001[Music] hi it is 502 and i'd like to call to order the concord carlisle regional school committee's joint meeting with the concord school committee on april 13th court thank you very much and i will call the concord public school school committee meeting to order and note that we are being recorded we have a motion to move to executive session i want to acknowledge as does uh sarah the regional chair that we received correspondence from a citizen regarding the language on executive session motions and we are grateful for that i move that the concord school committee and the concord college corey sorry roll call first oh forgive me thank you thank you so much hi alexa hi guys alexa we didn't know how to start without you yeah on our own sorry guys it's okay sitting
002there alone um well anyway i'm present both present and valid present best set present most fluffy present really present wilson present thank you for that correction a move that the concord school committee and the con concord carlyle regional school committee will enter into executive session under purpose three of the open meeting law to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining relative to the ccta and the secretary's associations comma or litigation of which there is none in our session tonight if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body and return to open session at six pm is there a second place second discussion and a roll call please anderson i for both booth eye for both without eye for both ms dead eiffel both mustafi for
003region rainy eye for both and wilson for region very good and we'll be back at six o'clock okay great link right so we're gonna leave this meeting say hello to our guests good evening hi hi dr martin [Music] happy ramadan thank you so much thank you appreciate it hi carol blake hello i've met you before i don't think ah yes i've been around for a while i knew i haven't you see andrew's here now whenever comes back up there's room ruthie's here welcome oh she's gone thank you all right well i see eva's trying to connect and it's 601 i think we can um return to open session for the concord carlisle and concord school committees the meeting should be recording at this point but i don't see it thank you for the reminder there
004we go this meeting is being recorded um and welcome back to the april 13th joint school committees meeting uh we will begin as usual with um public comments and i see amy is here amy i think we'll wait for li i don't see linda yet right so let's start with public public comment um a couple of reminders that uh you know to raise your hand click the raise hand in the participants tab you uh please give your name your address please limit comments to no more than three minutes if it's on a new topic if it's on a topic on which you've already spoken please try to be even briefer um and um [Music] i think that's it so um oh and yes and that this is a meeting you know in front of the
005public but not with the public so we don't usually respond um that's not our normal practice but we are very eager to hear from you um so with that are there any public comments i see we have colleen on screen colleen if you would name an address please colleen wallston hawthorne village thank you um i'm here to officially ask the school committee to establish a committee of teachers administrators parents students and interested community members to examine important issues related to special education dyslexia professional development and evidence-based literacy practices and all tiers of instruction this group's work would be transparent and inclusive hopefully subject to open meeting law and empowered with some decision-making ability the problems with the handling of language-based learning disabilities in concord are systemic but please don't take my word for it don't
006take anyone's word for it you may not know that dyslexia affects approximately 15 percent of the human population and can be reliably diagnosed by age five and a half with advances in scientific understanding pointing to even earlier signs and did you know that the vast majority of children who receive intervention in kindergarten and first grade do become proficient readers while those whose intervention was delayed until third grade or beyond do not research tells us there are extremely few late bloomers we should not take this to mean that older children do not need and deserve intervention only that it is necessarily more difficult intense and costly to provide adequately early identification and evidence-based intervention is not the norm here in concord but please don't take anyone's word for it the district has data on when students
007are being identified with disabilities such as dyslexia please ask how many children are identified as kindergarteners first graders second graders and so on you may not know that dyslexia is not a medical diagnosis but an educational one you may have heard differently just yesterday federal idea law tells districts they must identify locate and evaluate all children with disabilities this is called child find the new dese dyslexia guidelines state that quote both federal and state guidance endorse the use of the term dyslexia during evaluation eligibility determinations and iep documents when students meet the criteria as outlined in the most widely accepted definition of dyslexia this district routinely denies that children have learning disabilities until the gaps are so vast that parents pay thousands of dollars for independent neuropsych evaluations but please don't take my word for
008it as school committee members it's important to read and understand the laws that govern rights for our children and our school's obligation to its students the new massachusetts dyslexia guidelines will be a great place to start you may not have heard of a practice known as three queuing sometimes referred to as msv meaning structure and visual to encourage children to guess at words based on context first letters or even the pictures on the page this practice is harmful to beginning readers especially those most prone to reading difficulty who should be diligently working to apply their burgeoning knowledge of letter sound correspondences you may have been told differently but generally it's just you have about 20 seconds left but general education has been conquered the most widely and the most widely used rti curriculum encouraged teachers
009to use this practice but please don't take my word for it it is there in the first grade curriculum map first graders are taught that good readers use multiple strategies to decode and make meaning of unfamiliar words i'm going to stop there and that's about halfway through what i wanted to say so i will be back next time thank you thank you very much and do know that uh given the time limitations uh which we also regret uh but such it is uh that you can certainly email us and that uh that link is is easy to find on the website if you would thank you i have emailed in the past but got no response thanks thank you okay mr benjamin yes hello hi thank you for allowing me to speak um i would
010just like to make an observation out of the numerous school committee meetings that i've attended i've seen a disturbing trend where people who offer public comments are the only ones to whom a time limit is is subjected to i've been on many meetings where presenters have gone for well over an hour but yet parents residents taxpayers who want to address the committee are routinely cut off that's a very disturbing trend for an open meeting and for your constituents now that was not my main point of of um of conversation of discourse with you today but it is a very troubling uh circumstance that has occurred over and over again the reason that i wanted to address the committee was as it pertains to the middle school building project of course we've seen that there are
011requests for a larger building i really am not concerned either way with a larger auditorium or with more gyms and larger gyms but what i am concerned about is the overall cost and so i would ask that the school committee um endeavor to their utmost to maintain the cost of the middle school building project to the range that the voters approved at town meeting several years ago if it's so desired that there be a larger auditorium or more in larger gyms um then and as long as that can fit within the budget then fine if they can't fit within the budget and those things are still desired then other cuts would need to be would need to happen whether that means in the in the building itself or in other areas of the school budget
012so i would just ask that the voters wishes be adhered to in the middle school building project and lastly i'd ask that or i'd like to make sure that the cost for the middle school building project reflects the potential increase in labor and building supplies we've seen with the um with the increase in cost that for some building projects the cost of labor and supplies adds up to 20 percent to the building costs now of course those costs can fluctuate over time and they do fluctuate over time but given the high level of costs and labor now it's something that should certainly be factored into the equation so thank you for your time thank you very much mr benjamin i don't see any more hands up i do see linda and amy both here um
013so so welcome welcome guys fresh from uh fresh from the radio show huh that was exciting it's a different different way to do things this year um so would you guys like to yeah what's on your mind yeah before we just want to mention that cheerleaders just went dcl's that's pretty exciting and then also we're about to head into break next week which is also pretty exciting for a lot of students but we get back when we fully in person which i think is exciting for a lot of people but also a little bit like scary they're not really sure how it's going to be yet and like you know for seniors they're worried about like parking and stuff but i think that generally people do seem pretty excited to see everyone every day um
014and then also spirit week is this week which is planned by uh senate which me and linda are in so we have like a cornhole tournament tomorrow we have like a bunch of different events going on which i think is something that hopefully uh students are able to like like right now while we're kind of in the last couple days of hybrid and then uh the last thing i wanted to mention is just we thought that we should bring up just uh the killing of dante wright and the derek chavin trial because i think that that's something that's definitely on a lot of students minds right now and it's kind of uh we think that this is something that's important for just the classroom and the school to recognize it's happening and it's definitely a
015very big part of what students are talking about and thinking about and just daily life and stuff in classes right now yeah and i'll just add on to what amy said i mean first of all i just want to apologize for my tardiness my dad and i were having a conversation because we were supposed to get the johnson johnson vaccine this friday but now we're in a little bit of a dilemma which i'm sure you all know about already but as amy said i am it's upsetting i'm sure to everyone at this meeting that a reoccurring topic that amy and i have been discussing is just the racial discrimination and violence that has been ongoing in this country um i'm really thankful that my com law teacher took a moment before starting today's lesson to
016recognize what happened in minneapolis and what's also been happening for a while now it may be more appropriate to do it in a class like constitutional law since we just finished doing brown v board but she also didn't mention opportunities in the school to have an open dialogue and how that's invited to everyone who may not feel directly impacted by the events that have been going on um i think a lot of my white peers are a little apprehensive about attending you know intersections club meetings or like attending anything that the school offers like adl and other sources to learn about these issues not just racial issues but like sexism and whatnot because they feel like they won't fit in or whatever whatever i don't know crosses their mind but i think it's important to
017note that at the end of the day the people who need to have these conversations aren't the people who are facing the race of discrimination every single day so people who need to be educated on what it feels like to be racially discriminated and how to change the prejudice towards that and i'm really thankful and i'll continue to mention this every single chance i get i'm really thankful for joining intersections club not just for the conversations we have towards um any racial issues but also conversations we've had towards sexism and coming out and being a part of the lgbtq community um eating disorders and many things that i may not relate to but just hearing those conversations and being a part of them has taught me a lot and i think it's allowed me to
018reflect on my own prejudice and grow as a person and i just would encourage almost everyone adult student child whatever to partake in those opportunities as well thank you linda thank you amy uh you both have brought a social justice lens to your uh meetings with us this year um and i think i speak for my colleagues i i suspect i do when i would ask that you let uh your classmates who might be replacing you next year know that you have really tried to to reshape your role in regard to school committee exchanges so that they know what what you're leaving behind as a legacy for student representation here at the school committee yes thank you and we'll be sure to do that amy uh you mentioned that uh or perhaps linda was you
019i i honestly forgot forgive me but you mentioned linda it was you the the apprehension that some students have some of your white colleagues have about attending uh intersections or adl activities and all could you speak a little bit more to that in terms of what you might might advise school leaders student leaders and adults to try to to lower that lower that apprehension bar that you spoke of i know it's a big ask but what comes up for you so actually not very long ago just say a couple weeks ago um many of the many members of the intersections club including myself had a meeting with our principals and we were talking about different ways and mechanisms we can move forward to inclusion at in our community in our high school which i'm sure
020is something that we all would like to see someday and part of that is just starting conversation within students rather than kind of having a member of authority whether it be a teacher or some a guest speaker coming in and speaking to you having students particularly white male students who may not experience the racial discrimination or the sexism that other students may face and start having that dialogue and start pushing that dialogue and maybe it's seems um i don't want to speak for someone else because someone in that meeting mentioned and a lot of people agree with it that it it feels hard to be a student of color and that you have that sort of like obligation or responsibility to somehow educate everyone around you even your teachers and it can be very difficult
021so working towards a way where there's this forum for white students to kind of i don't i'm honestly like really like uncomfortable talking about this because i feel i don't want to sound like i'm putting the blame on a bunch of people but it's just the idea of moving forward and how we can get there um you mentioned the word forum and that sort of parallels what i was thinking as i was listening to you is this this belief that perhaps if more structures conducive to more give and take that would would enhance people's understanding about social justice racial discrimination and anti-racism might happen if if more opportunities or forums or structures are created for it yeah i would agree and i think something that rises that i've seen a lot starting from george floyd's
022death is people being very quick to prove that they know what's happening that they're aware of racism and that they're anti-racist and in our generation i think a lot of teenagers are quick to do that through social media with what they're posting and what they're showing and from there it's sometimes not much after that sometimes it's just i posted this on my instagram that said black lives matter now i am anti-racist unfortunately that is not the case and i think maybe part of that is i don't realize what the feeling of being of being a person of color and conquer carlisle isn't super fun all the time and bringing it up is also really hard for anyone who has felt that way so just kind of it's hard to i think the first step is
023always to come to the terms of realization and it's honestly the hardest step so just sort of bringing like a welcoming forum like um you had mentioned would probably be the best way to start you linda thank you [Music] i think here you know their comments amy and linda we wish you a very happy and very safe break i know it's a few days away it'll seem like a long time but it'll be here before we know it so uh to you and your classmates uh it's it's a well-earned uh week off and we hope you stay safe and we'll see you back in in full-time presence on the 26th thank you and then we only have them for another meeting after that right because that may 11th is sort of the the end of
024seniors on right yeah they're on campus until the end of the month so we'll have to see zoom might keep them around that wouldn't stun me we'll have to see what they want to do yep okay great um chairs and liaisons reports i know that uh there's the yes cynthia so selectboard i'll send it around i have it haven't done so yet but the nmi starmet reuse their final report we've conquered um it's really really good and i think food for thought for every boarding committee about the potential of that site um so i'll send that around another issue concord related was the transportation advisory committee um i had been in one prior meeting where uh residents expressed major concerns about the sudbury road and safety commuting to willard school and just safety in general
025this time there's a discussion about old marble road same legitimate concerns where we have two reversals on old marlborough plus we have the roost room and rail trail and i'm kind of disappointed there's no concord school committee member on the committee because i you know i would i would like to see us become more active in this space and um i know dr hunter is working with uh initiative is it safe travel to school safe what is it called lori say fruits savory favorite school of the state program yeah and i haven't really heard any discussion about that at the transportation advisory committee so i think we have a gap here that i think is important to try to close so um uh maybe to talk to mr crane about how we can kind of
026do be more collaborative on this very important topic um especially with march 26 bearing down on us and i think just the amount of traffic going through those roads is going to increase uh a lot and i'm just really worried about safety um so and then one final the capital planning task force is meeting tomorrow um and we're going to try to come to some conclusions about planning but i think the nmi starmet report might have some uh we probably will discuss that but i don't want to get into the details um but uh so this is basically about planning and conquered around um uh new new buildings outside of the middle school so that's it for me eva uh hi um so um we uh we had a um i attended a forum this
