001okay um so um so when you're thinking about your goals it's is it within your purview to carry out quick so when we think about school committee goals there are certain questions missed us are there there are certain questions that you can be asking what are the actions within your purview that need to be addressed how will they how will those priorities support the work of the district what's a reasonable and appropriate number of goals the line we often use is if you have too many you don't have any right you mean a lot of times you can think of a lot of work that you could do but what can you reasonably bite off and chew and accomplish that really helps you make progress instead of a lot of work that doesn't get really
002down or done well um how would you articulate those as smart goals i think you're probably all familiar with smart um strategic measurable achievable action-oriented realistic and time-bound right so articulating those as smart goals and particularly the thing that i think often catches people when they're looking at goals is that m measurable because it's really easy to measure if you completed a task but it's the outcome that you want to be able to measure so think one way i tend to think about it is how will things look different a year from now if we accomplish this goal so you can you can accomplish a list of tasks that don't really move you forward or you can make those tasks meaningful that actually help you go forward so as we're maybe drafting some things and
003thinking about some things tonight those are um we'll put some emphasis on that m um which is really you know what is the outcome right um so that's an overview before we get into sort of the workshop and the work so before we go to the next slide and get into that any questions i just appreciate how you took us beyond measurable set of metrics is different than put a human face on it what's it going to look like for people in the future is a real important part of the conversation okay so now i'm going to pass out my district district governance post-it pads and give you each a chance to think about um if you can just aaron uh move to the next slide to think about um what are the priorities what
004are the top two priorities that each of you would have for the school committee's work this year um erin can you do a couple more clicks so and then once you've done those two priorities you know once you've look listed your two top priorities and put them on a big sticky that i'll put on the wall we'll look through them and look for where we can see some common themes um that will help you sort of guide where does the where where is your sense of the work that the school committee needs to be doing this year and then we'll do a little bit of work on turning them into some smart goals and that's probably where we'll end tonight um because you know as we talked about um there's there's some more work to
005be done to make sure that they are fitting into the district polls and so forth yes so a question um [Music] in order to achieve those goals would we need a vehicle to achieve those goals and i'm going to say something like um a committee for example a dei committee or a budget subcommittee or it could be a committee as a whole um so that would be being potentially more successful achieving that goal would that be part of the goal that would because part of the goal is going to be what's the action plan to get you there right that makes sense okay yep okay okay so and can i just interrupt for one second so domingos and sarah you both have my cell phone if you want to just text me you're too um
006if you're comfortable doing that um just text me your two priorities for the school committee's work do we put them on separate posts yes yes thank you cynthia if you each get two i'm going to hold you to two right goals and each each of your two goals should you should each have two post-it notes right because you each of your two will be written on a separate piece of paper does that may ask even a little so student achievement do you want to be more granular yes okay yes yes that would be an easy thing to write yeah yeah something these are like big picture because to your point the action items these are not like specific these are things that would have an action these are i think umbrella they're like we want
007to improve yeah i mean if they're priorities they're still pretty umbrella right yeah yeah and then we can narrow them down right um but so i'm trying to think of uh in our discussion i don't want to give any away or put so sometimes i'll use what i sometimes see right when i do this exercise is improve our budget communication with the community or improve our budget process better better community engagement um those are just kind of two that pop into my head um i'm not going to plant too many ideas in your hands you probably all know so did everybody get a sheet of paper and would you say those two examples are for this this part of our sequence broad enough yeah yeah and if i mean if you have a few what
008does that mean yeah right size for now but if you have a little bit more context about what exactly does that mean um then yeah add that too have that too and we'll see where the themes come through and from there does that make sense yeah and do we i thought about it can you be specific about do you want us one to be a like a school committee we talked a little bit about and dusty talks about professional practice goals like one to be like a school committee goal like a an actual community um you know some of the things that you took we talked about working more on um develop or putting into use putting into practice are revising our norms and putting them into practice um i'm not going to give you
009guys too many ideas you can think of them on your own i know exactly what i want to say i just and i'm also going to text sharon she just let us know that she's not able to attend so i'm just going to see if she has two ideas that we can also put up so are you having people who are on scene they're going to text me yes yep so okay [Music] no i just get two right first choice lots of commas and how much can you put on exactly the 300 right [Music] once you're done you can feel free to put them what did you read my terrible hand hold on um no i only have one so far i'm good but i'll give you something in a second if i get anything
010yep [Music] okay [Music] i'm going to have you write this one right there [Music] no i have sarahs yeah no and i'm rewriting one i think um [Music] so we're waiting for carrie and tracy tracy plus yes tracy plus she's really going forward i'm going for it uh i have to say i've never seen them end up in a circle before very equitable [Music] probably closer to how the brain works [Music] haven't submitted but that's okay we'll just we're in progress and we'll continue to add to it [Music] erin can you hear that can you take the slides down please you can hold it holding it is probably easiest for you yeah okay so i'm going to read these and as i'm reading them you're going to be thinking about what themes do you hear
011coming through right because we can't have that many goals that would be too many so what are the themes that seem to come through so a data dashboard to monitor student progress in both districts diversity training or creating a more inclusive environment improve communication with the community and increase community engagement budget prof budget process education timeline differences between different districts improve community improve communication among school committee members and representatives use data to monitor student progress and satisfactory achievement uh rebuild trust in our community both both our micro community i.e between each other and the communities of concord carlisle and boston create diverse and varied ways for kids to feel and be successful at school and in the school community um not just the 4.0 gpa okay 4.0 gpa okay got it rethink how we define
012student success ensure we are looking at the whole child uh for example mental health um this has always been important uh provide all students with equal asset access to education and give every student what they need to be successful define education equity goals and measures and create mechanisms to monitor over time sustained budget resources within context of larger towns in fiscal sustainability objectives ensure resources are being deployed equitably possibly through increased community feedback opportunities with targeted forum can you read that one again ensure resources are being deployed equitably possibly through increased community feedback opportunities with targeted forums okay what'd you hear let's see carrie go ahead i heard improve internal and external communications um diversity equity and inclusion and inclusivity student success and budget and fiscal sustainability those are the buckets i heard anybody else
