Whitman Hanson Regional School Committee Meeting 9/30/20

001[Music] good evening and welcome to the whitman hanson committee uh school committee meeting of september 30th 2020. my name is chris griffin i'm the vice chair of the committee and i will be sitting in for chairman bob hayes bob has a prior commitment and is unable to attend tonight as our chair starts every meeting i'd like to remind you that this meeting is being broadcast live on whca tv and online this meeting is also being recorded for use in the future and will be accessible on the whca website so please keep that in mind we hold this meeting in accordance thank you we hold this meeting in accordance with the order from the governor of massachusetts on march 12 2020 suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law mr small will be participating remotely tonight

002and just to double check mr small can you hear us fred can you hear us yeah right here okay all right thank you so all votes will need to be done by roll call uh at this time i'd like to ask you to join me in the pledge of allegiance [Music] and to the republic for which it stands one nation nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i'd also ask if you could join us in a moment of silence thank you we'll take a roll call steve boyce here now we ha dan culley is not here as of yet uh mike jones here chris howard here hilary niffen here fred small here dawn byers here david forth here and chris griffin here okay first item on the engender is looking for a

003motion to approve the meeting minutes from august 6. so moved second any discussion okay roll call vote steve boyce yes dan colory not here mike jones yes chris howard yes hillary niffen yes fred small yeah don byers yes david forth yes and chris griffin yes thank you next is the meeting minutes from september 9th i'm looking for a motion for that to approve that second second yep discussion go on thank you vice chair i have a amendment i have submitted to michelle lindbergh on page three it's just a clarification under student handbooks the sentence reads at the high school bandanas are not allowed as a face covering and it's a clarification i'd like to amend it to read in alignment with the memorandum of understanding with whea the committee discussed excluding bandanas in the face

004covering policy ebcfa okay so the clarification just to elaborate on that wouldn't necessarily be specific to the high school it's district-wide and it includes the policy for district-wide in an agreement with the uh okay mou thank you all right so i've been looking for a motion to amend what what what was that later what was the change sorry so the way it reads right now indicates that at the high school the indiana's are not allowed as a face covering but we discussed and we amended the policy to be district-wide so if a middle school or elementary student um we're going to wear a bandana that would be part of the exclusion of okay our policy the middle school can wear oh no no it's just removing really that says at the high school because it's

005clarifying that it's district-wide exactly we discussed it to a line that it's a district-wide exclusion that the bandanas are not allowed okay any other discussion nope all right so someone did make a motion already i seconded second david okay and roll call vote mr boyce yes mike jones yes chris howard yes hilary niffen yes fred small yeah don byers yes david fourth yes and chris griffin yes thank you oh he didn't no all right the next first season so we voted on the oh i'm correct now we're going to take a vote to approve the minutes as amended thank you um so i'll take a motion motion for that mr boyce right after a second dawn okay um you know your discussion no okay so another roll call vote mr boyce yes mike jones yes

006chris howard yes hilary niffen yes fred small yes don baez yes david fourth yes and chris griffin yes all right matt puts that to rest thank you and the last one is for the meeting minutes from september 15th like can you get a motion to fly fred a second second mr boyce mr boyce any discussion david um i was looking over at the 9 15 joint meeting and there's a couple inaccuracies on there so i would like to make a motion in the table the table yeah okay anybody i have a second on that second okay any other discussion can you what are the actors yeah sure um so paige let me get the right one so page three they say uh that george coffey had emailed the former superintendent and it was chris george

007um and then for my review it didn't go into death about the deci review and didn't mention the reasoning as to why i brought it forward and it left out the individuals that i mentioned but for the other town officials they had their people that they mentioned in the document so i think for the sake of accuracy um i think everything that i added my timeline needs to be included along with the other public officials timeline who was given what was the first thing that you said david i'm sorry yeah no it's all right so george coffee says you said it on page three what paragraph on page three yeah hold on let me just i got papers actually page two page two okay at the second paragraph well five lines down yeah so okay

008oh here it is all right yep yeah so it's george coffee instead chris george sorry about that okay and then the for doing it by paragraph i'd say first second third fourth fifth uh the sixth paragraph six yeah that one i think needs more detail considering that we spent four paragraphs talking about the other town official i think for the sake of accuracy it should mention everything that was spoken about on there considering the meeting michelle yeah sure yeah okay email it to you cool thank you mike okay michelle is it through through um is it easier like once we get these we notice in an accuracy like normally we email michelle and say hey can you change this and normally is that easier for you rather than come here and and do that or

009okay or whatever works okay so we have a motion to table um we get a second from don yeah so i'll take a roll call vote to table the meeting minutes from september september 15th 2020. steve boyce yes mike jones yes chris howard yes hillary niffen yes fred small yes don baez yes david fourth yes and chris griffin yes thank you okay so the next item on the agenda is um we had bob rogers who will be here tonight but he's just not here yet so we're going to hold off on that and we'll go right to the superintendent report and we'll start with john tuffy i believe right yes yep john can you come up and give our end of the year report and close out please so in the packet that you have

010you should see a page that deals with the line item transfers it's pretty standard it's the sort of thing that's happened at this meeting or the every year all all this does with your vote what we will do is is move items be move amounts between different line items so that none of none of the budgets are in negative numbers this doesn't increase or decrease the final budget that we have it doesn't change the spending it just it just ensures that again the actual expense lines don't don't exceed 100 percent of the budget okay so i guess i'd be looking for a motion to approve please the close out of fy 2020 budget report as presented second favorite second yep any discussion gone you have a question sure john can you just um explain so

011these starting right at the top so indian had elementary teacher salary this hundred and three thousand is that um a surplus in that line that will move to accommodate a deficit in another line and that is so we're we're adding to that line item that's a credit to that line item there it was in deficit and as you look further down you can see um the substitute line item for indian head also had a debt is now being debited 249 dollars it was a surplus in that line item okay so if it's a if it's a positive number on this it means it was the negative number on the financial report on the budget report and vice versa okay okay and where it says change to budget and there's no number there that is not

012an accident that's if you added up each of these line items um you'd come to zero any other discussion um are we going to go over this separately i just had a question oh go ahead we'll talk about that separately separate fair enough for the transfer get the vote out of the way please i'm sorry john i said if i could could we get get the vote done and then sure on to the next part absolutely okay thank you roll call vote steve boyce yes mike jones yes chris howard hillary niffen yes fred small yeah dawn byers yes david fourth yes and chris griffin yes all right so now the next part of the close out actually is to talk a little bit about the about what happened last year um when you look at

013the end of your budget reports and there are two of them one deals with revenue the other deals with expenditures what you'll see is that we we spent 98.6 of the expense budget and we collected 98.4 percent of the revenue budget and there are some reasons for that and at this point i might as well mention that you also have seen the end report we managed to get it into the state about on the i think was the 12th or 13th of september and they turned it around quickly we were among the early early in people who put it in the committee may remember early on we talked about revenue shortfalls that we expected from the pre-k program and the full-day program that was full-day kindergarten program and that was a function of of we

014stopped collecting fees in march and in fact returned some some fees that people had prepaid the total amount of tuitions that were returned were 294 000 additionally when you look at the revenue side of the of this you'll see where there are it appears as if we hadn't collected all our funds from our member towns when it came to non-mandated transportation and that was deliberate because we had talked about the fact that we would refer re return to the member towns a portion of the savings that that we got from the bus company when it came to non-mandated transportation and that amounted to 113 so even with those two unusual events happening our end is now certified at six hundred and nine thousand dollars uh which is slightly more than what we were certified for

015last year last year was six hundred and five thousand dollars the six hundred and nine thousand dollar number includes the use of 350 000 dollars of end in this year's budget to maybe add a little perspective to that at the end for last year was certified at 605 thousand dollars we are using 350 000 towards the budget the net of that is 255 000 that's what we would have if we came out even if we received as much as we spent um so the fact that we have 200 609 000 um means that we have put 355 000 back into e d which is fund balance or free cash if you're a municipality and it also means that really for the first time in a in a number of years we are adding even if

016it is the modest amount you're adding to end not not using e end we are starting to do what we should should be doing which is building up a rainy day fund and of course the other part is that we are using 350 000 in end but that is a reduction from what we've been doing these last few years has last many years as well so we're sort of a little less dependent on it so all in all i think as as the finance side of the school department i think those are all good signs so uh just a couple comments i think uh so one uh to mr tuffy's point yes uh the four or five thousand dollars is definitely a move in the right direction but i would not classify that or i

017know i think you would as a material amount right it is not really moving the needle so to speak much um so i i think that's important to understand and i think for the folks that are watching listening in that the number that we have in front of us that five percent number that we could have of 2.7 million that is a big difference from the 600 and 9 000 we are at today so we do have a lot of work to do i think when it comes to making sure that there is some level of stabilization in terms of our excess and deficiency and i think the last point was just i know when we voted to take the funds out of end to support the budget i think both you and jeff had

018to do some pretty healthy guesswork in terms of trying to help us understand what we could potentially take out and kind of maintain so to come within four thousand dollars that's that's pretty good so if you both did a good job of that so thank you well thank you and and and maybe to add a little more perspective to that in 2015 the e d balance here was a million four in 2016 it was a million three in 2017 it was a million two um and in 2020 it was 605 000 so there has been a a slow erosion of of of e and d balance for lots of good and valid reasons but i think we all agree we've probably come to the end of the road and looking at that as a as

019a solution to budget deficits and cr i just mentioned that the five percent that you mentioned chris that's the recommendation by uh desi i believe is that right i think that's the so i think that's the uh the maximum yeah if if i could five percent is the total amount that uh is the maximum amount that a school district is allowed to have uh in end by the state and actually by state law okay jesse does not make a recommendation to the best of my knowledge and belief having said that i think that that sort of best practice is uh in some places to try to get to five percent um and build up to that number knowing that you might have a capital project coming about or some one-time expenditures certainly not anything that's

020on a recurring basis um and in fact i have seen a number of of districts that that talk about it will be no less than uh two percent it'll be no greater than three and a half percent and then in cases where we're trying to build up something for a upcoming project you may build up something on top of that okay thank you uh one second fred dawn okay thank you several months ago the committee and jeff received a letter regarding our bond rating too for the district and that indicated that our bond rating went down and um it's my understanding that may be related to the um you know having less end as reserves well so back up for a second and part of a a standard review that um standard and poor's does

021of outstanding credits and we still have we still have uh several million dollars worth of debt outstanding on this building that we're in right now in the high school building they review credits and yes we were downgraded based upon a number of things some of it was things beyond our control the general state of the economy our dependence on state aid the fact that massachusetts at that point in time did not have a budget that didn't help but it also was mentioned and mentioned prominently that we had we had fund balances that had been decreasing over time and we were showing a greater greater reliance on fund balance as a way of up funding our operating budget so it wasn't the only issue but it certainly was prominent in their concerns thank you fred uh

022john uh do you happen to know off the top of your head what our opel liability is at right now i don't we develop a plan uh in conjunction with the ind uh to be funding now well the district has a separate um opev account and i and and those people who manage those funds part of a plymouth county program have come and visited with the committee i think every february for quite some time certainly the february i was here they did the committee had made a number of deposits in relatively modest amounts but nonetheless a start for several years and then for these last few years um they had not been contributing to that opec fund and that was really i think a function of the budget issues that we had here and the

023fact that we were also seeing increases um in our in our plymouth county retirement uh liability thank you any other discussion sure go on yep one more question if we're referring to the year-end report i noticed a couple line items in regards to general supplies jeff at middle school specifically in it in library instructional materials and it's just sort of an overall question it totals with both middle schools about ten thousand dollars and i've had a parent or and and i know as a parent of past middle school students my real concern is is reading books essentially getting books in students hands covid right now is a different story because we're utilizing some audio books i understand and maybe sharing books or so forth so my real question is you know are we um utilizing

024the supply budget line appropriately to you know get books in students hands um so they can read you know we talk about screen time too you know our audiobooks the best when they're already doing screen time sometimes kids like to curl up on a couch and just read it it's been presented that if if parents can go out and buy the book that would be helpful if you need one we can provide one as a district so the district is offering that still so that's something i notice and something i've heard from parents about you know the availability that we're just not having enough of the you know simple chapter books the outsiders or other middle school level books where are those nine items oh sure they are sure um do these have people i

025i think if is the top right the page number four okay so page four hms about the sixth one down gen supplies and i'm looking at available budget 2000 and then several lines down for their hms library instructional materials again i don't know if this is what we would use for additional reading books 1 000 available there i think library books would be books that the students would take out of the library as opposed to student books that the kids are getting from their ela teachers i would think those would be two different line items but i don't know instructional supplies are different line items and library supplies correct library each library has has a supply budget to to recirculate as you know we really only have two librarians in the district the high school

026had a full librarian who's now out for covid and working with elementary students and hanson's librarian slash librarian actually teaches a full load of classes so in district we have parasupport in our libraries outside of the high school and i think that would be ideal but if you look at if we dig into when we present our budget again in february if you look at what we provide for instructional supplies district-wide we're poor i mean not poor financially we don't provide anything in instructional materials george as the middle school principal myself as the high school principal that line item hasn't shifted since 2010. um so i think we can look at how we want to provide or use utilize the money and the resources we get from the communities to provide instructional materials and i

027agree with you don the reading books are great for kids um and then this year and i'm already jumping forward we're going to be looking at devices as well so i think we can look at those line items and look at how we appropriate them and how the principals actually spend that money for the circulation for the for the publications in the library i know in our classrooms right now we are short of books to hand out to kids uh in all the districts and our teachers have been outstanding in recycling and collecting donations so that that we can put books in kids hands that's where that's what happens when we're in the bottom third of the of the of the state and books cost a lot of money also like a set of perma-bound

028books to give like a like a class out of the outsiders like those cost a lot more money than you actually think like in my district at the end of the year we're always short you just lose books like kids don't like chromebooks like if the chromebooks didn't come back in from march like textbooks and and literature books didn't come back to i'm sure um and they cost more money i think than we think but the other thing too i don't know jeff in the district our la can kids take a book out of the library and do like the seven to two hour like drop backing george is going to jump in on that so what's happened uh the libraries what we've done is we've shrunk as budgetary budgets shrink and we've lost people