027tuesday uh a listening forum uh on um with um uh kristen our director of uh pedagogy and curriculum and also uh other presenters talking about uh the literacy programs the uh middle school building um and um there were other parents in attendance from uh see back and and parents from um with questions about special education it was a really good presentation we we had an opportunity to learn about um teach about uh programs used and literacy how how it works in the schools um uh and uh and listen to uh the feedback that comes from parents i don't know if there's anything else that alexa you wanted to mention so i know court and i were going to do an update on the middle school but was there anything else regional before we get into
028that no there was not not much sorry there was not much regional um not not region mentioned at all actually at this um at this uh forum oh okay okay so before we move then to middle school heather yes thank you um by way of uh report but also recognition um on sunday night uh johanna glazer of our high school faculty was the keynote at the concord and carlisle human rights council holocaust memorial event sponsored by the select board and in short she she did a stellar job of uh representing the high school representing the uh the capacity of our faculty to engage students around critical issues it was a very compelling presentation that did did the high school very proud and i think heather and i want to bring you up to date on
029the middle school because thursday there may be some critical decisions coming our way we did informally poll you when we last met but this is our final opportunity to see that we represent the committee uh effectively on your behalf uh before we go into that meeting heather do you want to um share with them where where we're at sure sure i want to do a quick update of the building committee meeting that happened this past thursday it was kind of it was actually an extra one as compared to the original plan it was a an update and a touch base on where we are in the midst of the large uh discussions right now that really circle around budget and potential growth in certain areas of the school um we reported out on all the
030information collected as you all know we did that town wide survey we collected a lot of information we actually had almost 1500 respondents to the survey so it was really impressive response um it was town wide we had a lot of residents who do not have kids in the schools and a lot who are parents who might have kids in the schools currently but who will not necessarily benefit from the middle school so the kids will be out of it by then um as well as business owners and even some students so reported out on that in terms of the the feedback on you know keep the building uh project cost as projected bring it lower let it go higher um and and what people were looking for in terms of that a lot of
031it did focus on gym or auditorium um what we did at the meeting was really kind of step back not in and debate those points but look at overall process of where we are and the chairs took us through you know here's let's let's all review the history and the charge and what was actually presented at town meeting back when we approved this phase of the project um and and looked at the steps going forward there was some discussion of you know can we push off this decision until town meeting but realistically the the feedback was that that's not particularly realistic because it means it would mean going over budget on the current phase with the design work that would be needed and everything um and that we need to really you know make a
032decision and get behind it and so the plan is to try to get to more of that decision on budget level at least i think at this coming week's meeting thursday morning as well as to look at the construction delivery method which we've all discussed a little bit here and take a final vote on that so this past meeting was a lot of um kind of touch base and and let's make sure we all understand where we are and then collecting questions to bring back answers to so lots of committee members had questions and if we'd gone through the questions and answers to everything we would have been there for another five hours not that we know you know what that's like or anything five hour meetings um but we all were able to give
033our questions the chairs and professionals collected those questions and are going to be following up with the committee uh with answers to those this coming week as we then discuss and vote on uh plans to move forward so that's kind of a high level uh court laurie did i miss anything major no i don't think so it's going to be uh trying to firm up budget and trying to confirm up uh the construction method both both of which are critical and have all kinds of implications um i think construction method uh is is very important to me because we're trying to accelerate the timetable uh we've got a hugely ambitious project an elegant design uh we're going to be building during school operations [Music] and to my way of thinking i don't want to see
034jared and lori attending to daily problems at that site for two years so you know my preference for uh risk mitigation in the form of a construction manager i think my my opinions are clear we want to make sure we have the opinions of others so that we carry carry those as best we can to the committee where where we represent you uh i have the same sentiments about the construction method um i did attend the meeting and there was a presentation and i really couldn't see it because it was very small and i don't i look for it online i have not not found it um is it possible to get that posted certainly certainly if it's not posted yet we'll make sure i couldn't find it it could be okay spots um the
035other thing is uh they look like there's for the the uh gym in the auditorium they look like there's sort of a three options to go with or maybe three major options to go with the current plan to go with a slight enlargement of both and then to have a very big much enlargement of both um my concern is if we go for instance with the 550 and the two nia gyms that will be constantly used by the community and we currently don't have nearly enough parking to support such a robust usage and i don't understand how we could support that from a number of perspectives so i'm just wondering if if we can just put that those options aside because they really just that site can't support it for so many reasons and i
036think it's just it's not just a cost discussion that's what i'm trying to get at it's a resource discussion in terms of the site in the parking yeah it is cynthia and that was one of the questions that we did bring up in the meeting um in order to have a better understanding of what what implications parking and otherwise would would that larger plan entail and so i think we should hear more about that on thursday because i don't think it's responsible it's not a matter of just money i mean is it just the site can't support such a a rigorous community center as as that that would become um just it can't right well and so i think the question was can it and what would it look like and so before we just
037say it can't i think we're waiting for a little information from the professionals that may be the case that it can't um but but we want to let them look into it and tell us because it looks like a assumption of constant parking on old old marble road is not acceptable that's not an acceptable solution i i want to assure committee members that we do hear from various professionals uh but they're not making our decisions for us nor nor should they ever this is a this is a concord project and there'll be a day when our vendors have come and gone and the school will be ours so it's just we understand that because i think if that if that's even a possibility those two very large facilities then i think we need to stop
038and do a lot more analysis of the impact the options because it's just i just think that that is a that's a huge change it's not just a adding a couple of seats and enlarging it a little bit so duly noted thank you sylvia other opinions or questions you want brought forward um i asked i must have missed the what were the what was the final seats number of seats in the stream in the largest off option uh it's right now 270 and uh we're debating 350 we're debating five 550 that neighborhood and it was okay so it was but it wasn't anything to exceed 550 no the at the present time no um the the 270 is the current the 350 would put it in line a with sanborn uh so we know what
039it will do and what it won't do because we have the sandboard experience and then secondly it fits the the roughly fifty percent uh of student population that holds true for all the auditoriums across the schools in the town that the auditoriums seat about half the students at full capacity um and just as a slight asterisk to that 350 or 550 those are the two sizes that were modeled out but at least in the survey when we put out options one of the options that that we collected feedback on was you know i would like to see a larger gym in auditorium to both of them not one or the other you know according to whatever specifications the professionals deem possible so you know who knows if you're trying to do both maybe it ends
040up you know 360 instead of 350 or 540s you know but somewhere in the middle there who knows just to say that it's not that doesn't mean that it could only be exactly 350 or 550 but those are the ranges that we're looking at likely those numbers but not guaranteed okay understood thank you all right thank you guys that's helpful feedback and we will take it oh sorry so i i i have a few comments they're all um interlaced but um i'll start with um the budget um i as i expressed last time we discussed this um i do share uh the concerns of my uh colleagues of this project getting too big in terms of space and in terms of budget i would like us to stay within that range that was adopted by
041a town meeting of 95 plus uh to 105 million um i would like us to begin at the lower end of that window so that we have that cushion for the unknowns um the construction method also ties into the budget because right now uh it looks like the the cost up front there is not much of a difference between um a cm at risk and the design we built uh the cm at risk will be uh invested in saving money to the town in uh staying within the budget keeping the project and the cost under control which i don't think is the case with um design with build so that's uh i would favor uh cm at risk again as it ties to the budget and the predictability going forward my other concern i actually
042occurred to me recently if this project keeps growing the cost of this project keeps growing and the toll on our taxpayers gets heavier it impacts the diversity of our community we are taxing some families out of this town and i worry how does that fit in with our um diversity equity and inclusion work that we're doing in classrooms what we're doing the policies that we pass the way we handle this project i would like that to translate our efforts in the area of dei um we don't want our seniors to be taxed out of their homes we don't want our um the lower half of the on the economy scale in this town to be priced out of this town um and when we say lower in concord we're talking about 600 700 000 homes
043uh so i i worry about uh that as well um we the um professionals that are presenting to us uh and [Music] encouraging or uh maybe uh yes encouraging the design bid build construction method um i don't believe that they have the um taxpayers at their top priority uh so that decision yes needs to come back ultimately to the citizens of this town that are on these committees that do have the interest of the taxpayers in mind that is why they are there and i'd like us to honor our tradition of citizen government and not really let self-interested businesses uh lead us down the road that's not right for us thank you um can i just make one clarification on comment on that it's very helpful to hear all that you have said um just
044in terms of your comment on um the the professionals having having in mind the taxpayers i've done a little more questioning on this also because i get this question keeps coming up and i i've been torn and i'm not you know sure which direction we could go and all that um one of the things i've been hearing over the past week is that i think my understanding from the professionals and from one of the chairs i was talking to is that the reason for the recommendation of dbb is actually because of the taxpayers and to save money that they feel that that will actually save us money because of the way it's done and you're going to pay less upfront and the way dbb projects are coming in so the more i've been digging the
045more it seems like a question of their recommendation for dbb is to save money and so if we're talking overall project costs and keeping it down then dbb would be the one to support that versus the the risk and i'm not i'm not advocating for either here but that was my understanding of the i guess the scale of comparison that it was somewhat of a budget thing thank you thank you and i and i am letting you know my position i want you to know how i'm going to vote on thursday i think i'm obligated to let you know that um and i would uh wish to counter what you say heather in the following way um experience with dbb today i predict has very little to do with pricing two years from now i
046think we are in a more volatile stage in our national economy in our global economy than than we have been in in decades so current experience with dbb i don't think is going to serve us very well someday we'll know the truth we don't know now but i would i would caution people to use today's experience with pricing as an indicator of 2023. okay and we'll see we'll we'll see and i hear that and just in terms of if you think it's a i don't know an obligation of us to to say how we're gonna vote on this i would actually say i'm not sure yet and i think because there are a lot of questions that were asked and they're going to bring us some answers on thursday so i actually to be perfectly
047clear i'm undecided still i think a lot of what i've heard about see them at risk resonates but also the fact that the professionals were kind of giving more insight on why they want why they're recommending dbb and that it is a they feel like that could save us significantly on the project cost leads me that way so anyway i would like to hear them follow up more next week and hear the discussion um and i will take into account all the thoughts that you guys have given us because we are your representatives but i also will take into account what i hear thursday yes if i cannot just follow up please uh so the the and i currently encourage people to watch the recording of the uh the building committee last week the uh
048presentation that was uh given to us uh with a side-by-side comparison of dbb and uh cm at risk uh you know it was commented by citizen experts in this area in this area that you may have been biased more towards dbb and i think that the the cm at risk being at the table from the very beginning will save us money uh right now yes up front it looks like dbb saves money but having that cm at risk at the table from the beginning will save us money and again we've had some very compelling correspondence from experts who are citizens in this town who care about this town and i think they need to be uh looked at and really uh thought through when taken into consideration definitely thank you thanks oh yeah just before
049we wrap up just um i realize i haven't weighed in publicly on some of these um larger issues confronting the building committee i in my conversation with court the other day i said i feel terribly for you guys because these are really hard questions and um you know people have in a widespread way have only you know recently started paying attention however my feeling on vote voting on the space summary which of course i won't be doing is not a member of the committee i i do urge everybody to do two things i think you know there are some really compelling correspondence as and and in my personal meetings with a lot of the people um who are really entrenched in our arts program i do think that you know if if in fact we
050we reduce this space by i think it's you know almost 25 when you aggregate the space that's available currently at peabody and sanborn you know we're our original plans are represent a 25 reduction in space we're talking about the potential ramifications of eliminating really really um valuable programming specifically our musical programming which i think um our dramatic arts musical production which i think you know in some years has a hundred kids that's like a sixth of the population at the school participates in this program and i think that um this idea that we can or they can just pack up and potentially use the high school seems to be really not the case i think it would it would you know really have implications on the program um you know as and and again i've
051heard really compelling arguments from people who are entrenched in youth sports um i do think when i evaluate where we are as a community as a town this is the last project we're doing in a generation and i recognize that the implications of costs are significant there is no doubt that this is we're talking about real money here and i and i understand that but i get i think carlin reid actually in the select board meeting two weeks ago had the best sort of summary that i have heard yet and i think um she said let's not be i'm going to get this old adage wrong like let's not be penny wise and pound foolish here um i think that's right um and and that that hit me that hit me like some lightning um
052because i felt like that was very compelling and um you know we are not talking about blowing this budget by 15 20 and further just on this and then i'll be done and further i believe that when we went to town meeting the escalation costs um if we were to break ground you know today put us not at 80 to 100 million but 90 to 105 million dollars so we're really i mean we're not even really talking necessarily about you know really going over budget depending on where we sort of fall in that scope so i do hope that people recognize that um when they are thinking about this building i'll leave it at that thank you alex thanks alex i'm just curious are you supporting the very large the 550 in the double gym
053um well i'm not supporting anything i don't get to vote on it but um no we're asking our members to present us in our you know again i i you know to your point cynthia there are questions that are not answered yet with respect to being like that i really can't answer that because we don't have all the data so on thursday if there is additional data about accommodating parking and sort of figuring out if we can in fact make this work yeah if the pieces of the puzzle fall together i do think and that this is a this is our last chance for a generation of kids most of the kids that are going to be using this building aren't even born yet you know so i i i do think that if you're
054going to build something you have to build it properly and i also think you know it's compelling we got compelling data i i don't i don't think it would be wise to ignore that um we got conclusive data from the survey i think and we've gotten a lot of correspondence so i wouldn't want to so or that i just want to say one thing about the survey we do not have needs assessments for a gymnasium we have no no i get that to to to deliver on the educational concern because we're going off and doing something where we really don't know what we do need we know what we need for the middle school but we oh no no i get that i get that this is over and above the scope of the educational