013yeah yeah yeah yeah i think yeah you could see i was trying to like pull the post-its as i was going to sort of put them cluster them together um yeah i think that pretty much covers it there's one that kind of crosses between budget and community um which was the one ensure resources are being deployed equitably through increased community feedback right so that kind of crossed over budget and communication but um the rest were were pretty well targeted so all of you came up with i mean there were no like nobody else thought of that they were all they all felt into a cluster with some with another thing which is unusual i have to say that it's pretty unusual that everything felt me fell neatly into the same buckets um so i does
014anybody feel like anything big is missing that when i held you to two that it meant it was some i would open that up to everybody too like you guys are you know i'm i had stuff missing from my stuff but it got picked up by other people so so what you're saying is by limiting it to two there were more that you wanted to list but other people other people said other people covered them so same yeah made it happen with me too important i had two others on my homework that didn't rise to the level of top two sustainability was one of them i.e environmental sustainability and another one was the on the concrete side the new middle school not a small undertaking but you know maybe those are givens maybe they aren't
015but uh unfortunately they couldn't rise to the top two because others had to uh eclipse them in importance for me yeah i think i think we'd all have ones that you know would naturally follow our top two that we didn't you know include that makes sense but i think to your point are you you know every sort of thing that i've read and i don't know the answer is that limiting the goals and being very very very specific about them is in and of itself a goal right yeah um so that we don't um you know become over extended or or lose focus let's say right but i think both those things are true if like like i said if you have too many you don't have any because there are limits to your time
016your capacity the time and capacity of you know any goal that you have like any goal that the superintendent has is going to take some degree of support from other places to to and often from the school committee right if you give the superintendent a goal and you don't provide the resources for success then you haven't supported that goal and i think this the same is true for some of the school committee work it's going to take some support from other places um some help and support so um it's not it's your capacity on the one hand but also the capacity of the district to help move things forward on the other hand so i just have a sort of a process question so for example if you have a subcommittee like a policy subcommittee
017would it be appropriate for them to set their own goals like we want to get through x or do this much or what have you so one of the strategies that i saw a committee use once that i thought was pretty effective um which like i was saying before if you know what one committee does you know what one committee does right but but sometimes you know the ability one of the joys or one of the values of district governance is sort of saying you know a committee did this over here and it worked would it work for you um is that the committee set its goals and then each subcommittee thought about what's our work as a subcommittee to to support that goal right um so i think that's kind of what you're saying
018yeah um yeah i mean there may be there may be things that any subcommittee does that is not directly related to the goals because you have ongoing work that's not like i'll take the policy subcommittee right you're chugging through the policy manual that's that you're doing that anyway that's work you're doing so that work is going to go on regardless of whether there might be other things in here that would pull in the policy subcommittee that makes sense so what i would like to do and i'm sort of trying to figure out how to pulse if there's a way to pull sarah into this or not um is is divide you into pairs to work on different like sort of draft drafting a goal out of this information i mean i have worksheets to draft
019the goal so we could someone could facetime sarah okay i'm just thinking about technology here um because there are like one [Laughter] can we put us into a breakout room somebody with sarah oh we could do that too yeah can aaron do that yeah yeah so there's okay four seven i have my zoom open so i use the fingers is domingo's participating in this right now or is he um dominguez is still online i'm not sure if he's available okay windows you're available yes he is sorry i'm here i'm listening like i said this is my last tuesday for football so moving forward i won't have any issues with tuesday meetings we know totally fine we have one i'm listening we're on the right track and that community participation is the key is one of
020the one stickies that i like to stick up there myself uh because that that brings in a lot of the the uh individuals we're looking for yeah so how about if aaron puts sarah domingos and i in a breakout room for this activity you explain it okay and then erin can put us in and then you can figure out everybody else okay those two yeah most of you can do yeah we can yeah those two can go and then breakout room you don't need to because there's six of us here oh um i'm discounted yeah yeah okay what was that again sarah domingos and who was the third just sarah and i think just the two of us yeah that'd be great okay so i might add sharon's to that can i just add sharon's
021just came in by text too can i just add it or join what they are why don't you just say i'll just say what they are so um yes yes yes that's okay yep totally fine um so one is continued dei work and effective communication around this and two is community parental engagement so so match is right up yeah yep okay so i have worksheets um i have many many more than we need um which has two sides one is reflective prompts which aligns with the questions that alexa had on her handout more or less um and the other side is okay now take it and make it a smartphone right so um so in each of the pairs or however pairs or trios um we'll we'll take we'll assign a goal topic to each
022set of people and you'll take that and work through the worksheet that makes sense yeah sure okay um so so now i am thinking that one of us has to go with sarah and domingo's because we have to read the worksheet to them because they don't have yeah yeah all right so aaron if you can put me in the breakout room now thank you can we not drop the do we have a chat no can we not drop it i just feel like they're they're both on their phones so i think it's going to be challenging to get the chat at the same time so i'll just describe too yeah so i just want to make sure that we are there there was four different topics carrie you had them listed i had improved in
023journal and external communications and then as a one a second was dei student uh sorry inclusivity and student success and then the third was budget and fiscal sustainability what about the data did you have one now i had dei and student success is separate oh you had them yeah oh yeah yeah i had them as separate so yeah i had them as i had applications i think we had i think that we had data linked to the students success okay yeah right okay and then the dei you know the equity and um equitable yeah i had separate yeah yeah you probably can't see that as well but it it looks like four that dorothy arranged four buckets okay one minute yeah four yeah all right do you want to scoot that way yeah we'll scoot
024in muddle okay of course [Music] oh yes whatever you said right there i'm just going to say because i think it would be easier i'm sorry yeah okay two three and three okay yeah i have to join the audio [Laughter] a rough time so we're doing all four of them so our scribe is going to need four sheets right are we doing all four no each group is doing one [Music] we have four goals three groups so what does tracy that she's doing okay we have four goals three groups yeah dorothy you'll run in and tell tracy and lisa we have four buckets or do we all take a quick whack at communication and then we divide the others the easiest one yeah [Music] okay um i gave them students stuff okay okay budget and
025dei training equity writ large wherever that takes us okay and it'll overlap with student success but so do it right they're all overlapped they have to all over [Music] thank you very much okay so we're doing just the reflective prompts first to kind of warm us up uh what do we want to improve um this one's very specific for me i want to improve and build metco participation um i'll worry about it later i don't know good question great question i don't know i just know our incoming mecco students tell us that the end is near if we don't build it and i'm overstating it i don't mean to you know hyperbolic here but we have 10 students come in last year that was not encouraging and so we have to remember too well we're
