Concord Carlisle Joint School Committee June 7, 2022

001okay welcome back everybody we are ready to start our public meeting and so it looks like i can see harry and darcy and zaria so we'll start with our student update okay yeah so we definitely have a lot to discuss this week sorry i kind of lost my voice a little bit earlier today so if i sound a little off that's definitely why um oh okay so i got both out of order there we go there you go so we've had this on our sides for definitely a couple of weeks now but there's still a lot of anxiety surrounding covet with like the increased caseloads at school and i think it's something that people are starting to get used to at this point and i think like we've said the teachers are usually pretty good

002about being accommodating with absences and things like that yeah and i've seen the use of zoom a little bit more which i think is good and stuff like that yeah um i would say i think um still a lot of students are finding it a little bit challenging being out especially around finals week because it's definitely preferable um if you have finals to to be in school and to be studying but um i think teachers are doing their best um especially those who who are out right now yeah um i don't know for sorry and felicity who i'll introduce in a minute if you guys want to talk a little bit about the experience for a freshman um personally i think um for this being like freshman finals i feel like they're being a lot

003more lenient and being like less pressure is being put on to us because it's our first time being out of hybrid a hybrid scenario and you know a lot of the stuff surrounding covert right now yeah for sure and i don't know if we'll see if you have a slightly different experience yeah um sorry so as you can probably tell i'm i just got covered last week so having coven like close to finals has been a little bit stressful because i've been trying to study for finals and other tests at the same time but i do agree with zarya that there definitely has been like the teachers have been um relatively understanding and flexible with that so that has been nice um yeah i would say from the sophomore perspective personally um i it hasn't

004been too bad um upload for finals i think we're approaching what it would have been typically i think also a lot of people are just kind of reaching the end of the year that comes naturally and they're kind of feeling tired and ready for summer a little bit of burnout yeah and then so like we're kind of done i think with the bigger events of the scenes things like that obviously graduation stuff happened last weekend but coming up we have the sophomore semi-formal on friday which had been a long-standing edition at cc um it went away with covid and it's back this year which is really exciting i know that the ticket sales have been even better than like before so for darcy and i that's definitely something very exciting that's coming up um and

005class government is all or do you want to talk about this yeah of course okay so class government is hosting feel good finals um so they're kind of trying to to reduce some of the stress and make it a bit more fun um because finals are stressful for a lot of people um so there's different activities being hosted that are kind of like arts and crafts projects there's gonna be an ice cream truck on it i believe it's the final day of finals yeah and different things like that um and then also um the eighth grade orientation took place last week i don't know also sorry if you want to talk about that yeah we're actually in the same group because i was oh okay sorry yeah yeah i was supposed to do it but

006i was out so sorry i can talk about that um i feel like it was i feel like the eighth graders got to see a lot we got to take them into some of the classrooms and you know show them like some of the teachers and stuff like that we were actually in the same group which was cool and i think it was good too we did like a little q a like she was saying we went into a lot of the like classes of our own teachers the sort of interrupted class for a minute to introduce them to the teachers um and then yeah graduation happened obviously i was there just to like celebrate and take pictures from my senior friends and then we're thinking since this is one of our last meetings of

007the year if we could go through and sort of talk a little bit about like how we think this year has gone we have now representation from two grades so yeah yeah so first of all i just want to start the freshman perspective anything you guys aren't sure felicity do you want to go first yesterday um you can go ahead uh personally uh like with freshman academy i think it's been pretty interesting uh basically freshman academy is like when you get to when we all get put in like the separate groups with the teachers and the students so we can better like get to know each other for high school so it can be a better like integration and like growth i guess and i don't think it's been completely um easy i don't know

008i feel like that next year it's not going to be easy for me to like get used to not seeing people i've seen for the entirety of my freshman year and i don't know i think i'll have to get used to that i feel like it delays the like the step that you take when you first get into high school um but that's just personally what i think of it so [Music] yeah um i have a lot of like similar perspectives i think like um my team the oak team we took two field trips this year so like i did get the chance to get really close with the people who were on my team um but also like it was a little bit hard sometimes um when i had friends who weren't in any

009of my classes because we were on different teams and we never really got to see each other if we didn't have the same lunch block so i think it is definitely i did enjoy like getting this good sense of community with the people in my classes and on my team but it would also i personally think that it would also have been nice to have like more diversity um in the people in my classes so i'm excited for that next year for sure yeah i think we we had similar experiences probably i think we can try and quickly talk about sophomore year yeah so i would say it's definitely been a pretty good like introduction to regular high school i think i was saying this earlier with finals but i feel like yeah we've pretty

010much approached what a normal school year would have been like and i also think one of the biggest components of sophomore year is prepping for your junior year when the like class level workload really is taken up a notch and from talking to like some of my friends who are currently just finishing up their junior year i think we're pretty well prepared and i think it's been a good experience overall and i think the transition between freshman sophomore year like you guys said it's a little bit daunting but you definitely get over it pretty quickly i think all things considered it's been pretty good yeah um i would i would definitely agree i think um we were a little bit lucky in some ways that we had sort of still sort of a semi-covered semi-normal

011um start to the year which kind of allowed for a smoother transition so i can definitely see how it could be daunting for for freshmen coming in to kind of be exposed to the level of work and expectations we have on like the second half of the year um after having a much more lenient um like cobia freshman academy experience um i do think though by the by the end of sophomore year we're definitely feeling much more prepared for junior year um and it's just been a great experience being able to be in class um back totally normal for the first time in a while for sure and then we just have a quick little looking ahead yeah um yeah i mean i can just take this first point i know this is something we've

012been saying for a long time but our goal is to have the middle school student council representatives if they want to have like some feedback for kind of one of the last meetings come to the next meeting or even just like share some points if we were to go to the middle school to one of the meetings and get some points you guys just to get some more perspective from other schools and i don't know if let's see if you want to take this next one yeah okay so hi um i'm felicity and i know i've already said some things but um yeah so i'm the part of the class of 2025 so i'm going to be a sophomore next year um and since darcy is elected was elected to be the secretary for student

013senate congrats thank you um i'm going to be taking over well okay that sounds like really condescending sorry but i'm going to be filling in um on school committee for darcy next year and um fellow is uh definitely one of our most um present and vocal freshmen so we're super excited um and i i really appreciated my experience this year um you'll definitely still yeah yeah for sure for sure um yes i just wanted to say thank you and uh can't wait to see felicity you do a great job thank you yeah thank you so much great thank you so much um darcy we're sad to see you go but you can of course come at any point because our meetings are open and you can come visit us and welcome felicity and so next

014year they'll be harry felicity and zarya correct that's correct yeah great well we're looking forward to that um looks like you guys have been really busy and i do currently have an eighth grader who went on one of your fabulous tours so uh it's definitely a highlight for the eighth grade to come to the high school so thank you thank you so much thank you have a great day the updates have been very robust so thank you for that one more meeting and then we'll see you back in september okay thank you thank you bye thank you guys all right we are going to move on to public comment and we will start with public comment in the room and just a reminder that this is a meeting in the public but not with the

015public so if there are any um comments in the room we will take those first and just as a reminder you have three minutes so i'm seeing no one on the room if you are on zoom please raise your hand if you have a public comment to make seeing no hands we will move on to our next agenda item which is recognitions um sure um justin's coming up to talk about the playbook initiative which is an anti-discrimination and anti-bias prevention program to those who don't know out in the public i think we're all aware of what the playbook initiative is in this room and i just wanted to say that my seventh grader was not a leader this year but my seventh grader who says well virtually nothing about anything um did come home the

016day that the leaders were in the classroom and said i think this is something i might want to do next year and given how um you know typical seventh grade boy i think that is just one anecdote i assume many that demonstrates that this program is pretty exceptional if it can rouse my son it can browse so um with that i'll turn it over to justin to um walk us through your presentation well thank you alexa i really appreciate that we appreciate that um i do want to give a shout out to harry zarya darcy and felicity it's almost like they were an administrative team i worked with a couple years ago so uh amazing that they're still doing yes uh such wonderful things up at cc so there are three playbook student leaders who

017are on zoom and i would invite them to turn their cameras on and we're going to start with a video that was actually showed um we shared last night in our rising 6th grade parent night we had about 240 parents on our zoom last night and this is just a portion of the video that was shared so that we can introduce the playbook and the work that we do in this anti-discrimination program with our fifth graders sound [Laughter] video looks pretty glitchy too there's no sound she's at home oh aaron yeah how do you guys do this aaron go back to the beginning he's going to talk us through it because we can't hear the sound so is if aaron is muted on her computer that's the fix right there so all she's doing can

018you unmute and hit the play button again just make sure aaron your volume is turned up here we go i'm so smart mr cameron bringing me back to last year stepping through some important life lessons student leaders with the playbook initiative spent thursday leading discussions about race religion and gender orientation they also played out different scenarios that were written by students it's all part of an anti-discrimination and anti-bias program run by project 351 and the celtics shamrock foundation which was inspired by the team's 2016-17 roster with middle school students such an important time so great to do that when they're at that age right yeah it's nice to see that they're making that a priority yeah this is the playbook initiative at concord middle school of the off-court legacy left behind by the 2016-2017 boston

019celtics team the playbook initiative seeks to leverage the power of sport and more specifically the appeal of the celtics to engage middle schoolers on critical and plaguing societal issues starting in 2017 and 2018 the playbook initiative is an anti-discrimination and bias prevention training for middle school students and adults the training centers on a social playbook written by middle school students that inspires a dialogue on race religion gender and disability and ultimately equips those who participate in the workshop with the tools to intervene in challenging social situations the goal of the training is to teach those who engage in the workshop to be more aware of discrimination and how to respond when it happens too often teens even adults are either the target of teasing or are witnesses to bullying and feel unprepared and how to

020act individuals who leave the playbook initiative report that they feel much more equipped in responding being an upstander aimed with the understanding of telling a trusted adult when the teasing or bullying happens concord middle school was one of the first schools selected to engage in the playbook initiative in 2018. since 2018 over 400 concord middle school students 200 adults including support staff bus drivers parents teachers members of the community including the concord police school committee members and concord public school leaders have participated in the playbook initiative since 2000. coaches and players have partnered thank you okay video is a little glitchy apologize um if we could share the playbook student leaders i could invite them to put the cameras on and unmute themselves and introduce themselves we'll start with layla in sixth grade want to

021just introduce yourself um hi my name is and our seventh grader sophia hi my name is sophie redmond in seventh grade and the committee might recognize tyler who visited the committee earlier the school year is our project 351 ambassador tyler you want to introduce yourself hello i'm tyler and on the video um you may have saw you may have seen the spot where tyler was with grant uh is it great wiggins grant williams williams that's right i'm sorry um do you want to just share a little bit about that tyler that experience you had at the celtics practice facility and what you brought back as a playbook student leader yeah sure so if you don't know already i'm the project 351 ambassador for concord so there were some project 351 ambassadors who were able to

022go to the auerbach center in boston to do the playbook training and we were able to meet brad stevens and he talked to us a little bit about the importance of leadership and then jalen brown made a quick appearance and then grant williams and sam hauser actually did the training with us which was a lot of fun and then when i came back to the middle school i was able to form a leadership team with some some of my friends and then we went to ripley and did the training with the 70 student leaders and we ran the training in the five different groups so the other trainers could see what it looked like and we had pizza and it was just a very fun day and then when we did the training i found

