Acton - Boxborough Regional School Committee Meeting 9/3/2020

001Good evening everyone. Noting the hour and the presence of a quorum, I call the Acton-Boxborough Regional School Committee to order. This meeting is being conducted both in person and remotely via Zoom webinar per our remote participation policy, BEDJA. The following members are participating via Zoom. Kira Cook, Ginny Kremer, Nora Schein, Angie So, and Yevon Wang. The following members are in the auditorium with me, Evelyn Abaya-Isa, Diane Baum, Adam Klein, and John Peterson. Amy Christian-Murthy is absent. Public participation is possible via the Zoom link or call-in phone number. Our school committee meetings are also live-streamed on Acton TV's YouTube channel, although public participation is not possible with that option. The links and phone number are found on the posted agenda on the abschools.org calendar. This meeting is also being recorded and will be posted on Acton

002TV's website at actontv.org. I will note that we do not use the chat feature, so if you have a question, please raise your hand. Per our remote policy, all votes will be done by roll call. I will call each member's name and they will state how they vote. Thank you for joining us. All right, welcome back, everyone. It's only been a week. I counted. This is our sixth meeting since July. So that's a lot. And school hasn't started yet. I don't know. I have nothing to share. It's been a busy week with assignments and schedules and everything else. So is the time for public participation? I have a point of order. Oh, okay. The school committee has failed to thank the chair for her service over the last year. And that service has indeed been

003a yeoman's duty. So it's my honor to, on behalf of the committee, say thank you, Tessa. And just as a reminder to everybody, obviously everyone on the school committee works hard to try and understand things that are going on that are related to the schools. The chair has a special burden to really actually try and understand every one of those things and then organize meetings so that we have the opportunity to discuss those issues which are most critical. No one could be chair, of course, without the support of their friends and family. So in addition to thanking you, Tessa, I would like to thank all of that extended group which makes your participation in this possible. And then Beth obviously helped us arrange a gift, and she admonished us. She said, you know, you've got

004to be careful if you're going to give things of monetary value. But for you, Tessa, I offer today's Daily Zen. A man is known by the silence he keeps. Well, thank you, John. That is incredibly appreciated. And your daily zens are so often like really, really good for the moment, which is surprising. But I do enjoy when you share them with us because they're often on point. So thank you. Thank you, everyone. I really appreciate it. And, you know, it is a big job and it is a time-consuming job, but I secretly enjoy parts of it. I will say the last couple weeks have not been those parts. Here we are, and hopefully as everyone gets more information, they're settling into the reality of what the school year will be for each one of us,

005and that that is bringing some peace and alleviating some of the anxiety. So with that, I will open it up to public participation. Please use the hand-raise feature to participate, not the chat. According to our policy BEDH, members of the public may speak for up to three minutes on items not included on this agenda. Comments regarding items that are on the agenda should be made during that part of the meeting. Typically, the committee and the administration will not respond to comments during public participation. Is there anyone that would like to participate? Adam says he doesn't see anyone, so I'm going to go with that. And with that, I will hand it over to Peter for your superintendent's update. all right thank you tessa and i would just echo john's sentiments of thanks um we have

006spent a lot of time together it's particularly this spring and summer but thank you for all of your ongoing support I have a few items to update you on, and for committee members, I did send this out to you a little earlier tonight. And just so you know the process, I do take these superintendent updates now that we're back into the school year. And whatever I update you on the next day, it goes out to all of our families across the district so that they get the same information. So, you know, first I just want to recognize the high school, but I also want to recognize all of our educators, students, and families. As you may have read recently, the Acton-Boxborough Regional High School is recognized as the top high school in the area by

007Boston Magazine. I think it's important to recognize our students' educational outcomes are a pre-K through 12 effort, and are the result of our students' efforts, our educators' work, and our families' support in providing opportunities for them. I don't personally believe that any ranking is an all-encompassing measure of the success of a district, so John, that will not be our metric, but it is a nice recognition of the community's value for education. I also hope this affirms our values of wellness, equity, and engagement, as well as the changes the district has made over the last several years to help students achieve better balance, along with the idea that healthy, engaged, and well-balanced students can also achieve at high levels. Next item is Assistant Superintendent Don Bentley and I had an opportunity last week to facilitate our

008first meeting of the district's diversity, equity, and inclusion family advisory group since we shut down in March. The meeting was attended by about 25 family members. At the meeting, we proposed and the group decided to elect a co-chair from among the families, so it's a shared... responsibility for running that parent advisory group and we also brainstormed ideas about areas the group would like to focus on this year and so we really came to an agreement on five areas that we want to focus the group's time and energy one is around hiring processes and practices another is around the anti-bias education for our staff and administration A third area was district curriculum, which included not only a focus on integrating anti-bias, anti-racist education into the traditional curriculum areas like math and science and history, but also

009really looking at the specific anti-bias, anti-racist curriculum that we want our kids to have as they progress through our grades. And then we also wanted to take a look at family community outreach opportunities and as well as education opportunities for families across the district. And then finally school and police interactions. The group decided to meet as a full group approximately every six weeks with the meetings of the working groups focused on each of those areas to take place in between the full meetings of the group. We do anticipate the group. I do want to thank Kira because she helped us brainstorm some ideas prior to the meeting. But I think generally the feedback we received from some of the families after they felt it was a productive meeting that allowed some work to get moving.

010I have some really exciting updates from food services. I don't know if you've followed the news, but the USDA actually extended their food program for students. And I'm not going to read the whole update, but we will be sending it to families tomorrow. But the exciting news about that is because the USDA has extended their program, we'll be providing free meals. regardless of need. So school lunch will not cost anyone any money. That's at least through December 31st. And then after that, we have to wait and see what the program gets continued. But that's really exciting news. And that applies to our in-person students as well as our fully remote students. And we'll be sending more details out tomorrow to families, but it's great, exciting news. Also, we give families an option at the end

011of their time here if they have a positive lunch account balance to donate that back. the district and so because of that and the generosity of our departing seniors and their families we've actually been able to zero out any student in the district who had a negative lunch account bounce so everyone is starting back at zero again and that's a real positive so great news on that front I also you know I think Steve Martin's here in the audience and if you'd like I can have him come up and say a few words but he has been working tirelessly throughout the summer to work with all of respond to the state guidance and provide our student athletes an opportunity to return to play safely. I do want to just share a few highlights of that.

012So as you recall last time I noted that there were different categories of play where some sports were categorized as high risk. Those are going to need to wait a little while before we get to them. But others were either low or moderate risk sports based on the level of contact. So the sports that ended up being low and moderate risk for the fall. were golf, cross country, soccer, and field hockey. Some of the sports like soccer and field hockey, because they were more moderate risk, have significant, significant rule changes, minimize the contact between players on the field, and so our athletes will have to adapt to that, but we will be offering fall competition for those four sports. Unfortunately, though, due to a lack of teams to compete with, we are not able to

013offer junior high school athletics. There simply is no one in the league offering it, and so it doesn't become a viable sport at that point. But we will revisit junior high athletics for the winter season. There are some space restrictions that we all have because of the need for space within our schools, and other schools that we would normally compete against in volleyball are now using their gymnasiums where they'd normally afford things like lunch. And because of that, the volleyball season, is going to have to be moved later into the school year, as well as football, girls swim and dive, and cheerleading. So some of those sports right there are going to have to wait a little while. And again, there are a number of districts that are just not opening their pools at this

014point. Other uses in gyms and space constraints. So scheduling is a real challenge to try and get anything. And if we don't have places to go play, we can't run a sport. We certainly will be taking a look at all of our cleaning practices inside and outside for our facilities. We will arrive at practicing games fully dry. That is a change from past practice between maintaining safety and it's just not viable. It's certainly a significant restriction on athletes, but it does at least allow us to get the seasons into the best of our ability. I mentioned that a lot of them will have rule changes. We are also limiting travel outside of communities to one time a week. The varsity teams will play at the same school on both Wednesdays and Saturdays. So the way

015it's designed is you're only playing one other town, and all of your sports are playing against that town on the same week. And then you play on Wednesday and Saturday, so you kind of play the same team twice in a row. The lower level squads, the JV squads, actually won't play twice a week. They only play one game a week, and that's on Saturdays. We have been working with the town of Acton in terms of reserving space, and last I talked to Steve, there is a conflict on Saturdays with cross-country, so it's likely we'll have to do our cross-country meets here on Fridays so that we can get, I believe it's NARA is where we hold those. There's no high-fives anymore. That's gone. You cannot spit at players, but I don't think I have to

016elaborate too much on that. You know, one real restriction, and I'm a parent of a high school athlete myself, and I love going to games, but one of the challenges is the state requirements are that we can have no more than 50 spectators at an event, and that includes both teams. So we are really trying to limit the number of spectators, and unfortunately, once we hit 50, we cannot allow anyone else in. But that also means we need all of our families to work with us, just because we can't limit it at 50. inside, that doesn't mean we can have 150 lined up along the fence outside either. It really does mean that there are 50 spectators allowed. So just please be aware of that. I believe Steve is looking at some opportunities of maybe

017live streaming events so that people could. Those are the big ones. You know, we'll send out the information. Steve, I think, was going to send out a letter either today or tomorrow to athletes. And we'll be sending out this update as well. I don't know if, you know, Steve, feel free to. raise your hand as a participant if you have anything else you wanted to add to that. I'm not giving Adam that kind of power. Steve should be joining us as a panelist momentarily. Hi, Steve. Oh, you're muted. I'm glad we got that. No, the spitting was just no spitting at all, like on the ground or anything like that. So they weren't going to spit at each other. So that was one thing I wanted to say. And I just wanted to be here

018if you guys had questions. I'm happy to pause the update in case you have questions for Steve because I know athletics is a big... Diane, go ahead. I just wondered why the girls diving was something that had to be postponed. So we only have one other team in our league right now, and that's Boston Latin. They're not participating in girls dive because they're not going back to school. And then all the other schools are limited to league games only. So there's no other league games, no other teams that would play us because they can only play within their league. So when we move it to the fall two season, the schools in the DCL have boys and girls co-ed swimming, but they're going to have to switch that because they can't because of the limited

019on the number of kids who can swim in a pool. So they're going to have to split the girls and boys swimming. So we'll actually have more league teams to play against moving it to the fall two season. And Steve, when does the fall two season start? February 22nd. So that's really kind of the next date. You know, just one thing to highlight what Steve said. One of the challenges of the state guidance is if a school district becomes a red district based on that state map that they publish, you are not allowed to participate in athletics per the governor's order. So, you know, if a district turns red, you're automatically shut down from athletics at the state level and you're not allowed to participate that season. Even if you become green or something after,

020you're pretty much shut down for the season. And then they'll reevaluate at the end of each season. So, you know, that is a challenge for some of the urban locations that we would traditionally play. And it's a fear that I know, you know, hearing the superintendents and athletic directors and principals talk the other day, that's something that everyone's kind of watching because they know it's kind of an instant you're shut down. But that's not a local decision. That truly is a state decision. All right. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, guys. Evelyn, do you have a question? I'm sorry. Peter, for your update, I just wanted to go back to the free meals. Sure. I just want to make sure that kids that want seconds, it's important to some kids, are going to get it, given

