they have to you know say

079one thing or the other thing because they feel like you know they get that kind of pure something else yeah self-consciousness yeah so that's why i begin with a lot of social emotional learning activities so we begin with a lot of identifying your emotions we use emotional scales we use um different activities games things like that so they begin to develop like i talk about the first day our class is a community you know and if they're going to be members of the community there's certain responsibilities of being part of the community so we don't jump into real hard subjects right away we we really kind of work our way they set some goals we do a lot of just getting to know each other and then we start to you know when we start

080talking about mental health we start talking about it you know on the big picture but then it starts to personalize they start thinking about hey do i have a friend that potentially has some issues and then it develops i don't start with the toughest subjects right away but once they start to feel comfortable then it's amazing how they come out of their shell and it's also amazing i said i talked to the kids i'm just as concerned about the kids who say something inappropriate these days because being canceled is sometimes in some cases more dangerous than someone who's bullied you know we i try to protect all the kids and try to make i want them all to be successful and i they have to understand that they have they have the right to to

081express their opinions but they have the responsibility to do it in a responsible respectful way and so that's really the the foundation that if we can build that as freshmen in the school it's going to be a much better place absolutely you know it's very well said so um you know as when i was a kid my health education was a one-class video um so i'm very pleased that we're serious this is obviously very important and so thank you for everything you do for our kids thank you thank you thanks thank you thank you um so that uh those are our invited guests so we'll move on to to school updates uh and we start with the uh student advisory council report i don't think we have one this time we do not but just

082just so people know this is a home watching that this is a standing agenda item that we'll have and you'll see that through this agenda uh many of these are standing john jennings we'll just skip forward uh if we don't have them it's some of them are tools to make sure that we hold the place and keep the discussions that we have going so with that we'll go to school news with dr patrick sullivan very nice thank you very much i also want to just welcome mr dial as the chair thank you already moving in like you've been here forever and of course mr carr is his secretary and uh mr coleman is the vice chair yeah yeah hey just wonderful uh your all of your service here um i was a very hefty agenda

083so i don't belabor this update but just to mention that what you saw from miss ryan and miss melia is exactly what's happening in the district right now so a lot of culminating activities there's some wonderful field trips a lot of experiential learning uh the middle school did have a wonderful arts night uh this past week which was uh i'm losing track of the time of the weeks things like into one very late june week but um it was extremely successful and thank you to um everyone who helped put that on as uh was mentioned by principal mills we've been doing a lot of celebrating of uh juneteen throughout the district and also with pride month and diversity we we had some wonderful diversity and diversity day at deer hill where we had uh mrs

084crimmons and mrs humphrey get a bike i want to make sure i have the correct educators with their uh with students from the high school went down and helped put on a diversity day activities no doubt inspired by some of the things they get in mr sweeney and mr ford's classes but wonderful collaborative experiential learning around diversity um we have a clean up day at the high school on the 24th which is friday so people likely but maybe you've noticed a security of wonderful courtyard doing some great work around the district and making sure that our facilities outside are up to snuff uh recently and then of course i'd be remiss if i did mention our sports teams and that all of our sports teams did wonderful uh this spring where we had four teams

085who uh made the final four we had uh boys tennis uh who who did lose inevitably to linfield uh but did wonderfully uh we had our boys lacrosse there's three teams in the final four three teams in the final four at the four and then we had a boys lacrosse who lost to wacona but in overtime and i'm told it was a game to to beat all games and then um yesterday we had our girls just fall short in the state finals girls lacrosse uh against a really excellent untold midfield team so uh congratulations to all those teams to our coaches to all of our kids who participated in sports in the spring it's really an amazing season and our kids really did wonderfully in sportsmanship and also obviously in achievement in that way so

086that in a nutshell in my updates we're looking forward to a few other things we have a great um picnic happening for our fifth grade families and students at deer hill coming up and some really nice accommodating activities it's been very nice speaking of culinary i believe this will be our last school committee meeting while school is in session school ends on the 30th correct anything that any updates for the school committee as a committee during the school year about the end of school i imagine everyone's looking forward to shifting gears and moving forward yes well the end of school as you know as you said is on the 30th and that is what we call an early release day which is a different language that i used in my previous district for what what

087what it is it means no lunch is served in the dismissal when i have uh two principles here to an assistant principal to help me if i'm wrong but it's a it's a 11 30 dismissal for our middle and high school and that equates to a uh 12 15 and 12 20 dismissal at our two elementaries that's good so we're looking forward to that not to missing the students well very much miss the students but uh any of your uh on a good note no doubt most of them if not all of them will be back except for maybe our senior class is off to college but we'll replace them with some new kindergartners and the cycle continues that's right and so we've got some spam and some really good transition work i have to

088say i'm very proud of it i've been highlighting into my newsletters and i'll continue to do that we have a great uh transition that um that miss noah's run helps run organizes and has really nice transition activities great thank you dr sullivan so we'll move on to our next uh agenda box which is teaching and learning the goal here just for people watching at home is to align some of our school agenda items with our strategic plan as a as a district and so one of our compass points is teaching and learning so we have some agenda items here that are teaching and learning and uh dr sullivan dr scollins are just going to speak um so things are winding down a bit obviously as we get towards the end of the year but um

089and so committees are finishing up their work making plans for next year but we do have our summer learning program which we've been fortunate to have a grant over the past couple of years and so this year we made it a little bit smaller because our funding sources were a little bit lighter but but we still have a two-week program and that is for our students who are in great going into grade one and up to grade 12. we had about 70 students and so we did have a little tighter criteria in the past because of our funding we were able to really think anybody could do it but we really did have to stick to what the grant asked us to do which was really to focus on students who um were students with

090disabilities that weren't you necessarily recommended for psy program which is our extended school year for students with disabilities i'm looking at el students students that had already been identified as being support during the school year so but we saw about 70 students so we're really excited about that the grades one through five will be the first two weeks of august and it's a half-day program just like we've been doing so um that will be lovely and then um six through 12 is really tutoring we found that even though we ran a bit of a half day program last year it was fine but we thought tutoring would be better for these students so they get a 15-minute session and there are eight sessions in either ela end or math depending on what the student's needs

091are and then new this year we are adding a kindergarten jumpstart which was very exciting yes and so that was mrs farrell's idea and so we have 74 students who are going to come that's the last week of july and the students will come in small groups and it's about an hour and a half or so and they come two times during the week and they get to see what the school looks like feels like go to the cafeteria kind of learn some of the routines because you know going to kindergarten is a very big deal but it's also a little anxiety provoking for children and parents i still remember my son's first day of kindergarten um and so um so i just think it's a really nice way to transition just to kind of

092really take that little piece away because it's nerve-wracking to think about what am i going to do in the cafeteria so anyway so that's lovely and that's free to um students whoever wants to do it and um and then we do have some students from our netco program we do want to participate so we are working on all that with our transportation coordinator too and uh um so we can see uh what we can coordinate so we can figure out a way for students to be able to access our summer pro offers that we have at school both from boston so um great uh open four four committee members any questions for dr scollins on academic updates hearing none we'll move on to the cohasset high school handbook and school improvement plan by mr brian

093scott wonderful i'll invite mr scott and mrs and let me just say what a wonderful team these two individuals are uh leading our high school and i can say the same for principal mills and uh the south is not here but really proud of the work they do together and um the the way they sort of work together but also take on different aspects of their school which is really admirable so welcome to both of you thank you and i will now share my screen so as just as we did with the um there we go just as we did when we presented the handbooks and school improvement plans with our elementary principles we started with a bit of a data trend in terms of what kind of information that there they've been they're searched

094out through surveys and um we're doing the same with our high school middle school so scott uh so i like uh mr noise actually start with the handbook it's relatively straightforward uh we just kind of went through and buttoned it up anticipating that we should have a little bit more consistent structures next year and hopefully cope and find it so i'll turn it over for that sure so we have um five bulleted points um that we really made some minor changes and then probably the biggest one would be um our attendance and tardy policy that we'll look at so the first one as we remove the hiv and aids policy in the handbook because there is no medical research that shows that truly needs to be in there um it's people aren't not reporting hiv

095and aids anymore um in the sense of disclosure to you know the school they don't have to do that so we felt that was you know will handle any medical precautions with any type of bodily fluid incidence in the gym if a kid gets a bloody nose or in the lunchroom if something happens it would just all be handled the same way in a medical procedure and then the updated attendance procedure is really focusing in on obviously from covid we've had such a transition period um and again really trying to reel the kids back in and the parents to making sure that it's a partnership working towards making people realize that the classroom experiences can't be replicated when they're not here in school and daily attendance and being on time the tardy piece is a

096partnership between the parent and the student with support from administration and the teachers so really focusing in on that piece through the the writing of the procedures there will continue to be letters home as a state policy for five unexcused absences and then a letter at 10 or the parents will receive another letter and then at 10 now we'll ask them to come in for a meeting with myself or mr scott just to kind of figure out what's going on and why there's so many unexcused absences the second one is just revising the party-ness escalation procedure in the past handbook it was a running tardy policy for the whole year it never reset so now we figure that we can get a better handle on tardiness if it is by term so every student after

097two tardies will then have a morning meeting with me um on a fourth party they will be assigned a lung fertility detention to work with some restorative justice pieces about ownership and responsibilities and that would be an hour long in the office with myself or a staff member [Music] and then it will go to six targets within the term so after the sixth party it would be an hour morning detention with me so it's like a meeting first let's have a conversation why are these things happening what can we do to improve and then a lunch utility detention to kind of what i started using was the book um highly effective teenagers and so i have a student kind of read the chapter let's discuss you know time management um and sometimes our kids get

098stuck because their older brother or sister drives so then they have to you know unfortunately but that's where the partnership needs to happen with the parents and and teachers of administration as well so we can work on that together um if we do if they do hit the sixth uh tardy then it would be considered an unexcused absence for that particular class that they are missing on that day so we want to try to really reinforce that piece as well um again because of respect for the teacher a lot of times we have kids that just chronically come in three and four minutes late we do ask the kids to be in this in the building at 8 10 when our first bell rings at 8 13 they really should be in their classes or

099at least by the door of their classes and then at 8 15 ready to learn so that that teacher can start their class and not have multiple interruptions so that's our goal moving forward after the term is over we would reset and then the students would um have another chance to start all over again and work at a at a better pace with coming to school my apologies there is a memo in there that that summarizes that i just wasn't able to call it up we also are trying to incorporate more restorative justice practices which is community service based so if there was graffiti in the bathrooms or something like that we would ask the students as part of that lunch utility program uh to come in and clean help clean a certain part of

