Concord-Carlisle Joint School and Concord School Committee - March 22, 2022

001all right just tell me all right i'd like to call to order the march 22nd uh concord carlisle regional school committee cynthia and call the concord school committee meeting to order and uh with uh no no we don't need a roll call no because we're just waiting for them yeah okay so we are all here we are called to order and i will entertain a motion to adjourn to executive session so moved uh shall i read it for both yes yes oh forgive me i can read it i'm sorry the concrete school committee and the concrete carlisle school committee will enter into executive session under purpose three of the open meeting law to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the cchs tutors and cps cchs bus drivers unions and return to open session

002at 6 30 pm i so move is there a second a second okay all in favor i think we do world calls to go and accept we do do real quick exactly i know okay who's i oh gosh okay okay yeah all right uh we wanted to return at 6 30. yes thank you okay i'd like to welcome everybody back to the march 22nd joint uh concord concord carlisle school committee meeting uh thank you for staying with us through the executive session and i'm just going to note that this meeting is being recorded and we will start by welcoming our cchs students for the student update welcome darcy hi um it's good to see you um i'm just gonna share my screen to show the student report [Music] sorry i'm having trouble sharing do we

003need to give her access she should be awesome um sorry about that i'm having trouble sharing so i'll just give the student update without the presentation um but uh so the first update was on monday it was our first day of sports at cchs so a lot of students had tryouts um a lot of students were participating who were participating in sports had their first day of the season and it's very exciting um because a lot of students at the school are involved with sports so that was great especially since now we don't um have any copied protocols because um my sports are outdoors so um that also makes it especially nice because i think that's like the first time um for a few years now so that's great or two years roughly um and

004then today was also the first day of mcas for 10th graders um and it seemed to go pretty smoothly from everyone i talked to um and that was that our second day will be tomorrow and then we also have math and science later in the year but um english was today and that seemed to go pretty well for many students um and then also recently um due to the rising cases and a lot of a lot a lot of students getting colds which is probably to be expected with the mass coming off there are some more students wearing master and being more aware of the health situation at cchs especially due to the rising cases at cms and in particular puberty um but overall it seems to be going still pretty well with um the

005nomad or the mass optional policy and then additionally um the quarter is coming to a close soon our quarter three um and many students are beginning to wrap up and start to look towards quarter four um and then sort of more recent um activities at the school class government ran a successful st patrick's day luncheon and dodgeball tournament um which were both widely attended i think the dodgeball tournament had over i want to say over 250 students which is great um and then the st patrick's day luncheon also had a lot of participation and then student senate recently hosted the semi-annual blood drive through boston children's hospital and that was also really successful we were able to fill all the spots which is especially great because of the current blood shortage um and many students

006were involved in that and then student senate also met with mr mrilla to discuss attendance policy changes um which will be put in place especially um following a lot of the copic protocols previously in place coming not no longer being necessary and then finally many students have been very aware and signed by the missing cchs student and i know a lot of people are thinking about that and and just really really hoping for the uh the best and wishing our family well so um that's all i have for today but uh thank you that that's quite a whirlwind of stuff that's a lot darcy thank you so much uh we really we value you being here um i appreciate it thank you uh so so good luck with everything uh on to the next the

007next quarter on to the next athletic season and uh into the home stretch we go yeah yeah thanks and i do want to take a moment to recognize something that darcy um referenced that this weekend the school committee was uh informed about two troubling situations affecting our community and i just want to thank the administration for their engagement uh through the weekend that was very much appreciated um and um you know this is and and i also want to extend a thank you and gratitude um to our law enforcement officials in concord and in carlisle um and for for all of their work um so for both the administration really thank you um thank you you know our thoughts are with everyone in this situation and i also want to thank the concord middle school

008nurses and staff and administration and dr hunter and i'm sure many many other people who worked on the cases last week at concord middle school and i hope we're going to hear a report that we're on the right path to indeed that'll be your good news okay good good so thank you very much i that's probably was a lot it was a lot yes and caught us a little bit by surprise i bet yes okay all right um so with that we will go to public comment and i just want to take a moment to to recognize that other committee members have reminded me and cynthia to be more careful about observing our public comment protocols at the last meeting we permitted extended time allowances and engagement with visitors that deviated from our typical practices

009and cynthia and i recognize the need to exercise greater restraint um in our public common practices and we hope that our visitors understand that this isn't to say that we don't uh we don't we don't invite public comment and we don't uh desire public commentary um or that we don't want to hear fully from the community members but that we do recognize how consistent practices um ensure better relationships with the community and within the committee itself um and so with that i will return to my normal spiel about welcome for the public comment section and if we will begin with people in the live audience where we have quite a few yay um ed please state your name and your address for the records um and please try to keep your comments to three minutes

010and as a note that this is this is a school committee meeting in the public but not with the public and so we listen to your concerns and your thoughts we take note of them um but we do not tend to engage thank you akita obas a boston resident olson akiya obas a boston resident first i want to start by saying the boston resident community stands in unity with the family who is searching for their ninth grader we would like to take a moment to recognize the pain that this family is going through and we want to offer our love our prayers and support dear members of the concord carlisle school committee in our letter dated march 8 2022 the concord mecca families collective indicated mountain concerns in which we are seeking resolution in a

011timely responsiveness in response to that letter superintendent laurie hunter held a recorded zoom meeting on march 15th at 10 a.m which limited many of our working parents from attending during the meeting the chat feature was turned off the families expressed concerns as we were unable to correspond with one another after the meeting hunter set a correspondence to the mecca families with a link to the recording which families could not access these ongoing tactics are symbolic for the countless barriers we face which contribute to no trust faith nor confidence in the current administration leading the district to become anti-racist we ask the following of the school committee what is your response to our letter dated march 8 2022 including the list of demands when can we expect a written response to this letter how can anti-racist

012strategic planning occlusive of collective representation become a regular agenda item in order for the school committee to ensure that there is a systematic priority to the district is actively tracking progress on our voices are critical in the process and we believe district leadership does not address nor understand the magnitude of the issues surrounding inclusion equity and systematic oppression we are not interested in performance interactions including having weekly forums that become listening sessions that result in no action we are interested in being contributing members of the anti-racist agenda we believe that significant and strategic action must occur now and long term our voices are integral we demand that the stu committee open up a minimum of two seats for the boston parents through a direct nomination by the mecco families advocacy collective thereby democratizing access and

013opportunity to amplify our voices and be part of the decision-making process during our meeting on march 15th with superintendent hunter we yet again raise concerns there are outstanding issues from families that have not been acknowledged or responded to her response was that families should reach out again why should the parents have to reach out again it is your professional responsibility to respond we find this response to be both offensive and irresponsible we are seeking transparency and accountability by the school and district leadership as it relates to responding to parents and student concerns the issue is easily remedied by a clear and transparent process for responses please provide us with the policy plan and process that is in place for district and school leadership as it relates to addressing outstanding and future parent and student concerns

014the concord mecca families connective would like to formally express our support for the mecca director heidi harris lamell mrs harris has demonstrated sincere care and strong advocacy for our children she has been an invaluable resource to us it is critical that you know the importance of having a mecca director that holds the trust of our community has a passion and understanding of the unique needs of mexico and shares relationships with our children moreover it works tirelessly for them as heidi has done on wednesday march 9th superintendent head turner thank you okay my name is kristen hagerty uh 95 revolutionary road i'm going to yield some of my time if you don't mind we believe that she has placed a leave in retaliation for her advocating for medical families who face issues of implicit and explicit

015racial hate bias and discrimination superintendent attendant hunter lied to the mecca families about the fact that the superintendent hunter placed miss heidi on involuntary leave immediately following our initial letter to the school committee on march 8th one boston parent describes this wrongdoing stating mrs harris was punished for not silencing us and the message this sends to all faculty and staff is that they advocate for the equity and anti-racism then they too will be punished while we aware that mrs harris has been placed on administrative leave we are appalled by the actions and efforts and are deeply concerned by those who hold and abuse this power while contributing to the harm of us and our children furthermore we believe that is impossible and unfair to assume that mr namichi can perform duties of the dei director

016and acting mecca director mr nemichi must begin to restorative healing process with students and families in an effort to regain our trust and confidence both students and families require this in order to build and restore our relationship with him multiple aggressive actions by district leadership continue to perpetual systematic oppression that impacts many who have also suffered harm including being token out of the distant district taken out of the district when they have the courage to raise their voice and take a stand on behalf of our children we recognize this risk for retaliation does not limit itself to staff alone we as families understand we and our children may be subject to retaliation as part of our efforts in raising these harsh realities in our district however we stand together now as a uniting force for

017justice for our children and families we demand for a quick return of the medical director heidi harris-lamell in the interim we request that mrs deborah jameson serve as an interim mecca director we also request that the job descriptions for both the mecca director and the dei director be emailed to concord mecca families at gmail.com we seek additional information on the purpose goals structure and timeline of the superintendent's parent advisory committee who are the members of this committee is this a newly formed group or an existing group what is the purpose of the meetings advisory or decision making power how often will these meetings occur will the meetings be in person or virtual how can concord public schools support mecca families in access and opportunity to these regularly scheduled meetings the following parents are interested in

018participating sorry thank you okay my name is aaron fife 174 hill street and i also would like to yield my time to the former speaker [Music] the following parents are interested in participating in the parent advisory group ikea obas melissa frederick tanika williams dominguez derosa melissa oliviac ortiz nia wilson phd the unveiling of the strategic planning process raised many concerns and questions how do we start this conversation and how do we make concord schools inclusive and equitable when we lack transparency in a clear timeline that includes an actionable plan what is conker's definition of anti-racism and equity what strategies and initiatives can be addressed as sprints with clear timelines for implementation who are the consultants that are being used and how are they supporting the work of the dei director how do families contact and

019access these consultants in a safe environment when will the strategic plan that includes an actionable timeline be provided what is the budget for dei and how is it being used diversity inclusion training for teachers are within the first five years of their employment what can be done about that timeline for teachers to be required to participate in this training before or shortly after they're working with our children does the school committee and all of its constituents have a clear understanding of the history of mecco what additional data points will be included in the plan including subsequent action items to mitigate the disproportionalities between black and brown children in their white counterparts throughout the time that we have participated in the mecca program in concord there is little knowledge nor transparency on the process policies in