023that the students were much more open when other students were leading and we had a timer and slideshow going in the background to make sure we stayed on track and i thought it was super beneficial and it was so awesome that we were able to train every student so a great experience overall sophia do you want to speak a little bit about tyler mentioned there were 70 students at the student leader playbook leadership summit that we had here at ripley do you want to share do you remember why we had exactly it was actually 75 do you remember why we need 75 student leaders um uh i think some like couldn't make it or something so i was one of those like last minute ones where i had some like quick training done so i

024didn't actually go to like the big one but i got caught up the day before do you remember though what what is important about the number 75 25 in each grade oh so you could have one liter per home base there you go so we ran we ran the playbook initiative through our home base advisory program this year and the celtics were very interested and so is project 351 we're the first school to actually run the program for the entire student body and all of our faculty and staff so it's quite the undertaking i want to thank the administrative team all the teachers and staff who gave up almost three hours of their school day in may for this program to pretty much take um the entire school over leila do you want to share

025just a little bit about your experience leading a sixth grade home base um yeah it was not gonna lie i was kind of nervous before um but because we were like the same age group and i didn't think they would take anything serious that i would say but it was really fun and i got lucky that i knew a couple of the kids in the home base um when i came in like it was really fun um everybody started clapping and then we played the video but we had some tech um issues so we ended up playing hangman for like 25 minutes and it was really fun so we got to know everybody um i i did have fun the home base ambassador i think yeah the homies no the home base advisor um helped

026us dirt a lot we had pixie stix and i i just had a really fun time and it really showed me that um i could do things that i didn't know that i could do it do you remember reflecting with me about um your recommendation for next year about the t-shirt remember seeing me in the hallways afterwards oh yeah the sizes aren't accurate and we have to go we have to go from what long sleeve to what oh allows you to show sleep because of the day i wore it it was burning hot like it was like so hot outside so um when i got home i ended up cutting the sleeves off because that's awesome this was our reminder to remind the school committee of our very warm buildings [Laughter] yes what a great

027idea uh sophie do you want to share a little bit more about your experience at sanborn and with your seventh grade group um yeah i had a pretty good group and as long as i like started a topic that they were like interested in talking about people would like people were really talkative and stuff and so i mean i really liked the video that was helpful although we did at one point when we finished a discussion early people had a stretch break because they had been like sitting down the whole time and so that was good and then i was like um with the home base advisor it was nice because like they so if i if they could tell that i needed help in like a situation then they would help but then most

028of the time i got to like be able to be a student leader and stuff and be able to talk so that was nice and so i found it like a fun experience and everything great tyler you want to wrap us up anything else you want to reflect on and give advice the sixth sixth and seventh grade student leader for next year yeah i would say my group was great i had i had two home bases combined and everyone contributed well and the home base advisor stepped in when they needed to but they mostly let me and the other leader do it and some advice i have for the sixth and seventh grade students on this call is just i would say do it again i mean try to get your friends to do it

029it's a great experience and i had a lot of fun great thank you any questions for our student reviews excellent job sorry about that um i just think it's so great to see you guys in here with us this is my favorite part of the meeting when we actually have kids here so i appreciate hearing it from your perspective and it's tricky when you have to get up in front of your home base and you're actually the teacher so that takes a lot of courage to do that so thanks for that okay thank you so much thank you thank you good job thank you thank you very much thank you i think it's a great example of how we engage students with engaged students yeah truly so on to we have two sets of minutes

030tonight we have the minutes from april 5th and sorry may 5th and may 10th we should have received so any uh questions comments on those before i'd like to put a hold on may 10 i have a small correction i'd like to get off to aaron if you'll indulge me on that sure thank you okay so if i would entertain a motion to approve the open session minutes from may 5th of 2012. second discussion thank you to uh aaron for faithfully keeping all the minutes yes yes okay all in favor all right opposed all right on to correspondence at the region we received three pieces of correspondence this week one was a thank you to our school committee for our time spent during our meetings which was greatly appreciated one was in regards to an

031eighth grade civics project and perhaps um one of those members was just on with us so our eighth grader has been very engaged with us through these projects which has been wonderful and one was on security specifically at cchs jordan at the at concord public we had six pieces of correspondence one from our mecco families collective one from an organization called ballotpedia that's doing um collection of data on school boards across the country they're endeavoring to compile lists for all of them no small undertaking we had two emails about uh the eighth grade civics products project from our eighth graders um one about school security and one about apparent concern right okay and on to chairs and light science reports so we're going to start with cps so alexa sure um okay we had court

032i know you were at the select board last night i tried to call you and you were engaged so did you want to report out on that yeah certainly uh the uh director of public works referenced the uh capital needs of the town and included on that list is the uh the doug white field which he believes will be a warrant item coming up in 2023 for fiscal 24. details forthcoming i'm sure school administration will be in touch with with alan cathcart on that also the moderator town moderator carmen reese presented a draft calendar to the select board and they made a few minor changes to it and i have forwarded that to all of you just this evening the uh plan is for a special town meeting this fall because there is a deadline

033for some state funding pertinent to dpw that has a deadline attached um and so that means that perhaps there'll be other items added to that special town meeting and then the regular uh town meeting is slated for give me a moment here uh sunday april 30th 2023 at the high school that's uh that's all i have from this lecture cynthia can we go to you with the warrant closes january 4th what the warrant closes january 4. so that's that far away unfortunately yeah that was one of the corrections that was made last night yeah yeah um so peg access advisory i'm just coming up to speed but they do have an interesting process underway with an rfp for the uh renewal of the comcast table franchise so it's a pretty big deal for um mmn

034and the town and for everybody actually and carlisle so i'll try to dig in we interview and sex session of the applicants to the rfe on the 16th in the afternoon so that would be interesting and then the contract is due to be awarded on july 1st and did you also attend the dei commission or was that no before last week that was a long time ago it seems like uh so they had a lot of conversations i hope that the recording is up about they did have a lot of conversation about the mecco um situation um and i'm reluctant to report this very probably almost an hour so i've been able to summarize that it was a lot of participants and a lot of conversations so i will go i didn't get a chance

035to check up and then okay as posted the video so i will definitely check and circle back with you on that and i supposedly they're going to meet again soon and court we'll save our building committee until cps part of our larger discussion okay and we will move on to the region so since i've been around but i did get an update from them and they refer to jill refers to this as a quietly busy time of the year so they've got a lot going on she says we have a handful of adult education classes still running this spring and are busy working on the fall schedule already the new adult english learning language learner program will start in mid-july and they received twelve hundred dollars from the community justice cornerstone grant for that program

036so yay um we have about 10 to 12 students they're in the process of enrolling for that program so far and on the driver's ed side june and july summer classes this is important to those listening at home june and july classes are already full but there is still space in the two august classes that was as of last thursday i don't know if it's still true and um let's see they do have new instructors who are newly certified as driving instructors and so that's exciting that they're getting a little more capacity um and then we have let's see imscc music lessons are winding down for the semester but they're busy enrolling the students for the summer and excited to offer some of the long-running uh popular music workshops again including summer band trombone flyer

037trumpet workshop and they will open registration for fall lessons on today june 7th perfect all right thank you honey thanks to jill great and then we have our superintendent's netco advisory council carrie and i sit on that carrie's going to give an update on that yeah sure so um and we talked a little bit about adding at the new policy to add a mecca representative which we'll get into later they in general seem to really appreciate the latest around the benefits that we made um so there wasn't much effect on that um we had a linking discussion around professional development um what we're doing at a staff level um what's going well where there's an improvement and i um continue with that conversation um and then there is we're working on finding another time end

038of july and we'll continue on in the fall after that yes yes and we're actually part of the part of the july discussion was how do we kind of formalize this schedule so that we don't have to go through the pain of scheduling yes scheduling is always challenging um and sharon and i sit on andrew's cei strategic steering committee we've had sharon has stepped up from it so i'll give a quick update we've had i think three sessions our fourth session is on thursday and it is students it's teachers it's administrators it's school committee it's andrew um andrew runs breakout rooms and we actually really do work for a solid hour he's very good about managing us and giving us a task to accomplish at every meeting and i think we spoke a little bit

039about this at our last meeting but our thought when we did dissolve the dei sub committee was to kind of roll into the strategic steering committee so we actually are participating in that committee um so our next meeting is on thursday and then we will meet i think that's going to be the last one of the year i think it is and then it will be monthly in september so that's the update there and that's all i think we have perfect all right so on to we are on to the discussion portion which i will hand it over to lori but i just want to say i love i have updates oh you about things oh sorry go ahead lori i missed you i skipped your report i was so excited to see all the

040principles here they're very excited too um my updates are focused on two topics primarily that just were timely uh further updates to mecco on other pieces of what we're working on in addition to the topics at the advisory group we had a really fantastic last session with the leaders from medco headquarters who came out about 10 days ago and spent the morning with about 25 high school echo students and us as leaders mike and his team and really took the priorities that the students had worked on with the pre in the previous sessions with the mecco headquarter leaders they had come up with a list of 13 items they wanted us to consider uh andrew and team spent some time calling them because five of them are already in progress so we named that and

041didn't spend time on those then as a group we collectively well the kids collectively prioritized among the other eight what their top three were so we've got that list we're working with them um probably one of the biggest ones is they're going to get a dedicated space at the high school it's been a little bit of a shared space until now a dedicated space and they really want to own that space design it make it purposeful and help us know what they need in that to make it their own so more to come on that as those goals take take form in the fall uh also we've posted for the cps side of the director position uh so that's up and we have resumes coming in andrew's working with denise to manage that process and

042putting a committee together and screen resumes put a committee together interview with a very ambitious goal of um hoping to have a finalist even as soon as the end of this month um deb jemison is excited and anxious to take on the cchs director position and really make that her own uh really knowing what an opportunity is to work with kids at that age and as she's the words she used with me was mold them and support them so we're grateful for all of her activity and work this year as acting director and then in the fall uh we were able to go into boston last friday mike and i and andrew and a few other members of the um leadership and graduate a young man who could not attend on saturday and mecco inc

043really dealt the whole place up and had food and we were there with mom and grandma and it was just a really great great event that morning and then finally we're spending time at both k-8 and the high school looking at our staffing for the fall that's going to go on into this into the summer for sure both what our needs are academically social emotional otherwise so it wouldn't be budget increases it would be reallocations we've got a little attrition um in a certain few spaces so more to come and what what we're going to build under the directors so that we have supports in the schools as well i think that's where we are but it's been a really great great few months working with kids staff parents families it's felt really collaborative we're

044making progress there's a road map ahead of us for sure but i think we've all made common priorities and working together toward them it was really exceptional to see i don't know if any um one subscribes but the metco director millie um puts out a weekly email sort of detailing what um what's going on in in all over the state with respect to metco and i couldn't help but notice um we kind of dominated her entire newsletter this week because there's so much um so much activity that is positive and forward thinking happening in the district and it was nice it was nice to see it highlighted by you know even just outside our own our own committee here so i don't want to understand how much work there is to do but it's a