026talking about here oh i'm i'm not no no i know i'm not prioritizing so i think that's a good thing we're going to change yeah realistically yeah i think the goal is lovely for one of the better word like last year you poor kids in concord specialized kids this is where i want to say you know if we want to use very lofty language it's um every student and faculty member uh believes they have uh a seat at the table what did you just say no less than anybody else's seat that's not very swift language maybe but that there aren't um differences in somebody's sense of membership what are the ways we can measure that so it would be about a message it's a message of belonging that is not mediated by race color address
027um sped status um right for gender identity yeah right or or what's the shorthand it's respect for differences that really means it yes so what would be something and i guess this is going to be easy because that's going to be easy well easy maybe but there's a lot of reasons to choose that goal no no i know what i'm saying we're going to do that i'm saying okay okay things that will be hard everybody not just you know i think we really need to do this uh some of that is going to be qualitative and that's okay yeah qualitative meaning what people tell us um you know we ask people shorter than some but the kids for me i'll settle with this how do we know the goal will be achieved um a combination
028of qualitative and quantitative data so right and let's not get into the weeds yet in your mind yeah but here's something like and i and i get that part for tonight but eventually you have to understand that it can't be our goal no i i get that i'm just metrics fast then we're working in reverse [Music] i'm just writing all this crap and then we'll get better at it so that to me you know belonging intercepts with wellness um if that's not true then what have we been doing with seo sel for all these years you know because we do believe we do believe social emotional learning uh equates with every evaluation educational striving educational commitment educational attainment are all classes accessible i'll go to kristin for data to prove it or disprove it but
029we apparently believe it because we've certainly poured attention into seo is there a place in there began discussing demographics we've had so much turnover forwards i don't know i don't like it because i think there's some things so well they've also got johnny cole leading the school committee and leading the superintendent i don't know if you've met this guy he used to work at our high school and then he became lexington's dei director he's got kids here maybe and he's a pretty effective guy i don't know where you really started they just gave him a whole lot of responsibility makes you think in so many ways yeah and i looked at need i'm thinking wellness forever is like do we want something i mean whoever said the equitable blah blah blah blah blah blah dismiss
030it by saying blah blah blah but that's sort of part of this right you have a little equitable distribution of resources well um maybe this will help and there's a lot of ways just as with intelligence there are multiple intelligences there are also multiple ways to measure this thing we call social emotional wellness so maybe one of the goals is to appreciate that there are many uh indicators let's be loose about it because we're not professionals there are many indicators of social emotional wellness and many indicators of inclusiveness and belonging some of which are self-reports i'll tell you if i feel i'm accepted by my peers you know that's qualitative and some of them are more quantitative there are some of them are more quantitative the students from boston or the students from carlisle or
031the students who are in esl classes are underperforming in this area and they know that's an indicator you know where you just want to keep like exactly do we need to say that more explicitly in the world i don't know this is hard work and we don't want to make it easy by making it generally smaller if it's not narrow and small we want to improve how many people we want to increase about this we need to have we want to increase our people in our community [Music] yeah what if we moved away from what we want to improve and went even higher just to a vision statement for a minute just for a minute because this is a reflection you know vision statement every single member of this community could i include you know
032everybody in this school community um believes that they have a uh a rightful legitimate membership accessing membership something like that you know or just membership and belonging but i think we started with the community didn't we just so what you're naming foreign [Music] rightful and legitimate membership that's your belonging word membership um and access to all the resources available and necessary for success now put that in the negative nobody's going to say i'm i'm being short changed because i'm a 19 year old student you know who didn't pass 10th grade mcas i'm not uh claiming that i'm not a belong that i don't belong because i live in carlisle and i'm you know and i'm out of district nobody's claiming the opposite yes because when people start when people say they're not getting their share
033so i think one of the things they're thinking about when people say they're not getting their share they often have a because because people when things aren't going right we people want to know why [Music] um [Music] if we wanted to be i'm just stirring the pot here if we wanted to be even more gutsy about it we wouldn't talk about perfection we'd talk about reducing imperfection you know so what i don't like is everyone we're never against we're never gonna get there so what if what if we wanted to achieve [Music] qualitative and quantitative evidence uh that there are subgroups that are in some way disenfranchised it's kind of a gutsier way to put it here i know there's been field disenfranchised legal updates no so and i remember what andrew namichi said to
034us you know you won't get this data if policies and if you ask the wrong people you sent us actually a stuff in the spring you know um if you ask your excellent senior class in the last two weeks um you may get very different data then yeah you asked and now we have uh another subgroup right sure if you want to know how a 10th grade boston student is experiencing this place you got to ask a 10th grade boston student they said don't ask the 10th grade generally you know because any any minority in that population whether they're an asian student whether they're a student in a single family or whether they're a student you know just moved here last week but they're the same day school i don't live i thought yeah yeah
035anyway but uh yeah [Music] i said they're possible so what do you want to do here go big or go home i'll tell you why i i think the goal is important one is because i think we have a moral obligation two is because i think all students perform better when all students perform better i mean that may sound strange but yeah yeah exactly yeah you get it yeah um well and we also chose this goal because this has proved to be a stubborn intractable problem in this community and in every community right now you go to acting they say well you know how come all the asian students are taking ap courses well that's not true but you know you hear claims like that you know um [Music] and when they say something like
036that they're talking about inequity perceived inequity [Music] what specifically that is at a later date you don't need to look that up now you know when i think about teacher negotiations teachers think this is really important so if we focus on it we're indirectly making this a more attractive place for our teachers because they they want they want a district that's doing it for real and doing it better and the best teachers if they don't get it here they're going to go to another district that you need to support um [Music] i um i don't know um we would notice that from uh so when you talk about how would we notice policies um [Music] right it's a little different does that make sense it is a little different right not necessarily what do we
037want to achieve to do those franchises how do we recommend bullying or another you get a princess i find it difficult to [Music] so it can you're right you're actually right so now like it can be the right programs you can make it get a perspective feeling well so i don't think monitoring male says [Music] and these are going to get scrubbed by everybody and we're fine we're just getting started okay and then what are the executive decision here yeah wherever anybody wherever you are at 7 30. we're coming back together i think that's i think that's right don't you think because we're gonna do a second session we're gonna run out again i don't think it's too broad yeah yeah we're gonna be okay what time is it right should we go with you