020intended practice that pertain to the hiding handling of bullying cyber bullying civil rights violations and sexual harassment we are interested in having a clear and transparent information about the policies process and intended practices that concord takes in these cases we reviewed the working document that highlights a flow chart we are seeking a longer more comprehensive discussion on this process during the presentation given by mr namichi on march 8 to the school committee it was stated that the hiring practice onboarding and retention of educators of color would change to be more inclusive we assume that this is a commitment is being made to ensure that the district has models of people of color for all students to learn from and for children of color to be able to interact and learn from people who look like

021them what is specific to the plan for this strategy how will outreach look different how will each hiring team in the schools be given a specific charge to ensure results how will cultural competencies be at the forefront of the competencies required for educators and leaders to be hired and conquered transportation equals access transportation for mecca students continues thank you thank you okay and i'm going to note that we have 15 minutes on our agenda for the first public comment um so we will have our last public comment in in person um and then uh and we'll return to probably comment towards the end of the meeting so please hi my name is rose felix presley and i live at 79 hillcrest road in concord and i'd love to yell my friend transportation for mecco students

022continues to be a concern students should not be punished for not attending events that are required if transportation is not allowed like saturday sports requirements or morning chess additionally the one stop at franklin park is extremely stressful during the last blizzard many families forced extreme challenges in dropping off their children because franklin park had an exorbitant amount of snow and many mecca communities decided to do the same thing all of the buses were trying to pick up students at the same place causing chaos we need to determine a safe snow emergency plan in closing the district's current response to our concerns is demoralizing condescending and patronizing meetings must be goal oriented and actionable while we still do not know what the plan is for moving conker kalau regional school district to becoming an anti-racist our

023concomical families collective will continue to stand together as a uniting force for justice for our families seeking the accountability transparency care and respect we all deserve in unity and peace conquered mecco families collective thank you thank you so we do have three more minutes left um in our public comment time for right now so we'll take the first raised hand online see no more public comment in person um and so that will be brad hubbard nelson um hello um brad hubbard nelson from 221 shottick road i'm a cchs parent and a member of the school's sustainability committee and also concord camp and a founder of the heatsmart alliance which promotes clean heating statewide i'm commenting about the plans we heard about last week to replace the alcott school boiler with another gas boiler and i

024don't know whether electric alternatives were considered during that process but we were told that it's probably too late because to change that decision because it's a process that's been going on for a couple of years uh seemingly without too much public scrutiny um it may be that a heat pump option would be more expensive however in the context of the climate emergency that we face society can't afford to keep using the same fossil fuel burning heating when there's low emissions options concord's climate action plan adopted in 2020 requires lowering emissions by 50 in this decade and the town is urging homeowners to transition to heat pumps when replacing or upgrading their home heating system homeowners can't be expected to do this at substantial cost if our town-owned buildings don't bother to a decision like this

025affects our children's prospects for a livable climate and if the school system were to change that decision and go electric the example it would provide to the community and to other communities would be very positive to that end i urge the school concord school committee to put the alcott boiler project on hold and evaluate efficient electric alternatives and if technically feasible choose the low emissions option for the sake of our children's generation thank you and i know there are other members of the public who wish to participate in public comment um and just note that we do return to public comment before our action items so just before discussion so anyone who wants to speak you are in line to speak next and anyone else who wants to share something later on it's not too

026late forever to uh to join the public comment lineup okay um so with that we go to recognitions so i'll invite mr cameron and the teachers that are on with him as we recognize the hydroponic uh project at the middle school there's mr cameron all right good evening thank you for allowing us to come on and share an exciting partnership that we've had with concord ed fund we've also connected with the concord garden club they were not a fiscal um they did not fiscally contribute to this project um so i want to start off um before i volley it over to our teachers and just thank the concord ed fund for underwriting this project that is about to be shared with all of you i think maria is going to start actually i think tara

027will start yes is it okay if i go ahead and share screen for some slides as well absolutely great if you want to introduce yourselves since i forgot that piece as well absolutely yes and i would also um like to welcome a student that is joining us as well dominic sabatino if you'd like to turn on your camera dominic he can you know be a part of sharing some of this too so let's see here okay everyone seeing the slides there okay so i i good evening to everybody i'm tara fernandez davila a seventh grade science teacher and enrichment teacher at um sanborn building and i'm here with maria maria if you'd like to also just say hello hi i'm maria mcdermott and i am the family consumer sciences teacher health teacher for seventh grade

028and i do an eighth grade enrichment as well great and we are both very excited to have uh been able to get this up and running this year as uh mr cameron said through the help of the concord ed fund so uh just as in the last couple months we've been able to really start growing and uh you know get this curriculum up and running um we have many benefits to this program and one of the things we're most excited about is that these these types of seed to you know community um programs where we can garden within the school are becoming quite popular and uh definitely something that a lot of schools are interested in but they often start in the the like food services side of things whereas we have really taken this

029from the classroom up and we are really trying to get as many students involved and get our curriculum connected to um this growing process and uh from there bring it to the cafeteria and the food services system so we're very excited about the project-based learning it can bring the social emotional learning standards it can address um you know the many ways it can engage students and ultimately also support um very healthy lifestyle and options for our schools so we're excited about that okay um one thing i wanted to mention too is that this is a called a pteroponic growing system so we're actually using soil so we can pretty much grow anything that we decide to in these uh growing racks we're not limited like some of the hydroponics growing is tara and i thought

030this was a great quote that you see above here give people something to do not something to learn and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking learning naturally results by john dewey and here we have a couple of pictures of one of our students watering our growing racks and the students really getting into the dirt and starting to break apart the soil for some new plantings that we started in tara's room and sharon coblitz's room my particular room has a lot of the greens but we are actually going to be growing in tar's room now things like tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers things that can grow higher than what we see in the rack right here right we have many participants and sixth grade science along with sharon coblitz will be

031uh getting started and they are just getting the first plantings um we also have maria's facts classes as she mentioned the family and consumer sciences where students do a lot of cooking and you saw her racks in her classroom i have plans to involve my seventh grade science students and currently i'm working with my enrichment class called ponds pools and produce and have some garden leaders that are participating in getting this up and running and you know supporting the growth also maria has an enrichment class called regional foods of the u.s and you're going to see some of them already using some of the produce in their cooking class so this is just a look at you know a little timeline of what we've already seen some amazing progress from the time we first started

032planting so you can see back in january where we were starting to see some sprouts and is dominic with us dominic our my student um who's been a part of my enrichment class over the winter if you would like to say hello dominic you're welcome to mention some of the things you've been doing to support this growth and um these particular documents we've been showing um all right um hello my name is dominic sabatino and i um was one of the gardeners who took care of the plants and it was really fun get her getting to do all the watering and taking care of the light for the plants and also like just like watching them grow i guess yeah that's it nice it is pretty simple it's pretty amazing how much you can get

033out of it it's set up to be so ideal with the soil and the way the lights are set up but it does take you know monitoring that dominic was a part of to be able to to get it all to be in its best conditions and grow at its best so we're very happy with the results so far and here we have some pictures of my fax class which actually i took yesterday we were able to start harvesting some of our lettuces for our greek food lab the students were making a salad and you can see um what some of the growth looks like um up close um you know they're trimming these actual um growing racks give us three harvests so this is the first harvest and then once we trim the um

034the produce down we'll still get two more harvests and then we will be recycling the soil um composting the soil and we should be able to just turn around the soil from now until who knows when it will go on for a long long time with the composting and then here you can see the salad that the students prepared and one of the students cutting up the lettuce here's a picture from the outside of my fax room i have a nice window there so the students as they come by every day have been able to witness from the seeds being put in all the way until now as you can see we have quite a quite a full window there of produce that we are um anxiously going to be um using in the next

035couple weeks dom will also be using this in his fax class within the next week or two so we thank you all for you know attending and enjoying what we're excited to get started here thank you all thank you very much thank you both this is wonderful i'm getting hungry [Laughter] yes thank you all for joining this is wonderful more than muffins right compliment thank you thank you so much thank you all right so on to reading of the minutes um can i take a motion to accept the minutes from the open session of february 15th 2022 it's a move just need a second second all right all right all in favor hi it's a weird list no okay um and one two on correspondence uh at the region we only had a correspondence um

036about masks um just about where do we stand for this week uh with with the new developments in the middle school and that was i think it was it was it was more of a directive towards the but it came to the region okay so we had two emails regarding gas spoilers and email uh from core and that's all i okay remember um okay and so with that uh chairs and liaisons reports yeah okay great so um i am chair of dei and we started our school committee training last week which was great with dr martin and with ed burns and i think we all wished it went on longer so we were here from four to seven in person and a little bit hybrid eva was at home um so we're glad to see

037you back with us again today and our next session will be on uh monday april march 28th from four to seven and our third session will be tuesday april 12th from four to seven so it'll be the same format we'll meet in the room i think sorry i think we've figured out um our technology in the room so we were shifting around back and forth but i think you know everyone here really appreciate the training and um i'm glad that we've committed to doing that and then our subcommittee meetings um we it's been challenging to schedule the april one before vacation because we are spending a lot of time um which we want to be spending during the dei but i think that the subcommittee meeting our next one we definitely have schedule is may

03811 from 10 30 to 12 and we're going to hear from mr nemichi at that meeting and get back to the um information the from the equity audit so that's just a preview of what's to come in may okay great yeah see back um so cpac had a meeting on monday march 15th i always look back at our meeting notes and i say every time we had a really productive meeting it was another productive meeting um two main things i want to emphasize that came out of that meeting one was that the cpac agreed that they had interest and they have you know much more flexibility for example than we do to put a mecca family representative on their board so that will um i think be kicking off soon i don't know i don't

039know precisely what outreach they've done yet and how exactly that will go but um that was discussed they they put it really nicely they said you know a number of the people on the board at cpac were present at our last meeting and said you know we we heard um the public comment we really took it in we synthesized it and wanted to make some meaningful action quickly and so they did um and then the second piece that um i think is is interesting the cpac board did put out to the select board yesterday a formal request for a seat on the cmsbc meeting as i've said a number of times to you all inclusive design is something that they are as a group um very interested in as the um building progresses to the