021that it's a free meal, that we're going to put in place practices and procedures not to limit kids that want, because when kids are paying for their meal, they can go for seconds, right? So are we going to ensure that kids are full? and kids that don't have it are home to eat and we just don't want to restrict them because the meal is free. Yeah, we could certainly look at that. That's not something we had thought of, to be honest, so that's a great point on that, but we'll take a look. Marie, can you connect with Kirsten on that? Can I just add, sorry, it's breakfast and lunch are free for any student until further notice. Breakfast and lunch are free. other things but not quite as long. So we created a blue and

022gold cohort calendar which is now published on the Return to School Transition site and you know we know you know students in the remote program have a pretty consistent schedule but students in the hybrid schedule have to kind of keep track of days. and so that is now published for the year on the transition to school website i do want to thank andrew shen because he had developed that for the junior high school originally with their rotation but i removed the junior high rotation and i also added some information about weather and things like that you know the the piece that i do want to highlight for everyone though you know we have a number of planned holidays that come up throughout the year where it's either a monday or a thursday or but You

023know, we all know holidays kind of disproportionately impact Mondays. And in the hybrid schedule, we were really concerned about the loss of in-person time that that could have over the course of the year, plus all the other interruptions that can happen for unplanned events. So for the planned holidays only, if they fall on a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, or a Friday, what we'll actually do is that week we will not have kind of our Wednesday typical early release schedule. but the day that would have lost in-person instruction will now come in on the Wednesday. And so for that reason, we wanted to publish a calendar for the year so families can plan for that. You know, in the event we have an unplanned synchronous day, we really can't change a week around on the fly for

024families because, you know, I don't know too many families in the world who could all of a sudden drop off a hat and say, oh, if I can't come in Monday, don't worry, it's just too much shifting around, including for our own staff like bus drivers who may not be working on Wednesdays. So it's really just for those hand days we are coming into school on the Wednesday. You know, the other piece, and I just want to keep highlighting this because we are using a heat metric in our schools now in addition to typical weather, snow days. The heat metric was put into place because as we looked at all the research around masks, efficacy of masks, what we learned is if you don't wear them, there was a virus. Schools intentionally relaxed their mask

025requirements, and then they ended up with an outbreak. So it conditions that and so if we'd index the tools that don't so if schools have air conditioning where to continue to bring the students in but for the schools that don't have air conditioning they would end up being remote that day it's a little confusing but that was a really important piece to make sure that everyone the other thing that we had really looked at with all of the changes to the school calendar and I know I received John I received some feedback from you on that you know just some concern around the idea of not having traditional snow days and adding them. But we did end up deciding to, if we have a snow day or a weather day, we will just have everyone

026go synchronous at that point. And then finally, just public health update, because I think it's important we keep mentioning this, but I did pull the data for Expo again yesterday afternoon. We've published our new weekly report as of today, and the procedure that we have essentially is every Thursday. Don and I and one of our school nurses, Joanne Chadwick, actually meet with both departments in Acton and Boxborough. We have a discussion about processes, procedures, make sure we're on the same page about all our protocols on our website. So the September 3rd report is now up. We are still very favorable for in-person learning. Acton is still categorized as green, and Boxborough is unshaded, or I think the new term is going to be for that unshaded category. I think they're changing the name again. did

027add a page on our transition website solely dedicated to public health information and know how to access that easily. So I did include the links in the update that will go to. the families tomorrow. And then, you know, the list of upcoming dates is getting shorter of when we're releasing information. All of our class placements, junior high team placements, and high school schedules have now gone out to families. So a lot of kudos to everyone in the buildings who contributed to getting those ready. That was a monumental task. September 8th is the release of bus routes and assignments. That's next Tuesday, right after Labor Day. And then September 14th is our first day of school, and that is a blue. That's it. Everyone. Pivot from in-person to online classes. Whoever the students have on a

028daily basis. So if they are in the remote program, they would just stay with the remote teacher. And if they're in any of the in-person classrooms, the in-person classroom goes remote for the day. One piece, one small advantage to some of that, and if we do go remote, it actually provides an opportunity to have all students experience synchronous education on the days we go remote rather than in the hybrid schedule with every other. So, you know, everything we've done this year is about tradeoffs. Recognizing the challenges, we also want to recognize that there can be some benefits too. Angie? Continue the snow day question, just clarify. So if it's snow day, then the in-person remote learning, how about some classes elective that needs to be in person? So that would be canceled or that would

029work? I'm not sure. Could you just restate that one more time? I'm not sure I followed it. So my understanding, if a snow day falls on a day that's in person, it becomes a remote burning day. Is that how it works? Yes. Okay. So then if some of the classes, say a lab or something, it cannot be remote, would that be makeup or how would that work? Oh, yeah. Yeah, if there was something that teachers wanted to do in person, they would make it up the next time they have students. But they would still teach remotely that day. So if there's a snow day or a heat day, the teacher will teach the class remotely. Let's say it's a science class. They will teach science remotely. They just won't do the lab that day. They'll

030do that a different day. Okay. I can also add that we do have tools. There are simulations. There are different tools that even the science teachers will be using, even in their classrooms, that can also translate into a remote learning environment. And so there's lots of flexibility in how they can teach remotely on those snow days. So we have no snow days? Correct. Okay. But if you recall, my contract says that there are no snow days in Acton or Boxborough while I'm superintendent. We've discussed that before. Okay. Folks are asking that we're not offering the same level of classes or amount of classes on the remote side of things. If a teacher was teaching in person, is there opportunity for the teacher to live stream that class to students that want to participate in that

031class but are not going to get that opportunity if they went fully remote? So could you clarify that, why we can't do that, why there's a restriction to that? Sure. You know, I think, and there are some districts who are doing this. We have had a lot of conversation about that. And, you know, and I've had an opportunity to teach remotely. I've run, you know, remote programs before myself. And I can actually fairly confidently say there's a different pedagogy. to effective instruction when you're in person with students and a different pedagogy to when you are working remotely with students. You know, it's one thing to just turn a camera on and have students watch it, but a lot of good instruction is not about the teacher just lecturing for 45 minutes. The teacher might talk

032for small periods of time, but there's breakout groups that happen in classrooms. The students are doing a lot of the discussion. And in all honesty, none of that would get picked up or be accessible to students who are just screaming into a room. We also feel like, you know, we need to make the most of the time that students have with kids in front of them. And if a teacher is trying to compromise their instructional practices to half meet the needs of the students online and half meet the needs of the students in front of them, they're really not effective at doing anything. And we talk to our teachers a lot about that and have conversations. But we want to make sure that the teachers are really highly effective with the students who are in

033front of them on any given day, and that's why we ended up making that decision. I understand that, but what I keep hearing is if the school committee can do this, we're doing a hybrid, right? Yeah. folks that are home. I know that there are restrictions to doing that, but folks in the community are watching us. Some of us are here in the room. I keep hearing folks coming up to me and saying, if you guys can do it, why are you not doing it? Why can't we do this for the game? So I just want us to, I sort of have information that I understand why we can, but I think that we need to explain this to the community to understand. So, Evelyn, I want to just speak to that a little bit.

034I'm clearly not delivering content as the chair of the school committee, and this is unbelievably exhausting to do this for an hour and a half. To be able to look and make sure that there aren't questions on the remote screen, I mean, it's exactly why Adam offered to help me, because it's exhausting. I can't even tell you what I was feeling like after meetings where I was having to screen and look at the participants. not only the list of participants, but the people that are on the screen to make sure no one's raising their hand, that no one has a question, that I've then scanned the room and made sure that no one has a question or has something to contribute or anything else. And I think that, at least from my perspective, and like

035I said, I'm not delivering content. I'm not a teacher. I'm not trying to make sure that you learned whatever it is that we talked about. But I just think it's a really different format from what... a classroom looks like and the kind of teaching that goes on. So that's just my personal perspective as someone who's running a meeting here. It's really hard to do in person and via Zoom. And I understand that this is what this is going to be like all year because it enables our community to attend our meetings, which I think is really important. As the person running it, it's way more tiring and draining. I think I'm as good at doing my job because I can't, it's hard to read the room and read the people. on the screens. I mean,

036you just can't see everybody the same way on a screen. And it does make it different when... And I would just wonder what Tessa talked about, and that's with three of us actually managing the online environment. You know, Tessa's running the meeting, I'm running Zoom, but Adam's running participation. It is, I actually think that would be really challenging for someone to pull off effectively. I hear you, but I take the point to clarifying the reasoning for community. And I understand because, you know, we all run Zoom meetings on a daily basis. And, you know, with the waiting room, making sure that somebody is not in the waiting room waiting to get in. But this is what we're hearing from the community. And folks would say something like, why don't we have somebody like an adult?

037Like, why don't we have an assistant in the classroom that is scanning and making sure that they. the teachers looking around, and I just want us to be able to address them. Because I know it's easier said than done, but these are questions that are being raised in the community because people are feeling like they're not getting their kids and, again, the same opportunities as they would get if they were in person. And, you know, it's a matter of choice, but also people are feeling like, well, if we can have Adam and Peter sitting down scouting in the school district, then there could be... Maybe Dave will tell us there's monetary constraints that we cannot hire more people to do that, but I think that's the message that we have to echo and folks understand

038that there are restrictions that bar us from doing that. Yeah. Yeben? Thank you, Tessa. So just follow up. Peter's just mentioning we need three people, three persons to coordinate during the school committee meeting. That's small, actually. So how many teachers are teaching assistants in the remote learning classroom? Do you plan to put? That's a great question. We're actually going to go into detail in that in a little bit, if that's okay. Sure. Marie has actually a whole presentation on it. Okay. Thank you. I'm looking forward to it. Sure. Okay. I don't think I see anyone else with their hands raised. So do we want to move to the first presentation? Sounds good. the opportunity to share with you our approach to teaching and learning and transitioning back to the school year. Peter, in advance, thanks.