045collective collaborative effort now and that's really important yeah my last comment is a number of us are going to the betco conference on friday in framingham called living the legacy she's invited dr adolf browning who a number of us have seen in the past and um he does this fantastic dramatization that you can't your implicit bias shows before it shows i can't give more away or to give away how he actually does that but you go down a path of your own in responding to him and then he reveals something very different and you have to stop yourself and realize oh i just went all sorts of assumptions and i need to slow myself down looking forward to that my other update is on security um we certainly are very invested in security of the

046schools and everything to do with security we're obviously as concerned as everyone based on a tragedy in texas two weeks ago and every school shooting i mean it's just unfortunately a sad state of where we are in the schools and american culture in general um pieces that we've had in place cobin interrupted us for sure we're reinstating and we'll come back full plan and place in the fall we are in alice district i think it's really important we say that our teachers are aware of the pieces of alice we have not drilled in a couple of years because gathering kids in a big group in a corner of a room under a lockdown doesn't fit with distancing so we need to regroup the drills we are actively talking about drilling in the elementary schools which

047is not something we've done in the past but the needs and the you know need for kids to know what to do probably outweighs and we're going to talk a lot about how to not make that traumatizing and certainly i've already started that conversation with the police we had a staff meeting last night with the elementary teachers and help them hear where our mindsets will be as we make those plans um the second piece is really tightening the buildings up k5 doors are locked all the time and there's no entrance middle school and high school the place where cobit interrupted us again because ventilation precluded locked doors was where the swipe cards are required those all need to be reset and reestablished the middle school by the mods and then the open campus issue is

048the other one so peter kelly and i quickly talked this morning there's a lot of new technology out there that will make this easier um potentially so we're going to spend the summer looking at that crisis go is an app that we've had in pilot waiting to roll out for years now um where that we should be able to hit the ground running in the fall everyone can have it on their phones staff students everyone gets a hot red button to hit to get police urgently and immediately because we all know the main office is not the way that that is likely to happen um and it'll also give us communication with the police during crisis and in buildings where cell service and all of that can be tricky we can be on the wireless

049network and have more reliable means of knowing what's going on so we're excited to get that off and then the final thing which i think is frankly the most important when we have any report of anything concerning going on with a situation or an individual a familiar individual or an unfamiliar individual that feels different or somewhat off-putting we don't just ignore that we actively encourage and ask our community to report that to us people do and a lot of this because it doesn't turn into anything quietly happens with us and the police and people are checked on and we all come to a place of comfort nothing acute was threatening but we are always in the mode of doing those low-level pieces so i think that's probably the most important piece is the ongoing security

050mindset both in terms of kids and adults in need but also in terms of kids and adults who um maybe something different that we're not normally expecting and really getting at that early so a lot more to come in the fall as we roll everything out tightly we finally have an emergency plan that we updated thoroughly with the concord police in the fall of 2019 ready to roll it out literally in march and we closed so that's going to get its electronic dust taken off of it and pushed out to the staff so that we can be sure they're thoroughly informed like to note how important it is that you reference the mindset um the idea that safety is everybody's business i think uh is more significant than all the technology we can bring to

051bear to have student staff teachers aware that it's their responsibility and we need practice in saying to a person new to us in the hall may i help you as opposed to one of these um it's a big cultural shift and so i'm impressed that you're moving as assertively as you are thank you thank you thanks now i can say i'm really happy to see all the principles in the room we saw you on zoom last year but it really is impressive to see you all here so welcome to our meeting we're happy to see you and i'll turn it to lori to run us through this yeah so they are all here i'm going to just remind you that all the school improvement plans come off of a process with the school council so

052they've been working with them um they are also based off of the strategic plan so the template that's been filled out and completed by every building and is posted online reflects the initiatives of the district and that's by design so that we have common direction and goals within that you'll see individual schools doing their way of doing it each individual building has its own needs and wants um and so there's tweaks within those goals but with you know tight and loose all at the same time is always the purpose um what we've asked them to do tonight is not to go through the whole plan we're going to assume that you've read it but highlight three things out of their goals for 22 23 to just bring to your attention and then be here for

053any questions and things you want to talk perfect so mike's coming up first cchs i know where am i going yeah i'm upset well hello everybody and thank you for uh allowing me time to speak about the the high school school improvement plan and i saw some of you at graduation it was a good event so uh nice to see everybody um so i i will as laurie said we're just going to touch upon a few points and you know all the goals are are obviously uh important and we could you know get into a discussion about ranking them some are kind of ongoing and i would i would count 9th grade academy our dei work and mtss which is you know offshoot of rti is is kind of ongoing work in areas that we

054recognize in different levels that need to improve the one i would like to highlight the most is the undertaking once again of a schedule um a bell schedule overhaul um and so i this is my sixth year here and i inherited the tail end of a schedule review process we've had the same schedule at school for 22 years you know our work with challenge success you know i highlight this this comment we know how important the work of of a bell schedule is and it impacts every student every adult and so it plays a really big role on uh you know various different things uh and you know challenge challenge success highlights that as the most important thing you can do to you know to really impact a student's day-to-day existence so um the the

055challenge with the bell schedule is it's really difficult to please everybody um and you know we can as kristin has often said you know we can what's your famous line we can schedule anything you want we just can't schedule everything yes so so it's really about identifying what are the priorities there are there are lots of great examples out there ironically um before the pandemic lori cited something else in terms of security that you know kind of was was close and then uh get thrown to the back burner i would say bell schedule was very close we were working with gene thompson grove we did have some consensus in the room um after a really challenging um process that i again i inherited when i first started that was a contra little bit of a

056controversial bell schedule so uh that work it will come it's already started to some degree and that the planning and identifying committee members getting a timeline in place with the what the it's a it's a quick timeline we want to have a new schedule identified by december december is a really critical point because in order to implement it for the fall it has to be ready by january so it will be a major um component of the work in the beginning of the year we've done this process multiple times so it's not like we're starting from scratch um but but this will be a very big undertaking it's very exciting um you know there are a lot of great examples out there that i think we can we can adopt uh as a whole or

057in part so i think that is uh the most exciting part of the work we have next year and the following year will be in place and and i'm looking forward to that process unfolding that's great that's exciting i love a new schedule 22 years 22 years yeah that's a long time as i said today at the uh the staff meeting there are kids graduating college that has essentially the same schedule so i think it's education has changed a little bit in 22 years and some bell schedule needs to need to change as well great thank you mike thank you thank you yeah you're next year [Laughter] all right um so i really just want to highlight three things from the middle school school improvement plan i do want to thank the students parents faculty

058and staff who make up our school council and putting together this draft plan so the first of which is going to be a presentation made through christian's office i believe to this community next week about the work that we're engaged with with star 360 and pair as well and just the importance of continuing to assess our students locally and use that assessment and that data for informing decisions in the classroom but also informing decisions in class placement in our now three-year-old rti rtp program rti's response to intervention rte is response to enrichment supporting all our students who are in need of high achieving opportunities the second goal i'd like to highlight is we're going to be piloting throughout the school an entire year at pbis which is positive behavior incentive systems if you talk to

059many administrators across the state many of us felt somewhat ready for the support of mental health of students coming back many of us were caught off guard with the discipline numbers um we're ready for that extinction verse to actually burst and to really focus on all the students who bring such positive light to the middle school and really celebrating them monthly we have partnered with concord ed fund in this area of our school improvement plan we're going to be celebrating and teaching explicitly for our home base advisory program a characteristic of the month like one of the months we are going to be teaching in home base what inclusion looks like at concrete middle school after the first week or so teaching that through videos through quotes for days and stories on books that are

060on display in our library possible assemblies um we are then going to be celebrating those students who portray that word exemplify that word by really propping them up and celebrating them in our school community we're essentially doing what our end of the year awards do but all we do for our end of the year end of the year awards is celebrate students at the end of the year and we have a lot of past students and faculty and staff who are named after these awards and characteristics such as perseverance inclusion kindness which are three of the 10 words we're going to be teaching through the pbis program next year again are words that describe former faculty and staff and students we have awards in the adventure so we had a school improvement plan we had

061a school improvement goal this past year rethinking our end of the year awards and how can we celebrate those qualities throughout the entire school so we're doing that through on pbis and i want to thank comfort ed fund for some of the fiscal support of our pbis initiative for next year um and finally we're partnering through christian's office um this will be a district district-wide restorative justice committee that's going to be forming and we're also putting together a committee at the middle school as well to explore what restorative justice looks like at the middle school i'm committed to having faculty and staff and medicine students such good work happening at the middle school it's impressive that's really neat i like that pbis thank you thank you thank you very much alphabetically first hello naomi hello

062all right um that's right i'm not going to go over all the points but i have a couple that i want to highlight um the first one and i you've you've heard about it a little bit already in the middle and the high school um is the mtss framework that we're updating um or adopting i think for alcott the key there is really updating um we have a lot of the structures in place through our rti model so we we are already screening students we're providing them with interventions we have regular data meetings with progress monitoring i think the piece that we've identified through the work with the mtss committee this year is that we just need to be um more purposeful in the supports that we're providing students and so one of the things

063that we're really focusing on you'll see on the um the improvement plan is this this idea of really being purposeful about matching the interventions to specific student needs based on the data um and so you know while we feel like we're in a good place to do this because the structures exist that that to us feels like the work that we really need to focus on is just being more deliberate and how we're matching interventions based on the data the other piece that i'd love to highlight is our continued expansion of our branch program for students with emotional disabilities since i started here this is my third year now the program has been changing every year and it's been growing every year but it's been largely just kind of moving along in the grade levels

064and we're now at a place where we actually get to truly expand vertically and so we're going to be opening another classroom next year which means that we're going to be able to meet the needs of students with significant emotional disabilities across the district from in grades k to five so whatever the grade level is um and we are really excited about that and then i think just uh sort of forward thinking part of that work is also going to be thinking about now that we have a program that runs k-5 thinking about that expansion into the middle school and so that work that conversation will start this year in preparation for two years from now um and then the other thing that i'd love to highlight um falls under the inclusive culture strand um

065which is and so partnering with our di director our metco director and our metco families to ensure that students at alcott who are part of the metco program feel um valued respected and welcomed at all grade levels um i think after covid i don't know if we can say after covet but now that kobit has happened and continues to happen there is really uh there's a big need that exists i think for everyone to rebuild that sense of belonging um i think we're feeling it across you know all grade levels across all students but um we want to make sure that as we are rebuilding and building that sense of community that we're really making a concerted effort to focus on our our students who are in the echo program and our families who are

066in mecco um there's different ways that that might work it might be working with our ptg who's really on board to making sure that things that we plan are accessible to all families um you know it's individual outreach with families um and then also um working with the dei lead that's gonna go into place to support our staff to make sure that they are feeling um like they can do that work as well so thank you excellent thank you question question if i might um you know you talked about uh more deliberate intentional uh intervention um or bringing services uh around mtss and i think this school committee knows you've always been deliberate and intentional about that so um i'm thinking the the change that you're you're envisioning is uh what i read here um