029in the libraries what we tried to hold on and there's two different things we're talking about but if you're talking about increasing the circulation and getting books in the hands of students we always tried to make sure that whether it's the paraprofessional or the remaining librarians we at least did uh what was called like the book of the month club it was something you pay about two thousand dollars for we always did it usually sometimes didn't come out of the library line but it was you would receive 20 books a month over 12 months so at least you'd get 244 new books of high interest caldecott winners newberry winners into your library we still try to do that in our libraries not necessarily this year because it's so different but that's what we do when

030it comes back to the classroom set i know what you're saying have being a former middle school principal that the amount of money you would pay for the one classroom set would be astronomical when you think about what you could get that book for on amazon let's say so you could get the paperback of i don't know ivan the great or the mighty ivan or whatever book and then you might get a 5.99 on amazon but when you get it perma bound and permabound is basically if you can think back it's sort of like taking a paperback and almost making it like a textbook you know it's like that hard plastic it fixes the the binding a little bit and so you can keep it for years when those things happen you're now it's astronomical

031so we've always tried to pair share and do books i think at the highlight when we had a lot of money at the time coming in we would get the double class sets per grade so that teacher a would have the class set and teacher b would also have a class set so the whole let's say eighth grade reads it at the same time and then those books go away and they go on to the next one but i do agree that instructional supplies and library materials is something we really need to look at as we move forward like jeff said i think we're going to talk a little bit more about one of some of the initiatives we have as we go forward to equal the playing field it's a technology component but there

032are things out there now from our new reading program at the elementary school and then also what's called epic which is an online library for kids that hopefully can address that to make sure we're a little more equitable in the future thank you i think if we can get what that actual cost is for the permabound sets it would be nice for the committee to understand how much it really would be to put a book in every eighth grader's hand um so if you if i remember if i remember correctly you're looking at you're looking at like thirteen hundred dollars for a class set for permabound and that's for a novel that's not for a that's not for a textbook that's not for a basal reader that's not for a program at the middle school

033and it's something that always sadly doesn't end up ends up on the floor of the budget cut because then you have teachers who do the right thing and work hard and go above and beyond and they might get their scholastic points if they order books with kids and they use their own points to get some books we go with like our program with the public libraries where they'll get sets but no you raise an excellent point okay i'm i'm just looking also on page three as the whitman middle school um in that general supply line is is very minimal it's eight thousand dollars for the entire school so correct and everything comes out of that your pencils your pens your planners your uh everything that you need from a non-educational standpoint so much so that

034it also becomes the consumables that your science department needs so that's why pre-covered you have dances that's why you have fundraisers that's why you have all of those things because in the mind of a principal they're saying you guys do what you need to do but i still have to make sure i can run my building so you look for ancillary methods to do it now that's just the state we've been in since you know since i've been here since 2004 and hopefully we're on a path now that we have such a modest you know modest gains start to get three sets of votes yeah we could start to get on a point though that those are the discussions that we start having and those are the planning that we start having so we can

035actually make sure we have a level playing field for all students so i agree with you don right thank you and i appreciate these balance of available funds have gone into e d it's not like the money just disappears and goes by the wayside but if there is an available budget um you know i would have i would like to see that it's used we've budgeted for supplies so i see uh an availability there left over um at those schools so thank you for sharing okay any other discussion anything else john no thank you very much okay thank you we need to vote you need to vote on that right you need to vote john correct so i think michelle could you clarify what we just took the vote on because i might have misspoke

036i may have said the budget and not the line item transfer we're all set we're all good okay all right thank you okay uh superintendent thanks uh thanks chris so um on your table i i gave you a um self-assessment that i'd like you to review over the next couple weeks and provide feedback this showed what i feel we did as a district what i did as a superintendent in uh in some abbreviated term um from night from september of 19 through um september of 20. uh from this document though i've asked you or as i asked you a couple weeks ago i need your help as i prepare my goals superintendent goals usually superintendents have four goals sometimes six two goals being a professional a professional goal for myself professional improvement and then a

037student learning goal the other two goals are district oriented and what i asked you to do for homework and this is the first time i think this committee is going to discuss what you see the needs of the district are i ask you to come up with some some district goals and i also preface that to not really think about it in terms of budget or finances what this committee what you as individual school committee members would like to see me look at this year in those two district goals so i kind of open it up to to members of the committee who would like to volunteer i feel like i'm the teacher in class who's going to raise their hand first but who would like to share and michelle's going to be taking some

038notes and i'm going to take all of this information and we don't have to vote on it this isn't a votable this is a discussion item and i'd like to just really hear what you think so then i can structure my goals with george we can talk about it internally and say this is these are two of the two of the top priorities and these other these are other things that we could potentially work on as a district i have some things in the back of my mind already that i'm seeing as we opened up in september what we look at is the district we have some things on the table already that we need to work on as a district but i really want to hear from the committee as to what you see

039specifically for for 2021 you would like me to put on as a district goal and for me to work on this year so i open it up to two members of the committee um to share did you say you wanted us to look at this for the next yeah for the next meeting student self-assessment it's it's five pages long so i kind of want you to read it for the next meeting and give me feedback if you see some or or question uh question that i didn't want to take committee's time tonight and read it through um so but i'm really looking for discussion now on what where you want it what you want me to focus in on district what we can work as a leadership team to work on district-wide and really kind

040of take out the oh my goodness it's going to cost too much money throw it out there and then we can see as we formulate the budget those costs and maybe put it in a two or three year plan but specifically what you would like to see representing your community our district as a whole for me to put down and drive us forward this year mr boyce welcome mr chair sure go ahead mr boyce i just heard don i don't mind going after but also no no okay um thank you um jeff one of the things i thought was remarkable was the idea when and i know it had to do with space and so forth but bringing the preschoolers up here and having that sort of integration and when i ran for re-election in

041in the spring i mentioned that as one of my things i thought why can't we collaborate more across grades and i don't know how that would look or what that would be like or how that i mean i almost consider it like maybe in a way it's kind of a strategic thing or it's it's one of our you know engagement things or i don't know but i mean it just seemed to be it ideal and i know this wasn't the past this past year wasn't the year they say hey will you take us on a trip through there because you know once as you mentioned march 13th hit it was a whole different game um but a couple things and i think it probably is brought out because of the covert world is is that

042and more doing things outdoors i mean we sent our kids in i remember being at the indian head school and spending time in the town force across the way yeah maybe there's a lot of liabilities but but start somewhere else um i mentioned i keep saying build the solar system in in the in the hallways of the schools and give students the idea of like yeah that is quite a ways away use that back field and behind indian head i know these sound like more like other type of ideas and not specifically yours or whatever but it just a couple of things if they can be grown off of or whatever and i'm not trying to mess up our whole school system and say hey we just straightened out all the schools you know we

043can't now put uh sixth graders back in the conley or or anything like that it's not it's not so much like that but just the idea and and trying to still foster with that we might have a vanna white up there right now so when you shout out your things uh joy might be writing them down for two to four mr boyce okay three's a nice number um the mass conferences and i know this year it's a whole different beast it's not happening in november or whatever at least the executive meetings happen happening massive mass one of the years i went and when dr whitney was here and we were sitting down and we we listened to i forget the um the gentleman's name um but they talked about how global learning you said uh

044you're stu you're a student you're sitting in front of a computer and you know you're listening to a classroom in japan or you're listening to a classroom in and and before we had the china i want to say exchange teachers here um you know we've had a lot of different programs we just delved in in an emergency way in the telling our kids you're gonna have to learn online for a little while until we get all this sorted out why not almo almost continue like that i know everyone wants to get back in the schools all all together and that would be ideal but i still think that there's a tangible layer that can come off of why can't we keep that that um not even if it's not global even if it's local or

045even within us i mean it could be something and i tell you all about the presidential libraries until i'm blue in the face probably in your you don't want to listen to me after a while but i use that as an example because it's a it's it's a system that isn't often understood and once you put it out there and say you could go to all of these take your passport book and move and that's just an example of something like that but that would be my third one and i i saw that as a good opportunity thank you thank you sure i'll get dawn first fred then i'll go to you um i would say full day kindergarten universal kindergarten for incoming students um i looked at our reopening plan and should the governor

046close us down our school hours for high school kids start at 9 a.m so my second would be healthy start times for all students to look at that we appreciate john tuffy's work but i don't know that he's on board for a third semester so i don't know if that falls under district goals but certainly some focus on um you know full-time replacement in that position is real important i'm sorry i didn't hear that group replacing john yeah in about four years yeah so that's kind of my side side note and um certainly maintaining a technology plan and replacement plan yearly to replenish devices said done yes okay fred okay and i'll leave this to administration to uh when you have a list of prioritized uh practical use in the high school for businesses or

047decker classes uh let's send kids out to you know be able to sell advertising and learn how to you know operate quote unquote in the real world uh i think that some of life's lessons could be incredible lessons one-to-one devices i know that was just mentioned foreign languages but not to bring them back for the middle school but to start them in elementary and really foster the proper education because it is a global economy um chapter 74 programs that perhaps are not taught at votec i know jeff you've had discussion about uh nurses at one point or a nursing program uh different advantages that we can take there uh that could help us both budgetarily as well as uh you know being able to expand our offerings so to speak and i believe that's my

048four thanks fred hillary um i just i guess this is one but um i would like to see a plan or i don't know if there's a plan can you hear me for um like diversity equity inclusion training like social justice training for staff for students that's a big it and not even like including it in the curriculum you know from you know i know that my children are in first and second grade and a lot of things they're doing is being kind and what do you do at the playground to be kind the high school level you know what are the kids learning what are they reading are they reading books by old white men who are dead are they reading more contemporary things um you know getting that in and that's that's going

049to take a lot of work on the curriculum side and it's not going to be done in two months but at least starting to think about it and i see things on twitter that educators in the district are already doing along those lines but to have something a little more formal um training for teachers too myself like to have those conversations in a classroom that's a hard thing to do you know good manner so i can speak to that um so i'm glad you brought that up like we talked um one of the things we're looking at is we're in our fourth year now formal fourth year of the excel coalition so the excel network is something that whitman hanson's been a part of um and that stands for excellence and social emotional learning it's

050through the renny center it's also through transforming ed uh we're one of 22 districts in the state that are still with it in its fourth year and this whole year so what we've done internally in a quick snapshot is what we've done in the district is take the castle castle is the center for advancement of social emotional learning it's out of california but they produce pieces that students need that adults need to have healthy proper uh life self-awareness self-responsibility resiliency all of these pieces and we've worked on that in this district k-12 for the past three years so now in the fourth year the theme of this is transformative sel so transformative sel is taking those topics like shared responsibility like self-awareness like self-management and saying how do we identify how do we do this

051as a culture and a system to not only let people have an identity let people belong but also let people have a sense of agency and what does agency mean it means that they have a sense to say we need to critically look at what we read we need to critically look at what we teach we need to look at the system itself so we can end up in a place of justice so justice is after equity after equality it gets to justice and that's when the system will change so that everyone themselves can have an equal part and can all prosper now that goes along with not only what's happening in society but it goes along with the meat and potatoes of what's happening now in our district from a standpoint of our social

052emotion uh socioeconomic groups from our english language learner groups from our groups that are underrepresented and there's things in our plan that you'll see that specifically address these but then it also gets to the bigger picture of what's happening in society what do we read what are we reading what voice do we give to our students what voice do we give to our staff so that's a big piece of what it is that is going to be in our it's in our strategic plan that you'll see and it's going to be one of the themes that we have this year with our excel network the excel network we have in the district is 11 individuals from every school and from multiple levels within schools so it goes from a nurse it goes from a principal

053it goes from classroom teachers middle school teachers elementary teachers high school folks so we're really trying to look at it from the whole system of what we do here so that we can not only produce better for the system of education whitman hanson but so that we can produce better for the society that we all live in anybody else david um i just have a list right here most of my papers are on community engagement but um i'll just read off a couple um enrollment hold harmless mental health addressing education equity hold on one second [Laughter] enrollment so can i ask for example like you know like drawing the same full day um and like fred was saying add you know something to compete with uh votech in their program so david just to clarify

054enrollment i'm not sure what right well well we're in a whole of harmless right now so in order to get a hold harmless one of the things we're gonna need to do is work on enrollment and we're going to need to get more people in the district so i say we've got to orient our goals around that and getting out of hold harmless especially with chapters uh chapter 70 reforms after the student opportunity act so then mental health education equity hold on one second david mental health yeah we already mentioned tech but special education improvements public transparency which would tie in with community engagement and to make sure we're creating student first oriented policies and then my last one was just saying that as a committee we should be working on robust community engaged initiatives

055that way we're out in the community people are under like are aware of what's going on there isn't any narratives going out about you know the schools trying to do this and that everyone knows what's being said it's transparent it's honest it's coming directly from the source it's coming from us and there isn't people on like you know i know whitman pride or something saying this or that you know we have the opportunity to get to our community before someone else kind of intercepts if that makes any sense but oh yeah robust community engaged initiatives and that's what i have for the plan that's all that's it dave oh yeah that's the first strategic i'll talk more for community okay chris so just too high level i think we've already covered some of it but

056one really around whatever we decide with community i think that's more defined as making sure the community understands the what why i have so a little bit more richer in terms of there's a lot of great things that happen throughout the district but understanding the why why are we doing some of the things that we do because i think that really helps bridge everything and then a little bit i guess a continuation of kind of where steve was going i think with everything that's happened uh in terms of the pandemic and how it's changed things i almost want to suggest that you guys kind of come up with your own bhag or really big crazy goal in terms of what is the delivery of education look like in 20 years so we can kind of

057work towards that right because if you look at education and post world war ii kind of what's happened yeah you had computers in the internet but the delivery has still kind of been kind of a consistent push so i think there's really an opportunity like steve said with some of the things that have transpired even with some of the stuff that fred's talking about like how can we be different not to be better or anywhere but no if we're really thinking about the future of education why wait for something fundamental to shift why not start to think about what that looks like and then if we kind of have a little bit of a vision we the steps that we're taking today can kind of align to that so it's more of the goal would

058be to develop what that big future of education looks like for this district i understand and i deal with this all the time so i understand and appreciate you'll have to deal with the certain regulations that need to be followed there's certain things that need to be done this is how it was always done but i think this is the time to really think about the future in terms of you know how can we be a little bit different innovative in terms of that mike yes um most of mine were already touched upon through other people but um the one i do have is can we work on a facilities plan worked on 100 transparency with our boards of selectmen and finance committee and keep it up to date that's it yep okay george i