100the school this year i had some students go and take care of the sports trophy cases and they had to come in and kind of dust it and wash the windows down and just to kind of give back to having pride in their buildings so that they don't want to write things on the wall or in the bathrooms i use the book also as i said for that uh with bullying we often will try to use some sort of a group discussion on how does it feel have kids write either an apology letter to the student um also talking about you know coping skills of when someone does do that and just opening communication and building confidence in kids to talk about what's actually happening whether it's social media or you know in person in

101school oh and then the last piece was we added um a record release procedure for graduating students that we did corrections any questions um um mr the record release and what's the changes from launch here too we're just publishing it just yeah okay yeah we're just commenting on the handbook and we're going to talk about improvements [Music] how much is the parent's fault and how do we bring the parents in the box i gotta know i gotta tell you be honest with you and when my kids were in dear hell i looked over there was like 14 tardies i was just like this is crazy you gotta sit down and i just said to my kids i said listen you're over there you're over there and you're over there when we're trying to get ready

102and my wife and i are arguing over you guys this is crazy so we actually set a pereira and we just said look you know and we were never laid out after that i mean we do have our issues here and there but you know we took it on as a family so like i i just i just don't want to i just don't i i it makes me nervous that this kid is dealing with parents that just laid all the time so my case is different yeah so yeah the biggest concerns that we have around school refusal within that piece which has definitely escalated since goldman across the country not just for us the goal of all of our that's you know let's put it in context that's three percent five percent interaction maybe

103yeah um it's the other 95 that it some of it comes down to whether you value it and how much you really want to fight the battle and push it so you know there are students who come in late all the time because they don't get up early enough right there are kids whose brother or sister drive them in those kids are on time the brother and sister doesn't get up or the parents are running late for right you know there's all kinds of different situations so the goal really is to make sure we identify people have a conversation and work with folks to try to figure out what we can do to solve the problem right and especially in coven you know i've had parents tell me everything was just so crazy between working

104at home everybody trying to do this and whatever i just lost the structures so this year really is going to be about getting some of that structure back because it's important right now and i think we've for real reasons kind of gotten away from you have to come to school consistently you have you know cause if you got stiffles if you got red eyes or everyone was like stay home all right we gotta get over that and get back here but it's important to be in school yeah and to be on time yeah and to be honest with you too it shows respect you feel late you just you either you don't care or you don't respect it right so those are the things too and honestly i you know i employ a lot of

105people if you show up late don't even just just just go and that's my number one thing when i do meet with the students like this is your job right if you were late right five times you probably wouldn't have a job right absolutely and of course they're like well if i work from home you know be living in cohasset you always think you can get the handle over in 20 minutes you're like i'll be there in 20 minutes so everybody i was late for everything and people would be like annoyed with me you're 10 minutes late and i'm like but it only takes me 20 minutes from coldwell but what we don't realize is it takes 10 minutes to get into the cup because it's five minutes three minutes to do this too so

106my life coach is like it's a half an hour so i i would just say you try to use some of that to that because it's i think it's like again it identifies if you want to be here you know we go when i see somebody i went to an auction in a real estate auction and the guy who bought it i said to the auctioneer who was the first guy here guy who bought it yeah and it's like you know you're just a buck and a half shopping i say this all the time there's no not a car in the pocket i do do a perfect attendance breakfast oh you do yeah yeah you can't show up late for that mr um um thank you both um uh thank you noise for the institution

107i just quickly um we're not gonna i don't wanna retool this year but just for the future like maybe some consideration and maybe it's not the right suggestion but just just my thought in the um in the progressive disciplinary discipline section um as you know that can become important at certain points um as people are as disciplined as being you know imposed on someone their parents become involved and are happy with that um it may make sense so i i like how um you sort of discuss the concept of the progressive discipline and procedure and how we approach it it's really good um then level one offense is a subheading and it sort of talks more about like the level one procedure um like i like that you talk about okay so level one it's

108you know intervention occurs in the classroom is there like basically minor offenses that we can you know you know address at this low level of faculty level usually um sort of direct one-on-one and then and you say up here their general guidelines not you know an exhaustive list so i think you should probably change like types of level one offenses types of loads or two examples of and then after the description of the procedure then say examples level one offenses and examples of level one you know disciplinary measures and then you go to level two level two that is just one sentence saying students continue exhibit behavioral um problems after level one interventions basically well it's not only that it would be that plus some more severe you know infractions right um but um and

109so you can talk about what kinds of things would happen in level two and you do that in level three you go back to doing that again which is good you know sometimes the police are involved with psychological things like that so just um i mean you are just as stable as i am i'm just pointing that out i think it would be maybe a little bit more intuitive yeah i mean the more you strike clarity with people that's really what we're doing that's all talk about yeah unless they violate the handbook exactly exactly that's why i always go to that section it's just i i just think if you could be more clear so it's less ambiguous or at least less the imagination or interpretation rather is really a good word and and sort

110of really lay out the procedure so people everyone's clear on it and expectations are managed from the outset it's kind of a fine line between you need concrete examples again you want a lot of latitude sure for context some of that is based on experience oh yeah you do a good job though saying that though you know i'm saying this is not an exhaustive list but then like just make sure that when you say types of offenses it is clearly you know it's like i i don't know so right i'm just a suggestion as i was reading so um quick clarifying questions uh are you suggesting these changes for this cycle are you no no i'm suggesting that principal scott and assistant principal noise just take that consideration for the next time i don't think

111this is like any major problem i'm not looking to have them rehash this at this point i think it's a really good suggestion to standardize all of them towards is perhaps this is something to be taken up by our policies um i know there's reference to the school committee policy binder here and i wonder if this is some language that so it's different from school committee policy i i believe i think this is more of a building operation but it's actually remember handbooks can only be adapted by school councils so it goes to school council it doesn't go so so it's the school council discussion that would you add that or anything they do but i'm wondering for feedback focus is not necessarily for specific because you haven't i guess what i'm saying i actually

112very much like mr commons and some line edits might be helpful and just trying to put some structure on it i mean i i think so first of all i like the unit the thing i do like is that we're seeing the uniformity between all these handbooks now obviously the secondary schools are a little bit different from the elementary schools but the elementary schools are reflective of one other one another now um secondary schools using middle school as a secondary school here at like they're reflective so that's good and i agree with having uniformity or someone just said i thought it was you but yes uniformity interdisciplinary procedures overall again there's going to be some differences just based on the development level of the kids in the building but um i just i don't i

113look i feel like the reason i'm saying maybe for next year is just because you know we can certainly work with what's here now and i just feel like a lot of work goes into that and it's like we're gonna be it's gonna work to our detriment like we're not gonna be able to like you know get going here so like maybe we just for next year consider that i just have complete faith in our building principle are building leaders principals and assistant principals that they'll be able to do that that's why i'm just mentioning it is like something to throw out there i don't know i don't know that's i'm just bringing it up as a suggestion for next year i'm not looking to change it now yeah okay okay um i think it

114looks great also there is a policy related to what you're talking about but it's substantially separate from handbook development so we'll touch upon that at the subcommittee but in a different context um so i i don't i don't have much i um in the in the prior uh the the deer hill policy and the osgoode policy i noticed the snack list there's no snack what i'm kidding is unique when you have those unique cases where you know it's it's a sibling that drives the school or you know and it becomes a you know it's a regular thing that you know it's almost structural like this is the way you know my you know parents have to get the boat or bus this time and so on how do you how do you deal with those

115structural ones is there like a just general uh excuse process or uh i mean we try to work with the families as closely as we can to identify what the block is and whether or not we can help uh i mean it's it's hard to fault a child or something that's not within the child's control at the same time at some point you need to get to school so if that means you get to take a bus then we could think of us you know or come up with some kind of alternatives you know great so i have i have no questions further questions on the handbook um i think the next phase of this is the school improvement plan i'll note on the agenda we can mark this with an asterisk there will be

116a committee action required uh but we'll book it the um handbook and the improvement plan together so go through just a little bit of background data going back to 2019 um we do two alternating surveys and we've done a couple of focus groups in addition to that one is always on school climate culture and the other is on student wellness which we do in collaboration with safe harbor those surveys have varied a little bit over time one because the climate cultural survey that we used to use kind of folded during coven we went into using it so it's not always apples to apples comparison but it is um close enough that we can kind of see some trends and the biggest areas of concern that we had back in february of 2018 were physical in

117social emotional security for students perceived or real bullying um trust communication inclusion we were starting to kind of unpack there and we did that over time and then we had some pretty serious student wellness issues and again this goes back to why we initially implemented the um wellness class and kind of expanded it from from just pe vaping was spiking at the time uh we had a spike in kind of depression and suicidal ideation um and student stress sorry it's sometimes tough to read so those are the kind of biggest things that we were focusing on going into the 2019-2020 obviously the back end of 2020 we get into um covet but we continue to kind of monitor students and implement programming to try to alleviate some of these things the most recent if you

118want to flash forward dr sullivan the most recent um trends have actually turned the corner on some of our biggest weaknesses so for example if we go to the next one okay so in the most recent school climate inventory that we did in february or march i can't remember i think it was in february the biggest strengths were safety physical security social supports for students communication and trust and jumped up tremendously so we surveyed students we surveyed parents faculty members we did some focus group work in a couple of different ways we did affinity groups and one series and we did kind of more inclusive um focus groups in another and we're trending in the right direction so effective communication was up respect for cultural diversity was up among black students it was it was

119reported as um you know over 90 that the school was in favor of it it doesn't mean that we're there yet but it means that we're moving in the right direction and the students two self-identified strengths from the pair survey were empathy and trust which from my perspective gives us a great strength based approach to kind of dealing with some of the other things we still have a lot of challenges and this comes out really consistently and there was an april 29 newsletter that i put out that had all of the full reports um and folks are welcome to kind of consistently reference that it slices and dices a million different ways there was a lot of information in there but the students continue to report that there's there's some real insecurity social media definitely

120contributes to it um they have and some of this is a function of the size of the school there's real insecurity among friend groups and between friend groups so groups that are exclusive or groups of friends that sit at the same lunch table and are exclusive to each other and once you're out of the circle you don't get back into the circle they'll report that this goes back all the way into elementary schools when um some of the friend groups are socially engineered by parents for other reasons you know then then people want to kind of hang out in the same social circles and they're really articulate and really aware of how those things kind of impact them so that the relationship piece is is a huge piece and the other is this kind of

121implicit and explicit messages about what success looks like and it is grade driven superficial um you know ivy league school it includes a wealth component um and it's it's just not authentic and so we see a lot of kids who will report high academic motivation which means i want the best grades possible low earning interest learning interest i don't really care what i'm studying and so we have kids who will you know try to manipulate the systems that they can have more um ap classes they get more gpa points at the expense of taking something that they might actually be really interested in some of it is disproportionate to what their image of a like a prior sibling would have gone through so we've had more than one student who said well you know my