040more technical aspects of what we're doing they're not going to get a seat probably but which is okay and they and they sort of expected that but um but to that end um we will work me as the liaison i did clue in dr hunter this morning um we are gonna in in because a seat will likely not be granted what instead we're going to do is formalize sort of a feedback loop um so that they can ensure that the things that they perceive to be really necessary are in fact heard by the committee and um to ensure on a regular basis at their meetings they will be updated as to the progress of inclusive design and what in particular is happening um in that regard so um there was good openness to that and

041um i don't think they've received a formal response from the select board but that was sort of in that was sort of where we were going with it if a seat was not made available so um that's sort of those are the two big things that came out of that meeting eva you were kind of in and out yes we have today uh just the recipes on the region uh that um and then mark is coming oh yeah yeah to do the outreach and work with the teachers and administration at the high school too debbie's update was pretty robust and had a lot of back and forth in question so she's been um an invaluable resource coming to those meetings i would say because there's just so much back and forth and all like you

042know many questions are getting answered and there's a good dialogue that's been established so that's it the uh middle school building committee design subcommittee met last week and what we saw was uh what i believe will constitute the the major portion of this week's full meeting thursday morning 7 30 in the morning a public meeting on zoom we specifically looked at the changes brought forward by the architects that were an effort to address some of the value engineering or cost reduction necessary to keep us to our budget in practical terms the community will not see one corridor separating locker rooms and gymnasium but no impact on each educational plan of course and actually no impact on use of the gymnasium for school or community and then we took a closer look at some of the

043exterior facings um and the visuals i think are going to impress people it's a very natural looking four color scheme um that we think really affirms the kind of values that we ask the architects to bear in mind when they put this together so again that'll get rolled out thursday morning okay thank you all so on to the superintendent's report thank you i'm going to just highlight a few portions of my report knowing you can read the rest and some of it overlaps with the remainder of the agenda i'm going to focus on special education and actually a good amount of what alexa reported out on cpac is work that i'm either participating in with cpac or working on with the administrators and building-based leaders so we've been meeting regularly to look at our continuum

044of programs i met with the k-5 principals in in ms dixon for five hours in this room a few weeks ago and really did a big picture view of what we were proposing and offering in special education and what was working and what needed and might need some tweaking and we were really able to look at that in terms of staffing in terms of services in terms of the continuum and also look at it horizontally which was the reason we did it as a k5 group and additionally we're um looking at meeting debbie and i meet regularly and talk on needs that she's seeing whether it be the goals that she set for systemic processes to tighten up and sync up k through pre-k through 22 or whatever other patterns and trends that she's seeing

045she's done a really great job of both identifying those and making starting to make change which has been really well received in a very short amount of time so it's been really encouraging and positive direction in that regard uh again as alexa mentioned i met with uh debbie and the cpac president and talked on the upcoming agenda and some other items we're working on engagement with the building project we're very shortly going to be connecting with the inclusion consultant that's embedded in the design development portion of the middle school project so it'll be great to partner with cpac on that that input um and then i really am looking and working with both debbie and denise son and hr in securing uh the interim directorship for second year and that'll be a late spring event

046given the course of processes we need to follow so stay tuned for that um but i think we're all in agreement debbie's been a really big value-add and one more year under her leadership would put us in really good standing a year from now in terms of literacy and the work we've been doing there and kristen should chime in at any point we continue to to work with the mtss team that christine and debbie lead so they're preparing for a literacy forum we're going to give you a preview of that at the may 10th meeting is where it's tentatively slated and then a full forum on the 16th for the community that'll be available through zoom so that it's accessible to everyone and that'll be the big picture view and look at our best practices

047and the way in which we're approaching all aspects with a specific focus also on phonics for sure summer school again is attached very closely to reading instruction and is very data driven so that students are being invited based on their winter data benchmarks we have dates set for summer school of july 11th through august 5th we've gone back to four weeks we've condensed to three and this year feel strongly four is going to better serve students coming off of the pandemic so we're excited by that and really looking at how the data is informing what those practices will be and in that same way i was able to connect with each leadership leadership team at the elementary schools uh in literacy and look at the data collection processes that they're using kristin's job is to

048sync them all up because each k-5 school has its own approach to some extent not widely varying but but you know unique to them so that's part of the job of the committee is to decide where we're going to be consistent where we might have a little bit of variation um it was really exciting to listen to the folks really working directly with students gathering data tracking data intervening with tools that align with that and really their you know satisfaction when they see progress their review and regrouping when they don't and what they do next a lot of passionate passionate work going on so to hear that firsthand from them was really really really exciting so i think those are my highlights i'll let you read the rest and other topics will come up later

049in the meeting are there any questions okay if i may dr hunter um could you speak to the summer school dates they seem unusual but i'm sure there's a good reason that we don't know yeah we really worked with the july 4th week differently this summer last summer we had tried to bring summer school online a porsche a portion of the week of july 4th and it's just too much of a conflict of vacation so we pushed it out the whole week to the week of the 11th and we're going to run into the first week in august great okay thank you uh you referenced a reduction in the cps budget uh i trust we can circle around to that later tonight i think that's is that an agenda item tonight um and then finally

050uh i look forward to learning more about the uh metco advisory group uh because i think the work to align it with other activities um is gonna be important to us very much so thank you discussions certainly let me just pull the data up here for you to see hopefully not much to discuss not too much to discuss other than a quick review of last week i'm sorry i had it ready and now i don't having the zoom open with all the other documents becomes a bit of a challenge well i'm going to just speak to it so i don't hold you up anymore um last week as you know we had a surge at peabody specifically very much contained to pbd was the good news uh we ultimately ended up with 52 cases at

051peabody uh 51 50 of those being students so it was the 11 year olds that were acquiring the virus and clearly spreading it sharing it among each other so total of 88 cases last week clearly most of those at the middle school we worked very closely as all of you know with the local health officials with desi with the state epidemiologists um by friday because really was the absence rate that drove the decision to just catch our breath on friday and um allow instruction to cease for just that one day because so many kids were homesick it was complicating the path of instruction so greatly uh we've done really well since then uh just a handful of cases since friday so we seem to have had it go through and um retreat just as fast

052we're glad for that and we're watching the numbers this week we're up a bit it's 22 so far to date this week uh some of them are siblings of peabody so we know there's some household spread going on as a result of that but we're keeping an eye on it there's no one spot that that's concentrated it's fairly equally spread across the schools the 22 cases that we have so i don't believe we're headed towards another peabody type of event and we're hopeful that that's behind us and the masks will come off at peabody the way we had said they would and we're back on track to mask optional and all activities resuming essentially normally a little blip on the radar and is that tomorrow or is that it's tomorrow yeah we picked monday and

053tuesday to mask so we could get them all back in together get pool testing behind us see the data from the weekend all of it's really really stable so there's no reason not to unmask tomorrow and across the board very mild every consistently which is also really important yeah you know we did see one study i think i think the conclusion of the peabody event is a bit of a combination of factors uh but certainly the vaccine seems the least effective in the 11 year olds the studies show that and then we put all 11 year olds together and took the masks off and omicron must have made its way in so hopefully we're behind that and we're back stable and moving forward are any of the public health folks talking to us about the

054sub-variant and whether that's arriving yeah jesse mentioned that specifically we made it to their medical team last week there was question of jesse if the sub-variant had been a piece of this what i learned in talking with all these experts is there's a lot of hypotheses and theories and not much way to confirm so okay could be it could be it could be okay if there is another situation like that like in any of the schools is there any discussion of like is there any preparation or discussion of remote at all no no no and in fact that was a discussion we had about friday was whether or not we would consider going remote we felt well juan desi would have to grant that i don't have authority for that but two we also had

05550 kids home sick and we weren't sure remote was going to be successful with so many ill kids and the turnaround time to do it on a dime like that we're not as facile at it as we were and we just didn't think it would be the most effective instructional day yep so thank you okay thank you um so tonight we have with us members of the world language teacher team from midland high school and they have prepared an interactive and engaging presentation that we've gotten a preview of through our agenda but we have been much looking forward to seeing live and in action well i don't know live for whatever that means anymore yeah yes in in in action real time so so thank you for joining us this evening yeah please do um

056an explanation of why i invited our world language leaders to present to you because their work is truly remarkable for three reasons the first is makes us one of the only districts to offer world language to all students in elementary so all students k to five takes spanish twice a week that's unusual to have elementary language and it's unusual for it to be offered to all students so both of those things make us really unique and in i guess five years since we implemented the program we have had to integrate it with our existing programs at the the middle school and the high school so you could think that would be really hard but these folks who worked on it made it actually very seamless because of the second piece that i'll mention which is

057they have a particular approach to teaching world languages to make them engaging it's called comprehensive input but you'll see it's it's doing plays it's reading books it's having conversations it's having a little store set up they're not sitting around having a teacher talk at them so it's really really an engaging class and then the last thing that i'll mention mention that makes our program i think unique and uh has conquered sort of a step above is in all teaching of world language you are teaching speaking listening reading and writing that's what the standards say like every other content area in our curriculum we uses as an opportunities to provide multicultural windows and doors into other other cultures so that if kids aren't from the cultures that we're studying they can learn more about them so

058i've asked them to highlight those three things because these ladies love this program so much they could talk forever so without further ado maybe yolanda you can start thank you for having us good evening i'm happy to be here tonight to share with you what our students learn in the world language programs cpr at cps and cchs i'm here with my colleagues annette howard courtney sawicki and caitlin smith and they will introduce themselves when they speak later my name is yolanda volpe and after 21 years of teaching spanish at cchs and for some of the time i was chair of the world language department i am now the facilitator of the concord induction mentoring program and i've been working with the elementary teachers k5 spanish teachers who are amazing to write curricula for each grade