067communicating student progress toward goals during each intervention cycle i.e more evaluative uh work about the efficacy of those interventions is that how i could interpret what what you meant yeah definitely and making sure that whatever intervention that we select for a student based on the data is effective and then and then making those adjustments um sort of in a timely and responsive manner yeah yep great good thank you yeah all right looks like price is right come on down two years since we've done this in christmas yeah and coped is not written on my school improvement wonderful so that's something to celebrate excited about um so a couple of things i'd like to highlight um about the the rose school improvement plan i know that we've all talked about different portions of our implementation around

068the mtss system um something that i'm very excited about is um consistently using the devil's eighth edition to monitor the progress of students who are getting intervention and reading what i love about using this program to progress monitor is that there is um a tiny data warehouse component that allows us to share student progress information and data with families um at various points throughout the course of the year so we will have very specific targeted data to share with parents um at fall and spring conferences so that's a huge one for us i'm very excited about that a couple other things i'd like to highlight are i see them as a more of a return to normal and past practice things that we have not really been able to do prior to covid we were

069able to engage fifth graders um in a four to six week smart executive functioning boot camp that was run by a special education teacher and a speech and language pathologist um sometimes our people adjustment counselor would sub in for that so we are very excited to be able to bring that in we found it to be very effective and it at the time it seemed um easier to do when we were not mixing classes and now we can you know bring cohorts of students together and hope that we're sending them to middle school that are prepared on the exec function side of the house um similarly to that we're looking to revitalize a lot of our positive behavior intervention system which included frequent assemblies and bringing the whole school together so very excited about that

070limited to three so i'll say the third is we are getting a facelift to our lower playground that includes all accessible playground structures so that is going to be installed this summer it's far overdue i think we currently are using the structures that were on the old alcott playground um so through fundraising efforts between the ptg and the district we're finally able to make that happen i think that when you were when alexa you were still yeah the real parent on the ptg yes my first year you said we've been sitting on this money you know we need to do so it's finally happening yeah you've been pleased to know very plans um there will be structures that all of the thorough students um can access so we're really excited about that yep that's great

071thank you thanks thank you all and again that's those are highlights there's one more oh [Laughter] [Music] thank you again for all taking the time to read the willard school improvement plan again we're going to be looking at just three areas tonight but we're very proud of them uh three areas the first of which is our continued work with programming for students with language-based disorders for general education specifically with students with disabilities we're going to train 10 additional staff members and ready to rise ready to rise foundation's accelerated and intensive boost program we began last year and we used it as part of our rti process it's you know the mtss process and we're partnering with wilson actually with who signed mou because they're interested because of the data that we would provide that suggested

072incredible growth of these students so we're going to train 10 students and ready to rise and seven more in foundations um thanks to debbie dixon who is here tonight we're going to be partnering with landmark outreach as you know we are the language-based uh classroom program the uh language and beyond as it's now called and we're gonna be working with them for uh pd and and consultancy of special educators and regular educators so in the partner classrooms and um we're gonna be doing that throughout this year it's gonna begin this summer and we've already kicked off and we have a scope of work and we're very excited ever to excel so we're looking forward to that working with andrew nemichi he came to our school as he's come to each of the schools to work

073with our staff about looking at areas within his strategic plan that resonate with the particular building and one piece that we've decided that we're going to focus in on is regularly returning to best practices and case studies we early on uh been using a phrase called little dirt on your face it's a sicilian expression which a good friend tells you when you have a little dirt on your face so when we are having these difficult conversations uh a good friend on staff will say yellow dirt on your face maybe let's talk about what you just said or how a student might feel by you doing that um so rather in the moment having those difficult conversations and having all dirt in your face we're taking time from our uh faculty meetings to ensure that we

074continue that good work so we feel very good about that and then lastly um i won't be able to tell you everything about this and you'll know why in a minute we're going to have a all grade 5th grade read so it's going to be a book that we're going to distribute to all 5th grade students it's going to be one that's focused in on the environment leadership diversity and inclusion but it's going to be a book that kids are really going to love to read and it's a book that was selected using our new anti-bias reading criteria thank you kristin and we're going to be sharing that book with the rising fifth graders this week in their fourth grade classrooms and we'll have enough for all students of course we're going to encourage their

075parents to read it as well and if the parents are whatever reason not in a position to purchase a book we're going to have extra books available to them so that's going to be an opportunity for them to have a voice to be empowered as they are the leaders in the building um so we're very excited about those three initiatives among our others yes can you when you reveal can you share that with us oh i certainly will you're really gonna like it yeah yes and one of my needs to bring them in person was just to publicly thank them because this is a really deep really talented team which even in a few minutes i love sitting back and just listening to them and not actually being part of it in the presentation so

076you can hear the threads of the work we're all doing together you can hear where they've got their individual pieces all of that's collaborative and led with the staff and everyone's going forward in the same boat and they do it well and they're really passionate committed leaders and i'm just really grateful for them and wanted to be sure i said that my last plug will be that the strategic plan does is headed into its fifth year of five so i've already been in touch with laurie lycus who is the facilitator we worked with five years ago and she's very interested in working with us we've got a little bit of a timeline and plan sketched out that i'll bring to you in the fall as we work through it it's more of a renewal than

077a start over which i think we're all i believe would make sense um and i'm just excited to see where that brings us and it's i think that's going to be a great time coming out of covid to really look forward for five years yeah yeah that's great so more to come on that right and i really enjoyed the way we did this this year because you know we got to preview them ahead of time and but we got to have the good stuff and that is i think what we really like to do as a committee i do want to thank you all for your time especially over the past couple years you've been fearless leaders in our schools you've led your school and we can't thank you enough for that you know you

078don't have a principal appreciation week but we do appreciate you the community appreciates you and you've been asked to do a lot and you have delivered once again so i'm proud to have you all in our district so thank you thank you all and i'm sure you have a lot to do tonight so you can feel free to leave at any point or stay if i yes so next up we are going to be hearing from our cpac leadership um if you guys want to come up you're welcome to come at this time um i just want to say um this is their annual presentation that they give to us to summarize their achievements throughout the year i have you guys can sit down please we're going to go phrases where it's done yeah yeah

079right you have to just share the microphone [Laughter] so you know i'll i'll give my broken record speech that i've given a couple times in my recent updates but this year has just um felt very collaborative and very productive um in ways that i think are are worthy of recognition i am always i'm lucky that i get um a preview into all that the cpac does because i attend their monthly meetings this year has been one i feel that has been you know jam-packed full of accomplishments these guys have been advocating for students and families they have been advocating on behalf of um it's been going on since a blue honda thank you these guys are an extremely active organization who work tirelessly on behalf of um student populations in our special ed program so

080um like i said i've had the preview into what they've been doing all year now you will get to see all of that as they take you through their annual report so i will turn it over aaron will pull up the slides thank you alexa no problem just wanna waiting for this slide i'd like to just emphasize we are a volunteer board so if the slide presentation lacks pizzazz that is part of it excuse me my name is casey atkins i am the president of the concord public schools and conquer carlisle regional school district special education parent advisory council our um sorry aaron could you please advance to the next slide i'm going to have to find a way to do that in a more smooth manner as it's going to be slide by slide

081um sorry aaron i think if you go back one more slide nope i guess go forward my apologies yep so our our annual report overview focuses on our purpose mission our membership focuses on our priorities and accomplishment this school year and what we're looking forward to in the year ahead please advance the slide thank you our purpose and charge are codified in mass general law and in massachusetts regulations part of our charge is to advise the school committee on matters that pertain to the education and safety of students with disabilities and to meet regularly with school officials to participate in the planning development and evaluation of the school committee's special education programs our mission statement this is something that is pulled from other cpacs around the state it is also something that previous boards have

082put together and approved our mission is to ensure an appropriate education for children with disabilities and to foster and support a collaborative and inclusive culture in our schools and community that values diversity and recognizes the contributions and uniqueness of each learner we work in partnership the school administration in the school committee to support students and further their goals of diversity equity and inclusion we provide outreach support and education to inform and empower families and members of the community through events workshops and communication via newsletters social media and our website we welcome and encourage all members of the community to engage and take part in these efforts please advance the slide i mean i got a little nervous when i danced i'm not gonna lie our membership is comprised of parents guardians and caregivers of students

083on individual education plans and 504 plans and other interested parties we strive to cultivate a membership that reflects the linguistics linguistic excuse me religious racial cultural geographic and socio-economic diversity of the districts and intends to include members from the preschool each elementary school the middle school high school inclusive of alternative and transition programs 18 to 22 program and out of district placements inclusive of case collaborative our membership includes parents guardians and caregivers from boston carlisle and concord thank you for bearing with me as i read through all of that it is important because this year as many of you know in the school committee different dialogues were brought forward about inclusion inclusion of our boston families inclusion of our other families who have felt marginalized and it gave us the opportunity to look inward on

084our own board and look for opportunities to expand inclusion and be deliberate and intentional in our outreach we'll talk more about that in these slides to come our current board membership is made up of myself i am here tonight with the lovely hi i'm ashley healey i'm technology chair not here with us tonight is sarah bettencourt our membership chair carolyn blackham our secretary megan carroll our publicity chair kelly o'donnell our member at large kristen streeter tarlow our events chair please advance the slide part of what we do at the cpac is we try to have liaisons in each of the schools in each of the programs now this has been broadened over the years we used to just have liaisons at each of the schools and now as there have been specific programs that the

085schools we are trying to branch out to those as well so we've we're looking this is what we have proposed for the next year we're looking to add two mecca liaisons for cps in cchs and to specifically add an ell liaison since there are many families who fall into that category from our co we are uh delighted to have so many programs that have come about in the past five years in the district and we are building out our liaisons for those programs it's important for these parents to take part to have a voice and it's also a great feeder for our board please advance the slides our priorities and accomplishments this year focus on five areas improved communication and transparency with the administration and school committee visibility and profile raising for the cpac engagement

086with the middle school building project participation in the district's diversity equity and inclusion initiatives and literacy and dyslexia guidelines and practices getting further clarification and dialogue on those please advance the slide nothing like a really dynamic slideshow to just keep you engaged in you know coming up in the second you know third hour of the school committee meeting so i'm going to improvise just slightly here and start off by saying what a difference a debbie dixon makes debbie should have a huge shout out and i want to highlight just how thoughtful and consistent the participation has been from the administration and from the school committee and not just our liaisons from all of you who have come to our events who have attended our meetings and who have been engaged with us we are so

087grateful for that we know there is a lot on your plate and you guys are also volunteers in this effort as well i'd like to highlight alexa anderson and eva mustafi for their continued thoughtful collaboration eva's no longer a member of the school committee but i'd like to inform you that she will indeed be a member of the cpac board we are hopeful in the coming months when we have our board elections and we are thrilled absolutely thrilled to have her the participation from you all really means something and it makes our work together so much more meaningful and effective and it also points out i should say each of the principals who just gave their presentation tonight highlighted on elements that are critical to our student populations and if you are just tuning in

088now i highly recommend you go back and listen to this principle updates specifically in the areas of literacy and we'll get into that further we have deep appreciation for that it was not always that way in many districts or in this district and we appreciate the road that we are coming down together i will go back to debbie dixon debbie debbie has really set a standard that we like to take forward as a best practice in terms of communication and collaboration not just the fact that she helps me almost every other month improve the fix the zoom link for our meeting but because she is communicating what our programming is what our continuum of of services is for pre-k through 22 and that she's been very forthcoming with data regarding our student populations as i

