001you got it started okay great thank you i'd like to call the order uh the um what day is it january 6 2021 first the school committee meeting of the year the meeting the cohasser public schools school committee meeting would all members please indicate so in roll call uh mrs cleary present mr kearney president uh mrs maher president mrs president president craig mcclellan all members are present start of the meeting um as i remark in the beginning of every meeting this meeting is otherwise in person public meetings being held virtually due to the pandemic and governor baker's declaration of emergency in this commonwealth the meeting as dr sullivan just stated is being streamed live on facebook as well as cohasset 143tv um at this time i'd uh move to uh public comment which is a
002section reserved for uh um discussion or comment not related to um to uh items that are already on the agenda if any members of the public have any comments that they'd like to share um or topics of discussion that they'd like to raise with the committee please do so i'll give them a second to chime in on the q a feature here the q a feature is functioning properly you'll be happy to know jim mcclellan great okay i don't see any so we'll move on to the next agenda item with the which is the superintendent's report uh turn the meeting over to our superintendent of schools dr patrick sullivan dr sullivan thank you very much craig and um like to say happy new year to start off to everyone you know is uh the new
003year always starts with a bright promise and um you know i think that we learned a lot about our ability to persevere this year uh if nothing else and i do do think that you know 2021 um promises to be a much better year i i feel like you know we've learned a lot about how to get through tough things together uh and i look forward to taking those lessons and continuing to to move forward for the students um we obviously have some traumatic events happening now as we're actually doing this webinar so i thought it might be an appropriate measure just to share what i will share in my newsletter regarding some tips from the national association of school psychologists about talking to children about violence and as you can see on the screen
004these are very common sense tips but often when we do traumatic events or anything happening in the news that that younger kids particularly may have questioned about it's good to have some guiding thoughts about making sure that they feel safe and secure so you know what they recommend here and this is talking to children about violence or anything that might be happening in the in the world that could be traumatic to reaffirm safety really make that time to talk to keep expectations developmentally appropriate developmentally appropriate and as you can see in early elementary really provides simple information balance by assurance of safety upper elementary and early middle answer questions and assistance separating reality from fantasy and then upper middle in high school really emphasizing the student role in safety and how to access support uh
005and then at schools you know when whenever there are things that could lead to unrest we always have a role in making sure that students feel safe and part of that is making sure that we keep a normal routine and we found that in any any event that could you know cause uh any type of a traumatic reaction for a student or or any unrest it's good to have a feeling of safety in a normal routine so i thought i'd just take the opportunity because it's really fresh and happening right now and there might be some families watching just to remember that often during these traumatic times keeping it simple and reassuring students about safety at a developmentally appropriate level is always a good play and a good way to go about it so just
006wanted to share that and i thought i'd transition from that to some really happy news and and uh we all could use good news in in these difficult times and uh one of the great things about working in schools is that i'm surrounded by students and staff members who are always looking to help others and always looking to send messages that will support and uh provide inspiration when needed for for those who need it and for those who are doing um an amazing job in trying to provide safety during this difficult time so why while i have principal mills here i thought i'd uh let him share just some good news that happened um really coming out of the the positive efforts of our students and staff at the middle school and their collaboration with
007a community member who works at massachusetts general hospital so and as you're doing that principal mills i'll i'll share some of the images that they sent over thank you this is a nice uh opportunity that came out it came up in early december when one of our parents uh who's a nurse at the neurosciences care unit at mass general reached out to say you know that uh it would be wonderful if uh if we had any children that would be interested in creating any sort of decorations for the holidays and uh for the patients just to dress up their unit um i reached out to mrs cynthia gordon who's our student council advisor and mrs laura schwartz who's our art teacher and shared uh the parents email and the request and they immediately jumped right
008on it mrs schwartz talked to her art students about creating positive messaging um you know they explained to the kids where it would be going so a lot of the messages were positive and get well and things like that um and those were done in art classes were oftentimes just with as students were remote they worked on it on their own and then brought it in mrs gordon with the student council sponsored an after-school holiday decoration workshop where we provided the supplies and we had a a lot of students come in after school and you know we socially distanced we spread spread the workshops out over a couple classrooms and um mrs gordon and the student council uh created um these these really neat three-dimensional stars that i i we're going to see in one
009of the pictures but uh the both faculty members combined all the student work and i think we ended up sending three boxes to the hospital that really did a nice job of providing color and warmth to that little corner of mass general and it's a corner where people you know go for any sort of brain or head injury so it was uh and then talking to the to the parent uh it sounded like they you know it was really well received and her colleagues as well as patients and their family um we're really thankful to uh to our faculty and especially to our students so we're happy to do it and uh we're nice you know happy to have the opportunity to make a difference and like the kids and faculty as always were fantastic
010it just thought it was so heartwarming uh and nice to see the efforts of our students in this in this uh very important medical unit so it's a good lesson for our kids i think it provided some positivity for the folks at mass general hospital i love the collaboration that it was a community member and it's just so indicative of the special things that happen every day here in class of public schools that sometimes go unnoticed or are unspoken about so uh thank you to you to mrs gordon to mrs schwartz to all the middle school students and obviously to the folks at massachusetts general hospital who do such great work every day so just wanted to start with that thought it was a good it's it you know we don't get enough good news
011nowadays so it's good to see that and uh and the efforts that were put into place so thank you for sharing that that story principal mills um and just as by way of a few updates and then we'll kind of get into the the meat of the of the meeting but um obviously um we're we're in the midst of uh a surge in kobed um we have had some of our neighboring school communities and towns make the decision to move to a full remote scenario i just want everyone to know that we're looking at things very closely what we're tracking obviously our community numbers are up we are in the red that's an important factor we're also looking at cases in our schools transmission in our schools and we're looking at our quarantine numbers and
012that could be quarantining of students or staff for various reasons either being in close contact or having um having to have traveled and at this point or you know we're probably shifting somewhat out of that but having the travel protocols put in place for for out of state travel and we're really making sure that all of those factors are are considered in everything we do moving forward right now we are not at the point where we have uh an extravagant amount of quarantines district-wide and um as you know i've been keeping people in tune with the cases for our community members as they have happened we've had a little uptick and clearly the community numbers are not at a place where we want them to be and we're really watching that but right now we're
013still at a place where we feel we can function safely but we're looking and watching and certainly ready to move if there are scenarios that come up that make us have to deviate from our course of action right now but i will continue to update the community every thursday where we are as a as a community as a town as a school community you know as you've seen in my communications it's an ongoing process of making sure you know where things are happening we're very much looking if there's any transmission in schools so far there hasn't been we're watching that though and we're ready to react and i just want to put a a quick word of praise out to our nurses and um our school nurses and our nurse leader kelly um gilda and
014also our town nurse and health agents um particularly mary goodwin our town nurse who is an absolute treasure here in cohasset we're so lucky to have her and the relationship that mary had built up with our nurses over many years of being here in cohasset is really paying off i think our communication between our health um department and our schools and the community members that may be affected by covid has been very hot very um well done and i'm i'm very thankful that i'm working in cohasset because of that because i think it puts us in a very safe situation in a difficult uh scenario for sure so i just wanted to just start with that um another update regarding kindergarten our kindergarten registration is now open and it is available all the information is
015available on our website it will be open through january 29th for the school committee knowledge we already have i think 47 or students signed up for for kindergarten next year um monday the 11th principal farrow will be doing a virtual um sort of frequently ask questions and uh the opportunity for people to who are maybe having their child go into kindergarten ask questions about the program and yeah so i don't know if the committee has any questions about those updates or thoughts if not i will move on to hear from caroline um any questions or thoughts chairman colin anything i would just like to reiterate your thanks to the public health officials in town i believe today may be mary goodwin's birthday and i would like to share thank her for all of her hard
016work well i'll think i'll text her tomorrow because every time i text mary i think she probably gets nervous that something's going on yeah i'll carry it tomorrow but um yeah she's she's amazing and happy birthday mary if if you happen to be out there um great anything else uh craig all right so move over to caroline then um caroline happy new year welcome back and uh as uh i think i mentioned at the last meeting we have uh increased now our student advisory council to include middle school students this year we have three middle school students under principal mills if you want to announce who they are yep um happy to announce representing cms is ella lynch nathan ashjar and uh great honesty who just all wonderful kids they're eighth graders hopefully they'll continue
017on and represent the high school on the council uh next year and in the future that's great and they're going to be joining us in our february meeting and our next meeting we'll be looking at um which will be wednesday this coming wednesday we'll be looking at our data regarding the survey so caroline i'll turn it over to you i know we haven't been back all but you know three days but uh any update you want to provide would be very welcome so caroline yeah thank you um yeah i think i'm intrigued and excited to look at the data that we collected and we put a lot of thought into the questions that we wanted to ask our students and what we would think would be the most beneficial to hear back from them and
018to help making more informed decisions and um additionally so since this year the it didn't really make sense to have a big ceremony that usually would happen for the national honors society and students who get inducted in which is a big accomplishment not only for academic but for leadership and in like the school and the community so mr sasso and mr turner and a bunch of the students we're working on now to put together like a video compilation that's going to highlight all of the kids so they will um get their moment that will be sent out to families and so that i think will be a good way so that's in progress so i'm excited to see when that comes out definitely now we're kind of like as you were saying kind of in
019a surge of covert a little bit um just we i think like to kind of help the students as much as teachers like i remember i had a nice conversation with one of my teachers like a while ago just about how we wanna it's gonna happen if students get called down and removed for contact tracing reasons and stuff like that that it's not like a shameful or negative experience just at all like it's gonna happen and um just like reiterating that it's nothing to like be ashamed of or anything like that like just to make um as long as like because you don't really want students like speculating and rumors about like if someone has it's not something like that at all so i think for the most part students get that but just as
020kind of like a second reiteration um across for everyone and exciting like some obviously our winter sports have been happening for a while like i play basketball and i'm excited we have our first game which is on friday um and i know it's hard with like other sports who like commute like swimming hockey or going to outside facilities and um it kind of just brings a lot so just making sure that we all are taking the rules that the mia has provided with us responsibly that it is a gift that we get to do these things and um like i just enjoy running around with my friends and it's definitely something that we all need to keep taking seriously if we want to continue and i know jake had kind of mentioned last time in
021the student meeting we had about getting um like the theater in the play kind of something to unfold i know miss moriarty i'm sure she's been hard at work in all the music department arts department thinking of different ways because those are equally important for students just as much as any sports so working to again create creative ways for that to happen positively in the new year that's pretty much all i have to say i know i'm ex first day back tomorrow in person because i'm a cohort b but um that's all i have to say so thank you thank you caroline um and i should say you know we we realized that cohort b did miss some days in the latest snowstorm so i i know that you know we obviously have a winter
022ahead of us but we are aware of you know we want to make sure we keep it as even as possible and we can make adjustments with plenty of notice going forward uh if you know when when it's available we are happy to see the cohort b students back tomorrow that's for sure uh any questions for uh caroline i don't have any questions but i would like to wish you luck in your game on friday absolutely okay well thank you caroline caroline you're welcome to stay around a bit for the next part of the presentation if you like who are doing the inclusive cultures might be good for you to stay and then you know certainly after that feel free to to leave i know you you're busy and you get to get ready for