055plan but i do think that you know the ability to you know with respect to the auditorium you know we used to have a dramatics arts you know embedded in the curriculum the teacher left the program wasn't resurrected i think that leaving space for for that that kind of curricular synergy to to have kids that are you know doing doing artistic stuff during the day and in the afternoon extracurricularly i think that's important to leave space for that um you know just because we don't have it today we're talking about 50 years from now i would hope we'd be able to someday resurrect an arts program you know and i don't know and i think you know as you know fitness i just think i get it it's not necessarily in the curriculum but fitness
056for example is a lifelong skill that i wish was pressed upon me when i was younger more so you know i i do think you know we talk all this talk about the whole child the whole child and and and i think that part of that is what happens in the school and in the community after the day and after the sort of the day concludes after science class is finished and you know if we're gonna if we're gonna talk like this there has to be some infrastructure to support to support what we're talking about and and it seems like everything again i'm no expert um you know my i have one middle school child i you know but when i listen to people who are in the know it does seem to me that
057there is there's insufficient space to run the programs that the community would like to support so if we could do it and we can do it responsibly i don't see why we wouldn't i want to end on that note i want to thank you alexa um i think that the people in the room who will be uh on the building committee uh deliberations thursday have have heard a variety of opinions here and each person thursday will try to be mindful of those i'm going to ask to have the committee indulge us out of courtesy to our guests tonight if they're ready we have item 6b the equity survey and focus groups and i'm going to ask that uh there be a motion to the effect that we move item 6b forward and take that up
058at this time please is there a motion to that effect so move for both second hand and a second thank you very much heather and roll call please anderson eye for both about eye for both and let's see who do we have wilson for region rainy eye for both and mustafi for region thank you very much dr hunter can we turn to you please certainly and i'm just going to get us started and then uh turn it over to kristin and andrew to introduce our guests so part of our discussions in the series you had on cultural competency anti-racism and equity this year really kept bringing back the need for some data so we've been strategizing that we had some early discussion of a complete equity audit covet and timing and what that would be
059comprised of really didn't quite fit where we were at so so we've looked for a way to try to get some baseline to work with um and yet build the foundation for what can become a larger audit as we get into next year and beyond so kristin and andrew have been working with some of the folks that are on the call and have been waiting to tell us what they're proposing so andrew and chris i'm going to turn it over to you and of course you've already said good evening to dr paula martin who's also here with us and we'll let you share with us what what we're talking about happy too so when we saw the need for data around our equity um issues and anti-racist education that we're trying to begin on with
060our third pillar of our strategic plan thoughts immediately went to who is the very best team out there to help us collect that data in a professional way that is actionable and so for literally decades i think one of my first classes in anti-racist education was actually taught by dr calise warnum and run by dr carol blake so they have been around for all decades in the new england area in the boston metro west area doing the work of anti-racist education and cultural competency at the absolute highest levels so we are so pleased to have them here and i think uh someone needs to make dr calise ronam the host so she can walk us through about five slides um i actually think i'm okay to share my screen oh great okay yeah we want
061uh to hear from you uh much longer uh introductions but just to say that from our in-house uh equity team of andrew namichi and dr paula martin and myself there is such confidence in this team thank you so much i i want to start by saying thank you so much for having us here this evening excited to be here as um kristen was talking i almost hid in my face that's not possible that i've been doing this for this long i'm still 21. what are you talking about how is that possible um but really excited to be here with you tonight i'm gonna share my screen with you and my colleague dr carol blake is the one of the best in the business if not the best i have been following his lead my entire
062life and he will join us in um reading the slides and so i'm going to stop the share for a second and what i want to do is i'm going to show you a couple of things i want you to see first is i really want to spend a second introducing my team to you right okay here we go introducing the team to you we um these will be the lead facilitators on the equity survey the truth of the matter is we really are working very closely with your team to help you come up with a baseline of understanding where you are you have to understand where you are so that we can better define where to go and how you can sustain it sustainability is really important in this work and so what we've
063come to this work not by state coincidence we've been doing this work for a very long time out of our team we are senior school administrators retired teachers principals college professionals and superintendents it's an assistant superintendent so i want you to know and to feel confident that we come to you very experienced with public education as well as college and university experience and so we come to this honestly we've all we are all from new england and have been working in new england public schools um throughout this time and so we bring to you a very skilled team that myself and dr blake will lead i wanted to take a second before we dig a little deeper and just define bipop right because we're going to say that word a lot tonight as we're talking
064about our um presentation to you and i want you to know what we mean i want to thank um dr herbert for putting this slide together for helping me grab the data on this um but when we're talking about bipac bypoc is stands for black and indigenous and people of color years ago um probably around 2013 actually is when they started when we coined the term bipod right we used the term people of color for years but we specifically now are using bypoc as a way to call out and to make sure we are giving voice to black and indigenous folks and that's why we're using the term bipod so if we look at your community and we look at your bipod total um total community those are the numbers on the screen and so
065i want you to understand when we use the term that's what we mean when we say bipod community in within concord public schools i'm going to ask dr blake to jump in and introduce himself to the group as well hello everyone my name is uh carol blake i've been very familiar with concord uh public schools for a number of years i think i've lived through two superintendents that were part of that and also part of my dissertation work was uh concord public schools was a part of my work that i did uh in my dissertation which was entitled transforming teachers thinking in suburban schools through anti-racist education and so i've been familiar with that and i was right next door for 17 years i was the mecca director in the town of lincoln but all
066of that's history like police said i'm a very young man actually turning 71 next week so the idea is that what are we measuring in relationship to race culture and identity there are three things we are going to look at one is beliefs attitudes and practices and as we look at those three parts we're going to look at three components we're going to look at the instructional component what are the beliefs around constructional components what are the beliefs as far as our attitudes from personal interpersonal and institutional so even when we look at these three areas we're going to look at it from those three components instructional personal interpersonal and voting and institutional people are so upset why because could everyone please mute thank you so those are the those are the key pillars of
067the of the survey that we will be doing now how will we go about doing that please if we can change how will we measure it we're looking at measuring several different three different ways one is that questionnaires having a questionnaire that everyone will be uh participating in are students teachers staff community and hopefully school committee too will participate in the questionnaire after the questionnaire we will then begin to look at focus groups the focus groups is going to give us a little more data besides just what's in the questionnaire some information we get from the questionnaire might help us to focus around the uh focused truth but it would give uh folks an opportunity to go deeper in the conversations around the three pillars that we had talked about before now the other component
068will be doing a swot analysis approach and that's going to be using a tool that i've developed called acorn so we're going to be looking at five areas they're looking at the achievement what achievements have the school made now we're not starting from a point that we're saying that you have done nothing we know that you have done a lot over the year and a lot of that that you have done has been successful so we want to take a look at what are those things that you have done already so that we're using that as a building block not erasing but saying these are the things that have worked these are the things that you've done well and how can we build on those then the next we will look at the challenges what
069are some of the challenges that face the school now everyone immediately goes to the budget well we don't have money to do this but the idea is it's more than just money what are the challenges that that face us both from uh politics what are the challenges that face us from our beliefs and attitudes so we look at what are those things in a wide range of things that we feel schools are being faced with then the other is others the obstacles what are some of the obstacles that get in the way from getting to where you want to be you have a goal that you're looking to get to what are the things that are blocking you from getting to those goals and how can we address those obstacles and begin to make those
070not obstacles but challenges the next part would be recommendations we'd like to and come up with recommendations for improvement after we do our listing sessions and questionnaires and focus groups we're going to combine get our data together and hopefully be able to give you some recommendations that we feel will move you to the next level and then when we think about the recognition what are the needs what things do we need to get you there what are the steps that need to be put into place so we're going to try to give you a road map from the information we have and here's the road map to get you to where you want to be okay absolutely so sustainability is a big piece we want to cover as well right it's important that we enter
071into this but then what are we going to learn how are we going to translate that into action how does that bring about change and how do you sustain it and there are three major components to that we're going to identify the needs that each school needs to move forward every school may have a different approach to this as well as a definition they're dealing with so we'll leave you with that um implementation for recommendations for each school improvement but the big piece that we also will will touch base on is professional development and we know research shows over and over again that the closer you get professional development to the real time where teachers are teaching in their own space and if we can embed professional development within their space the more likely you
072are to give them strategies and skills that will change and enhance and improve their practice that's what's different in the way that we offer surveys and audits are that we come into this thinking long range and thinking how do you sustain sustain this and how do we help you develop the next step to take the learnings and turn them into action and we're really proud of that that okay so so it's not a one-and-done say no i i'm just saying well we've done that we've been there her idea is that giving you some road maps saying these are the things you can do and these are the things you can do over the years to keep that level of keep going absolutely absolutely so we're excited to get started so much so we want to
073start with the seniors we can't let them graduate without us getting our hands on them first we want to hear their learning right and so we have been running as fast as we can to put that together so that we have time to really hear hear from them so we're going to survey them we're going to begin with survey start surveying your senior students so that we get to them before they leave early may or mid-may um and so we're going to do that as soon as possible and then we also will then turn around and do um next year we'll do your faculty and and and students as well as community members right as well as family of guardians as well of the students and then um we're gonna take some deep dives into
074focus groups i love focus groups because we give folks time to really explore and to share with us things that they are bringing to life that they really want to make sure that they're describing in their own terms of what's what's their reality and so we're going to do that as well we're going to set those up and stay in focus groups for all stakeholders that's really important our seniors your seniors before they graduate not only will they participate in the survey but we're also going to spend some time giving them a focus group as well and this is all contingent on your approval of course but but you already like us so i'm confident we're good to go um in that area and the reason why we really want to focus on the seniors
075they've been in the system for 12 years for the most hopefully i've been in for 12 or 13 years and they're a wealth of knowledge they're seeing things come go and change so what we're hoping to get from them is getting a wider perspective from a student from students by being able to uh to access their knowledge absolutely what questions do you have for us what can i ask answer for you uh dr carol dr wornham um to what uh two questions which might be related uh number one what uh do you do to look at the history of efforts in our school district prior to your arrival and how that sets the sets the stage uh or does that simply naturally happen in the survey and the focus groups um is that the the
076starting point or is there are is there any pre-work that's done and that relates to the survey to what degree is the survey uh something that is a proven instrument and to what degree is it customized for the the client or the district you're entering sure why not start with the second one second as far as the instrument the instrument uh we're using that we have uh is tow card it's really came from the minnesota minnesota state universities that they use to do a great deal of surveying their campus uh training on a campus that really focuses towards racism so that was the base of it uh of the of the questions then we take the question there and look at uh what are the issues that we've found what are the things we have
077found out in dealing directly with concrete what is it that you're looking for or hoping to get and then we fine-tune that to fit just concrete it's not one of these things that we just pulled off the shelf but here's a survey let's just give it we've been working on fine-tuning that to fit the concrete collar public school system we've had conversations with uh with the committee to find out some of those pieces so and the tool has been used uh also uh within one of the school systems here in uh in boston i'm sorry in boston in massachusetts and i would just add that it's actually a national tool as well that it's not although it was founded um at minnesota state it that it is a tool that most um most if not
078all um i can't say all but with most diversity educators are familiar with and have used so we use that as the skeleton as the structure of the beginnings of our survey and then we met with your team and we talked about what to pull in your earlier question um we talked about what has been done they were great at sharing with us the history of the things that you've done in the past and where that is and and how folks walked away and so we incorporated some of those questions and then some of the our own experience dictates certain questions that the national survey doesn't um bring up that we thought is pertinent and so we had us draft we gave it to this to your team your team took a look at it
079they decided this is where we want to go and we need to make some changes so we've been tweaking this to really define the tool to make it unique for concord i think i also just would like to tentatively address your first question in that first question of understanding the history i do think they've done a great job explaining to us what you've done and where you've been and we've done our due diligence as well as doing some research on concord um before before finalizing where we are i do think though that there are things that has happened in the past that are that are gone and and it hasn't stuck what the focus groups will reveal will revere to us reveal to us is what's stuck around right what did folks really walk away
080with what made them feel better in the moment and they're great and they're healed from it and then what changes have you made that really stood up for them and that they're still present in reverberating today that's what you get in focus groups or you'll get the pain that is still reverberating today and we need to uncover that to figure out you know what this really worked for them three years ago when you did this this strategy they're still saying this made a difference in their lives that's great we want that kind of data that's the data you get in a focus group and as well you get the flip side of that you also get but i need this i need some more help with the curriculum it's not happening in fourth grade that
081kind of data will get in focus groups and sometimes when you have people are great at uh checking boxes or circling circle enhancers but then the focus group is going beyond the checks marks but going real to like at some points banks talks about knowing caring and acting and the focus group is going to start to get those things about what they know and what they care about and what is really happening thank you great so we're we're delighted you're here i don't want to dominate everybody knows i have a lot of questions but i'll i'll ask you to indulge me with one more if you would and then i'll pipe down and listen um i i heard recently from uh another expert in the field with you i'm sure it's a colleague you know