059level each year we as we went on we are now completing our fifth year and i'm happy to report that the students are loving it and they're learning a lot of spanish so after that i'd like to go on to give you a quick highlight my role tonight is to talk to you about what research says about the benefits of learning languages and what the best practices are for teaching and learning a language so as you know the department of elementary and educa department of elementary and secondary education places word language among the core curricula it is not an elective next slide and additionally they make a statement that says we believe that all massachusetts students should acquire language and no should acquire cultural linguistic proficiency in at least one other language in english proficiency

060in one or more language one or more word languages will empower all students to use languages other than english to tell their own stories understand the stories of others and engage in their communities so why is it critical to learn other languages in 2022 we all know that we have lots of new technologies all our smartphones can speak pretty much any language we want them to do so why is it that is you know uh researchers and others tell us that it's critical to continue teaching and learning languages well for one thing we all know that the world is flat i have that in quotes and so in quotations it's smaller it's more interconnected than ever before language is a bridge to the culture of the people who speak it so learning a language leads

061to an appreciation of other cultures promotes global understanding and cultural competency learning a language is an interdisciplinary endeavor we don't only learn words and verbs which are essential to understand the structure and the grammatical structures of a language but we learn those to move on and communicate for example in the business world or when traveling those who know another language often have an advantage over those who do not you have to click again in that sorry well there we go so according to research what are these benefits why is it important to acquire one or more language so researchers have known for a long time and there has been some debate about this but mostly and consistently they talk about how it provides cognitive benefits for students it fosters a global mindset and an appreciation

062for linguistic and cultural differences it supports higher academic achievement across the curriculum enhances problem-solving skills creativity and flexible thinking and they've found that children who are in effective early second language programs show overall gains on standardized tests of the basic skills and derive additional cognitive social and effective benefits i have my uh sources at the bottom here there are links and i meant to say that additionally language has been proven that language learning physically affects the brain the density of our grey matter so it makes our brain more active and it helps us stay engaged so my next slide is about diversity and inclusion we know that this is a critical goal for the conquered schools and we feel that um as language educators we see that word language classroom is often the first place

063where students become aware of the world around them and how diverse it is and they get first-hand experience in seeing different cultures and different languages obviously and creates us grow with an understanding of diversity we engage our students not only in the study of language but in the study of the language geography celebration music in other words all aspects of culture and hence it being a interdisciplinary subject these are some images from cms concord middle school where the teachers and i have invited speakers artists performing artists performers from different cultures of different countries and with their presentations they bring what the students are learning in the classroom they bring it to life for them and the educators at ccps and cchs uh we work hard to stay aligned with um act poll desi and uh

064nell these are national institutions except for massachusetts who design or define what our standards and frameworks are so we um adopt the best practices in teaching world languages and we work hard to stay aligned with them this next slide is a video from actful and it's brief but it gives you an idea what the standards are nationally [Music] learning languages prepares us to connect in the multilingual and multicultural world we share actful and 16 other language organizations collaborated to create the world readiness standards for learning languages recently the standards were modified to focus on literacy real-world applications of language and 21st century skills these standards serve as a roadmap to guide learners to communicate effectively and interact with global competence while participating in communities locally and globally supporting this vision are five goal areas also

065known as the five c's communication cultures connections comparisons and communities integrating these goal areas into instructional programs helps students become world-ready educated citizens thank you annette and um these are this is some terminology used to describe language teaching and learning so um kristin um mentioned comprehensible input it's one of the things the first one on my list here is proficiency which refers to being able to speak spontaneously about the variety of topics and achieve communication not memorize but be able to respond and to converse about something that's relevant at that moment comprehensible input refers to the ability of the listener to understand as much as possible even though they don't know every word or every single sound but because the speaker uses visuals gestures and context to make the language understood so a classroom teacher

066who's teaching chinese spanish french doesn't have to resort to english to have the student understand what he or she wants them to know and second language acquisition is the um the preferred way to talk about learning a language because as young children everyone learns their own language but they learn it through acquisition by repeating making mistakes and then learning it no one sits a two or three year old down and says this is a verb and this is the subject and this is how we conjugate and yet they all learn how to do that they say things correctly so we aim towards acquisition which means that if a student makes a mistake we keep going and we keep stressing that languages are for communicating and they don't have to speak perfectly while they're learning next

067slide and i want to thank you and i want to say that we know we cannot teach or learn all the languages spoken in the world but we aim to spark a love and interest of languages in our students and we want them to understand the language study is to get to know other people in the world and to communicate with them and whether people were diverse from them or different from them or like them and that's what we hope to achieve so thank you again and now i will turn it over to annette howard my name is annette howard and i am one of the four spanish teachers at concord public schools besides empowering students to communicate in spanish we aim to create enthusiasm for world cultures as well as a desire to continue

068learning languages and embrace multiple perspectives oh boy sorry today i'm going to give you just a few highlights of our program of what our program looks like you can visit the district website to see a full description of our kindergarten through fifth grade curriculum and my computer is being a little difficult oh here we go who wants to do this slide now students in kindergarten the first grade received spanish instruction twice a week for 25 minutes this adds up to 30 hours of instruction for academic year students entering kindergarten leave fifth grade with about 180 hours of spanish since proficiency is based on hours of instruction that means that fifth graders will leave concord public schools with a proficiency of novice mid to not as high maybe even a few at intermediate low students and

069teachers use spanish the majority of the time we use a lot of visuals hand gestures and acting to make what we're saying in spanish comprehensible without using english we show students that speaking a new language is a journey when i ask them a question for example como estas students can answer with and for every word that they say we add a scoop of ice cream this visual encourages students to speak in sentences and chunks instead of individual words they always aim for question which is the story but cherry on top because that encourages back and forth communication our main focus is on comprehension and verbal communication we believe that the most effective way to acquire language is through the use of activities and games that are engaging and fun this video is from thoreau and

070it shows a very fun and engaging way to count students in kindergarten have to count to ten before they can throw off the stuffed animal from the parachute [Applause] working in groups is a fundamental language classroom activity with the use of sentence frames in a word bank students go from passively listening to actively producing spanish this video shows third graders from thoreau say what they like to eat and then answer the question why this type of activity requires students to speak and complete more complex sentences at the end of this unit a student will be able to say i like to eat bacon because it's delicious instead of just i like bacon [Music] uh third graders from willard sing this lullaby about a very small very special frog that lives in puerto rico i have

071been told that they also live in the dominican republic hawaii and florida but they did originate in puerto rico um music and songs are a very important part of our learning of learning our native language and they can also help learn additional languages the rhythm of music and the repetitive patterns within songs help students memorize the words even if the words are unfamiliar at first mimicking the words in a song can help students practice producing sounds that are new and unfamiliar so here are the third graders from willard [Music] is [Music] this is what the actual cookie sounds like and that was recorded in puerto rico um there are many benefits to playing games when learning a new language the most obvious are is they help build culture they increase student engagement and they bring

072a lot of joy one less obvious benefit is that games are a great way to build vocabulary it always amazes me how quickly students pick up new vocabulary when they learn it as part of a game fifth graders from alcott are practicing vocabulary from a book that we were reading called biblioburro and they're playing ice skating charades [Music] come on oops okay um students of their own were asked to take a song they learn in music class and rewrite the lyrics they could write about anything as long as they use the original melody and ukulele pattern these fifth graders created a song in spanish [Music] i think these students show that they're ready at a novice high and ready for middle school here to talk about the middle school program is courtney thank you good

073evening everyone my name is courtney sowicki um i am the chair of the world language department at cms and i also teach french the world language program at cms is a comprehensive program it's a three-year program beginning in sixth grade so the students entering sixth grade had the option of continuing their study of spanish from elementary school or they could choose a new language french or mandarin chinese our sixth grade students have world language class four times per six day rotation we have a six day cycle in the middle school so sixth graders have language four times and our fifth um seventh and eighth graders have language um five times out of the six day rotation and our world language teachers really aim to use ninety percent of the target language in their classes next

074slide please so what do our classes look like as kristin mentioned earlier the four skills of learning language reading writing listening and speaking we try to hit each of these skills in every single class period so reading for example next slide reading for example is something that we do in all of our class periods so what you see in front of you are just a few of the examples of the readers that we use at the middle school um le mayo a book that i am currently teaching in eighth grade french explores the life of a boy who lives in the ivory coast um so the students are exposed to french but they're also getting that cultural aspect of life in the ivory coast and the similarities and differences that that country has with their

075with their own country and then of course reading um has all kinds of amazing benefits learning vocabulary and grammar language structure it helps to reinforce words help you to learn words in context and then of course reading is fun next slide please in our classes we also do a lot of writing so what you see in front of you is a sample of a student in our mandarin chinese class so the seventh grade sample on the left both students are have the same writing prompt so in seventh grade um they're talking about their age likes dislikes family so you'll see that the seventh grader was was able to write a pretty solid paragraph um and then on the right hand side an eighth grader using the same prompt is able to add a significant amount

076of detail in his or her writing so there's you know pretty amazing sort of progression in language that happens over the three years next slide please listening and speaking are also crucial components in learning language so the first the first sample that i have is um of our eighth grade spanish teacher who is presenting an activity to the students she is speaking only in spanish and i was in the class and i can confirm that the kids were able to follow her instructions without any problem at all [Music] thank you and then the next sample of student work is um an example of speaking so this is two eighth grade french students and they are um talking about shopping so what they plan to buy how much it might cost and these students are i

077would say at about a novice high maybe pushing into an intermediate low level of language bonjour bonjour uh barnes noble um i think there's one more slide in there just the thematic units that we do yeah there we go um so these are the thematic units that we cover at the middle school so students in sixth grade explore um talking about their own identity and the identity of other students across the world and they also look at school life not only school life in the united states but school life in spanish speaking french speaking in chinese speaking countries around the world seventh graders explore families and free time or leisure activities and then in eighth grade we explore health food and communities um communities again not only in the united states but communities across the

078world and on that note i'm going to pass it on to my colleague caitlin smith at cchs thank you volsoir and good evening my name is caitlin smith and i am a french teacher as well as the world language department chair at cchs to continue with the theme of inclusion i'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the many cultures and languages that exist in concord schools as you know spanish is a key language for many of our students and families alongside english and when you look at this map you can see the other languages that are flourishing in our country including french in the northeast in louisiana and of course up north in canada as well as the importance of chinese in new york and on the west coast we honor all of our