023your first day of school in a while in person uh tomorrow so thank you caroline thank you so i'll transition over now to uh if i can uh greg to the next agenda item wonderful so uh we've had uh the pleasure and i think really uh it's worked to our benefit to have the institutional climate inclusion assessment which isn't doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but it's a wonderful measure of what kind of culture we're providing and what and i love and i have to give principal scott a lot of kudos for really bringing this to cohasset and uh principal mills for for jumping on board with this because i think it's a very meaningful tool in um really determining how we're going about making a environment as inclusive as possible and if there are
024shortcomings that come from it i really appreciate the openness of the staff and of our two leaders here to to really look at those measures and create action plans around it uh to make our school and community a more inclusive uh place to make sure that we're filling in any gaps that might result by being an underrepresented population whatever it might be in our school community so with that i will turn it over to i believe principal scott is going to start the presentation and then principal mills will look at the data specifically as it relates to the middle school and then i don't know chairman mcclellan if you'd like to have questions after the high school part um and then after the middle school part or just after both um presentations and he may
025have jumped off for a second no i'm here i'm just trying to uh just trying to serve my son some some dinner while this is going on i apologize um i'm having a tough day um but you were asking about the procedure how we do this i i think that i know what you asked and i would say just go through it and ask questions at the end i think that's probably a good way to go about it um but i will turn it over now and i believe um principal scott you have the power to present and there you go so take it away brian i think i think you're muted maybe i am all right this will be better okay more effective so i will kind of give a general overview i'll go
026through the high school specific stuff um and then i'll turn it over to principal mills for the the middle school stuff uh after that and you know the institutional climate inclusion assessment doesn't roll off the tongue um and i've pronounced the acronym but just icia but in talking with the woman who created it she pronounces it icia which i kind of like because it reminds me of icu so that might roll off the tongue a little bit a little bit easier that's better we'll see if we can stick with that okay um so what is it every two years we conduct a survey called the institutional climate inclusion assessment and this alternates with the youth risk behavior survey both overlap and while the youth risk behavior survey measures mostly risky behaviors of students substance abuse
027violence general safety the ica survey comes at the student wellness from a different angle namely whether students feel like they belong in the community that we've created in other words while the ir yrbs measures student behaviors i see it tries to get at the root of those behaviors by understanding what the student perception of the school climate is particularly as it relates to diversity equity and inclusion so you know what are the student experiences of the campus of the classroom environment of the school policies of their classmates and understanding these perceptions better prepares us to create environment rich in protective factors which can both prevent risky behaviors but more importantly you know just create an environment that promotes student wellness and and success some of the questions that it hopes to answer are around you
028know whether students feel safe whether they feel seen and cared for whether they are respected by their teachers and their peers and the administration and whether they generally feel included in cohasset we're fortunate that students in cohasset take you know surveys seriously we try not to inundate them with surveys and we've always had very good participation and so these slides will just show a little bit of the general breakdown of student demographics um across both the middle and high schools combined and you know i think you can generally see that we have a pretty good number of students about 700 students in total it breaks down about how you would picture it breaking down 88 percent white about 22 disability versus 78 percentage report no disability most are in the religious majority about nine percent
029um relate as lgbtq plus and then about five percent report as international students versus domestic a few things are important to note and the reason that we're taking the follow-up steps that we are are related to this is that this is a survey that measures perception and there are a lot of factors that that influence what we're looking at so it's important to recognize that while we're looking for and want to capture actual student experiences those experiences need to be unpacked because personal experience is influenced by all kinds of other factors what's going on at school at the time what's happening in a student's personal life what do students think is going on in a school and often you know you can't be forthcoming with all of the actual information so the rumor mill generates
030a lot of misinformation um and and what is happening nationally you know the national climate tonight is going to influence the school day tomorrow so it all changes over time and even our perception in the moment isn't always our perception after we're allowed some time to reflect on it so it's a moment in time we intentionally give this in february when it's a struggle for everyone if we gave it in september or june we'd get much different results we give it despite what's going on in the school because often what's happening um good or bad can be a vehicle for student voice where otherwise if it wasn't at the forefront they might not think to mention it so i see all of that as a good thing and i do think um and again i
031say tonight is a good illustration that the larger societal forces do make a difference you know in talking with our consultant behaviors in schools over the last several years have mimicked kind of the national discord and the lack of discourse and demeanor and you know the the increase in social media exacerbates that and i don't say that as an excuse you know some of the trends here are not good and i will make no apologies for that but they're not good despite working towards them which i think points to the enormity of the problem and the the need for a strong collective response so a few general findings and you know we tend to gravitate towards the negative but i'll start by saying that there's a lot of positives that were shown in this report
032unsurprisingly you know the overwhelming majority of students care about their education and i would put 96 up against any school in the world you know that underlying motivation is a real strength when looking at culture students also report higher levels of physical safety since the last report and lower levels of drug and alcohol use which i believe 100 correlates both to the work that our safe schools committee did into how well that safe harbor coalition has created a partnership not just with the schools uh but with the larger community in a way that it's it's a true partnership everyone has a role but we aren't stepping on everybody else's toes we're not doing anybody else's job we're all kind of functioning in relative harmony and overwhelmingly you know students report that they like their teachers
033and they feel that they're cared for and respected and so those are all important contextual points students also report that they have friends that they're involved in sports and clubs and that they generally feel that the physical space in the classrooms is a comfortable environment comparative to the first report overall there's been a general steadiness in the way that students feel that they've been judged and you can read that in a couple of ways depending on your perspective you could read that as a lack of progress uh or you know in light of kind of the national trends maybe there is more progress than the statistics show but in any event this is all information that requires some further unpacking so i'll get right into the high school major findings and the report is thick
034it's two or three hundred pages long but the major findings at the high school really revolve around seven groups that either feel excluded outright or marginalized and each group indicates different ways in which they experience the culture of cohasset so students of color for example rarely report and this shouldn't be shocking that they've had a teacher that looks like they do right students report of these groups report less involvement in co-curricular activities in sports they report feeling negatively judged because of their identity thought to be less capable by the adults treated unfairly by the administration and in the classroom they feel like they don't belong and then they need to change who they are in order to come to school in some cases students report feeling less safe either physically or emotionally or both and
035there are some large discrepancies here sometimes a 45 difference um and because in as a percent of the total these groups make up a relatively small percentage their stories and their perceptions often get drowned out in the larger narrative so for example if 75 of lbgtq students report feeling out of place as opposed to 30 percent of the overall population that's a huge difference that we need to focus on two other general trends that students report they report liking school s now this was given in february before the pandemic so this isn't related to that and among these groups particularly sharp declines were reported in fairness this is a little bit hard to norm it's tough to know whether 68 or 62 percent is average or you know it for what type of school and
036in what area but you know for me i think the overall takeaway is that 60 isn't good enough for this school uh independent of what anybody else is going on and so that really needs to be the focus so what are we going to do we've begun addressing some of the issues simultaneously and what we really want to do is unpack the data we have a lot of numbers but we don't have stories and you know so when you look at that as a teacher as an administrator you say all right that's a jarring figure but why what does that mean what what is going into that student's answer and so we'll we're simultaneously beginning some trainings on cultural response responsiveness as a staff but more importantly we've contracted with an outside organization to conduct
037a series of focus groups and the reason that we went with an outside organization is that i don't want my own perceptions to color the results you know it's easy enough to say that you know for every decision that i make one person thinks it's reasonable the other person thinks it's outrageous so you know of course 40 of the students think that the administration is you know unfair i don't want to fall into that trap and i don't know that the students would be forthright telling me if i'm doing something that's created a negative experience for for students i promise you it is not intentional and so i want to hear from somebody else you know if i'm doing x how is that action being received and how can i adapt it because if it
038is happening i guarantee it's not on purpose and it's unconscious so to date our consultant um began in december with so a selected number of faculty and community members most of whom directly have contact direct interaction with these subgroups mentioned either through clubs or different organizations and that was about 20 members all of the members and all of the focus groups are reported out anonymously while that was going on we created student affinity groups so we put out to students volunteers um for any student who who found themselves in that category and wanted a voice without other voices kept crowding that conversation and we got 28 students which was good they volunteered their experiences our consultant sent out a calendar today so those conversations are going to be happening in january those are the two
039groups the first two that are going to start to unpack the data they're going to provide the stories they're going to allow us and allow me allow our faculty to really see how they are experiencing our administration our classrooms our physical plant you know what are they hearing what are they seeing because you know oftentimes in any kind of relationship anywhere what someone says and what someone hears are often very different and so really trying to bridge an understanding between what those two are is important so those are going on right now after this we're going to share our survey results these survey results with the faculty so that they can start to consider the data in light of the trainings we're not going to give this to them and then start a conversation to
040say all right how are we going to fix it um because it doesn't it lacks a student voice you know it's one thing to look at the data we want to wait until these focus groups are done so that we have these stories we'll have a larger conversation after that but while this is happening while we are sharing this with the faculty we're also creating parent focus focus groups so the parents can share their perceptions of the environment and right now it's only been a couple of days since i sent out the invitation we have at least 15 parents which is i think really good we'll open that until the end of january um we can never have too many volunteers so anybody who has something to say please say it and this does not
041have to be associated with any of the particular affinity groups it's anyone in the community that wants a voice these conversations are going to happen in february and then following that we're going to have three student body focus groups groups that that make up the actual um student body so kids from student council from our athletics from um national honor society you know from the general student body will have a voice there all of this work should provide the foundation for us to create a solid plan at least begin a very good conversation about what is it that are challenging us and then once we kind of draft what that plan is we can embed that into our school improvement plan that can inform our strategic plan at the district level it can become a
042much larger conversation and hopefully because we've started the conversation we've provided a vehicle for people to talk which i think is the big the biggest challenge we've had so far and even in trying to get and solicit some of these student voices for the focus groups people are very reluctant to have the conversation that it's just not a safe place so i think you know taking the relatively slow road and creating this space and and letting people know that this is stuff that we want to talk about we want people to share their stories it isn't going to be you know frowned upon we we're going to try to change uh and we want to hear where we're falling down along the way i think um you know that'll be a very good place for
