School Committee 6.16.22

001welcome good evening um all right at this moment i'd like to call the meeting of the hamilton oneham regional school committee to order at 702 on thursday june 16 2022 um and i'd like to begin by inviting you to join us in the pledge of allegiance is anna the hamilton wanna regional school district would like to acknowledge the massachusetts tribe the tribe of indigenous peoples from whom the colony province and commonwealth of massachusetts have taken their name we would like to pay our respect to the ancestral bloodline of the massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historical massachusetts tribe territories to this day thank you um next up uh we are going to have an opportunity for citizens comments oh and i should say before we get started that this meeting is being recorded

002and it's also being live streamed on hw cam um citizens comments are an opportunity for citizens to speak and for us as the school committee to listen and this evening we are going to offer citizens comments from anyone in the room and also if there's anyone on zoom eric do we have people that are on zoom we do okay um if you do choose to make a comment i ask you to keep it to three minutes um also if you choose to make a comment i ask you to make sure to spell your name state your name spell your name and let us know your address so we can have that accurate for the minutes um okay i'm gonna start in the room i don't know if there's anyone who has a comment in the

003room suspected not okay um do we have anyone on zoom who would like to make a comment anyone in zoom who would like to make a comment please use the raise your hand feature okay looks like no okay um at this moment we will close the zoom link and those people on zoom um can continue to watch on hw cam we'll be closing the zoom link you can move over to hw cam on the youtube channel to watch the meeting live thank you okay and next on our first order of new business is going to be to recognize our retiring staff and i'm going to turn over to superintendent tracy thank you very much yesterday at the staff faculty reception at the high school we had a little ice cream social and we recognized our

004our retirees there we wanted to also bring them here from the school committee publicly i think it's important to to be sure people know who's retiring and that and all that they've done for our our district through the years and uh tonight with us we have some retirees and supporting some supporting staff in the back and family and then principals will each uh present the retirees with a little bio we do have um we gave some of our retirees who were with us yesterday there are gifts already so some the people who weren't with us yesterday we'll get one this evening and uh if we can start off mr shirston you want to start off come on up becky started her this is becky oliveira becky started her teaching career in ottawa kansas as a

005second grade teacher in 1985. in 1988 she moved to new england newington connecticut and the following year joined us the hamilton windham family she spent her first 10 years at cutler teaching a year third grade and nine years at first grade in 1999 she came to beaker when it opened as an elementary school and she spent the last 23 years teaching first and second grade here throughout her career she prioritized strong relationships with students and families there was never any doubt that she cared for her students as if they were her own children as if leading by example becky never stopped learning even through the final months of her career she was collaborating with colleagues to learn new skills so that she could offer new opportunities to her students throughout her career becky was always

006willing to lend a hand and help out her school family that kindness was reciprocated when becky was called for what was supposed to be a few days of jury duty in 2018 then a couple more and then a couple more and then a couple more days and all that ended up being 23 days and everyone was more than happy to pitch in to help out a friend becky truly has a career to be proud of she's had approximately 750 students move through her classrooms a year i know they will all look back fondly on in her retirement she is looking forward to knitting biking water aerobics her book club and doing some part-time volunteer work we wish her the best [Applause] all right carolyn shadyac mrs jenny i can't oh i just want to make

007can you put up the mic so we can yeah there we go i'm this evening i have the privilege of thanking missy andercheck for her dedicated service to the students and families of winthrop school and on behalf of the winthrop staff again we thank you for your friendship and your support during your years at winthrop missy andercheck has been a strong advocate for developmentally appropriate early childhood education throughout her career the hamilton wentham school district was fortunate to hire missy in 2005 as a kindergarten teacher bringing more than 15 years of teaching experience to her new position in 2011 missy moved to first grade where she spent the next 10 years bringing a love of learning to winthrop six and seven-year-olds missy created a caring structured and predictable learning environment that sparked academic social and

008emotional growth for every student and each one is lucky to have had missy andercheck as their teacher the start of the new school year won't feel the same without missy but we will be happy knowing that she is traveling and knitting and gardening and enjoying a stress-free first day of school we know she will be back to visit us and we look forward to hearing about her latest hobbies or adventures [Applause] rebecca butler okay i'm really happy to be here speaking on behalf of melissa graham melissa joined cutler school in the fall of 2006 finding her home on our fifth grade team it is in fifth grade that melissa has worked her magic for many years developing mutually reflect respectful relationships with her students she was brave to take on new challenges as she took