089said she's the best practice that we would like to keep in place going forward debbie also assisted us and co-hosted coffees with the special education coordinators for the elementary schools the preschool the middle school and the high school some of them were not well attended because of covid and we tried to cram them in in one week but they were all recorded and accessible to our members and greater community we're looking forward to the current the program branding and descriptions that will be published in the district in the fall and we look forward to making sure that our liaison positions the line accordingly and we'd also like to give a lot of gratitude for the intensive mtss that's multi-tiered systems of support did i nail it i nailed it thank you kristen presentation by the

090district this was a collaborative effort it was across each of the schools that include it included administrators principals it included teachers it included literacy specialists and it was a really wonderful starting point for dialogue that we hope to continue and we're very grateful for the effort please advance the slide take your little voice arrest for a minute um so as casey mentioned one of our um other goals for the year was visibility and profile raising for the cpac um i think our probably our most uh well-known and best um example of that was our fifth annual cpac appreciation awards that took place on may 5th we invited all families with a child on an iep or 504 plan to submit um and it was just a google form but it was to recognize a new

091teacher or tutor counselor aide administrator any school staff member who made a difference to their student or students this year since some of us have multiple kids on iups and 504s we had a record-breaking response to that invitation for nominations we had a 116 submissions which is more than we've ever had before and um those submissions were for 86 distinct appreciation award recipients so it was really um really an outpouring of of appreciation and it was really wonderful to see that much participation from our families and um yep as i said it was on me we can have the next slide please um so during the ceremony there were two student speakers who um came up to recognize their honoree um dr gary reese from the high school um that was probably the most moving

092part i definitely showed it i tried not to but i did it was lovely um the cpec also recognized uh ann bailey who is a speech and language pathologist at the preschool who received six different nominations which is also a record breaker she's absolutely wonderful um the cpac also honored debbie jackson our interim director of student services and dr hunter here our superintendent um with the cpac appreciation awards um for the effort and dedication they've shown this year to special education in the district as casey said we really appreciate it um and so um yeah just i guess the main thing with the appreciation awards is they give us um and the families a chance to reflect on the school year recognize the staff members in our districts who have gone above and beyond in

093their efforts to support our students they are wonderful uh we just really are so grateful um one other thing i want to highlight from that event and i know some people in this room were in attendance um it was really well attended actually and i think part of that you know is partially wow we can all be together again indoors and it's it's wonderful it's so nice to see people and and people are smiling and there's a positive energy um but it was also great that the you know so many members of the administration came out um the building principles were there supporting their staff to show their appreciation for the staff who are doing this work in their schools too so we really appreciated that as well uh next slide please uh we held

094a number of events this year um our events chair chris streeter tarlow was managing those we had a number of virtual workshops in november we had tracy morgan from the federation for children with special needs presents an iep basic rights workshop which they present yearly or they're able to present your legacy packs that requested basic rights of evaluation and eligibility for ieps in february as casey mentioned we had our informal zooms with the special ed coordinators at each school level in march sarah ward did an outstanding presentation on the executive function and for that one the conquering carlyle cpac had collaborated with four other districts to split the cost and it was really well attended um it says over here over 150 people joined i believe it i don't even remember how many were on

095i was on it was really awesome really good and then um just uh well i guess it's june now so say just a few weeks ago but it's literally may 3rd sarah gannon from crafting minds um spoke about early literacy and evidence-based instruction for early readers and then throughout the year we also have a number of parent coffees we basically we get together usually at ride out playground with a box of joe and some munchkins and just a nice informal way for parents to come meet each other um ask questions over another just kind of get to know each other we have a really great um network and supportive group of parents here in concord with our kids in the district that are on ieps and 504 plans so those are great and we'll would

096definitely keep doing those and uh next slide because that might be the last one oh no one more we also um did a lot more with our social media this year um our social media chair megan carroll did a phenomenal job um kind of just increasing our presence across social media platforms um it's obviously a really important method but especially since i think hovid it's more and more people are just looking to that that's how they get their information about when's meeting happening when's an event happening um so we've had a lot of stuff on there um you know the events and updates but also articles resources um she's been great with that and all the board members are able to post on those so you get a lot of good content on there as

097next slide um and i know as casey kind of mentioned to just sort of our participation and a lot of things going on in the district the ptg president's meetings the schools themselves their ptg's meetings we've had attendance at school committee um finance committee other relevant town committee meetings and just um it's been great to be sort of welcomed there and and let everyone know that we're there wanting to collaborate it's been great um and then um also casey touched on our outreach with our proposed expansion for the at-large board positions really looking to you know reach out to more families especially in the areas or districts that have been less included on the board before let them know that we really want to invite them in and be part of our part of our

098process here and so we'll have expanded liaison positions um we've initiated outreach to matco metco families collective and the coar and we again are anticipating um eva mustafi from carlyle who you all know is so wonderful to um hopefully join our board and i think that's all for me so thank you please advance the slide engagement with the middle school project this was a hot topic for the cpac this year at the front end of the year dr hunter and principal cameron from cms presented a design and programming plans for the new middle school at one of our board member board meetings we also were part of sending a letter of support for the inclusion of this center for human-centered design to the cms building committee we did have a late request to the cms

099building committee to rather to the select board to have a seat added due to the size of the building committee i think it's probably like a you know you have like nfl team size it's almost as big as that um it was deemed that that probably wasn't a great idea at this point but then again this goes back to the collaboration between the school committee and the administration we have regrouped to look at ways that we can partner together looking towards planning on hosting a building design forum in the summer to collect input from our families in the greater community and to continue that collaborative dialogue as the project moves forward this is a project that's near and dear to our hearts because so much of it includes bringing programming for our students into the

100middle school where it hasn't previously been and that is reflective in the design it's in how the spaces are made it's how they look it's how the sound is amplified it's how they how it looks to be pulled out of a classroom rather than pushed into a classroom so we are really grateful for that and we look forward to continuing that dialogue and sharing more information with our parents please advance the slide we were fortunate to be part of and very grateful to be part of the district's um diversity equity and inclusion strategic planning committee uh i serve as a representative for cpac on that committee and it has really been a tremendous educational opportunity for myself and it allows me to better uh not just voice where the cpac is coming from in these

101dei conversations but learning more for us to take back to our own membership to how we form our board as uh ashley was mentioning we are proposing and she'll get to a bylaws in a moment and i know bylaws are a great way to keep oxygen flowing they're great um part of what we're looking to do with our board is to have intentional representation with our at-large seats we currently have three at large seats but they are not designated we want to make sure that we have a concord designated seat a boston designated seat and a carlisle designated seat there is some discussion in this process to have a fourth designated seat and we will be going through these bylaws later on in the month um we also i don't want to skip over the

102fact that um di director andrew nuichi and debbie dixon from the interim student services director did a focus group with our families for collecting information for the dei strategic planning committee and i've already gone over the bottom piece so you may please advance the slide last but certainly not least literacy and dyslexia guidelines and practices this is a particular area of interest for our membership and we were we formed a subcommittee to go over a couple of key initiatives that were the priority for us early and proactive identification of dyslexia educational alignment across all tiers of instruction teacher training and certification ensuring that educators are officially trained and certified and updating a teacher training database annually increase ela achievement for all students with disabilities again i want to go back to the principal reports i

103know it it i will admit i did check my phone at one point so i wasn't tuned in totally my apologies principal miss trullo um thank you certainly each of the elementary schools and mr cameron at the middle school mentioned literacy and reading in their presentations they weren't coached for that i'm certain that is something that is genuine coming out of the priorities for their schools and it's a testament to our voices being heard our students who are who have um ela sorry our students who i'm not even going to use the correct language kristin help me see this is a i'm like calling for a helpline here our dyslexic students but also our students who struggle with literacy and um they are they are some of our biggest population of students with disabilities and

104we look forward to continuing a specific dialogue around this area after the presentation the mtss presentation which again was collaborative was expansive and very very informative we're hoping to see more information be available on the district's website for families to be able to understand what that screening process looks like to be able to understand what they should be looking for what role they play in the process and where the thresholds are in terms of gaining services so we look forward to coordinating further with the district on that please advance the slide this is the bylaws this is work it's really good that's why i get to do this part [Laughter] i can take the hate um it's actually pretty um pre-brief i promise so we we did um as a board vote in february to

105update our bylaws to remove um some of the references to open meeting law um given guidance from the ag's office saying that cpac is not bound by those laws um i don't have to tell all of you what they what they entail they're quite um they can be quite onerous especially for a small group like ours where the membership is kind of constantly changing so we did remove that um and we just sort of clarified our membership membership structure added the virtual meeting option because that is important makes our meetings a lot more accessible we've found and added the um at-large at-large board members and now as casey mentioned we are going to um we be revisiting that over the summer to um to designate um and be more intentional with you know trying to

106get those um at large seats for um concord carl and yellow and boston so that's what we're doing with those thank you please advance the slide all right the final slide looking ahead we are going to be focusing in the year to come on increasing our family engagement so this is looking at updating our website to really have more robust information for families and resources whether it's from summer camps or places to go get outside occupational therapy evaluations we're looking to have more of our events and we're very pleased partner with the administration who helps fund many of our events obviously we want to continue the collaboration and continue the debbie dixon standard going forward and we are looking forward to participating in the hiring committee for the new director of student services when that

107comes we're looking forward to the continued and enhanced participation in ongoing communication regarding the new middle middle school building to our families and we are also looking to enhance our outreach to all of our membership most especially our members most historically marginalized from historically marginalized communities we want to continue to be part of the district's diversity equity and inclusion strategic planning committee and be an active and collaborative member on that we will continue to advocate for budgetary support for special education programs continue the dialogue on district wide dyslexia literacy programs and supports and finally we understand that old habits are hard to go away but we respectfully propose that the administration and school committee refer to the district's student population as pre-k through 22 rather than k-12 this more accurately represents our student populations but

108it also language means something and i do want to highlight in my closing remarks how awesome our preschool is and how awesome our programs are that close out our students who are here with us through the age of 22. we'd like to also thank you our preview thank our previous board members who worked so hard in the previous years to build us where we are today and thank all of you for listening to this presentation number one but being active collaborators and partners in this we deeply appreciate it and we look forward to more to come thank you thank you very much thank you guys so much um i am really grateful for such a comprehensive presentation um you know i don't have questions because i've been with you for this ride all year but

109if anyone else has any comments or presents or questions on the cpac presentation i'd entertain them now very comprehensive incredibly good very detailed don't leave much room for questions we were deeply impressed with the award ceremony and we thank you for for your participation that i should note that also a lot of the building administrators were there even if they weren't nominated and they were there to support their staff it was a really beautiful thing to see very nice thank you i don't one more thing i don't think it's a coincidence that you had 116 um you know people nominated i think that you've done incredible outreach this year to families and that is definitely showing so people are being actively engaged in the process so i appreciate that appreciate that chair murano i will

110say that that's more of a reflection on the educators themselves and administrators and building staff so i would i would turn that around that's really reflective on them but thank you i love this notion of um pre-k through 22. i think that's i mean we all talk about being an inclusive community and that's certainly um an easy way to do it but hard to retrain like you said how we talk about who our student population is it's true in in the preschool so ann bailey are six time award winner is a mainstay at the preschool the preschool is just down the hall here if you haven't been there i highly recommend you go there they uh they work wonders both of my kids went through there and and they're one of the reasons why they're