043us to end up in so you know the the long-term goal for the high school for this year is to end up with a plan that can be you know reflected in the strategic plan and then carried out over the next however many years obviously adapted as it goes so that is the high school side all right uh thanks brian the um middle school data before i uh sort of jump in where principal scott leaves off kind of a slightly different path to getting the data when the assessment was given it was given 6-12 last year it got reported to us this fall is as six through 12. like as if it were one institution i ended up working with a consultant getting the raw data so we you know we weren't able to focus
044on six through 12 for every single sub group and we only really got most of that data in december so we're in a slightly different place but i really feel good about the fact that we have data that pertains just to our students so uh you know i think uh what brian had done i think it makes sense to sort of start with an overview general findings um you know the majority of our kids uh think education is important and they also like their school i do also want to point out at this point that this um because the we're focusing on the six through eight data there's not a trend or a pattern line or a benchmark that i could i could refer to uh we don't have data for the 2017 uh icia
045just for six through eight because it was never disaggregated so these are just sort of you know data points out in the thin air as close as we could get to making relative conclusions on them was an interview with the consultant who said based on her experiences with public middle schools that we had a tremendous amount to be really proud of and and numbers like uh 67 percent report on a survey they look like their kid uh their school was extremely positive so um without having those benchmarks you know some of the more positive things you know is that 90 you know over 90 percent of our kids feel safe that they to almost two-thirds report that our their school community feels like it's caring um when it comes to their relationship with teachers they
046see our teachers is caring about them they like their teachers they feel like their teachers treat them respectfully and that there's at least one teacher or sometimes staff member who knows them pretty well and that last one i know from working in other districts 74 is uh you know you know a good 20 25 higher than i've seen at other schools so i feel like the data some of the data is really positive and and anecdotally what i see every day kind of supports that so whenever i look at data i always look for you know what surprises me like what did i expect to see what's a nice surprise and what's maybe concerning and i i you know found these data points to be um to be nice surprises as far as other general
047findings um you know peer interactions uh over ninety percent of the kids report that they do have close friendships and they do feel physically and emotionally safe around other students uh things like that are really important they're often called uh protective uh factors uh which are important for social and emotional health the fact that they do have those positive relationships and they feel safe so once again it's it's a really positive piece of data about our our school and our culture inclusion i was really happy to see you know over four-fifths of the kids feel that appreciating ethnic and racial diversity is really important at their school and that they agree you know three out of four kids agree that it's important to be aware of one's own bias so obviously when it comes to
048issues of inclusivity and other cultures and diversity kids hearts are in the right place i don't know that was kind of a weird animation yeah there we go however um you know the purpose of the goal like brian said of the survey is to really to see how different subgroups are feeling within the culture of a building and whether or not it feels uh like an inclusive culture um our analysis of the data we were able to focus on racial minorities like african american black students and historically underrepresented students defined as latinx or hispanic students as well as lgbtq plus students and students with disabilities it's important to note though students with disabilities are students at the beginning or in a demographic section of the survey students self-reported as students with disabilities so for instance
049when i looked at the size of that sample it was higher than students the number of our students on ieps and what we might have had is students who might be on a 504 also reported within that group so um it just something i found interesting all right so the survey reports out on nine different dimensions of school culture one of them is general campus and climate a general campus climate when we got here uh you know the things that really jumped out the surprises that were concerning to me were differences between the subgroups and the average cms student so when it came to for instance report on whether or not they like their school there were substantial differences between sort of the average student and lgbtq plus african-american and historically underrepresented students asked whether
050or not it feels like a caring community students with disabilities and lgbtq students also reported a difference and when it came to some of the less supervised less structured parts of a school day cafeteria the use of locker rooms the bathroom sub group some subgroups also reported that uh you know compared to the average student they felt less safe in those places uh it is worth pointing out this year because of covid you know the cafeteria is is run different our students are socially distanced they still are around some friends they get to choose but what you don't have are long tables with large sort of groups uh pressed together and um the opt the opportunity for maybe two or three close friends to go sit somewhere else isn't quite there so our calf is
051a little different we're not using our locker rooms and to socially distance uh our bathrooms are one person at a time so brian you know as brian pointed out that depending on the timing of the survey it's you know if this were given this year for instance uh there would be none of this data so i'm kind of thankful to get it because in a normal year those sound like areas where uh students may feel uh uncomfortable uh the last general climate um piece that jumped out was lgbtq students and asian students more likely to report feeling stressed i think it's important to to stop here too and as you look at data make sure we uh we we don't use the word because oh yeah that you know when they look at a data
052point like that well that's because of this that the other thing you might say well i'm kind of surprised by that or i'm concerned by that i really uh record you know encourage people not to use the word because as we look at this because for instance that last bullet really requires us to dig a little further and ask well what you know what's causing stress what is it about school that's stressful so uh the the one of the nine dimensions peer interactions same thing although generally our students reported really positive peer interactions members of some of the subgroups report that uh that our students don't treat each other respectfully and that um lgbtq students for instance feel less likely to compare the average student to feel physically and emotionally safe so around peer interactions
053there are issues once again our kids reported if you think back to that general finding slide our kids reported that being aware of their own bias and and embracing diversity are both important issues when members of subgroups are asked does it feel like as a school uh we value uh diversity whether racial cultural gender um a number of subgroups african american underrepresented lgbtq say it doesn't feel like students do smaller group teachers and then lastly administrators and then some of the subgroups also reported uh not being satisfied with the school's efforts to support diversity because once again everybody said that they feel like it's important but then there are some groups who report that it just doesn't feel like we're doing uh a good enough job i'll paraphrase um you know that statement so so
054next steps like what you know what can we do as a school um i think you know to brian's point too the conversation that um this engenders i think is is one of the critical pieces um in the discussions uh you know sometimes quote unquote solutions pop up but when we're talking about cultural change that just takes time so and you can click again brian it's important for us as a faculty and as a community to consider things that work really well and areas to be concerned about and then really look to explore more deeply what is the data saying and those are conversations that for instance we start with the faculty tomorrow faculty and staff at a faculty meeting and then i look forward to just you know having conversations with parents in the
055community as well as students as we sort of explore what's this data is saying to us i think it's important for us to identify resources that we can use to help you know address some of these concerns whether it's our you know an excellent school counseling staff i'd like to see us work together within the school to create a you know faculty administration diversity committee where we can talk sort of explore the data a little bit further and then talk about uh the you know concrete steps that could be taken and then you know something that would work over you know multiple years the district's been great as far as planning professional development we began the year off with cultural inclusivity uh work and we revisit that again in march and then uh i think
056it's important to look at things like you know outside organizations desi has got a lot of curricular materials and support materials around inclusivity as well as a safe harbor because uh they've been a great partner of ours when it comes to um supporting uh you know protective factors among our students and student relationships um so those you know those different places are important resources that would be able to help uh us address some of these concerns i think through a diversity committee would be able to start shaping short and long-term goals uh you know laws that could be part of a school improvement plan or district improvement plan and most importantly uh would be a vehicle to once we have those goals is to convince uh continually revisit them uh we've talked about uh uh
057using an sel assessment tool that uh monitors a number of different dimensions of socio social emotional learning uh including some of these same inclusivity um dimensions and starting that next year so uh in rather than us waiting every other year but you know do a little bit more dipsticking during the year to see how we're doing and assessing our progress on goals and then like i said above all it's important just to remember that it's not going to be a speaker it's not going to be a book it's not going to be an event or a t-shirt that's going to change the culture it's going to take time and it's going to be a collection of all those of all those steps both small and big so thank you very much for listening thank you
058thank you principal mills and principal scott for those uh excellent presentations uh at this point i think it's appropriate to uh open it up to any questions uh or comments from the school committee dr sullivan that's all right with you i know we're in the middle of your report yeah it is thank you and thank you uh principal mills and principal scott but particularly for your openness and i just want to you know say how much i respect you uh looking at this data constructively with your staff means a lot so uh mrs coleri uh lead the way alphabetically as usual um i would like to say that i remain profoundly grateful for our district's commitment to this tool and the data that's generated from it and making progress in light of it um principals
059scott and mills i think you both did a fabulous job presenting this i think it's important for us to continue to remind ourselves how how really fortunate we are to have the leadership team that we do in this district that um as dr sullivan pointed out doesn't try to sweep the stuff under the rug doesn't try to paint a happy face on things that aren't very happy but looks at data acknowledges it and develops concrete steps and tools that we can use to move forward to improve the experience for our kids and our community and i just want to thank you both so much for and dr sullivan and dr scollins for for staying committed to this tool because i feel like this tool specifically is really valuable um i have to say i was
060a little bit sad looking at the data because it does clearly um it does clearly define the fact that um the school experience is very challenging for certain kids in our community um but i i do believe that we have the right people creating the path forward in light of that and i want to thank you for being those people and um dr sullivan and i had a conversation earlier today about um some upcoming efforts that are community-wide that i will be sending an email to you both about um and look forward to getting your thoughts on so thank you thank you mrs cleary mr kearney any comments or questions absolutely um i also want to echo what ashley was just saying on um this is a great tool uh and i was surprised on
061uh how much information is there and also want to uh give a shout out to the to everybody who filled it out because it really gives us the information you know there's some really good news in there and then there's some concerning i think that uh both principals have really have their finger on on on the button here and i i really appreciate that one being my education is important to me 97 that's really really good and almost 90 percent of kids feel safe in our schools um i think that is brilliant um and um generally liked school um as far as with their teachers and and again um was so lucky to have such good teachers in our school um and then you start seeing what can we improve on and um one of
062it's like i like my school um that's it like that's not really high especially the difference it's funny too because i looked at male and female in the study and pretty much they're generally in the same wave length except for a few things and i want to try to point that out one is that 55 of uh females say they like their school versus 70 being male the other thing that is really concerning to me is the um the kids who feel stressed out at school and almost 80 percent of female students feel stressed at school versus 52 percent of the males um that's something that just stood out to me that i thought that is is a concern um the other thing that i thought was great by the way is that uh the
063drinking and the um illegal drugs is down i think that is uh a sharp contrast to the commitment the community has made with safe harbors safe schools and you know that's another awesome thing that we've been working on um again something that i think when we can fix how do i like my school i think a lot of it and we'll bring it up later with the budgets because i think this is important to know that our kids less than few or half the students reported that school buildings are clean orderly and maintained so that's something that again our students there might be a reason why they don't like their school i mean if half of them don't think they're clean orderly and maintained you know that's not on the school sorry can you hear
064me so that's that's really not on the school that's more like on the community but i'm really really grateful that we put this together and it's really really a good uh presentation and i appreciate it thank you thank you mr charity this is mar thank you um prince phil mills and principal scott for this i just have a couple of comments um overall you know especially looking at the middle school results and and you think about we think about all the natural transitions kids have and i i don't think kids go into the sixth grade and all of a sudden feel um you know they're not included you know especially in in some of some of these subgroups were talking about and maybe this is more for dr sullivan we really need to start thinking