039The first thing we're going to do is just start with a quick overview. I think it's important to set the expectations that we have for the district. The most defining feature we know coming up for this next school year is uncertainty. We have been sharing with our staff the need for all of us to embrace a mindset of flexibility and agility, but that also has to be met with an organizational structure that allows for and supports innovation and adaptation close to the ground. And what we mean by that is at the educator and at the student level so that we can meet our students' needs. First, it's important to explicitly acknowledge that in order to meet our students' needs, At this particular time, our teaching and our learning is going to look differently and it's

040going to feel very differently. But moreover, we are committed to supporting each other in our learning of new pedagogy and methodologies. And second, there are elements for learning that are required in any mode, whether in person, hybrid, or remote. How we meet them is just going to need to be operationalized differently. We're all still figuring this out. As we read the literature and the news, we know that along with every other educator in the world, we're actually in the midst of compiling a brand new body of knowledge about how to teach, how to design engaging and effective learning opportunities for students. So while we'll be trying new approaches and employing different pedagogy, we also know that the following elements are required for learning, and they need to be central to all of our planning. So

041the first one, of course, is relationships. And as they say in real estate, location, location, location, it's the same in education, except it's all about relationships. The second is building a caring, warm, and welcoming environment and building that sense of community. Purpose and clarity. Students need to know why they're learning, and they need to know what they're learning. We need to make sure that everything that we use is accessible for our learners, making sure that the materials are inclusive, our pedagogy is inclusive, as well as culturally responsive. And we need to make sure that we develop a sense of agency for students, and this can be done through meaningful feedback and by providing them choice. So as we enter the 2021 school year, we need to consider how our plans and instruction must be modified

042or enhanced. in order to meet the needs of this current moment while holding true to our core values wellness equity and engagement and keeping that at the center of our work and our decision making a sub sub working group of the summer of 13 educators school and building leaders created a comprehensive document that has been shared with all of our staff and in this document we identified five core design elements that will require special attention during this period So the core design elements, components, maintain a focus on equity. The second is to revise the sheer scope and sequence to emphasize the critical learning standards, to strategically address unfinished teaching and learning, to focus on student engagement and collaboration, and to provide useful and frequent feedback for students for their learning. So the first design component,

043and I'll take each one in order, is to maintain a strong focus on equity. As we begin to imagine and then design what the 2020-21 school year will look like and feel like for our students, it's critical that we do so through the lenses of inclusivity, equity, and anti-racism. These values must be anchors for our work to be student-centered and for our classrooms, whether virtual or concrete, to be spaces that value and honor our students' identities and the strengths they bring with them. I was talking with one of our elementary principals the other day. and how important it's going to be for us to recognize and to actively look for different strengths that our students may bring back to school with them because of their experiences through March. We know there are going to be

044some challenges and ways that we need to support our students and families right now more than ever, but we don't want to lose the opportunity to affirm our students' strengths as they transition. The second design component is to revise the sheer scope and sequence to emphasize critical learning standards. So regardless of the learning mode, this school year is going to offer far less instructional time than an ordinary year due to the many accommodations needed for health and safety. In addition, students and teachers need to be mindful of unfinished learning from the last school year that may make current grade-level learning less accessible for students. So as a result, teachers need to revise their scope and sequence to prioritize key grade-level content, concepts, and skills. and to build what we're calling just-in-time and just-enough instruction of

045prerequisite content when essential. This work is best done collaboratively within departments and grade levels. For the elementary schools, district-wide K-6 curriculum overviews will indicate the critical standards by grade and discipline so that all teachers and principals will be working off the same document. A portion, so just to give you a sense of what that could look like. I just did a snapshot of second grade mathematics. And what you can see there is it's been highlighted which sections of which units are the major work of the grade. This was done for, of course, illustrative math and also investigations, the two programs we'll be using this year. But this was done for all grades and for all disciplines so that we are all working off of the same information. The third design component. is to strategically address

046the unfinished teaching and learning. So first, some definitions. Unfinished learning refers to the material or learning that not all students have mastered, whether previously taught or not. It replaces words like gap or weakness because it demonstrates the potential for growth and learning, a growth mindset rather than a deficit mindset, and is an important step towards supporting every student. Unfinished teaching places a responsibility on educators and school and district leaders to provide the necessary materials and resources, instruction, assessment, and decisions to create environments where every student has a chance to succeed. So we've done the big picture thinking. We're prioritizing the key concepts, content, and skills for disciplines in the course. And so now what needs to happen is the process is to identify the main concepts, content, and skills for the very next. upcoming unit

047of instruction. So for example, what is the very next science investigation students will be conducting or the next historical period they'll be analyzing. And then we need to determine what those prerequisite skills are and to assess our students' understanding of those prerequisites so they can access grade level content. So in order to do that, we will employ the use of a combination of universal screening tools in grades K through eight. classroom-based measures, and formative assessments directly aligned with upcoming learning to aid us in addressing students' unfinished learning. Ideally, teachers will begin the year using the types of informal formative assessments they've always used to determine students' understanding, such as looking at student work and observing students. The types of formal screening done with these universal screeners would begin once teachers have had an opportunity to

048build some relationships with students. and have supported the social-emotional learning of students. Just a little background on universal screenings. They are systematic assessment of all students and academics. It's used for English language arts and for mathematics and also social-emotional learning, which we'll speak to a little bit later. The purpose is to take stock of students' achievements and areas where students may require support that varies in terms of level, intensity, and duration. Simply, given the new constraints for interaction with students, these brief, whole-class administered assessments will help us know students who may need further assessment or support due to any combination of spring learning loss, lack of engagement during the spring, and regular summer loss. So you can see for kindergarten, we'll be using the early bird assessment, which is the one that we helped pilot.

049last year. Unfortunately, their work in Boston got pushed out a little bit too, so it won't be ready until very early in November. So in the meantime, we'll start with our own kindergarten literacy assessment. For mathematics in kindergarten, we'll be using some selected mathematics probes. For grades one through six, for both literacy and for mathematics, we'll be using the iReady assessment, and that is a digital assessment. So whether students are remote or in person, they'll be able to all take the same assessment. Our reading specialists have identified Lexia Rapid to use throughout the district. Grade 7 and 8 will be using iReady for literacy, and again the reading specialists for Lexia Rapid assessment, and then for mathematics, iExcel, which is one that they started last year. The universal screener is designed to help us identify

050who might need extra support, but it's not designed to tell us what exactly the support should look like. So once our educators have the results, we are asking them to collaborate with their colleagues during scheduled times, such as grade or department-level collaboration, to have conversations with their building-based administrators, or to engage in a student-centered coaching cycle at the elementary level in order to brainstorm instructional strategies and supports that can, again, differ by opportunity, time, and influence. For disciplines or grades other than English Language Arts or Mathematics K-8, To identify the critical concepts, knowledge, and skills for that discipline, classroom-based measures may be used to know students who may need further assessment or support. So, for example, working with the high school English educators will assess students' levels of proficiency in the prerequisite core standards, reading

051and writing, literature and language, with departmentally developed text responses. To complete these common assessments, students will actively read and annotate a short text. and then respond to a prompt about that text with a valid claim and strong and thorough evidence to support their analysis. The students' work will be assessed with the English department's common rubrics, which are based on the Massachusetts English Language Arts and Literacy Curriculum Framework. Formative assessments is the last piece that we'll be using, and these are mini-assessments that we'll use on the prerequisite skills that have been identified so that students can access the next unit. Investigation, text read, whatever the next unit is. They will also enable educators to determine that just-in-time and just-right learning students need to access. The fourth core design element is to focus on student engagement and

052collaboration. While we know educators will need to use specific digital tools to support student learning and engagement, the tools are not the focus. There are three different types of engagement. There's behavioral engagement, which is students' observable academic actions, including participation and task completion. Cognitive engagement, which has to do with the deeper psychological commitment students make in their learning. And emotional engagement, the personal or affective investment students make in school. What we've been stressing with our educators is that we need to focus on the cognitive and the emotional engagement. Because if we do that, along with it will come the behavioral engagement. And so this is a change, but it's really important that these are the two areas that we focus on. Making those connections with our students and making sure that they feel challenged and

053cognitively engaged. And we can do this by using open tasks, which encourage students to think in more than one way or to consider multiple perspectives. Understanding tasks, which help students develop deeper understanding of individual topics by asking them to make connections between them. And with problem-solving tasks, which involve creating tasks that challenge students to try their ideas out on their own rather than telling them what to do first. Educators can also schedule to promote engagement. So, for example, live sessions, as we've been stressing, should be prioritized for what has to be taught live. and for student-to-student, student-teacher, and teacher-to-student interactions. They can also design weekly schedules with clear expectations of what the tasks need to be completed before and after a live session. They also need to include learning intentions, success criteria, and assessment information.

054And lastly, designing ways to provide families with access to the information and instructions, including expectations, timelines, and due dates that will enable them to work with their children if they need that additional adult guidance. The last design component is to provide useful and frequent student feedback for their learning. Feedback drives learning and allows students to adapt and adjust their learning in order to reach a desired outcome and informs instruction for teachers. Feedback, though, depends on a positive relationship between the teacher and students and a climate where errors are viewed as part of the learning process. And you can see the following list of characteristics of feedback. These are essential. But how can feedback be given in this new environment? In a typical classroom environment, a teacher might circulate around the classroom, lean over a student's

055shoulder. But given the need for physical distancing, feedback's also going to have to look different. So teachers can offer office hours. You can use discussion boards and different kinds of rubrics, online portfolios, video and voice feedback, surveys and exit tickets, and performance assessments. Students, to students, they can leave comments and annotations on Google Docs and slides within Zoom breakout rooms for discussion and also guided discussion boards. Students can also... give feedback to teachers. We've been talking a lot about using hand gestures in Zoom meetings and also privately chatting teachers. And then also families, we can share online portfolios, which is a feature in Seesaw, and Google Sites that can show growth over time and making sure also, of course, that we pay attention to providing translations. So in order to do all of this, what

056have we done so far to get ready for this transition? Over the summer, around mid-summer, 25 of our educators and school leaders took part in a summer course offered by Harvard entitled Developing Strategies for Online Teaching and Learning, which gave us a good baseline. Then over 225 of our educators participated in our own summer tech camp, Unmask Your Potential. If you want to click on the AV Tech camp link there, Peter, it will take us just, you can briefly see. a very long list of different kinds of workshops that were offered on those two days. And they were organized by our digital literacy leaders, specialists, but they were facilitated and offered by peers, so colleague-to-colleague teaching, which was true. And then a four-day remote synchronous responsive classroom workshop took place for K-6 educators. Responsive Classroom

057just posted engaging activities to build those caring class communities in both an altered in-person physical learning environment and virtually. So it's really terrific that some of the programs that we use are developing different resources so that our educators can make that transition into different kinds of environments. And then lastly, 91 of our K-5 classroom educators, special educators, English language educators, coaches, and building leaders who are part of the illustrative math beta pilot took part in a two-day workshop. And teachers in grades 7 and 8, mathematics teachers, building leaders, and special educators, as well as academic support teachers, also participated in a different two-day workshop. Illustrative math, too, has done an incredible amount of work creating supports for educators. So then we found out we were given 10 days by the state to do some more

058work with our educators. And I'm going to turn this over to Dawn for a few minutes. So this chart, which all of our educators spend a lot of time in right now because it's where all the links to their professional learning are. It started out, Deb and I started it in June with three boxes. and then we thought we were going to get six, so we expanded it to six, and then it blew up, and now it's 11. So it's been this growing thing. decisions around those sort of came in. But before we started building it, we surveyed our educators around what their needs were as we transitioned back. And their responses fell into four different categories, which is how we ended up organizing these 11 days. Educator collaboration, workplace preparation, student and family check-ins

059and orientations, and professional learning were the big buckets. So we used this information to plan, and each day we also were very intentional about... having principals provide a time to work with their staff, department and grade level time, also balancing that with educator, individual, in your classroom on your own time, and also time for some social-emotional learning check-ins. So we spent the first few days of our professional learning with the Brookline Center for Community Mental Health, which is a partner, has been a partner for us for... seven or eight years in the district with our bright program at the high school so they split our staff up into a few different groups and we started the whole thing with an hour on self and collective care and really focusing on the fact that you know