111still in the district today thank you guys so much thank you thank you have a good night all right um we are moving on to international travel and you should have received the memo from dr hunter outlining some of the trips that the high school teachers are hoping to plan for next year and really what we're looking for is just some consensus to give um mr strullo and teachers and the district the ability to start planning yeah i'm actually gonna invite mike back up if he'll come sit with me and just to highlight a few and partially i want to spend just a minute because the last time we had this conversation of international travel was winter of 2020. it had been a very uh lengthy discussion among the school committee at the time and

112then ironically everything stopped and despite all that preparation and conversation no one went anywhere so just to note some of the pieces that we know we're still on the discussion table at that point and also forward thinking of where we're trying to go we did collect from the staff whether they're interested in going i think most of those if you've been on the committee a little while will recognize familiar places and names so that's the early draft of tentative trips please also note some of them are exchanges which means kids will come here as well and they operate a little bit differently and that usually we're sending kids to stay with families in these other places or or work with another school in terms of where the um hospitality is being hosted rather than a

113packaged trip and that does matter in terms of the planning process um so i just wanted to outline all of those the earliest we're considering it all would be february of of next winter into april um q5 had been a portion of this we are not planning a q5 for next year but for the spring of 24 we need a year to get our bearings back um so the end of year might not be as open and available as it had been in 2018 and 19. um ideas and things we know we need to talk about that we don't have answers to yet which is why we're just asking for planning approval not bringing you the actual trips which i've highlighted here just getting more systemic about our approach i met with all the teachers

114mike has also been part of that so we're talking with all of them at once and not just one trip at a time which they really appreciate it i have to say they were thrilled by that getting all that to the school web page which already exists it just needs a refresh arrangement of travel insurance i still have scars from trying to get money back from some of these companies in 2020 um so we're going to be way ahead of that because we know covet as would be the next item is going to impact if people can't go if a trip gets postponed etc all the various new things we have to consider uh arrangement for fundraising and this is the money part which we talked a lot about three years ago a couple of

115ideas that were floating is that everyone participated in some fundraising fundraising opportunity it will not necessarily cover the cost of these trips which can be thousands of dollars but at least to subsidize and then the sharon young fund which is a fund that was established when our one of our elementary principals retired a few years ago and there's 20 some thousand in that account that never got spent re reinstating that committee in the process so that we can actually utilize those funds through a process that makes sense um not just mike and i figuring out who's going to get it but a collective group somewhere to come on a proposal for that and then the staff this came from them was really talking through individual student needs traveling abroad um and i'm sure mike would

116agree he's managed medical and mental health issues from here when they're in japan and europe and very tricky stuff so we'd like to be more proactive so with your blessing we'd like approval to plan and then bring you a formal proposal of trip proposals in the fall with all the details dates locations costs etc as well as those processes fleshed out so that's what we're hoping for tonight is blessing to go forward okay um any questions for miss miss rule dr hunter thomas i know how many kids participate in each program in each travel or and how many collectively does that add up to each other sure it depends yeah i mean it varies so um some of the trips like the an iceland trip might have you know 30 40 kids where some of

117the exchanges are smaller um roughly 15 or so um so it's been a while the aggregate i mean you could have you know over the course of two years 100 students traveling so you know it's pretty substantial there's a long history in the district of the exchange programs now being at the top of that list which you know we just passed 25 years and um you know a big believer in the opportunity for kids to to travel and i think that the programs that we offer um you know not all travel has meetings but uh you know some of these particularly the exchanges uh had great value and you know long time lasting friendships and relationships but also just um you know not necessarily just blowing through museums so to speak but more trips but

118then educational purpose service or you know environmental whatever it might be so it's a it's an impressive list and great to get back to offering it for sure mike uh do we know if nanai might be actually in exchange because we do have principal contacts over there i know and i'm imagining that's still a potential but we don't know it certainly is a potential there is turnover there quite a bit with you know when uh and i don't know if you're speaking of like building principle or just principle as no it'll build a general sense yeah um so there's definitely turnover in that area um and so you know there have been efforts to kind of maintain that relationship it has proved challenging even some of the ideas we had about how do we maintain

119this during kovid whether it's you know a a writing exercise or zoom or and then we have time zone limitations and so um it does uh represent some challenges however we're fully committed to it we do have david bresco as a stipend advisor to nanai we do work with folks in the community that are still in contact with folks in the nigh so it would be great for that to be in exchange i will say that where the other ones tend to be a little more manageable because we're talking like 15 kids and usually what we're doing in a night trip it's a very large which which is great but obviously a lot more planned if i could use this opportunity um a week from tomorrow night the concord denial group is doing a fundraiser

120at barrels if anybody's interested and the the new community liaison from concord tune and i is a cchs grad that whole thing was suspended as you know because of it but um he's heading over there i think in the next month yeah and and sue curtin deserves a lot of credit here from just maintaining keeping an eye in the forefront of our minds and um yeah it'd be great to just kind of get back to actually doing it instead of talking about it right well i i cannot underscore the benefits of international travel myself i um haven't had a passport since high school because i went on a school trip in high school and i and i think about that and it is an opportunity for some kids that they may never travel again internationally

121so you know i'm fully in support of it i think that we should just maybe just take a consensus we have support of um christopher dr hunter and the team of teachers to just move forward and start the planning process sure yeah absolutely okay thank you so much and definitely thank your teachers for going with students because that's a huge lift for them yes they get to travel they're an enthusiastic bunch i have to say yeah so thank you would you like me to just reference these other two trips that we're asking you to consider these are athletic trips which uh we actually you the committee did approve them a year ago and then both of them attempted to go out and covet got in the way so this is first discussion you would vote

122this next week we're trying to get our old practices back uh so the first is for the football team to go to the camp in maine at the end of august for a few nights we we know a lot more than we did a year ago when we went when we thought they were going to go and then covet snuck up right before the trip and we know a lot more so that's great news and then the second one is the girls soccer team their annual trip to new hampshire which is right at the beginning of september same idea i think we've got a much better handle on well first of all a lot more vaccines and testing and all of that but i think we've also got ways to manage it that can be

123really successful to separate kids and keep the rest of the trip intact knowing we can test and maintain that so um we'd like you to think about approving that next week and we could take any questions between them okay all right so moving down to superintendent evaluation um this is on the agenda desi has new guidance well actually it's from 2019 that now recommends a two-year re evaluation cycle for experienced superintendents i'm happy to say that dr hunter falls into that category of an experienced superintendent which they define as three or more years of experience and as you know she's finishing her fifth year at the district so we would like to propose the committee that um the desk for the deci guidance we evaluate dr hunter every two years so the discussion tonight will

124be um a little bit of discussion then we'll vote on that at our next meeting so it would mean we evaluated her last year so we will not evaluate her this year and then evaluate her next year so that is up for discussion right now you know your comments good okay great so that will go on the agenda as an action item on june 14th um all right and then our school committee self-evaluation sort of the same thing um in preparing for my role as chair i was doing a lot of uh research at the masc and the tools and whatnot that they have to offer and what i learned is that you know per our own policies and our own handbook we engage in a in an annual self-evaluation and the masc actually provides

125a suite of tools to do that and what i thought was nice about [Music] what the masc does is that they facilitate it for us meaning a couple things one they aggregate the data for us so it takes something off of our plate um you know in a quite literal way um it also allows us to have some more anonymity and you know freeze us up to sort of maybe be a little freer in what we say i don't know if that's been an issue in the past but it does allow us to do that so um we have i've engaged with dorothy who is our representative she recommended um that she would bring in a partner to do this work with her she's recommending for several reasons mostly to be honest based on availability

126jim hardy we would the process is that you everyone on the committee except for lucky sharon who i've talked with already will receive from dorothy an electronic version of the survey the data is collected by a the platform they use is surveymonkey data would be collected and aggregated by dorothy presser data would be synthesized together by her and jim and then we would it would be brought to us with their sort of analysis their recommendations um and the idea is like all self-evaluations um it would help us and you know inform you know what we adopt for best practices um would help us set our goals for september um the trickiest part is going to be our scheduling um aaron did collect data from all of us about our availability we've cross-referenced that with dorothy's

127and i think we are going to be able to squeeze it in july provided um i'll just be honest i fly back from a vacation for a day which is fine um so otherwise we wouldn't be able to really do it till september and that's when we want to set our goals so um that's what i'm going to propose and hope we can get that started soon great question so the self eval is online but the dorothy is she physically joins us to present findings as well yes okay thank you it removes the data aggregation and even i guess some of the analysis from the plate really of the chairs um so that it's done independently by the facilitators of the mac and this is common practice for the masc they do these types of

128things frequently so this is not you know something new do they tend to do they recommend doing it in the sum like when a company he's just formed or i mean because like you know this is like we're under a new yeah this we're gonna because there could be an argument for doing it in like january so yeah no dorothy was they want us to generally they do it in advanceable setting so as we do that in september this is a perfect time and generally they do do it in the slower months of the summer when there can be time dedicated to it so she actually said summer was sort of the perfect time for us so i love doing self-evaluation i feel like our committee has done extensive work already reflecting on our year

129and i would very much like to move this to january to actually stick on what initiatives we're putting in place right now right okay i i don't think it's a good thing to look back on this past year to be totally honest at this point i don't think it's productive and i think it's much more productive for us to move forward and invest in what we want to do moving forward and then look at how successful we've been on that in six months from now well i think this will be an annual process so we would do this i think we're kind of at a juncture right we're kind of at a juncture right as a committee we're putting to we're trying to do a lot of new things which is great and i think

130we just need to move forward right now and we did have discussion with dorothy and this is some recommendation process well we didn't have discussion no you haven't had it yes right but we haven't discussed this yeah exactly my question would be is is dorothy aware of the very special circumstances that have these very special workshops that are so highly unusual that we'd be doing was trying to stop time and do an eval during this active unusual process of workshops she was she articulated that um none of their workshops whether they're this kind of self-evaluation or some of the ones that they list under different governance categories are really prescribed meaning they're always customized and kind of bespoke if you will for every committee that they work with so given that um you know some

131of the work we want to do is about i think adopting best practices like to your point cynthia looking up for a vision forward and for again a really great way to provide consensus about goal setting i do think it would it would behoove us to do some self-reflection so that we can sort of all have consensus about you know identifying oh wow we're really good at these three things oh we're mediocre at these things and we're kind of rotten at these kinds of things and i think all of those categories would be present frankly in any school committee no school committee is going to be entirely right or entirely awful and i think the more we can identify um our strengths and weaknesses as we cut into our goal setting phase i i think

132that is going to to be in our best interest and again it also is our policy we have to do this anyway there's many i mean we we don't comply with every policy we could certainly make an exception vote as a committee not to do something sure i suppose we could vote as a committee we're the chairs to want us to move ahead do the chairs also want to weave the findings of this self-eval into these special workshops to participate over this summer what personal workshops are we doing i thought we were working with uh mr evans in some capacity i think this would be i could see some more interesting sure i could see some of the work intersecting but again my feeling you know my thought process was this is a wonderful way