009on our role as library media specialist in 2019 and was a district-wide second and third grade remote teacher last year this year in the final year of her career melissa has returned to the fifth grade classroom melissa shares her passion for science and history with her students but what we will remember her for most is her love of music melissa started our string jam program many years ago bringing together fifth graders each week to share her passion for the ukulele string jammers are a highlight of our all school meetings and a rite of passage for our students just recently ukes on deck brought the opportunity for younger students to also share the music melissa's ability to connect with her students and to help them shine with strengths they weren't always aware they had will be

010truly missed thank you melissa [Applause] mr mangoni tonight i have the very good fortune to speak about an outstanding educator i'm standing next to kevin sano our world language curriculum leader current middle school teacher and former high school teacher it is almost impossible to describe the magnitude of impact that she has had on our students school district and community over the past 31 years in hamilton wenham i can however say with certainty that kevin is a passionate thoughtful and supportive teacher she thinks carefully about each student and provides on an individual level the experiences that allow students to maximize their land language skills and also guides their growth through adolescence kevin is also a passionate thoughtful and supportive colleague she works tirelessly to grow the talents of teachers in the world language department and has

011also ensured that there's a positive culture for educators and students in grades 6 through 12. i am also grateful for the service and travel opportunities that kevin has brought to our community for many these are life-altering experiences that will continue to have a positive impact for years to come and i can only say that i'm eternally grateful for having both of my own kids in her classes and having had the opportunity to accompany her on some of these trips and it's really amazing to see how much work goes into some of these trips overseas with students the effort that she puts in the care and thoughtfulness that goes into all of this work because like i said these experiences will continue to have an impact on these kids lives for years to come now although

012kevin is retiring her influence and impact upon her department and the schools will last for many years to come she is guaranteed that that will take place thank you kevin so much for your energy enthusiasm and care for our students and community we will miss you [Applause] thank you very much and congratulations and thank you to our retirees and certainly you know i've always gone by the mantra once a teacher always a teacher so i'm waiting to see what happens next thank you all and good luck and congratulations [Applause] thank you thank you all okay um all right let me just let that clear a little bit um all right next we begin what might be a long agenda okay all right oh we need to do we need to do the protocols um anna

013you're up again as elected members of the hamilton wedding as elected members of the hamilton wedding regional school committee we including the superintendent accept the high honor and trust that has been placed in us to ensure that the students of the district receive the best possible education to that end we hereby commit to the following and the conduct of our business number 13. the school committee will demonstrate professional and collegial relations with one another to this end members will work to maintain trust and mutual respect between and among each other the superintendent and the administration by treating everyone with dignity and respect even in times of disagreement all voices and concerns of individual school committee members shall be given equal weight and significance recognizing the importance of honoring these protocols members will respectfully remind each

014other when they get off track thank you anna all right next up we have our consent agenda before we make a motion do we have any items that people would like to have held okay i have one i'd like to hold the minutes from may 19 2022 and then when you're ready amy we can take a motion on that uh i move that the hamilton mudram regional school committee uh accept the consent agenda as posted in the agenda except for the minutes from may 19th second second by gen carr all right all those in favor yes uh and that is unanimous and the motion passes um so i held the minutes um from may 19th because if you look at the minutes um at the top the header in bold um i consulted briefly with

015um mahala our recording secretary um to double check that this was accurate the header in bold if you see um all of that information represents um the posting of the of the meeting that so the bottom of that part has the time which says 7 p.m to 8 45 p.m i did check with my with mahela and she said and i did look back at every other minute and typically that is actually the time is supposed to be listed as what was presented on our agenda so it's the estimated time that the meeting would last um but this meeting actually was posted from 7 p.m to 9 50 p.m um and i noticed it for if you studied it you would sort of see why i noticed it and um and so we're gonna unless

016there's any objection i think it should be posted at the top questions so going forward you want the minutes to reflect the actual end time of the meeting no i think it's fine it just in this case i mean i'll just tell you one a member was was late to the meeting and it looks as if that member arrived only one minute before the meeting ended but that was not in fact the case and that member didn't do that and was there for some portion of the meeting so um but yes i did double check with mahela that that bold part at the top should really represent what was presented to the public at the beginning so it's the whole posting and so it really and that meeting really was posted to go to 9