060we have to take care of ourselves before we can take care of other people and also recognizing just the emotionality of people returning to buildings returning to school after we're almost on at six months now March 12th was our last day together. So it's been a very emotional sort of return. The following day we spent time with them doing a ready to learn teacher moves where we focused on building equitable classrooms, really thinking about trauma-informed strategies to prepare our students, and helping to shrink the change where we had educators think about what's day one going to look like, what's day two, week one, so that it wasn't so overwhelming to think about an entire year and what that might look like. So this looks like a traditional pyramid of supports that many people see attributed

061to multi-tiered systems of supports. This is one that we built with our colleagues at Bright at the Brookline Center to really think about the green, which are the universal supports. So what do we want to be able to offer all of our staff? And then the yellow is sort of the supplemental, knowing that some people are going to need a little bit more red, certainly are other more intensive types of supports for staff. And so we spent some time sharing information about this. And for instance, right now, some of our staff are. signing up for peer-to-peer network across the district where we can have weekly check-ins with folks that we don't normally interact with just to see how things are going. That's one example of the many things that are going on. This is a

062padlet that our SEL team built over the summer. It's got a lot more on it, I think, now, to support the routines and practices that we expect to see in our classrooms to really create. supportive environments to recognize student identity, to help everybody understand the diversity and the wealth of information within a classroom. So we started building this with our SEL team in August, and educators are helping to add to it now with all sorts of strategies that they're using. This is another Padlet that folks are using. We're using a lot of Padlets these days because they seem to be a nice visual way to sort of chunk information. This was created by a classroom educator and one of our coaches. It's for all educators to use to really think about reconnecting with students and

063to create those caring, connected classroom communities that we've been talking about. There's the chart again, but we're now on week two. So this week we started our work thinking about anti-bias principles, thinking about new curricular resources that we are looking at, which I'll speak about in a little bit. Then we switched into thinking about designing teaching and learning in both a hybrid and a remote environment for two days. And today we ended with a workshop. from Edco Ideas facilitators for elementary and then secondary, two different workshops on engaging in brave conversations about race in the classroom. It focused on how we have age-appropriate conversations and a lot of it actually on how do we make mistakes and demonstrate our own learning in conjunction with students. So I'll speak a little bit more about that. So

064for the workshop, the four-day workshop on designing teaching and learning in remote and hybrid learning environments, these are the goals that we laid out for all educators. And you can see that our educators had opportunities for reflection, to reflect on their own practices and their own knowledge base. We included some choice. We also created opportunities for collaboration. One of the most important aspects of this was for them to meaningfully and authentically also experience what asynchronous learning felt like and looked like and also what synchronous learning felt like. I thought it was important to have them experience it firsthand. So beginning on the first day, they had a complete overview of all of these different, the process that I just laid out for you, those five different. components so everyone had the same messaging then they

065had an opportunity to reflect on their own learning expertise with different aspects to different tools and different pieces of the redesign and then we gave them some choice the next They'll come next week. So that they can decide for themselves what area they really need to focus in on and dig in a little bit more. You can go back to the previous slide just for a sec, Peter. Thanks. And so what we're also trying to do is to model for our educators that choice really does create more motivation and increases engagement. So again, giving them the same kinds of experiences that we would want them to then provide for our students. So again, these are the five different areas that they will be focusing on next week and digging in just a little bit more

066in these choice areas. One of the resources that we made sure that all of our teachers received is a document that outlines the components of an asynchronous lesson or an activity, as well as a template. We thought it was really important to give structure to what we felt the asynchronous days should look like. It's going to look very different than it looked in the spring. And so the bulk of any asynchronous lesson is for students to use the skill, the concept or content knowledge to create, to practice, to play, to explore, or to assess. But the additional asynchronous learning assignment components also have to include, from the very beginning, what is the learning target? So again, that what the students need to learn. Some kind of welcome or greeting and an overview of the lesson

067or assignment that needs to be completed. Some sort of direct instruction, and that might be a teacher-made video, Flipgrid. It might be a found video. Next, there needs to be written instructions about the assignment, an estimation of how long it's going to take, the various parts, which parts need to be submitted, which parts are going to need to be assessed or graded. And then, again, the bulk of the lesson or assignment. Further practice, application. And sometimes this might occur after direct instruction in a very linear fashion. Though there may also be assignments that include cycles of instruction, practice, synthesis, reflection, there are endless ways to do this. Sometimes students are going to be tasked to do something that's non-tech related too, of course, to step away from their computers, to go do something, make something,

068find something. In those cases, they can upload those different types of things that they find, take a photo of it. Other times, students are going to be visiting another website to complete their work. We can also ask our teachers, we're also asking them to at times include some class communication or collaboration. They can do this by incorporating discussion in asynchronous remote learning. Not only helps develop discussion skills, but also maintains that class sense of community. There are some great tools that can facilitate online discussion, like Flipgrid, Jamboard, and Padlet, just to name a few. These tools, along with specific models for posting and providing feedback, give students the opportunity to post and for their classmates to respond. Then we also want there to be times for students to reflect, not just at the end, but

069ongoing. So again, reflecting on their own learning, posing specific questions so that they can gauge their own learning. Then finally, a reminder for students to turn in their work. I think Sarah Ward last year used to call that done and then get done, to actually turn the work in. And then our educators are encouraged to really use, so again, embedding different blocks of instruction, practice, and reflection. But we want to make sure that they had some structure to designing. So another resource that we've created for our educators is a digital toolbox. We felt this was really important that we narrowed the number of tools, not just for our educators so that we could provide support in professional learning, but also for families so we don't overwhelm families with different kinds of tools being used in

070the district. What we did, there was a combination, a collaboration between the teaching and learning department and the ed tech department. We included tools, and we thought very carefully in general what tools needed to be used at different grades. but we also reached out to the different departments to see what specific tools a department might be needing to use. But we made sure that all of the tools that are in the toolbox for our educators demonstrate evidence of curriculum alignment and can be purposefully integrated, that they meet the student data privacy regulations under COPPA, they do not duplicate readily available online resources, that they support inclusive pedagogical practices. and that they are culturally responsive and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, ancestry, or national or

071ethnic origin. So we took this process very seriously. One of the tools that we had been using last year, RASKIDS, we came upon a research study that was just done in 2019, and this research study found three critical issues with RASKIDS. It found that there was a lack of inclusivity in representation for groups that have been historically marginalized. It found that it perpetuated incorrect stereotypes, such as portraying indigenous people as savages and immigrants as incompetent. And it also contained problematic and biased ideology, which was reflected both in what was included, immigration as a problem, and what was excluded, present-day racism. We wrote to the company several times. We had our own teachers look at the materials to do an evaluation with a critical lens. Based on the information that we received, the research, and our

072own teachers' assessment, we decided to discontinue our membership. And we found a replacement called Literacy Pro, which we're very happy to introduce to our educators this year. So this was an important piece of the work going forward to make sure that, again, everything that we're doing and using is aligned with our core values. Back to the previous slide just for a second. This is exciting for us because this digital database now our educators can also search. Hats off to the EdTech department, a searchable database for these digital tools. But to give you a little peek to look at it a different way, Peter, maybe the next slide, if you can just click on maybe one of them, first or second. We also have them organized by different ways that people might want to use a

073digital tool. Sure, engagement, collaboration, just as you can see. the name of the digital tool, the collaborative features, and tutorials. So how do you go about using this if you wanted to give it a try? So these are just extensive lists. So for next week, set aside time to continue some of those building-based, principle-led conversations on the book, How to Be an Antiracist. We've also set aside time for the assistant technology workshops for our assistants. It's really important that we spend some time making sure they're up to speed. We also provided time for our assistants to watch the bright workshops that Don mentioned. We've put aside some time to distribute materials to students. All those boxes that you see on the stage are materials for go bags and for our remote learning students to make

074sure that they have what they are going to need at home. But it's a massive undertaking to make sure that those get in students' and parents' hands. We set aside some time for K orientations and check-ins with families. Then, a deep breath before we welcome our students back on Monday, September 14th. I'm going to turn it over to Dawn to talk a little bit more about the anti-racist. So tonight we're just going to share a very brief overview of some of our anti-racist professional learning in our work. But we do have an intention to come back to you very soon and provide you with more information. In fact, it might even be next week that we're doing that or two weeks from now that we're doing that. Next slide, please. Thank you. So one of

075the first things we did was look at different curricula. This is one tool that. folks will have access to or have access to, starting with the National Association for the Education of the Young Child, which is what NAEYC stands for, and really thinking about our preschool classrooms and how are we starting to have conversations about race and bias and what literature we're using, because we know that from very young ages, actually about age three, children start to be able to notice and discriminate and make decisions based on the color of their peer's skin. We also are using pieces from the Anti-Defamation League's three different types. Our teachers also use extensive other resources. These were just intentional curricular purchases that we made with the goal right now of continuing the work in two areas particularly. identity

076as we work to bring our classrooms together, build those relationships, make students feel safe and welcome and engaged in their environments, and diversity, which is, as we think about social justice standards, that's really the second sort of level, and that comes right after, which is really around building classroom community, recognizing how we're the same, recognizing how we're different, having conversations about that, and working to understand all of our strengths. So the other piece, so as Peter mentioned before, you can have standalone curriculum, but it's also important for us to embed it into our curriculum. And so one of the tasks that we undertook this summer was to begin mapping our K-12, or pre-K-12, actually, curriculum to see where we stood based on some topics. Sure, thank you. So you can see down the left side

077all the different topics that we started to map. just to get a sense of where we teach those things in our curriculum. And some of these we know there are areas that we need to pay attention to. There are the new social studies frameworks, which is going to help provide us with some structure to provide some new lessons, especially in the early grades, teaching several of these topics. So this is really important for us to get a handle on where students are taught. The other piece that we are engaged in right now is the high school has been looking at the social justice standards and thinking by each department what they can do, different strategies of how they can embed the social justice standards into their curricular areas. As Don was mentioning, the four social

078justice standards are grouped by identity, diversity, justice, and action. Don and I refer to them as self, others, the system, and efforts. But it's really important that a group of educators from all those different departments came together this summer to begin to take a look at how they can deepen the work within the department. The elementary social studies coordinators are working with our K-3 educators to think differently about how we approach teaching holidays. And so they will be presenting our teachers with the fall holidays and then the winter holidays. And then lastly... As we redesign all of our units according to the new social studies framework, we are embedding the social justice standards. So you can see on the left, you have the history and the social studies content standards and the practice standards. But

079as Peter scrolls down, you'll see that we've also embedded the social justice standards. If you keep scrolling, you're also including the social emotional standards and competencies from CASEL. and then continue scrolling, making sure that we are incorporating the UDL principles of multiple representation, engagement. So all of this work is ongoing. Again, this is a new framework from last year, but this is an opportunity for us to rethink and redesign our curriculum through all of those different lenses. Some of our professional learning this fall, some of it will continue with the SEED workshops, which you all were able to participate in. Is that July? That might have been August. I think that was August. I lose track of time right now. And so we will be offering a fall and a spring workshop as usual for