059just wonder if i can buy a vowel okay there you go no on a serious note um the uh my biggest issue um even before i decided to uh run for school committee was uh the culture right uh so much and i see it jeff you have it in here professional culture and different aspects of culture but um i i just think it's uh imperative um for at any any level to um at any interface between the school district and the uh community to um you know just basically be kind and empathetic and inclusive um you know it all kind of ties together to not only um getting more people involved and more support but creating the best environment to educate children right um whether it's you know um on the sports field or you

060know when you walk in the building or you know anything really i think it to be more mindful of um you know the fact that we're here uh to provide a service to our community right and that that's what's most important to me i think there you go most of them touched already um the only thing i think i could add most of the people already said it is engagement with the it's kind of hard to do right now with covid but have like maybe town hall sessions where you can be out there with a couple of us there and if people you know because we're always like i guess we're educating people constantly like i think chris was pointing that out we're not getting some of that information out there and we gotta pound

061that back um you know the the biggest thing i think we have to do is transparency and in every level we have to get that out there better um and to touch on what christmas is saying equity across the line for all these grades there's certain things that aren't done it's always you know it's we have to be very very consistent with this we're not good at that um you know nothing else that everybody else has already brought up you know but i just thought maybe it's bad time to try to do a town hall with the covid but eventually get something like that kicked in and i do like what mike was saying about the facilities also so just i love the list so the nothing on that list hasn't been talked about in

062my office between george and myself and if this committee is allowing us to just you know think outside the box we've already have some to go to your plan what education looks like in 10 years we have a new middle school project coming up we're already thinking post middle school how can we transform this district into a unique district so giving us this opportunity to look at and when i say us because i feel my goal will trickle out to everybody in the district if this committee has us focus in on some of those things and and hillary yours is already in goal number two for me for professional practice i think that's imperative this year especially looking at these district goals these are all something we can collaborate on and when i say district-wide

063we'll put these in but i'm going to need your help as a committee to be united in these and if we move into that one-to-one initiative with a full tech you know looking at infrastructure and tech one-to-one what does that mean it's not just a device in somebody's hand we have to look at how we're going to educate the students using that device and train the teacher so when i'm asking for money in the budget we will talk as a committee about why the whys of needing that and i need this committee to spread out and send that message out it's not just a device the students are going to have to learn how to use that device and the teachers are going to have to modify their lessons to that device which costs a

064little bit more a little less or whatever as we we tend to move forward so all of the things that you've shared with us are things that we've talked about and i'm really glad we're all on the same page nothing was was way outside that i'm thinking or george is thinking or this committee is thinking these are things that i think are attainable that i can put in as goals and we can benchmark it and you can measure them as we go along so thank you for sharing this this list i will look at the two two goals from the district we might add a third because i did the msba project for us and that middle school is going to be a district thing that i'm going to need your assistance on as well

065as we're looking at the feasibility study talking about what we want in a new building that will be a goal of mine whether it's it's a formal goal or it's an informal goal that's something that i want to make sure that we see through and get that new middle school project going so thank you for this is there any other any other comment on the on the district goal piece mr chair yes mr small that is if we can come up with a way whether it's by going through the packs and holding separate smaller meetings or having larger meetings but getting community involvement in what they're looking for in the district and what they're looking for for their kids to be taught uh i think would be imperative okay i mean i i get ner

066i'll be very i get nervous when i ask the community what we're going to teach students i think we have standards and we have a state curriculum that we follow and different people in different areas might have different ways they want their their their their students taught i do appreciate though get soliciting community input on what they want to see and how the district moves so i i hear that and we'll see what we can do and then when we talk about engagement i think that's another area that we can focus in on and looking at a town hall or how we can engage the community in in a way so that their voice can be heard and how they want to see this district moving forward in the next five 10 15 years just

067wanted to add two comments as a follow-up to two of these items um as hillary mentioned diversity equity and inclusion um a year ago i attended an that masc conference and there was a seminar on this and i felt like at the time these can somewhat be buzzwords that people don't they hear it and the explanation that really hit home with me and resonated an analogy if you will diversity it was explained to me as similar to if you have a party and you invite everyone so that's diversity equity is everyone who comes to the party gets to add to the playlist of the music their own that's tough and inclusion [Music] equity inclusion is actually having everyone on the dance floor together so i thought that was just i just wanted to expand on

068that um to me that was uh really interesting and second um mr small mentioned chapter and how we could maybe begin to talk about adding programs and he said nursing i my daughter at the high school was invited to a new club which is pre-med club at the high school so there are people interested in medicine and science right here in our building superintendent would you be able to explain a little about chapter 74 and what we could do and can't do as that relates to cell show vo tech so i can't go deep into that because i don't know exactly the rules around what we can take from voctec i know we can look at different types of programs within the within the district um and apply for chapter 74 one of those areas

069we were looking at was potentially culinary and moving that forward but fred and i spoke a couple years back about bringing in more of an online resource around vet tech x-ray technician things like that where students can actually attain a certification and walk out of here and either be certified or go or or have a year of massasoit knocked off their belt so those are programs that i can look at to bring in and i know it's a i don't know if it's competitive against folktech and john i don't know if you know more about chapter 74 than i do but that's not something i'm well versed at so i don't want to speak and we can we can look at that for another meeting i don't know if you know anything about chapter 74

070um and what we can do and what can't do as a regional school district not to put you on the spot but i will i think everybody knows i previously was in regional school district and silver lake is a comprehensive high school which means that we have the regular academic program that you have here but we also had i think it was six but i'd have to would take me a minute to go around the room and count the different shops that were chapter 74 programs chapter 74 is just different funding formula than chapter 70 which is what we get here and it is very specific about about supervision and the resources that you that you have to have now you're a member of south survotech um but there's as far as i remember there's

071nothing that would that would preclude you from being in competition with them although that's sort of an expensive way to to uh to move forward so you'd be looking for programs that that aren't readily available there they are expensive to run because they are they require a lot of equipment that is not inexpensive and a lot of supervision in some programs that might have a risk that it's involved with them but it often appeals to a different group of students students who who are somewhat more focused perhaps than than the student that's looking forward to a college experience in liberal arts and at that point they're looking to make a decision as to what direction their life will take um it's it's often somebody who maybe has more of a goal of of graduating high

072school and going into the workforce although the numbers more or less say that about two-thirds of of all students and and i don't believe it's changed about two-thirds of all students who leave a leave a vocational high school go on to additional training now that may be a four-year school like a wentworth or umass for horticulture it it may be a two-year program for an associate's degree that puts them on a path to a four-year degree or just a two-year program that gives them additional skills or certifications in various areas but it is it is a commitment the district would have to make and chapter 70 so the vocational education program at deci is a separate uh group and we really would start with talking with them about what it would require thank you thanks

073john um just to add to that is there anything at the high school um like a senior project or an internship program for seniors that they can go out and shadow a veterinarian for example or do is there a program currently at the high school like that we've had that in the past i don't know where this what the status is the past year but we've had that in the past uh it was a school-to-work program then it was an internship program the challenge we had there was not necessarily the ability of students wanting to go out where the where the people coming in so we have worked with with local local town we just didn't want people traveling too far away but that's something we've looked at we've also looked at you know a

074uh diff other opportunities for kids to leave the building and get hands-on experience in the in the career field that they're looking for i just before we moved off this topic i uh i just think i wanted to make sure that we talked a little bit about curriculum and education has a goal this year and i know one of the things that were we started this week and will be in the next two weeks is that students will now for this year for really the first formalized time will have k-8 interim assessments in ela and math at the elementary school we're using inter-reading which is our new program that was purchased just this year and in our second year of i ready at the middle school we've expanded our offerings with what's called ixl which

075is an online platform for reading and math and that'll go up through the eighth grade uh our goal is to do it three times this year so that we can really say okay where are we at from where we were now at the beginning where are we at at a midpoint range and then where did we end up with and this is a this is a pretty big movement in our district because we're finally centralizing our curriculum at the lower levels thanks to the work that the towns and yourselves have done with our new programs and then it's also tracking or it's also allowing us to expand into the middle school with some of the new online components what chris said this pandemic this pandemic has now sort of changed how we do things and

076how we do things from a technological standpoint to assess where kids are at is some of the new things we're doing now in k to eight excuse me in six to eight so i just want to let everybody understand that that's for the we're doing interim assessments that'll help say where our students are in their growth and then a path will be developed so that they can continue to reinforce those skills while still learning the curriculum that they're at so that that is something that is going to be a part of our plan it's also part of our plan to then address those subgroups that may not have um achieved as much as they have or that they may need more support so i just wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that we

077still have the educational component that we're pursuing and that's one of the main things we're going to be doing this year with that that's the question um how often are the curriculums revised like do teachers get together every summer and kind of look at this is what our plan was yeah what our math was we didn't actually get to this or we yeah so curriculum yeah so curriculum planning takes place uh at the element at the k-8 level now it's in his second year with lead teachers so they have a we have a curriculum elementary curriculum director and that is the work of lead teachers who are per grade per school um per discipline per dis per grade per school k to five then per school per discipline at six seven and eight and then

078at the high school we have curriculum coordinators curriculum coordinators also have a grades also have a six to eight piece as an overall sayer but their responsibility is to say where are we at most of that work has always traditionally been in the summer that neces that didn't necessarily get done this summer because of the state we were in however they've already started we have all of our teacher leaders chosen they've already had their first meetings and then that trickles out into the individual grade levels in schools with their professional learning communities so this year especially that's where we're at so what we started with this year with the result of what i just said is now we have the ability to say where are the children at so now we can assess where they're

079at compared to where they should be at their grade level see if there's deficits or if there's gaps and then it some of the programs we have now in ela and math then adjust and give them a learning path so hopefully there's remediation so the the adult the human aspect is to fix the curriculum itself the technological aspect in a way is what is going to help define the path that the student needs to move forward thanks george any other questions on or or comment on the goals piece thank you do you mind if we go out of order and get bob rogers not at all no so we will take bob rogers um let me see now also from athletic director bob rogers regarding student athletic transportation waivers and an amendment to the athletic

080user fee policy during covid thank you all right good evening everybody so the first thing i have for you is an athletic transportation change to what the current school policy is regarding students riding the school bus so we give the parents an opportunity this was reviewed by our school attorney to make sure it was legal it gives parents the option to allow their child to be driven by another parent for the child to drive on their own if they have their license and for the child to drive with another student who meets the standard by the law you know they have to have their license for six months before they can drive another student so parents are given the option to sign one two three or none of those the reason for this uh a

081few reasons the first one is some parents still are not comfortable with their children riding on a bus um the second thing is transportation is kind of at a premium right now we have limited resources with first student although i will say it's been much better than i thought it was going to be in terms of them meeting our needs in part because the other school that uses the same office as us abington they don't have as many offerings as we do um but we also are going to be in a financial crunch in the athletic department we're not going to have any gait receipts um so where we can save money it does help i have made it clear to the coaches to make sure the kids know that you know they should if

082they want a seat on the bus we will do everything possible to give them a seat on the bus this should be if they don't want to take the bus and that's where we've kind of stressed that with the kids and the family so far so i just asked the committee to go ahead and approve this and again this has been reviewed by school council motion to approve second transportation that was from dawn had the motion and david had the second any discussion the motion is to approve the waiver as presented correct no discussion we'll take a roll call vote uh mr boyce yes mr colony yes mr jones yes mr howard yes sniffing yeah mr small yeah ms myers yes mr force yes and mr scriven yes thank you the second uh item you

083have in your packet is regard to user fees uh knock on wood i hope this doesn't become something that we're gonna have to deal with but just trying to be proactive that if we should face a shutdown um so that everybody goes into this with their eyes open in terms of what we would give for refunds after i met with this committee last time and we discussed it briefly and listening to some of the feedback that some of you had and then i met with dr jones again we actually revised this just a little bit to be a little bit more in favor of the families we're doing two week increments instead of what we had before was four so you can see we basically have a 20 assessment for each two week increment so

084if we were to get shut down you can see it in your packet it goes from 80 60 40 and 20 depending upon where that shutdown happens knock on wood it's not going to happen but just in case it does i do want people um to go into it with their eyes open in terms of when they pay their user fee they know what it is thanks bob so i'll entertain a motion to um approve the amendment of the athletic user fee policy as presented so moved and dan second roll call vote go ahead fred yep uh do we need to place the actual policy number on here i know we have a policy for athletic fees we need to place that exact number on here so that's exactly what we're approving fred i don't

085believe i could be wrong um i don't believe there's actually a written policy i don't think jeff you might i don't think there's a policy it's it's it's a protocol it's something that committee assesses something that says already in the student handbook it does say in the student handbook that once the user fee is paid it's non-refundable for any reason like if a student leaves they decide to quit the team they get kicked off the team for discipline reasons uh the user fee is always non-refundable i i kind of put this in kind of is in good faith because you know it's to nobody's fault if you know we get shut down so i don't think there's a policy number but i i could be wrong michelle just looked it up and she said she

086has the benefit of being here i'm just going to follow bio kf-r but that's more of the building use than the athletic case i thought we did have to have public key policy that could be mistaken i guess i think it's the difference it's probably semantics the difference between the policy and having it written in the handbook so i in a sense it's written in the handbook and then that gets approved by the school committee every year so i think that's where it gets adjusted when we do adjust it so we're amending the [Applause] the handbook with us uh this is just an addendum to the current user fee protocol that we use and i think it was it's imperative because because in it it's non-refundable it's cut and dry we've never experienced this before

087and and what we talked about is we don't think it's relatively fair and equitable if the season shuts down tomorrow and i've paid 250 i'm just my concern is that we have it in the right place so someone can't say that they weren't aware of it understood i think the other thing i should say is it's been communicated to all the families that are currently participating as they participate um i did put in there just so i wasn't presumptuous i said this needed school committee approval on the handout that you have um that they received i gave that to all the families already and it does say that it needed your approval for it to be ratified if you didn't approve it then actually it would be that they wouldn't get any refund you default