065about it maybe in a more informal way at the elementary levels because that's where kids start to feel um feel their you know so feel their oats and find their way and find their friend groups and start to develop some some added attitudes about each other and and and social situations and and i don't i don't know if you can extrapolate this data down but it would be um nice to see some programming or or some of the same kind of awareness particularly at the deer hill grades four and five where kids really start to develop their own identities about some of some of these issues um because sometimes by the time you get to middle school you know they're they're young people with you know their own um perceptions and ideas um so i'd
066like i'd like to um i'd like to you know talk about that further maybe with uh with miss sullivan i was happy to add one thing to that ellen just over the last couple years we have had a couple of student groups that have really kind of lostened um one is the asian culture club in the diversity group or the diversity club and they've actually requested to send groups down to dear hail and osgood and read stories and do um you know origami exercises and basically like just kind of show that it's cool at the high school um just to model that so you know it's not pr programmatic necessarily but even this year in the pandemic they virtually recorded a lot of different uh stories that were more diverse than um baby kids are
067used to so the kids are now starting to mobilize which i feel like is the key and ellen will also add to that sorry brian add to that just by saying um from a programmatic standpoint i'm very thankful that this data is sweeping into our strategic plan because i think it may lends it lend itself to point out that maybe we we do have responsive classroom which does a lot but maybe we need a little bit more of a targeted approach with some of these data points through a programmatic kind of take on all of it at the elementary level so something certainly will we'll look at and play out um but yeah your your comment is very well taken actually and i would say too uh alan that's a great suggestion as we you
068know uh continually to look uh look at how we can improve our transition program for our income in sixth graders and really stressing those sorts of core values of who we are as a school that that's a great point and it's a great place to address maybe some of those latent uh biases that are starting to be put in place in upper elementary to take it on and just sort of normatively say well that's that's not who we are is at school maybe work with high school or our seventh or eighth graders but that's a great suggestion thank you okay great thank you um i had a note as i was reading through how do we incorporate the parents so i was very happy to see that parents are being included in focus groups for
069information because um you know we all develop ourselves 24 7 you know and it's not just things in schools so i was happy to hear that um and then finally um principal scott on your next steps on number seven um you wanted you your point was to um train captains and coaches which i think is awesome in terms of being inclusive but i also um might suggest maybe other student leaders um although recognizing many of our athletic captains are also student leaders in other groups but we have student council we have class officers we have club um advisors that you know as you begin the program you could migrate it out to some of those groups that aren't being touched um yeah i totally agree with it and you know we've had a little bit
070of good conversation especially at the end of last year with student government um and they lend themselves to that kind of conversation the captain's counsel has been the toughest to crack it's a you know i don't want to insult the athletics in cohasset but it's a dormant group in terms of using their social capital to really make this place inclusive and a lot of the anecdotal feedback that we get is that there's the athletes and there's everybody else and so we really want to kind of pinpoint that group to to use their superpowers for good because i think once we get people talking they'll realize how unique and how valuable and how much they have in common and and you know that's that's the only reason that that was singled out uh is because i
071really want to focus on that group specifically yeah but we also know our athletes are multi-dimensional i mean they have to be they have to be in our school because our school is so small and and you know we have athletes who are artists and we have athletes who are politicians that you know who go on model un and we have athletes who are ap students and student councils so so it's um you know is it a self-fulfilling prophecy that we label them athletes only as a as a subgroup and not as student leaders in general kind of a rhetorical question but i i understand what you're saying um so that was that was it for my questions thank you both very much thank you mrs mrs um i'd like to just build on on
072everyone else's comments and compliments thank you so much for all of the work that you um and many many hours that you've put into this um i i really like hearing the process and um love hearing about building on top of the numbers and and really finding the narrative behind these responses i think that will be really telling as that as that comes to light and we can all kind of hear that and use that to help our our schools and our community grow and improve um and just to echo what ellen was saying i know that just in the school system where i work um the bringing this down to younger grades kind of over time has happened i work with fifth graders and they take a similar but adjusted survey and then i
073think it was brought down to fourth grade this year and it does make a difference i think to be able to hear that and just to be able to look at a broader spectrum of responses and um you know i know dr sullivan and everyone here so values hearing everyone's voice and to be able to broaden that um would be excellent over time so thank you all for your work and i look forward to um to to following the progress as this process continues okay thank you all um i think the first uh step to effectuating change is uh acknowledging and identifying the need for that change and as i think principal mill stated in his uh presentation that uh you know uh institutional change is not something that's gonna happen overnight um i think
074it's an important step uh to identify this i think uh um principal scott uh you sort of uh uh sort of addressed a major glaring i mean you know all of this is you know some of these are are very specific um facets of the school's um operation the school experience but you know overall you're looking at that you know i like my school figure which you uh you know spoke about and uh not knowing whether or not you know the low 60s is something that's you know in line with the average nationwide um and i think that your statements uh certainly uh you know struck a chord with me and that um that's how i felt is that uh um low 60s is far too low for our district it's not acceptable i mean
075there's really no reason we shouldn't be striving for something in the 90s there we have a we have the benefit of being a very small community a very small school district and it's uh somewhere where we should have our finger to the fingers to the pulse of of most every student's concerns and you're always going to have individuals that you know can never be happy but largely our student body should be very happy they should be very excited about going to school and um i think we're very uh well um we're very well outfitted with uh an excellent leadership team to ensure that that is the case in the coming years as soon as especially as we address these uh this data that we just compiled and we and we take steps to um strategize
076in ways that we can improve our school district so um thank you both for your uh comments and for your presentation unsurprisingly very well done and we'll look forward to continuous updates and developments and progress in this front as we move forward to ever improving the cohasa public schools thank you dr sullivan thank you very much uh craig and thank you all for your very thoughtful comments and we look forward to using the data and forging on with our action plans and once again thank you principal mills and principal scott for your leadership every day and in particular for your work with the icia survey look forward to digging in and getting to work on it so thank you have a nice night both of you okay so um moving on from uh from that
077um we have a brief professional development update by dr scollins doctors collins hi everyone happy new year um so yes very very quick um we uh had some opportunities in december on the 14th we had a half a day professional development and we also have one on january 11th lisa raden our new director of technology and digital learning did a nice job coordinating with edtech teachers they're the organization that we've worked with since the beginning of the year on providing some technology training for our teachers we have two sessions two different opportunities for the middle and high school teachers to choose from it was assessment and then also collaborative digital learning experiences with two different teachers from ed tech so teachers had the opportunity to choose which one they wanted to do in december and
078they will do the other one and monday the 11th so um that will be um you know that'll be a nice continuation for for the staff um also on the 14th lisa did some work in a sandbox session where she ran some of those but the teachers really talked about how they wanted some time with their colleagues to play with some of the new tools that edtech teacher is providing for them so so they'll also have that opportunity and the esps from the middle and high school will be working with um barbara sawanka last last session they did some assistive technology so they won't be doing that but the elementary will be esp's will be learning some more about assistive technology based on what their developmental needs are of those students elementary will continue their
079work with our bridges consultants again these are the same consultants that we used in the beginning of the year and they've been a constant with us and our math specialists and our teachers so they will continue um this is a little bit different last uh last session they gave 90 minutes to k through 2 and the other trainer 90 minutes of the three through five teachers really would like a shorter time with them and then more opportunity to work with their grade level teams and the math specialists just to really kind of dig into some of those things that um are happening in bridges it's a new program and and then covid um has impacted um you know the delivery of that instruction so um so they'll be doing that in the afternoons our specialists
080will be working together at the elementary level so our pe um and music arts they'll be getting together and working on looking at the technology that they've used and collaborating with each other and our nurses are going to continue to do all sorts of things to keep updated on what's happening with kovid and some of the um all the other things that they need to be dealing with as nurses so um they often have pv outside of those professional development days um so um often we'll give them the opportunities a little more collaboration on those determined days because we can't always pick and choose when the when their professional development is going to be available so um that's our quick update thank you dr scollins any questions for dr scotland anyone thank you so much
081dr scollins and for all the uh again for all the effort that goes into all of that i know it's a real bear to schedule all those professional developments and work that out and i think that uh in many ways it sort of goes uh taken for granted uh and and we shouldn't take that for granted it's a huge undertaking so thank you for all your efforts in doing that i know it's only a small part of what you do but nevertheless a pretty big job thank you because that was very enjoyable though i know what you mean about the scheduling but it's really really fun to be able to offer opportunities to teachers and staff related to what they want a lot of times we survey them we ask them what they're looking for
082so um it's very teacher driven um often so so it's exciting but thank you for acknowledging it's nice to have um dr scollins working closely with lisa raden um and then also you know thank you to the teachers for buckling down and working through the professional development time is so um precious now uh you know clearly everyone sees the need for that professional development but you know i just appreciate them doing that um so if i move on now if that's okay chairman mcclellan of course okay so our next uh on our list here is an uh update of our proposed fy 22 operating capital budget um as the calendar would have it we still have some work to do in um finalizing some of our line budgets and uh some of the the items
083on this so i i know that um sue is gonna present uh where we are right now but i do believe that um at our next meeting we'll present a little more of a refined budget um with as well as our line budget correct soon right okay wonderful so i will share my screen now and um just one second and of course dr sullivan this is just uh being presented by our director of finance and operations uh ms susan owen yes thank you absolutely excuse me for that can everybody see my screen not yet not yet okay how about now you got it yeah there it is okay take it away um yes thank you craig and take it away our director of finance and operations susan noah thank you um good evening everyone happy
084new year this is just a very preliminary draft of what fy 22 is looking like we've um we've sent our budget in budget worksheets to all the department heads the principals um the stakeholders you know they have interest in in each department and i've gathered all that information um put it together here that the first thing i want to talk about is the basic rollover so the basic role over basically is um all the all the staff that have bargaining unit contracts we move their steps um steps and lanes is what i would call them so everyone everyone has moved a step um we've increased you know stipends that need to increase we've increased longevity based on years of service all that rolled into one and the fact that just about all of our bargaining
085units are up for new contracts coming into the next year um this placeholders of some type of projection of what type of inquiries may or may not happen um anywhere from you know one percent to three percent not sure because we haven't begun under negotiations yet but just a ballpark it's about 685 000 just to roll our budget forward um which is a significant amount of money and um some of the questions were you know it's higher than last year part of that is because last year um we had a contract we we knew what the rates were going to be we don't know this this this upcoming year um so we we had to plan for that the second item here which i don't know what happened to the words that went with it
086um the 125 thousand seven hundred and thirty two dollars is a decrease in circuit breaker funding between the two years so we're usually in arrears each year so what we received last year in circuit breaker um which was 731 thousand 29 dollars it was also a 75 reimbursement rate that rolled in and we used that to build build our ffy21 budget um for fy22 we'll use the fy21 um reimbursements that are coming in that reimbursement rate is at 70 so right out of the gate we're getting less back um and our tuitions were a little bit lower so the circuit breaker that we're going to be using from this year rolling into next year will be 605 thousand two hundred ninety seven so it's a difference of 120 um 125 000 so right there we