080our educators who are working to move that online. which will be our first time doing it entirely online. Last year we were able to meet a few times in the spring with the group before we went online, so that's something that our SEED trainers are working through right now. We also purchased Ibram X. Kendi's book, How to Be an Anti-Racist, and we've been having some book discussions. The first two occurred this week. There'll be another one next week, and there'll be some other things that we'll pick up from that throughout our work this year. We also had our anti-bias principles workshop with the ADL this week and EDCO initiatives as well. So we have been doing a lot of work in this area, and yet it is, I want to stress, it is the beginning

081of, not the beginning, it's ongoing work, but it's the beginning of our work this year. Finally... One of the pieces that Deb spoke about earlier in terms of the redesign of the core is really looking at culturally responsive teaching and some of the principles of Zaretta Hammond. If you don't know her, she is a rock star. You need to check her out. But the focus is on students who have historically been marginalized, so bringing those to the center of our instruction instead of the outskirts where they often are, to center around effective... affective and cognitive aspects of teaching and learning and to push back on dominant narratives about people of color. And additionally, a tool we just rolled out and will do a lot more work with is this teacher checklist for instructional materials. And

082it's based on the seven forms of bias, which is interesting. This was guidance that was actually originally published in the 1970s and 80s by publishers and professional associations. And so while certainly 1970s and 80s, certainly things have... have gotten better over time. I mean, Deb gave a really good example earlier of Raz Kids, which was really a go-to resource in our elementary classrooms. And yet it... we still are so far from bias in many of the materials that we put in front of our students. So we're gonna be working with teachers to understand that as they're thinking about the materials that they put in front of students, that they need to be thinking through each one of these questions. And ultimately they may decide, I am gonna put this in front of students because of

083the bias that it has, because I wanna illustrate that bias to them and make them aware of the things that do exist in the literature, in the media, in the pieces that we consume every day. Our kids get their news from social media, right? So how are we supporting them in that? So there are seven different areas that we want them to really think through, planning their instruction and picking their materials. So what questions might you have? Thank you both for a very thorough presentation. There's a lot to digest there. I'll start with people in the room if anyone here has a question. So first of all, I want to say that this is a... slide pack that I could spend like a week just clicking on all the links. It's really, really well done.

084And it's great that you shared it. I'm going to be spending a lot of time really exploring it. So I really, really thank you very, very much for putting that together. It's quite a feat. It's a lot of work. And it's really, really, really helpful. A question I have, and it really, I keep going back to it because I keep thinking of Yevon's question. The feedback. component of the design. How does that happen in a remote setting? Can you speak to that? Sure. So I think there are a lot of different tools, as we mentioned earlier. If you want to go back in the slides, there's a whole list of tools that teachers can use so that they can gather feedback from students in terms of their work, but also sort of the affect, right?

085So how are students feeling during the lesson? We know during Zoom there's a couple of different gestures that can be used, but we've been also talking about some hand gestures and signals that students can give to teachers so that they can get a sense of how they're feeling just within the moment. The tools around the academic piece, there's so many different, the annotations that students can use and teachers can use on Google Documents. I'm trying to think of a couple of others. But I think they're just the different tools that we're sharing with our educators. There's Peter, there's the other slide that had all of the different tools by list. Which one that had, so we can get a sense of what digital tools performative assessment are. throughout Google Classroom and the different kinds of

086tools that are embedded right within Google Classroom using Google Forms. So surveys is a real quick way to get responses from students. Seesaw has, again, that's one of the operating platforms that can be used. Google Sites as well has some tools embedded in it that educators can use to gather feedback. I think if you keep scrolling, Peter. Pear Deck, Padlet. And there's more and more that are coming. But again, we want to streamline and make sure that we weren't using too many tools so that our educators can do it. And was that quizzes? Quibis? I don't know. It's a new one. Just to make sure that our teachers know how to use them properly and effectively in the classroom. So those are just some of the ways that we're thinking. So is the intention to

087kind of mechanize and kind of tech out the process that in a traditional classroom would look like the teacher noticing a look on someone's face and then sending a classroom assistant over or going to mechanize all that to capture that in an environment where we're masked and we're remote, hard to catch? of those nonverbal signals at least. Right. So some of those tools, again, to use them in the classroom, even as students are in the hybrid in-person mode, because we want to make sure that they also have a cell with those tools in case we do have to pivot. And also some of those tools can be used on the asynchronous days for student collaboration as well. So as they're introduced and students develop their skills, they'll be able to use them independently as well.

088But I think... You know, there's nothing like being able to talk to a student and to get that verbal feedback, and that can also happen in the classroom. Writing on papers can also happen. You know, a hard copy, we can take pictures of them, we can upload. So there are lots of workarounds. I think it's how people feel comfortable giving that kind of feedback, but making sure that we're gathering that feedback is the most important thing. So we want to give people options. One thing I think is actually an advantage of the Zoom environment is being able to do individual conferencing with students. There's a lot of opportunity for that. And I think particularly if we, you know, in what portions of our work end up remote. really thinking about how we break our large

089groups of students into small groups of students or individual students at times and really think about kind of the individual relationship building between students and teachers. That's actually a real advantage to the environment that we can't do if there's 25 kids sitting in a class all the time. Well, one of the things we've talked to our educators about is when you have a group of, you can create 20 breakout rooms. A student goes to a breakout room. They can be working. You can go have one-on-one conversations with a student in a breakout room. So that's an advantage that you don't have in the classroom. Also, that's the only environment we're operating that we'll actually be more able, I think, to see. John? Thank you. I think a lot of people in the Commonwealth wondered, you

090know, what was going to happen with these extra days of professional learning, and I would hope that anybody that took the time to review these slides and all the work that has gone into this would be very satisfied that this time had been well used, both in terms of... the ability to strengthen curriculum, as well as working on opportunities to improve the strength of our educational workforce. Obviously, there's been a tremendous effort to start the school year. So I, of course, will immediately ask us about the end of the school year and remind everyone that we have policy IL, evaluation of instructional programs. And at the end of this year, like every year, we'll want to know what our students learned, how much they learned compared to their peers in other communities. And of course,

091in this particular year, we're very much going to wonder what did they learn this year as compared to previous years. When do you think you'll be able to speak to us about the assessment tools that you will use to come back to the committee with information about student learning? One of the wonderful happenings that happened last year was that the high school created common assessments and did away with their midterms and their final exams. So that's a wonderful thing that we have in place from last year that we can use as a baseline to see how our students are doing this year. So that's one. I was talking with another principal the other day, and one of the things that we often hear teachers say is that they have to cover material. And it always

092goes against my grain, and I always... I hear it, I say, we're going to be teaching and learning, you know, material and content, right, not covering it. And so one of the things that we talked about was how with smaller groups of students in the hybrid model and then with some of the advantages in the remote, that might be an opportunity to go deeper with a smaller group of students, right? And so you might not feel sort of that pace, especially if we identify those, as we're doing those critical learning standards, right? What are the most important things that we need to teach? So I'm going to put on my... rose-colored glasses, there might be some wonderful outcomes around that, being able to work with smaller groups of students, because sometimes you can move a

093little bit quicker in the material. So that would be one thing. I think it is a district, one of the most important aspects this year and every year going forward, it's going to be the social-emotional well-being of our students. And so I think we also need to look through that lens as an indicator to see how our students are doing. Some universal screenings also for SEL, which we'll be speaking to a little bit later. So I think that could be one, John. to make sure that our students are well and that we're taking care of their social emotional needs. The universal screening tools that we talked about at the beginning, as we employ those and then use them again the following year, that will also give us an indication because they actually break down the

094different components in mathematics and literacy. So that will give us a baseline and then a follow-up year baseline. Educator observations, there are surveys. I think it's not going to be one metric. I think there are going to be quite a handful of metrics. If I can just piggyback on that one second. You know, I think the idea of having a metric so we know at a district level how did we do is important. But I think one of the things we've really talked about this year, the metric we need to really focus in on is how did each of our students do and how do we help them maximize their own learning? Because what we know is the pandemic, we cannot make assumptions about it. And so strategically what greeners, that's our district before. universal

095screening, consistently a standard by which, you know, we can have all students take the same assessment and get a sense of who needs additional support in what areas. And so I'll be honest, you know, I guess my approach to the idea of metrics is the metric I'd rather focus on is trying to identify which students might need more support of the system, focusing on the big picture. I mean, we could say at the end of the year, our goal is to be at six, but it doesn't mean anything. My personal goal this year is to kind of focus more on the individual. I see that Yeben and Kira have had their hands raised for a while. So Yeben, go ahead. Thank you, Tessa. Am I allowed to ask more than one question? How about you

096start with one since we're already more than 20 minutes behind schedule. First of all, I think this slide includes a lot of information. I just can't follow. I can only follow a few of them. If I ask something which is already being answered in the slide, please excuse me. So anyway, I like the word asynchronous learning, which is very important for us to actually to prepare, get ready for the asynchronous learning. But meanwhile, I think it also offers good opportunities to basically to encourage and cultivate students' capability to perform the self-learning. So that's just one comment. So I think Debola's slide already mentioned that. So one suggestion actually is, do we, maybe let me go through a question first. It should be simple. So there were slides mentioned, we have, we send 25 or 30

097teacher educators to Harvard training, right? And about 200 educators to the AV Tech Technology Camp. But I checked the website, we have 1,000 staff. So does that mean we are actually not getting ready for full remote? 25 folks who we sent to take the Harvard course, we sent with the expectation that they would be able to come back. They were leaders, whether at the building level, the district, or department level, so they could come back and then share that information, what they learned. But some of those folks also informed the sub-working group for that document that we created around unfinished teaching and learning. So it was an opportunity to gather some outside information and expertise to bring back to the district. to inform our work summer tech camp is voluntary those were days that our

098educators chose to come in yes we have a thousand staff we have about correct me from about 500 certified staff though so about half that number of our certified staff. But those same tech workshops, very similar ones, are being offered next week for all of our staff, the next two days, to dive into the digital tools. And so many of them are repeats, and so folks who avail themselves of the summer will be able to take other ones, so the folks who are not at tech camp will have an opportunity to take it next week. So just creating different opportunities. Some of our educators, of course, we know different people have different levels of... need to get the information earlier than others. And so some folks avail themselves earlier in the summer to take part

099in summer tech camp. I'll just add to that. So we had a group of leaders go to the Harvard course. That was the 35. Then we had about 235 educators participate in the optional professional learning over the summer. And then all educators are getting the same professional learning around this by grade level as they return over these days that were coming. So, you know, we have that system in place where we have additional training for some of the leaders who have to lead it, options for who wants it, but it's optional because it's during summer, and then we have learning that all educators get. I would also add that of the 500, you know, licensed educators we have, we probably have, I'm going to say, 75 to 100 of them are not classroom-based teachers. They