01750. it didn't didn't actually end at 9.50 but that's um got it all right um so i don't know whether you're willing to make a motion i don't think this needs to come back i think we could probably just change it david did you have a question no no sorry you just looked inquisitive so i moved that the hamilton runner regional school committee accept the minutes from may 19th with that edit made post to this meeting okay do i have a second second second by julia campbell is there any further discussion all right looks like we're ready to vote all those in favor all right and that is unanimous and the motion passes um amy do you feel like you have the information you need to get that fixed up with mahela yes okay um

018okay um point of point of order yes do we want to adjust the agenda because we have an outside guest here or no um do you want to move the audit up i or no uh no i think um i think we're going to start with the handbook we might move the audit up but i don't think the turf people are here so we might we might have to move the turf down we might be moving the turf down all right um okay uh is it mr matagoni are you doing the no i'll do it it was tom but tom's going to be a little bit late so excuse me outlined in mr gary's memo to the committee oh no aren't we doing the handbook the handbook handbook high school oh sorry my apologies it

019is brian i had the uh summer hiring in my list here oh yeah nobody apologies yep no nobody okay we're all so on top of it that we didn't need it ryan manigoni yes to the student handbook all right good evening again so i'm here too but i can hear you but it's not super loud i wonder thank you is that better so good evening again i'm here to present the handbook changes that were approved by the school council uh just a week ago um there's there is one change on here that i we're going to strike and i will explain why now just that way we can skip past it it would be the change to the tobacco and vaping rule that's in the handbook i looked back again at the ordinance that is

020in hamilton specific to this and it does say that on a first offense that the consequence has to be it's either a fine of a hundred dollars or a smoking cessation program so it can't be an and it has to be an ore so i just want to make sure that's clear so there really there is no change to the tobacco and vaping rule that's in the handbook but i still can say that we have seen a rise in that behavior in the high school so our response to that is just going to have to be be more vigilant use the security cameras that are now in school and continue to educate the students about the dangers of that kind of behavior so i could start from the the top then and just quickly talk

021about each change that we made i'm not going to read everything in there just to say that assault on a student is not a rule that's outlined in our handbook believe it or not assault on a faculty member is but i felt it was appropriate to have that because that is behavior that can take place in a high school setting and we want to make sure that that's clear because it is distinct from fighting which often implies some sort of mutual behavior assault would be one party acting directly upon another so we want to make sure that that's clear the dress code interestingly enough this came about from a group of students who wanted to take a close look at the dress code how it was worded and how it can be better aligned i

022think with where kids are at right now also to ensure that it is not discriminatory in any way and finally also to lay out some clear consequences because that was one thing that was not in the handbook prior were really clear well laid out consequences for dress code violations after the dress code we made a change to the electronic devices rule that we have in the handbook on the main highlight there and we tried this last week on phone free friday which was a thrill for everybody involved next year students will be required to place their cell phones in a holder that kind of hangs over the door when they enter the classroom and that is to cut down on the distraction that we see caused by cell phones i've seen some pretty neat tricks

023where kids will have their laptops up and it looks like they're paying attention and their phone is propped up on the laptop when the teachers can't see it and they're playing around with that so it is a i think a necessary step to take we a couple of teachers have piloted this year with students uh through second semester and the kids really just get used to it and it's just the way of doing business teachers do have the discretion to allow kids to use their phones at certain times because there are activities and classes that really call for it taking video taking pictures and just some of the other things that cell phones can do alongside of tablets or laptops we also are making it clear that kids need to take their earbuds out when

024they are in class that can be a problem for reasons i'm sure you can imagine we've i've also learned in the last week or two that kids can actually voice text through their earbuds so even if their cell phone is in the holder on the door they can still text each other if they have their earbuds in it that's actually pretty good i like that but we need to probably cut back on it the next change that we decided to make were food deliveries to campus if anybody's seen fast times at ridgemont high where the pizza gets delivered to the classroom that's not really what we're talking about however we are seeing grubhub ubereats and some of these other services bringing food to school during the school day why do we not want that well

025it's disruptive because the front office staff has to let people in to the vestibule in front of the high school i also wonder what are kids doing or what are they supposed to be doing while they're ordering food and there is a security concern around this and that we're allowing people who like really don't need to be here on campus on the campus not that i think they generally have any malevolent intent but still they're just people who don't really have any business here so we've decided not to allow that the next change that we're making has to do with the gym and weight room area and i realize that there's a duplicated paragraph in there that will just take care of that when we rewrite the handbook previously we didn't allow kids down into