088back to the handle so yeah go on i was just going to add maybe we're looking to just add this as an amendment to the non-refundable language temporarily for this year yes maybe this is a one-year non-refundable policy we are i'm sorry i take that back policy but yeah i would say as long as we're in the covid situation yeah is that clear michelle okay all right so we'll take a roll call uh steve boyce yes dan colady yes mike jones yes chris howard yes hilary niffen yes red small yeah dawn byers yes david fourth yes and chris griffin yes and then just the last thing just to for your own information um because you're probably getting phone calls or emails my phone's been ringing off the hook and the emails just regarding the attendance

089policy up until yesterday we were restricted by the fact that we were in phase three step one in terms of the number of people that we could have at our facilities so because of that the patriot league athletic directors voted to only allow home school parents attend the events with school-issued lanyards so we could identify who is at our facility that's what we've done it's been quite a project to do that to get language to everybody we've done that however yesterday the governor did say on monday we're going to move to step two of phase three which will increase those numbers i have an athletic director meeting tomorrow and what we're hoping to do is to adjust that in some way i don't know what the vote will be because there are some people that

090still would just prefer to keep it the way it is obviously it's more manageable this way but i'm of the mind that the experience that the kids have in athletics is a whole family experience it's just as important for mom and dad and the grandparents to be able to go so i'll be advocating at the meeting tomorrow to raise those numbers um with a plan to be able to make sure that we can have social distancing when it does when we have our vote tomorrow i will be putting it on social media on our twitter page and our athletic web page as well but that's where we are right now and we're hoping that right now the plymouth community above the athletic director their superintendent has said nobody from another town hoping that if we

091all agree that that's the way to go and we can have like the visitors on the opposite side or in a completely different section not interacting that we can work together so that the season is really short this year it's 11 games so when you say you can only go to the home games you're either talking five or six games so to lose the away games i think is you know it's a it's we're gonna advocate for tomorrow and i will report out how we made out well just to clarify so parents right now as of today only at home games identified by a lanyard so no students just immediate family members how many family members can go there's only two per student okay it's two per student and they get the lanyard and it's

092and it's um sports specific and level specific so for tomorrow you don't want to be in my shoes tomorrow because in my first attempt to try to make all this work we have cross country home tomorrow we have field hockey home tomorrow and we have a volleyball home tomorrow so i will at each one of those venues are all their own venue we'll have those restrictions and we'll all have their specific their sport specifics as the the level the name of the sport and they have certain areas that they can be they got the lanyards with a letter explaining what they're supposed to do they have to wear the mask they have to stay socially distant there have been some experience there you go don has the language right there um there have been unfortunately

093some examples elsewhere in the country of some really ugly interactions between athletic administrators and some community members that feel like it's their right and the reality of it is we're charged to make sure that we're following state law and so that's what we will do and our community usually you know knock on wood i've been here a long time and people are very respectful they may not like it they'll tell me they don't like it but they're usually very respectful so i expect people to abide by it tomorrow okay thank you i just wanted to clarify two right now and if with the with the uh the ads meeting it could it could raise after one day the motion that i'm making tomorrow is to make it so that every lanyard is worth two guests

094okay so that way not having to reissue more lanyards we could just say that those uh families were able to get that and then be able to create student lanyards a certain amount for each game to be able to do that and then have those the women hanson lanyard honored at an away game so you could wear your whitman hanson lanyard to duxbury or to plymouth or whatever it is but again it's going to be it's a vote and it was really close the last time we had the vote so we'll see how it goes tomorrow one of the things i was just going to comment on on that kind of with mr scriven said on culture it was weird in the building without there's no it's the building's flat and there's no friday night

095lights there's no and hopefully starting tomorrow we might get a little bit more of student engagement or if the opportunity comes that you can actually go see your friends game or even parents being able to see and participate it can raise the culture right now because we are experiencing real flat especially in this building because of the restrictions we've had to put into place to keep kids safe yeah obviously jeff i'm biased but but i i get to see other communities in other schools in our culture at our school in terms of athletic in terms of the kids supporting each other going to other games you see the attendance at our games compared to other schools and it's it's much larger than other schools and you know we have a lot of things a lot

096of fun things on friday night lights we have the couches the super fan coaches we give the super fan cards you have all kinds of specials for the kids to be involved in our captains go through leadership training so that they try to find ways to be more inclusive to the groups so but you're right i mean we definitely have a huge void right now because it's you know the whole thing about if a tree falls in a forest doesn't make a sound if nobody's there right and it's kind of like if the game happens and the stands aren't full did the game really happen and we're hoping that that changes at some point i'm good okay did you want to ask chris i'm all set thank you thank you everybody thank you thank you

097so next um i sent you a copy of the strategic plan that we worked on uh prior to february prior to going out in covid and as a leadership team we we voted on this in june what i'm bringing for the committee today is not necessarily to vote on the strategic plan but for input from the committee so that we can add things run it by our leadership team our outcomes we haven't been able to develop outcomes yet we haven't really met and and drilled down but the the the hallmarks of success george talked about excel already uh pre-k 12 system of teaching and learning safe and secure environment and then we added community engagement is a hallmark of success these are things that i'd like the committee to look at again visionary looking two

098to five our a three-year plan that we can have action steps we know we're working on and over the course of the next three years we can we can report out to the school committee so i'm looking for input that we can add so that we actually approve the strategic plan at an upcoming meeting and i can align my goals to this to this plan as well so input and i know a couple folks have already mentioned a few things that we put on on the board but other things pertinent to the strategic plan whether it be in the mission the vision the core values the theory of action or the hallmarks of success we're really open to uh to hearing what what say you do you think it would be a good idea to

099have us go over this and talk about it next meeting or do you want to do it i know we sent it out but i'll take input we can we can revisit it next meeting as well but as if there if people want to share right now i'm willing to take that information now we can share again uh a next meeting as well but as we have it if folks want to share that's fine i'll go thanks so small looking at how do we actually engage the community uh you know and i know you sent out a wonderful question here uh the one thing i don't believe we utilize enough is the tax uh you've got people working really hard you know they do a tremendous job of fundraising but they also you know meet

100on a regular basis and convey a message back to other parents and i'm thinking that could be one way that we could uh perhaps hold smaller sessions but to quote unquote get the word out there so to speak um i can keep going or we can keep rolling fred i think that's good um you know we it appears sometimes we have individuals doing their own thing on social media and i believe a consistent message coming from the superintendent is a wonderful thing uh you know jeff you're the face of the district you know for good bad or indifferent uh you know it's your face that they say that was the joke by the way i'm laughing under my mask the video is a little bit behind so sort of weird here but uh you know

101i think that the communications coming from the superintendent's office uh you know a wonderful thing and one strong consistent message otherwise you know too many chefs can mess up the soup so to speak i believe perhaps some structured time within our meetings you know that we can have public forums uh whether it be a q a and we you know select you know five random emails or messages that people have questions you know just uh you know have that uh you know when the world changes back perhaps we can get more into you know the coffee hours and you know posting little things uh you know such as that uh the express articles used to be a wonderful thing i think that's another way to reach out for uh community involvement uh you know face-to-face

102conversations i think are a wonderful thing as well uh any comments or no good out good chris i'm sorry uh go ahead chris so are we doing strategic plan feedback are we doing engaging right now we're strategic plan but i think fred jumped on the engagement okay i jumped into the engagement portion of developed communication between uh i'm sorry increase uh community relations okay i i'm sorry i skipped over david david had a comment oh i was just going to add about the social media part i actually attended a presentation by masc uh tracy novik the field director who also runs all of masc social media she did a like an hour and a half presentation and she strongly encourages all individual school committee members to use social media because that's the best way to

103reach out in the community and that is what masc has said and i think it would be in our best interest for our school committee members to stay engaged and continue reaching out and making sure information's out there and i agree with fred that absolutely jeff should be reaching out i think uh just done a great job of communication i know recently we got a bunch of emails last two weeks or so and i think they've been really informative but i also want to stress that it's our job as a committee to make sure to be on top of everything to reach out to our constituents and to utilize technology which would be social media and it's encouraged by masc well well i agree it's our job to reach out you know to people uh

104you know there are you know very vastly different things that can occur by a simple post and it you know perhaps gets misinterpreted etc you know so i don't know maybe we have a screening process that the superintendent's office you know uh looks at everything and you know people want to post things and whatnot and i'm not saying to send me the message but i'm just saying so it's a one consistent message you know that's going out because the most innocent thing can get people in trouble uh and it's you know we're all there to try and help but uh you know some things uh you know can get lost in translation and whatnot thanks fred david uh i also want to reiterate that masc did say that there's no the administration can't oversee what

105we post and say this is okay this isn't okay because that is a violation of the first amendment so there's no overseeing either by the chair or the superintendent that's not actually legal um so i just want to keep that in mind and um to my knowledge nobody here has posted anything that's resulted in anyone getting in trouble um individually so but i think can i just edit this i just think that the masc training that as a new member i also attended um the the social media posting is informative and transparent and positive and unifying and that's what we should be using our social media posting for and i don't think we all are and i agree with you i don't think we should have to send everything to jeff and george or michelle

106and say read this and do this i don't want that however right you've got it the purpose of having a social media page is not to arouse suspicion amongst our communities and that's what's been happening and that's not engaging anybody it's making them all want to turn away and not trust any of us so if we're going to have presence on social media it needs to be unifying and it needs to be positive and it needs to be factual and if people have questions and further questions people have come to me with complaints and i've said reach out to your building principal reach out to this to the superintendent i'm not qualified to field those questions about the budget numbers i'm not john tuffy i think that we need to do a better job with

107our presence on social media as far as presenting the minutes from a meeting and the facts and this is what they are and we're all here for the same goal and that's to give our kids a great education that's what we're all here for and that needs to come through and i think all of these things that have been happening are not allowing that to come through the first day of school we didn't talk about school we had a meeting about something else and we didn't talk about school and we should be ashamed of ourselves that we didn't talk about what school looked like it it was embarrassing there are people who tuned into a school committee meeting and no one asked jeff or george how the day went how did it go for the

108student no one and that's what we need to be doing thank you i just like to add to that hillary you know as a school committee member when i have someone approach me about a particular issue i do exactly that i refer them to the building principle because there's a you know we're we're kind of circumventing the the process um that we hire these people to engage in if we don't do that um so you know while it's important for us to you know take input from the community absolutely but i do think it's remember that it's important to remember that we hire uh the superintendent who then in turn hires building principles that have you know jurisdiction and a job to oversee their building so you know i think it's it's important to um

109remember that you know if we want to be an effective uh organization you know for lack of a better term go ahead david at the same time we also need to understand what our roles are and what our responsibilities are and one of my major issues and i guess related to community engagement is um the roles and responsibilities of a chair it's a 41-page document on masc one of the things they talk about is that when there's reorganization usually there's an orientation for new members so maybe going forward we should have an orientation so new members are informed we receive robert's rules of order masc does a yearly workshop on it we have a membership here any workshop that we want we can get for free because we're already paying for it there's five workshops

110i have right here that are very relevant everything we're doing district goals strategic planning governance operations roles and responsibilities so maybe in order to be more up to date with everything that's going on there needs to be more transparency we should get masc involved to let us know what is our roles and responsibilities because we have uh you know members who have been here a while uh however many years um it's been apparent that the ways we've been doing things isn't necessarily the proper way and that's not everything we've been doing is wrong but there's been a significant amount especially surrounding the budget and it's uh impacted our district it's impacted our public relations with our constituents so we need to make sure we're doing everything we can do to be on the same page

111whether it's having masc m-a-s-s um other things like that um do you mind if i just read my community engagement papers are we on that or i'd like to get hold off on that if you don't mind um go ahead chris so i i think i'm just gonna make a suggestion yeah so we're starting to go all over the map really fast and we just had like three comments on social media that probably we should spend a little more time actually getting if we want to engage then we better be able to listen and all have a conversation because if we just start all making quick points in an effort to get it out there we're not going to accomplish anything right we're just going to talk about a bunch of stuff then we're going

112to come back two weeks and be frustrated that no one listened to what i said or what steve said and we didn't do anything so i think i would suggest that if we're if we're going to do engagement we do engagement yeah if we're going to do social media we do social media if we're going to do the strategic plan we do the strategic plan but pick one let's stay on it let's make sure everyone has an opportunity to stay on a specific point and then i think we'll actually build some engagement here that will actually maybe lead to some of the action that we're all looking to seek so that would be my suggestion i i just i don't want to do the shotgun approach we're going to go 100 different ways without accomplishing

113sure go ahead george yeah if i could ask that if we sort of table the strategic plan right now because we do have four pages there we have like five pages here and then if we sort of jeff gives his goals they're all supposed to come under the umbrella of the strategic plan then go out to the schools then maybe we can get back to the engagement of the school committee and that page so my suggestion would be maybe something like that on that note i was i just wanted clarification if this is something you're is there anything blatant that we shouldn't be focusing in on because i agree with george we put this out there i'm looking for clarification as i write the goals and and we did tangent out so i appreciate that

114pull back in looking at this plan what our hallmarks are is there something else we should be looking at or is this where we should be going chris specifically to the strategic plan two overarching broad comments so one is uh and i didn't pick up on this until you sent it to us i shouldn't because it's on our plate literally six feet in front of me every meeting right but when we talk about promoting student success how do we define success right so i think that's i have a feeling i'm not saying we should do this now but if we went around we'd probably get eight different answers so what does success mean right and so i don't know how the hell you put that in this document but it's certainly a conversation point i

115think of you and the administration and leadership kind of telling us what you think is success because again it gets this aligned if you're thinking success in this and i'm thinking success is this you're going to go this way i'm going to go that way correct and then the only other thing and and i'm going to try very carefully with these comments because i think this is i want to support you and your team in terms of the core values i think potentially from anything i'm firming them up a little bit more as this is what we will do so less of the we're gonna try or we we believe no this is absolutely if it's a core value it's a will it's it's it's a core value you believe it would run through the

116wall to do it so as i look at some of these i think there's a lot i think perhaps maybe there was an opera maybe there was an intent to be inclusive of the various stakeholders and services provided but there may be an opportunity to kind of share more broadly in terms of you know this is what we're all going to do nah i'm going to do this because i'm in this group more of that and maybe less is more right but that's you can completely so not for example that's not overstepping that's yeah for example um there was a good one here uh uh where the heck was the language right here in front of me oh yeah so for example we are committed to provide a safe secure and healthy environment no we're