082although the name doesn't come to mind who made the point that in organizational surveys or in predominantly white communities or or predominantly white corporations survey work will often yield uh results that indicate we're okay quote unquote and it's only when uh historically marginalized subgroups are surveyed does really useful data start to surface that can drive the kind of change that this school committee and this administration has asked you to come help us with how do we how do we reconcile the fact that we want everybody to have a voice but historically marginalized voices then get drowned out in a community like this can i start dr blake you know um part of the the concern um court is really in how you disaggregate the data right so we're really conscious of making sure that there
083are um although the survey is confidential we're not looking for folks name we are asking for demographics to be identified at the beginning of the survey so that we can just aggregate the data and say although you know what the majority of white 11th graders are feeling everything is fine they've never had an experience but when you look at the majority of vibe 11th graders they have a very different experience so now we have to make sense of that part of and part of the way we dig a little deeper into that is in our focus groups we're going to have focus groups that are for every stakeholder but we also will offer race affinity focus groups as well for our students so that we can again disaggregate the data i understand the push or
084the the um message that the point that the colleague that you talked to before was making but you have to it all depends on how you break down and disaggregate that data and you that's why we put identifiers on the beginning of our survey so that we have the option to disaggregate the data to say most of the majority of your community is here now let's break that out what does that mean for eighth graders what does that mean for teachers that kind of thing what does that mean for your teachers of color that's what we're looking at as well good yeah and i think that the main part is that a lot of us agree that some of the questionnaires come but we're also going to try to make sure that everyone's voice is
085heard absolutely because i think it's important it doesn't matter if it's only four or five uh maybe by park students or whatever that really get involved therefore is important because they're experiencing the experience of concord they're experiencing whether they live there or if they're part of the mecca program so that we're really going to try to massage this out so that everyone's force is heard and everyone's voice is important as we as we go through this work thank you very much i'll go next if i may uh yes let me go first first i have to apologize because i will have to leave at 7 30. i have a full page of questions and comments feel free to email them to us we'll we'll help thank you both for being here i i looked at
086your work and i'm really impressed with with the work that you've done in this field um i also want to take a moment to recognize our administration um dr hunter uh andrew and christian for laying the ground for this work for so many years uh i think that carly's and carol you'll find that uh the the leg work has been done for you and i wanted to recognize that um my my question one of my questions uh follows up on the previous one yes when we're talking about sub groups and representations so um for instance i looked at the focus groups that you um surveyed in in wellesley and uh it was it was a choice for parents and for participants to come forward and participate and he left the doors open uh to whoever
087wanted to participate uh i'm thinking how do we capture the we're talking about minorities we're talking about um marginalization and by by definition sometimes uh marginalized groups or members of the community are so disenfranchised that they don't take that step forward they don't come to uh this kind of survey um how do we reach them because that's important that's the core of what we're doing um i i do commend all the minorities the that do come to the table um and i wouldn't want us to miss out on those that do not um and then there is also for instance um i could set an example and i'll move on um in in wellesley i looked at the medco parents there were three uh medco parents in in in in those uh focus groups and
088we know the limitations uh you know if the work happens in in wellesley we know the limitations and you know that whatever the reasons that number is there three parents as opposed to so many uh locals and then the the question of language we're talking about minorities sometimes you will find families that don't speak english they don't understand the questions i don't know do you resort to do you use translators and by translators i don't mean just the language if you are going to interview say an immigrant family uh i think that we are uh more likely to get the full picture if we are interviewed by someone who understand the culture not just speak the language but it understands the culture i think that um yeah i wonder about that i wonder how that
089uh can fit in in a survey to to really capture uh what we're missing and and i think what we're missing is not for lack of trying definitely but i would like to see that addressed thank you um so i think two things thank you so much for your um for your question i think that i think the first thing we have to realize is although we will of course i i'm sure do our best effort to make sure that we're getting the survey out in plenty of time and that we're inviting others like there's a invitation to please come and participate that's a really big piece of it but they're also we also have to be flexible enough to adapt where we need it where we need to for example you brought up wellesley
090and how that there are in some of the focus groups there were three parents from boston or boston resident parents in the wellesley focus group meeting and so we adapted at that time and then took some of those started having focus groups in boston right and so you have to be flexible enough to know where the need is and when the and adapt to get what you need if the goal is to get us a high percentage of um participation then that means we really have to accommodate be as accommodating as possible offering making sure that we're offering both um daytime meetings and nighttime meetings that the the lane the survey in wellesley was offered in several different languages right in it and my um we haven't we're not with the seniors because there's not
091a need for this particular senior class but my anticipation is is that we're going to have to offer this not and i know you may not um until let's answer one part at a time um that we will have to offer this survey in multiple languages that that overcomes one barrier but then there's another piece of how do you encourage someone who is um disenfranchised to say you have a voice here some of that i believe that the majority of that comes through relationships right it's different to say here's a survey fill that out then to have a friend say we need to know what you're thinking and i really think this is a great opportunity for us to hear your voice let me help you like let me i need you to fill this
092out i think it means something different when there's a relationship intact and so what we'll have to do as a consulting firm is to figure out where those relationships are and lean on them and rely on them and so that may mean that i need to um make sure that your medical director that hey can you get your parents together and see if they'll come out for is there a way for us to do this together are there the um ell parents is there a group we can lean on is there a um another time like we just have to figure out who have we not heard from and then be relentlessly committed to knocking down the why the commitment is here like that yeah we're not going to hopefully not let any anything or
093anyone go go uh untouched and want to make it so it's an environment that they feel comfortable to say what they want to say without being chastised or without uh some type of retribution an example of this is that within wellesley there was a housing development that's in wellesley they didn't feel completely comfortable in the larger group so what we did at that point is we heard them we heard that from one or two parents that we heard it from more so what we did was to go there and have one of the focus groups there that that they felt comfortable it was their home it was their environment so that we will make those those adjustments we realize that everyone's coming to this in a different perspective now we may not be able to
094do all of it but we're going to make every effort there is to make sure that everyone's in an environment and comfortable environment that their voices are heard and that the data that they give will be part of what will be presented did that help in answering some of your questions yes yes thank you you've been doing it very very thoroughly and if you have if you have other questions that you have to uh they have our email emails and we will try to answer any questions because we want to go into this with an understanding that we're all in this together yes you know we are we may be the consultants but we're all a big team and the only way we're going to get changed is that for us to make sure that
095we hear you you hear us and then we all are somewhat uh coming to the same dance floor absolutely thank you again i just want to uh apologize and uh to everyone here that i will have to excuse myself at 7 30. not the everyone knows how much you know we all care about this topic and this work thank you thank you okay i'll jump in next if that works um okay so i will just start first of all i just want to say i am so impressed and this is very exciting um really really excited about everything that you're talking about and working and going forward with this um so i have one question that i think is relatively quick and it um actually kind of echoes court's last question and maybe fatima's also
096but it's slightly different when i think about this work and the information that we're trying to get at obviously one of the things we want to tease out are biases and attitudes right that's that's very clear we want to understand what's there and what's going on and tease them out um but one of the other things it's almost like a second level is acknowledgement of those biases and attitudes right so of maybe people like me even if anybody in the majority who might say no like like court said no we don't have biases we don't have problems there are the biases and and beliefs but there are also acknowledgement and understanding of those of the fact that we might have challenges and does this survey somehow get at those two concepts uniquely somehow is that
097possible yeah well i think the survey will bring some of the biases out uh the idea of acknowledging acknowledging the biases is a little hard for us to be able to do i think the idea that once when we can identify or help you to begin to identify then that work becomes long of much longer term work to really begin to uh say oh really i am biased there or i am feeling this so i think that that piece is the long-term piece but the idea that we're hoping to do is delay a floor plan or lay in the map to how to get to a point of everyone's acknowledging the biases and then doing something about it you know one thing is knowing other things acting so right hope the question there will get
098you to the knowing yeah we will set the road map to how do we resolve that great so this is the information that then helps get to that acknowledgement which is a different level that's really helpful thank you and again really excited for this i have a question about the road map um and in terms of just how does it i know there's you you have ongoing support and professional development i just wanted to dig a little bit deeper into that and see i mean is there a check-in after a year and do you find that just the process of participating sort of to what to what linda and amy were saying the process of identifying these the process of taking the survey of participating in focus groups does that start to make people who
099maybe before we're saying everything's fine start to be aware and a little more observant about what's going on and and how does that play into the sort of the road map and going forward the ongoing support that that you offer like you come back and check in again or is it is it a need based is it the school reaches out and says we've we're stuck at one of our obstacles right like you identified this obstacle and we need help getting out of this obstacle how does the road map operate i think um and push back sarah if i'm not as thorough as you need me to be right because i want to no i don't i don't need to be thorough just to know sort of what kind of supports you offer that the
100first thing i will say is one that we are long-term residents of massachusetts we're not going anywhere right and we're easy to find and very well known in the area and so although that when the when this survey and the focus groups and the report is finally finished and we say you know what what we hope to uncover is that folks really are struggling with racial microaggressions there's implicit bias they seem to have an understanding of what that is but these microaggressions aren't being interrupted your staff needs to know how to interrupt them they're not for lack of desire they just don't have the skills here until we can say to your team here's the fact that they don't have the skills of interrupting them you now need pd on how to interrupt them here
101are some great options for you maybe you need that you know or the high school struggling with this and the the elementary school is struggling with my um implicit bias so those kind of things are how we develop the road map for you to say this is most likely where you need to go next is that so we not only will not only give you your roadmap but we're there to help you to uh to set up the lights put up the track put the stop signs here and there to go so that all of those pieces will be it's all in which after we do this it's all in which you feel you need okay so it's not like up we're done you're on your own bye no we're we don't do great thank
102you and i'm sorry that our seniors had to to to leave i think they would have loved to have heard notifications i know i like what linda was talking about yeah exactly so nicely so but you'll have them in the surveys yes yeah sarah i wonder if we just double check with fatima to make certain that she doesn't have any follow-ups before she has to depart and then we'll go to alexa and cynthia thank you thank you for checking like i said i have page four so uh but i will let others ask the questions i'm really really thrilled that you are here and that we're having this conversation and i hope to see all of you um again soon thank you thank you we'll leave uh uh to have the number you can feel
103free to call call either one of us or call me i i put my give me a call or email and we'll gladly answer any of your questions i will certainly thank you very much you're welcome good night have a good night alexa yeah so actually that this is good timing my literal follow-up when you guys talk to in answering sarah's question when you then present us with this road map forward are you guys like a soup to nuts kind of organization do then we continue to partner with you and the programs that we may or may not engage with come under your umbrella or do you guys have partner organizations that you sort of then recommend out so what i will say um and i'm uh i'd say this in full confidence that that's
104one of the that we're soup to nuts right that's one of the things that makes our partnership so different is that we can do the the um survey do the focus groups and then we offer the professional development um as well and we design but if there are for example if there are things that come up in the survey and we honestly feel like we're not the best organization we would recommend someone else for you and do that introduction um and so we'd never leave you completely high and dry okay so we always give you options absolutely and then my next question is um linda talked explicitly about how sometimes the people who need to be in the room most aren't right so when we're engaging with students are we doing that like and maybe
105the folk maybe the survey is one question and the focus groups might be another are we engaging with them during school hours so that it's easier for them to engage um and something like the survey would that potentially be compulsory and something like the focus group be elective or is it all elective the participation hey chris christopher we've talked talked about that we like to provide it during the school day but we also want to provide an opportunity for the evening because the questionnaire can be online so people can do it at different times but we're following following the lead of kristen who has a better understanding of school and school schedule so we're working along with them to get that done i've outed myself as like an anachronism thinking yes they can do this
106at home online in their bedroom they don't have to do it in their desks got it okay cool but um i guess so pathetic so um but but but do we have an idea in our district as to whether the survey will be compulsory or elective kristin see you around so what we uh modeled uh what we're doing with the seniors this spring and what we hope to do next fall with our students is um modeled on the youth risk behavior survey yeah what we find you know we give that every other year is on all kinds of risky behaviors that students may be engaging in and it's very much like this in that it's anonymous and we're just looking for aggregated data so that we can make decisions around education um and uh we
107find that we get a much better rate of return when students do it at school um so we have a opt out program we alert parents that uh it's coming and if the parents don't want their students to participate they're simply given something else to do during that time um both this survey and the youth risk behavior survey usually is given during an advisory period in the middle school in high school which is about a half an hour but it can be extended if we need to be awesome thank you guys so much hello i just wanted to say how impressive was the uh presentation um and um how thorough it was to to listen to the whole process i had one uh just one question as many of my my colleagues have asked others
108today we listened to our senate representative our students to to their input about this topic and their wish that the students would drive the conversation and solution to to the difficult discussions around bias and um racism if if you don't mind giving us an example how you how those solutions programs and suggestions work to facilitate this kind of were coming from students that that um how do they uh how if you can give uh maybe an example of um how you guys set up this kind of solution so with students feel like it's it's you know they own the problem they own the problem of i'm not sure i'm following you like you know you when when you are discussing um discussing when it what i mean when it doesn't come from adults yes they
109don't feel like it comes from an adult so they are working and working through it that's that's thank you for clarification um so i'm are you asking after this survey like after we do yeah part of um part of it's so it's so um i'm glad you asked that question and i love sharing this this with teachers and and if we're not and if i'm not answering your question thoroughly please give me another shot at it but what there's a i used to do a survey every year with rising ninth graders and right and seniors about to graduate and they and usually when i did this survey and i did it for years and years and years and 90 i would say 98 of the students of color that attended predominantly white schools would always