079students heritage at cchs with our global competence program and cultural clubs while teaching chinese french latin and spanish as core courses in our world language program next slide please at cchs we also offer interactive cultural experiences that have been fully supported by the concord ed fund such as concerts with the togolese singer brees cappell salsa lessons with the noche latina dance company visits from roman reenactors and chinese calligraphy sessions our students love these opportunities to hear see and experience culture in action next slide at the high school level students can begin any language of their choice they can add a language to the one they are currently studying or they can switch to a new language that they have always wanted to learn such as latin which is foundational to our romance languages as well

080as english we have about 50 students who take two languages at cchs because they can they find studying language to be so rewarding next slide please world languages are core courses at cchs just as they are at um at cms they meet just as often as the other major subjects and as you can see certain colleges do expect students to take a certain number of years of the same language when possible let me correct that actually record courses at cchs and at cms they um they meet regularly but not quite as much as some thank you i'd like to use the rest of my time sharing the ways that students use their language skills to create connections and expand their horizons at cc we did a school-wide survey about what engaged students in learning and

081one of the top three answers was relevance students engage in their studies when they feel the skills and content relates to their lives and futures in this spanish 2h video for instance you will see how this student is able to talk about his daily routine in a humorous but also practical way levanto that's just part of a very humorous and effective presentation by one of our spanish 2h classes in the next video a chinese 3 student explains in depth not only the features of the city of harbin but why she hopes to go there someday this student is developing proficiency in presenting data and opinions in a coherent way and could you choose siberian international icing festival jen however thank you when you watch this latin 4 presentation you will notice that latin is often

082spoken in our classrooms the new massachusetts guidelines encourage students to read speak and write in the target language as these students do by explaining the myth of the huntress diana as you will see the students can fluidly translate complex and culturally rich latin while explaining how this text is reflected in the artwork of the artistician in diane and action ovid examines the role of fate at the beginning of the poem he writes fortune i creamen in elo non-skeles in winnie ace um and this translates to you'll find a crime of fate in this man not a crime of wickedness ovid makes it clear that taeon is another victim of fate and must face the punishment for this crime that he didn't intend on happening titian illustrates actaeon's fate through actuarium's form as action arrives at

083the grove ovid writes nepo's cadmie dilata parte laborum per namus ignotum passives aarons per wani in lucam sikh illum fattah pherabant um and this translates to wandering through the unknown grove with not certain footsteps thusly the fates of bringing him petition to pixactome with his hands up in surprise showing that tan didn't have ill intentions walking in on diana but through his expression we see we see that he realizes his fate is already sealed thank you here is a french video that shows students warming up sorry well that's spontaneous they're warming up for what i call spontaneous dialogues french for students prepare top five topics and then pick a partner a partner's name out of the hat to improvise one of these topics for more than a minute in front of the class as you

084can see they are enjoying this opportunity for interpersonal communication [Music] hey and finally here is a presentation by an ap french student mia caruso to my french for honors class we encourage our students to study current events and then share with students at other levels like many of our students mia plans to continue studying language in college and to pursue a career that centers around french emmanuel macron republicans [Music] having come through our k-12 program our students at cc relish the opportunity to use the language skills that they've learned in real life situations while expanding their cultural horizons here are just a few images from interdisciplinary field trips here we see latin students attending a manuscript translation hackathon at holy cross and world language students studying the normandy landings of the international world war ii

085museum and at the end artwork at the museum of fine arts you will also see images from our international exchange and travel exchanges and travels next slide please as you can imagine one of our great joys as world-leading language teachers is to see our students navigate the family life classrooms metro systems and other cultural aspects of living abroad throughout their school trips cc students make long lasting connections to friends and cultural traditions in their host countries and when they return they share their excitement and improve language skills inspiring their classmates to use world language in their everyday lives now we'll see some images from our different exchanges and trips abroad let's see everything from beijing rome paris quito and more one of our favorite things to do as a department we deeply appreciate your supporting

086our students efforts to pursue their modern and classical language studies from elementary school through their senior year your invitation to present our programs tonight signals your unwavering commitment to the students of concord carlyle and boston as they develop the skills and confidence to function successfully in diverse cultures here at home and abroad as truly global citizens gracias gratias and merci beaucoup sounds great thank you thank you thank i mean you really see how that the beginning of the progression the beginning with the focus on questions and all of that that really engenders kind of you know the relevance um and just a fostering of an embracing of the the language and the cultures that these students are studying so thank you for sharing that with us thank you for those clips that's really great to

087see it that's one of the problems i think for school committees we get slides we don't necessarily see uh what's really going on in the classroom so that that's awesome to see all that that work and i know there's a lot of work to put that all together so i appreciate that there were decades there were decades uh when the only way k5 students could uh do language was before school and it meant very few could the the fact that everybody participates now is a huge change that is now fully embedded in our in our district and uh you know credit credit to you folks for making it successful thank you kristen thank you okay okay great no questions no thank you thank you thank you so much have a great night thanks very much

088bye-bye all right so switching gears now on to um the concord public hearing articles 22 and 44 and we did have a development because carlisle fincom met last night so i have a couple of updates on the article which is our article 20. but concord 22. um on that but yeah yes exactly the capital uh capital warrant article so there were some developments um following the concord fincom meeting i don't know dr harner if you want to talk about just the change of uh i could talk about the time the timeline that's sort of the focus for the school committee to just be we met with the town concord town moderator following the realization that the capital article to pave the roadway had not been put on the ballot in time for the april election

089uh so we reviewed options and consensus was to uh put that vote on this on the primary vote in september so september 6 6 i'm sorry i'm in front of tuesday september 6 tuesday will be the vote um pending successful passage at both town meetings so concord will do the first round of town meeting and then the vote in the fall so that's what was so excited so we just it was just important to bring it to school committee's attention that that they'll be um you know just to remind we'll need to remind the community of the importance of voting yes and it will be the the clerk and conquer told us to be three separate ballots a democratic republican and then a separate ballot for the [Music] the yes oh so okay so just

090have to be sure that people understand they need to get that third ballot i mean it's their job to get that ballot yes whichever party you're getting correct yep no you'd usually pick because if you're if you're out of room you can pick which one you want yeah i'm not enrolled for example i'd pick but you write but you would get a separate ballot just for this yes no matter what no matter what yeah correct or you could go and just vote on this true uh-huh should you not have any yes skin in the game in the primary correct um so we'll need to we'll need to keep that on our radars and figure out how over the summer we can just sort of message um you know not unlike reminding people to vote in

091the special elections uh for for jerry's joining us here at the middle school um yeah the state primary is a is a difficult time this is right after labor day is that labor day i'm not even sure yeah i think it is must be uh-huh yeah okay and then article 44 i just want to give out that from from carlisle's side so carl alfinco met yesterday and they unanimously supported to uh invited in to support uh the paving project so many thanks to them for understanding the importance of this um of this project right they did they did have a question about the use of the terminology or some other sum um in the in the write-up because it says we'll appropriate the 853 000 or some other sum and they just wanted to make

092sure that that doesn't mean that there are any surprises coming down and i mean my understanding is we always put the or other some in there in order to leave we have a little bit of flexibility it you know you can go up a tiny bit but or you can definitely always come down and so it's just to allow that flexibility so so uh nobody gave an answer specifically but you know they they talked about this but but i just want to know from the school committee side can i go back to them and say that that's not there's no intention to to dramatically raise the psalm we can't right it's just to leave the flexibility to reduce the sum um so that was that was all because i couldn't say anything about that last

093night so um and then the other thing that they just wanted to emphasize is that the vote will be it will be on the carlisle town meeting falls before concord town meeting so we just want to make sure that the language in both towns is identical and so we just carlisle warrant goes to print on friday i believe so if we can just have double triple quadruple eyes on that to make sure um that we do match up exactly um because that would yeah but so but the good news is sir i don't know if i address this to you or if jared can help us um the war conquer warrant has been published correct and that reference is a debt exclusion yes um i don't recall our vote explicitly referred to debt exclusion is

094that does that matter is that a technicality that isn't going to trip us up because yeah we didn't vote for the whole that write up about the two and a half exclusion on our vote was very very succinct i'm almost positive no if not we can always just revoke our um right which just to be clean yeah we basically use the same language that we use for the other project in 2019 so whatever that language was that the school committee voted it was the same as then um but i can i can maybe double check with bond council okay that sounds great yeah and if and if we have to bring it back to the school committee just to you know while we're dotting eyes and crossing teams and it may be more amount of

095clarity than legality yeah is my respect yeah um and i believe that that's all that i had on yeah article 20 22 depending on which town here yeah um article 44 cynthia i'm just trying to bring it up okay um so article 44 short version is it's um an authorization to uh make many changes upgrades to our uh cable access facilities um and one of them is to upgrade this room specifically and another obviously to keep the studio at the high school vibrant and functioning which i just feel like it's important as uh to for us here in this room but for our education and community outreach so i just wanted to support that article uh seek the school committee support for that article but i'm open to any comments or questions about that you

096know that i sit on the uh public access advisory committee as your representative to that body we don't have detail on that budget at a granular level nor nor could we at this point because that budget will then drive more detailed plans the article in and of itself is for peg access monies moving from the account in which the town receives it to the operating account for uh minuteman media um the upgrades actually are a small part of that yeah to your point a pretty critical one i think for the schools yeah i would expect that uh dr hunter her designee are going to know as will the chairs will know exactly what that's going to look like when the town knows in terms of the upgrades here yes yeah peter kelly's already in touch

097with mark and working on okay can i ask clarifying questions does school typically take a position on any of the worn articles has that been past practice or i know in carlisle for example we had when i first joined this solar over like we're doing solar canopies and a repaving project right and we were asked to actually take positions on two articles or there were a bunch of articles related to the paving and to the solar stuff which was on our part of our facility part of our campus well not our article per se because it came from the sustainability thing but um so on that one we did take a position we were also asked to take a position um by the zoning board of appeals on something having to do with whether or