087have to make up the difference there unless um unless we tap into the incoming circuit breaker for this year which typically we don't do in this district and lots of districts don't they like to be one year and a raise just to be safe so if you if you're further down on the list are all our staffing requests so um department heads and principals had requested um certain things so for instance there's a four there's forty thousand dollars at the high school um wants to at a point five social studies teacher thirty thousand dollars for the middle school to increase the reading specialist a 1.0 technology specialist um to be shared by the middle of the high school for 50 60 000 um i put a placeholder here fifty thousand dollars to at least begin
088the process of discussions of reducing the full day kindergarten tuition um this obviously at fifty thousand it's going to take us multiple years to bring that dollar amount down to free if that's the direction we're going um but i figured it was a starting point and you know to start the discussions and and decide which direction we want to go um and then there was an ad of a grade seven sped teacher that came through the 119 000 which is an increase to supplies and materials that was that was um came from all the different departments um some of the big ticket items were uh in science they were looking at um advanced chemistry textbooks for for 25 so that that took up a big piece of that there were um cleaning supplies for the
089arts program for instruments i guess they need special special cleaning um supplies to clean the instruments based on what's been going on with the coven um situation the um elementary schools were looking for the continuation of the consumer rules for the bridges math program so there was an increase in that budget um the world language was looking at some online textbooks so it's a wide variety of what made up that additional supplies and materials money um but those are some of the kind of things that make up that number if we just look at rolling the district forward that the half stews we're at a 3.26 increase to our overall budget from 21. if we get into the staffing and the other additional supplies materials that brings us up to about five percent increase um
090these definitely you know just the beginning discussions pat and leslie and i are meeting early on next week with principals um to go over some of these requests to see you know can we discuss you know uh are they are they necessities are they wishlists or are there other you know other things that we can do differently um that won't cost us um an additional 369 thousand dollars in supplies and materials or staffing so like i said this is definitely preliminary um i don't know if there's any any questions regarding it it's raw data i mean on the next meeting we'll have the line item budget um and we'll have more clarity on these numbers i did have a conversation with dawn piet today um about what what he's thinking the number might be looking
091at and he's shooting for around three percent he said he can't guarantee anything right now because it's still very early on for him as well um but he's when i told him that just our rollover costs we're gonna be about three percent he said that's probably in the ballpark but he didn't want me to give out a definitive yes or no because he's not sure yet so i don't know if there's any questions thank you miss owen are there any questions from the school committee members mrs cleary uh the technology specialist is not the computer science teacher we've been talking about for years correct different i don't believe so yeah those are two different things right different things just want to make sure okay thank you i would just say that uh a lot of
092these are really important stuff i mean you're talking about a social social studies teacher a reading specialist um i just think that this is this is going to be tough to i mean i know it's three percent but we're looking at three point eight five as well numbers we're we're looking to get like five point six nine percent just just throwing that number out there that uh you know if we were we should fully fund it you know i think we need the 5.69 percent i just don't know where we're going to get the money but uh you know i appreciate the the the back and forth that the problem is is that we're still gonna underfund the schools and um i just think that's not acceptable so i think it's 5.69 it's 5.69 that's
093the price and um you know i think we should all reach out and just you know go over the numbers these these aren't things that we can't do without you know we're talking about sped teachers we're talking about a reading specialist for thirty thousand dollars i mean that's so important for kids especially in the middle school so if we're going to improve our middle school this is a good start i just want to you know i appreciate again i appreciate um the the need and the in the you know the town people but i just also want to know that it's we need 5.69 thank you thank you mr kearney mrs maher um okay thank you mrs owens for putting this together um i of course would like to see a lot of the detail
094um i'd like to see the uh population by step and column to see where our teachers are aging um you know because some of them by the time you get to the highest step you know there's there's no step increase there i just want to make sure we're we're looking at that um properly the other thing that's not incorporated into this you know into this um worksheet is is the offsets and and mrs owens and i have had some conversation about offsets last year we had about 1.5 million i couldn't figure out why you know in the town warrant our budget was voted at 20 million 960 000 but on the um five-year forecast of revenue and expenses the number the number is lower and i couldn't figure out why and i think it's because
095of the offset so we have to come to the number we have our budget but then we have to come to the number that we're going to ask the town for and we have to look at our beginning balances in our revolving accounts which have been cut into a little bit this year um athletics transportation kindergarten as we know will probably end on a zero balance which you know will be the first time in a long time so we're gonna going to have to carefully manage those um if the recently passed covid relief uh package and what i've read and i don't know if it's true maybe dr sullivan you can chime in is the second wave for this current year is going to be four times maybe what we saw before um comes through
096we had looked at some of the revolving funding to offset some of the hires that we made correct for fy21 yeah yes so so we we might have we might have be able to rework some of those revolving so that we have more to draw on from next correct so um i think once we know exactly what that that number is and in the covid you know round two um we we can take a look we can take a look at that um i actually comment mrs colery commented on the technology specialist this has been talked about for a couple of years at the high school level it's the um if i understand correctly it's what cassie o'brien role is at the elementary level it's exactly that rule yeah so it's that role and um
097i i have like major concerns about we're still deferring computer science curriculum and it's in the frameworks and i and it's a big ticket it's not only it's not only instructors and teachers but it's also the curriculum and we're not complying with the frameworks and this has been the third year we haven't even addressed it and it's been in our strategic plan or you know the end of actually it's going to be five years because it's been in our strategic plan for five years so um i i don't i don't know why it's not an ask i don't know why why administration isn't saying we need this um in in terms of um you know what priorities are um i i personally feel like we've kind of beefed up our support our technology support roles
098and i'd like to start really putting some money back into the classrooms whatever money we have um and but that's that's my personal um point of view i like the facts mrs owens that you you started to include some offsets for kindergarten tuition um you're right it's going to take some time but 50 000 basically is 500. which is a which is a nice decrease in our tuition number i think for families and i think it's a good start um so i just when you get more information we can have a subcommittee meeting or i'm happy to come in and look at some of the detail and grind through it so that we really understand um you know all of the details i'm wondering on um things like the the cleaning supplies for the instruments
099if we're not in a pandemic situation next year because this is for next year's budget are those supplies still needed for the instruments or has it come about because of the pandemic that whatever these supplies are are best practice i i don't i don't know but i think that would be an interesting question the other thing we should look at as we begin to forecast the end of fy21 is if we have residual money we should look at the textbooks the advanced chemistry textbooks and the world language online textbooks and we can pre-purchase those so we ought to keep that amount of money you know in in mind as we look at your end and that's all i have i think some of those specifics will come out in our conversations next week with principals
100because the principles are um in the process of meeting with department chairs so like your question regarding the instrument cleaning will be will be answered and you know obviously we know our job is to trim those down to uh to meaningful but appropriate numbers um and yeah i mean today we had a brainstorm session a visioning session regarding technology for about two hours as a leadership team and really talked about technology as really a three-legged stool involving professional development curriculum and hardware and how we were going to have to make sure that all three of those tied in the district hasn't strategically built a plan for a vertical plan for an instructional track uh which is something we know we have to do and uh it's it's getting there with all the other pieces we
101have to put together that uh haven't really been strategically placed is is difficult and um yeah we i hear i hear your frustration and share it with the computer science um it just to float it out there right now on its own um isn't as strategic as we would like it to be but i'll let dr scones if you want to mention anything about it um because it is a it is a definite need here in the district there's no question about it it's part of how we want to build it out like bed we are doing the frameworks are being addressed in courses so it's so it's it's not like we're not doing any of it but i do agree we do need to really look at what does our computer science actually pre-k
102through 12 look like um and today like dr sullivan said we talked with um with the principles about the leadership team um and looking at the elementary level too and and how have we built that out um for our you know in our labs and our experiences for students and what their needs are so it was a it was our whole energy team we had ron and um dan there too and of course lisa and everybody here and the principals but it's um it's it's a definite need and uh it just you know one of the things we could also offer the school committee would be a meeting as we have in the past it would have to be a school committee meeting but we have a budget workshop to hear a little more about
103the needs and kind of the the directions and leanings we have right now um and that might be helpful for you so that's just i i offer that as is something we considered in the budget process um and didn't it's not on there but it is something we could do that might be helpful as well as meeting in the finance and facilities you know i i thought i thought last year's meeting with the building principles was terrific um you know with the leadership team hearing hearing everybody's budget i i thought it was great um and i i feel i'm gonna be very candid we have last year we um put great emphasis on social emotional learning and supports and we've added staff a lead guidance counselor we've added adjustment counselors we added support staff we
104added even after budget around that we'll fortify that i feel like it's time we start investing in the classroom in the academics um the the true academic you know experience whether with with text with stat with teaching staff um because i think i think we've built everything around it we were just the other night at capital on technology and we were rightfully asked well what are what are the student achievement outcomes you hope to get with the technology and i think we have to have to kind of keep circling back to um the fact that teachers teach you know the building doesn't teach the teachers teach um and um how are we going to support academic achievement um for all of our students yeah i mean i'd say i agree i'd say the technology supports
105though do directly um support the teachers in their teaching and um so that that's that's why that's there uh but yeah no definitely i mean i think the obviously the social studies teacher was a need put forth by the high school right um i do feel good about the way we've supported ourselves socially emotionally but i i should also note that we were really lacking in that i mean it was it was a place where we were critically short so and so to you know when you're choosing between increasing something that we have a lot of or giving us something we don't have any of we chose to increase what we didn't have any of which was you know we were so critically short in those supportive areas so you know you're looking at where
106do you fill the gaps and needs and i would agree with you i think now we're in a a situation where we do need to to to focus on um some of those academic achievement areas as we did with our adoption of our math program um but but you know i just i just want to make it clear that it wasn't that we didn't see that we did we just reacted to what we felt was a critical need and critical shortage particularly as we came into the the ever-changing and stressful times that we're facing so don't don't get me wrong i'm not criticizing the decision no i don't think you are we were you know we all voted the budget we all voted on on those myself included and and and it came out loud
107and clear in the budget workshop with with district leadership every single principal discussed the fact that they needed the supports for sel so i'm glad and proud of that fact that that we did that because it's so important and i'm just saying now we have to keep moving and and i just want to you know make sure we stay focused on what's going on in the classroom um yes that that's my point uh no it's a it's a good it's a good one and it's it's correct so okay thank you for those important thoughts this is maureen for your uh ever keen oversight uh and critical approach of the budget it's a huge asset to the school committee and uh and the school district at large so thank you mrs st onge i i really
108don't have anything to add i feel like um i feel like i should but i don't i i appreciate all of the other questions that were asked and they kind of answered what i was was wondering about so thank you okay well in addition to uh seconding the uh the the suggestion for um a budget workshop um in the not too distant future i would just uh the only question i have which just sort of isn't directly related to this but but uh your presentation is owen caused me to think of this um where are we or in terms of or when will we know whether or not we'll be able to reimburse um families for the kindergarten tuition paid for this um for this year i'm just wondering i know that that's what there