110make a statement that said something like i wish i remembered the quote directly but it always said something like um i would i would rec one student said i would recommend my teacher to any minority student he is one of those teachers that is not afraid to have difficult conversations that is one of the things that inspires me to do well in this class that student of color at a predominantly white school district i would hear that over like it seemed like if i it was almost 100 of kids of color would say something of that sort and what i think that tells us is kids want to have the conversation kids absolutely need us to have the conversation they just they don't need us to be perfect they don't need us to get it
111right 100 of the time they need us to provide a safe space for them to do so right that's all they're asking for so much so that they're even tying their academic output to our ability as adults to give them the space to have the talk kids are talking they honestly are they're doing it in the lunchroom younger elementary kids are doing it on the playgrounds and unstructured times all they need for us to do is to provide a space for them and give them some guidelines of how to have it safely and respectively they want us to we just have to provide them the the opportunity to do so and sometimes i think i always say that sometimes we need to get out of the way because it's not so much the students sometimes
112we are the pro we become adults we become the problems because we are afraid of having the conversations but they are ready to have those so sometimes we put roadblocks and so i think it's three things that happen one you have to empower the group when i listen to linda tonight i think that there's a very young empowered young lady that has an idea what's going on and knows how she feels and not afraid to to express it then the other you have to give them a platform a way to be able to do this and then after that you have to begin to recognize and acknowledge what they've said so when you have those three things then i think that the voices and and all of those excuse me and all those come together
113much smoother when you can put those three things together did that hopefully answer your question yes thank you okay hi thank you for coming tonight i think this is really exciting um i just have a question do we have an estimated cadence of the work you know i know we're doing this the seniors and it sounds like then we're going to do the bulk of the work in the fall am i getting that corrector that's the plan right now so um okay so we don't have a servant we're going to finish this work by x state or no well we could would you permit a follow on cynthia i mean are we gonna i assume we're not gonna do much of this work this summer that just doesn't work right yeah okay so we'll begin
114in earnest in the phone then we'll probably have a better idea as to the duration of the work etc yeah one thing that we've talked about in our small group meetings in terms of the planning is using the experience with the seniors in our planning over the summer to guide what we want to do with our much larger population of students their parents community members our educators school committee uh when we do that in the fall so um we we hope that that um almost thinking about the seniors as a pilot okay yeah so i that's why they're sort of quiet when we're when we're talking because i'm not sure we know enough right at this moment to say how the the larger experience would roll out in the fall i i just know the
115community is so eager to do this work so we just want to say you know it's not going to be now through the summer and finishing the september or something like that it's going to be we're going to take a pause like everybody has to this summer and then really start up in the fall yeah so just to give you a sense of timeline i think is what you're looking for we really wanted to start it in earnest in the fall really september october november and do a lot of the crunching in december january and to get uh like the final report and presentation to school committee in early spring next year that's great i just i don't want people to think we forgot when they don't hear anything for a little while so yeah
116and then and along the way we are we have check in points like along the way we'll be giving you some reports this is what it is so it's not all of a sudden at the end we give you a big surprise so there will be uh you know checking points that you get an idea where are we at what things where things are going and as part of your work how do you then weave in analysis of curriculum and of our educational practices well i think that piece of that will be uh getting a lot of information from you from the teachers okay and as and as we go along long as it's going we also when things get like we'll be going through some walk-throughs at the schools and looking at some of
117the things so that we also can get a snapshot from our view as well as the snapshot from those who are there every day great thank you [Music] i wonder if i could just pick up on uh heather's reference to the business of acknowledging uh which i sort of translate myself as as the feedback loops that are going to get built into this so that the parties involved hear back uh and you've already spoken to that uh dr blank and now cynthia is talking about timeline and cadence uh both of which interest me greatly and i hope that in the future kristen i believe it's a small team that you are responsible for leading under dr hunter's direction would uh be accountable for this and i would hope as it gets fleshed out we can
118see that um i'm particularly interested in how the 12 months would work hypothetically and then it gets fine-tuned and made real hour away but there's probably still a template that people start from this isn't the first to go around on on an effort like this and where those critical feedback loops happen uh so that change happens by virtue of this 12-month exercise instead of next spring being a launch this is a continuing process because indeed we're not starting tonight what we're doing is getting more earnest and real about it and bringing in experts from the field to to facilitate also how it intersects with our intention to bring in a dei director to augment the medco staff at the high school to pay greater attention to multiple constituencies in concord carlisle boston i think all
119matter so i i i'm looking forward to the detail that gets fleshed out and i will note that uh we might want to look for a way to apprise carlisle of what we're doing with our own middle school uh because concord and carlisle and boston students all converge at the high school so i think carlisle middle school needs to be very informed if nothing else certainly yeah yeah we there was there when when we talked about um the equity audit in the carlisle school committee there was a conversation about how can we get you know how can we get involved kind of uh thing so there's there's interest on the carlisle side of of making sure that all of our students um are coming at everything from the same um not really the same page
120at all but at least um with some other expectations is there a brilliant question we should have asked you dr warren and dr blake uh if we if we mean what we say that we are you know genuinely committed to this um uh what else should we be uh be probing tonight or do you think uh this is a good start you've uh you've launched these efforts before with other with other districts that claim to have great ambitions for change i i think it's a good start one thing that i would say i was doing is begin to have some of these conversations that we've had tonight and you probably have with each other because as we go along it's we're going to need you uh in the school and the students are going to
121need you to be able to make this not just an exercise but a reality and moving it from track movement from uh practice to procedures to policies and i think those are the things that you're really going to have to do in order to make systemic change systemic change comes from policy decisions and how that how we implement those so i think that i should begin to think of that and we are we plan on interviewing you also the committee also to get your views and uh voice in this process i agree 100 thank you that's great and it you know it makes me think of our goals that we all agreed to at the beginning of the year which i think included some type of you know training for ourselves continued professional development and
122given this year we'll give ourselves a pass that we haven't actually accomplished that yet maybe but i feel like that should still be on our list and we should we should do that ourselves also to your point dr blake that's critical um thank you thank you all right this has been really encouraging i think to us all this is not the hard work uh i think we're all gonna be engaged in in harder work what we're doing is is meeting you you're meeting us uh and we're we're doing a critical part of setting the stage for the work to come and we know we'll be hearing from you dr honduras to some of the particulars of the the arrangement and the commitment that you're going to make with doctors ornament blake any other questions or
123comments when will we see you again we don't have that figured out yet but we fair enough fair enough i'm getting ahead of myself i'd like to thank dr blake and dr wornham for being here tonight and for meeting uh they have been meeting weekly with andrew and i and dr paula martin uh to plan all of this moving forward uh we've looked at every question uh we've talked about timelines approaches and they've just had our very best interest in in mind and um are providing incredible flexibility um so they are absolutely a pleasure to work with and i look forward to us uh engaging more in the future we do as well yes thank you dr warren thank you dr blake thank you so much thank you for being here with us and i'm
124sure you're going to be hearing from us yes and we thank you in anticipation we've enjoyed the conversation all right good night very much that was uh very encouraging to meet people that can bring this this capability to us i think sarah we're going to return to our normal order and we are going to uh it's labeled reading of the minutes it's actually acceptance of the minutes as i understand it and we will accept a motion to [Music] accept the minutes of march 2nd 2021 and the executive sessions of january 26 february 1 february 2 february 9 and february 23 so moved second and the second from alexa discussion and a roll call please anderson i for both booth eye for both about eye for both mustafi for region rainy air for both wilson for
125region uh for correspondence uh sarah if i may i'll start with cps correspondence and note that since we met last two weeks ago we received seven uh pieces of correspondence regarding uh literacy and curriculum and materials six regarding the middle school project uh one referencing the open meeting law and how executive sessions are framed in the motions uh one from the de cordova museum about a new exhibit about the confederate flag and how it started uh according to this message as a as a surrender flag and has taken on different cultural meanings there's an exhibit underway now and they've offered it up to students and faculty and then finally a communication from the massachusetts association of school committees uh referencing the fact that we are in division two as you know and uh there are
126new officers for division two who will be in touch with us at some point very soon that's the extent of our communications and yeah on the on the region we have the the cordova uh that same email and we had also the aforementioned email about um how we address uh executive sessions in our agendas and we have has noted looked into it and we'll adjust the write-ups accordingly and now on to i think discussion dr hunter expanding in person you so tonight i come with just verbal updates there's plenty of them we've had our first full week of full-time in-person learning at the elementary schools last week i will say it was very successful to extend the day the weather cooperated i'm going to hope that continues um and we're just really appreciative of all
127the hard work you've heard all the details of what they were planning and we definitely were to the point of needing to do it to look for the wrinkles and actually there were very few so um i thought i'd highlight a little bit of data and then talk primarily around the high school just because when mr cameron here was here he had so much detail for you one of our last meetings um a few data points we are firmed up for a number of remote students for the remainder of the year um we will be at almost 95 of kids returning in person which is exciting and also draws the need for us to be sure we stay very connected with the remote kids who will stay home for the remainder of the year so
128we have about 120 at the elementary k-5s that are staying home fewer at willard than the other schools 28 at willard with 45 and 52 at alcott and thoreau um we have 57 kids at the middle school going to learn remotely for the remainder of the year and we have about a hundred at the high school so this is a community that wants kids back in school and we are excited and i i'll share i think amy's you know take excited and anxious all at the same time very much prepared but also needing to execute kind of that august feeling again district uh pool testing i thought you'd be interested to see some of the breakouts here we have seen a steady increase we are promoting and marketing and encouraging extensively now with the help
129of the ptg's and some regular messaging last week we had an all-time high of 1700 kids k-12 pre-k 12. um breakouts there range about 250 ish at the elementaries with willard at a high of 300. willard's actually really close to that willard and peabody are both close to that 75 to 80 percent mark so excited by that again not that i'm making it a competition but little data goes a long way uh at the at the middle school overall we were at 384 last week and the high school seeing some really nice steady increases of 40-ish kids a week hitting 487 last week so we're going to keep promoting and encouraging and have asked the teachers to do the same we're having teachers bring us survey data to say you know a little more information
130would go a long way with the kids here's what they're wondering so we're we're getting a nice committed effort to it um we did hear from destiny not only are they extending payment on the testing throughout the rest of the school year uh they are actually going to offer it free for summer school in-person supports as well so there's a commitment there from the state i'm sure with uh support of the federal monies that are coming forward and i think the momentum just feels really good and hopefully that'll continue any word about the fall no not yet the summer was brand new today alexa alexis we're we're a day a minute at a time uh the high school is really preparing a bundle of information to go home in the next couple of days uh
131mr masjulo said to me this afternoon it felt like it was september again because of the level of detail that we need to send out which is accurate to the way we felt at all of the schools mr cameron's already shared a lot of this and so we'll be following suit at the high school i think the good news is we're finding that three feet is an exception not the norm we're closer to four to five in most settings um obviously six feet at lunch will be will be enforced um space-wise we're going to be using different parts of the building for different purposes auditorium will be for um where kids with a free block or an absent teacher might go um when it's not being used and this has been exciting we've been actually
132able to work with the music departments we're finally to a place where they have full guidance on how to do both instruments and singing inside 10 feet apart with lots and lots of precautions that i won't get into all the detail of but it's it's a lot of ppe involved and so the uh kids are actually starting to do some music at school again which is pretty i didn't realize how much i missed it till i listened to the theater kids this uh over the weekend and the music instrument instrumental work was there i'm like i haven't heard the kids play in over a year so it's pretty exciting that they're getting getting some opportunity well we had realized they were doing everything virtually on their hybrid days or their remote time and so we
133either had to figure out how to do something in school or the whole program was going to go dormant for the rest of the year and that wasn't our first choice we have purchased desks to replace where they are in the common areas the common area desks are going upstairs at the high school jared's done a great job with his team of securing those deaths some of them are in and some of them will be in friday jared i think to be distributed over the break we have all teachers returning so the high schools reconfigured some space so that all teachers have the right not only have a classroom but have the right sized classroom schedule we have the good news is the schedules essentially stayed the chain the same with the really good news
134of not needing the maroon and gold rotation anymore because wednesdays aren't alternating everybody's in so that's a positive out of out of all of this there are tents at all the schools including at the high school you've probably seen they're there ready to go with furniture to go with them um so we're ready to roll on that we did work with the teachers on really front loading messaging uh about social emotional needs last week rachel pollinar one of our social emotional go-to's for consultants was able to meet with the entire high school staff on the staff meeting and really do more work on what amy so articulately described of that mixed emotion and the transition back and the real acknowledgement that we need to have of what a real difference this will be the week
135of the 26th um just an update the middle school is taking that same approach and we'll be actually having a no homework week that week we're going to engage with challenge success uh they've got a survey for a social emotional check-in and so we want to collect that data from the kids um when we can and if nothing else kind of like what you just heard about with the cul the equity and cultural competency work it'll give us a baseline of where they are as they return um because we're still hearing from parents of you know it's been it's been really hard and as exciting this is as this is it's not going to fix everything things won't be normal um so we just want to be sure we're staying close to that and have
136really sent the message to teachers to not that they needed it but reminders and and from us the priorities are kids mental health and well-being and not a hardcore drive to the academics we did modify as you know we worked with the hybrid fading away that does mean we're tightening up remote access to class and that's a little bit of a hard message because it's been so flexible we do feel strongly that the reset needs to happen now um so the only kids who will be remoting allowed to remote in are if they're fully remote or if they're given permission through a quarantine through the office of the nurse's office the hardest message there has been after travel over the break but we're working with families and helping them figure out how to do testing