038ripped us in oh shut up okay and then we didn't even get to communication i think we could discuss is [Applause] [Music] i mean nobody's reporting it to me and if it doesn't get here it doesn't get to the public so if it doesn't get to the public and nobody knows if nobody knows nobody cares well we do know mas he recommended last spring i think so then we're supposed to form to our proposed draft bowl on the other side and now it's just remaining we know it's good once we hear everybody else just like we can on our own at home take a stab take a stab and then come with us yeah tonight she gets overwhelmed so maybe this is you know maybe maybe like if everybody writes a proposed goal then someone's
039might stand out with needing a little editing here and there the back of the envelope you know that's appropriate we do [Music] you know budgets deadlines or something so yeah yeah and i was going to say something like mas again with msc recommendations there's a lot of side chatters like ours and then is that connected edited out and then just go through and fly accordingly like i said it's terrible tv there's no reason to yeah yeah yeah no because if people pick up a word or two a word person but well i think all valid practices uh well let's just speed into that though let's find it that's fine manage to a culture and manage to well or you could just say develop practices they'll support the culture so you must give somebody we're in
040every member of the school community with supporting evidence there's your quantitative reports [Music] that they consider themselves yeah foreign [Music] is because we do need to have like actions report from your process all members of your school community so improvement and i also my big proponents more members of this community we would schedule them later at the beginning of the school year december i like your bit about reading or whatever lay them out with things that's location sometimes i think that's what we were trying to be just like whether that covers every day yeah everybody feels that way everybody knows how to access everyone has access what what benefited my kids more than anything maybe but i think we need to have ways for people their ability to self-advocate ask he didn't want to do
041it right now maybe that's just because he oh i want your time i want your attention or whatever you want to call them i'll never sell them you know that kid doesn't belong that's one of their own she doesn't know where the bathroom is and she doesn't know where ice cream i don't know either so is she going to march up to the first team i think she would be helpful for us to do a lot more from education you it's not for deliberative purposes obviously but can um put this into like electronic foreign so if you share it as a piece of information to prepare yourself for the first meeting and you're not commenting back yeah so that everybody knows where each of those landed and then i might be so between tests say
042if you have the energy and homework alone as an individual right so that we might take so that we might have to take ten meetings so that if we all do our own individuals again if we just add our own that's really no different than [Music] you know getting your packet of information saying i'm do you want to grab them because it's almost 7 30 yeah it's out there [Music] is [Music] is [Music] so how do we measure that so um so there's a couple ways i said that so how many people are talking about driverless um version of homework um [Music] i just do the mechanics should i talk about what you and i just talked about with the next step well or do you want to let's wait sorry you guys yeah let's
043do a wrap-up so time to stop writing where you are so what i'd like to do is have each group just do a quick report out um because as we said these are not going to be final goals right before we do that is aaron still with us can karen can you bring up the powerpoint again sure and where so at the place we left off right so the next so yeah um and then i want i want the next screen with that grid on it see what items yeah the slide after priorities so i want you to think as you're thinking about your goals and because they're not done right um when they're done i want you to think a little bit about this grid it's not a perfect grid i'm still kind of
044fooling with it um but think about that there's two things you want to think about as you as the goals for the school committee the first is it is it within your purview and your ability to implement right that would be one way one thing you should be thinking about the other is does it support the strategic plan and the action plan of the district they may not like a goal that's your own professional practice goal or a goal around that internal communication might not but that would still be appropriate right but if you find that it's not within your purview or doesn't comply with the action plan you might want to say maybe that's not a good goal maybe we want to erase that one i was trying to make it be a word
045no i couldn't do it um i want um you you maybe that's a goal that no that's wrong we're going to start over again um it might be a goal that is within your purview and ability to implement and it doesn't really fully support the plan like we just talked about like your professional practice goal so that's still a potential goal if it's within your purview and your ability and it supports the plan that's probably one you want to go for right um and then if it's um not really within your purview but it does support the maybe you need a reality check there is this really one we should be thinking about or do we need to adjust it to put it more on the left side of that grid so just as you're
046as you actually get to the goal i think these are some of the things that you should be thinking about um with the goal so now with that in mind a quick report out of the goal that was not the communication goal the one that was unique to your um to your group just a real quick report on what you're the where you got to and what your thinking is tracy you want to start yep sure so our proposed draft goal is ours dealt with basically student success so it was use data to evaluate student satisfaction and student success that was our goal would that be an action item well not necessarily if you're not using data now right you want to use that to make a better use of data right so that's part
047of the discussion you're going to have is that an action item or um does it need more refining okay so um any thinking any thinking behind it that you want to um i thinking behind it was and sarah you can chime in at any point if you want but our thinking was is to look at all students as individuals and give them what they need um based on who they are okay i'm also passed to success like all you know we talked a lot about different things you know related to student success so when you think about is it a smart goal right something improving what's it improving but and how are you going to measure sorry gosh i'm really on the spot seriously you can really jump in at eight points so so one
048of the in your goal statement sometimes that how you make sure you capture that measure outcome is as measured by okay right and i think that's why like the the goal is to improve the student satisfaction right or student achievement student experience the student experience i think was one of the words that we we used and we thought that was too broad so we said we'll use data to improve this and mostly we were thinking of looking at um you know like the yerby whatever that is the the youth behaviors behavior survey yeah right that challenge success just sort of to build this into sort of an evaluation of like the student experience to figure out how we can evaluate that and so be through those and maybe also look at like student enrollment in
049their our courses are like our offerings matching what the students need right now like are we giving everybody a path to their own kind of success yeah so um some of the discussions that that as i was like listening in and so forth um so i have to say because it was interesting listening to the three groups it almost talked about you it almost felt like you were some of you were having all three groups are having somewhat the same conversation even though you were all tackling different aspects of things um so because you were all focused on what students were doing right um so part of i think what you also need to um take a step back on and we talked about this a little bit with the diversity goal is that if
050if if that if the goal that you created feels almost more like a there everybody in the district has a piece of making this happen um what is what is your sliver right what is your sliver to make it happen so that's another way to think about it and you guys maybe can demonstrate that when you get to yours so just some thoughts about as the goal moves forward alexa we did a lot of work on the back side and less work on the front so i'm just going to put that out there and that was the body well um so our goal ended up being and this is real rough and we acknowledge it needs to be far more concise oh sorry our umbrella was d yeah okay okay so our umbrella no wonder