122older sister took four ap so i need to take four aps and the old sister will say i took one ap and it was just okay right um so we really need to do a a much better job of challenging that and building in more authentic learning opportunities and showing kids why that's so important personally for their own stress levels for their own growth and yes for you know future success because the stuff that they're driving after doesn't line up with success what it lines up with is extreme student stress in college and the bubble's going to burst at some point if we can't get our arms around it it's not unique to us we're seeing it in college as we see you know places like stanford and harvard and mit and the suicidal ideation

123that those students have the feeling of never being good enough and having to climb another mountain and it's just not uh it's just not healthy and at the same time some of it is the system so you have to kind of acknowledge that there is an element that praises the transcript and and the points and the accolades and all that stuff so you know really working with students and families so that people are all kind of talking the same language and it's not you know us telling them or the parents telling them or you know their peers telling them um that you know we're really starting this kind of collective conversation around how to how to make what we're doing much more authentic and some of the things like the environmental science courses and the

124partnership with cr and you know i'll put out a newsletter on friday that's going to talk about a lot of the really meaningful learning experiences that the students had in a couple of the last couple of weeks not the least of which is the work with the elementary schools where they're going down and they're writing books with them and they're telling stories they're participating in snapper sneaker day and they're teaching kids about diversity and it's stuff that they can get behind and and feel like they've made a difference in a way that in august when we get the ap scores and someone gets a five it's like oh what does that mean it means you do really want the course great um you know but there's there's a lot of you know there's a place

125for that stuff but it isn't the end all in be all and when it becomes the end all we all we see huge increases in cheating and uh you know kind of byproducts of that stuff even you know when we try to entertain conversations um against humphreys class for example she kind of posited the question of the students what if everyone got home and the student said well that's not fair and she said but what if everyone over time actually mastered 100 of the the information and they said but that's not fair i got it faster right so this kind of like internal competition um to be better than someone else is is you know really uh one of our biggest challenges and then there are some byproducts of that which you know we understand

126the cultural survey and then we understand kind of the maladaptive behaviors and so while we are seeing a lot of real progress lower rates of depression um students kind of reported less stress and more sleep during coping and now we're kind of turning the corner and getting back the other way same with vaping uh the vaping went way down and now it's kind of picking back up a little bit uh not to the level it was before by any means but it's still certainly there and then we've seen decreases in alcohol and marijuana which is phenomenal but really only with the male population with our female population they're at least constant with what they were before and that's a subgroup that i really want to kind of focus on as well because they seem to

127be struggling as a subgroup more so than the boys with some of the maladaptive behaviors and some of self-confidence and insecurity and so we're trying to unpack that a little bit more so that leads us to some of the school improvements right um and it kind of falls into three buckets um one is kind of the student engagement and personalized learning so our civics projects our community partnerships with holly hill safe harbor cscr we want to implement things like student art portfolios and promote things like the seal of biliteracy which is a foreign language um certificate if you master so much language so different different types of things that are going to really kind of make students unique and engage them in some meaningful learning opportunities that other schools may not have it's going to

128make them hopefully stand out we need to get back to kind of a student skill building and operational consistency so when we're going between the gym the cap and the outside and wherever you know students like routine it provides a certain sense of safety you get up you brush your teeth you take a shower you get dressed you don't have it nobody ever says like i'm going to mix it up just to see what happens right you people like kind of getting things and so us getting back into some of that routine and teaching kids what it means to be in high school which is one thing we really found out about three quarters of the way through the year they have no idea what high school learning looks like they're not even really sure

129what bills look like so to come in and you know our teachers and administrators have these expectations that of course you should come in with this kind of skill set uh they did not have it and so kind of rebuilding that you know what does high school look like what does independent learning look like so when you're not in school what does it look like when you're home and then what does authentic look like you know when you're in grades 11 12 when your schedule frees up and you have the opportunity to do some unique things what does that mean and how are you going to do that and then all the stuff that ron and tomorrow talked about the relationship building so um you know we put a student leadership class in to hopefully

130get a mentoring program and some real authentic connections uh to have our older students working with our younger students the use of project adventure and one love and all the things that uh that ron and tour and kind of touched on and then from an administrative and a guidance perspective really doing some community outreach doing some parent workshops doing some podcasts recognizing a broader array of student achievements communicating with parents what the expectations are and why we're setting those expectations and what skills we're trying to enforce and how they might be able to reinforce those at home so what is you know what does homework look like for a ninth grader how how much should it be how do you organize that person how would you check that it's done um if you have any

131questions what's the proper chain of command to you know kind of discuss those things all of that stuff kind of goes into the school improvement plan and what we realized when we went through it as a council was that our goals from this current year didn't really change we're just in kind of evolution 2.0 so we're going to continue to work on and you can flash forward to the to the goals the student learning experience and and overall student wellness by looking at those things that were on the prior slide we're going to try to do things that cultivate more relationships between students and among staff um that build community that build their own identity and not just kind of typecast identity of what they think a successful kid from cohasset is supposed to look

132like and then continue to try to empower staff and students to promote equity cultural responsiveness inclusivity uh moving kind of from the professional development piece to uh incorporating some of that into curriculum and some of the other kind of more on the ground approaches to you know what does that look like in the classroom what does it look like in your instructional methods what does it look like in the books that you're reading the activities that you're doing that type of stuff so that's really where the school improvement is kind of in that evolution for next year i think that's it i think one of the big things that brian said to hit home too was it really reared its head when we had our semi-formal dance and we had ninth and tenth graders at

133the dance that just kind of stood there and looked at each other because for two years they have not had any type of relationship building and you know when it was all said and done i said to brian i felt like we should have actually had to have organized you know whether it was the cha-cha slide like we had to teach these kids how to have fun and build relationships so i i reached out to john newsom and said make sure when you have your eighth grade dance or a sixth grade that you have some sort of relationship building skills but it it was just like it jumped at us so big and how much work you know we need to still continue to do with those those relationships building uh jesus after i sent

134me form although i told miss noyes that don't worry about it like i'm sending her a whole grade of the answers and yeah they know how to have fun uh mr carr any questions comments so i do hey thank you i think you guys do a great job on communicating with parents but some of these data trends i don't know how you can fit this more in i mean i you got to kind of tell parents it's not gonna shock you a lot about stuff you want them to ultimately catch up with but this is very eye-opening information yeah so to the extent if there's any resources we can give you to help you do better with that or whatever or differently but the more you tell parents that kind of stuff that is going

135to go a long way especially at home and it will only resonate here so good for you to recognize what's happening well i do have a question from a constituent in regards to uh which is that okay to read it for the record it's your time okay well i have my own sorry this is not one of his three comments let's be clear uh this comes from danny ian doley from short street cohesive mass he just asked it's a simple question do we have any personal finance education classes agenda at school if not are we planning on going so we do have a um finance class we have two sections of it uh right now it's an elective so kids aren't required to use it look great it's typically junior class okay most of the

136core maths go through sophomore year and then julius seems to take personal finance there's a demand for kids from kids and well we've been talking about this faculty on kind of basic things like that like how to fill out a check right uh balance check yeah i mean if anyone does that anymore if that exists right yeah how to um an email you know like really kind of basic like you need a greeting not just you know you need to use capitals but it's just such a different world that they're used to when they're you know scrolling through everything um then that's that's kind of what they produce to you and they don't i don't know that they recognize that it comes off sometimes it's disrespectful and then there's also a learning cup that we

137talked about bringing back where the business is set up for the day yeah we're looking at uh february or march the only thing uh and i got a couple questions the only thing that just kind of disappoints me with this is that uh we didn't get a parent sir i think i wasn't asked i you know i searched all my emails and i couldn't find it so i i don't know where it is and i don't know the result trace is involved [Music] you know i looked for the high school in middle school and i didn't see one because i know in the in the um middle sorry the elementary schools we had one how many participants what's the question so um a criticism director of me i asked him to give us data and

138i think what principal scott did is he just he had so many data points that he gave us a summary of these data points which i you know in the future if that's something by the way this is just this is about handbooks and school improvement plans i was the one who said i really want you to do a survey or get some data from the community that shows how we're doing and we but if we want it to be in a particular format that's something i can make sure we do next time yeah because really i think principal scott and the systems for those are just doing what i ask them to do so i'll take that one yeah which is fine i just i do want to hear from the parents because i

139just think it's kind of like yeah i'm not surprised because like i feel like and to be honest with you guys you have children in elementary school i just feel like as a parent in high school middle school it's like you know we don't really get asked anything there's really isn't any parent participation and and i can see that by not having a survey because some of the things that what we could ask would be you know do you think this would be a good chance to have a wellness day you talk about wellness day and this is not something i'm making up there's this talk in taunton public school and there's a there's actually a bill out there that a child can say i need a wellness and not make up a sick day

140so they can actually take a walk so these are the these are the things that the questions that i would like to ask their parents like how's the food um how's this how is this so like honestly like i can't even vote on this tonight unless i see what the parents have to say because as i pointed to the april 29 newsletter because it has the so there's two surveys there's a csci survey which has a student faculty and parent component with the published results in the newsletter you can actually download the entire report okay and then i would point you to the focus group work that carlo puglisi did okay and in the back of that report are straight comments from parents they also had qualitative um focus groups too so again i i

141think that i i like what you're saying paul i think that that may be is because this is new for us something that i wanted to do in conjunction with our we wanted to do is conjunction with our strategic plan maybe we can be a little bit more specific i do want to know one thing though that is impressive to me is we're really moving more from a communication format to more community engagement and family engagement some of the things that were mentioned on this the parent um workshops for instance that's it's a very much deeper level of engagement where it's it's back and forth so that you're trying to as mr carson explore those feelings from families and explore what we're seeing with kids with families and get that back and forth in an

142engagement format which i think is really deeply important so i i know it's sort of a little bit um aside from what you're asking because you want more you know what are the families feeling but i think that back and forth is really where we are in this district and it will bring us to a much deeper place but your point's very well taken by me yeah well thank you for that but i do i do want to say that as apparently middle school it's just a different environment then and maybe mr clark attends to that because and you guys really don't know because your kids are in elementary school i'm going to tell you once they get to middle school it's a different experience and it's less parent involvement and and and i'm not

143going to bring this up with you and bringing up more of the middle school is is there really isn't because it's a new school it just doesn't seem like there's a lot of it doesn't it just seems like the parents are kind of they feel like they're they're locked up you know we're given one hour to try to meet the teachers right and like quick get in get out and then this is kind of like whoa like i feel like we need to get parents more they need to be more of a stockholder because like you know questions would be asked you know do you like the school does your kid like the school i i'd love to know if my if the community actually likes high school you know these are the questions that