100might be counselors, nurses, things like that. than that. So it's actually, you know, when we say 235 people did this optionally, I'm going to guess that's probably somewhere on the order of 65% of our teaching staff came in voluntarily over the summer to do this work. So just to give a sense of perspective. But yeah, we're really focused on making sure all of our educators have, you know, access and, you know, really thinking deeply about what this looks like this year. Thank you. Yeah, Ben, I'm going to move. And if you have another question that doesn't get, just so that I can give everyone an opportunity to ask a first question, and if there's another question that you have after I've gone through all the people that have an initial question, then you can ask

101again. Okay? No problem. Yeah. Kira? Thank you. I loved the slide with all of the different standards. Just as a former teacher, I loved seeing that. It made me happy. I have a question about the parent education piece of this, where we know that we have, we've condensed curriculum, we've edited curriculum, we've chosen what's essential. And I think that that's important, and I think that's very smart. is there an intention to educate parents on what that scope and sequence is going to look like? Perhaps what we chose to keep and what we chose to leave, you know, kind of on the cutting room floor. And even if we can't talk about intentions for what happens to that curriculum that we're not going to address. perhaps we can just inform on what's going to be missing

102so that way parents can make choices as to whether or not that curriculum is actually important for their child. document that I referred to, the comprehensive one that was shared with our educators, my plan is to create a parent version of that and to post it so that families do have an understanding about the process that we went through. And then I think we're relying on our principals and our educators in the classroom to be sharing with their families what the scope is going to look like in terms of teaching for the different areas and to give them a sense of the upcoming learning. what the critical standards are that their students are going to be learning, and at that point sharing with them what might not be touched on as much as in previous

103years. Again, it's a matter of balancing between those critical standards and making sure we still build in some of the other enjoyable things that we know is important for students, right? But it's really making sure that our students can go deeper into some of those critical standards and to learn with practice and with joy. I think what we're dancing around, in all honesty, in some of this is attention in our district because each school, you know, we all teach to the same standards, and every school teaches the same standards and frameworks, but each school also has an individualized approach to that. And so doing something at a district level. that tries to get exactly to what will the teaching and learning look like at every school and classroom and grade level in our district is

104almost impossible. And so that's why when Deb talks about we probably need our schools to really take the lead on that, I think that's the idea behind it. Yeah, I think we can certainly share those overviews because I think that's really just mentioning what those standards are that we've identified. But I think the how that they're going to be going about has to be done at the school level. Angie, did I see that you sort of raised your hand before? Yeah. Go ahead. Can I? The first one is a clarification because I see the question raised from the community. So I just take the opportunity to just make sure. I think I know the answer. Basically, the question is, is the homework policy, grading policy, and the content covered is the same for in-person and

105the remote? So I think a lot of parents are asking, are they teaching the same thing or is all the policy the same? They'll be teaching the same. So that's why we created that at the district level for elementary so that whether it's hybrid or remote, everyone is teaching to the same critical standards. And then, of course, at the junior high and high school, it is the hybrid teacher who is teaching the remote students in those sections. So, yes. Okay. So my question is, will students be able to have in-person group project opportunity and both in-person and remote? Well, I guess I don't know whether the remote want to have in person project opportunity because a lot of Actually hire a do a group project. I don't know whether they would have the opportunity to

106smaller group project. In the in person learning program, there will probably be some opportunities for some group work as the year goes on, but for the remote students, they would not have an in person group project. because they did elect to be fully remote. But there are, we do have one of, again, one of those toolboxes is digital presentation tools for students as they're working on projects. And so there are many different tools, Book Creator, 30 Hands, iMovie, Explain Everything, Screencastify. listing of tools that students can collaborate even remotely to on projects to create one project so again opportunities both ways and and it could be my confusion on the question i thought the question was would maybe the remote students have an opportunity to do in-person group projects so that's why i said no

107okay thank you is there anyone else that has another question Thank you guys so much. That was obviously a lot of work to put together that presentation, and I think it was really helpful. I hope that there are some parents watching so that they can share out some of that information, but maybe we can get creative about a way to share that in a condensed form that would be sort of manageable for parents. I mean, I just think that there's a lot in there about our expectations and what things might look like and, you know, about what... to expect this year. So it was really good and very informative. So thank you. Okay. Do you have the staffing report you're going to share the screen? I do. I just have to go through the 17

108tabs that Deb had me open and find it. I can start with, oh, it's there anyway. Hold on. There's a process that this has to happen, unfortunately. I have to first share my screen, then I can start the presentation. Backwards every once in a while. I just learned there are technology tools to help with all of this. I'll search for it. Hi, everybody. I put a lot of information in your packet. I hope you had a chance to go through it. A lot of them are sort of spreadsheets that we have been developing throughout the summer with our subcommittees and planning as the whole remote learning program. concept has evolved and the number of students has become sort of a large number of students. So I'm going to go through it kind of at a

109high level, but I'm happy to answer questions at the end. So we start our hiring in February, March, believe it or not. We post the positions we know about for September, which include replacing retirements and the budgeted positions. Little did we know how much things would change as we started, not the least of which is we didn't have job fairs this year. But our principals have done a great job. We've hired 59 teachers as of yesterday. This number has changed. Today we're at 60. So we're getting there. We have a total of 63 that we're hiring for this year. That is the most in at least 20 years. The last, I'd say three of the last four years, we've been around 50 teachers, give or take a few, which is still a lot. We're replacing

110more than 10% of our teachers every year. So if you think about that a little bit, 30% of our teachers are fewer than three years. So we put a lot of time and effort into hiring and mentoring. We have a two-year mentoring program, and we provide our teachers with as much support as possible. This year, what's unique is we added positions because we are staffing the buildings for hybrid, and we're staffing the remote learning program. That added about 14 and a half positions to what we otherwise would have hired. So I'm going to talk a little bit about how that's going to work out financially. And 20 of these positions are one-year positions because of that, because God willing, this is a one-year event. We budget every year at master step three. It kind of

111balances out in the budget with our hiring. We hire some newer teachers than that. We hire some more experienced teachers than that. We have teachers leave after the budget that have a higher salary that offsets it. So we're doing fine in terms of meeting our budget with the addition of the COVID CARES money and the positions we had to do for that. We, it's really fun to read. I hope you had a chance. We put it in your FYI this year, but there's like a paragraph description of each of our new teachers. Again, 5960 so far. It's exciting. One of our favorite things to do is meet with them. So, it's Amy Krishnamurthy asked me for an update on this, so I hope she has a chance to go through the packet. As of now,

112we have had 19 teachers retire. I shouldn't say as of now. We're done with that. We had 15 originally. We got four more this summer when we extended the date based on all the changing information. Again, 19 is more than we've ever had. I think 16 is the most we've ever had in a year. We have 15 teachers taking unpaid leaves of absence. That is a very high number for us. In the packet, you saw a five-year trend. Nine of them came up over the summer. We do often get some in the summer. They're not all necessarily well in advance, but 15 is a lot. Some of them are related to child care. Some of them are related to COVID, health issues, et cetera. but they will have a position here next year should they

113wish to return so we're up to with these temporary positions we're at 509 teachers which is a high number for us again 63 are new that's about 12 and what i said before we've hired 10 or more each of the last three years I put a little bit of information in about this. We'll continue to update you about this as we go along. And we're looking forward to working with, I think, a subcommittee to really strategize good ways to increase our pool and talent, the pipeline for educators of color, our hiring and our retention. We've participated in every group that's out there to try to... improve the situation. The fact that we're just that far from Boston doesn't help us. We have made it a priority last year. A year ago now, we were able

114to hire six educators of color, which was very good for us. This year, we only have three. Two are African American teachers, and we only have three, so we're going from three to five in the district. One is a Latina teacher, so we're going from four to five. So we've increased from 20 to 23. We're not done with our hiring. And, of course, the other categories we haven't updated yet. We're kind of concentrating on teachers right now. So we'll give you an updated chart later in the year. And, Marie, maybe this is a time. Maybe you can talk about the affinity groups we've started. Oh, yeah. I put that in the memo. Two of our educators of color are leading an affinity group for educators of color, and they've had great response. So many of

115our educators are going to participate in affinity groups, and we think that's going to go a long way in providing all kinds of conversation and feedback about what we can do to better support our educators of color. The remote and hybrid, I gave you all the data in the packet. I hope you read it to your heart's content. by school, by grade, et cetera. 1,234 students are enrolled in remote learning. That's pre-K-12. The high school has 260. The junior high has 191. And elementary, this was about a week and a half ago, has 783. They hit 800. So there are 800 kids in the remote learning program. The way we've structured it, the elementary program really is a separate school. It's going to operate as its own school. The junior high and high school, the

116students are really still part of the junior high and high school. And for the most part, the teachers in those schools will be teaching four classes in the building and one class remote. It'll just be part of their day. They'll teach one remote class. So there are far fewer junior high and high school teachers teaching remotely than there are elementary. So believe it or not, I couldn't believe this number when I added it all up because we've sort of been working with teacher individually one by one. We have 61 teachers teaching fully remotely for the whole year. We've really accommodated a lot of students, a lot of teachers, and really worked with individuals to do what's best for them. The elementary remote learning program has 31 classrooms. We were able to move 25 of them

117basically from a school to remote. So you can kind of see how that works. 20 kids at a grade level in a school go remote. We move a teacher remote. and it works out numbers-wise, class size, and so on. So the staff for the elementary remote learning program is up over 50 now. So we have 31 classrooms. We have special educators, a counselor, psychologist, assistant principal, principal, and we do have assistants to answer Yevon's question. We have a math assistant and a reading assistant at each grade level. and they will work between the classes. So we decided to go with those that really specialized in math and reading to help support those classes. The class sizes for the remote learning program are slightly higher than the class sizes in the buildings. And there was a

118chart in your packet that showed that. I don't have a slide on it. Grades K-2 are 23-25, and grades 3-6 are 25-28. We have a couple classes at 29. We want to emphasize that the instructional model is really different in the remote learning program. They're not all kind of squeezed into a classroom. There are breakout rooms. It's not going to be a teacher, not that we do this in the school either, but it's not going to be a teacher speaking to children for 45 minutes. It's going to be a very dynamic environment. The teacher might meet with half the class for 20 minutes and then have them go do something, work in groups or work individually, and then meet with the other half of the class for 20 minutes. There might be four breakout groups.

119There are structured times during the day to meet with small groups. So when we sort of outlined this, we had limits in the buildings for the numbers of... kids that could be in a classroom six feet apart. And then we had the numbers of kids in the remote learning program, and we balanced them out the best we could. We have four or five classrooms at every grade. Next slide. So this was all done. We've been kind of watching the finances. We know we have certain funding sources. directly coming because of COVID. And then we know we had many additional expenses because of COVID. So we've been trying to match them up and make sure we're not overspending our budget as we go. So the additional staffing, we've added 14.4 full-time equivalent teachers, certified staff, not

120counting assistants. All of the additional staffing costs $1.1 million. The other thing that we've been talking to you about is we were not able to run all-day kindergarten in this environment. All-day kindergarten revenue, which pays for the salaries for the kindergarten staff, is about $800,000. We worked really hard to find ways to mitigate that. We were able to bring down those costs to $380,000. That's with we reduced some sections. We did lose kindergartners that I'll talk about in a minute. And we reduced assistant hours. And as a result, it's costing $380,000 to pay for the expenses that are left in the kindergarten program that would have been paid for by all day K. Altogether, our expenses are a million and a half dollars. We made some tough decisions around staffing, and one is around Wednesdays.