026the gym at any time except for when they have gym class but now with the addition of power block during the school day uh the health and wellness teachers do open the gym up during power block time because their kids um that's what they need in fact we've had a pretty good uh wiffle ball league and floor hockey league running throughout the entire school year it's actually kind of scary to be in there at times um and finally the last thing that we're changing is the rule it just calls it out of bounds we're just going to change it to unauthorized area and further stipulate that students can only be in designated areas of the building and on campus because as we've sort of opened the outdoors more to the school i'm finding kids in

027areas why are you out there during this particular time it's for a mask break we're not wearing masks right now so we need to pull the reins in a little bit on where kids are going generally i trust where they are but you want to make sure that kids are safe making good decisions and that we can keep a lid on some of the movement across campus so those are the handbook changes with respect to student conduct and that is what the school council has purview over that is what we came up with for the 2022-23 school year and i welcome any questions okay all right does anyone have questions anna uh thank you mr maniconi um i do have a couple questions um and i think this is maybe a little bit more procedure

028at some point are we going to vote on the whole handbook later on in the year this isn't a vote just on this little snippet right or is the intention that we're voting on this tonight well the the school council only looks at the uh student conduct portion of it okay and you know that the only part my understanding that the school committee would have interest in is anything that has to do with policy or their conflicts in policy okay i just ask because normally we see the whole handbook before we approve it so i um i guess that's an open question to the superintendent and the chair um but in terms of the specific changes here there is an asterisk next to the fine under tobacco what does the asterisk refer to because it's

029not part of the document um so that i believe when you look in the the hamilton regulations refers to how that is actually adjudicated so that's part of the full handbook then yes okay that's in there this next one you're going to love and i know that's a little bit on the policy subcommittee we still have the discrepancy between all these protected classes and i think it's because we haven't yet adopted the new a sections which is on our list of things that we're going to talk about soon but i do want to note that there is a difference um between different groups in terms of the protected classes which we have been trying to standardize so is that what we went over in the fall i think yeah and this the policy subcommittee um

030not to jump ahead too far but we have newly adopted policies at the subcommittee level that we're bringing back to the full committee that have been brought into alignment by the attorney general's office the masc so that list is not quite the right list and it's also different in a different part of the same proposed changes so before we before we go get tattoos of those lists i think that whole conversation has to come back at some point yeah i agree i think i think the the a section is one of the ones we're doing in the near future we've already done all that egg section those are those revisions we did the a c a b the a c e that's so then it's just going to be a determination of which one aligns

031best with they're all the same now but we haven't adopted it yet because it hasn't come back to the full committee okay so i think right now this is reflective of current but we should be prepared that that's going to have to go into alignment i can get that to brian okay yeah um the other thing i guess it's more of an inconsistency in some cases the consequences are very specifically spelled out strike one strike two strike three um but in other places um like mobile devices for example it simply says they'll receive disciplinary consequences undefined and the same thing for food deliveries undefined consequences um do we need to define those specifically or i just feel like there's a little inconsistency where we're so clear about first offense in many ways but it's very

032open-ended what those consequences are the undefined disciplinaries under mobile devices and food delivery to campus are both kind of it's not clear what the consequence would be it's it and if you looked at the the rest of the handbook that's pretty typical it will say we'll face disciplinary consequences so ultimately the i guess the teacher or administrator or educator you know sort of decides the disciplinary consequence in a given situation i think with the dress code in particular because it was so vague in terms of how do you approach it when do you approach it and then what do you do um it's that's probably why they the students really wanted a very clear stepwise approach to consequences because it's again even with a a very well spelled out dress code it's going to be

033interpreted differently by different people and there's certain comfort levels that are associated with approaching a student who may or may not be dressed appropriately on a given day so what they were looking for is real concrete stuff you know in a classroom setting if a kid has their phone out or whatever you're going to say put it away and generally they put it away and that's a disciplinary consequence in some ways they're receiving a reprimand from the teacher when you do it 50 times in the span of 30 minutes then there's probably going to be a different disciplinary consequence but any time um suspension could be a consequence that is generally spelled out for example with the assault thing i mean that's probably going to be a direction that will be considered okay yeah so

034are we at some point then gonna vote on the whole handbook you know i i don't know the answer to that question do we were we anticipating that this is the this is the vote on this yeah typically if you go through the the actual legal right these are all the changes changes to the handbook are here the issue will run into is when we bring the policies back to the committee approve the policies we're going to have to align realign the handbooks across the district so that's that's that's one area that will be whenever we approve the policies we'll have to figure out how to bring it i just don't usually we approve the whole handbook we get to see the whole thing in the fall i don't recall ever just voting on the