144i think that we gotta ask and the other thing is a student survey let's hear from the students being in the high school if they like that teacher because a lot of them are going to be really honest with you guys and and you know this smart kids they know what's going on they know that you know and i'm going to put this out there they know we have a math issue and we have a math problem and as studies have showed him how i i haven't cast the tests are gone so like i don't understand because like i would be screaming about a mass specialist like if we see the data that shows that we have a particular problem in math then i you know we should be all talking about a math specialist

145right now because you wouldn't i think we all agree that we need the math issues at the high school right well because you want to focus on the plan okay no i get that but what i'm trying to say is that you're not going to hear that like the parents in this town will tell you that we have a math problem okay we have a macro all right there's no they can't tell us right now but in a survey they could have wrote have a math problem well because we have a math problem right so you're not going to find out if you don't ask the parent i'm done i'm fine that's it i just i'm very disappointed that we didn't see a survey because a lot of parents have a lot to say and

146they feel like they're not being listened to can i hear it miss recall thanks and i think that's why everyone uh i think that's why the uh the middle high school parents really value your participation i hear that all the time and i think it's thank you you've uh voiced a lot of things they say but um i just um i i know it's a continuation of the work like you said it's 2.0 um but i do think that they're really responsive and pertinent goals i really like the the three uh goals and um the first one i can't help but think about as you were sort of discussing the sort of data behind it that drove it um that concept of creating a personalized path to success i i keep on thinking about the

147um a class of 21's a valedictorian uh speech uh message that she was sending which was uh i think was miss cunning right um that was talking about like what what success truly is and how to realize that and sort of capture that um and not and not let it escape you um in you know in your quest for profession you know uh so it was like sort of pertinent to that to that goal i thought i just couldn't help thinking about that repeatedly when you're talking about the challenges that we're facing so it continues to come up i mean it's good to see some self-realization yeah anyway i i i know wrong critique questions sound they're great goals i love how much my school is involved in the other schools my kids recognize it

148all the time and come back and report about it when the big kids are around it's really exciting um and i just think even out in the community it's so nice because what they're learning at school isn't just about what they do at school it's what you know when they're on the soccer field or helping with tennis or coaching or wreck camp or just in the street passing you on a bike i just feel like really really great kids coming up in school and um and that i mean we're hearing it in valedictorian speeches like you know you're not just the number and i feel like what you're saying about you know balancing atheism that message is coming through and it's kind of giving your voice and i think these goals match up with what's

149happening great thanks um i have uh one one question um i like i do like the goals i like how they're responsive to the information that you gathered um one question that resonated with me and i love this i love this focus on definition of success and trying to get authentic learning because that that their their my high school experience was filled with people who were after those ap scores looking for the easiest course so they could get that perceived path success and you know one way i don't know what the solution is to that but what i worry about is that you know we don't we don't want to dilute it in such a way that it also minimizes honest academic achievement as well so we want to make sure we celebrate academics without

150emphasizing that that is the only path so i guess have you thought about how to balance that because you know we also celebrate you know athletic achievement in ways and competitions um but if you thought about how to balance those two and it seems to be almost competing goals you don't want to say hey everybody needs to be the smartest person with the straight a's but at the same time you don't want to you know discourage people or you know not recognize you know bona fide achievement yeah i don't see that as the problem i i don't think that we have to take away from one in order to do the other you know one of the comments that i get a lot is that the school overemphasizes athletic achievement as opposed to anything else

151and i would challenge that and i would point to any newsletter that i have that does include some athletic success but that's not typically the focus of of my communications but the town culture is a very athletic heavy town and they have you know every team has a booster organization that has a twitter account that has a fundraising mechanism that pushes stuff out and yes a lot of the local photographers kind of celebrate that so that's what's in the letter that's what's in you know the anchor and all that stuff and and that's a good thing i don't want to necessarily take away from that what i think we need to do a better job of and we've started to kind of pull a little bit of it together this year with with some of

152our independent learning opportunities is pushing that stuff out in more public forum so cscr has done a great state of the harbor for as many years as i've been here it doesn't get a lot of press um and i did have one parent reach out earlier in the year and she said you know i would love to actually kind of be your press agent and push some of this stuff out and i think life got in the way and it never quite happened but you know we were talking this morning um about this partnership with cscr where you know we'll have kids collect data in the summer about eelgrass about water quality about whatever bring it back into the curriculum have our environmental and our marine science forces actually process that come up with the

153driving questions further the research and then publish a conditions report based on noah's uh conditional support that they would publish on the state of the harbor and see if we can get that out you know um so doing things like that we've had kids publish books you know create drones make movies right so you know some of what i'm trying to push out is the last newsletter of the year on friday is just that it's it's kind of authentic student learning artifacts and i would love to have some kind of showcase at the end of the year where either we you know remotely publish them or we put them in here and have some kind of community walk through that's the next step you know which is not there yet but that's a you know

154showcase like that you know of can i just wait to alerts you know a showcase like that where you have you know student you know creation studies that's that's an excellent idea you get a balance of those things so i mean just looking outside at our courtyard that you know we're gonna have a greenhouse here our kids have put so much time and effort into maintaining these vegetables and and herbs and i mean they become so passionate about it and so proud of it and then they take it to the farmers market and display what they're doing so that alone i mean it's just it's huge and i think you know getting this is where we could actually use a little more power involvement and i don't know if the pso or if it's us

155if it's the vehicle but getting people who are successful in who didn't necessarily have you know 5.0 and go to harvard and follow that back right which is 99 people um you know because my experience and i think a lot of other people it kind of goes a little bit all over the place until you land on something satisfied right right um so you know having more of those conversations highlighting more of those community resources i think would go a long way too because the kids they need to trust and the parents need to trust because the hardest thing about straying from that quantitative all a's ap classes is that you don't really want to gamble with your own kids right even though like it's a better gamble you know any further comments questions look

156ready can it's good timing question because i i did read the data on those reports and i want to make sure paul's time to is there any reason could we vote on this at the august thing or is there a timing issue i just want to make sure you have time to read what you want it would be like an initial i mean sorry see him jumping over you you could you could certainly i just want to make sure you get it i need to be helped i found it to be very helpful yeah information in this area so i'll make sure you have yeah and thank you for that because um i i really don't and i would like to kind of postpone this until i mean they don't have to be here correct

157they do not have to be here for the vote i mean i i really would really want to hear from the parents i just i just think it's an opportunity to hear from your parents and you know i don't know if dr sullivan can send out a survey and then we can yeah i guess it might be there's student surveys there's faculty surveys there's parent surveys okay some focus groups okay if people didn't read them that's really well but that's on me so right now last night when i suck it up and say listen i'm good fault i didn't get to keep this information and then i i would definitely stop perhaps and mr and i talked a little bit before the meeting um maybe you could talk about a little bit of how you

158incorporated any parent feedback in developing your your strategy you plan here because it sounds like you got data and feedback and so i made that um adjustments to experience here so the two primary points of contact were the focus groups that we do the parents and the culture survey that we did in february and both of those sets of data went into kind of the collective set which was mostly student data faculty feedback uh other focus group feedback that we've done with some of the consultants but you know i don't have issues people postpone it uh if we have to send out another survey if we don't like the services that we're done my only issue is that we can't continue to say that we didn't do them no no we didn't i guess we

159did yeah and i just didn't have a chance to read it you know yeah you know i have kids in school and i didn't see it well i i i also think that it's on a newsletter that's a little different because like you know we don't have what we had that the the elementary principles came in and that's do you like your school or not do you have and we don't have that day you're talking about a survey was sent out to the building parents in an email right so that's what i'm talking about like why don't we have that here now in the link that i've ordered so so i don't want to we don't have any of the numbers so how many people participate so that's that's what i'm talking about so i

160guess maybe we'll we'll close this off um i i guess hearing i wouldn't i would entertain a motion to approve but i understand that there's there's concerns about i think that you're getting more data although i don't know what's going to change the handbook like what we're really voting on here are is the school improvement plan which is created by the school council it doesn't have anything to do with any survey data or engagement data i asked for i asked the principals to make sure that they got some engagement data so that we could present it it was really an extra but what i'm hearing from you loud and clear and this is important because you're part of a major part of the voice of the community is that we need more questions being asked

161of at least the high school but potentially everywhere um to get more information to hear to to figure out where we are and where we stand and i have no problem doing that moving forward i guess the question is does that dictate any of the content of the school improvement plan which it may have but again it's the school council who's digesting all that and is creating the school improvement plan and so i don't want to mix dr sultan just so just to remind everyone what's the constituency of the school councils so school councils are an even proportion of um parents guardians and that's one constituent and then the other constituent is administration and teachers and it evens out and they discuss these matters and they they're really their major functions are school improvement plans

162handbooks and budget in particular as it relates to class sizes so that's what a school council does so this edition of engagement information comes from from me asking the principals to provide that the format that we provided it in is slightly different it isn't uniform and it is not to be confused with the uniformity of our handbooks and improvement plans so the fact that you may find some um frustration that they're not the same is only because i didn't ask them to be the same because there's no format for that i just knew and i think i'm right that you wanted to hear about what's what the community is thinking what the data points are saying and then how the data drove these plans and that's what we were attempting to provide but moving forward

163we could certainly provide it in a different format but i i don't think that has much to do with the school improvement plan traditionally we've never presented survey data or data of any type when we presented school improvement plans because quite frankly it isn't an assess necessary component of the school improvement plan i think it's important and that's why i suggested that we do it as a team so i just wanted you to understand that the the the uniformity is is no failure of anybody's it's just it's it's just an idea i had that i asked for um and i didn't provide a template for them to do that and mr chairperson there's also a school committee member on the school council we have input but no vote so any voicemail vote and mr the

164questions were asked is the parents just that you didn't get it like the elementary school parents did and that's just that that but they said they were asked so princess scott has that information yes and it just wasn't presented in the same manner as the two elementary school and this kind of goes to the uniformity i was talking about where the elementary school is sort of aligned and the middle of high school sort of a line just because of the sort of developmental differences and but i think that principal barrel and principal sullivan work together on how they how they did things and they actually derive their processes from their collaboration i think we'll see probably some similarities between principal mills versus scott since the personal noise since assistant groups will uh sales will also

165work together collaborate on their improvement clients but what i think the main takeaway here is as a middle or high school parent you would like to see those questions coming to you in email so you can take you can participate the survey because you didn't you didn't get that you didn't see the newsletter you didn't participate in anything you think would be a better vehicle to get to you in the emails that's sort of what you're saying because when i was hearing from principal scott the survey went out so you know so so it's just that the vehicle wasn't forgiven and responsible for getting data and that's what we heard somebody that it was incorporated exactly so exactly so i think it's just the vehicle through which it wasn't effective for you and i i