051this is oh i bought you guys for budget oh well okay okay we'll just keep going um sorry so develop practices that support a culture where every member of the school community reports that they feel like they have a rightful and legitimate membership we're not concise at all and access to all of the resources available necessary for success in our district which is far too verbose we know that but that was sort of the gist and we know it's not great but what things that are great just so you know um we were we really focused on all of these in hopes that it would get us to this goal but we found that interestingly that was sort of hard and we were starting that at like 7 20 yeah so so the same one
052yeah well that means there's more work to do on the budget and the other thing i if i haven't said this already smart goals are hard yeah right smart goals are hard so that we when you said the utopias will walk out with the goals no you want it yeah no you won't we knew it wasn't happening but cynthia asked the question yeah so um so just remember you know a lot of thought does need to be put into the is it within our purview is it achievable how are we going to measure right and so then you know we did that is where i thought we did quite well yeah um the goal itself i think we have a lot of answers to the questions on the back it's been just articulating them right
053you know right and i think you know a check-in as you're developing the goals i mean yeah with administration and like how does this work how does this jive are we in our own sandbox it would be really helpful too it's important yeah yeah because this is hard it takes a lot of partnership with you all so if we're not a lot if there's not to your point what we understand our narrow slice of that to be the good news is i feel like it's fully aligned with your strategic objectives then we just have to carve out our hard work is okay what role do we play in that as narrow or as wide as it might be do you want to go ahead sure so we um admittedly had dorothy sitting beside us for
054a portion of this so um we felt we had went through a similar process as you where we came up with um a very like big umbrella like just create an environment where everyone feels welcome and that's not a goal that a we as a school committee can accomplish um and certainly not any year and so then we started going through some of the smaller items like increased dei training and staff that's administrative and identify who is has extracurriculars and who does not also admit so dorothy really pushed us on like okay these are all great ideas maybe lori will include some of them in hers but ours really is to examine current school committee policies and ensure they align with our dei core values and that could mean fiscal that could mean instructional that
055could be discipline it kind of has a bunch of buckets that we could be looking at um but that's our sliver yeah okay and how far did people get on communications didn't touch it we focused on um external communications we felt we didn't have the time to internal communications but we wanted to um this is not really like worksmith but proactively share school committee goals communicate uh actions accomplishments with the community or be more proactive about sharing like news that's happening what we're doing communicating yeah in the committee with the community and some of the ways in which we thought about doing that was um just bringing back some of the old things like coffees and whatnot um and me and not relying less on people coming to us and being more willing to go
056to other groups um so whether cynthia had some really good ideas on different groups that like we wait for them to come to us instead of going to them yeah um and then finding creative ways of tapping into existing platforms of things like i know lori is a really good communicator so if she would be willing to let us create like different spaces where we could say this is what the school committee is doing and then one specific goal that we had was within this goal is um and this was cynthia's idea too is to look at the current number of subscribers that we have increased to the school committee distribution list and then increase it by like 200 like actually trying to demonstrate that it's a worthwhile email list to be um signed up
057to and or subscribe to you and then drive people to it like that's where they're going to get information right so those are some of our ideas that's really well done oh and then tom and then similarly get tom lucy summary out broader so that i didn't even know that it existed yeah yeah we talked about a little bit about that yesterday actually we were talking about um you know where does it go who gets it yeah we have a social media platform which we're not gonna endeavor into a school through social media you know we talked about like who does that go to and it does go to the subscriber list but how do you grow that first forever right yeah and i think that's like all of these things together will help you
058that right like if we have if we're more engaged in the community we're going to more places and you say if you want to stay in touch like sign up for this you know website or email list the coffees and forums tell parents about it like you have to sign up right there if lori's willing like included a push on her one of her like newsletters that just has like a lot of different things in it um and then like whatever other creative platforms that we can just sort of find our way into yeah yeah living in concord want to know what's happening in the school committee it's like totally i don't care so there's just like so many there's so many people with the existing conferences yeah yeah i was actually surprised i don't
059know if it was you guys or desi where there was a lot of there's been a lot of talk again i spent a lot of time like searching around your website jesse's website there's a lot of talk these days in school a school community world about leveraging the community um whether that's businesses organizations and that kind of thing so i think that is becoming more and more expected commonplace and and the only way to you know further your communications platform and that kind of thing so and the only thing that we did tap into with internal is that we feel like if we are more proactively more proactive with the community inviting community involvement and also like more proactive without our accomplishments or whatever we're doing um that will also help with our internal communications
060that if we are if we're all working on something sharing something externally internally we'll have to do more we'll have to be aligned um so that was the one that was the one thing we made when you guys did more than we did [Music] we did a little bit we didn't we really started at like 7 25 so it was probably like five minutes and generally we we said to continue to work on improving communication and relationships um one thing we talked about was targeted community forums on certain topics get back to that and and push information out to the community we talked about the copies uh what used to be common practice and this is probably like i'm gonna age myself a little bit but like five to ten years ago was that school
061dude members would go to ptg meetings pa meetings just like hey here i am do you you know and that's yeah you can engage outwardly at those things and and i don't know you know i'm not sure if back to school line is necessary for us to be there because that's really you know that's what we used to do yeah so i don't know so that's just something else and even like we had talked about at one point um musicals and like things like that to just get out there with the community to you know yeah and sometimes i think as you know we did uh with the communications for the building committee sometimes i think it's not just enough to put it out there generally oh we can be available it's like we would
062like to come to your meeting yeah well yeah please find a date that it works for us to come to your meeting so it's not feel free to invite us to talk it's we are seeking to come to your meeting please respond with the date yeah cynthia said like identify who our key stakeholders are yeah and then like be proactive about saying when can we all that can be i like that and even like i love that um the building committee that website that you guys pushed out yep like could we have something like that that just looks a little bit more inviting than our you know meeting dates minutes and all of that like maybe you know that's what it does yeah so we could they could run through the district website maybe that's