035changes least in the time i've been here usually we actually have a whole handbook and we vote on it do it i guess for clarification does the committee approve the handbook high school the high school student handbook high school handbook but the the school council is the one that has the authority over the student conduct they approve the changes so what does the school committee do then i guess that's for clarification in in this district this the school committee approves a high school handbook specifically for alignment with policy which would be something that brian and i would make sure would happen so realistically we could these are their changes whatever we've already approved has been approved the dilemma we'll run into is if policy gets changed in september we have to go back and update

036right across the handbook procedurally every time ever at least again i've only been on the committee two years but we've had a vote in the early like in august on the whole handbook like that's usually we're trying to i think do it now so that way over the summer right i actually haven't gonna be refreshed i actually think we talked about having it now so that you have the summer a long time ago i think we talked about that um but it's a good question that the but but again these are the changes so everything else has theoretically been approved we'll have the handbook back this is the 17th or 9th whatever in august the august meeting is we'll have the handbook here for approval so we do plan to bring the whole handbook back

037yeah we've always done that that's what i'm saying i didn't realize what you were saying until now but so the handbook itself will come back the high school handbook gets approved by the school committee these are the changes specific to discipline that were approved by um school council okay so and they're really only changes in the handbook other than policy changes will make and potentially which potentially by the fall if policy can get it done and somehow i mean there's a chance we could get to that point so yeah so so this pull-out only began last year right after we had the whole handout and then it was asked to actually have put to pull out the changes so you know brian done that for us right maybe that's what i'm remembering that discussion yeah

038okay yeah because people had said so we'll see the whole thing with a few changes in the whole book this way you see the changes and then the whole book can come before the committee everything uh these are the changes and then policy changes as they come okay okay um jen did you have a question um part of this is my fault i like the fact that we added a policy on sexual assault or on assault sorry do we also have a policy on sexual harassment yes that would be a title nine thing that's yeah again that's part of it we have the a section policies that the state and the masc had us right but does it i don't think it's spelled out in the handbook no but it references the policies like the

039policies are overarching it refers it would refer back to those a-section policies so last year we updated the student handbook with the new title ix language okay which is about to change again what i've been told so yes you you the group has already approved the title ix language which covers sexual harassment so that's already been approved by us the changes i'm not sure when they're coming but we keep hearing they're coming so we'll have to probably change it again at some point during the school year and jen just given the the way that student handbooks work you know the word like assault would cover sexual assault it would be a bigger it would be a bigger umbrella yeah and then the title ix provisions as well would apply yeah i was just like i

040was surprised to see assault there and not other forms of what would be considered assault that was just my question and i meant to look it up before i came here and i didn't so i apologized um other people i i have something that's a little more concrete um does anybody else have anything um so brian on the um on the uh dress code under acceptable items it says hat and head coverings that do not obscure your face or eyes say for religious garments my concern is i think people we do want people to be allowed to wear masks if they are feeling that that's appropriate for them correct which wouldn't be religious correct um but it would be obscuring the face so i guess my maybe it's less than satisfactory answer to that is

041you know that people are choosing to wear a mask i think either because they they need to because they're returning um from from kovid or uh there's somebody in their household who has it or they just want to wear it for their general protection in some ways it to me it's although not a perfect analogy it's like if a kid comes in wearing a gigantic cast on their arm they're wearing it for a certain reason you know it's medically and health related so if they chose to wear a mask you know we know what that is for so i don't i think i can manage that at the building level as a principal um yeah i just want to make sure that that was something that we because i think it's my take on it

042is it's certainly possible that we're going to see a culture shift and that people may you know whatever they wake up feeling not a hundred percent they might just choose to wear a mask that might be still going on you know five years from now yeah um so but yet it's certainly not most kids probably aren't going to choose to wear a mask as my guess but they're going to be times where they do make that decision and that's fine and we understand what the reason is behind i just want to make sure that all right anybody have anything else nope um so um what do you eric and brian what do you need from us to accept the changes for the handbook up as req as recommended by this council by the yeah by