166think that's the case for you mr kearney that's probably the case for other people too and that's not meant to be a criticism i'm just sort of recognizing the fact that i think it is important because principal scott's trying to point out that that did happen so it's not like it didn't happen she just wanted to make that clear but i i think there is there is marriage just wait until the next meeting just let paul have a chance because when you put on these things the more information you have as a member it's great if y'all want to vote that's great too no i just wanted to bring it up that he wants to take a look at something you know yeah well i don't want i don't want to hold things up if

167it's on me because i didn't look at it so i will i will entertain a motion what i've done in advance has drafted up some proposed motions so i'll just read out what i've drafted here we can change these your proposed these are not removed by me but this is a language that one could use and can fall into the minutes and i would entertain emotion resolved that the um cohassen high school handbook and school improvement plan uh is hereby approved as presented to the cohesity school committee so um second all right so it is uh moved by mr cullen seconded by st onge i will uh do a roll call vote uh mr carr vote a vote in favor as a vote to approve the um the the high school handbook and the school

168program yeah number one approve mr mccullough hi guys hi um and mr dial yes um so that is nice guys so five eyes and no names unanimously approved so thank you very much the um please implement the uh the handbook and the school improvement plan very good thank you thank you thank you very much thank you and i believe up next into the gauntlet is uh principal do to the handbook just like they have i don't know so similar to uh assistant principal noyes and principal scott i'll do the handbook first i'm sorry um and similar to the high school handbook there's nothing i don't think uh very radically different um a lot of the changes we're making for the handbook actually are um just incorporating school community policy or um in other ways just

169trying to make uh what we're doing operationally just have it reflected in the handbook so just to walk through it um pages 15 to 16 is just sort of an update of general school information happens every time pages 21 and 22 uh where we describe courses uh a i just want to insert the new new course that we're offering next year coding robotics just so that the information is accurate uh b um where there's a section that describes how children are recommended in the course levels and include the language and diagnostic or screening data as well as standardized data in other words it's an additional data point um and that's on to the next page in fact the um it's just one additional data point that we're using to help evaluate uh the most appropriate

170academic level for kids and teachers are recommending for ela or math accelerated courses in seventh and eighth grade the cheating policy actually page 24 contains language that's a little bit anachronistic um last year we had removed an introductory section that talked about the expectations for student learning at cms the high school also removed this section it was created ago and sort of outlined expectations that you know a child who graduates would have this communication skill or that it was language that nobody it's really not incorporated and i feel that the cps mission and core values and vision statement actually represent what we do now so i removed a reference to old language and just sort of incorporated the spirit of it by inserting a sentence that each student would develop a strong sense of honor

171integrity behave ethically and act responsibly so that's just a matter of updating some of the vernacular or some of the language page 28 um we have a section describing lockers we incorporated the school committee policy that exists just reminding students that there is a right of inspection that's granted to the school committee but also administrators we don't search lockers if we had to we would but we just wanted to incorporate you know the fact that when kids put things in lockers just a reminder that you know it really is still school property and there is if there was an issue we have a right to inspect uh in the three years of being here um we've never i i think maybe once uh had to inspect the school locker um the page 30 to 32

172some of the discipline stuff it's just a matter of updating language um uh the the chart that lists different offenses uh cheating plagiarism was absent so we included that so that it's aligned with the academic integrity policy uh there was some um on b now we removed some offenses from they they were hold over from when there was one handbook between the high school and middle school but uh up until last up until this year unfortunately kids could uh our kids could fit driving infractions uh so we removed that um i hope i think if our kids are driving it's more than an infraction it's a big issue it's a level three it's a b yeah so um and there's they also refer to counseling and we just tried to clean up some of that

173language that wasn't redundant um we sort of oh we inserted uh just language as a level one offense reminding kids that uh only water is allowed outside of the cafeteria unless there was some special situation and our kids for the most part just carry water but just to keep the school clean um dress code uh we incorporated the school committee dress code um as stated there and once again it supersedes any prior school policy there was old language the department created years ago uh the attendance policy in page 40-43 um all we're doing is incorporating the school committee policy much like um the changes that assistant principal noise had outlined previously and that's straight our school community policy um i'm on page four of this um attendance procedures it's it's uh letter b um we

174did we had language that explained how parents had to send in a written note of explanation um and there wasn't anything about an absent line so we removed the written note of explanation and we set up an uh a call line an absent line that parents can call before 1815 and reminds them that there will be a system where we will send out an automated communication if a child's absent the explanation it really just it aligns with what deer hill does i'm sure osgood does the same thing but it's going to help our sixth grade parents as they transition into cms if we have the same policies it actually also makes our main office a little bit more efficient um letter c home tutoring same thing there's language um that it exists uh per law

175language that was absent we didn't have a section on home tutoring so we wanted to make sure that we described the student services policies or practices and then lastly on page 49 we didn't have anything that really described what there is to do after school especially uh sometimes we have families thinking about moving into the district and then they go to the website and one of the things that i think they would certainly look at is the handbook and we wanted it to be reflective of sort of the rich life that we're trying to provide that's great um it's school so that's what we just want to more accurately describe life at cms they said nothing really crazy nothing it's great that's good you don't want things crazy i don't want things crazy but we

176also though we wanted to make sure because we you know what we're working on is a handbook that had been the high schools when the two schools were together we've evolved it and one of the focuses with school council this year was to make sure that it was reflective of um uh school uh school community policy that we were actually our handbook actually contained what the policies are that you guys have passed so we updated i'll return to the committee for any questions mr carr uh no i think this is um this is great so we um at our last meeting we spent a lot of time with your colleagues at the other schools and i think you will be surprised where there's a different level of parental engagement at the other schools and i'm

177sure you're aware of it so this is just something that's coming up and important to us i'm sure we'll spend more time about it but i think these are very good choices i think as you think drew you're the first line of defense when you when they come from the other schools here so that's something that's you know important it just was a very different uh document and presentation it is and you know that that idea because like i say we've we've evolved this now for a couple years but there's a school council the year before last uh or 1920 we get our cut in half because of uh colbit shut down that year we had started looking at some of the better middle schools in the state and how they present their handbook and

178i think that's going to be one of our jobs as a school council next year is to sort of look at the way it presents the way it reads and you know it principal scott's exactly right most people don't sit down and read it they only refer to it when there's an issue you know even in that case you still want to present it and make it user but also have it represent who we are as a school and i'm not sure we're there yet but um but that's like one of the goals for next year that's great yeah thank you thank you yeah well one of the things i do like it's the um collaboration that you have with the um elementary schools as well we were talking about my son about this children

179and he just thought that was awesome yeah to see that to see that in high school as well you know that that way it really gets the um the fear of going up there that you already have that role more or that mental so that's awesome thank you yeah we'd step up there last friday so the fifth graders came up and uh seventh and eighth grade student council members and eighth grade peer leaders one of whom was jack led small groups of kids well actually there are groups of like eight or ten with an adult one of the fifth grade teachers or aides we had them sort of do a tour of the school and then came back for a question and answer period that really i kind of stepped back and our eighth graders

180kind of ran that they sat on the stage they passed them like between them and he answered the questions so um yeah we're you know we take seriously the fact that we're a middle school where you know we're connected to the elementary school in the high school so i really recommend it really alice and i both have talked about the fact that in growing up we're both middle children and we get it it's all about the anxiety yes and i i would also say like what what do you think we can do to engage more parents especially when i think pso or um can i have less work can i i'm not i'm not playing the fifth but can we talk about that when we get to school improvement plan yeah because that is a

181big deal yeah yeah [Music] just the same thing that i mentioned to principal scott just i think collaborate with them to make sure that the disciplinary section of the handbook really leaves nothing to interpretation as best you can i mean as these situations arise you'll probably discover things that lead to interpretation but if we can square that away as much as possible in advance and you know provide some level of consistency for building a building um like for example one discrepancy i saw is in the alcohol the bag of control substances section um yours had a sort of nice preamble about like students shall not use or consume that by selling um that section did not appear in the high schools and this isn't the criticism for those funds i think i think i think

182it's important part of it i think that both handbook should uh exhibit that um also give thought to when you're talking about controlled substances or paraphernalia um mentioning uh any container that once contained you know whether empty or full you know so any empty vaping cartridges any emptying tobacco containers any you know any empty cigarette butts anything like that like at least it's not going to mandate disciplinary action but it'll give us the opportunity to do that if we think that that's that intervention will be necessary given the student their history and what their possession of i don't think about that but definitely collaborate on that on that portion of it to make sure that there's uniformity there it's very important when we get situations because they as you know they can be very emotional

183important that's a great suggestion thank you i really like the addition of the uh extracurriculars that just came up the other day with friends who all of us have oldest children in fifth grade and they're wondering about middle school when i was listing some things either but just nice for those of us who are you know to the middle school hey this is what's available so it's great to have it yeah yeah it's nice yeah just any time it's easy to find information it's a good thing um one question from me and this this actually may be for dr sullivan because it probably goes across the schools um the uh excused absence policy includes a litany of things that are excused one of them is illness with a note from an appropriate medical office and

184i'm curious um if that's a requirement because in this world we live in now i don't think we want to discourage people from staying home if they're possibly contagious and people might be worried about getting an unexcused absence but they may not be sick enough to go to a doctor either so i guess how do we manage that is there is there a process for people who are just staying home because they're ill but haven't gotten a medical note well so remember you're this is all about legality and providing credit or providing um and you have a number of days that someone can be absent because they're ill and not get a medical note it's not an excused absence but it's an absence but in order to excuse it that's when you go to a

185doctor to get the note it just makes it so that that we wouldn't have an egregious long-term absence that would be over eight days where we would have someone losing credit it allows someone to go and get a doctor's note to forgive that absence from a legal standpoint so is that is that is that a is that a from a legal requirement that we need to have a doctor's note for an excused absence or can we have a parent note or do we have latitude at all no no that's that interesting in reality when we put in the show they don't care whether it's excused or an excuse okay that's just an excuse okay but it allows you it's not excuse me so essentially it is for families and four students to allow them to

186potentially from a high school point of view particularly to have their student to have the students still get credit for the course got it by doing that but from a missing school you know whether you're missing school and you're homesick or you're missing school and you're homesick and you get a doctor's note from the state perspective it makes them better it's all exactly and it's because of the it's leadership um but it's the chronic absenteeism that's happening across the country so that's where this law came from some years ago but the view is to look at it is we're helping families to be able to get that experience as opposed to not allowing any exclusive true and we also part of the the this um this policy in the law is that we want to

187help families if there's a problem getting a child to school right we're just hearing about um you know how how students are school you know well avoiding and all these things are happening so yeah you know so so we're here to help and that's part of the laws in place also right so we want to keep kids we can't teach at fdc so thank you for that um no this is this is good work on the changes i have no no concerns if you want to move to the school improvement plan okay so um i did just uh wanted to share a little bit of data um they'll connect to a couple of the school improvement plan um goals the first comes from it's called the holistic student assessment we partnered with pair partnership and