117not committed we will provide more secure safe and healthy environment like it is it's absolutely like that's that's what we're all gonna do um and again maybe like if i look at some of those last couple it seems like it was an attempt to be a little bit more inclusive those to me are more of um like the tactics are good not necessarily on value so sure that's thank you no i think thank you i i believe that to be true too we we will i like that statement better other other comments on strat plan nice chair welcome sorry don thank you um if if we're digging into this on page two um 1.5 uh little bit ago jeff you said you know as far as our district you said you know just what do

118we envision and leave the money piece out of it so 1.5 does say within the budgetary structure available look to establish school start times that are in best interests of students within the budgetary structure available so of course my you know opinion is um you know we should be looking at simply the students best interests healthy start times right sleep is important to all of us we need to recognize that we really need to start looking at the science behind that you know why are we having students get up and be alert in a class at 705 a.m for high school and to do that and say within the budgetary structure available i i don't agree with that um you know we're making we're putting finances ahead of students health is really what that says

119right well we'd love to do this but we can't well you know we we need to consider mr chair mr small if i could ask through you just buy us a question uh i know in the western part of the state you have students getting on the bus as early as 5 30 a.m i believe uh how are they doing it you know and that's from keen that's you know through all grades well i would have to get more information from you on what you're referring to mr small i don't know what school you are referring to but i'm considering our whitman hanson students and what i need to do that's best for our whitman hanson students anybody else mike when we brought the kids in um last year and talked about this i think

120we had i don't remember maybe six out of seven all the kids were very happy with the start time so they could keep working their jobs in the afternoon and this and that's i think maybe careful on how we worried that because they all i think all but maybe one didn't speak or what but um they all seem to be all for the start time the way it is i just comment on that i i mean you know i think it's important to um have as much empirical you know data and whatever we can for these issues you know and and i i'm you know i think a lot of times kids want to do things that maybe aren't in their best interest and or that they don't know isn't you know so i you

121know i agree that student input's important but ultimately i think it's it's more uh responsible of us to rely on the science and what the experts recommend for our children i would like to respond to that meeting that was five students females that were seniors and i believe that meeting happened around january so they were on their way out pre-covered i agree i'd like to hear from more students i'd like to hear from eighth graders who'll be coming up next year as a freshman i'd like to hear from freshmen sophomores i'd like to hear from parents input maybe the parents do feel you know this suits us well in our family in our household in the bus schedules and so forth let's hear from more people that's what i would like to accomplish this year

122and not um hearing from five students and who came into a school committee meeting who had never been here before and were asked a direct question and answered it um they did but i'd like to hear from more of our community okay thank you anybody else a little bit like i do think start times are really early but i think that we also have to consider all of the things that kids do after school so having a job is one thing what time does the school day end like 140 140 705 to 140. so they have times they're going to start their shift at 2 o'clock and you have to also consider the socioeconomic status of our communities we might very well have students who are working to help with their home finances and i

123understand it might not be a big selection but the other piece you have to think about is sports too right or kids who um to me like kids who play sports if you start like when i used to coach high school we would go to duksberg and duxbury doesn't start till like 10 o'clock in the morning i feel like they start very very late um and we wouldn't our games wouldn't start until after four o'clock and then in the fall come november first you're trying to scram in a game in the dark because not everybody gets the lights and so while i agree that teenagers as a high school teacher i agree that teenagers need more sleep and they do i just think that if you put the start time later they're still they're just

124going to stay up later like i it's a it's a vicious cycle that teenagers fall into when i i know i'm making general statements and i know they don't uh you know apply to every single student but i do think getting a feel for things but also looking at what other districts are doing i mean i think we have to look at what other districts in the patriot league are doing if we all have to align our sports and our debate teams and all of these other things with what our schools are doing and they're waiting for us to get there or we're waiting for them you know that's going to throw off a whole lot of other things than a kid's sleep schedule okay yeah i mean there's obviously a ton of factors that

125contribute to to making a decision on this and all should be considered absolutely dan you can look at it also that early start time you're preparing from life people go to work at 5 30 in the morning these kids are gonna you know have these kids on not everybody goes to college and you know they're going to be getting up early it isn't really a health issue for those people and like what hillary is saying you move it back to eight they go to bed eleven move it back to nine to go to bed at midnight and just like she says they just they're going for this six hours sleep and that's it they're going to complain no matter what time they have to go to school so chris so i i part of the

126plan is just an overall plan so it's things i think we are going to look at and i don't really want to we're in the weeds again on a certain topic and i'd like to feel if there's anything blatant that you want me to look at and change and then we will be looking at all that empirical data asking questions and this is over a three year period because i i don't know and i'll be very hon i don't know what 21 22 is going to look like because we haven't finished the september of 20 yet so all of these things this is just an overview of our focus areas as a committee and as a regional district to say these are our plans these are the things we're going to look at and some

127of these shifts will shift along the way on may march 13th the district shifted totally so and the strategic plan was put to the side because we had to react so i appreciate all the feedback if there's anything blatant that you want me to change or again come to the next meeting and we can add add two and and our team will be looking at those uh action steps and outcomes over the next couple weeks so we can add those to the the the strategic plan so we can have a plan moving forward and we can refer to that in our goals with our principals with our teachers and and with the superintendent and that was that was the strat plan we can move to engagement yep okay so we're gonna because this has been

128engaging so i know i know chris i i know we talked a little bit about engagement and you put together that sheet and i i know some folks filled that out do you want to lead the the conversation on engagement you want me to do that or we've talked a lot about it i think we can do it together i guess i'm looking for the committee this is a this is a group decision but i think the thinking was with that document is if we kind of went with the questions of where we are and then where we're going we kind of all participate with the questions it gives everyone an opportunity to kind of go opposed to just this is where we're at today and i think this is where we need to go

129well we kind of so is that okay if we just take it question at a time and kind of go around if if you want to pass you pass but does that work sure i think that would be good okay so i think the first question we had was i want to make sure i'm looking at the right document yep so how do you how do you feel the engagement is between the district including us the school committee and the citizens of whitman and hanson and you know strong weak in the middle and what do you think so and we'll just go around this way and if you don't have anything you can just pass you already just like give a one word answer or do you what do you i think whatever you think

130how would you describe how do you think the ingredient engagement is with the with the community i mean honestly i i think it's weak and i'm going to speak from on the personal experience my senior year which was only two years ago we had a huge group of seniors uh send out a district email to everyone in the school committee all the teachers and staff and we were trying to organize a march over to town hall to help get an 8.5 assessment pass because at that point it was only 6.5 and we just we didn't hear from anyone we tried to get a student-led effort and there wasn't anything we were trying to learn try to figure out the situation and ways we can advocate and nobody really stepped up we had parents step up

131to the plate but nobody on the committee so that's where i say from a student standpoint um from a parental standpoint obviously i'm not a parent but from my campaign and just reaching out and speaking with everyone throughout that time period in the spring it just seems there's a lot of um confusion you know i think it's fair to say that and a lot of people are just trying to figure out what's going on with cobit obviously but a lot of people just don't know simple stuff like our obviously like our budget process or why are we advocating for this type of budget or why do we need this you know why are where are we doing well and where can we you know for example say there's an override that needs to pass well

132why should this override pass and that's what i think we need to be doing as a school committee is interacting with our constituents and saying you know this is why we need this override this is what we're trying to do with it this is how we'll improve the community this is what we do well right now and this is what we need to work on so um from that i say from a committee standpoint i don't think we do a great job but yeah okay all right how do you think our overall engagement is i think um i would go with middle um i think we can do better i think we're doing a lot better than we were two years ago um we'll leave it at that great i think it can be better

133how is it do you think presently um i mean i think part of the reason kind of things what david said part of the reason why i ran was because information wasn't really out there um and you know as someone whose children are so young and i wanted answers and i wanted to know what was going on um it was hard to find that without just watching a full meeting all right great i feel it's weak a lot of room for improvement um one example um would be i don't recall any interaction with our senior centers and and you know greater portion of our constituents jeff you want to play no i i think i think there's always room for improvement um i i i need and i'm going to use the i statement i

134i need the committee to get words out and if if you need to clarify clarify with with myself or with george or with john as we get information out i think there was a real breakdown on social media and we let members of the community run without this this committee taking it taking charge of that so especially and you had the perfect storm when we weren't meeting together we were meeting on zoom so but that's what i found and the frustration from from where i sat was we were letting members of the community run the narrative without our own committee members stopping that narrative um whether and i don't want you to engage on social media but engage with either a phone call or a conversation with that with that person and and we can

135have that multiple so i think that that's the area oh yeah right so that's that's where i'm at sorry okay good good first yeah i think we're in the middle um and i i do i i think uh it's important for us to speak with a unified uh message because i think that um you know is going to uh speak to our i don't know it'll certainly help with our credibility as a committee um and and our effectiveness you know um and and the confidence that the public has in us as you know good fred um i rated us this week uh and the times we have too many many individuals doing their own thing on social medias i'd say you know setting emotion creating confusion uh opening meeting law dictates that we can't really

136discuss positions but we do want to answer questions for people and make sure that there's factual information out there i agree with jeff that it's not worth getting into a uh skunk war on social media going back and forth with people uh you know you call make a phone call stake your case talk to people one-on-one i think is far more effective than going back and forth because you no matter what your comp went uh on social media with that uh that type of going back and forth okay thank you and good because right now we're just trying to paint the picture of where do we all think we are so we can definitely spend more time on the how do we deal with where we are yeah um i would say we're like in

137the middle maybe a little weak one of the biggest complaints i always hear from everybody the information on the website i know we're starting to put that back together but it really needs to be more information out there people complain the things that used to be out there now missing um how budgets are budget you know our minute meetings all that stuff once they're approved they should go out there or something for people to read um you know just our information just isn't there anymore they were saying so that's uh you know that's something we have we have to improve on we have to get that information out there data is important to people thank you steve it's below the middle by the way the tech just came in and picked my microphone for that

138i have to repeat everything i said in the mean we might be here till 10. um i'm sorry it's it's below the middle and the way the reason i say that is you know not everyone has in both communities i'll just take whitman for now the desire the whereabouts the time the energy you know we talked about not only those families that they we don't know what's going on in their personal life they might not have that extra time to engage themselves and so forth we could bring almost anything out but there's going to be people that just they they either don't want to know they don't want to hear it or that they just want to say something that's not necessarily positive in the end i mean i could expand on this going on

139and on i grew up in a home that you know two parents i was very fortunate never heard about divorce until um my aunt was divorced and uh things like that my cousins were spending more time with me and you know because it's my mom stepping up to the plate for her sister you just don't in today's world with people's lives are just so much more complicated it's almost you even told me tonight that you know extremely busy day i mean you probably haven't seen your kids you probably you you know just saw your white belly this morning or whatever and i'm not saying that's that's bad for us all we know how we have to move we know how we have to keep going um but there just seems to be yeah we can

140improve upon a lot of things and obviously i'm not saying what we where we need to be but it doesn't mean that everyone is going to show up to the game or want to be engaged or want to understand um local elections you know how many upward percentage comes out on a regular local election it depends i mean it's it's usually a smaller number and you know those are the people that are deciding for the whole town or people talk about town meetings how many go to those um chris even said that vice chair even said it in one meeting you know he he knew me as he was growing up and and that kind of inspired him uh with things but not everyone gets that opportunity and so it's just a very hard reach

141but it's it's really just kind of me saying this this is it this is the raw data of what i have to say okay good thank you um i had it as so i think our overall engagement is weak with the with the overall community as a whole i think we have good relationships with our town officials but we need better connections with the citizens at large i think they should under the citizens should understand what we're doing and more importantly why we're doing the things we're doing um so i'm going to keep going this is so okay so far yeah do we want to do like a two-minute clock or we're okay everyone's okay so far okay so next question was how effective do you think our school committee meetings are specifically and building

142the engagement with the citizens of both towns so actually we'll go backwards this way steve sorry well i always like a very procedural meeting i i've run meetings before in the past i'm you know currently president of the cemetery association at colebrook and whitman and i i mean i but i understand that there's got to be involvement of more than just you know the stakeholders being in project management for work you realize the importance of the stakeholders and we have many um but yeah i i i i think we're there but i i don't i can't close a book and say we are there's probably plenty of places for improvement and i'm sure in a few minutes i'm going to hear plenty of that dan do you think the meetings are effective in building engagement

143um well i'd say about medium i mean some people have different relationships with um you know there might be only on one town or the other i mean i try to go to either either side i'll meet with any selectmen on either town because it's still a really yeah so let me refrain let me make sure i'm getting to the essence of the question so these meetings they just they are meetings all right i thought you meant with other yeah so that are specific like this in terms of building engagement how effective do you think these meetings are with building engagement with the community um i think we have to get more information out to the people when they need it um it's it's kind of like we we have to start educating them much

144better because we can say you know jeff and everybody can put out the word for whatever but sometimes it just falls on deaf ears and certain groups out there and you know it must might be up to us to have to like you know because we see how it always works they take something and they twist it to their way they're not saying anything wrong but it's not accurate you know misleading and that's where maybe we have to step in i mean i don't like going on social media for the same reason you know but maybe like the suggestion here you call those people up and say you know stop the town full you're only hurting the towns at this point it's like tell the truth and the whole truth okay first so i guess

145my answer to the question as i understand it is specific to these meetings well committee meetings i don't know what we do to encourage engagement more than just posting the meeting and and uh i'm just being honest i i might be missing things um but uh that's just my take you know and um that's it that's it just looking for everyone's take fred uh i believe we're somewhat effective but i believe if we have structured time within our meetings uh you know can we answer questions that citizens would like to submit you know in foster or perhaps a public uh you know forum you know to get people more involved that way and maybe it's uh you know also we talked about getting the packs to you know bring forward messages so but as it

146so so fred les less although what we need to do but just today yeah it sounds like you said you know kind of effective there's probably some other things we could do is that do i got it absolutely awesome somewhat effective got it jeff i i think it's poor okay um and i think there are ways to improve but if you want my overall i don't think these meetings allow engagement of the community unless it's a hot topic and we have people i would like to see it better okay don i think the meetings have not been effective either in building engagement um i have an idea on how to improve that but we can go around and come back to that yes don't don't lose them okay yeah ineffective there isn't any engagement right