109was there was a there was an issue with that at the beginning of the year a very reasonable one and uh you know obviously we couldn't uh offer uh free kindergarten without defunding the program so our solution that was potentially offering uh reimbursements at some point and uh i'm sure it's still too early at this juncture to to know but i'm just trying to get a sense of when when would we have a more definitive position on that i would i would say probably may may more towards the end of may end of may um i know you know people are interested to see you know where we are at um but based on you know the initial presentation i gave it was basically a revenue coming in is just it's covering our expenses in
110a slight you know surplus um because we're still funding those teachers full-time and those classrooms full-time so um at this point i really don't know whether it will be reimbursement or not i mean i really have to wait till we get closer to the end of the school year because it's not like our expenses are less no i mean that's a perfectly acceptable response i was just i didn't know if there was any sort of uh no it's not it might not it is on our radar i mean um it's definitely something on our list you know and i know ellen mentioned the offsets and we've talked back and forth because they got transportation you know we we had a you know significant amount um of a balance starting the year but because we don't
111have any paid a rides that that's gonna probably offset what the school budget doesn't have to cover full transportation salaries so that that account will probably be you know almost be down to zero okay are you awesome comments or questions before we move on to the student services update well to just quickly craig um we we know that buses and transportation is a is a concern uh and something we brought up in terms of trying to provide we do feel we could utilize our metco grant to um and correct me if i'm speaking out of turn here uh susan but um to try to bolster our um our own individual the the mecca grant has increased a bit from what i understand um and we're we do believe we're able to get uh some of
112our transportation um for our mecca students out of that grant which i think will be helpful um to know but there's a there's a there's a lasting you know feature to that as well so that's something that we're also trying to work out and it's not mentioned in the budget correct sue correct no you're correct um we're still working out those details and looking looking at different um different aspects the other the other piece was you know just an update on capital we went with capital on monday um i thought it went pretty well i i didn't know what to expect um it was two two and a half hours um but we got through our list there was lots and lots of questions we have definitely have homework um we did get the gmax
113report back today early today or yeah it was either early today or late yesterday afternoon um you actually didn't get turf for the turf for the for the turf correct um if you read through the report i think i forwarded to everyone um it basically says right now we fall within the average we we're fall within the range um but when i talked to steve he said do it again in the warmer weather and that truck will be trunk track will be all bubbled um so it does depend on its weather dependent so that was just that was one thing that came out of it um other than that like i said i'm looking for blueprints i spent some time today looking for blueprints for the high school um to drill down into that science
114room um because i need the footprints for that for that before i can get started with having an architect looked at it and tell us exactly what it's going to cost us to put to update that classroom into a science lab so i mean we definitely have homework going on yeah great could i make a comment as with circling back to capital um first of all mrs owen this is fabulous work this is i love the little price tag um with all the pictures and um it really it really i just want people to know that thank you um this is a 2.7 million dollar request for next year and this stick extends out to almost 8 million in the next six years so um i just want to reiterate the fact that um this
115is a big priority to the town because our buildings are very important and uh i gotta say i'm proud to work on the committee with alan and in the last couple years to be able to put this together and to make sure that it's something that um will continue for years to come and i'm just so grateful and so pleased to see this presentation because you really seem to know what the community needs and and i can't tell you how much i appreciate that not only as a school mayor committee member but also as a parent thank you thank you i mean we do i think need to have a finance subcommittee meeting to discuss capital prioritize capital at some point um because i know they want us to come back with a prioritized list
116um so you know wouldn't it wouldn't be too soon to schedule something like that and we could also talk about um the more of the budget details um yeah that that's fine i did talk with uh mr mcclellan about it he asked me for an update on the capital budget meeting and um i i think i think in terms of prioritizing i think the whole committee should be involved and perhaps at our next meeting school committee meeting we can have that conversation i don't know how full that agenda's going to be but i think it should be in terms of the priorities it should be the full committee um to to do that if you want to meet in the interim or if we have questions on things or you want to divvy up some
117of answering some of capital budget questions just let me know and i'm happy to help um but yeah um that that's kind of where uh mr mcclellan and i were thinking that the whole committee should look at the priorities i agree because i think it's a from my view anyway it's a it's a tough task because um they're all pretty pretty needed so it is they're all important yeah so i agree with you yeah also um you know i know we've we're all kind of working on different committees too and you know i want to bring up even with the solar committee like um one of the things that uh we we were talking about was you know having good enough roofs to put them on top of the roof instead of putting these carports
118in which basically i i think are i just did some research on those i wasn't too impressed with the the whole thing about that but i think the point is is that you know if we were to be able to fix our roofs then we would be able to so i think it's important that everybody because i don't want to discount what uh other folks are doing on other committees because it's it's well-respected work it's just that if we can kind of put it into play with our um strategic um next year's you know the next five years on uh what makes sense so i think it's a priority that all of us come together and figure out um for this meeting so i'm in full support of that okay uh thank you miss owen
119if there's if there's nothing more uh dr sullivan maybe we move on to the student services update nope yes that'd be great thank you very much sue for your report and um move and thank you for your patience and waiting uh barbara happy new year everyone it's nice to see everyone again mr wonka just so everyone knows at home uh this is uh barbara sir wonka uh we're a director of student services here at the coastal schools i'm falling short on my intros my office make it as a resolution i usually do it so it's not it's all right i just want to make sure everyone knows who's who we see each other all the time but well i know them now so i don't have to keep introduced so i'm just kidding thank you
120craig so last month when i was here i presented a bit on my goals and i wanted to kind of follow up with some specifics um regarding that of some things that have come up recently to update all of you in terms of where we are at with some of those things so um you know it's kind of nice following the budget report with this um jessie has put out two grants for which we applied for under the office of student services one of them is for early childhood and one of them is for special education overall and um all of them are for kind of the excess costs of special education under this covered 19 worlds that we're all kind of living in and that goes directly to some of the things that we
121were talking about last month in terms of those gaps in learning for kids and and how is remote learning kind of being handled by our neediest populations and things like that so um we have found out already that the early childhood grant was was approved and i'll be working with the pre-k teacher there we already targeted some ideas of things that we want to put in place to really engage with some of our youngest and most vulnerable kids um in this environment where they you know even though they are here with us they are kind of you know more isolated and not as engaged as they can they can could be in the past because of the social distancing the masking and what additional resources we can put in place for them and and i'm
122sure we will hear very soon on the next grant as well and see what else it is that we can use it for to continue to provide for our students another thing that is coming up that i wanted to talk a little bit about is that jessie has been working very hard as you're aware i'm sure um in the area of dyslexia and our new regulations and a final document is going to come out in february it is going to include a screening tool and it is going to be for all students with a focus on identification and support of all students at risk students with learning disabilities students with reading needs both in general ed and special education so we're really very much looking forward to that coming out and continuing our work in
123reading with all of our students but particularly those on ieps we have some of our teachers right now who are finishing up some reading trainings so some of that will be finishing up very shortly because they've been able to do it virtually and that will be some great additional tools that they will be having um also this is something that didn't come through but i want to share it because it reflects really the commitment of our educators um there was a desi sponsored class that would have been a 45-hour commitment for anyone who was taking it and our elementary team chair and um three of our teachers were interested in forming a team and even in this you know pandemic time that is really kind of stressing everyone's resources and time in terms of you
124know their education um the amount of time that they're spending on these new educational tools and things like that to really reach all kids they were nevertheless willing to engage in this it was so popular that unfortunately they were not able to get in it but it still deserves a shout out because it shows really not only their interest in this area of reading and dyslexia but also their commitment in this time in which they really are very very stretched and i'm sure it probably will come up again and um they will be able to join in and take it but um you know just like i said kind of a shout out for their commitment to that at this particular time and um and knowing that they have that commitment and the energy to
125take it when it comes up again that's great um another thing that i wanted to bring up that i'm not sure um you know people are fully aware of is that the group ace the massachusetts administrators for special education is really just a wonderful association it is an association that when i came on board we joined this year it is really the lead association representing special education administrators in massachusetts and it provides really wonderful resources to all of its members one of the things that it provides to us is the opportunity to go to three professional development sessions a year and what i have done this year is um the first one was in october and i had my secondary team chair michael stapleton attend it and bring back all of the information to all
126of us and then we dispersed it with the staff um one of the nice benefits of it having to be on zoom this year was that they shared not just all of the paper resources with us but also the videos so i pushed those out to the staff and have been following up with the staff in terms of through my department meetings with them um so that they also have the benefit of the experience our um our special education legal counsel murphy lemire murphy and specifically paige tobin is one of the people who are one of the kind of co-sponsors for ace so she presents frequently at those and did this past year so our staff kind of got to hear and see her in action talking about all of you know the legal work
127that we need to do around our response to kova 19 so on and so forth as well as seeing um ellen bloom speak about ieps and that was really timely because we know that the iep is under review under deci and is going to have some tweaks and changes to it in upcoming years so um i'm really happy to be able to be a part of that organization here in cohasset and to bring all of those benefits to our full staff um the other thing is that you know since the new year um as i spoke to you last month i have um reached out to all of the principals and um engaged in their child study teams and look forward to joining those meetings and those groups and um continuing to do the work
128and advance all of the tiered supports that we can for all of our students and um they are of course very welcoming and it's always a pleasure to partner and work with them and very excited to jump in but also for them to kind of um have me do that and be on board so that's something i'm really looking forward to does anyone have any special areas of question for me mr scalia mr kearney first of all thank you thank you for the great job uh work that you're doing um are you starting to see uh um how are the children adjusting to like um with remote learning and what are some of the um i guess some of the things that we've come up with that have been proved in the last uh uh
129say six months or so what are we seeing that that we can say that we're improving on right so you know i have to say we've been very um kind of flexible and nimble in the um special education world in terms of these remote learning experiences that kids are having we've seen some students who really have um you know been able to adapt to it very well and been able to you know really kind of shift their learning into different modes like that and then we have had students that for some of whom we have really seen that it's been very difficult but with the principles and the health and safety metrics we've been able to sometimes open things up and offer additional days to those students and that's been very wonderful and it's been
130an ongoing process not as i said it you know just kind of that first outcome from me that you know these were the students who fit the metrics but it's continued to be an ongoing process we've been looking at students we've been looking very carefully at their ability to access the curriculum and to make progress progress reports have come out in the world of special education in our district for all um levels now and we've been able to open up to a few students that we've needed to to offer more in-person time whether it be through walk-in services or additional days the other things we have done is we've really taken a look at individually how we are engaging with students remotely and really working in a very self-advocacy kind of way even with our