188education and resilience this year i presented earlier in the year about this essentially sel survey that we had students do they completed it um third uh just about the end of september and then midwinter i think next year where i'm doing a little later in the year when we it it basically shows um strengths and challenges along a handful of dimensions the pair defines different qualities or characteristics or um skills social skills um when we present at the beginning of the year it was the greatest challenge school-wide was around what they refer to as assertiveness but it's sort of feeling comfortable enough to um you know share share your voice empowerment and we worked on a lot of different initiatives everything school-wide like reforming student council all the way down to individual practices in the

189classroom to help kids develop greater assertiveness to use pierre's term but it's really uh empowerment and a big phrase a big thread this year at cms was developing student voice and we saw overall that student voice decreased as a challenge for the number of kids who reported it but the nice thing the the exciting thing that jumped about the data was that along with that um there were a number of strengths that were developed that were connected and we saw increased the number of kids who um reported in the survey or the survey reported that they had developed or increased you know the following strengths and there were things like relationships with peers relationships with adults uh action orientation meaning uh you feel like you get agency which we talked about uh earlier in the

190year the ability to like sort of control things or affect things uh around you the ability to use critical thinking school bonding which really meant a lot to us um trust perseverance and the ability to sort of reflect on um you know the you know your job as a student your role um how you do school um so it was it was nice to see some some growth and development using this pair assessment we're going to continue it next year and it'll be kind of neat to start getting longitudinal data so that was one of the one of the pieces of data that we looked at in developing school improvement plan and then the other was the school council as one of our action items for this year's school improvement plan was to develop a

191parent survey we the school council and i developed it um yes the uh um so we collected data in february uh we had about 80 parents which was only about 25 percent uh we shared it via email and other times and newsletter um and there's a breakdown by grade and it was all it was actually pretty even between the three grades the parents that participated which i was kind of happy about it overall i would have liked to see the higher rate of participation but nonetheless i feel like because of you know the fact it was even that the data might tell us something so the first area that we looked at was family engagement and overall eighty percent of people said that they were happy with uh homeschool communication like things like emails and

192newsletters uh the next piece of family engagement teacher meetings and the question was are you satisfied or very satisfied with the number of times you meet in person with your your kids teachers and as you see most people aren't satisfied at all only only 15 yeah yeah so uh as a follow-up question um parents were asked you know the number of times that they'd like to meet in person with their child's teachers and it averaged out to be most people said two to three times over the course of the year and then uh as far as engagement we also had asked about their will or parents willingness to get involved to their interest to get involved and one out of two parents so that they would be happy to participate in fundraising so um i

193think you know the question about family engagement they came up it shows that we have families that they're happy with emails and newsletters but they want to get more uh involved personally uh you know meeting with teachers and being involved in school so i think some of the the sentiments that were expressed earlier i think are reflected in the state of uh school fit this had to do with basically how much uh how parents think about how well their child you know how well fits in cms said that cms is preparing their child for the next academic year 93 said that they their child feels a sense of belonging 88 uh the activities match their child's interest and 86 agree that their child is comfortable asking for help from adult students overall almost 90 percent

194said the teaching styles of teachers match your child's learning style so with the school council we we had a great meeting where we boiled down all this data we first got the results we kind of felt like when it came to school fit that was a really successful piece i mean engagement wasn't like it wasn't that it was unsuccessful it was data that was telling us something um as far as what we had to do better with some things school fit we were really happy with that but obviously there's still room for improvement uh next area was around learning behaviors and that these were questions that really focused on uh how the individual things that kids do to learn and their parents perceptions kind of 94 percent agree that their child is motivated to learn

195uh school curriculum 83 said that their child their children do find the assignments and lessons motivating and engaging 93 said that they kids do learn from the feedback that they receive all really good things um there's a question or a statement my child struggles to get organized for school we 80 percent of parents agree with that so it was another action item another place we realized we have some work to do because parents don't feel that their kids are um either that their kids are not uh that they don't possess the organizational skills or maybe the parents could use some help in helping kids get and stay organized at home in the school climate [Music] the same thing we found really positive numbers uh 91 said their child enjoys going to school uh 90 values

196of diversity of students backgrounds students at cms have respect for the staff and 94 said the staff have respect for the students same thing we're really you know overall really pleased with um school climate and what parents said and then the last area was around school safety and this was done once again in february but 94 said they don't worry about violence at cms bullying response it's not difficult for kids to get help from an adult if bullied cms was positive and 92 said that their child feels safe at cms once again we did this in february with you know the events in the world over the last month or two i would hazard a guess that data might look different but um in late late february early march people felt that's how they felt

197so um so as school counsel we talked about what are the next steps number one and probably most important to create more opportunities for parent-teacher connection support student development of organizational skills and then we thought you know what even though it was positive it it could only help to make sure that kids and parents have a really a much better you know an improved understanding of bullying and safety protocols overall it's just going to believe it turned out to sort of be forward thinking because i think now that's really helpful so so that was the data that we got out of student survey and what we did with it was the school council i'll stop the plug too i had a great school council uh parents barbara steppen uh katherine williams and sarah williams were

198fantastic and teachers uh gabby lima uh kathy sanjay's and uh mark eagles were the three faculty members and they did we had great meetings um we were actually kind of sad at the end of the year because uh somebody has to give up a seat so we can get a rotation with parents because we've worked uh closely now for a couple years so that's uh that's where we are with uh um the data that we looked at so can we switch over do you we'll switch over to um the school improvement plan that will lead to so uh a lot of the first few pages are really just template um you know by sharing you know the mission and vision of the school uh as well as the mcas data which is actually 21. um

199so i wanted to get right into the goals this was the same mcats data that i presented in the fall with this year's school improvement plan obviously we haven't had updated we won't have updated until later in the segment so um the first uh school improvement plan goal uh does it so much come out of the data that it really comes out of the work we've been doing over the first couple years especially coming out of the pandemic and it's really focused on you know i would describe it as we're trying to erect the scaffolding that we need to support all our kids i think deer hill does a in oscar but i i use deer hell because our kids transition in from there they do a really nice job with a reading specialist math

200interventionist they use screening uh to help identify kids that struggle and kids get support that they need there um as i came in uh in 1920 we didn't have math or reading support so our kids would you know go into the general ed classes and data as i looked at the data they would struggle a certain percentage of kids especially the kids that received that support in deer hill they struggled in a high percentage by seventh or eighth grade they were being evaluated and being put on ieps in other words they weren't addressing their needs any other way and they had demonstrated you know lack of progress so at that point if you remember a year and a half ago we started talking about we have to get the people in to build those sort

201of similar scaffolds at cms so that's background so the first goal really is that cms continue to implement implement a multi-tiered system of support and i go on to define it it's really it's evidence-based uh systematic uh systemic practices that you know are set up to respond to students academic or emotional behavioral needs um the action plan would be to support the reading specialist in identifying kids who in need of intervention using the you know implement the appropriate intervention and progress monitor while communicating with families um to the you know the the largest school committee we were able to add a math interventionist going into next year and that they would have the same sort of action plan that their their job is to help identify uh students in need of intervention implement the intervention

202and then progress monitor while communicating with parents i do have to say as an aside um really happy to announce we uh just hired our math interventionists we're really excited um um dr sullivan and dr scotland's help um and i think she's gonna be a great addition to the faculty um the next bullet under action analyze diagnostic screening data which is i ready right now and use it to inform how we support kids make sure we provide professional development and strategies to improve reading comp across all content areas when you talk about tiered support tier one the bottom of the triangle is what do we do for all kids and one of the things i think which can be really important is to work on literacy strategies for all kids so they become better readers

203and then uh with those strategies it unlocks the social studies the science curriculum the you know the foreign language it's the non-ela it's informational text reading that i would like to see our kids improve on that's what the data says within reading that's one of the places that they struggle uh across the school and then lastly develop the mtss capacity and practices to support all students specifically that would one of the one of the first goals there the mtss team is talk about uh in a tier one way tier one and probably tier two how do we support kids with organizational skills uh you know especially coming out of the pandemic i think a lot of kids maybe develop bad habits but that'll be one of the first goals is um how do we help

204all kids develop those strategies and communicate second goal is around sel and it's to implement four strategies um focusing on promoting equitable opportunities poor and social medical social emotional wellness of all students we're going to use care data again we'll see where the kids are especially with a new grade in and one grade gone see what their needs are and then really focus like we did this year um on their social emotional development um the last piece the last action bullet really is around inclusiveness which is a piece to me it's one of the same as a social emotional uh development but uh we've done a lot as a school this year around inclusivity with uh we have an inclusivity a student inclusivity group uh the faculty's committed and you know we've done we had

205a lot of great events but at times we sometimes felt like it was a little reactive and one of the things we where our goals for next year is to um look for like explore and find a program such as like no place for hate or something like that that we could try so that we could start the year with um almost an agenda for the year what do we want to do and when as opposed to reacting to unfortunate events or events that happen in the world or in the school so um that would be one of the four strategies that we're looking at but like i said the other three are based on the scl the pear data like i showed you earlier and then number four i'm sorry number three uh smart

206goal three is around parents and three new methods to develop an effective communication engagement partnerships and first bullet develop opportunities for parents and teachers to meet to discuss and support continued student growth we've talked a lot about parent conferences um if i'm not sure if we'll have them contractually or not if we do that's gonna that's really what our parents are looking for our parent conferences if we don't get them or maybe on top of parent conferences we also talked about things like grade level breakfasts so you know certain day uh of the year we could have grade six parent breakfast and the grade six teachers would be here parents would be invited to come in but it's it's a chance to sort of just get to know to have a little face time with

207um for parents with their children's teachers we're still working on more fundraising with pso especially one big event i feel like we're still missing that uh to help fund the pso and then lastly we're going to continue the parent survey that we developed this year uh net for next year so we'll drive into the student school so those are those are the three parts of the school community great thank you very much uh comments from favorite mr carr this is great um what is the current uh contractual you mentioned contractual obligation around here it means obviously uh i think there was some talk in collective bargaining around bringing like uh creating a conference we do have an executive session item uh you can comment questions already so okay great this is an excellent one thank

208you yeah and regardless i we we met on uh may 27th of early release as a faculty and that's one of the things we brainstormed is how do we how do we get more parents in here how do we spend more time face to face faculties like i've shared that data they understand that you know parents uh trust them and respect them they just want to find opportunities to meet with them and get to know them um so we brainstormed different things like the breakfasts but uh yeah thank you yeah good thank you mr carey yeah well i would say that parents are very happy with the high school that's the middle of the entire school i i would say that definitely people have told me the improvement is a hundred percent and to be