133to get some sort of foundational knowledge of sort of where we are um you know i don't think it needs to be um you know again this is i think what the best practice of what a good school committee would do anyway um personally i love the idea that they would you know help us i think an independent third party coming in to really do that analysis would be helpful um and i and again i as we look towards goal setting i think it would be helpful that we answered last year right last year we just sort of took the process and made it into those five reflections right look back on the last year what are you proud of what did you miss like what do you hope for this year what whatever right

134what do you bring to the table or whatever those were are and yeah and we referenced the 35 page document that the masc has yeah so initially we had but the so the survey monkey but that just takes me my question the survey monkey thing is that you because one of the things that you circulated was like a 15 page yeah is that the survey monkey no so i apologize so when i embarked on this process yeah no so when i embarked on this process it really was organic i'm i'm fishing around and you know seeing what sort of tools they have to offer us as we're going into summer which again i think is a lot of the times at least from what i'm learning of dorothy is when the school committees engage in

135this type of work when there isn't the business of the school committee if you will that kind of gets in the way this can sort of be the focus i initially stumbled on the initial document that i distributed to you or maybe was attached in the agenda um at that time i said to dorothy you know if if we move ahead with this we're going to need to have some dates um would you know could we start talking about that at which point she said that's an older version of what we recommend this newer one we think is better it's what you know we're using you know again they have several tools that i'm sure they modify and refine over time and she was the one that brought this you know it is it's robust

136um uh this robust evaluation and she said that's this is the one we're recommending to school committees now and there are many school committees who use this as their annual tool but this is the new so the second the second one is the survey yes and it is in a pdf version so just so that we could attach it to the agenda obviously yeah and then so it's it's a that's a lot of work to even fill that out yes but the good news is okay so then we're not getting an image we're not getting a workshop anytime soon so we will have a long time um no it's still it's time you know we've all devoted a lot of time over the last three or four months to the school committee i mean 50

137to 70 hours not even exaggerating right um and then how much time we spend synthesizing this door so so we don't no no i mean um how long is the workshop you know i'm not sure i i would this is exactly like two hours it's one it's one workshop okay because i think we need another workshop that's what i'm trying to get at not just talking about the survey going through a lot of other stuff as a school committee right and i think that our feeling was we you know in our discussion with dorothea is the only way to really understand how we're working together as a committee and and going up best practices is really to drill down in every area that's in that survey and and just start afresh and have somebody else

138help us to move forward in a productive way i mean that's that is really our intention to see where we're at and and this has everything to do also with just school committee relations with each other with you know it has it encompasses a lot of information and so i think it's really the best way to really reflect on how we can be the best community we can be in best practices and masc is our our guide for what are best practices out there for school committees and we can decide you know we want to do it or we don't want to do it but they are the governing body that helps school committees and that's why we look to the i mhm the concept it's just we are at a very odd place as

139a committee right and i just think that looking back i think you're going to get a very wise you know it's just a show but i think that will help don't you feel like i mean to me i don't know i really don't know we'll share and participate in what way that's the other thing sharon is not participating i understand but then in the process at all but she could join me with the workshop yes she could be invited to enjoy the journal workshop well she can't and i even find it hard i think for kerry to feel about i i think it should be somebody who's been here at least six months well i have to say last year i did actually feel it out and i felt very uncomfortable that was a little

140tiny thing right but i felt very uncomfortable doing it i still filled it out and i i gave my perspective more i guess more so as a parent you know it was you know and it was all i could do so i totally understand that and i think the workshopping process so after we do the evaluation you know i mean carrie's been with us since i don't know march well it's been quite a raucous three months let's be honest right i understand [Music] but i also think too you know this is not some special one you know some special thing this is something this is the document that a lot of school companies use every year there's nothing special about right now as we are this is where we stand right that's where that you

141know like you know like the the practices i would say they're in the current like as as protocols are going now right i need a bit i need to figure out what's okay so dorothy can take us through exactly how she'd like us to answer it because i do think that what we're getting into is we need an objective third party to give it to us tell us how to fill it out we will fill it up good and then she can get all the information together and then we'll workshop it and that's our intention with the self eval but it is for our policies that we do evaluate this committee and and i understand that we've had a rocky you know few months but this is part of our responsibility to you know the

142public okay if we could just get a clarification because i like sarah i would say the way things are today i wouldn't try to say well let's fill it out based on january or february or well it is a look back it is a look back and evaluation of the year but but we'll have dorothy meet with us and she can talk to us about that and the most effective way to do it because i i do think that masc is our guide they are who help school boards through challenging times through great times i mean they are she's our field trip and she can bring us through that so she'll come to that's the thing i need to have us all talk to her together about this okay okay that would be great we

143can do that so maybe we can just see if she can come to our june 14th meeting and join us for part of that and so we'll just put it we'll put it on our june 14th agenda and she can talk to us about it and then you can you know ask questions but that's where we're at with the evaluation at this point hey anything else okay all right so keep backing us specific that we should hold [Music] it's going to be dependent on me on when i can do it i think the only times um that work for everyone on this committee and dorothy are times when i'm away so i just have to look break the news to my husband talk to dorothy when the best date for her will be because i

144know all of you are available so um give me a little time do sorry about that okay all right you're up next okay and i'm up so uh we wanted to put on um the agenda just uh to keep the greater public informed and to um demonstrate our progress moving forward that i just wanted to provide an update that we have engaged with a facilitator that will assist the school committee in developing norms for interactions and communications between and among members of our own committee between and among members of the superintendent um and to uh hope that this work will be completed by august 15th i think if we're all being honest that is going to be aspirational um considering our schedules now that aaron has collected that data so um i think we're going

145to probably that work will commence over the summer we do have a workshop scheduled for the 16th which you guys all know about um and then some of the more ongoing work involving norms and protocols will happen over the summer but likely will get pushed at least a little bit into early september when we all return more to come on that once i get everyone's once i again look more at everyone's availability it's not looking great for summer so do we get a final time and location for 16. uh we are working on that i think we're gonna hold it here um and this time is 6 p.m i think i referenced that in an email so 6 30 to 9 30 i think okay i think you got that maybe another location might be

146good i'm sorry another location well i think we have challenges even getting into rooms of other locations we want to just make it as easy as possible just it's after hours i think it's okay yeah but okay so it's 6 30. yes yes to 9 30. okay three hours okay so in more exciting news um next up we have the necco school committee representatives policy and aaron if you could pull that up on the screen that would be great and court i know you weren't here at the last meeting and um this is our second read and if you know feel free to chime in what do you feel like i'm aware of the changes that have been adopted thus far thank you okay so we made some changes at our last meeting and then

147we actually um cynthia made a good catch in that first line um and the only addition here is the concord and concord carlow school committee we stated it in the title but we just missed it in that first line so if if anyone else has any changes or additions or anything you caught in the past two weeks are we good i think i think we're in great shape here but again we're going to revisit this um we can revisit it at any time if if anyone has any additions or feedback we try to include all of the necessary legal references at the bottom and certainly if anything else comes up we will revisit it any other comments or discussion no i think it represents uh a lot of interest being spoken to in the fullest

148way we can at this point um i guess given the cpac presentation tonight the only thing i might want well pre-k doesn't affect mexico and that was the only thing i was thinking but um okay so we're all set there we could say kindergarten to 12th grade or should we put kindergarten to 22. we don't we don't we don't have anything yeah right what it says right now is accurate i think you could be so good with that i just wanted to be aware okay so if there's no further discussion on that you will see that in a vote tonight um now i'm going to give it to lori for the regional fy 22 budget and you all should have received a memo from dr hunter on that thank you and ian rhames is on

149zoom so he can be available to us as questions might come up so in terms of where we are for the end of year status fy22 with the regional budget uh right now we have an uncommitted balance of 733 thousand dollars we need 300 000 towards end because of how that's the revenue stream that's built into the fy 23 budget um the business office is estimating we want to hold 200 000 or so to get through the close and end-of-year commitments that are coming up and uncovered and that would leave us a balance of 233 000 uncommitted so essentially that's quote unquote your surplus projection for tonight um i do note here that we uh did do recommend and are planning on pre-purchasing again the ninth grade laptops and that would allow us to stay

150on cycle and it also maintains the budget processes we've been building in the past we can talk about that in the fy 23 build if you'd like we gave you status on revolving accounts because in some places they're connected and others we just knew you would want the information the athletic account started with 304 000 is going to end with about 300 000 so that's a pretty pretty much an inflow and expense and revenue cost that's equating to each other so that gives me comfort that the athletic fees are sound it does mean that really the coveted savings that piled in there are remaining and could be available to you for for other options in the future including the turf field food service does need to be self-funding there's no one anywhere who has exactly

151achieved that in covid um so that needs to be the goal for fy23 we right now are looking to need to subsidize that sum we're going to have actual revenue numbers from the federal government the totals firm up after you stop serving lunch so we need to finish school get into next week and within a week or so we'll have those solidly in hand so once we know that we can look at what offset we need to contribute and really the discussion as we get word from the state there's a lot of politicking going on right now in massachusetts the federal government is not providing universal free lunch anymore but all the states are each talking about it including massachusetts so we're in a little bit of a holding pattern while we wait to see

152which direction they go we had been planning on expecting to charge again but we'll see where that lands we do need to get to where it's a self-sustaining program that's that's a given uh in terms of circuit breaker we have uh carried over uh the entire amount and so we're going to have unspent contingency there which is a good positive thing to have that as as flush as possible in terms of the recommendation for tonight uh to look at the official vote to pre-pay special ed tuitions to the collaboratives which were allowed by law to do and you have been doing annually very typical of the close of a school budget so we're recommending 300 000 dollars and we could talk on a remaining balance of 22 if you decide to look at how to

153work with the surplus first and so that's the surplus discussion um our recommendation right now is to take 200 000 of that surplus and allocate it against this capital the regional let me be sure we're clear on which fun capital uh stabilization fund that is overseen by the region and within our purview because a couple of moving pieces are there the september sixth vote on in concord for the paving project it's looking the more russ has spent time with the folks involved it's looked like that's going to push it out almost a year probably we can't get it to work with the timing of the weather and the bids and the vacations and all that it's not coming together that could it could or it could not have additional costs that would be moderate i'm

154sure but if you had funds available you should be able to manage whatever variance is there and the turf we know continues to be on our radar to need to talk about that so the vote on tonight is for the um prepayment of the collaborative tuitions of 300 thousand dollars what i'd like to do is get feedback from you if you'd like to consider the stabilization allocation then we can get the language together to vote that like we did a year ago but i didn't want to put that i didn't want to make that assumption for you i wanted to get direction for next week okay so that's where we okay um cynthia so i'll say somebody's been out here for four years this is a little confusing for two new members so i'm having

155a hard time even following it so and i mean not because it wasn't well presented it is complicated you know it is really good so i mean maybe for next week i'm happy to vote tonight i mean i i'm not you know i i don't dispute any numbers or anything like that but because i think the hard thing i have wrapped to wrap my head around is you have a surplus and then we're doing you know the laptop pre-pays we're doing the 100 000 in the um food service budget we're doing so that's coming out of the budget before the surplus is that correct yes we made an assumption we would need a hundred thousand right so if right so if you could just i mean i guess i could look so it's the laptops