131as young as our upper elementary students to find out what we see as working for them but also hear from them what is working and what isn't and make adaptations to that remote learning so that it's a better match so that things are distilled down more or are less overwhelming um you know maybe fewer things on a slide deck things like that to really meet those individual needs and it continues to be a work in progress and it will continue to be all the way through i am sure but we continue to kind of change and evolve with it and hopefully meet those needs thank you so much thank you mr kearney mrs mar any questions or comments um yeah just just one question and it kind of overlaps with mrs owens budget presentation one
132of one of the items that's being requested is a 1.0 sped teacher in grade seven um and i'm wondering is is that to expand co-teaching or are we developing a bigger cohort that we can address their needs in-house as opposed to going out of district could you explain a little bit sure so what we're seeing there and for next year it would be a grade seven teacher but it might evolve and i've had some conversations with sue about this how um we're going to be need to really look at that and look at how we're posting for that because what we're seeing is we're seeing a little bit of a bubble we're seeing some kids who are going to be coming up who are going to need more reading supports than did this current year
133so that the teacher who usually provides a lot of that extra reading support for us was able to be a little bit flexible and provide some more general services to some of our kids who needed them and that's not going to be the case in the next year so we're seeing some of that is going to be taken away and there's a little bit of a bubble for grade seven then who is going to be needing some more supports and in order actually ellen to continue to provide some of those inclusive opportunities at those levels that we want to as well as some of that specialized instruction we're going to need an additional person to do that that person might need to continue to kind of loop for a little while and we're going to
134keep an eye on that and see what we need to do with it okay thank you thank you mrs maher mrs saint orange any questions or comments uh yes i'm just curious um mr anka about the dyslexia screening and just grade levels and the tool that that you can't plan to put in place right like that right so that's coming out directly from desi we expect like i said kind of the final to come out from them in february and um you know certainly while i i've you know been engaging in those meetings that i do twice a month and kind of been hearing the direction that things are going and things like that we wait for that final to come out before we really put anything in place do we have a screener in
135place currently as far as a dyslexia screener yes um dr scollins can speak to it a little bit we do yeah we have the shiloh wits which we um worked on last year to create our protocol for um how to address our needs for dyslexia so we have a whole protocol of how we evaluate our students and so there are indicators that um when we assess all our kids when they come in we look at um you know we look at dibbles we use um depending on the school dras there's a variety of assessments we use then if a student shows up with a couple of red flags then we would then look at look at it deeper and then maybe and then maybe use the shade so we're not using it universally yet we
136need to we're just really using it for that next stage when we have a kid that we are concerned about and the shea wits book on dyslexia and that screener really is considered still the gold standard but then the deci like the plan that deci is going to be putting out is that that's for universal screening yes there is going to be universal screening in it it's going to be much more targeted um and what it's really being born out of is that the identification and the diagnosis of dyslexia came out from jesse a couple of years ago that really could land in schools so this is a follow-up to that and what it's really going to do is focus on that identification and support system for all students just like we kind of have
137with our screeners in place in the district it's not going to be just for students on ieps it's going to be for those students who are at risk those students we see with reading needs those students who bubble up for us because as always we want to make sure we get those kids as soon as we can right absolutely of course yeah i'm just curious because i i think i i think we're talking about the same class the deci class about um dyslexia dysgraphia calcula i took it when it first came out i was in the first round which is very exciting um and one of their recommendations was to use the ran raz as a universal screener in kn1 and that's what the schools where i work have done and it's just been an
138interesting tool to use in kn1 we haven't done it this year because of um coved but last year we used it it was just just very telling it was just great data to have so oh maybe you and i you know outside let's connect on that talk yeah yes i'd love to thank you mm-hmm okay thank you mr st onge uh thank you mr wonka for your update um unless there are any further comments we'll move on to the school committee section the agenda so uh the first item under duck sullivan is there anything else well i just wanted to add that you know um we can always tailor any of um barbara's updates to a particular topic you know she covers a great agreementy staff and uh that have sort of disparate responsibilities in
139the district and uh she has a lot of a lot of uh you know calls on the fire i guess so to speak so if if there is some uh future item that you'd like her to update on specifically you can certainly do that so just keep that in mind as as we progress forward and that's it sorry to interrupt you craig no no you know that goes for uh for any facet of the schools and i i hope that the school committee members all feel uh free to do that when i forge the email with the potential agenda the draft agenda please let me know if there's anything that you'd like to uh have included in that and uh and uh that goes for community members as well if they're some sort of issue
140that you want to raise i mean you know we're here for you so feel free to email me and let me know that that goes for every facet of the school not just the student services but certainly student services as well so moving on to the school committee section the first item uh under that section of the agenda is the um the policy uh the the proposed policy revisions by the policy subcommittee um i know you guys spent a a solid amount of time doing this i don't know i know it's mrs caleria miss st onge generally that are our uh policy gurus i don't know who wants to lead the charge here with this uh but take it away one of you i'm gonna do that um so as chairman mcclellan referenced mrs cenange
141and dr scollins and i have been meeting pretty regularly um we made a goal for ourselves to more closely align our district's policy manual with the draft mask manual that's online um we feel like that will make our manual easier to keep track of and easier to reference and we'll be better able to update policies as needed once we sort of do one sweep and try to get everything in line we can then go back and look take a deeper dive um so with mrs mars help which we are very grateful for we sort of identified the um policies in the book that don't right now align with the mask reference manual and our first batch of um suggested changes is included i emailed them uh has everyone had a chance i can um actually
142sorry to interrupt that can put them on the screen if you'd like um hold on thank you there's just a lot of content so i just wanted to sort of get the committee's um input on how they think best to handle this process and so for me what makes sense this is a lot of information it's not actually a lot of substantial change it's just a lot of paper it's a lot of material to digest so what i would like to do and i know that i didn't get it to you with an abundance of time before this meeting what i would like to do is get a feeling from the committee about whether you feel prepared to discuss any questions or any input you have on this material or if you feel like it
143would be best to table that discussion until the next meeting my feeling would be to um to uh have discussion amongst ourselves so long as everyone feels like they had an opportunity to read it i did and i'm sure that you and mrs st orange did and it sounds like mrs marr would have and mr kearney uh formerly doing business as craig mcclellan uh he has uh been all over everything um this meeting so i'm guessing he may have read it over as well so if we can have a meaningful discussion tonight that'd be great i might only and i would even i i would even be willing to vote on it my only apprehension about voting on it is i don't know if it's something that we should somehow you know provide an opportunity
144for the public to look at before we actually vote on it but we can certainly have our discussions tonight um again as you mentioned uh mrs kaliri not a lot of substantive changes here from the mask language so i don't know um how detrimental any of these changes would be but nevertheless any policy changes are likely uh something of significance so or of interest to the public so i don't know and and i'm open to suggestions that's just my thought i'm not i'm not mandating that we move forward in that that that manner but uh that seems to make sense to me um i don't know if mrs mar and security have any you know thoughts about how we do that happy to hear them i i'm prepared to i i i went through them
145all i only have one comment out of all of them and um i would be prepared to vote on them tonight great okay mr kearney okay great um mrs mar what do you so i'm sorry go ahead sorry so the only comment i had on the uh adoption was policy bdfa-e-1 which was a school improvement plan and the only comment i had that i liked about our existing policy was that it linked the school improvement plans to our strategic plan and that's not included in this particular policy it is referenced in one of the subsequent policies regarding school councils and school improvement plans but um i i don't i don't know if that could um you know be that could be incorporated into point number one all right consistent with the goals and standards and
146the strategic plan you can just you know insert it there and and that would suffice but i was okay with every other recommendation okay mr tierney including that in bdfa e1 that's recommended for adoption or in bdfa edf a dash e1 that's recommended for adoption okay i would just comment that um thank you um this has been i can imagine a lot of work for the subcommittee and and um lydia and ashley thank you this is this is a lot of work i appreciate it okay well as i mentioned i'm comfortable voting on it i just didn't know if we wanted to give it some time but i'm certainly comfortable doing it um you know these were all these recommendations which i reviewed um are were made by uh um three very intelligent people that
147i'm lucky enough to know and i'm comfortable with the way that they are i didn't see anything that i felt strongly about changing so i'm ready to vote on it if everyone feels that way we could just do it so i'd entertain a motion at this time if anyone wants to make a motion we can i think we can adopt them in a bundle as uh as amended uh proposed by mrs marr the change that she just articulated in her last comment um we could we could probably just uh vote on them as a bundle so if there's a motion to that effect on the floor can i just ask a question to make sure i'm clear so can i so i'll just say that point one on bbfa e1 recommended for adoption would be
148school improvement plans will link with the district's strategic plan and then point two will say the educational goals right is that okay um you y that's fine or in point one just with the goals and standards and strategic plan instead of creating another bullet point i just put the gold standards and strategic plan got it and then i think we're covered okay good great thank you okay is there a motion on the floor to adopt these policy revisions as proposed by the policy subcommittee uh with the additional revision uh suggested by mrs marr so moved motion made by mrs marr is there a second second seconded by mrs saint orange all in favor please indicate so in roll call mrs coleri aye mr geary aye mrs marr aye mrs saint orange hi hi craig mcclellan
149that motion that unanimously passes so those policy revisions have been accepted and will be implemented thank you all for your efforts on that moving on to the next item that's just an item i have permanently on here i i keep on meaning to reach out to the town see if there's been any additional uh applications for this uh for the school facilities committee um and uh and i just haven't done it i want to know if there are and actually mr saint andre i'm interested in maybe even doing one of those uh electronic signs i want to advertise this there must be there must be at least nine people out there in this community that are interested in this and i just don't think i'm getting the word out to them and i mean i
150really haven't done much to do it so i maybe we can touch base uh sort of offline and sort of uh i can figure out i can learn from you and your experiences and how to sort of uh coordinate that um yeah i can connect you to the right people great i i just like to make a comment there too as well i i'm gonna sign up myself so um you know great you're muted paul yeah craig uh you know i'm gonna i'm gonna volunteer for that so i'm also um if we could almost make a goal by getting getting it filled by the end of the month because i think it's important i know we we've been all talking about it and i know three or four people that i could ask so myself
151i'm gonna put myself on um it's definitely needed so um you know it would be a pleasure to serve with you i know you put yourself on there craig um and um you know i think that we can get that fulfilled by the end of the month and i think that's a good goal because it's very important i think that'd be great uh mr kearney i'm very happy to hear that because uh not unlike frank sinatra you demand nothing but the best so i think yeah you'll be a zealous advocate for that as we're looking at uh proposed new facilities for the schools and i think it'd be a great addition to that so i'm my pleasure to serve thank you um so uh okay well that's this is why i keep that on every
152agenda because i just want to i want i just want to keep on talking about that i don't want to let that dot that die you know uh moving on reports from the subcommittees liaison positions let's move through it in alphabetical order if mrs cleary is ready right now she can go first if not we can move her down to the batting order you ready to go nothing to report oh okay moving on mr kearney do you have anything to report no just a comment on um i'm just so grateful that uh where our teachers are uh working hard um you know we walk around my house and you've got all sorts of different classrooms going on and i know it's been um it's been difficult but i just want the administrations to know and
153and all those hard-working teachers and custodians and bus drivers and how much we really appreciate them and um you know we look forward to getting through this and um we're doing the best we can and i just wanted to say thank you thank you mr kearney mrs maher um thank you um you know mr mcclellan i just had a thought on you know how how to help populate the school facilities committee in that um the the other appointed boards have been filled in town namely capital budget advisory and then there's some some other ancillary boards and you could check with tracy connors in the um town manager's office to see if they had applicants for boards that and and those applicants weren't appointed because obviously they have an innate uh desire to volunteer so that's