121So there are a lot of our hourly staff related to school being in person that we are not going to pay on Wednesdays. The other big piece that happened is when the number of days got reduced from what's normally 183 days. There's 10 fewer days of school, so we also reduced the amount of time that hourly staff are working at the beginning of the year here. So we're bringing in our assistants for two days, not for 11 days. Bus drivers, cafeteria workers, monitors, et cetera, campus support. So altogether, the reduction in the number of days in the year and the reduction in hours on Wednesdays is going to save us $900,000. We needed that to happen because we're spending an extra $1.5 million on staffing. So the net additional cost for staffing is $600,000. Next

122slide. Now, on this slide, the left-hand chart has the funding sources. We received a tech grant, a grant for technology, $150,000. Dave told you about all this last time, and he's been telling you about it as they've come in. The ESSER grant was $114,000. We're working with the two towns. We're requesting funding from the town's CARES money of $453,000. That's not definitive yet. We need to work with both towns. And then the CARES grant, the CVRF it's called, that came directly to the school district of $250 per student is roughly $1.2 million. You might remember when we updated our budget in June, we put aside a $500,000 contingency that we can use if we have to. It's basically coming out of reserves, so we'd rather not use it. But altogether, including the contingency, there's $2.4

123million available. The expenses, as I said, for staffing, $600,000. The Chromebooks that were purchased for students, K-12. and the iPads together cost $700,000. And then PPE, air purifiers, some tents, all of those things that we needed to get to protect folks adds up to $600,000. A piece of that is we bought voice amplification systems. They're called FM systems for classrooms. So when teachers are doing what we're doing, talking through a mask to a room full of people, It will be amplified, so that will hopefully go a long way in helping student learning and students being able to be engaged. So the expenses that we know about today, and that's, I guess, what we want to emphasize, Dave and I, is this is what we know about today. There are bound to be some things we

124haven't uncovered yet. $1.9 million. So essentially, if you put the contingency aside, we will have spent all the money we know about from CARES, the $1.9 million. We still have the $500,000 contingency. Now, things could go either way. If we end up going fully remotely, there are things we will save money on. With everyone in person, there could be things we have to purchase that we're not aware of yet. There are places we're watching as well. Food services, school lunch could lose money this year. community ed, athletics. There are the same kind of revolving accounts that struggled last year. So this is kind of a financial overview where we're on target, I would say. We're not feeling great about it. One other thing I wanted to tell you around the enrollment when you looked at

125the numbers, our kindergarten numbers did drop, and to some extent our first grade numbers did. So there are families who pulled their kindergarten and first grade kids out. There are some homeschool kids. There are some that are just going to wait a year. So for kindergarten, we had a projection of 330. In April, we had 307 kids. And today we have, I think, 292. So we're down quite a bit. Those numbers could jump back up next year. Some number of kids have been held out because of this year, and they'll enter kindergarten or first grade next year. So we'll be watching that. We do an extensive report on enrollment in November, early November, so you'll see more detail about that. So we wanted to give you an overview of our staffing and how that's impacting

126the budget. Thanks, Marie. That was super thorough. John, you haven't really had a chance yet, so go ahead. I just wanted to say I was shocked when you said you don't feel good about this. Given everything that's moving, to come up and say that we still have the contingency sitting to the side, I think, you know, for today, we should be extremely happy. So thank you. On the funding side and one thing on the expense side. So the town cares would... would cover the cost of, and is that, that's still up in the air? When will we know? So that's maybe not an answerable question. And then the second thing is that the PPE, the 600,000 in PPE and other, is that what we spent to date on PPE? And is, okay, so is that

127a, do we expect to spend a lot more on PPE or is this the big chunk of it? Is the pandemic going to end? We followed the guidelines and bought what's hoped to be a three-month supply. The grants that we've listed require them to be spent by December 30th, so things are kind of aligning as far as the useful life of the expiration of the grant versus what we can buy it for. I think you did say, and I thought you were going to say, FEMA is a separate case because there's not a separate allocation. There are eligible costs, and we can submit what we think are eligible costs, and if they agree, they'll give us 75% of that back open-ended as long as there's still money in Washington to fund the program. On the

128slides here, when we say PPE, that would be the local share, so the 25%, if you will, of... I want to jump in too, Peter, when you're done. Sorry, we were at the same time. You go first. No, you first. No, I was just going to talk to the CARES piece because the town managers and I had had some conversations about that. I do think we're going to get that, and I think one of the things that Marie said she was cautious about, feeling cautious at this point, we showed you that we're about $500,000 ahead with the CARES money in there, but if for some reason that didn't materialize, then we're done. spending money and so I think that's the piece that gives us pause now I do think the towns are very willing to

129work with us we have great relationships with both communities and administrations in both towns so I think you know the approach that we've taken is let's get through this piece of it and let the dust settle a little bit and then we can come back to the table and talk about cares because that will give us a more complete picture of it and give the towns a chance to actually assess what do they need in this FY 21 cycle for cares money because I 20 cycle still and so give everyone a chance to kind of get their feet grounded as we head into this new year and i just want to point out that i think we're using the term ppe pretty loosely if we talk about actual what i think we're talking about with

130ppe which is like masks and gloves and those sorts of things um the total right now we've spent just over 90 000 but that also includes 26 000 worth of paneling to create all isolation rooms which we're required to do so i think When we think of 90,000 minus 26,000, that's what we're talking about with things like masks and face shields and gowns and plexiglass and those sorts of things. So just to clarify. Evelyn? I just have a comment about staffing, and I hope that we can have a discussion later. But as I look at the number of teachers we have, 509, the number of teachers of color we have is less than 1%, 0.98%. If you add the Hispanic teachers to it, I calculate it to be 1.8% of our teachers. At some point,

131I would want us to have a discussion about how we can engage more teachers of color. I know we're all consumed right now with COVID getting the school open. We have 10 bus drivers in the district. I have teachers of color. We agree 100% with you on that. I just have a quick question about the... So it's good to provide a Chromebook to every student. My question is that does also school district consider offering say the touchpad or touch pen to facilitate the discussion, like in case a student needed just write some handwriting or join for like whiteboard type of digital input devices? So the high school Chromebooks that we deployed are touchscreen with a stylus. Okay. I think in the younger grades, styluses can go missing pretty quickly. So I think that was the

132decision not to do that there. Yeah, fair enough. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Marie, that was so thorough, and I told you you didn't have to have it ready for this meeting. So I appreciate all the work that went into that and pulling out all the numbers so that we could really understand, and I recognize that that wasn't fully apparent to everyone who's listening tonight, but within our packet, and people can look at it on the school committee section of the district website, within the packet, there are lots and lots of numbers. So thank you. Diane, did you have something else? I just want to thank Marie for putting in the bios. It really, really helps kind of put a face on people and really helps us know them just a little bit

133even. Thank you for doing that. And actually, I was going to note that too because there are several of my students' teachers that are listed on there. So it is helpful to know where they came from and that they are new and things like that. So thank you. That's really helpful. I need to thank my assistant, Marlene, for pulling that all together. Our staff has really worked hard, and we want to thank them. Tessa, I have the MOA next. Is that okay? So in your packet is the memo of agreement with the Acton-Boxborough Education Association, our teachers, and there's a lot of numbered. small items in there of things that we've accomplished together. I want to tell you that we have had our teachers at the table throughout from the beginning, every subcommittee. Many of

134them have given up many, many hours this summer to participate, to be a voice, to help us work our way through this in a way that works for kids and works for staff. Our teachers are in the buildings. They came back yesterday. They did their professional learning remotely for five days. They're now in person full-time going forward. The remote learning program teachers have been working like crazy and building a community and building a program and a school. And I just... What's on paper here is technical details. I just can't tell you how grateful we are to our teachers for partnering with us and for doing what's best for kids and for being here and going forward. And I think we're very, very lucky. We ask you to vote to support the memo of agreement. Does

135anyone have any questions about it? I participated in part of that process this summer, and I would concur 100%. We are incredibly lucky to have the staff of teachers that we have and the leadership amongst the staff and able to advocate for their members, but also recognize and advocate for their students. And it really was an incredibly collaborative process with lots of emotion because this is emotional for everybody at the table, parents and teachers and administrators and everything else. But it was... It was really, as far as negotiations go, I hear a lot of horror stories, and it was an enjoyable, as far as negotiations can be enjoyable, experience. And, you know, we joked, I know that Mike and Amy joked on opening day about all the time they spent together on Zoom calls, and,

136you know, there was quite a few sessions, but not a bad group of people to spend those hours with. Does anyone have questions, or I'll take a motion. Diane? So in item 37, that's the high school teachers who volunteer to teach a remote section outside of their workday get a stipend for an extra prep period. Is that a large cohort? Fewer than 20, more than 10. John? School committee and the Acton-Boxborough Education Association containing the 38 points listed in the packet. Second. I'll just note before we do our roll call that Angie needed to leave the meeting. So Ginny has been attending the meeting by listening, but isn't, according to our policy, a participant because she hasn't had her video on. So as I do the roll call, I'm just going to note that I'm

137not going to call on Ginny to vote because she hasn't been participating in the meeting as the way. Tessa, can I just say one thing? Yeah. Oh, hi. Sorry. I'm just having an internet connectivity issue. I can't hear it and see it at the same time, but I am here, just so you know. But that's fine if you can't call on me. Okay. I just think, according to our policy, that it doesn't work that way, but I appreciate and I wanted to note for everybody watching that you have actually attended the meeting tonight. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry about that. Thanks, Janine. All right. John. Yes. Evelyn. Diane. Yes. Yes. Kira. Yes. Yebin. Yes. And myself, yes. So amongst those of us that could participate and vote, that was unanimous. Thank you. Yes, Peter.