156are out of the budget before the surplus the 100 dollars for the uh food services out of the budget before the surplus what else was there was there something else i think those are the two i think those are the ones and then uh and then two hundred thousand to close 22 out right and then the tuitions are before the surplus or after that's part of the surplus that we've been using now that ian do you want to clarify for us yeah so 233 is after the prepay right no the the 233 does not have the prepay included so we didn't assume that that was going to be um done or not so it's um it's still for debate i guess if we prepay that's going to lower the surplus but we also have we

157could have um closeouts and things like that that increase it so um but isn't the 233 after the 300 000 in prepaid ian no uh no it's not no can you clarify that for us then yeah so if we did the prepay that would if we did the prepay for the full 300 000 that would eat up most of our um available excess funds so if if we did the stabilization we would only be able to prepare to a certain amount so if we did if we moved 200 000 into the stabilization fund we might only have 100 or 200 thousand dollars we could prepay depending on the year okay glad you clarified that yeah so i think we want to put this together for you so you see how the totals add up yeah

158what i'll do is take would this help if we took some of the narrative out and just did the numbers yeah great yeah i think the intention was to be more clear with the narrative but i don't think it worked saying that it wasn't yeah i just i it's like appropriation accounts revolving accounts multiple years so we're going to take the total and just start subtracting off we'll do the givens first and then show you where the choices are and i you know i completely appreciate it and i just i just uh i just have i have a hard time fair enough i did look at it so we'll move that vote to the june 14 um agenda thank you so much really appreciate it perfect and given the fact that it's the end of

159the year ian may have slight changes yeah yeah true every day makes a little bit of a difference and the numbers might look different you know that business manager we're missing i completely yeah he did a great job and i'm trying to translate and so yes we're gonna be glad to see bob in a few weeks we'll see him next time right yeah he'll be visiting with us next week okay yes but not participating well i'll warn him okay ian is still on deck that's where he's still on deck yeah we'll keep him in the loop thank you all right so that's a good way to speed up and we'll do it next week great great perfect update everyone's favorite yeah i'll make the covet update really quick the great news is the numbers have

160dropped really dropping so uh last week we went from 157 a week before to 81 the high school went from 104 to 37 so that was really important and this week's a much slower pace at about 25 a few good pieces of information we are winding down pool testing this week and that will be it i think never say never um and next year we'll go to symptomatic testing um and hopefully we're gonna see normal yeah we'll maintain the antigens here so that a student we're pretty much doing that now we evolve on our own that if somebody's symptomatic the nurses are testing them right on the spot so that will continue and we'll fund those ourselves and they're off the state bid list so that's easy right the parents opt into that or is

161that something that is organic with a phone call as a fever shall i test them it started as you had to opt-in and we really stuck to the consent and then we evolved into let's make the phone call and get permission okay yeah so it won't be an aspen permission probably i don't think so yeah no i think it'll be the that if your child's here doesn't feel well great and it'll pretty much be automatic i think that we make that call and ask that okay excellent okay at this point we are on to our additional public comment so um i would remind anyone in the audience or online if you have public comment please use the raise hand feature or come to the microphone and i do not see any so thank you very

162much and now we're on to our action it's items exciting so uh dr hunter would you like to do the vote to approve the want to just give us that we also have this link to the staff requests yeah and i think the exciting part of this is this is a new newly hired teacher who's really excited to bring her kids with her so she has a ninth grader and a sixth grader great if someone has that up um if you could leave them in motion yeah i'll be happy too uh i moved at the concord and concord carlisle school committees vote to approve the following staff request to enroll her children in the concord public schools concrete carlisle regional school district for the 2022-2023 school year and the tuition we waived nuna pinto teacher

163cchs daughter to enroll in ninth grade at cchs and some to enroll in sixth grade at cms second discussion i would know for our new members that this is a one year commitment but it's actually a for the duration commitment on the assumption that we can manage it within our our ratios and our classrooms all in favor okay that passes um up next is a vote to approve the medco school committee representative policy so i would entertain a motion to approve the medco representative policy as it was uh seen tonight and it is linked to the agenda show moved second well we're very excited about this and i think that um this was really great policy committee and school committee work that we did to move this as quickly as we possibly could um cynthia

164what policy is it going to be b e d f g we have um we actually have that because he helped us with that i think oh no dorothy will help us with that okay i it is not on that document but i think we do have that we'll get a designation we did there was there was one that's not on this document so we'll get the appropriate designation from the masc and what they realized so i i had looked at some of the other policies and i was just guessing at what it might be and dorothy corrected she's like oh we have some correction work to do in other districts i said oh great we're doing it the right way so she has a designation and i'll just i'll find what that is and

165i'll great if you're going to send this out the official yep the official birth policy interesting as a practical matter what is the next move by school committee to reach out to our metco community do we have that in place we we do have that through the superintendent's uh medical advisory council um i believe that's going to go through laurie's office to do outreach to the entire um k through 12 because that is k through 12. i'm sorry uh community and then the advisory council will work on an election so that that's their next project i would say would you agree with that yeah and i have one last friday update this week that i can tell them you've approved it and put put it back in front of them and then tell them the

166process has come great okay right so we will take that to a vote so all in favor all right all right post nope so we are happy we will have two new seats at the table hopefully in september the goal is to really get have the election happen and when school starts we will have our new members with us which will be fantastic all right um we're taking off the free payment of collaborations and now we have a vote to approve the non-union salary increases and i believe that carrie has that motion i move that the conference and concord carlill school committees provide for a cost of living adjustment of 2.75 for all non-union personnel in fy 23 as well as for five salary adjustments and four title changes that are recommended by the superintendent

167of schools second any further discussion no gorgeous we're just happy we're moving right along and we've got our increases and well and and i think because the year the school year is closing out i think we can extend our appreciation to all the non-union personnel absolutely labored so magnificently and supported uh teachers and students throughout the year made the year successful so we're grateful to to all of them absolutely great all right so all in favor all right so i would now entertain a motion through the carlisle regional school committee to adjourn so moved that's that's the motion i think [Laughter] and if i could just um take a five minute break before we start concord so to the public we'll be back in about five minutes and if you could mute us all that

168would be great thank you i can sort of you want me to start with like my liaison update and then you can get into more detail stuff so we had our meeting finally on june 2nd and i thought one of the more worthy things to note was the potential for an earlier move-in date that was identified in february and initially i think the move-in date was going to be over april break there were some changes that um [Music] that were based around the idea that some of the smaller punch list items could be done after the move in so that was exciting um the project managers the selection committee also hired a commissioning agent um i didn't know what a commissioning agent was before joining this project so um i guess in laypersons terms just

169for anyone who doesn't know um the commissioning agent essentially um works closely with the contractors to ensure that the building construction project sort of meets all the operational requirements um they're there following the project um the entire way so we did have six i think people in the rfp process and they were able to select someone last week and then we looked at several different areas with increased detailed renderings um the commons um the some of the more common spaces actually we looked at really the whole building actually um and it is really um encouraging to see the the fruits i guess of the collaborative work that's being done behind the scenes with the educators and um the teams to really flush out this vision um you can really see it now um so court

170you were there for some of it but not all of it is that right did you have anything to ask a call when i got to my work i was i was traveling when i got to my workplace i dropped off yeah i thought i thought the the other thing that was good news was the commissioning agent came in under budget yeah surprising in this environment so good to know yeah i think i would just add speaking of that the estimates have gone out so we're awaiting the next couple of weeks they'll come back they'll reconcile with hill and smma and then they'll bring to the building committee on the 30th uh package of what that estimate is we're all obviously anxious given the conditions of inflation rates and things like that to see where

171that lands um i know they haven't told us exactly how they're getting ahead of that but hill and smma are definitely strategizing what could be you know an unpredictable result to the estimate so i think we're going to all try to not panic about that because the times are so fluid right now like you have to factor in what that even means but so more to come on that um the work behind the scenes that i'm involved in today was on a call with all the town department heads and they're talking about permitting processes and things that need to get brought to various committees in town and i can't say enough about the collaborative work that's going on with the town leadership and the design and opm just proactively and constructively and i don't think

172we're going to find a lot of surprises when these permits need to get processed and they're coming at us fairly quickly and then the final thing i'll mention is that the light board is talking on the solar project tomorrow morning i was on a big email with a new rendering of the design of that so i imagine that's part of their discussion but looks like that work is moving along as well right yeah exciting to have a new middle school i was just thinking today about hot days and we don't have hot days this year i know i know because they can well i asked well we had a couple in may well because of you can use fans this year yeah yeah we've still been watching i'm grateful the temperatures hasn't been too lower

173yeah we're going to get by without worrying about it great good all right let's move on to um the budget which hopefully as indicated as a little bit more it is certainly simpler at cps so the bottom line is there's 239 000 there uh we need money to close out we're anticipating 89 to 90 000 ish um bottom line we've had to do some subsidy also for the food service but we would like to prepay tuitions with really any balance that's left so it's probably approximately a hundred thousand i watched carlisle come up with great language to say any remaining balance could it get allocated towards the prepay i think it would be um the best use of that money and give us more more to work within fy23 and i think we'll leave it

174at that it is certainly much simpler circuit breaker just to note we did use a little bit of that this year um a portion of it but we're not concerned that we are short contingency at this point and feel good about where we are so the uh the circuit breaker that we use this year was 200 000 as reference uh spent in fiscal 22. yes okay so rather than carrying over the whole amount we've used 200 000. thank you so is it sort of a june 30th you realize where you think you'll be to to then go ahead do you have to pay before july 1st i guess the special ed tuition we are ian are you still on we would encumber and then take the final balance and actually make the allocation is that

175right yeah what we already started doing is identifying placements that we would be able to readily get bills for the fall there you go okay we would immediately move forward on that so yeah great thank you thanks again so again you can vote that tonight or you could package it and put it on for next week and put it then yeah it's much simpler i think it's easy yeah great things are really going to change dramatically no no no okay um all right thank you everybody so we're going to so our the handbooks for k5 are attached as everyone knows the handbooks um our collaborative effort with um principles and and i think um actually with cindy and i were chatting maybe today um or emailing today about the fact that they're they're done collaborative

176actually kristin actually takes the lead among the three schools and then works with the principal so she can go through the list none of them are major they're all minor so we changed the dates of the school year the school committee members the time of the school release on wednesdays and the update on lunches that there's no lunch provided on wednesdays um and we changed our company for uh who trains us for doing student restraints if those are needed we also changed our counseling resource from interface to care solace and the last change is that we change we took off the signature line from the acceptable use computer policy because we don't do it on paper anymore we do it through your changes perfect so i would entertain a motion to vote to approve the

177handbooks unless there's any questions for kristin i'll make a motion to approve the k5 school handbooks for 22-23 second and all in favor aye and now we can um move on to our vote to approve the prepayment of the collaborative tuitions that we just discussed anyone want to make that motion okay uh i recommend you'd like me to do the mgm uh i recommend the concord school committee authorize the prepayment of fy 2023 tuitions in accordance with mgl chapter 71 section 71 d and mgl chapter 40 section for e second and all in favor hi great um so we've concluded our business guys and i will take a motion to adjourn a second all right all in favor hi thanks everyone and have a good night thank you i so lost