063yeah it takes you there create a new website no sorry this is just a thought here just ask lexington what they did yeah yeah you know the chair we do yes we do she didn't text me back today actually is she the chairman yes there's your channel okay yeah okay so this was awesome yeah it's great oh good really great time flies when you're having time so there's so i'm going to say i mean aaron now you have the presentation so you can just send it out to everybody there's a few slides i'm not going to get to which are basically things we've talked about already okay um so um you can just have at it um i mean they're basically output outcome um example of a goal that's too broad with a you know
064goal that has more detail in it um and um what alex and i were talking about as people were coming back together was taking everyone's notes putting it into a scan document or something so everybody can read everybody else's notes just on their own not to deliberate outside of a meeting but just to get more of an idea of what people had said put together so that when you come back together to work more on the smart goals you all haven't you're not starting from scratch again from just a quick overview and i've heard of everybody i would even go further and dorothy said this was appropriate as long as we don't speak to each other we all have the energy and enthusiasm you know i would encourage people to try to work on refine
065and improve what not only you and your individual group started with but even you know going with others and and and because we missed this budget piece i would recommend if we again if we have the energy this is not like a real homework assignment and i'm the teacher but if you have the energy do it so that when we come back together on the 13th which is when i think we'll work again towards some of this um we we we're better off then than we are at this moment in time today yeah and i just would you know just as a final caveat don't forget you want it you want this to be within your purview but not in isolation yeah does that make sense so that you know there is there is you
066do fit into there's the governance team sitting around this table um that all has to um be able to work together so we're going to ask for a cheap can you give us two examples of smart budget goals smart budget goals off the top of my head so oh i might have to did one up for you up but um you know so okay so is it here that's absolutely what i was asking yes okay um so targeted enough that's targeted so just so we get on the right so i think you have to think about why did you want this as a goal right did you because you didn't do so well in the last budget or because you just this is something that really needs a focus because do you know this new
067everything a new arrangement but basically we have a new assistant superintendent many new members yeah um all on the same page right kind of thing so that's my goal then actually cynthia that could almost be a professional practice goal yeah um where it's not about you know i don't know increasing the budget to ensure that x or reducing the budget to ensure it's more about ensuring that a solid understanding a budget process and so yeah i just wanted to ask other people who put that up there what their vision was just so we can since we didn't do it yeah i'm saying right i think one of the sheets said um yeah i don't know who ended up with the sheets that had the budget physical sustainability listen someone's about physical somebody somebody has a
068little poster that's different than than the professional practice yes yeah there's the budget once yeah yeah so then this question yeah i was trying to get out that sort of dynamic balance between ensuring that schools have the resources they need we say educational excellence and fiscal responsibility and uh being mindful that uh concrete and carlisle have their own town-wide needs they want us to be at least mindful of and that's always a dynamic tension for us yeah are you sure you had the you looked like you were looking at the post it's in front of you did you see anything there that would no no [Music] yeah okay um could that court almost be as another thing on an upcoming agenda i'm thinking again things that are outcome driven would that what you're saying about
069fiscal sustainability might that be better placed and i don't know the answer to this and i could be dead wrong i haven't thought this through more than six seconds could that be something that is more placed effectively like in our protocols that we will always endeavor to prioritize long-term fiscal sustainability when looking at a budget just because when i look at these questions like what do we want to improve i thought you were going to go out what is the action step i don't know we're going to go in a different direction and ask if it belonged in some of the strategic plan right because that's something over time right yeah i mean you can yeah i mean two entirely different directions what's the right one i don't really know i thought that's what i
070expected and glenn kind of spontaneously brought that up earlier today when he talked when he referred to uh the fact that we serve the needs of many people who aren't direct school constituents but they're still our constituents both i forget exactly how you framed it but yeah right and he was talking like communicating with all of our constituents and i guess you know where i think it's tricky on the on the budget is yes it's our budget as a school committee but it's also being developed by the district so what is our role in that and i think we have to continue to ask ourselves that where where do we fit into that yeah well par i mean part of the answer to that is ensuring the budget matches the goals right right and part
071of that is the monitoring right and and we have to know it in order to advocate for it right which brings you more into the professional practice side of knowing you know the budget and and what our role is in that so okay and so one of my post-its was the ensure resources are being deployed equitably and possibly through increased community feedback opportunities with targeted forums because i mean i look at the example of you know the increased transportation opportunities for boston students right it we're not aware of where the resources aren't going equitably necessarily sometimes we need to give people an opportunity to to come forward and talk about them um and so that's where i was going with that in terms of like a budget thing or i look at something that's come
072up over the summer that i've heard from a number of people is access to technology over the summer right like especially junior to seniors who don't have computers and are you know struggling to get their applications done over the summer are there things like that that we can find um that that we're just making sure and the other one is just making sure that like our course offerings all match the student uh x you know the student demand right and so those are for me some places that you could look at the budget alignment um and you know proper allocation resources and i don't know if i'm making sense anymore more than ever i am fading i am fading now that's a golf ball okay okay let's wrap it yeah yeah yeah so can everyone
073turn in their sheets and i'll type them up and then and then i'll distribute them you really and i can call the scribe if need be which is likely good um so yes so and then i'll and then what we'll do like i said is i'll distribute them to everybody so everybody has the documents and then if we so desire um we can do a little work on our own on this in between meetings so that again we just we start off at a better place than we ended today cool thank you dorothy thank you this was very exceptional really was thank you great thank you very much thank you so much thank you for your help it's nice to meet you in person yeah that's true sarah are you staying with us or are
074you gonna go can i uh can i quickly give you the report from the ccac um yes if is there any objection to moving sarah's report up before bob's last one they've left and and okay that's totally fine okay sarah you can you can just go in the middle i can go okay so the center for parent and teachers is now in the um [Music] carlyle adult continuing ed um and they just had a couple of programs that they wanted to highlight that are coming up that are sort of the offshoots of the uh that are for parents and teachers so one of them is where they go okay is helping our children develop a sense of security in this world of upheaval um that's gonna be in november 16th and it's about giving kids
075mechanisms and giving parents really like coping skills to help their kids um get through you know find a sense of security in all of these uncertain times how to manage their feelings and their fears um and how to have parents be sort of enabled um facilitators through that and the other one is teaching kids to manage their time space and materials and their emotions in check which are powerful strategies to help kids develop independent executive function skills um and there'll be one for elementary students that's october 12th and one for middle and high school family that's october 18th and all this information is on their website they do have um their new um program offerings are all up but and then there's one other thing that she didn't specifically call out to talk about but