098not ferns could sell um cbd gummies and we did not take a position on that because that was not it was not on our campus it was beyond the distance that was you know this the drug free whatever right like so we yeah the school zones and so so so those are the things that i know that in carlisle that we've looked at from a school committee side so when it's had to do we've had a number of things that have had to do with our campus um or land that we own that's used by the town like if they can build a dog park on some of our land and things like that and those things we've had we have taken positions on um and others we have declined to even not even you

099know just just not even to vote on taking a position right so who asks is it like the select board that will ask you to take a position like in the examples you're giving well no so in the examples that i'm giving in terms of the the campus improvements yeah that was just brought by our chairs as well okay right in terms of the last you're deciding we decided we wanted to take a position in terms of the the cbd gummies being sold at first someone asked and we declined yeah okay so it can be a mixture to take it up yeah yep so it can be yeah and in this instance no one has asked us we're just proactively we're just proactively because having at least in the in carlisle on friday you know

100like they'll which won't be relevant to you guys but they'll publish the list of all of the committees that have voted in favor i don't know if you guys do that no the the fincom book just does blackboard and thing oh no so ours has like a list you know like oh the council of aging supports this and the recreation department and you'll have a list of people who are either in favor against or took no action on um if they if something is relevant to their operations so in carlisle it's an important thing yeah to put your thoughts behind stuff um so basically voters it helps guide voters in terms of like oh it's been vetted by these six different groups like i get that you know yeah who studied it yeah yeah yeah

101everybody good no okay okay what's next sorry to susan improvements are important so we can communicate effectively to the public yeah okay okay additional power back to additional public comment um for which we don't have any time limits um and except the three minutes yeah but um and let me get my little timer back up um and we will start with maxine greetings hi um my name is maxime ernst and i'm from 204 virginia road i'm here as a leader of the concord carlisle sunrise movement chapter and as a cchs senior the sunrise movement is a youth movement to stop climate change through governmental action and create millions of good jobs in the process um i'm here because i would like to express our weariness of the town's plan to install a new gas gas-powered

102boiler in alcott we urge you to reconsider this plan despite it being all but finalized and to find a more sustainable and environmentally considerate option small easy decisions like these are what will soon make the planet uninhabitable for our generation and those to come after us while it may be more expensive we really hope you will consider a better option please set a better example for this town and for the the towns around us as well we thank you for your time and your consideration of our planet and our future thank you thank you okay and then sydney you have your hand up hi i'm sydney haddad i'm a junior at cchs and also a member of sunrise and a part of the district sustainability committee i'm also here to talk about the new boiler

103at alcott um i don't go to alcott so i first heard about this new gas power boiler at a zoo meeting last tuesday and i had the pleasure of hearing many people report on our sustainability goals and how we are doing great in many of these areas including transportation and food however this same enthusiasm was not brought to the boiler at alcott it would be another gas-powered boiler and would not help us reach these ambitious goals i understand that it may be too late to change as it was presented as a way to improve with the other two elementary schools because those plans are less far along but the project hasn't broken ground yet so this is a final plea to reconsider a greener energy option like a heat pump i also understand that it

104is expensive but you cannot put a price on students futures we are in a climate emergency because of the culmination of many big and small decisions made by well-intentioned people that have prioritized money or efficiency the concord school district does a great job preparing kids for their future and should try to protect that future to the best of their ability which i believe includes revisiting the plans for alcott's new boiler thank you for your time and consideration thank you thank you thank you all right and so last call for additional public comment please use the raise hand participant tab if you wish to speak up jerry yes hello i'm jerry frankel 132 jenny doogman road uh i'm also chair of csec the comprehensive sustainability and energy committee here in town and uh i'm the author

105of one of the letters that you recently received about the alcott boiler in the interest of time i'm not going to go over all the details of the letter you have that here except to say that the existing plan to install a new gas-fired boiler that typically has a life span of 20 years or more is greatly concerning to many of us here in town who take sustainability seriously and accordingly i requested in that letter that the school committee described to csec how you arrived at this position and how you plan to address the significant sustainability issues i'm not the only one concerned about this my committee is not the only one concerned about this you just heard from students and it really impacts them from my perspective as a parent and i've had a

106couple of kids go through cchs i see the concord schools being in the business of preparing our children for the future but overlooking sustainability goals and measures is not consistent with preparing for the future i look forward to hearing from your committee about how you arrived at this decision what you plan how you plan to respond to these reasonable requests in my mind from these students and others and how you will address this in the future with the upcoming projects at the new schools as this will need to be done at both the thorough and willard schools in the not so distant future thank you okay if there's no more additional public comment then we can move on to our action items [Music] oh sorry domingos the rosa good evening folks uh my name is

107domingos de rosa father of jason and david derosa i'm part of the mecco parent group out of boston um i just want to thank you guys again for having this meeting tonight and allowing us to come back into your space and and advocate on some of the concerns that we see as parents here tonight i'm here tonight because from my last meeting to today a lot of the issues that we've presented to the school committee continues to occur day in day out so it's very disheartening as a parent to bring these issues to the school committee not only via email but in person and yet to receive a response from this body um it for me i'm speaking for myself it's troubling um you know in one breath you say the urgency about working on

108these policies about being inclusive uh about working on diversity and then on the other hand we've presented these these matters to you and we haven't received a formal response or even acknowledging the fact that the town has reviewed the document and has considered some of the suggestions made by the group of parents um i'm hoping uh in the days to come that the committee would actually you know sit down and have this conversation um as a whole body uh because it doesn't seem to be at the top of your priority list um it doesn't seem to be something that is going to change in the days to come we've made several requests for information especially when it comes to the dei um the data collected so we can review it so we can go ahead

109and fill in the gaps um as as a lot of the other parents have stated the study is inconclusive in our eyes because a lot of the things that have been put in that report is not accurate um i'm trying to be i'm trying to be you know realistic you know but at the same time i'm trying to be hopeful um we're asking um we've demanded and you know we're we're trying to be patient as possible but it's getting to a point where this is becoming unbearable um not only to our children who attend concord but us as parents you know to go in day in day out and continue to support each other on issues that we face as individual families and yet to have a decision from the body that governs the school

110system in concord um and carlisle so again i thank you for your time we've read out we've read out our notes into the minutes and we hope that you guys go ahead and actually take this serious uh because we are thank you okay yep thank you uh marlisa i'd like to add so so during during the last committee meeting which dominguez and i both um attended in person um it was quite troubling to me you know i i i spoke with a few of the committee members and i i felt that everyone is very great and you know i'd like to think that everyone on the committee is you know super bright super understanding and you know it really bothered me that after that presentation you know there were comments that were made about um

111you know mr nemichi's presentation being very thorough when in fact it was not thorough it was filled with tons of jargon there was percentages where we talked about studies that were taken where there was no actual n like no number of students there was no time span of when these studies were actually um actually conducted um there was no um definition of what antiracist means there was no definition of what academy equity means and i i just want to stop and say that like i i recognize that maybe the committee because especially one committee member kind of stood up and said you know you know i don't really know what this means but i feel that you know we're doing our best to partner with you to share the information with you but you know

112when it's not brought up or it's not on the actual agenda it's kind of challenging for us to feel as though it's important to you so what i'm asking for this group to do is to recognize that this is our our second letter that we've sent to you we're hoping for a response we're hoping that we can partner with you and we're looking for tangible results to actually show that the district is actually making the steps in the right direction we've been told about a budget that exists we're happy that there's a budget that exists we'd like to know how those funds are going to be allocated you know we're we're hiring you know okay how much money does it actually cost for a bus per day versus how much does it cost for us

113to hire these consultants to advise someone who does not have the background nor the skill in order to do the work himself so i just want to kind of throw that out there to say that these are the things that we need to actually pay attention to in order for us to partner together thank you okay um all right last call for public comment going once and twice okay uh when it's time to move on to action items yep uh vote to take so we have an action item of vote to take action on article 22 um which some questions have been raised about the um redundancy of that as it is our own article um and i think that that's probably a legitimate uh question of do we need to take an action and

114probably so up to the committee to decide if uh if we feel that we have to it might be worth our while for the carlisle warrant to have that's really up to all uh to have a vote in favor of it um i mean if everyone's in favor putting it yeah yeah it was january 18th that we put it forward right yes with the language with one question about debt exclusion but no ambiguity about the project or absolutely no anticipated [Music] would you and ever think it official sufficient for us to simply in discussion affirm that that was our intent and is our intent that is fine because then at the town meetings we will go and and talk about it and just say that we continue to affirm our support for this that's fine

115so let's see there's article 44. just looking that's the next one oh there's just some there's no vote in here so the um uh the way that the article language is usually uh structured when the committee takes a position is that the conquer carlisle uh school committee will take an affirmative action on article 44. okay so that do i have it or moves affirmative yeah thank you which is our expression to say we we support it it moves affirmative action would you like to make the motion mr booth um yes but just full disclosure as a member of that committee uh i was in support of the assistant system town manager's recommendation uh that did contain this um i don't think it violates any protocol for me to also serve on the committee because i

116was your agent there but i just wanted to make it very clear to everybody i i would move that uh this the contract is school committee uh move affirmative action on uh article 44 on the concord town warrant is there a second second discussion i not only want to thank the assistant town manager and the public information officer for staying focused on this but also the technical expertise of folks at minuteman media who are helping our i.t department working hand in hand with them to upgrade this facility and take a look at the main studio at the high school i think that something like our foreign languages presentation this evening shows the importance of being able to have all of these resources to broadcast broadcast the work of the schools and i guess i would

117like to probably thank mark back there that no one can see but we have this beautiful tv well thank you for the time and thank you to peter kelly for getting that going and thank you for the time you've spent on the microphones because it's been very helpful it's fancy all right um so with no further discussion uh all in favor aye aye aye okay opposed no promotion passes um and now we have a vote to approve a cchs trip to junior state of america convention washington dc dr do we have um eli eli's still here we're grateful for his time tonight so eli if you want to come on camera we're gonna ask you to talk about the trip yeah i'd be happy to great uh should i start with a little bit about