043the high school school council okay all right okay got it i moved that the hamilton wedding regional school committee except the language and the draft high school student handbook as written by the high school council second second by jen carr is there any further discussion okay all those in favor all right and that is unanimous and the motion passes thank you thank you brian thank you um turf um so i'm i'm gonna those of you in the audience turf committee [Music] it looks like you are waiting for one more is that right okay that's fine we've got a lot on the agenda so i might just move some things ahead of you so that okay um all right so if ever if regis if you're ready um i'm going to just move if everyone is

044in agreement we're just going to move item c up and we will do regis presentation of the equity audit right and kind of bumping in and out of the guest um oh is the wi-fi not cooperating it's kind of i'm in and i will i will not get into slideshow until it reconnects but i think that we can all figure that out so okay uh oh maybe that's it great hi everybody it's nice to see some of you um again it's been a while um so um i am gonna do um i'm gonna i know i have 30 minutes which is an insufficient time to talk about the equity audit and it's an insufficient time to actually go through all of the slides that i actually sent you so um excuse me i'm gonna i've

045picked i'm picking and choosing some of the slides and then you have question time so you can ask me questions on any and all of the slides so um just a quick introduction to myself even though i know um i've met most of you but i since it's on wi-fi or television or whatever so my organization is equity journey partners and my name is regis shields and i'm one of the founding partners and equity journey partners is a network of independent consultants who are passionate about equity in schools and our mission is partnering with schools and their communities on their journey to become culturally proficient and equitable ecosystems that ensure students of all cultures and social identities can achieve a future inspired by boundless dreams and we do training we conduct equity audits we work

046with family and communities to empower them in the um in the school process um all right so tonight's objective is once again i'm going to provide a summary of the purpose and the process of the um equity audit i'm going to introduce the framework that we used as the analysis for the equity audit which uh some of you who were at the my meeting with you back in january or december um are familiar with that so i'll reintroduce that very quickly and then once again review some of the initial findings the final report will be delivered in just a few weeks and it will be much more detailed and will include more findings um i um throughout this um presentation tonight and i've included on the slide some quotes and these quotes are from focus

047groups they're from open-end open-ended responses in the surveys and i think it's very important because i wanted the most important thing about an equity audit is including the voice of the stakeholders of the community that's what this is all about it's not my opinion i bring i bring the expertise so i wanted to make sure that i was giving you a sampling of some of the voices in the community and i've mostly focused on educators families and students mostly and i'm not going to read them all right so we're going to start with um i've realized now i can actually look at my screen here as opposed to turn my head so eric's just taught me how to kind of connect through this whole thing so um so we'll start with what is the purpose

048of an equity audit so equitable school districts make a commitment to give every student to the extent possible what they need so they can participate fully in student opportunities that are available and the focus of equity work is to remove those barriers so that limits students full participation so equity audits look for those barriers make suggestions to remove those barriers and also look for some really good things that are happening in the district and make recommendations about how to scale and learn from those equitable practices that are happening i always um start every presentation with this quote by james baldwin it is something that informs equity journeys journey partners work it informs my personal equity journey and the quote is i'm saying that a journey is called that because you cannot know what you will

049discover on the journey what you will do what you will find or or what you find will do to you and i think that's a really important quote to keep in mind because hamilton oneham is at the beginning of their equity journey and an equity journey is non-linear um and it's a learning journey and as we go through some of these findings you might find some of them unsettling and then you might find some of them confirming because there's a lot of overlap with the superintendent's report from last week but if you find any of these unsettling i just want to remind you that a lot of these findings are very very similar to the things we find in other school districts that are just starting out on this process equity work is very deliberate

050it's very systematic and if you haven't like purposely engaged in it there are going to be gaps that we're going to be finding so i just want to kind of put that in context quick overview of the process first of all i applaud hamilton one of them they had a great kind of governance oversight process for the equity audit there was a leadership team in the um that comprised of some administrators in the district and they helped with the project design to customize it for him and hamilton wenham's needs they provided oversight administration they helped design the surveys so it really spoke to the issues in hamilton wenham and helped with the analysis and feedback of all of the data and we met once a week um and i thought it was really productive you

051could ask stacey whether it was productive or not and then we also had a district advisory committee and this included teachers administrators but also students members of the community and family and caregivers and in fact the students helped design the student survey so they helped with product and survey design as well as analysis analysis input and feedback they met about once a week once a week once a month sorry about that and um the meetings were really interactive around both how to design um focus groups who we should talk to how to design the surveys what questions we should be asking as well as some analysis when we got feedback so i thought that was a really lovely way to keep the community involved to continue that conversation with the community around the equity audit