076i wanted to draw attention to it's about helping um it's one of these can we talk and it's about um helping refugees during this time in their um relocation to the united states and all of this is on their website so i think okay thank you all right so you can leave us sarah because we do have a quorum so we can continue perfect good night thank you thank you all right so we are now on to the discussion portion and bob connery is joining us our assistant superintendent of finance and operations everyone should have received his memo so i will turn it over to bob thank you tracy we'll flip your microphone sorry thank you tracy uh i'm excited to be here for my first official meeting attending uh previous ones before i was
077hired so i have a few items to report on you have my report for ease of access i put them all in one report they'll show up later in the action items three of them to be voted on the first one that i want to present is a proposal to implement some driver recruitment incentives um you likely heard this last year um and the year before there's a nationwide statewide shortage of drivers very difficult to locate um people to who are interested in applying for these positions and filling them we have been advertising regularly and we have some challenges in filling these positions and one of the things that we've seen being used in other places is incentives to get people to kind of take the plunge a lot of these end up being people
078kind of new to the profession from what i'm hearing um out in in you know through vendors through uh other people involved in transportation so this is a you know what we've done it might not have been as visible here is kind of through hercule efforts of existing staff we have mechanics and transportation manager who are also cdl certified have pitched in to minimize at least the visibility of this to parents but it's not a sustainable long-term plan so we do feel like there's a need to identify and hire more drivers i won't read i can i can read it i don't know if you've all read the report but the specifics are outlined here so at this point i wanted to leave that there unless there's any questions anyone have any questions you could
079bob could you speak to where we stand with mechanics because i know that when we're in trouble we sometimes pull those mechanics and put them behind the wheel um and i don't want to impose on you too much because i know you're in your initial weeks but any any sense of that any report out of john or anybody over there i know that we have mechanics who are able to do that they're cdl certified how how many exactly i don't know um part of this incentive is addressed well it's outside the transportation department but if there was more mechanics that were interested i think we would probably want to honor that third incentive it's not part of this is to find people outside the transportation department that would be the goal to support the team
080it will end up if the mechanics are filling in will end up potentially paying overtime for them to do their work at a different time so there were many a day last spring where everyone was driving and we had to send help from ripley over to staff the phone so that means the mechanics john his assistant everybody so we're trying to get the edge off of that [Music] and then if we um see it already coming back again if memory serves me correctly we had a retention incentive too that was a january june payment um is there a likelihood that we're going to have to resurrect that or do you think would that stabilize things for fiscal 23 the hope is that this will stabilize things i think there's a balance between how much that's
081part of the reason i think why this incentive is what it is i don't wanna i know uh another district i feel like um is overstretched and i think that can potentially make your existing drivers feel like they're not valued so right yeah and this strikes the balance i also will say our current drivers and support staff can refer candidates and participate in this so you know it certainly helps to have our existing drivers be here all the time but even beyond that we do need support people are going to be sick sometimes so we really need to get clean bodies to help the team that's there great thank you i think it's gonna some of this is gonna be market conditions we're in prime competition with a few of our neighboring districts some of
082this is coming from that just like it did last year we have to stay competitive so i think it's going to ebb and flow we're going to have to keep bringing you updates i met with kevin last week on another another issue and we ended up talking on some of this and they do feel very valued and very supported um i think we want to be sure they stay that way so probably more to come how soon do you feel like you would have a notion as to the success of this program so you know it sounds like you're concerned if we don't yield more bus drivers with this incentive we will run the next edge right we're kind of so we would maybe have to go to a plan b right i'm hoping we
083don't i hope this is successful i really do because i it's so important um there have been days we've already been tipping into a plan b john's consolidated private school runs like he tries to take the least significant impact and quietly do it so that families still have their their needs met so we've definitely already ventured over that and are always right at the edge i think the hope is we might be able to recruit with this pretty heavily here to get school started with some new folks yeah so that's some of the rush tonight to put it in front of you and ask you to consider it so maybe in a couple of months we can hear that there's yeah talk about measurable data we got to come next time and say we hired
084five bus drivers that's what i'm kind of saying or we didn't yeah we need you you need to help us right yeah okay and we are talking about other ideas but we're they're not at a point where we can kind of share at this point john is on i don't know that he has much stuff he wanted to talk but he is there i think we're okay i think you are thank you all right um the second item uh for your um consideration is and i'm proposing um you know in consultation with um dr hunter to establish a non-resident tuition revolving fund for the concord kyle regional school district where you may recall at one of your previous meetings it was the last one you voted to establish tuition rates for students attending one of
085our special education programs this non-resident tuition revolving fund would be broadly for anyone attending it doesn't have to be a special education program it could be other programs as well i think rivers and revolution was something that was asked about it could also be an international student that asked if they can attend here that the school committee you know decides to accept you can charge a fee for that so it's it's a broad bucket and it's helpful to have it go through a revolving fund because you have expenses you can offset whereas if you don't establish this you have to put it into revenue and you can't overstand overspend your expense budget once it's set for the year so a revolving fund is the best way to manage this and i would recommend that we
086establish one to house these tuitions and be able to pay expenses associated with the students attending from out of our district it's more than recommend you actually have to do this because we're bringing the kids in we have special education students already onboarded on someone over the summer so we just need the vehicle to do it i don't think this is a surprise because it's based on our conversations [Music] okay third item is uh very excited to report that we've hired interim director of food services you may recall bryce mcknight resigned um in the summer and that candidate that was selected was jess brown we we posted for an interim role she was the clear choice she's been here for about two and a half years approaching three somewhere in between there she's extensive colony
087experience in the private sector uh managing multi-site operations for a high-end establishment um and she's also been the executive chef assistant director for food services here and has a has done an excellent job a lot of the menus if you've seen them are phenomenal compared to what i've seen in other school districts and she's a large part of that so just wanted to share that with you um and the last one is um the district should have a chief procurement officer and that's by name um not by position when you appoint the chief procurement officer so um i would ask that you appoint me as the chief business officer as the chief procurement officer for the district we don't need to do that for for concord public schools that is done differently it's a delegation