209honest with you the last survey that we did with prior to you being here it was 50 that people were happy with the school i mean patrick you were there for that definitely the um the support we received to move to an independent middle school made a difference as you would imagine it would but it made some great yeah it's night and day i mean that's that was that was the statistics we had four years ago and it screamed parents weren't happy and and i can only tell you that in my experience with talking to parents is they are extremely sculptured and to process that we're not done no i i know i know i i just want you to know that that's the that's the the community outreaches and it's and i'm glad you

210touched on the parent teacher conference because that is one huge issue that i've heard from parents and we'll bring you but thank you i really appreciate um all the information thank thank you because you're gone thank you for the presentation mr mills uh i usually take this opportunity every year to recognize you for having created a really successful school out of nothing essentially and uh i credit um dr sullivan dr scollins for having the foresight and you for executing it so well and uh it's very clear what a great job he did in the survey results themselves and i think that that's true for frankly our building principles i think we have an amazing uh voltron if you will of uh of uh you know together by your powers of fun unstoppable forces and uh

211uh we're really fortunate you know and and i mean it goes i didn't such a dumb school i mean you know we didn't have that separate entity um you know just you know over three years ago so it's like it's amazing it's remarkable the work you've done and you should be credited that publicly as an educator it speaks volumes and your abilities at this level it's a very difficult i think a pedagogical and social emotional perspective um developmental age group to work with and you are just a master of it and uh they should be commended for it mr richardson also um yeah a lot of um for that the faculty really deserves a lot of credit they're the ones the parents i'm sort of beating down the doors to see because they because they

212really do love the teachers for sure but there's you know triple down effect there and you know i mean you know sometimes you know i mean you you get burdened with and sadly with a lot of the complaints but you are also you know um you know a lot of success trickles down from the um community sense of community and the culture that you promote that you're building so thank you and i am certainly not doing anything i was saying anything to dismerge any you know qualifications or contributions to faculty but i'm really focusing on you as a building leader and and how lovely we are to have you principal scott principal on a farrell um i like the goals i'm looking at the three goals i'm curious and i understand there's contractual like negotiating

213obligations that are gonna have to happen before parent conferences can happen but and when i look at all of them together it makes sense to use a parent student teacher conference model which when i was a middle school teacher we used it was such a beautiful thing as kids are learning what does organization look like what is studying look like what is my own you know taking ownership but you know it's great for parents and teachers to check in but the student is the one who's the student yes um and i just think it's something and maybe you're already have that in mind but i just found that when i was a middle school teacher it was such a productive conversation and it allowed kids to take ownership and literally be a part of the

214conversation so as you're moving sometimes i want to commend you on the data and i also don't want to go without notice uh principal scott you're still here your data was tremendous as well i saw that those improvement numbers were wonderful we got sidetracked a little bit but i want to make sure that was recognized that's that's that's that's fantastic news uh the fact that our kids are loving coming to school that speaks volumes i don't know that my schools would have scored as highly uh when i was i'm painting this picture of a horrible elementary school it was great but um you know at 91 percent liking coming to school that's incredible so uh so excellent work so um with that unless there's any community comments or any other comments to the committee what

215i would do here is again this is a committee agenda action items so i i'd entertain a motion and once again as we did with the last one i will read a proposed motion that does not have to take this motion to take this form but uh i would propose and if i would entertain erosion proposed as follows resolve that the handbook and school improvement plan for the classic middle school is hereby approved as presented to the classic school committee so moved okay we'll give the um the saint olins as the motion uh mr mccullen has second again um and we'll just go ahead and do a roll call mr carr hi thank you all right let's recall understand hi and mr dial i with five eyes no nays maze the handbook and school of

216brooklyn are approved as presented and dr sullivan and principal mills please implement as accordingly great thank you thank you very much thank you thank you to principal mills and principal scott and principal noyes and for all your work so thank you our next agent item goes to dr leslie scollins we have some amendments that were foreshadowed i think in our last meeting from the attendance policy at pure hill and joseph osgood yeah thank you i want to apologize we have a couple bulbs that flew that's why i was wondering why it was sort of shadowy didn't know it till it get dark actually actually okay tv shows are better so we discussed this at our last meeting we hadn't really fleshed out all the language so um you saw this in both the middle and

217high school it's the same exact language we're trying to really make sure all handbooks are aligned so this is the same language that will go into the oddswood and the dear health handbooks we give their pages it would go on um and then again just aligns so that all the schools have the same language based on the school committee policy and the law great all right any questions from the committee i'll just do open floor no questions all right uh once again this is an action item so i'll entertain a motion uh again i'll propose a resolution um resolve that the amendments the dear hill school and joseph odd school handbooks are hereby approved as presented to the classic all opposed all right the motion carries unanimously uh 5-0 uh doc sullivan art scholars please

218don't let them amendments as presented thank you very much all right next agenda block is our public resources and governance and we'll turn it over to susan oh in just a moment for the budget finance report but before i do that just for the committee and people who are watching this block is has a number of screenings and a security one you know to your heart one element i wanted to emphasize for the community and the stroke of this agenda is that the school itself is very complex organization not only does it have what we just heard about with academic learning and getting the product of education of our students and caretaking of our students but it also is in very real sense a building maintenance facility we have several buildings to maintain we have

219several yards to landscape we also serve as a transportation function we serve as a transportation medium for about a thousand students we also serve food again to about over a thousand people every single day that's the size that's bigger than many restaurants um so these activities are here they will be standing agenda items so in the event there are items to report on them we can have them but also just to highlight the complexity of this this organization um so with that as an intro miss owen the floor is yours thank you so this is the um budget report for the month closing month of may um we won one month ago it i'll just give you the brief update so the school budget um has been expended at um through the school budget and

220we are actually 92 percent through the school year so we're we're in a good place um we're right where we should be we have uncovered supplies materials on purchase orders and about 712 000 remaining balance available is about 3.1 million um as of yesterday we have we have run our last um auto pay so that um the remaining balance is much less than that because our last payroll was the lump sum payroll um and it was about 2.4 2.4 million so um it ate a pretty good portion of that 3.1 um but that will be in our next in our next month spent tuitions um throughout the whole year we've been holding negative um i think we're up to like 500 minus 540 um due to the the fifth payment circuit breaker um we did

221receive it we talked about it in the last budget update um the extra extraordinary relief came in for forty nine thousand one hundred fifty seven dollars um which lowered our shortfall in our split tuitions it went from 540 to um minus 335 000. um not on the norm to be in the red the sped tuitions that's always unanticipated expenses that come through um students move into the district students move out um outplaced so we're comfortable and closely monitoring um but like i said after after running most of my payrolls yesterday were a pretty good place and then we have the individual school budgets here as you can see it lists all the schools and they're 82 81.757 so maybe 3.21 again we are closely watching our budgets um we're 95 percent through the year and

222we're still winning in the 80s which is a good sign no worries let me talk about circuit breaker a little bit um which i just mentioned so 5 by 22 will receive the fifth payment from circuit breaker due to extraordinary relief um which is a very detailed process um department you know gets kudos for um they have lots and lots of fire and lots of paperwork and details to support that um in order to qualify for extra relief the district must demonstrate that the costs that we claimed on circuit breaker in the current fiscal year exceed the costs claimed under the program the previous year by 25 percent um our district did qualify which again shows why our tuitions are um in the deficit only unanticipated so the 249 thousand 157 dollars we have to

223spend that this year we have already spent wait until the depths that go down um and hopefully next year we can do it again it's hard to interrupt you put folks watching you know can you explain a little further what circuit breaking means sure so circuit breaker is i'm not sure why they call it seventh grader i've always wanted that um but what it is it's a reimbursement state gives us for a special education tuition um there's a foundation amount that they they take the total um tuition amount say a hundred thousand dollars there's a foundation level maybe forty five thousand dollars they they subtract off that hundred thousand and then they give you um currently seventy-five percent of the remaining they they return it they refresh you those tuitions received um and that happens

224every year a good tool to have in the toolbox absolutely great thank you captain lovely um most of our projects are complete or in process idea heroes idea hill sorry a middle high school hvac system um they're still working on repeating that they're revamping the big specifications obviously prices of things have changed um so i'm not quite sure when that'll be going on probably my guess is this summer or in the fall the oscar sprinkle heads which we talked about earlier it has been completed um turf and track so um we have a kickoff meeting for the track on friday um to talk about the process and the timeline for the charitable track um the woodshop dust collect is completed the door fobs are science lab exciting is what's going to be done over the

225summer how technology everything's been ordered and will be implemented over the summer lots of projects happening over the summer um service is revamping their whole whole kitchen upstairs we're expanding to have a snack break room um in the lives of the students um the athletics department will be working on a fitness center so that's happening over the summer um there's lots of big projects happening over the summer um press box they started finally working on that no waiting till school is out and then we their next one here sorry is the next year's capital outlay um so you can see the projects that we're hoping the school bus lease is if it is a given the middle school high school paging will happen over the summer um the furniture replacement will happen over the summer

226um replacement of agent chromebooks i believe technology is already working on day hill retirement of all the classrooms will happen over the summer the field links will be upgraded or replaced over the summer the locker mechanisms the middle school and then the health of the middle school health room um we've got the ac heater split and they'll be creating a separate entrance to the bathroom just in the school bus category i believe i saw last night the board of selectmen voted to approve the procurement of the test for the electric school bus in order to approve this great pilot program lydia and i are going to summary of our electric again um a month behind just to the end of the end of april and it just shows you comparisons from last year this year

227at this time of the year um uses the job this year it's not surprised first full school year i think we've had gas very similar um costs are up not by much but just to follow along you know it's good to compare from yet a year and then we have our grants which right now we're in the spend down mode so our rsa grant um as of today has about a hundred thousand dollars in it which will be carried into next year because we have um it was a two-year grant remember so our uses for this year is complete and the rest of the 100 funding will be rolled over to next year most of these grants are in sales currently um because this last payroll has gone through um for the month of june

228so you'll see like the spin id grant the 240 grand 59 000 i think there's like about four thousand dollars left um title one i think is probably four thousand the channel 5 i believe is just about gone metco um is spent and then the american rescue for early childhood in special education um those have both also been expended revolving funds again so we're looking at some of the some of the balances so school athletic um the balance is 248 000 after we paid all of our athletic coaches for the last um this last payroll that 248 is down to about a hundred thousand dollars so um it's it's holding its all so that it's in a much better financial spot it's kindergarten as well um that one's down to about 110. transportation is down