147i'll go with the week yeah i would say ineffective or weak it's certainly been poor uh hold on my notes are on a different view yeah so i mean i agree with what you guys said we have limited perhaps we have limited per participants and perhaps it is even worse uh it was even worse pre-coveted as we would only have a handful of people attend the meetings so i think this is as a committee we need to reassess i think the key question listening to all this is think of what the point of these meetings maybe were so it was more of a governance and public requirement i'm not sure that school committee meetings really i'm not sure if the genesis or the intent was truly to engage the community versus more of a requirement

148so if we're saying you know we want to move from requirement to what it is then we really need to think about how we do that i think my general comment here is people aren't going to sit in a meeting for three hours they're not going to sit in the zoo for three hours and it's not their problem to fix it's ours because we need them so okay so now we're moving from okay so i think to assess where somewhere we have a lot of opportunity for improvement both in terms of our present engagement with the communities and both in terms of these meetings and what we're doing in terms of engagement so um i think that was my individual belief but i think i wanted to kind of hear from everyone in terms of

149where are we at so it seems so far we seem to all kind of be in the same ballpark so that's good so in terms of how we could better engage with the communities so now we can get to ideas um your top three so i'm gonna be more of a stickler than jeff uh three only top three seven two top three uh what are your top three ways that you think we could better engage the citizens of whitman and hanson so david will i should start in the middle but i'm not even going to try and figure that out so we'll just do it this way yeah so my first would be the establishment of subcommittees like a community relations subcommittee at franklin uh public schools their school committee has seven members but they

150have 10 subcommittees in their community relations subcommittee their purpose is to review propose and consider matters pertaining to communication with the community about school policies issues and programs meet on a monthly basis throughout the community at various locations including the harvest festival the farmers market the senior center the public library franklin kv cable tv station in order to share information and address citizens concerns so i think we could implement it as we could see whca we could be going to our senior center and obviously recovery is a little bit different but i'm saying in our long term um and we could be going out to hobart pond or going to camp kawani things like that in our community i think that would be a great opportunity to reach out let people know what's going on

151and keep them up to date um another idea hold on we're going to try something a little differently this may this may blow up but let's try it so let's try and see if we can have some dialogue so on that point anyone have any thoughts as to what david just said makes sense love it hate it what do you think anyone questions questions clarifying questions no i would almost say you know we always come to the school library and when we first built this school we were in the theater upstairs why don't we move around and i think this was brought up years ago um why don't we even move around our meetings to different buildings i know you know now i'm probably going to give a level of confusion because everyone came to

152the high school and they thought that that's where it was happening and it is and so forth but i don't know i i just kind of see that as as kind of tandeming off of what uh david had to say sure anyone else yes i don't think we could really move around like we would have before we are now in where everything everything's recorded live broadcasting you move around you're not going to have the live broadcast anymore you might not even have the recordings we have because we don't have the facilities in every school because we used to talk about going holding a meeting um moving the meeting around to every school that way there you're engaging in every school syste you know within the school but now you're set up like that and people

153are expecting to be able to view the meeting live and things yeah i like some confusion i'm not suggesting we go to different schools to have our meetings i'm suggesting that with our community relations subcommittee the chair of that subcommittee would appoint people say hey uh you two members you guys want to go to the hanson or whitman public library and talk about said discussion and it's approved and it's a discussion that the subcommittee approves on well you can bring it to the full committee to approve on it and then the community relations can go speak on it so we're not meeting in person we're not having anything that would violate open meeting law or anything like that it would just be to go out into the farmer's market or go to the senior center

154go to the public library maybe whca we can work with them and come up with something that would be helpful like for example even with wxca i added a portion regarding public comment and that was the second thing i was going to get into is darren covid as we all know there's nobody else here it's just us and a lot of people in the community have reached out to me and said that they've sent emails out but they haven't been read during meetings or anything like that i know public comment hasn't necessarily been on the agenda but it's been frustrating to parents to not have their concerns heard so i'm recommending that we could even do like a zoom wait uh waiting room or do some sort of waiting room and use the promethean board

155right there and when someone wants to speak during public comment it'll pop up they can say whatever they want if it's something inappropriate or we need to remove them quickly whoever's in charge of tech whether it's someone from wca or or michelle or whoever can do it we can mute them remove them go to the next person and then we can also time how long public comment is because in policy subcommittee on monday we um recommended a new policy for public comment that will go to the full committee i think next meeting so we can look at that more and i think if that policy gets approved i think we can start talking about what does that look like during covid and what does that look like after covet and my final recommendation would be

156that we get liaisons actually full credit to uh to marshall otina for this idea he recommended pto liaisons i think it's an incredible idea i think we have school committee members go to duval pto meetings or you know handsome middle pto meetings or you know elementary levels and we can um appoint a liaison either to each school or to each school level like elementary middle or high school and then another idea i had for liaisons was a student advisory liaison we could have the student advisory council meet with the school committee and we can create that network where students feel they can talk with school officials and get their concerns heard because i know here there really isn't like a strong network like that i know jeff is only one person and you know you

157can't expect the student to send like five emails out and cc michelle and hopefully jeff has the time to get back to them so at least in this regard you could have students go all right we'll all go attend student government and i know school committee members are going to be there i can ask questions and we can kind of create that dialogue and there's that um you know that understanding and i think that would be great for us as a committee thank you mike you have any ideas yeah i couple out david and i kind of jive together like uh maybe pop-up meetings like you were saying like yeah today two members are gonna meet at lake camp kalani or our coffee shop with jeff um like obviously have a time frame um agree

158maybe appoint a social media head for us that maybe we could call and say hey um i don't know how you that's not my forte at all so um i don't know how you would go about that but okay um talking to some people over the weekend could is there a way to make the meetings a little bit shorter a little more efficient three hours is is too long that's what i have a couple things david just to go back to yeah yeah chris chris and i have gone to pto meetings in in hanson we have got some of the people that are popping up now are very good that are popping up and posting things and maybe bringing them in here might be a little more efficient than us going there right when even

159right now i guess i was kind of caught up in not the idea of going to like a different school because in my head i'm thinking zoom right now and that's a great point you bring mike is is that maybe we should try to get these people here but if we have the opportunity like i don't expect everyone to attend every meeting for every pto and i get that you know everyone has their own lives but um obviously we can try to get pto presidency or pto members here and i totally am on board with that but um at the same time during right now during covid if anyone has opportunities say hey i have an hour hour and a half you know maybe i'll do a zoom and be able to uh click on

160the link and join uh their meeting and they have any questions that i can answer you know obviously if i can't i'll direct to someone else or but to even just be there be present have someone there attending the meetings and um obviously again when we go back to in person for pto meetings that might be a little complicated transportation um but even to disappoint people so like hey maybe the pto president of duval goes hey uh you know you're liaison i just want to update you on this or something like that i don't know um just an idea to create that you know transparency and um you know i want to thank you for mentioning that you and chris went out to some pto meetings and i think it's a great idea i just

161i think it really gets people involved and it lets us or lets them know that we are involved you know we don't just sit here and go home and do nothing you know we care about our schools we care about our students and we put our students first and we put their kids first so yeah good hillary um i think like q and a's i mean obviously covet um like more formal q and a's i i'm i'm nervous to say like sure i'll be on a zoom at this time to answer any question you have i'm not like we we don't that's i don't think anybody should be doing that necessarily but like a more formal pointed we're going to talk about the transition to full in person learning so we will be there with

162you to take questions you have and maybe then we can put them in some sort of document and then present them at a meeting um something a little more organized i do feel like there are a lot of questions i think the public comments part of a meeting needs to happen um we don't have there's there's i think any of the meetings that i've been to since i've been on the board have not not had any public comments and that's concerning because those of us who are on social media kind of get the brunt of it when um you know it and my thing is to as i said earlier to deflect and say you know go to this person go to that person um for that um i think being out and about and

163i don't know what that would actually look like um i know you know like i coach my daughter's soccer team so i'm involved in the community you know being involved in the community not just being someone on the school board who just shows up for these meetings and that's that i think that being visible is important also to show that you're not just i don't know i think sometimes people might have certain motives for being on boards and i think if we're out in the community it might it looks like we care about the community as a whole because that's what the education system is right it involves the community students who've graduated students who are just up and coming things like that um and then you know i really like your point of pointing

164a point person for social media i think that for good or for bad people get their information on social media and if that's what we're going to do as i said earlier it needs to be for good and it needs to be unifying and if we decide as a committee that we want to make like a whitman handsome school committee page and have someone run it and like a pr person who gets out the meeting minutes who you know maybe puts a document together of what are things you want to hear at this meeting discussed um to you know do you have any agenda items i mean i don't really know how that works with the community but just things like that where i think the community would say like i want to hear about

165this could you talk about this um and i also think that three hour meetings are too much and people are not going to come and do that so great thank you don sure um so two prong here because the last question was how effective are our engagement here at the meeting so my comment to follow up on that specifically in the meeting for those who do want to sit through a three-hour meeting or come is really to utilize this tech board and by doing that i think it's important to share the information that we have in our hand right i believe once we get our packet that's public document if we're looking at it in a meeting i'd have to clarify that but i would like as best as possible if we're looking at something

166i would like the community to be able to have that too i think that's how we can build engagement for those who want to watch a meeting and be involved to that extent for those folks who don't watch a meeting but we would like to get our message out to them um aside from social media which is number one right now is still the newspaper so i'd like to see and and i did email as an fyi to the committee um a few other school districts that have an annual report which is quite extensive over 20 pages and i'm not looking or suggesting that this year but for starters maybe a one-page newsletter and i don't know what that would contain but we could do an insert in the whitman hanson express maybe in the

167spring pre-budget or or maybe around budget or also at next year opening of schools so an insert as opposed to an article in the newspaper because then we can make it a pdf attach it to the website it can be shared it can be there as an informational who we are um and then utilizing whca to tv and whether we run um you know informational shows or 10 minutes on each of us who we are a little you know a bio if you will because there are residents who are at home watching cable tv so trying to reach those constituents um i'll make a comment regarding facebook um also um i had about conversation ptos and pacs i think it's a two-way conversation right so we could attend that meeting to be ears and listen

168what do they have to tell us that they may want us to bring back to the committee to share um and perhaps we have something to share communication wise with them about what we're doing what our ideas are for the district social media i certainly have a presence on social media with my own page and i do my best to present facts and information and like you you commented hillary when you couldn't find information about the school district so that's really what my intent is to share information i think it's been helpful also jeff by this year a lot of documents being added to our website because i've been able to point people right back to that here's the document here's the document and that's really been the directive that i've learned from masc2 you

169know you yes people are going to be out on social media and they're going to have their own opinions but we can state the facts and we can if and it's best if you can point them right back to a district document and then turn off those comments and notifications and just leave it there yeah you know sorry again i think it's top three we will we maybe the next item we'll just skip ahead to after we all go through top three we can probably just have a conversation yeah so yeah thank you please come back with that one but yeah and i'm watching three hours right guys i know this one is this one is really this is really intended for us i mean certainly it's available to the public they can watch but

170this is you know how can we do better so i i agree um jeff what do you think i i really think that the public comment piece looking at different other school committees and how they function it doesn't mean that it's open public comment the entire meeting it gives an opportunity for public comment people sometimes even sign in as guests and the chair recognizes that guest and they bring up a point maybe not for discussion at that specific meeting but a point for us to then research or bring back as another agenda item because i don't also want us to engage in a comment without any information as a gotcha sometimes so people sign in and they i think that would be an opportunity for members not just to email a certain school community member

171and then drop it at a school committee meeting for us to decide or communicate but if they want to attend and we can set that up if it's if it's we're still in covert world how that happens and then we can recognize that person either by phone or whatever dial them in but public comment i think is essential and i've we've only had that when it's been hot button and we get a lot of it it helps the committee make informed decisions when people are out there i also think liaisons to to me if we're out and about in the commit in the community i don't want to be the only person out there representing the district and if we have more interactions with the pack i'd like if i attend i would like to

172bring somebody along with them and a pr person it doesn't that doesn't hurt so it's not always coming out of our office because i do i am mindful that we are short staffed we have cut administratively and i just want to bring that out there adding adding more stuff to our plate i have michelle that's it george has lori that's it and we don't have a pr person necessarily we do have a firm that if you want to blast something out there and on don's point about the the express feel free we we do have a spot in the express as a district if school committee members want to write an article i i'll forego mine and and you guys can write michelle actually had the idea he says how many months in a year

173how many school committee members are there pick one a month i'm more than happy to share that with with folks our administrators are more than happy to share that article space if you want to bring it out if you want to introduce yourself and that's another medium that we can use awesome thank you chris so i i guess i i really like the idea of having a subcommittee um that is specifically charged with promoting engagement um and i i think it is important to have um the community feel as though these meetings are accessible and they're welcome here and whatnot but i i think it would be a good idea to encourage parents to participate in their own school and engage more with their own building principles and administrations and teachers and because i think

174there's something to be said for the the more engaged a parent is directly with their child's education the better chance for success right so i guess just some of the things i was kind of thinking of is is having members of our subcommittee um you know be involved in whca um maybe uh sporting events we we we attend local youth events with or or high school with the idea in mind that we're prepared you know with a certain you know bullet points or things and then maybe you know just in general discussion it kind of very informal um but then i was thinking of like you know parent-teacher conferences right when you have these people coming in maybe we have a couple at each building and and and we get a chance to engage with

175with parents then while all the while trying to encourage them to engage more with their building i think i think that's sometimes where we go awry as we we think we want to field all these things through and channel them and funnel them through the school committee to the administration and i think that's putting the cart before the horse sometimes um and then i was also thinking of events like the quantity basket auction right um because you know i think you know uh we obviously have some very dedicated parents who have been and will continue to be involved in the packs and the ptos or whatever but i do think there's a significant uh segment of the population whether they're young parents or their single parents or whatever that they don't maybe have the the

176confidence or or whatnot to to to engage in in discussions that affect their their child but i you know i that would be my objective to try to get those people that aren't um you know uh likely to to uh you know engage great so clarifying question for you when you talk about the subcommittee are you looking the subcommittee as someone that would help organize things across the entire committee or are you what i'm trying to figure out is so in your view right how much of this engagement responsibility resides with the few verse no i think we all should engage it i just think the subcommittee might facilitate engagement okay okay great thank you fred uh and uh sorry some of these uh items are regurgitated but i guess it's uh in the middle