088of authority chief procurement officer is the town manager um so that's already delegated and that's by position not by by name so again this is just for the regional district and after you um vote on that tonight i have a form that the chair will need to sign that's my report unless there's any questions any questions about anything about your court no thank you all right thank you thank you very helpful and thorough so thank you um okay on to the reading of the minutes you all should have received the minutes and because we have some joint and some that are uh just conquer public we're gonna have to do them in two votes so um i would entertain a motion to approve the minutes of may 10th may 13th may 16th may 18th may
08924th june 7th and june 14th so moved second any discussion thank you thank aaron for putting them all together for us and bundling them and in the email so we could review them uh as efficiently as we did yep great okay so um we'll take a vote and now that we don't have anyone on zoo can i say something yes you can lost your carlisle member oh shoot oh does it matter aren't we aren't we yep so we can't vote you're right you can't vote on anything you're right thank you oh we can't vote on anything tonight and we're not going to wake her up and pull her back now you need the carlisle representation we need one you can fly to italy and wake her up could we maybe text her and see if
090she could join us for the votes could we do that sarah you're the champion i'm not texting you no you're not i'm gonna text her laurie's not doing that okay and we could we should do the chairs and liaisons but just as a preview to later on in the agenda we have so many votes and if we do have a member on zoom if there's no um objection could we vote them as a group all together consent for our protocols uh we can we can do that yeah oh i know because then it's a little bit easier asked to say sarah could you come on for ten minutes for three minutes three minutes 30 seconds yes yeah as long as the consent agenda lists them all yes and everybody has dorothy gave me a language
091yeah i wasn't going to do them all i was just going to do the first four initially but but now that yeah get around okay i'm going to put her on um continue on spirit why don't i move to where we table this and while we're getting sarah back i'll move to correspondence which i wrote down on my correspondence um i'll give the region if sharon could join oh yeah sharon she already said she can't okay wait um i'll text them both um correspondence at the in concord we had two pieces of correspondence from residents uh that are really close and adjacent to the thoreau school talking about concerns about the additional parking that lori discussed with us or let us know about this summer we received one piece of a correspondence expressing um dismay
092at our requirement to vaccinate teachers and sort of a dismay about encouraging vaccine use in the district at all we received one message about from a resident um expressing concerns about the middle school budget and um you know wanting to keep us focused on on ensuring that we meet our budget and then in addition to that there were four views sort of on the opposite end of the spectrum saying that they would hope that the building and the scope of the project would remain intact at the region yes we had two pieces of correspondence since our last meeting one was from um western public schools asking about how we did our school clean evaluation so i think you all received that and so we had a little back and forth i said we're actually in
093process right now and then the other one was from a resident about signage at the high school um you all should receive that and the temporary signs have all been removed from the tennis courts and there's probably still some work to be done some policy work that will move to policy to address signage at high school and i guess i should also follow up i talked with lori uh the meeting with the thoreau neighborhood residents is was postponed gonna be moved to rescheduling yeah he's good [Music] okay and that was it for correspondence so i'm still waiting to hear from our carlyle members um but let's move on to our chairs and liaisons report and i think we had cynthia and court developed something for us uh i can report on behalf of the town's
094audit advisory committee bob and i were at a recent meeting and we at that time looked at a few of the items before that committee light plant was one of them the town of concord audit for fiscal 21 was already closed out and we did the final work on the fiscal 21 concord carlisle regional school district audit um as you knew from past reports that was a clean audit no findings and you know of course an auditor wants to come in and scrub things and coach us on how to do things better but customarily they haven't come up with with too much by way of recommendations bob uh knows more than i do about gasby but i i can briefly state and i'll ask bob follow up as you wish um and help us here
095um we're still uh finding it necessary to uh incorporate more information about nice obligations in our reporting um and uh uh uh pay close attention to our year-end close-out process which has always been a challenge for any school district do i was that your sense of things yeah yeah we would we would get there's a schedule we can follow for the lease obligations that'll be straightforward the the year-end process they do have the comment um to me i i would like to get more clarity from the audit firm about exactly what they're looking for i feel like it's written in a little bit of a general way and i will say that i've observed that sometimes audit firms have different standards from different audit firms different standards so i i really want to have clarity
096from exactly what they're they're looking for um on that and you know we're already closed for fy22 i'm coming in we're you know we're in fy23 so we'll see where we can get for fy22 but for fy23 we'll have a lot of runway to see and work with the audit firm and get some clarity the good news is they're quite satisfied right thank you so uh i was just going to report on and i will send out because i think the last friendcom meeting is uh will be valuable to watch based on because that's where they discuss the letter that they sent us um the other thing is uh they also did a deep dive on something they call the sgr we frequently recal refer to it which is the sustainable growth rate so they've
097altered their formula this year and i think it'll be valuable this is a concord and calm for us to get a little more clear you know under understanding of what exactly that is because it really goes pretty much into the formula they use they don't just throw a darts in establishing the guidelines um and also for us to understand that on the carl outside but i'll send out just a link to the recording because i can't recall exactly the date of the meeting um and the packets in prior years they had done a training for the fincom and the school committee frequently attended they're not doing that this year but there's a movie of last year's training so again i don't think the landscape has changed dramatically um so i think that'd be valuable to
098watch as well i'll just send those things out and people can choose to digest it or not i have a building committee report but sarah is oh she's here sarah i just have a quick question about the pods the surplus oh yes um is that going to greatly reduce the pods at the high school or we don't know some yes yeah because those yep there's nine and they're not necessarily russ have been moving them out and some of the other future media chairs are in there we could discuss and i think some of them are used for athletics some of them are equipment well there's two this is the nine just right there by the there's two up and two below and then there's nine yeah okay later meeting yep um okay so moving along
099we're gonna do um sarah thank you for rejoining us i appreciate that and i will entertain a motion to approve the joint minutes from may 10th may 13th may 16th may 18th may 24th june 7th and june 14th second okay and discussion nope we're good roll call anderson verona randy i for both frank and i for both wilson for region thank you sarah did not give over here now yeah so we're going to go down to our action items which um sarah we just discussed if no one is opposed we can move all the votes as uh consent agenda are you okay with that we have a cps vote right so we'll take part we do it as a joint though right so okay yeah thank you don't pull it out it's a joint because
100it's a high school teacher and they eventually go to the high school so um i would entertain a motion to vote on items a b c d e f and g h nh are some of the regional only i'm just trying to be sure we don't yeah dude so how do we do that i propose did we cover it community trust was uh they're all reached well they're uh my suggestion is you do consent agenda for the region let sarah go and then if cps has to vote anything so you get the joint go back and do another consent agenda just for cpu okay like it all right someone is cara did you remember that okay all in favor do we second yeah