137there was a little bit of an assumption in some folks that they could test and then be remote for the first day or two while they waited for test results back and so we've messaged that this week that that won't be one of the options um parking we are working through this the seniors are will be or have actually have been notified that they all will have parking spots the juniors have been notified that they will not um what played out last week was our overlapping needs at alcott and the high school alcott's entire dismissal process is lined up on laurel street at three a little after three and there has been no student parking there we met with the police late last week and talked through what was viable and there is not a
138viable option for kids to park on laurel street so you all many of you know what a big deal that's going to be we're messaging that to the juniors right now and asking them to just hang in there and once the seniors graduate they'll be back on campus it begs as much as i hate to say begs again another big look at how we're managing parking um and i don't know the long-term options for laurel i think kovan may have changed the culture there that the neighborhood might not want back so we're we're going to stay close to the police and talk more on that um but for now we know there's no parking on laurel street traffic we are talking a lot about that with middle and high school the police are going to
139be supporting us on that um you've already mentioned you know the issues old marble road and certainly even walden and thoreau uh we feel very well supported and a little bit of trial and error error here we've got backup plans if plan a doesn't work and modified staggered schedules if we need it so we're going to give those a try and see how it goes uh mrs john arenas wrapping up transportation modifications um i think he's still hoping to get every request on the bus um with a little reconfiguring of roots i have not heard if he's done jared yet i know he's working really hard right now so i think he was aiming for the end of the week to put the roots out yeah he's still there right now doing him of course
140yeah yeah the understatement of how much work this is i guess we'll go on set but it's incredibly deep team effort here and we'll just throw shout outs to bryce in the cafeteria and rest with facilities and a lot of moving pieces to make this all happen and then finally we'll just highlight some of the senior activities there's senior week planned with a lot of safety plans coming my way already to to try to give the seniors as much as we possibly can graduation i know we gave you information about that on the 5th we have worked with the deci guidance and board of health it is a bigger environment this time we are allowed more people um which is great news for the kids we're excited by that it's going to take some structuring
141and messaging to make sure it stays safe and then we're going to piggyback the setup for the senior high school seniors in the morning and use it again in the afternoon later in the day for eighth grade so they're able to have a graduation ceremony as well so creative creative work and collaboration happening there there are other end of your activities being planned for fifth grade that we can bring you highlights of as they get firmed up those will be more school based obviously um but we're i'm pretty impressed with the level of energy and commitment to to really make this a fun end of year while we stay safe and the overlapping you know needs to make sure our kids are really enjoying themselves um amid the covet or despite the coven so cases
142have slowed down a little i'll just offer that um which is good news obviously uh we had a couple of positive pools earlier i think the messaging we really want to send is all of and we had one at the middle school over the weekend we have turned all those positive pools around within hours through the use of the id now rapid molecular test which parallels the pcr test and there's a test we accept and those are rapid and we get them back quickly so it has not resulted in big quarantines of the positive pool which we continue to hear is a concern so we'll be sharing that out as well but that's it's going very well and we're we're excited to hopefully just keep bringing kids into the program so it's busy but it's
143going in the right direction and i think the vacation will be well time to finish wrapping up plans and catch our breath while we get ready for all the kids to come back thank you amazing that's all i have to say just incredible team effort everything there's a lot of information and i know that it's just the tip of the iceberg it's not been working on 30 000 foot view but yes exactly much appreciation i know that middle and high school administrators are probably going to have to be working next week if they're if they're not that's great if they are i think them um regarding the parking at the high school are juniors being asked not to drive in other words or they're just being told that they can't park on laurel somewhere both
144on a message of both there will be a few options along the road by bt so we've tried i'm working with mike on the messaging that's going out because they will park around everson field yes i expect that will be unavoidable yeah so i i think it has to be pretty clear that you know i don't know you might figure it out but i just want to be sure we don't cause yeah i hear you cynthia i am worried on that myself they're gonna just creep in different directions it's probably accurate so the police are well aware and you know they're close we had both their their safety officer and you know t is our sro so um they're gonna stay close to us that's good that's good thank you thank you dr honor thank
145you any more questions comments no then i think uh we can go to our special education overview and again much appreciation for your patience um hi everyone how are you i'm just going to share my screen and shrink myself to the speaker view so i won't be looking at all of you um if you don't mind so i wanted what this does is let me share i don't know if i can share this i think dr hunter made it available to you yeah there you go thank you for getting these to us in advance too that was very helpful no problem um so i wanted to welcome everybody um to the presentation i'm going to put it on presentation mode and i just want to go over a couple of things i know a little
146bit yesterday i had gone over the um just some highlights on special ed and some of the middle school area but this will take us through the both districts there it is okay so in total there are 691 students who are on ieps who live in concord and and go to concord public and conquer schools and the breakdown as you see um is below which is the addition um of the all of the numbers together and most of the numbers make sense but um some people might question the not enrolled in district um the conch republican carlisle high school and these students are students who we found through child find or through parents placing their children in private schools or home school students and because of child find we still offer ieps and provide services
147for those students who require the services so the majority of students in the regions in the two districts are full of partial inclusion and have access to both general ed and special ed curriculum there are many support programs within the district and they were implemented before i got here or right as i got here and then we've uh um we've actually added some more through the west end report that was done in the past couple years um and the program supports these they the requirements are for students who require significant differentiation of the curriculum and additional supports and that's measured so differently because it's highly individualized students who are on ieps so some students may get their measurement might be different than say a typical report card we measure their iep goals we measure assessments
148quick assessments long-term assessments different evaluations we go with progress reports we work with parents and so those the measurements of that vary between um the students needs and exactly what their requirement is so we're going to start in the elementary school and we're going to start with the branch program the branch program is a district-wide program so regardless of the elementary school that you go into we're working on the entrance and exit criteria more specifically because it was a program that was just initiated last year so the branch program are for our students who are emotionally fragile as a primary secondary or tertiary disability and they're supported by a therapeutic social worker a therapeutic teacher and therapeutic tutors it may be that the student on any given day maybe having a difficult time um you
149know regulating themselves in order to go into the general head setting but more often than not students are in the general ed setting in a supported class with a member of the branch staff that's in there with them and sometimes they learn in a very small individual setting again depending on the needs of the student currently there are five students in the program right now their grades two and three we are anticipating more program students coming in in the fall so the intensive learning programs um again district-wide program regardless of what school a child originates in if if the need is there for the student to learn differently and in a smaller setting they would be moved to this program transportation would be covered so that parents wouldn't have to worry about that as well
150and these are students who are diagnosed with autism neurological or communication disabilities some require a form of aba services and bcba supports the classroom is supported by a teacher an ot a pt an slp board a bcba and at some points some students require applied behavior assessments which is like discrete trials and helps a student learn any given skill depending on what they're working on students are included in their general education peers for morning meeting art music and physical education but depending on which intensive learning program they're in and depending again specifically on the students needs students could be in a supported science and social studies class one of the classes is partial inclusion completely within the elementary within the settings of various types of curriculum some of the students learn alternative curriculums through um
151you know aba learning skills through like a discrete trial and yet others still children have like a completely modified curriculum so it varies depending on which program you're in if you are a higher cognition or if you're lower cognition or depending on that that's where that delineates from and when the child is ready the language based program is still in the elementary setting and that's a program that's k through five we have two programs one is a k12 and the other is a 345 program these students are included the majority of the day in the general ed setting for parts of the day they come out and learn explicitly math and reading or math and ela in writing depending on what's on their iep they often require more significant modifications to like the content the
152methodology methodology and performance criteria this is where you may hear multimodal approaches some of our children have dyslexia some have specific learning disabilities in the area of reading or in the area of math and as we learned yesterday from kristen and her team's amazing presentation that varies on some is decoding some as encoding some as comprehension so this program works on those skills with students in the elementary level and throughout the program sorry about that throughout the program there are 14 kids currently in the program so now we're going to move to middle school and the middle school special education workshops they provide the students with specialized instruction outside the gen ed setting so some of the questions on this is is you know that we received or maybe like does somebody have more than
153one workshop if they do why and so um laura brand today and she and i spoke specifically because she and justin are the gurus in middle school and um she was explaining to me that yes they generally meet two to four periods per cycle and it's a smaller group of 12 to 15 people this is not a subset program um generally in the workshop it's it's malleable because you can you can come in and out of a workshop and i'll get further on that when i explain what the workshops are the teachers deliver research-based instruction in small group settings this is the current model we're looking more for inclusive co-teaching and that's going to be a little bit further down in the presentation um but when when the building is built then uh we're gonna
154learn like like the flyby stations that laurie had or the drive up stations and adjacent to the general edge setting situation so the first workshop is the math workshop and it's designed for students who have difficulty with acquisition and application for example senses number sense may be an issue and they may not have you know gotten all of triple digit multiplication or computations and so they're going to be put in this workshop depending on the transitions from fifth to sixth and then sixth to seventh and eighth um the tutorial provides support so there's a tutor that provides support within the classroom um as well as direct instruction and practice concept skills so between the grades of six and eight there are 25 kids students actually take the math workshop the next workshop we're going to
155look at is the learning executive in academic processing this is the leap workshop it's designed to support students with executive functioning weaknesses that impact the ability to access grade level curriculum so sometimes it's an organization i don't know about you but i had a child in particular of my own that i would open the backpack and papers would just fly out of it and they said they didn't have any homework so i would you know organize try to help them organize and that's the executive functioning classroom is does things like that um you know it's about self-reflection and goal setting planning and prioritizing time management agenda books you know if they have homework you know don't they have homework and it's offered in all 6th grade classrooms for a period of the school year and
156i know that it's happening going to be happening in 7th and 8th um coming up within the next year or two [Applause] so our next workshop in the middle school is called writer's workshop and this is where they empower writing program or curriculum is introduced they use their ideas through writing they they evaluate they organize through graphic organizers they plan on how to attack the writing they structure the ideas express them in writing and then they do the rework this is where it is direct instruction from teachers and within the three grades there are 77 students that require some support in the writers workshop and again when i in the beginning of explaining what the workshops are some students may master the workshop and then they then they're out of the workshop for writer's workshop
157but they may need they may jump into another workshop that they require some assistance on and that's a very fluid process that the middle school staff has and they do very well readers workshop is similar to the math and writers workshop these are so to help some struggling learners um become proficient readers and more confident in what they do they might look at instructional strands of word study grammar and comprehension they learn some discrete strategies that can be generalized across academics you know they might learn test taking skills in a reader's workshop that allows them to not worry about the names of the people they're asking on the tet on like in a word problem just let's get to the you know basics of what the word problem is asking things along those lines and
158different strategies for the students and right now they're between the grades of six through eight there are 49 students in the in the workshop so literacy workshop this is very um when we get to the next slide you'll see when we get to the um intensive classrooms but the literacy work workshop is designed to provide instruction to the students who require more intensive structured as with the language based classrooms in the elementary school this is where you'll hear more um explicit uh direction explicit content language this will work with word structure and helping for automaticity and decoding in spelling helping children with spelling students who have dyslexia or specific learning disabilities or areas of decoding or encoding things along those lines would be taking a literacy workshop which is very directed study when we get
159to the next slide you'll see the number of students that are in the intensive classrooms but this this study is like reading comprehension with narrative and expository informational texts organizational information and organization of written expression proofreading skills there's a multi-leveled approach here and a multimodal approach here so not one program works specifically for every student it's very individualized per the students and per the students needs so our intensive classrooms are our students who are generally they may be in one of the intensive learning programs in the elementary schools these are students who are um coming in below average and um that read writ in math or reading or writing in the true like really one-to-one very small group setting on how to help students access the curriculum given different strategies in targeting specific skills sometimes
160in if you look at the 2017 frameworks curriculum frameworks there's an entry level generally for students and sometimes our these particular students may not be accessing at at the entry level we may have to go back a grade or go back um you know a grade and a half to see if we can get them to help them and guide them access math for example maybe at a grade below grade level but access this sixth grade curriculum so this is very um this particular intensive classes help those are children that require that that amount of need the access program is the program in the middle school it's a therapeutic program so if you look at a continuum you might look at the branch program that was in the elementary school these are for our some
161of our emotionally challenged students but also it could be students that have attention deficit disorder it might be students that have higher functioning asp you know autism the old asperger diagnosis different deficits they may have because not all students fit within a cookie cutter of of a disability and we would hate to just say this program is just for this because the needs of the student come first and so most of our students are comorbid or diagnosed with one or more disability so this this program itself is is extremely fluid most or all of the students are within the general ed setting in a supported classroom and the access program provides a home base for them to either have a therapeutic milieu if they need it to have they work with either a school adjustment
162counselor or teacher they may have difficulty in one particular class and then they go to the therapeutic setting to to get help through the classroom on that or go back and talk to the general ed teacher they may um look at various interventions most of the student here um this the interventions and the ability for the access teacher in staff to work with the general ed setting really helps the students generalize the skills that they're learning in the setting when they're when they're alone and then generalize them into the public um you may recall a student that um that worked with you last year and she did an amazing job which i don't want to go into now because i don't want to out her but yeah so she presented to the staff to the