177uh the liaison as i said uh before to the packs that can report out their activities at our meetings uh i also think that we need to be cognizant and careful of stepping on the packed house chris i agree with you a thousand percent that the more involvement a parent you know the more involved the parent can be within their own local community school the better off we all are and if they're involved with the path per se and then the pac funnels you know to give us an idea of what they're working on and what they're doing uh and perhaps any issues that they see we also have to be cognizant of what our charges uh budget policy and hiring fire the superintendent you know so we wanted he's in our proper lane at

178the same time but i think that being a cheerleader so to speak and getting messages out and taking back input is a very very important thing for us to be doing administrative coffee hours when the opportunity can present itself once again you know in presentations along with the presentations of the communities and the pacs q a within our meetings and perhaps a public forum get people involved have them asking questions let's answer their questions and also i think that within our website it is large this vast it is confusing and there is uh information lacking at times uh but a very simple portal that if someone does have a question or a concern you know that they can go in they can type it in hit enter and it will get to somebody that can

179answer that question for them and i don't mean to pass it off on to administration to make jeff's drugs more difficult but you know that might be the more appropriate place you know depending upon what the question is or that person guessed it and then refers it to the proper building principle you know etc you know and then thanks the person for their question you know it can be a uh you know quick two two line email you know thank you your uh your uh information has been uh forwarded to xyz you know you should expect an answer uh you know within 24 hours something reasonable and then go from there and then whatever we promise for an answer we over deliver so if we say 24 hours we have a commitment to do it

180within 12. okay thank you fred dan um like i was saying before and people have already touched the town hall meetings at the different venues going out there um getting information that way you know it's just not the packs and things just kind of like you know people are saying the coffee shops all that you know i think that's everybody's pretty much pointing out that i think that's a key thing we really have to get the input and the next thing would be the same comments here jeff hit most of my my thing public comments at the beginning of the meeting with the knowledge that there's no action taken at this meeting but could be put on a future a gender item down the line the line and keep it to like 15 minutes um

18115 minute long maximum because like everybody's saying these meetings are already way past what they should be you know we should be able to streamline these be more efficient okay thanks tim steve i think um being right back in our schools um whether it's going with the superintendent and assistant superintendent walking through the schools it gives not only the teachers students around an idea who we are better idea um but even not just doing that well with school days going on also doing that when i think someone mentioned it those special occasions uh of uh teacher conferences although i know those are more probably on they're all on a one-to-one basis um i remember the openings of schools you know the traditional way where the night before and i've been at some of those in

182the past just so that when that child goes home here mr boyce was in uh in our class on a friday afternoon volunteering well it doesn't have to be a volunteer every single week type of thing but just be able to get in into the schools and i think that's where we're sometimes maybe not seen or noticed even though whether children probably don't know it but um um the parents you know they they know who we are but they probably just need to know who we are in a sense and i as a side i got my own little fan club it seems right before school started on bo avenue of um a few kids coming by uh one young man on a bike he goes to high school some ways a few houses up

183aren't you um someone important in towning and it kind of grabbed me the other day or you know the other three other kids coming walking down the street they're getting all excited for school and of course my thing's always a share you know just it's a different type of school that year you know i'm not trying to be their parent or something but having the honor of being an uncle um you know and by the way i'm a great uncle for a second time that's a little guy nine days old um you know it it just gives you that chance to and i always make sure their parents know me but it gives you that chance to just say just say a few things you know you're you're human and they're human and they're going

184to be you someday um i just think those things are important good thank you thank you uh i'm in line with all of you folks so far i think the two items i had were definitely around public dialogue and comment i think the only thing where i'm different is i don't think we can have someone tell us something that we don't want to hear and shut it down because we don't like what they're saying so i do think i would encourage us to be a little bit more courageous with the public comment of just bring people into the meeting because you know what you know now maybe we have to say hey we'll get back to you or maybe we have to redirect i know that's going to happen jeff but we're going to get

185into it in a second i'm sure if someone has something to say and we don't give them the venue i don't think we should be foolish enough to think they're not going to find another venue to say so we're going to hear some things we might not like it it might not make us feel great but we might as well take our medicine deal with it head-on listen respond um so i definitely think the bringing the public whether it's a zoom 15 minutes something something that we can agree on to me is critical and then i think uh what all of you said in terms of outreach we have to find a way to get to the people people aren't going to come to us we need to go to people so awesome ideas i'm

186not going to regurgitate what everyone already said um so we don't lose engagement here i think it's starting to get a little bit later so i was thinking maybe we can do two things so one i think we need to talk about social media because i feel like everyone's dying to talk about social media so we should probably spend a little bit of time on that and then what i would suggest is can we come to an agreement with one two no more than three things that we're gonna do so we can take the easy way out and say we'll just look at our notes and talk about it next meeting or the meeting after and maybe in three months we'll do something or before we leave tonight we can say hero here's one thing

187we're gonna do so does that sound reasonably okay so social social media i mean we can just open it up i mean i think some people have already shared some thoughts uh any new thoughts in terms of should we i guess what i've heard so far to try and recap and i tried to listen as best as i could here so no disrespect if i missed anything i heard people want to share people want to put information out they want transparency i heard centralization in terms of you know making sure that that message is consistent people are going to use it i heard it's tough we were going to use it the wrong way what what else what else do folks have to to add when it comes to social media don i just want

188to follow up um hillary you mentioned about a school committee page sent sort of like a central or i think i'd piggyback on okay it was that the message i just like oh no more i was thinking more like a liaison like someone that would be in charge of that that we could appoint out of this to maybe run yes a page yes oh okay um then yeah the notion of a whitman hanson school committee facebook page i believe is highly discouraged among masc says you can't do it yes you can't do it so i just wanted to it's the school it's the school side has right because even if you're putting a document out there if it starts any type of representative of all of us yeah yeah and of course you'd have to

189shut comments off because you can't start commenting on it um okay so i just want to mention that um one person liaison i certainly wouldn't want to sign up for that and i don't know that that would be wise you know because one person shouldn't bear that burden actually i'll speak for myself that um back during budget season i did post on a handsome page and i was then removed from the page um it's fair enough they're allowed to do that but it was my message was you know quieted there so i respect that but it's a fact that i could i could so i can't do that right um so just um i think um i i looked up on my phone forgive me um we actually do have a policy ka says school

190community relations goals so ka it's on our district policy the one part i'll just read and it is relevant to social media i believe because it says effective accurate and meaningful communications that facilitate dialogue and encourage involvement in district programs and create community advocacy for its public schools right i think yeah i i never want to engage in any argumentative or controversial or never speak on behalf of the committee on social media um just getting out effective information that's how i feel yeah and i can tell you don does give out effective information um i just know i mean i know you know don you're in my stream and and it's usually just facebook but it's great you know you pulled up some things for us that are very helpful to not necessarily us but

191out there you know you've gotten out those words and it was that factual great stuff it was very straightforward and i said it last year don was my teacher for a little while i learned quite a few lessons i appreciated it i don't know what the enrollment fee for this year would be uh i'd sign up for another course with you um but you know what i'm saying basically is she's done a really good job of just being that factual type of person now i'm not certainly not nominating you for this uh at all but you know you got good information out there very straightforward so thank you for that so let me kind of so one thing with social media that i always struggle with is the timeliness so my challenge with social media

192is you need to be so depending on what you post if you post something and someone responds sometimes with misinformation which i think is common you need to be prepared to immediately respond because if you don't it you can just see the spider web of god knows what happens happens so personally that's a challenge for me because i just can't be on social media all the time looking at i want to put something out there you know i say hey this is something that we're doing you know my citizen mike over here says oh that's crazy whatever i can't believe they're doing that you know eight hours later all of you have caught on it's a prop so the timing for me becomes a huge issue um but maybe that's depending on what you're posting

193and where you're posting it as well right so um i i guess is there any and this might have to take a separate meaning or discussion is there a clear role that we think social media should play is it uh go ahead first um i'm a admitted dinosaur when it comes to social media um i i don't engage in it hardly ever um and uh so i couldn't i i don't pretend to be you know uh insightful you know with my comments on it i i'm just from my perspective um it presents more challenges than than are beneficial in my mind right um and especially with a group like this where we are um bound by uh you know certain you know uh agencies or whatever that oversees laws and restrictions yeah whatever um and

194so i just think it it might do us well to come to some type of consensus on how we will engage you know and and i don't really know i'm just trying to think of like i i think it's important for us to speak with one voice as a committee and not have you know the offshoots so i don't know what that looks like exactly but that that's my concern um and uh like i i don't really have a solution or to that it's just an issue that i see i i just i will tell you so i i quit social media this summer because i just couldn't i'm sorry what'd you say i said i quit social media this summer i am done um except that i have a facebook page for school committee

195for faculty member and you can have that um the feedback that i get from from people in hanson and whitman is that it's positive they like it because as i said earlier you know for good or for bad that is where people go to get the information to your point you're totally right you know in the summer if someone was commenting i could be like sure great now but now my phone's in my desk somewhere and if someone comments i don't see it for six hours seven hours whatever so that is problematic so what i have tried to do and i think to your point of coming to a consensus i don't post opinions i don't post anything that someone can put an opinion into or read into it's so usually what i do after

196meetings is i post a table of contents of from this minute to this minute this is what we discussed and this you know because people aren't gonna they're not i mean how long have we been in here two and a half hours so if someone wants to hear about the sports they can go right to minute 15 and click on that and watch the three minutes i think that if we take that kind of approach and then during the budget in the summer you know my approach was providing facts so i shared a statistic we talked about earlier about the budgets that we spend um per like professional development for teachers for materials for teachers all documents from desi so nothing that even though people like to take things like that and say that they're

197wrong you know nothing that can be interpreted as opinion or adding of course people have opinions but i think that that's what we need to be cautious of on social media because that's going to create an uh a dismembered message from us if you will so i don't know that all of us need to be on social media i don't think that i don't think that people who aren't part of it should be forced to be on it for this purpose i don't think that's going to help engage anybody either um i just think that those of us who are on it need to be unified in the message that we're providing and make sure that we're just providing information to people like factual information not things that are our opinion or accusations and and

198things along those natures so for those of so for those of us that are on this community that are active on social media are you posting on your page or in your feed or are you proactively posting on the other page i just have a page that people follow yeah who else is actually listening i got a page so are you posting for example like on women pride or handsome network are you would you post something there or you just so what i like to do is i'll post something on my own page it'll be on my page's news feed and then what i might do is i'll use the account to share it to other pages but i'm not individually posting on each page like for example say it was strongly encouraged by masc

199i reached out to them in advance about this to post recaps they want you to post recap submit to what happened in meetings it doesn't necessarily have to be um after the minutes are approved they can be done prior so i've been doing recaps and a lot of parents have reached out to me and said they appreciate it so what i do is i'll post a recap on my page i'll share it onto my personal page so people who are friends with me can see it on there i'll share it on the whitman pride hanson network other town pages and then it's out there and people interact with it and usually um you know i get a lot of good remarks obviously there's some negativity but like everyone else has said you know you just

200deflect it to the appropriate sources so okay are you just posting on your page right right not really sharing it anywhere just but if we but i think you and i have pto presidents so often times like the the indian head pto president will share my post to the indian head pto page of what happened and i'm sure that happens with conversation so an idea here um do you think it would be possible for those of you that are on social media to almost develop a best practice of what's worked well and then potentially share that with those that may be comfortable doing it so that we're all kind of i'm not trying to again i'm just throwing this out there i'm not trying to be a restricted like this like a best practice like

201this is a guideline not a policy but more of a this is what we've done and it's worked well and because it sounds like with some of you you know if if you're doing a recap and you're doing a chronology then like why can't you know you share her chronology and share your recap like what if it's factual information right i mean we i guess we may have to part of this may have to be you guys have to legally make sure we're not going to run a foul of open meeting well and then we would have to work on communication too as a committee between one member to another and make sure we're on the same page and say oh you know like for example like hillary dawn if they post this and i

202go oh that's great do you mind if i share it and they go yeah no problem and then i post something and maybe they have a question go well david in your recap you said this are you sure and then i go well yeah i rewatch the video i can point you to this minutes and it's a quote and they go okay i just want to make sure they can share it i know somebody reached out to me i posted something like two weeks ago and they just were like asking a quick question make sure oh does this violate open meeting law and i you know showed them that i didn't and i explained to them i showed them peace on the agenda and we moved forward um and that was that um but yeah

203so i think it's a simple communication whether it's between members to each other the administration um i'm i'm open to creating a document that i'll share with the whole entire committee and the administration on on ways i think social media has worked uh ways we can improve on it uh ways that it hasn't worked i don't mind doing that um and i don't mind talking with hillary or dawn who also use social media and kind of get ideas from them and get their views on pros and cons i don't mind speaking with anyone about it but yeah so i would defer to the vice chair and the superintendent of maybe there's because i think that's where we just need to make sure we're on the same page right i think the intent sounds like it's

204really good people are trying to share and help but making sure that there's some clarity around you know for example i think depending on where we go with some of the so this is maybe a start right depending on where we go with some of the website and technology stuff if the district decides to put something on the website it's probably really easy to redirect and share that through the individual pages now i hear your point too jeff about well who's doing that so there's there so maybe there's a longer term discussion about the role that technology plays in our communication and engagement or maybe the start is if you three are willing maybe sharing some best practices to what works that's funny i don't usually post after a meeting i'm kind of exhausted and

205i just move on it might be you you might i know right but i think what david does a recap is perfectly acceptable because he's stating what's gone on through the meeting i enjoy what hillary does because you're pointing out the time frames so i don't know that there's a right or a wrong or that um you know we should be no but first right so chris can i yeah fred go ahead uh you know one concern i would have about posting an in-depth recap uh would be you know we vote minutes and prior to that they're draft minutes and if we're giving you know complete recap which quite frankly i've read in there at times more in depth than our minutes our minister of general representation of the meeting not verbatim and david must

206spend hours because it's almost verbatim of what our meeting was but yet the committee hasn't voted them you know perhaps maybe a disclaimer you know upfront saying you know these are the topics this is what was said in the meeting as as i recall you know minutes will be posted on our website after they're approved of something of that nature so fred i think um the whole spirit of this conversation is trying to get us to a place where we all kind of understand what's happening and we're all hopefully sharing can i just reiterate one thing too yeah so fred i just want to reiterate that i spoke with tracy novick from masc and it spoke about the recap and asked if it was appropriate and i made sure to ask if it was appropriate