154one part of the battle so you know if you check with her to see if there's been any more applications you could also check to see were the people that applied for certain things that there just wasn't room for and we could reach out to them and see if they'd be interested just just a thought um great suggestion i'll do that thank you mrs maher sure um and i don't know if you want me to get into a little bit of an overview of the capital budget meeting the other night mrs owens had touched on it um it's sort of an evolving process i don't know if if i i don't know it's it would if you feel if you feel you think you'd be the best uh one to determine this if you feel
155that now would be a good time to do that let's do it if you think that after the next meeting it will have more substance to share then i then let's do it then whatever you think i i i don't know i mean i heard your update myself obviously but but i don't know what you think yeah no well i'll i'll try to give you know a 50 foot view and and not get into the weeds on the details so we we presented um as mr carney had mentioned 2.7 million dollars worth of uh capital items and the other night and um lots of good interesting challenging questions and as mrs owens indicated we have homework to do um our capital items fall into a couple of buckets and they fall into facilities and they
156fall into academics and we stated you know it's a challenge for for anyone to ask us to prioritize the classroom over an hvac system or an hvac system over the classroom um and it it's a quandary that that we're in i mean we work with facilities nick berardi was there and he he was terrific and um it's it's very it's very hard to make that decision but we're going to be asked to make that decision and i'm thinking that on some of these so out of the 2.7 million there's 950 000 for the turf and the track and there's um five uh 740 000 for the two hvac systems um one for the middle high school gym roof which is a priority urgent need that that facilities has said cannot be band-aid band-aid anymore and
157then one for deer hill and they clearly said doing them at the same time would be most advantageous for the town and i'm just wondering if we can take those two big tickets which in round numbers is 1.7 of the 2.7 million and somehow alternatively fund them via a bond or something else some other kind of mechanism um i i think that would take some of the pressure off capital budgets and off of us to then prioritize the remaining 1 million and um quite frankly you know we averaged 22 to 25 of capital budget expenditures in my tenure on the school committee and i don't think it's inappropriate at this time not knowing what else is on their plate to ask for a little bit more allocation so that we don't sacrifice the classroom for
158the building um and so that's why it's really important for us as a group to really vet the list and go through it and and and talk about the things that we you know we really we really need and um we should start having some conversations with don uh dom hi and christina about on these two big ticket things how can we creatively work them around without sacrificing the other things that we need um and usually in my experience having those conversations offline with with those two we come up with some solutions so i would like to recommend that um for that so that's all i wanted to talk about for capital budgets at this point well how do we show i mean how do we effectuate that recommendation um i think it's a good
159one um i mean how do we how do we put that into action i i think we call them up and we say do you have some time and we want to talk about these things and we want to brainstorm you know maybe dr sullivan calls chris senior and we get you know a meeting date and it's you know it's not it's not to to to subvert capital budgets but it's try to take some pressure off of capital budgets and and we just start talking about it and if it's next week it's next week and and um the more we talk about it and let them know our situation the better off we'll be in and that's just my opinion in my experience i agree with you more communication the better i guess i'm specifically
160asking who should reach out to who and when in your opinion i i i would like to i agree with it i think it's a good a good approach and i i would like to do it so i i'd like to recommend dr sullivan reach out to to chris senior and and just say hey we'd like to talk about this because we're really you know we're gonna have to be prioritizing and we really want to brainstorm on some creative ideas and they set up a meeting and i'm happy to attend uh mr mcclellan you you know as chair you you could attend and and just talk about it you know and they're creative guys and they have they have you know ideas i mean just having a conversation got us the math curriculum out of
161free cash last year so um that's what i would suggest so as soon as dr sullivan can set up a meeting let's yeah meeting i will i'm actually meeting with chris tomorrow so i'll be able to so you could broach the idea bring that bring that up yep okay so uh dr sullivan may be planning on uh including ellen and i excuse me mrs mar and i on that uh you know when you finally schedule it i will i will i'll mention it to him in person tomorrow and then i'll um well on on zoom everything feels like it's impersonal even though you're on zoom um and then we'll uh yeah i'll follow up with you and uh and ellen to make sure that the committee's in the loop um thank you via your communication
162if i if i could just make it one comment on that um yeah i i agree with alan um they're good people we just got to put some kind of a plan together um and also um i also agree with the fact that we don't want to talk about science teachers and air conditioners at the same time uh we do have um 1.7 for 2.7 for next year but it's like 8 million for the next six years so we might want to try to bond it all together instead of piecemealing it um or we could have maybe a one or two year plan with the idea that we're going to be having this school facilities committee that will be looking more long-term but i really appreciate the fact that we have it out there exactly
163what we need and and again if we can bond it or you know not pay for it right away and you know get these things done and move move it along quicker i'm all for that and um i just think again i want to thank um the facilities committee for all the work they've done on this it's it's good work and and so you know paul to the to the eight million that's on the 10-year capital plan right it's out there and and everyone knows it and uh one two one five 3.5 million of that is new roofs for the three buildings which uh we're not eligible for msba funding until i think it's 2023 for the first one and so it's 2023 24 and 25 um which is up to 40 reimbursement which you
164know forty percent of three point five million i actually did the math after the last aec meeting forty percent of three point five million far exceeds the twenty percent the savings over twenty years of solar panels on the roofs so you know you don't want it you don't want to give up 40 funding of new roofs to get solar panels earlier and pay for the roofs because you're not gonna do you know do you follow what i'm saying you're not you're not gonna make up the difference um but the 10-year plan we should always be revisiting and and adding two hey thank you mr kearney thank you mrs maher mr martin anything else aside from the capital update thank you for that appreciate it uh mrs st orange thank you so on december 21st the
165um rfp evaluation had uh committee had our concluding meeting um so mrs owen and i were there um and there were some interesting updates so obviously we voted to to move forward with negotiations um and so with that vote um what ms bodell did was move forward with negotiating with three companies um for for multiple reasons conditions could be changing um the k the most recent cares act i'm not sure exactly exactly what the outcome is right now because we have another follow-up meeting but um could be extending the solar credit for two years for um solar panels so that could change our outlook for you know like our roof replacement timing and and potential for solar panels could be better aligned because of an extension um which is great um so so basically a
166letter of intent was given to select which was the company that was designing the all um roof solar panel um system ameresco which is the um in in the um parking lots and then palmer was a substantially separate project in town so it creates the possibility of these like two parallel paths but it keeps those options open for the schools it also creates a little bit of competition among those two companies to give the best most desirable bid so um kind of nice to have that you know given giving the giving cohasset an advantage um so i am the one who will join the negotiating committee when that starts up in the next few weeks of the new year but um i think it's just interesting to hear that you know of course seemed like
167it was not a very popular um suggestion that kind of proposal is being developed but also a proposal for rooftop solar is being developed because this extension could align with um with a roof replacement in our near in our near future in the next couple of years so i will keep you updated as negotiations continue or begin slash continue okay any other updates from st onge uh that was it i have a question for you um my understanding of the way it was presented to us when we took that vote was that ameresco had already been identified as the potential vendor because they were offering the the best bid or product and there were no there's no discussion of any other uh potential uh vendors and also there was discussion of a timeline that you
168know there was some sort of um pressure being in in my opinion uh insinuated or implied um by the end of the calendar year the letter of intent the letter of intent was by the end of the calendar year um and so that has been sent by the town sorry i cut you off you can continue no i asked those are my two questions yeah so i think because it is um ameresco was being proposed as the viable option for something that could happen now with the existing roofs and the timeline that was understood um kind of at that point and then this potential of the cares act extension of solar made it possible to i think pursue these various paths with conversations with schools and then also with the select board um and so
169i i don't know i may not be expressing it clearly enough but it's just my understanding that the letter of intent was the deadline was the end of 2020. the companies are you know big enough and have enough projects that they're they understand that the projects may not follow through but they're willing to take the risk because even if they make designs they could move forward with other people kind of in line behind us does that make sense um sure okay and i'm not trying to put you in a difficult spot i just i i just know you have more information than me yeah you know i'm not trying to drill you i just as you know i was not a proponent i do know yeah and uh i just it it seems different than
170the information that was presented so i think that there was a shift because of i think because of the possibility of this extension of solar credit and so it became kind of more fathomable that a roof project a roof replacement might actually align with the with a solar panel project um and i think it was you know picked up that members of this committee were bigger fans of solar panels than carports so um yeah i guess that the vote was a letter of intent to bidders to say you can move ahead with negotiations and so negotiations are being explored i guess more broadly than just carports just to have the potential to do a project that might that might work out for the schools so as i get more information i will share it sure
171that's kind of what i understand right now that's fine i just i'm curious thank you can i make a comment yeah i first of all thank you for all the work you're doing and i'm so grateful that you do understand like because i was asked to vote on it and i felt like i didn't really know enough information on it other than um i just want to be on record that it doesn't make any sense for the carport so i wouldn't be um i i don't want to be close-minded to that but it just makes no sense to put the carports up and leave the roofs the way they are and uh and i know you know um by knowing this committee and and knowing the feel of the committee and i i just want
172to say i really appreciate that and then and knowing that um just wanted to be on record that i'm just not a big fan of those carports and uh you know if and especially the fact that we would be fined if we would uh um you know not want them anymore so you know unless they're like you know space age unbelievable like you know uh you can just put me down for a no for the copwoods yeah no i unders i understand okay um and i think that um ms bodell is very clever in the business of understanding these solar incentives and was able to kind of look at multiple options and hopefully position us for potentially having rooftop solar i mean if that timeline works out that would be awesome if we could get
173a new roof and put solar panels on how great would that be awesome save money and yeah yeah and kind of out of sight out of mind and saving money yeah who could ask for anything more i'm glad we're agreeing and i appreciate that yeah so i'll keep you updated negotiation the nokia can't even talk anymore the negotiation committee i think will you know start meeting um i'm sure soon i think now that we're in the new year we're all just kind of resetting and and figuring out how to move forward with that okay thank you um i have no updates so moving on next agenda item it's uh approval of minutes i don't believe there were any minutes to approve so uh the next agenda item is uh topics not recently anticipated by the
174chairperson 48 hours in advance of this meeting there is one item in that agenda section that is the um consideration of a fifty dollar gift by looters if i'm saying that right lawyers um an environmental uh company that has made a gift to the schools um in appreciation of the uh seemingly the the business they've had in cohasset in the community so um dr sullivan if you want to present that or miss owen whoever is doing that uh yes i can present that um i was actually struggling a little bit to find the actual check but it is from looters who's a local company um there you are and it is um it is in in recognition of what they uh are appreciative of in our schools to be used as we see fit um
175to you know to help the students so as we do with all gifts you know it gets cleared through the school committee very much appreciate this company's gracious and um very um generous uh giving to us and we put it up for a vote for acceptance from the committee they're emotionally accepting the gift at this time don't move sorry function made by mr kearney is there a second second seconded by mrs o'leary mrs coleri hi mr kearney hi this is mar aye ms sanj aye hi craig mcclellan that gift is unanimously accepted dr sullivan thank you thank you next uh agenda item is executive session there's no reason to move into executive session this time that i know of okay moving on to uh to a a fan favorite agenda item is there a motion
176to adjourn uh so moved and happy new year everyone boom motion made motion to adjourn made by mr kearney is our second second seconded by mrs calerio in favor ms cleary hi mr kearney hi mrs maher hi mrs saint orange aye aye craig mcclellan this meeting is adjourned thank you all so much for your time happy new year happy new year happy new year everybody good night everyone everyone