138So, you know, I don't want to let the moment, you know, have this go unsaid, but, you know, I just want to make sure I also thank our teachers on behalf of all our administration. I'm sure as committee members, you've all been watching the news lately, and you know that whether or not people... come back in person is a very, very contentious issue. In our state, just, you know, from west to eastern part of the states, it doesn't matter, north and south, it's really, really a challenging issue. I can say I've spent almost the entire last two days just walking schools and talking to teachers. I've probably had an opportunity to talk to somewhere on the order of 250 of our teachers over two days, some for a quick 10 seconds and others for 10

139minutes. Overwhelmingly, Our teachers have expressed, you know, regardless of the fact that it's a roller coaster for many of them, with a lot of mixed feelings, overwhelmingly the teachers have all talked about our kids and their desire to get back to kids and looking forward to welcoming our kids back. And it just speaks to the incredible educators in this district have and how fortunate Alalescu, who is the PEA, speak. An impassioned speech about kids and the need to get back to kids. The voice that our district has been able to speak to. We have such a strong school district. So I just want to say thank you to everyone. The other group that I want to just take an opportunity and thank, though, are the people sitting in this room, as well as a lot

140of our other leadership team and the people planning. But I want to focus on the people in this room for a second, and it's not to diminish anyone else's input. Each of the people here, committees, are participating on a committee into this related to teaching and learning. You saw that work probably incredible. And from talking about finished learning to how we engage, what the schedules look like, all of our schools. team work that she did with the is almost singular for the reason that our teachers were so comfortable colleagues in up around this state I talked to them they said that if they were coming re and Dave human resources side and the finance side you've seen the complexity of that and so every time either I would come in with an idea Deb would

141come in with an idea or dawn would come in with an idea this was people sitting in this room along with everyone else who helped on all of their teams just rose to that challenge and so you know The conversation that stood out to me among all the conversations I had with our educators over the last, was one of the ones this afternoon, it was probably actually late this morning, and it was with a group of teachers who were all working kind of distanced in the same room, and they talked, the teachers were talking about what, that is key, but it's the time to make this happen. I'm so grateful to them. I know it's a late meeting, but if I don't say this and emphasize it, shame on me, so thank you to each

142one of you. educator custodian food services person office staff this was a thousand people working to a goal of getting our kids back whether remote or in person to school and it's going to work so i just want to make sure that doesn't go unrecognized thank you peter i think that we can afford the couple of minutes that it took to say that no worries what yeah no it's two minutes we're already an hour behind no big deal But those are important thank yous, and I feel so fortunate to be the chair of the school committee in a district that has not had a seamless transition to this new reality, but not by any stretch. But I'm proud of the work that we're doing, and so that makes this job a lot more important. I'm

143proud to work with all of the people that have been able. So thank you. Ongoing business brings us to the approval of... the acting box for our regional school committee meeting minutes of august 5th we have minutes in the packet um to approve august 5th is there any discussion all right we'll do a roll call vote adam yes john yes evelyn yes diane yes kira yes yebin yes nora yes and myself those are yes those are approved uh unanimously thank you um and that brings us to dave Dave is giving us his 30-year financial forecast month by month now. And I was just going to say, who is hopefully not super long-winded tonight. It can be as long as you'd like. You have a memo from me about student parking fees at the high school.

144Larry requested this, that you, it's a school committee vote required to reduce the parking fee from $200 to $100 under the circumstances that... there won't be as many days that the students will be coming live to school. Last year, in fiscal 2019, the last full school year, you can see that about a little over $40,000 was brought in. So this will be a $20,000 thereabout impact of this decision, if you so choose. And we refunded about $14,000 that I missed a zero in that hastily prepared. That's it? Well, if you'd like to go. I'm just kidding. It's a joke. Dave, that was incredibly timely and so informative. If you do this, then in FY23, there'll be an imp. Your work is always appreciated, Dave. Thank you. Okay, so there's a motion at the end of

145Dave's memo. So I moved that the school committee vote. to set the high school student parking fee at $100 for the 2020-2021 school year. Second. Is there any discussion? Evelyn? I'm just curious to know, Dave, what we do with that money that we collect for parking. The money goes to help pay for campus security staff, so the folks who monitor the parking lots in the school. A small portion of them, but that's what the money's used for. Evelyn, I paused because I thought I had put it in the memo, and I did. So if you see the beginning of the third paragraph in the memo, that's exactly it. Okay, I'll look at it. Thank you. Anything else, or are we ready to do a roll call? Adam? Yes. John? Yes. Evelyn? Yes. Diane? Yes. Kira?

146Yes. Yebin? Yes. Nora? I think you were maybe muted. I couldn't hear you. Nora, you're still muted. We'll take that. She's nodding her head. Is that good enough, Beth? Yes? Okay. All right. And me, yes. All right. That's unanimous. Thank you. And we need to set the impress balance of the student activity checking accounts. This is an annual event that you, a vote that you take. And all you need to know is that each of the three schools which have a checking account, the senior high, the junior high, and the Blanchard Elementary School, there's a maximum balance that's allowed to be kept in that checking account. Accounting geeks call it an impressed balance. And you need to authorize that maximum amount. And so what we're recommending is the same amounts as have been authorized in

147the previous years. Where are my motion makers? This one has numbers. Adam has to do it. He's way overdue. So I move to set the impressed balance for the student activity checking accounts for the 2020-2021 school year consistent with the prior year as follows. Senior high school, $35,000. Junior high school, $25,000. And Blanchard Elementary, $5,000. Second. Are there any questions? Good. Adam. Yes. John. Yes. Evelyn. Yes. Diane. Yes. Akira. Yes. Yevon? Yes. Nora? Yes. And me. Yes. All right. That passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay. Subcommittee and member reports. So... Subcommittee met this Monday at 11 a.m., which is our new time and day. We reviewed the material that Marie shared this evening. And we spoke briefly about how we might be seeing... budget updates for this fiscal year and They'll basically be the same. We'll

148see our quarterly updates, but should we see anything that is Significant or a material change? They would obviously bring those both to the subcommittee and the school committee and then we spoke briefly about what our planning will be for the budget for next year And again, the process will be relatively the same with the exception that we have no idea what next year will be like so well address that as we have been addressing all of these uncertainties over the last few months. The policy subcommittee met on Tuesday at 8.30, which will not be our regular meeting time. That will be to be determined. So we sat. Thank you so much for your input at the last meeting. We had a really great meeting on Tuesday, and we actually discussed both. the prohibition of harassment

149policy and the one in your packet, the revised masks or face coverings policy. We sent the first one, the prohibition of harassment policy, back for a review because we did change some of the language. And then, of course, the masking policies here. But I wanted to just talk for just a minute about some of the tenets that are driving our thinking around these two policies. And one was, what is policy and what is procedure? Another is about legal language versus readability. We think this, it's usually, the conversation usually goes like this. Well, the legal language is important, so you'll have to give one up to get the other. And so this committee, the policy sub, is considering that maybe it should be an and. Maybe it is achievable to preserve the integrity of the legalities,

150but also provide a text that's readable. We played around with that as well. We also took your feedback seriously, and we want you to feel heard and see yourselves reflected in those changes. And then, of course, we're normalizing looking at policy through the lens of equity. So I just want to recognize Nora, Yebin, Evelyn, and Ginny for a really robust discussion on Tuesday, and I look forward to more of those this year. So tonight we're presenting as a second read. the policy EBCFA on face coverings and masks, and we're happy to take any comments. I don't know if Dawn, did you want to speak too? So are we looking to have, we can discuss first, obviously, but a possible vote tonight, right? Absolutely. Okay. This is being presented with the policy and the procedure, and

151so I just want to make sure that everybody understands that if we elect to vote the policy, At this point in time, we are simply acknowledging that this is the procedure that accompanies the policy. And the question that I want to make sure that we get answered is, if the procedure were to change during the year, and because of the nature of what's being proceduralized, I expect that it might change, how will that come back to the school committee? If there are substantial changes in the procedure, how would the policy be reconsidered? So we're looking at the procedure now. And so the question is, things go on, we find out operational issues around the way the procedure is operating, so the administration might change the procedure. And so different standards that could occur is the

152administration could provide notification, so we could get it as an FYI in our packet. That's one possibility. If it's something where the administration wants to make sure the school committee is in agreement, the administration can always propose to change the procedure, but before we do that, we want to make sure that you're in agreement. Yeah, you know, again, it would depend on the type of change that was made to that policy. You know, if it was a substantial change, we might bring it forward for feedback from the committee. If it was, you know, just some small changes to it or an update that we needed to make just to have it happen, we would make it and then make you aware of what those changes were. You know, with any change, if you disagreed with

153it and you believed, you know, if it was consistent with your policy, it would be within our purview to change it. If it was inconsistent, if our changes became inconsistent with your policy, you would ask us to go back and revise procedure. Are there any other questions or discussion, or do people want to take a vote tonight? I mean, it seems like this is a pressing sort of policy, given that it would be nice to have in place before our students start school. That being said, I move to approve policy EBCFA. Second. It is way too late for that. Okay. Is there any further discussion or can we vote? Okay. Adam. Yes. John. Yes, and I'll just comment that I do appreciate that there was significant work put into this. Evelyn. Yes. Diane. Yes. Kira.

154Yes. Yevin. Yes. Nora. Yes. And me. Yes. Woo-hoo. Good job. That passes unanimously. I'll also note for Adam that these are all musical alphabet letters with the exception of D and G. Thank you for that. I know our educators are very thankful for your support with that policy. It's a big concern of theirs. And I have a draft email ready to go to them tomorrow speaking about all the PPE and what's coming and what they've had. And this is a perfect piece I was hoping to be able to include. So thank you. I would say you probably can include the next item as well, right? We have a gift to accept? We do, and Marie would like to speak to it. So this is just very exciting. We have a very generous donor. It's the

155same person who donated 12,000 masks earlier in the spring. I can't even remember how many months ago. All of which were distributed to community members through... the food pickups and through community supper and all of those channels. And now the person came back and said, I have an idea, what do you think? And they have come forward, those four big boxes over there, with 4,000, they're actually KN95 masks. I didn't notice the memo said N95. They're KN95 masks. And talking through it, They said there's a process by which you can wear a KN95 mask for a day, and then you can put it in a brown paper bag and leave it there for a week. And then the next day you wear a different one, et cetera. And a week later, it's then ready to

156be worn again safely. So they donated 4,000 masks for our 1,000 employees so that every single employee can have one for each day of the week that they're working. I just wanted to read the tribute. The person wanted to donate it in memory of a person that they brought in to visit with our students at one point in time, Edward D. McClure. Mr. McClure, who was a good friend of Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., spent his life personally and professionally demonstrating inclusion, understanding, and bringing people together of all backgrounds to make for a richer, more just culture. As many have said in various forms, quote, in the face of injustice or mistreatment, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. It is in honor of Edward

157D. McClure and all those who actively work to make for a better tomorrow that these facial coverings have been anonymously donated for the safety, support, and well-being of all the teachers and staff of the Acton-Boxborough Regional School District. So they value about $40,000 for our staff. Is there a motion to accept this extremely generous and thoughtful donation of 4,000 masks for our staff valued at $40,000 in memory of Edward D. McClure? Kira? Yes, with gratitude. Yevin? Yes. Nora? Yes, with gratitude. So thank you so much for that extraordinary donation. We are a very lucky district to be gifted by something like that. I think it says that we're going to do the statement of warrants next meeting. Is there anything, Peter, in the FYI that you want to note? While Peter's looking, can I do

158one quick FYI? So I'll be presenting to the Acton Board of Health on September 14th. One of the things that I've been interested in is the possibility of doing wastewater testing for COVID virus. So the first step in that process is to go to the Board of Health and present that to them to see if they think that that would be a worthwhile. metric to add to our test arsenal. And I was also going to note that our next meeting here is September 17th, and also that there is a scheduled meeting for the joint PTO, which is something that we had noted last time, but we will be meeting on September 10th. I have nothing else. Then I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Adam? Yes. John? Yes. Yes. Sorry, too many

159tonight. Diane? Yes. Kira? Yes. Yevon? Yes. Nora? Yes. And me. Yes. All right. Thank you all. Thank you. Bye.