163school committee last year and she just did an amazing job um on that so and then the next part of the access program also has um more definitions of what it does you know it provides the student the services it does tailor to the uni the unique needs of the student um they do access all gen ed setting the adjustment counselor offers one-to-one or small group setting depending on the iep of the student and i just really have to say that because gen it's not it doesn't it it may be different for every single student parents meet with the access team every six weeks if they choose to there's a lot of conversation that goes back and forth with the staff and the parents in this particular group and currently in grades six through eight
164there are 13 students who attend um so we're going to jump up to the high school now and um the programs at the high school this particular program is the alternative pro program or all pro program um these are students that have emotional challenges who require supports beyond that that can be provided in the least restrictive environment which is the gen ed setting for most students students are provided with accommodations modifications and service support models there are behavioral supports and adjusted accordingly there is a psychologist a teacher well actually for teachers because we're going to be moving science and math to the programs so that this will be a completely sub-separate program for students they're the psychologists they have group sessions these are children who might be might have been hospitalized or uh require more
165um supports emotionally from the psychologist or for the class in order for them to access the curriculum and currently in the program there are 13 students ranging in age from 9 to 12. i mean grades 9 to 12. the bridge program uh is a program that is for children who are on the autism spectrum or have a communication disability uh the students sometimes have difficulty in social situation situations or reading social cues facial expressions body language anything along those lines they might have a problem self-regulating or with their executive functioning skills again as i mentioned earlier they're not all students have just one disability so there is some comorbility morbidity within this group um and students come to this program this is not a sub-separate program children come to this program to if they might
166have had a conflict and didn't understand the situation and and why didn't they why didn't somebody understand you know what they were talking about or or sometimes our students get stuck that are in this program and so they just they need to you know talk it out and see how they can unstick their um their thinking maybe to maybe pivot a little bit um and look at a situation that they might not have thought of in the you know previously [Music] there's counseling in this program as well and um they do group sessions and individual sessions and there's a psychologist that works within this program the harbor program is actually i would say a step down from if a child might be hospitalized or if a child needs some support either mental health supports or
167um something along those lines that they're anxiety or phobic or um or things along those lines and maybe they they have not been in school and instead of going into the huge classroom or a larger classroom because these children are have very little academic interventions they're um usually at grade level but they they go to the harbor program almost as a step down from wherever they were whether they were home for a while whether they were hospitalized in acute care or something like that they would come to this program and they're supported by a therapist and a school adjustment counselor and staff sometimes they too need to go to the classroom to complete work because they you know they got overwhelmed in a class or they just couldn't get down the hallway and they know
168that this is a place that they can go and have supports there and the total number of students here in grades 9 through 12 is 21 students launch program is the program i think you're familiar with we had some students present last year to the school committee and this is the second year of the post-secondary students are provided enhanced learning experiences that link them to the transition from school to career to independent living the total number of the students right now is five there are two more that may be coming starting after the break which will be a total of seven and they're taught some children are still remote and some are in person um just a little bit more information on this because the slide doesn't say much the students um all the students
169needs are very different and we work on their their goals that they've transitioned from the high school to their adult learning which is from 18 to 22. and we partner with many different community based businesses throughout concord and i'm just going to read a lot with some of them now so that i can get them right and give the credit where the credit is due so they work with a lot of the vocation for a vocational update we have a transition coordinator a teacher a bcba that's attached to the program tutors that are attached to the program speech language pathologist ots for activities of daily living we they have relationships with good now library drumlin farm discovery museum buddy dog elder services council on aging the groton market art for all they work with littleton
170high school to work with their launch program for some social um activities covert has stopped that a little bit um because you know it's we were out for quite a while but um we just you know these they socially distance they go out with their masks on and now that the other children are coming back to school those will really expound a little bit more but they've been one of our students actually just interviewed for a job yesterday and got a job which is amazing very very happy and they have an alternative curriculum in the launch program so their day-to-day schedule is different some of the students are at the point where they can go into the community and have little job coaching um because they can do a job almost independently and then we
171have other students who are learning the to engage in in society in specific ways that um that don't overwhelm them so it's really unique that they can address the needs of those students individually the next program that we're looking at is the leap program which is similar to the middle school leap program it's executive in academic processing the same self-reflection it's the same language as the as the middle school so it's just kind of a continuum to help those it might be the same students that have different requirements on them now that they're in high school and it does look different than middle school it may not be the same students it just all depends on what's on the student's iep and what their needs are so it's the time management memory strategies in between
172that grades 9 through 12 there are 67 students in the class they have tutor support there are two teachers and they work with them sometimes on direct with direct executive functioning curriculum sometimes they work with the organization of what the students have in front of them because that's where the students are at and we want to meet them where they're at literacy strategies similar to the middle school literacy strategies these are the students who definitely require the explicit language in the explicit um strategies in english and math the teacher that teaches this is certified in many different curriculum research-based curriculum instruction that she gives depending on the needs of each particular student the students are they are supported by tutors and they're supported by this particular teacher and then sometimes other teachers come in to
173help co-teach depending on the needs of the student and the strength of the other teachers they come in and support each of the students in in that way as well math support is similar to the reading support some of our students they may have a math goal on their iep some may have help in the math and may need specific help in the math area um and these these are the students who require supports for that they may not they may for example be in the harbor program but um or one of the other programs or maybe they're just not in school and not in a program um and maybe they weren't in school for a specific reason they would come here to get during the the math supports that were missed so that we
174can catch them up and the number of students varies it truly varies from whatever is on students ieps but really dependent upon the student need the pathways program is probably one of the more popular programs i think that has been around for a long time according to tom keane um and he um has done an amazing job with the program itself and these are for high school students who are on individualized you know social vocational and work together some of the students in this program require small group ela math life skills or vocational depending on the needs you know there have been some students from pathways who have gone to a four-year college there have been other students and pathways who would go to launch and learn learn about the community and learn about functional
175academics the day-to-day in that program they have similar partnerships with various community members they go to they go shopping they they make their own lunches in their own you know um kitchen their kitchen's a little nicer than mine i'd have to say and they um and they work together tom has community outings like meeting movie nights with different cities like acton-boxborough and i think littleton is now involved to give parents um some time to actually have some a couple hours to themselves while the kids socialize with pizza and movies and um and socialize with other children and that was done last year pre-covered and tom's hoping and itching to get it started again and when it's safe enough we'll we'll start that again and the total number of students currently in grades 9 through 12
176is 9. the rap program which is a writing reading and academics processing these are for students who require um reading supports you know vocabulary building note-taking strategies specific focus on you know the body of a of a paragraph or the body of a paper um there's a lot of students in this that require the supports and this is all based upon their ieps um they're in grades 9-12 there's 73 students um this is depending so these are supported classrooms they're not subset programs these are just supported classrooms that would um that just gives students additional help instead of not being able to go someplace to get the needed supports that are given and the teacher here is also certified in multiple you know evidence-based curriculum multimodal which is what we say just because that covers
177all different types of not just reading not just tactile not just you know visualizing there's all different ways in which students access the curriculum so i'm almost done um looking ahead we have hired um for next year the end of this year next year i said inclusion specialist she's a consultant with us her name is dr traniello and she'll be working with us um just kind of looking at our programs and and working with me and working with the new um in district coordinator michelle ceravera and working with um mario winterstein on as the outer district person on how we're going to really look at our classrooms whether it's a coat whether we're looking forward to co-teaching whether we're looking at um you know building different programs or supports or merging programs we're really just
178looking to use her area of expertise on on inclusion she comes from boston university she teaches at two different colleges right now she's written like 29 publications on inclusion she has her uh her own child who's 32 who was um a severe lee special needs student who was in inclusion for the entire 13 years that he was in school so she's a very big proponent of that working with parents working with staff in order to show how conclusion how inclusion can be really successful um michelle ceravera we just hired michelle cervera she started last week she's our industry coordinator um so she's going to be an amazing addition um we're looking at for the elementary programs a language acquisition program similar to a language-based program but some these students haven't really acquired the language skills
179yet and require a lot of speech and so we're looking with the speech language pathologists and staff to try to look at this this program and see if this will be in addition to to the language-based programs but not not the programs that have our specific learning or just or dyslexic students but a different program for the language acquisition piece the middle school programs over the next several years um they're working with uh we're working together to look for an autism program and intensive learning programs for low and high cognitive students and language based programs it's very tricky towards the end of elementary and beginning of um middle school and then in high school you know there's a difference between learning to read and reading to learn um so those skills require some real dedicated
180um well-trained staff in order to do that so that's what we're looking for for the middle school over the next several years and then in the high school we're looking we're looking at the programs that currently exist and looking to see do we merge them you know would we focus on specific learning disabilities in one program looking also for an autism program because we really want a continuum of services and we really want the scope and sequence of curriculum from pre-k to 22. so that is um that's it for the programs these are the people to call uh in the alcott building um you know you start with your special ed teacher if you have a question and then you assistant principal and principal um middle school you know you start with your special ed
181director i mean special a teacher and then you call laura brand and the team chairperson right now and justin um and then the same at the high school katie stahl is working um a dual role uh she's working as um the special ed per contact person currently and she's also an assistant principal and and then in our office um this is who you call and this is who you reach mary o'callahan michelle ceravera mario winterstein the n and out of district coordinators janet o'shea and you re you can contact me as well and now questions everything can i happen before you open it up to questions yes just a couple of other highlights and updates some of which i i can get the van you know advantage of having some a little more historical perspective
182here that ruth's only got 18 months worth of um you know i think it's really worth noting and i'm happy to send these to you the west ed reports we we did full special ed reviews the high school was actually the spring before i started in 2017 and the uh cps we did through the course of the school year 1718. somehow that happened my first year because it was urgent and needed to be done they have been road maps and if you pull them out now you can see just what road maps they've been for us this um whether it's the cohorting of the models that you see in some of the programs like leap and harbor and some of the less intensive programs or the intensive programs themselves and the you know vertical alignment
183we're building here and we're building it out still none of this is finished work um we're still building it out and it's exciting to hear it from the 50 000 foot view as i just listened to ruth and how how thorough it's becoming as well as research-based practices reworking the way the tutors are are functioning in classrooms and having the special educators actually frontline services to kids um a lot of the work is moved along in in these last three years and it's really exciting to hear hear all of that there's work to be done you heard inclusion that was absolutely in the report that's the work to come the other thing i need to name out loud is we were we were listed as over identifying kids our percentage is higher than the state
184average and higher than even our neighboring communities and so there is in complement to that west ed highlighted the need for extensive rti regular ed supports and we've built those as well so that mindset shift is going to be another another path that we need to start start venturing down so i'll send those west ed reports to you it's worth reading after you hear this presentation um a shout out to ruth she's somehow in the middle of covid not only has come in managed all of regular needs of special ed she's managed covet special ed in the middle of that she also managed the tiered focus and monitoring process is the state's accountability and i don't think we can share the whole thing yet but it's already been told to us it was incredibly successful
185in the in the in the report we're getting from the states so um that's another great sign there was a lot of work to be done in processes and paperwork and protocols so it's coming along and then finally just to shout out to the high school somehow again in covid they're still managing to pull together a unified track team which was on our list a year plus ago pre-covered was a best buddies enhanced program and unified sports and this spring aaron jankis is actually rolling out unified track which is a real collective vision of special education students with needs and and regular ed and really a really thriving environment so that was another priority for us and it's actually still happening um so hopefully you know i sit almost just overwhelmed with the way this
186looks now compared to the way it was when i walked in in 2017 and the what we're offering to kids and the way it's targeted and um it's all built around the needs of the kids we are fluid none of this is ever going to be a work where we go check we're done um and i hope that just came through tonight ruth you did a great job capturing a lot of information in a cohesive way and now i will stop and let you ask whatever questions you have alexa um i just had a couple of like very nitty like gritty specific questions it's my second time hearing this presentation you'd think i'd be an expert but um just a couple questions and they're easy ones um when you guys were referencing the leap workshop
187at the middle school and the slide says and i forget the precise number it was somewhere in the 70 kid range uh it said 70 ish kids between sixth and eighth grade but then i thought i heard maybe you saying it's only a sixth grade program that would then or if sometime in the future maybe as early as next year be implemented in seventh and eighth grade so are all of those kids currently in the sixth grade who are in that program or did i so i know laura brand is on the call right now and i but i believe that these are um this is the leap yes i think no this this is the sixth seventh and eighth okay there's a program and i and i got i i think it we all