118jsa itself the chapter yes that would be excellent all right yeah so uh hi everyone i'm eli holmes i'm a senior at cchs and i'm this year's president of jsa um so jsa stands for junior seat of america it's a non-partisan political discussion group here at cchs essentially every monday we meet to discuss a certain political issue it's a great opportunity for everyone regardless of their political standings to have a comfortable and like fair platform to develop and talk through their political ideas um it's completely student led and organized the president of the club moderates the debate and they always have um i've been part of this club for the last four years and i've watched the group work really really hard to continuously meet um throughout remote school via zoom hybrid and now continuing

119to meet um it's because of that it's formed a really tight bond but i think it's kind of a unique type of bond because all of the members of the club come from such different like backgrounds and they've so many different perspectives on the actual topics at hand um so everyone's so different from each other because the nature of the club being political yet we're all so close to one another um so our club uh of jsa is a chapter of the the larger national organization of jsa um the national organization largely deals with like hosting conventions um and our chapter of jsa hopes to attend the next convention which is called spring state jsa conventions are an opportunity to get experience with activism debate with students of different perspectives because of the difference in

120regions that they're coming from and listen to incredibly influential speakers just to brag a little bit about the conventions and previous years speakers have included uh ruth bader ginsburg george w bush and commonwealth harris so to briefly a few of the logistics who of the club we would hope to attend would be the six seniors of the club since this is their last opportunity to attend the jsa convention uh this year spring state convention is april 9th through 10th and it's in dc thank you for your time great thanks eli yeah all right um so i i think that i can get a motion to approve the cchs trip i'm i'm going to have some questions okay and in the discussion that's fine okay or we can do this you want some questions uh dr

121hunter maybe you can speak to this um and forgive me if we're not prepared for it is this a trip whereby we would uh in your estimation provide uh initial approval what we used to call initial approval so they then go work details and budget and then come back with a final or yeah is this far enough along so that you've got all the details in hand so you've got a level of comfort yes we we don't have a protocol per se because it's been in hiatus for so long this has come up fairly quickly because we haven't gone mr mastrullo and i were very deep into the details with the advisors and thinking through all the covet aspects all the details of the trip and all of that so we've done more due diligence

122in this first discussion than we normally would have uh the trip is scheduled soon uh april 8th so i think for it to be viable you would need to approve it tonight and that hasn't been our pa our practice in the past i understand that but it's it's a moment when we're returning it's yeah yeah i think we felt comfortable bringing it asking for the quicker turn turnaround it's a it's eight students domestic to dc about as simple of a trip as we could bring you given the internet versus international some of those other much more complicated activities and uh ms glazer is no stranger to this kind of activity no not at all yeah okay good thank you very much now you're welcome good very helpful um so be happy to read the motion

123and move that the concrete carlisle school committee uh vote to approve the cchs overnight trip from april 8 2022 to april 10 2022 to the junior state of america convention in washington d.c as outlined with the condition that assigned district liability waiver miia is received from all participants is there a second a second as a former cchs junior stater myself oh there we go i i think we all owe uh mr holmes a debt of gratitude for the uh persistent presentation thank you very much yep all right uh is there further discussion yeah nope all right all in favor aye aye okay the motion passes have a great trip um and continue those wonderful constructive dialogues this course is something to admire yes these days yep thank you thank you um and now we have

124a vote to approve a cchs exchange student from germany we've all gotten the information about this um so is there a motion to do any need for additional information from anyone i talked about this right yeah and this is a no this isn't a one new one okay this is a new one but there was included a link to the packet about yeah about the maybe you could speak very briefly to it dr honor afs is our known agent correct it's another student through an agency this time from germany they do all the onboarding and vetting and work on all the details that need to be arranged which has proven to be a really reliable way for us to bring students on it manages the english component which we've talked about in this group um

125and really sets us up for success so we're excited to have have another opportunity to bring bring the world to cc and those families yes to get this far to your point it means we have a host family yes yes i would say we're getting closer to normal pace on this this school year so we've had a few both semesters um that's about normal to what i recall before before covet and do we have partnership schools that we like what hasn't what hasn't come back is the exchange trips which are not as long and the kids come with it as a group they visit us for a week or two weeks and then we send kids to them for a week or two weeks so that's equally valuable but we haven't brought that back yet

126you'll be hearing more as we get ready for the fall so we have them go a year from now but we had a friend's daughter stay with us for a year and the year that she stayed there were there was a robust it was about five kids were there for the whole year yeah i think yeah and then some who were there just for one semester or another from like a financial perspective does the exchange like town pay for it or do we we um so that's why you're approving it as you're onboarding them with that okay tuition okay we don't actually tuition kids in in exchange at this point it's an option other districts have exercised we have not and i would add if there was a budgetary tipping point you'd tell us about

127it yes yes yeah they wouldn't come with an endorsement from me if we were hitting extra teachers and things like that because which is why the english portion is really important that the agencies vet that because if they don't then you have a less fluent student they qualify for ell services and you can get into the place where you're adding staff so the english component is really important that the agencies work with us work with that ahead of time okay do we have a motion [Music] um i'll move that conquer carlisle school committee votes to approve one afs international exchange student from germany at cchs for the 2022-23 school year okay great discussion you wish them good fortune yes all right uh so all in favor all right hi all right the motion passes thank

128you and uh with no further action items i will entertain a motion to adjourn the regional portion of this meeting okay all in favor all right hi okay thank you all right good night have a good night good night good night taking a two-minute break sure thank you 159 okay okay and i'll call the concord school committee meeting back to order or in order uh so let's see how much of a update do you have in the building other than what was given earlier building committee i'm sorry [Music] so yeah i spoke uh out of turn uh at the joint meeting simply to reference that the design subcommittee met last week and that uh you'll see the results of that work this thursday morning 7 30 when the entire committee convenes and i think uh

129alexa and laurie can tell us more than i could about additional additional items i've been have you know a ray of rave sunshine in a hard couple of weeks is spending the day yesterday and again tomorrow with the design team uh you and cole sitting with the staff rotating through in different groups as we look at different areas of the building and it's just been really positive and making it really real and letting us get their feedback and the design team will go back and tweak based on some of the educators suggestions so it's that was a lot of fun today and it'll be a lot of fun tomorrow yeah i don't have much from a communication standpoint um fortunately are there any other subcommittee meetings coming up there aren't any others planned we're just

130starting to talk about when and uh when a sustainability subcommittee might be appropriate and reminder for anybody listening in that there's a link from the home page for the district to the project great so on to the budget update so i'll just uh sort of set the stage so the concord fincom had their hearing last thursday i think um and they uh i think they reviewed only articles 18 19 20 21 and 22. correct me if i missed there was something else going on there um let's see just to go through the uh vote so they voted affirmative action on articles 18 excuse me 19 20 21 and 22 and they voted no action on 18 is that our budget article i think it is right 18 is the conqueror public schools budget right they

131voted no action on that um so that's so i court and i were there um and i know carrie couldn't make it was there anybody i watched it i i did watch it after that okay so i just wanted to go around with thoughts people had on their deliberations and i'll share my sentiment in the space just on my my gut i haven't spoken with fincom members i am hopeful that they don't expect this committee to meet that guideline if we've had as much difficulty to date that we have but that they would be gratified if we continue to make a good faith effort in in their direction um i know that's not very impressive very precise but i i think that's what they want to see they want to see us work um more

132on this was the the inference i got i don't know how other people read it i don't think they're opposed to the budget per se i think they ultimately uh uh want to support it yeah i think that's but again i'm i'm putting thoughts into their heads i shouldn't that's just again my interpretation yeah well i guess that you know we voted on the budget we support the budget and so i guess i'm a little confused i understand you know i watch the discussions i understand that they would like it sorry they would like it to be to meet the guideline but we all voted to fully support this budget sorry but it's supposed to be a dialogue right they have their job we have our job um so it's i think the right thing

133to do always to discuss when when they have a meeting and set a guideline we should respond i'm not asking anybody to yeah did we then vote the budget prematurely is my question well you recall two weeks ago i i was explicit and i said should we could we those were the way i think i framed it should we couldn't we wait until the fincom meets um and my thinking back then was i want to get a better read on that um i i'll repeat i i don't think it's realistic to say our goal is their goal by any means um they've you said it well they've got their job and we certainly have ours and dr hunter is going to bring us a budget that in her estimation protects the robust program that we

134intend to bring to this district um this district uh rarely uh uh is is bashful about bringing uh a request for educational resources to the townspeople in fact this town's proud of that i think even though it's an uphill battle for residents it's a uphill battle they're typically proud of in this town and i think we share that so i i think we would do well to uh examine the budget again with an eye toward any possible efficiencies and if we come up with something we come up with something and if we don't we don't yeah but again uh i'll say it i think they'd like to witness a good faith effort on our part that gee whiz we dug in because you asked us to that doesn't presume what the outcome is going to

135be i don't know what the outcome is my my i guess my only concern that i would ask you guys is that built into the budget that we have in front of us now that we voted on there was a certain level of risk built in and i think my personal concern in sort of going above and beyond what already has been done is is like i guess potentially putting putting us in a situation where you know that that sort of exposes us i guess in the in the future as the year moves on um and again i again i don't know it seems like the budget is fairly lean and as we i see where we are as a country as a town as a district i feel like we have we have a

136lot going on we've got covid we've got mental health we've got learning loss and i see those as really significant challenges and i just i don't know that i just get nervous thinking is this the time for austerity in any means when we're talking about students and families and their well-being and their ability to achieve and make up losses that were due to cove that just makes me personally nervous and i and additionally uh you know we're the gap is so small i'm just i i as much as i think the finance committee would like us just to to give some spay or some i don't know um effort towards the goal like we've we've done that what we haven't seen is them sort of come back to us with any wiggle room or or

137acknowledgement of the state of affairs again not just in concord not just in massachusetts but the country i don't know but that's just sort of my take income members did use that same argument it is so small yeah you know so they're they're using the very same language we're using in fact i think it was it's a fraction of one percent yeah so i don't think the fincom uh is asking for austerity um for any for any town function notably the schools and that would be a non-starter here anyway at the school committee level i this is my first time in this process but i i might was my understanding that we voted on it last time because and i do remember your question court but we voted on it last time because for a