052design and and the analysis so this is the equity audit framework work i'm not going to spend um any time on it because i went over this when i last saw you although i'm not sure everybody was here it's going to be there'll be much more information about it in the final report and i'm also going to talk about it as we go through some of the findings it's this audit that helped us think about what data this framework rather that helped us think about what data we would gather what questions we would ask both in the interviews some of the student focus groups as well as the surveys this differs slightly from the um from the diagram that you saw before down at the bottom there was cultural proficiency and um as a learning

053organization we changed it a little bit to the equity readiness and you'll see how we've incorporated that as well as cultural proficiency now is equity skills knowledge and beliefs so i'm going to go through each one of each one of those as we as we move forward so all right so at the bottom of the diagram is diversity and so that's where we're going to start and i'm going to kind of work work work our work our way up the framework so um as you'll see this is structured and will be structured also in the report where it will define what diversity is and then each one each piece of the framework has um guiding audit questions that um that it's like a rubric it speaks to the questions that were that we're answering so

054diversity the question is has the district define diversity in a way that makes that takes into account all groups of students with differences or variations that may lead to opportunity or belonging gaps this is the first slide the next slide is kind of the finding this is the one of the slides that i'm going to skip you can ask questions about it when we get to the question and answer piece because i want there are certain slides that i want to spend more time talking about um the next piece was that equity ready piece right it's the foundation for you have to be ready for equity what are the three questions does this uh hamilton wenham community believe that having an equitable school system is an important objective does the school committee share a common

055vision for an equitable school system and then importantly is there a culture of trust among staff that fosters honest and respectful conversations about diversity equity inclusion and belonging topics so those are the three kind of conditions that we use to talk about is your district ready to tackle this very big issue of equity so i want to talk about the first one is does the community believe that being an equitable school system is an important objective and what we found is that there is significant support within your school community that pursuing equity objectives should be a top priority this commitment is evidenced by initiatives already underway the commitment is not without its detractors including some family and caregiver survey respondents so in the surveys we ask the question i believe pursuing equity diversity inclusion and

056belonging goals should be a top priority in hamilton and wenham and these are the responses that we got so you can see in the both in the strongly agree in the summer degree column that almost all of the stakeholders think that this is a really really important objective one thing that i really want to point out here is is that the the top four uh the school committee district leadership school school leadership faculty and student support staff almost every single member of the hamilton oneham community responded to the survey we had kind of like a captive audience they the faculty did it all on one one day right so everybody responded family and caregivers was not that case right we sent out a survey we had about 250 responses yeah we had about 250 responses

057and that doesn't mean 250 separate families because every every um family caregiver got to um respond for each child if they were in a different school or you know they might have been in a different program they might have been um a general ed and one might been a special ed so whereas the the only reason why i'm i'm saying that is is that the bottom line represents 250 respondents versus the top four lines represents pretty much everybody in those categories in in the community so we did have some very vocal detractors within um family and caregivers um but it i don't know how you know the rest of the families would have responded and i just wanted to be very very clear about that we're not going to go over this one but this

058is all of the great things that are already happening in the district uh the superintendent talked a lot about that um last week when he presented his work so we don't need to spend time does the school community share a common vision for an equitable school system the answer is um no but that's not a surprise right you're at the beginning of your equity journey it's the next piece of work that needs to be done so um you're you're where you should be um i'm gonna i was gonna skip this one um because i want to get to some of the more the other student-focused ones but um this one is there a culture of trust among staff that fosters honest and respectful conversations and you can feel free to ask me questions about this

059the question and answer piece the next component of the framework is equity skills knowledge as knowledge and beliefs and the three questions we ask there do leadership and staff hold high expectations for all students um do they have the skills to use data to inform equity priorities and practices um and then does the staff have sufficient equity knowledge skills around diverse identities cultural competence and unconscious bias and excuse me tonight i'm just going to talk about the high expectations question um so does leadership and staff hold high expectations for all students and the finding is while students and family and caregivers are confident that educators and staff believe that all students can succeed the confidence placed in the school district is not completely shared by staff and leadership educators believe that some of their colleagues

060as well as some school leaders do not hold high expectations for all students and a majority of school leaders are not confident that their staff believe that all students can succeed so what did we hear from school leaders 100 of school leaders agree that staff at their school believe to some degree that all students can con can succeed and only 50 percent strongly believe what did we hear from faculty and student service providers 85 percent of school staff perceive to some degree that their colleagues believe all students can succeed and only 43 strongly believe this so you may be sitting there thinking well why how does that finding come out of this we've got 100 and 85 percent in agreement that everybody can succeed and my response to you is that not all survey questions