229to like 75 as of this morning um i know these numbers you know it's showing something different but we're a month month later and then the school lunch um the 367 she's she's revamping that whole um kitchen upstairs and then we're looking into purchasing some equipment for the elementary schools to upgrade them as well so that money will definitely be reduced um obviously lunches have been subsidized by the federal government for the past two years is that do we know if that's going to continue no it's not no which is also why there's a higher value that's what i we've got 100 reimbursement on everything right um next year um [Music] the plan is that we're going to offer breakfast at the elementary schools been studying the fall um so they're working on a plan

230for that we already offer it here at the middle high school and then like i said athletic evolving lots of things happening um field lights fitness center newell department cafeteria putting in a whole new serving line new snap room transportation we did add the salt finder we rolled that out to parents in the last week we have about 30 people that have enrolled already is it live it's live there was an email yeah sorry um so great thank you so if you want to sign up you can follow follow your gps on the bus it's a great program um for the parents to see where their children are so just the conclusion you know we're coming to the end of the fiscal year i said these numbers are reflective through the end of may um

231yesterday was a big turning point for us for the last payroll coming through um we still have open purchase orders that we're going through some who can be liquidated and closed out um anything that that hasn't been delivered um that was ordered back in september october november that hasn't been delivered that we'll just close those out and wait for them to come in and pay them out of following this budget um can we oh we can go around yeah i was just saying that is that include your report um yes all right no concerns now to the uh maintenance car any questions do you find a lot of cases where people are delinquent like that you order something and it takes a lot of you and you do you may or may not get it

232is that a big category this year this year just because it's not supplied supply chain yeah um not usually usually you turn around's pretty quick no at the end at the end of um every school year we do have some purchase orders that we just liquidate one because the order didn't come through so it's no longer needed or it got the invoice came in we received the product but they didn't pay it against the purchase order um so so the invoice has been paid but the purchase order didn't reflect it so it closes we close them out and it frees up um so that's kind of where we're at the stage where right now we're calling vendors we're calling staff they have appeals um some of the appeals open right now with some uh course

233reimbursements um so we hold a placeholder for them with vo can try to pay for any habitual vendors not cooperating or they're pretty good no no they're pretty they're all pretty good i think other than you understand the supply and demand right now is the only thing i'd like to add is we did have a meeting with the finance subcommittee and happy to say that our parents and our landscaping is looking good much better we haven't yet brought the process um we've purchased the lawn mowers the leaf blowers the weed whackers um last weekend they were out here at this school doing all the courtyards also chris kennedy uh thank you to kennedy gardens did some landscaping here uh we're at the middle high school and then also i had deer hill did some extensive

234work that um for those of you who follow uh principal sullivan on twitter she tweeted about that thank you chris kennedy and catholics but yes that that's it's nice to see it's nice to see them i actually was sitting in there where i saw a couple custodians yes the other side so yep so they're going to do the front of the building courtyards this past weekend and now they're going to do the fronts and up against the buildings um because they still need some weeding and hopefully we can get some mulch and clean it up and feel better perfect thank you thank you uh could we pull up the revolving accounts for a minute of course yeah i was just wondering like i want you know what i want to ask some of the committee

235members um you know do you think we can put at some point put this on the agenda to kind of look at some of these revolving accounts because it's like um you know we do have needs to buy things that we don't have so we do have like say 33 000 in our school committee gifts uh there's just one thing there i mean we got if if by a quick map we got a couple million we have over a million dollars here involving accounts that you know i would be honest with you i've been here for four years and none of them moved and as um you had the turf project marcus in product in process or in progress class i knew we were just doing track and then we didn't get on the target

236surprise or something some development interchangeable services i'm not aware of correct um in process more you know when we went out to bid um we were awarded the bid so well we've really made it to the style of need okay so there's no changes sorry don't change the circumstances i think um mr mcclellan makes it a good point though to clarify for anybody who might be watching today tonight who wasn't here last time we because of the supply chain um we have determined that we're going to forge forward with the track which we feel pretty confident will be done by the start of the year um enough enough to make sure that we'll do it because we don't think it's going to impact sports in the fall but we do believe that we're we're not

237going to have the materials um certainly wouldn't have the materials for the church that is in time to not impede the the fall sports so we're going to hold off on the turf right until um the following year it's still safe it's still in a um you know in a position where it's in a holding pattern right now but the supply chain is just not allowing us to get it done would be basically canceling our our home season and doing it in various places correct unfortunate but understand um lastly uh the commissioner education notified all the districts that uh there's an enormous amount of unclaimed lesser funds um and he was calling upon the districts to apply for a brand for granted money to use it but wondering if you have inquired or could inquire

238as to whether or not anything else is left unclaimed there's some deadline by which it remains unclaimed we might be able to get our hands on it double dip get some of that money to better our district absolutely secondary elementary secondary school relief fund and we've spent all of our hours yeah there's a lot of money that's sweet right we have spent all of our someone is closed our essa 2 was closed all right so three we have 3 000 connections just not going to sit there right if they want it it's already been earmarked for education if they say look by a certain date yeah we're going to open it back up say well we're first we want to be first in line or we want to you know get promo seats for that

239show and uh something i mean you know and it's like you know it's it's it doesn't matter if it's closed this or one doesn't matter to see what whatever it is yeah whatever i'm sure there's a good answer for it but maybe not you never know i'm gonna email tomorrow they can always you know they can say no at this point that's still early on but sure we can ask keep an eye on that because it was it was a ton the only other thing that i didn't mention is i know um athletic director tandy is um working on who i don't know if it's boosters but donations um and he's pretty confident that this is new on this week that we because the girls softball team doesn't work with the boys baseball team no

240good deacons on punishment but that's the fight for another night probably yeah there's not gonna be a scoreboard until they all tell you that no football teams superseded girls take though it happened to milton they got a picture of the boys baseball team baseball field so right in the patriot ledger mint girl softball fields weeds everywhere i just don't want that to happen to us so so thank you miss owen for that for that update actually if you would not mind passing on that concern to mr retunding um but we want to do wallets we want to make sure that we thought about how to do that maybe start with the girl system start with the girls the further further comics questions yeah um all right and uh and nothing from me except for thank

241you miss owen appreciate your budget finance um this is the point of the agenda where we start rapidly picking up clip uh on the pace so uh moving forward buildings at school properties some of what we talked about here with the end of that agenda item but there's nothing to date transportation i don't believe there's any updates there from uh that have not already been discussed um food service mr keaney i just want to point out that is an agenda item that we can fill in during the during the time period if we have dinner items put in there i don't believe we do now report from the school facilities committee this is the kind of new building committee on mr mcclellan i believe you are our representative to the school facilities committee meeting next

242tuesday next tuesday um any action items or needs from the school committee no excellent uh and then the last one report for budget and resources subcommittee is impossible because that has not yet been created so that is a deleted agenda item so that include that concludes item f uh img um any reports from ours this is our community relations and communications section and this is where for this meeting we will do any subcommittee or liaison reports uh and i will go around mr carr i don't believe you've uh joined any committees yet because you're new to the school committee so i'll start with uh mr kearney do you have anything from our yeah i would just say that um some of the things that we need to talk about pretty soon is being liaisons to

243the middle school and the high school in the um student councils um school council school concepts so we have to kind of assign that that's that's all that that is on our that's actually the next next agenda item oh it is but uh but given the hour yes that is on on the agenda um thank you mr committee on subcommittee updates um superintendent eval uh we are required to refine the summative evaluation superintendent year's end i requested this uh back when i had security clearance and uh i received only one response so please get that to me so that i can create a comprehensive collaborative summative evaluation of our superintendent who works hard all year round and deserves one fair point we will take your gentleman um so moving on to the dividend of age

244which is school committee governance um i was going to propose that we discussed at this meeting the um school committee's subcommittee constitution and assignments for next year uh as well as the liaison assignments but right now will fill out the committee in the late hour if we want to push this to a future agenda item and then also include the existing assignments and committee structures in the materials so that they are available viewed and thought about in advance and also i will have a proposal on restructuring some of the subcommittees which i can also include for the july meeting if i hear no objection to that then we will table these agenda items i'll make a motion of that effect okay so we have a motion table agenda items it is second to none none

245so that motion carries these um these agenda items are effectively tabled uh there are no topics not reasonably invisible to the chair there's a very short gift which i can share if you want to please okay let me share that and you want um introduce them sure so we received a gift from um it was for the brian built scholarship which is the swim um this this one clone was one group um fifty dollars from janet and frank acosta and 150 from helen and tom daley for a total of two hundred dollars and it was donated for the brian building scholarship which is maintained here at the school um currently there's 926.66 in that account and these checks will bring the total up to 1126.66 and it goes towards um still thomas one team yeah

246and it's this these are senior awards for our seniors and just want to be just want to mention we're very thankful to you for this generous donation to keep this important scholarship going any community comments open forum emotional except not i'll entertain motion to accept second second mr carr all in favor aye opposed on a motion united securities thank you very much um mr mr daley and mr mrs acosta for your generous contribution to the uh brian k building scholarship thank you thank you um for that that concludes the topic's not reasonably anticipated we do have some minutes to approve uh the minutes were included the materials have people had time to review the minutes if you've had time to review the minutes what i might do is entertain a motion to approve unless there

247are any comments but first i'll open for any comments for the minutes mr car none of these minutes have included sessions of what you're attending so um so fine um in that case we'll break that up into two resolutions um the first resolution i would entertain is a resolution resolving that the minutes from my march 2nd 2022 meeting march 14 2022 meeting march 30th 2022 meeting and april 13th 2022 meeting of the asset school committee are hereby approved as presented to the classic school committee so motion is made by mr mccullen do i have a second second by mid st onge uh all in favor mr carr aye um one abstention no nays the minutes are approved by a vote of four with one abstention uh i'll next entertain a motion to approve the minutes

248of the june 8th meeting that the minutes of the june 8th meeting are here by prudence remember presented to the classic school committee motion is made by this car motion seconded by chairman chairman collins yeah um by mr robertson [Music] the minutes are there hereby approve uh so we have five sets of minutes approved we'll now move into our next agenda item for people at home we are going into executive session for what is known as reason number three which is the discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining i'm going to entertain emotion with that effect mr uh my uh chairperson i do uh add reason number four which is the discussion of deployment security personnel and measures of strategy there too i have one brief point that i want to discuss so i want

249to mention that no possession so yes we'll then we will also have to move forward number four which is matters of security um we will come back into open session but we will just do it to adjourn so you will miss nothing if you uh log off now um with that i will entertain emotions movement to executive sessions which is made by mr mcclellan second it's not a motion to segregated by ms st onge uh all in favor o um mr carr aye mr kieran aye mr mccullough aye mr smigiel aye and mr dylan i uh we will now move into executive session uh thank you very much i think we will turn off yeah we will just come back in person yes we'll just call that turn off our machines thank you very much

250everyone in public