188hop in because we built a fundamentals like i'm trying to open a program at the sixth grade when we opened peabody is only sixth for all sixth graders and that's that first trimester course yeah first trimester course so now all kids are getting it with the hopes fewer of them may need services and then alexa so the so for the leap program those are six seventh and eighth but that's truly when you look at a child's iep and it says like executive functioning or that's part of their goal on their iep which they really do need to discern like the the planning pieces so that's all three grades i have a quick question all right so is that the same class as something that i've heard called systems and strategies is that what the kids
189refer to as systems and strategies or is this a more significant intervention i can't answer that specifically that may be what we're calling foundation the fundamentals is for all students it's no i know that but like uh the the there is a workshop i think that is sometimes called systems and strategies it might be maybe we'll get you that answer and then so my next question was um ruthie you were saying sometimes that kids can jump in and out of these workshops do you mean at the conclusion of the trimester that they can then transition either into an elective like origami or or potentially another workshop or is it as fluid as kids can bounce between two different workshops within a trimester so i don't think it's that fluid i think it's more than enough
190at an organic stop you know just like a a traditional stop and i think they would have had to met they meet their goals of their iep but again i will get that's the specifics to from from laura and justin to you because sometimes i think workshops can be taken by kids who don't have an iep yes yes that's my understanding um and then that the access program when when would we start that program i don't think it was on the slide i was just more curious than anything else do we know yeah i think it started um the year before i got here so i wasn't 18 yeah i knew it was recent um yeah i think that's going to cover it for me for tonight thank you guys most of the elementary and
191middle school programs have been within the last two years three maybe three yeah got it i also i'm going to give a shout out to the preschool ruth we could do a whole presentation just on the preschool um they actually do a little bit of all those needs um and do it incredibly well and uh we're excited to give them a shout out because you didn't have a slide on that so i don't want to leave them because they their program is integrated and i didn't you're right and janice pregnant no it's good it's it could be a whole presentation i really could that's that's the program at ripley yes yeah yeah this has been very helpful ruthie to to get this overview with this uh this thoroughness to it um i i should know
192this uh but jared and laurie can help me all of the uh the future activities that you refer to the consultant coming in the language acquisition program at the elementary and so on all slated for fiscal 22 or are any of these beyond the middle in the high school we're looking for beyond we really still have to do a needs assessment um on and work with the teams at both the middle and high school i the language acquisition program i've been working with um the staff there and this slps are really excited about it so i think that may happen in 2022 we're hopeful for the fall opening and we just have to make sure we do it right and you have the speech and language people in place to do it yep no hires
193yeah gotcha thank you it's very nice to see you um just wanted to make a comment um i um i i've sat um through the i i've listened to the launch program presentation last year it was really impressive and the thing that i truly enjoy was to be able to put that success and and experience of us students because we were able to meet them during that school committee meeting so i'm hoping that there's a way to um maybe put a link so parents of the special needs students can also see um how great this program is um to to last year's uh uh to last year's meeting uh there was a couple questions about it from community um but it was really impressive it and it's always such a pleasure to meet our students
194that's unbelievable day bring joy every day they've joined some of our staff meetings um they work jared in the business office one of our students works with him and his group and they have staff meetings weekly um so it's it's awesome it's thank you so thank you for that i appreciate um the explanation of the slides i think that was really really helpful uh to understand um the programs and how you know and and see some of the outlook for the future um just wanted to ask for math and literacy at the high school is for the kids on iep uh so they are getting that during circ or mark right or do they have special classes for that i don't know the schedule specifically i i don't but my guess is it's probably parallel
195to whatever to those classes so i think that they're taking those while others are taking supportive classes in other areas i'm not brian brian does the schedule so i i don't know laurie do you know the specifics i mean there are lots of kids in ieps in our in our classrooms getting the regular curriculum um and then mark and cirque support or wrap around to those typically okay and then uh we we've heard about a lot about the leap program at the high school um i did enjoy seeing the facility it's beautiful i know that it's used after hours for a for classes cooking classes and such um but i have not heard too much about transition to college for iep students if if they're like what if there is a problem i can definitely
196um speak to that so generally from 14 to 14 years old students are able to come to their meetings and they get invited to come to the iep meetings i know that tom matt rodman who's a guidance counselor and allison wiki who's like the lead guidance counselor did a webinar on st patrick's day that was all about readiness and different paths it takes to go to the different whether you want to go to career you know college or two-year colleges and they worked together to do that and tom keane's one of the teachers um of the pathways program so that is done heather mahoney is a transition um coordinator she also is the person who works at the um the launch program as like the coordinator of the program she works with teachers and teachers
197do assessments like for because in high school the students then the meeting their iep meeting is really a transition meeting right and they talk about what they want for goals how they want it for example if and it's the students goals i can't tell the student what he or she wants you know it's more you know they want to be in photography so they gear the electives into a photography class or they look at going to visit a college like heather has taken several students to look at different areas and or go on to naviance which is a a program to do like your your skills like it just gives you like what you're interested in do you like to stand or sit you like to be inside or outside you like to you know
198looking at things like that more of an assessment tool so the transition um to college is is similar to that in for all kids you know it's for the for students on ieps or not on ieps but the students that are on ieps there they learn you know how to how to navigate the socialness of being in a college campus and how to you know learn what classes maybe you start with one class and maybe start with two and it really is it's so individualized but the transition itself is something that is on every iep the transition form is on the iep and it's really the student's goals and we have to match the goals we have to look at it academically we have to look at it college you know either college career or
199other readiness that way so there's a lot of communication through that i can have heather she has multiple presentations i can definitely have her send you a few if you'd like to look at them thank you and another thing i wanted to ask is um we have carlisle students coming to uh transitioning to to uh to high school it's another type of transition yeah so uh looking at um and this will be um a question that will bring bring back to uh to our our administration as well is um uh as we are as i was uh going through um the slides and uh doing a little more deeper thinking about uh how we coordinate um sort of strategically the profile of students that you might see coming from carlisle uh to the high school
200so is there a you know is there a information and you may know uh or you may not know uh but i i definitely will uh try to uh get that answer is there an information flow from uh our school middle school to uh to uh earlier than eighth grade so you can plan better for yeah um lauren and i just started that i i contacted her in the at this point i want to say late winter just to check in and ask you know to welcome her to look at our programs and send some students um in carlisle to our programs if you know instead of sending them out out of district do you know what i mean to give they're going to come to our district at some point anyway so like the
201community the um regional district but she and i have been talking she her out of district or her person that works with her name is lori as well i think she worked with jared um wickham and now is working with katie i know that they had three they had a coffee in february for the carlisle students the high school did with all of the programs and all the staff members that teach in the programs they had it for the boston students as well and they had it for the middle school concord parents they did coffee in the evening as well to make sure that we could capture you know the students parents during the day if they needed if they could make it and then in the evening as well that was in february um
202lori and i are in contact marielle's in contact with our out of district person she's in contract with lori to see who's out and who we can and why and get to know more information on that but yeah we're trying to button that up um from almost from sixth grade on okay great that's great to hear because i know that uh the transition has greatly improved uh from definitely eighth grade on it there are so many contacts and so many opportunities for our families to learn about the programs and um whether it's iep uh families or families with uh general education that makes that transition much much easier you know when you come into when your school there is just a a fire hose of information yes and you only can take so much yeah
203thank you welcome heather i'll just say i had two questions they've both been answered i'll just say this is amazing and my only other comment is we've talked about you know as a school committee for several years we've talked about inclusion and let's increase inclusion and and we've talked about little pieces and we've said wow that's great and to see it all put together like this like you've just shown us really is incredible so just the the only not only the amount of inclusion but the dedication to it and to do it right just feels so good and feels so right so just thank you to you and to everybody you're working with it's a village yeah it definitely takes a village it's so many people that are looking in the same direction it's awesome
204so thank you that's all i have okay yeah thank you i i i don't know much of what was in place but it is obvious the um the amount of work that has gone in that this um the investment of time of energy of people power um and so this really shows through this um through this presentation so thank you i really appreciated having this grand sense of of all of the pieces and how they all fit together i just have one question the people who are not in the district that last 75 people or something to what extent do they utilize uh the services that are available uh it it varies we have so if they go to private schools for example um say they start at nine and get out at three parents
205will drop off at their home school um they can get speech services we've done it remotely we've tried to work with with ot some counseling happens it all depends some parents don't access it at all but we still hold annual meetings or we still you know those things home schooled kids absolutely they they they need the services as well and just because they're not in the schools doesn't mean we can't provide them so um so we arranged to do that and the staff is just awesome the speech people they they have the meetings they work with the families one parent um in particular i can think of in the willard school district um got the services for her child in one of the tents in the fall because the child was you know didn't want
206to come it was remote and she didn't want to it was just things like that you know it's just it's the right thing to do i had one last question sorry roo just remembered uh we actually talked about uh this we brought this up during the uh many changes to uh mcas planning for this year but i know that there are families that might that might this this may be important um does the mcas not having mcas this year um does it does it impact the students graduation or staying in a program and that's that's really has to do with the uh lounge program right at the high school so is there an impact uh uh when there's no mcas in the 11th grade or do the students continue staying in lunch program want me
207to grab that ruthie just because i was immersed in some of this so that state gives us another way to determine competency normally through coursework and they have to pass a certain number of courses they actually always offer us not always recently are offering us that same option for kids who hadn't passed the mcas previously because remember most kids take it in grade 9 and 10 and then if you don't pass you usually keep taking it so what's happened is covid impacted the set the administration of the test the retakes weren't available so we've actually been able to look um through the state's guidance and direction look at a student's profile and if they've passed a course um with the certain skills those state deems then we're able to submit an application for a competency
208determination and they have that alternative route to a diploma so the states making it work um you're right we're in it now looking at actually i think this year right now we're still focused on the class of 2021 but the state just sent us another round of emails to get in and look at kids who might be eligible for the class of 2022 because they're the ones you'll recall the state a week ago said they're not going to test so so they're getting an alternative set of options we're trying to keep up it's changing pretty quickly here so and this discussion keeps continuing yes it does ask us again next month yeah the primary goal is that you know our in terms of mcas our focus is always uh making sure graduation is a priority
209so that is still the case okay ruthie thank you very very much and thanks to uh all the people that uh contributed to the uh the results that you reviewed tonight there are many and thank you to everybody i know it's a lot it's a lot of work thanks guys take care okay action items jared's eagerly awaiting yes jared wait you're on all right so let me pull this memo up so i'll share my screen but just a little background so today we have we got the results in from our four buses that we are financing um and the rates came in very favorably um so if you remember uh we budgeted for fy can you all see that no it does oh because it's uh small can you zoom it in a little there
210we go perfect um better so we have four buses um for fy21 that will hopefully be coming in in the next two to three weeks everything has been delayed due to covet as you know um so td bank came in uh the most aggressive bid with a rate of 1.48 over the next five years um so the buses were about 135 000 a piece so the total amount to borrow would be five uh 541 704 split up between the two districts um it's pretty straightforward any questions i would just want to note that uh we had a long conversation about uh the fact that we would prefer more efficient vehicles but uh we we looked at it uh pretty thoroughly and realized regrettably we're not there yet correct we've got to keep moving students to
211school correct yep um and i have no real news on the electric box we're hoping it's going to be in by june but we still do not know yet um so the good thing i do want to point out here um is at the region this is uh chapter 71 um reimbursement eligible starting next year uh so that's good news so for the five years of the leases um that reimburse we will be reimbursed 75 percent all right thank you for putting this together uh sarah i think we'll go first for concord and uh uh move to i'll move to uh award the contract for the financing of the fiscal 21 2021 purchase of two school buses to the low bidder td bank with a rate of 1.48 for five years second discussion concord roll
212call anderson eye booth eye outside rainy eye okay thank you um and um if i can make the motion right to vote to award the contract for the financing of the fy 2021 purchase of two school buses to the low better td bank at the rate of one point four eight percent for five years for the concrete carlisle school committee second welcome anderson mustafi wilson i great and um thank you jared thank you jared much appreciated i think we can entertain a motion to adjourn no we have one more oh gosh sorry yes oh the big this is the big one right so we want to acknowledge uh the uh team that met with the secretary's unit for their work and the support work that went into this we have a potential contract agreement with
213the concord public school committee in the concert hall regional school committee with the secretary unit 2 a successor agreement the conquered motion reads and i move that the concord public school committee vote to approve the secretary unit two year successor agreement for the period 2022 2023 second discussion concord roll call anderson i so this is a this is both districts uh we're going to do them independently this was concord first concord okay it's one contract i see i guess i get it okay it's greatness promotions okay that's fine all right you know vote cynthia yeah i'm good brainy aye okay over to concord carlisle and then can we have a motion that the conqueror i'd like to make a motion that the concrete carl regional school committee vote to approve the secretary unit two-year successor
214agreement for the period of 2022-2023 second roll call anderson hi really throws me off little sorry okay so i think the the reasoning was uh one contract two budgets is that accurate mr stanton correct yeah okay and i followed the language that we had in the past um so it does make sense to do because it's two different budgets and they're both impacted um and if i could just say real quick i just want to also just give a shout out to the secretarials unit and the team that negotiated with us they were very professional uh they came in ready to go it was just a it was a good experience um and i just want to give them that shout out and i think it's uh more than well deserved these uh these folks
215toil on behalf of everybody in those buildings every day right and they have a presence 12 months a year and and it's necessary so thank you for for noting that i believe sarah uh we can uh move to adjourn i move that the concrete and concrete carlos school committees uh adjourn second roll call please anderson eye for both booth eye for both i for both mustafi and for region thank you all and uh jared and laurie and your teams uh we dearly hope that you get a few days off next week um do we have to call and check and make sure you get away for a few days we hope you get a whole week off not just that's the plan yeah we are playing have a great break thank you very much [Music]
216you