138couple reasons one we wanted the superintendent to go into the meeting with our with our backing and support and and also because i mean i've only this is my third school committee meeting as a member and i've seen this presentation four times i think jared has gone through great lengths and and the entire administration to try to we make wean things down and um and make this as lean as possible so my understanding on our vote was that this is like this is a great place for us to land and anything that we cut beyond this would impact students and that's where we draw the line that we've we've cut the fat and and now it's i mean i'm i'm personally prepared to say that um that this is this is where where it ought

139to be that's my my opinion and one thing they did mention quite a bit and we really need to think hard about this because we have a contract that's escalating to five percent almost five percent next year a cta contract so we'll have to make some hard decisions next year so i just wanna we have these budget these pressures because of our contractual obligations and somehow or another we're going to have to find a way to reduce our costs next year because we can't come forward with a well i mean five percent things change from year to year too i mean we might have different student needs we might have different you know funding sources coming i mean but it's such a big part of the pie it's such a big part we have an

140obligation to that you know and i think we're all very well aware that we have an obligation to that and i i do think that um i'm not comfortable cutting anything else because i do think it will hit students and that you know my priority is really i don't want anything to hit students and we talked about our continuum of services and extending that into the middle school and i don't want any programs to be at risk we're in a very tricky time in education right now and our kids have suffered for two years and i do think that we need to prioritize our students and their mental health and their learning loss all of that and um you know i was comfortable with where we're at at our last meeting the other thing that

141i think is really hard i think about this when i think about the continuum of services that we're putting forth at the middle school it's so challenging to for us to quantify um costs that we're avoiding in in establishing those services so you know one of the things too that i worry about is if if we don't continue to to make robust those services and scaffold appropriately the ones that we have for the student populations that we have there could be unintended consequences of that with respect to kids going out of district which of course has financial implications that worry me but even beyond that you know i i do feel and everybody knows i've really leaned into my role as liaison as as in cpac we are not only legally obliged to ensure that

142we're providing as much as possible for these kids but to me you know i know carrie said in a coffee once or candidate copy the budget is a value statement to me cert ensuring that we have the appropriate structures services people ftes in place to do that is also an ethical one from my perspective so again i just i get worried that superintendent has laid very clearly what we need if there's some way that those trade-offs are such that we can't start delivering that there's the moral and ethical and then there will be i think some financial ramifications as well and it's just so hard to quantify those in ways that i think i don't know can make the the argument for it a little bit more challenging three meetings ago when we talked about

143making the superintendent's recommended budget our budget um i think laura your words were i don't want to give you a cut list and nobody at this table uh disagreed with you a cut list is a is a threatening thing um and it's not the only way to do business it's not the only way to make your recommendation our budget that we take responsibility for um a couple of questions one can you help us any further tonight or anytime before town meeting further quantifying the risk factors embedded in the budget right now um we know there are uh an anticipated reduction of two kindergarten teachers you told us um and our assumption i think i speak for my colleagues is that this doesn't mean uh rifts this means uh movement within the ranks um so we

144hope we're not yeah we hope we're never getting back to risk um but that's the the the hope and a reasonable expectation on on your part um in your report this week you referenced a new 38 thousand dollars is that one that's from the last time we met okay so that's not right news as of yesterday's report that's an affirmation of something since we left i wanted to be clear about that that's good right okay good so does that mean the delta is 312 still delta 312 is that it yeah okay okay um so again uh not necessarily tonight i don't think uh uh this thing needs to be put to bed i think the fincom would be gratified to know that we're talking about it because it's important to them it's important to us

145that's that's fair we're all in this town together um uh but before town meeting if we can take another another look at those risk factors yeah i can speak to them tonight that might be it might be useful to get us started on this so we did we cut a kindergarten section at alcott based on enrollment and the assistant we could willard kindergarten teacher and assistant based on enrollment we reduced requests for nurses based on various needs expecting we can come to that in a different way and meet student medical obligations we eliminate we dropped 120 000 in retirements that we don't have don't have just to say allowed again hoping there's resignations retirements attrition to fill that we've reduced multiple tutors i think it's as high as four across different settings any place we

146could not compromise student services we've been all through the tudor lists and have have come to that i don't know that we can hold the cuts we made those were fairly risky we had a lot of discussion of putting engineering and applied tech this kristen's face is going to cringe while i say it again putting that back in the middle school we didn't we thought we were going to put it back we cut it before you even saw it because we knew the numbers were not where we were happy we went through all the supply and material lines they are zero based and now completely free of we know what we need now that we're this far past coming out of the pandemic so those those numbers are basic at best i would say we've

147already gone 75 000 into circuit breaker we're already 75 000 into circuit breaker and we zero base the tuitions so those are both some risk right off the bat meaning if we get unexpected unexpected spend you're someone without a district yeah you're not as nimble as you might be fiscally it should still be fine which is why i am not have not changed my recommendation uh this i think is where you'd have to go to make cuts and therefore i can't make those recommendations we've been through this budget i just want to be sure we say out loud we have been through these budgets i don't know how many times now five we're doing another round of the principles now it's not for lack of not working at this um the next places you'd have

148to go you'd have to go to contingency or circuit breaker or you are student facing i'm not kristen's going to scrim if i even read the list i started but it's support staff it you know it's it's student facing or it's the pd that's going to feed all these initiatives i mean you are to that point so it's either you're and i'm not going to make these this recommendation i think i just need to say that again you're either into contingency and circuit breaker further or you're into student facing or teacher development and i think we value those too much personally i'm struggling i listened to the meeting too because i left that night and then the conversation continued we came in under guideline at the high school that money was allocated that's 175 000

149of 312. i'm struggling with why that can't get reallocated um you're right the salaries are the big driver they're a driver despite whatever the salaries were we brought you a budget of 3.4 percent with the three ftes for the special ed if you subtract that out we were at 2.2 so we did all the work to offset the contractual increases so it was a reasonable ask we will continue to do that i have good faith that we will be able to do that more and more and more um i i feel like we're at a place where you've got the budget that brings level service with those special ed programs i'm also struggling a little if those if those spent programs equated to out-of-district tuitions would we be having this conversation because i think we

150all know at every level of town leadership out-of-district tuitions we can't control as much and we don't tend to have the same conversations about those we we accept them differently um that's what we're that's it's the same special education service in a different format so i just want to be sure we say that i think alexa did a nice job of saying it more articulately than i just hardly but um so this is your level service budget with those three sped programs which will avoid your out-of-district costs and serve kids well i want to thank you for that review uh it's probably not the last time you're going to share it with this community um and i think we've got to be patient and press on with uh with that kind of information yeah absolutely

151because i think it's always happened um so thank you very much yes i honestly didn't uh uh uh expect you to have that at hand the way you do but i'm not surprised that you did so so thank you for that i might have anticipated this well so thank you i do think it's important we say it as we're trying to figure this out and i am fully wanting we have not gotten to guideline in our in my five years here so i don't really want this to be the first year we don't right so i i am hopeful for ongoing discussions so they let's have this on their it's on the agenda for thursday yeah good so do we need to do anything as a committee do we need to decide anything as a

152committee at this point well i don't want this to be perceived as pestering our finance director or superintendent but i do think that updates through town meeting would be sensible for us yeah and even if those updates are the same ones that we have right now yeah looked under the same rock and didn't find anything might be what we hear i don't know um i don't know i mean and i just you know i i would be remiss if i didn't say it but the amount of time that i think that the finance office and dr hunter spent on this it's been a lot of time and i certainly appreciate all that time and looking for ways to you know meet guideline but you know we are in the business of advocating for our students

153and i just i can't say that strongly enough and um you know i i as you know i'm speaking for myself i would not want any of our pd especially now to be compromised or our students and that's you know and i feel really strongly about that and you know it sounds easy enough to oh just cut one percent from everything we are not a business we are in education we're educating children we're educating people we're doing all of that so it might sound easy to just cut one percent but it's it's not quite that simple i didn't even mention all of the pieces that got us closer to guideline because there's been other revenues we've tapped as well to to get to the 312. so we were at 450 450 initially when you first

154got the budget and now we're at 312 and that movement's been us going back again and again yeah and i i guess i didn't include this as part of my special education update but a big part of the special ed board meeting was specifically talking about the necessity of professional development and their hope that it continues to be built upon it was i was grateful for debbie to have been there to share i think there was confusion as to you know it's not easy to know if you're just a parent around what exactly we're doing in professional development so debbie did outline what um what our educators go through specifically vis-a-vis inclusion um and you know i don't you know we have it's robust and i think it should again i'll echo i think it

155should continue to be as as this is something at the forefront of you know appearance out there and i'll speak for the metco families that it is very clearly on their list as well and we couldn't agree more so yeah yeah okay but any other comments sir well i appreciate the conversation yeah uh i i know it uh is difficult for our administration to return and return again um but some years that's what we do what we do and uh i think we should be able to hold up our budget next next to any community in the commonwealth and be proud that we're supporting our kids and yeah and asking our citizens to uh to do so exactly good all right so the last item is uh concord article 20 which is uh to appropriate

156uh a total of 1.5 to the middle school stabilization fund so um i just want to vote in support of that uh this is just try to smooth out the debt payments in fact it's another payment toward a total five million dollar goal to level the peak years that'll be most onerous for folks in town so uh carrie lafleur and the selectboard got creative and found somebody in the overlay account which is the board of assessors account to pay payoff abatements so they sort of trim that down and we're really trimming back free cash to a very low level lowest i think we've ever had in this town so that's something we need to be aware of but you know the select board and the town are digging into deep into their pockets to try

157to help the citizens with the payments um for the middle school bet um so i think we it's important that we support that and uh because we want that to pass a town meeting so any other questions about article 20 the move that the concord school committee move affirmative action for article 20 of the concord town warrant the second second okay any more discussion well i would just echo what you said i think uh the town's working very hard on behalf of uh of the town this the middle school is the town project to uh uh ensure that uh support for an ambitious project uh is something that is a realistic yet big ask for uh the citizens of concord yeah any other discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed and the motion passes

158and i believe that's our last agenda item i want to take a motion to adjourn second all in favor all right okay [Music] thank you all you