207to post a recap prior to minutes being approved and trustee tracy novik who runs social media runs the mac social media she's on the school committee in worcester she said yes it's strongly encouraged right and and again so before minutes are approved it's all right and it's strongly encouraged by masc so i just want to reiterate did you so just to interject here your recaps are very thorough that like they are pages long which would be one of the my my suggestions would be like a recap to me is a paragraph right if if i'm asking my students to recap a book i'm not looking for three pages of something and i think that's maybe where mr smalls getting with it because they are very very detailed to the point where i mean did you

208show her your recaps or did you say i'm just doing a recap well i explained to it i did i did talk about i gave examples i quoted it yeah so how about that um david i'm not trying to pick on you i'm just trying to say that for absolutely you made a couple references tonight your interpretation hold on fred hang on fred so i think again everyone should be comfortable with what a their individual opportunity and rights are and hopefully in the spirit of all working together we all can come to some level of consensus into in terms of what's best for the committee as a whole so what what i would suggest is we probably need a separate discussion around social media and technology i think it would probably be helpful to almost

209have a best practice because if we come up with the best practice and if you guys talk and you find maybe there's a slightly different way or a better way because i think your intent of what you're trying to do is clear you're kind of provided information i don't think anyone has an issue with that great there's there's a way to get there right and i just want to add the reason why they are so thorough as many people have mentioned already is that our meetings are three hours long so people don't want to tune into a meeting and and a table of contents i think it's a great idea but sometimes you know if you're skipping ahead and you're like oh well is this one the superintendent talks about this piece uh you move

21015 seconds ahead you missed the uh the conversation right there because a couple sentences could be exactly what you were looking for so i do make them thorough intentionally and i do watch the videos and re-watch them so i'm making sure i'm quoting everyone everything's correct and uh you know parents have reached out to me and said they really appreciate it so they don't have to watch a three-hour meeting and they can spend 10-15 minutes understanding what happened so let's see if we let's see if we can get to so i jotted down just all i think almost to a person everyone said something about public comment and outreach so can we come up with so public comment do can we come up with something that we could put into effect fairly quickly anyone have

211a concept they want to float see if we can uh yeah oh hold on hold on hold on fred david go ahead well public comment i'm just going to go back to what i said during covid i would really like to work with whca as long as they're willing to work with us to create a virtual waiting room using zoom or using some more um some other thing whatever we can do to get it on the promethean board and then kind of spend 15 minutes 15 20 minutes and say all right well we have this many people waiting they've checked in we can verify they're from this town or you know whitmer hanson for public comment and then they speak and if there's anything inappropriate we can mute them move on whatever and as other

212committee members have said we don't have to answer them we can just listen in hear what they have to say and if there's anything that we think we should add to an agenda item next meeting or the following meeting after that we can do it um but i think the purpose of public comment is to hear what people have to say so we can sit on it think about it and then come back with a better plan so um i would like to move as soon as possible to do some sort of some sort of virtual uh comment if we can and uh go from there okay oh yeah fred uh i don't know logistically and uh you know where we're holding meetings quote unquote in person uh you know if you can combine the

213zoom element uh that would be an interesting thing to find out about but at least initially you could by our next meeting have you know q a with emails you know that people can submit their questions thoughts and ideas and have them read uh that would give us something you know pretty much right away okay can i just make a suggestion just the um school committee where i teach they've been doing zooms and it's been chat boxes um and one of the issues has been funneling because someone will ask a question and then it'll be answered and then 10 questions later the same question will get asked and then it's you know it's human nature you know um so if we're gonna do the live public comment which i think is very important and we

214need to do it we also need to find a way to funnel the questions so that even if it's just responding to someone saying you know what five minutes ago someone asked this question we've already answered it sorry because if we're only going to allow i mean someone was talking about 15 minutes of time we really need to make it more streamlined for the public comment i don't have an idea sorry for how we could do that um but that's just something that i would i just know in we've had a ton of q and a's in my district um and the repetitive like people don't listen until it's their turn to talk and we've got to find a way to streamline that so that the information can get to people you know dan jeff

215um the recent governor baker with the restaurants have they did the opening meetings all right yeah i don't know from 25 beyond yet you know i'm not sure yet that's something i mean we we have a couple weeks before the next meeting i think we can look at how we can effectively bring in like in the public either through technology or in person um i think that i think the technology i mean i'm just listening to our comments i think the technology is the key i mean i think to a person we said the meetings aren't working people aren't coming but we've got to try and maybe experiment with it and people are gonna sit or all of you if they're if they can listen to a meeting on a zoom you can have it

216on your phone and kind of be half listening and then when it's time for public comments i mean i've done that you know and come in and say i mean i think that that way in this era people are not going to come and sit through a three-hour meeting to wait for the last 15 minutes to say their thing they're they're just not yeah the public would have to be up front right after the pledge of allegiance both sides well that's what i wanted to distinguish because in pre-covid we chair hayes allowed members of the community to come up and speak as they wanted throughout the agenda because it allowed for that but with technology are we distinguishing a public comment piece on the agenda again that would be right at the beginning that if

217someone just had something to say they came forward and said it and then as we moved on to the agenda public comment essentially would be closed and we would not monitor that so that's what i'm looking to distinguish that's how i was thinking of it but yeah i don't know if others were thinking at least to start david um i just want to bounce off hillary's idea real quick about streamlining so i'm gonna talk about what i was saying before the policy subcommittee there's a policy that we're going to be putting forth to recommend to the full committee for a vote hopefully next meeting and that really uh brings a lot of clarification it's an masc recommended policy it talks about public comment it talks about the procedure of how long it should last their

218recommendation how people would go about that obviously we're in covid right now but without covid for example they would have people sign up and put their name right there and and we would go from there so i think when that policy comes out and everyone can kind of read it and and hopefully we approve it if it gets approved i think that'd be something to post online and then we could even uh you know reiterate to our constituents our constituency what that uh entails and how that would work so i think maybe it would even be worth uh kind of holding off on the public comment discussion to maybe next meeting when that policy comes forward and figuring out how we would have public comment with this new policy if it's implemented but i do

219think we need to have public comments in the next meeting because i i i i agree just because i mean we can't even do it we don't know what we don't know what school is going to look like our next meeting right like new york and so we need to give we need to give the public an opportunity to speak my only concern is having that at the beginning of the meeting i don't know when the best time to have it would be because right if you have it at the beginning of the meeting are we gonna throw away the agenda and just start answering questions from people or and then i also don't think we should have it after every agenda item because we'll never get through the agenda so i don't know what

220the best way to do that maybe smack in the middle maybe after the superintendent's report because that seems to be things that you know have the meat of what people want to comment on okay stamp yeah usually when you do the public comments it's right up front they they come up but there's anything for them to hear you'll listen we're not going to be replying back to them you know that's just their voice to tell us what's going on because we can't because it's not on the agenda we don't know what they're going to talk about okay and we have to be cognitive because we've had speakers in the past come up and they mention people's names as soon as that's done it's shut up if someone has a question i'm sorry if someone has

221a question at the public comment and it's a question that pertained to something that happened at a previous school committee meeting can it be answered or does it get sort of tables i think that we can clarify this jeff but i think basically if someone asked an operational procedural question so reply hey jeff when are we gonna change what we're doing you know what kind can we can we talk about like standardized lunch times can we um you know my child is in cohort a when can they go into cohort b like operational procedural if i wanted to not go on the bus i think that's perfectly fair right it would be the same as someone just picking up the phone and calling i think what we're going to have to be careful is hey

222i want to talk about start times right or i want to or i have a complaint i will complain that's where okay hold on we can't do that here so they're allowed to express a comment and that's really what it is they can say a comment right and we're not bound to um do you think it would be worthwhile or possible to get a volunteer to moderate the the public comments and maybe some of the public comments could be addressed by referring the individual to the building principle and how best to contact them with the number you know what i mean like so that we we can conduct our meeting and like maybe to dan's point that there's a there's a there's a time slot in the beginning um or wherever in the meeting that

223um is you know allotted for that but someone else is manning it because i know how difficult it is to for bob to utilize the chats and things like that um and everybody here is pretty engaged in the meeting and doesn't really have the ability to to monitor anything like that yeah because we're throwing a lot at you so i want to make sure we don't completely go off the rails here um what do you have thoughts so so i i would prefer and i think for structure of a meeting having public comment at the beginning of the meeting and if people bring in a comment and i'm i'm piggybacking on the school start time i'm resident so so so i have an issue with the school start time i'd like to be heard on

224the next agenda that's an opportunity for a comment that we're not responding to or people come in with a comment saying you know i think the budget should have whatever it's not necessarily a response with this committee i think it's an opportunity for someone to be heard and the committee not necessarily responding back and maybe inviting them back to the next meeting but it's an opportunity to be heard so it's not an interactive dialogue and i think it should be limited to about 15 minutes and we can do that via zoom and we'll experiment and tweak it i think we can become more masters of that piece of it but i am my concern about an open zoom is the person who has a question we answer the question or they have the comment and

225then 25 comments come after that or go off the rails so i think we can structure that and actually on our next agenda item put the rules of engagement for the public so they have an idea and we we can use social media to get that out early you know or through the website so i think i think we can have an opportunity and try it and see how it works ideally in the non-covered world we get people to come to a meeting because i think i think it's it's it's a better dialogue when people are here present than behind a screen because we're not going to necessarily see them so i think we can we can play around with the technology and it's not overwhelming at this point but i think that would be

226my preference to open it up to say hey look do the pledge or whatever and and public comment is right at the beginning of the meeting even before we get into the minutes and we're not necessarily deviating or if they have a comment about an agenda item they can have their say prior to us diving into the meeting yes fred uh just uh for everyone's information i did take the liberty of looking up the governor's new ruling and uh the limit for indoor gatherings remains at a maximum of 25 people for all communities thank you yeah yeah if you don't if you want a good example of this look at like the border selections meeting at the beginning of theirs they open it up for public comments um most of the time just like us

227they're not gonna be able to reply back but it's a way for the public to say you know hey you know my street sidewalks aren't being done all right now it goes off to the town to go look at it that's a good example of what we're gonna have to set up so jeff do you think it would be i mean i i saw i want to get some um as much as anyone i want to get something done right but at the same time i want to make sure we do it right so do you think this is something that we could have in place at the start of our next meeting or this is something that you'd want to build the problem i think we can have it in place at the start

228of our next community we'll try it i i don't see a reason why not as long as the majority of this committee and you don't have to vote but i get an eye roll that says hey we'd like it at the beginning and then we can we can tweak as we go along um but we can do that and i'll experiment how we can do that virtually with folks to make sure that they're heard plus the chair has to um cheer controls it anyways absolutely i mean i think he might want to delegate to jeff or george somebody has to control that waiting room van is going to be back in the in the back of the room but so there's probably a way to do that and then really uh from the zoom we're

229probably just playing the audio right yeah that's what i would do maybe we can somehow get to whda bringing them in but for the first one if if that if if that's something the direction the committee wants to do we'll absolutely look into it and make sure that it's on the agenda for next meeting and there's an opportunity for the public to comment right chair yes friend uh the one thought i had is why not uh allow participants the same way i'm participating right now on the conference call you could we could publish a number and perhaps a different meeting idea something you know the only problem is you're going to probably have a lot of people in the waiting room and i don't know if internally and that and that's my my shaking my

230head concern right now is i'm not sure so let me look into seeing how we best can and pilot this out for our me our next meeting yeah because i think zoom is conducive to waiting rooms and holding and muting and a conference call you're gonna be you know if you have 20 20 people all speaking at the same time you're going to get 20 people all speaking at the same time so all right good so it sounds like we have an action item i think overall really good conversation i think the only other question i would have for all of you is you know what do we want to do to tackle outreach is that a subcommittee because i think there was a lot of tremendously really good ideas about getting out is that

231a subcommittee that we want to form or is that a discussion that we all want to and i know this is a lot of time and energy for everyone to do that i would say so what do you want to do you want to do a subcommittee or do you want to do a separate i mean i do like the idea of a subcommittee um in the long run but i think in the short term uh i'd be interested in getting everyone's input on how to form that you know and and how does what direction we want to go in you know second that i think more committee overall discussion moving towards a subcommittee yeah so same thing i know it's getting late but maybe we could all agree on like here are three things

232we're gonna do we're gonna whatever we're all going to write a newspaper article we're all going to go to a pto whatever that is but maybe we come together and agree on an action set or two or three yes is that what we're thinking tonight at the i was thinking the next week i'm game but i know i i think it breaks yeah let's think about it and come back to it and and do it next meeting i think that would be best yeah all right i'm done all right um so before i take a i'll vote to adjourn or get a motion to adjourn um i just chris i know this was your initiative and i i think it's crucially important as as as cumbersome as some of this stuff is to deal with

233um i really appreciate your leadership and and i think it's uh it's something that's really going to benefit the district going forward no i think this is a great effort i think um i think all of our intentions are really good i think we have a good group i think everyone's intentions are good i think the structure makes it really hard to have a conversation i think it's just hard so i'm glad we kind of hopefully we're able to do that tonight share listen i saw everyone like try to take a note so honestly if we can't get engaged here we're not gonna build it yeah okay yeah just one more thing before you adjourn yeah so i i appreciate all the feedback today we'll be putting together some things for the next agenda i

234want to make sure that there's always education and kids as part of a focus for our meetings and and i said this at one meeting getting away from always the money talk um so we'll always have something around goals or the strategic plan at a meeting coming forward and then for the next meeting it is listed as october 14th i'm making a reformal request if we can do it on the 21st i have some personal things i have to deal with and michelle's going to be on vacation so there's no way within the next two weeks she's going to be able to put together what we've talked about today so if we can move the meeting to october 21st um at seven o'clock uh i would appreciate that i'd make the motion to move the

235october 14th to the 21st meeting okay fred ii okay we'll take a roll call vote um dawn yes hillary yes dan yes steve yes chris yes david yes yeah and chris my scriven is yes as well oh i'm sorry thank you yeah okay i didn't detain the motion to adjourn second second by dan roll call fred yeah yeah yes steve yes chris yes david yes hillary yes gone yes okay thank you thank you thank you