061are the same when you're talking about expectations and whether all students can succeed you want the answer to be strongly agree not somewhat right you want it to be strongly agree because that is the foundation of any equitable school district if it's not strongly then we begin to see um disproportionality in outcomes we be you know who's who is not being held to high expectations and so that's why i always start with this one because i think this is really really important you know you need to be concerned when you only have 43 percent of staff strongly believing that their their peers their colleagues hold all students to high expectations um and i'm this isn't these are another couple that i'm going to skip but you can ask um questions about this is about the

062sufficiency of knowledge and skills around diverse identities um and then then we move on to the component access and inclusion access is the gateway it's the ability right or permission for all students to participate and inclusion is the how the creation of an environment and culture that enables all students families and caregivers and staff to participate thrive and belong there's there's two pages of questions this is the big category um and i'm not going to go through obviously i'm not going through all of them and i'm not even going to go through all of the questions in bold since i know i have a short period of time um so but i do want to um go over the first two because i think that they are really critical so do district stakeholders believe that

063hamilton one fosters a culture and climate of inclusion and what we find is yes generally but they also find that there's room for improvement for the culture of inclusion and this is especially true at the middle school and contributing to this assessment is the perception of both students and adults that not all students are respectful of other students identities and differences so the survey question was i would characterize my school culture as inclusive and you can see i've separated this out by elementary middle and high you can see at the middle school only nine percent strongly believe that their culture is inclusive right with 26 percent somewhat or strongly disagreeing um and then the when i think about the neo uh neither either uh neither agree nor disagree i always think that as they're just

064choosing not to express an opinion on this topic so um the second part of the that is okay let's dig a little bit deeper about why people don't think that their school culture is inclusive and we asked a survey question about do you think that students in this school respect each other's identities and differences and students only 16 percent of students strongly agreed with this 46 somewhat agreed and 23 percent of students disagree with that statement for educators 63 percent perceived students always are usually students who are different than different from them but almost 40 percent believe they're only doing it sometimes or rarely um so um so then we start looking at okay if it's not an inclusive culture what's happening in that culture and so the question is do schools provide a safe

065environment such that each student can comfortably and safely access all available opportunities and students generally feel safe at school when they're asked do you feel safe at school most say yes and then you have to dig down into that question okay what does that really mean students do not report highly high levels of incidents of harassment stereotyping or disrespect there are some areas of concern however and those areas of concern are 18 of of students report behavior of harassment stereotyping disrespect around grades and academic ability around body type a quarter of all students around appearance 12 percent around physical or mental challenges and 12 percent around political views so so those are the areas that rose to the top as being issues around harassment stereotyping and disrespect but when we start breaking it down into

066traditionally marginalized identity groups we see that the incidence of harassment stereotyping and disrespect increase so many students who identify from historically marginalized identities report high levels of harassment based on these identities or characteristics others may associate with these identities and educator observations are in sync with student experiences so students of color report being harassed stereotype or disrespect by their race and ethnicity indicated that they did lgbtq plus 51 percent reported being harassed stereotyped or disrespect based on their sexual orientation 32 percent based on their gender or gender identity students with ieps 32 percent reported being harassed because of their grades and academic ability students with iep um with with respect to physical and mental health 25 reported that and then i have family income or economic status and i ha i have not act not

067applicable because um it was not in the student survey but it wasn't the faculty survey and it was it was fair i think it was maybe about 40 percent in the faculty survey observing that that type of behavior um but um i sorry i didn't include that here so then then when when students consider is my school safe they often think about when they factor into safety right they think about can i report this and if i report it will somebody do something about it right and um and that finding is not encouraging if they observed or experienced acts of unfair treatment many students are not completely comfortable reporting those acts to staff and some students particularly students of color and students who identify as um and this is the higher level for students of

068color and students who identify as lgbtq plus and one-third of all students are not confident the staff will take action when they receive a report of unfair treatment so 40 of students report not feeling comfortable reporting it and 31 of all students are not confident that staff will take action and um one student in a traditionally marginalized identity group reported that there's so few of us that if i report something everybody's going to know and i'm going to feel that right so um so i think that's a very that's kind of very telling about what the culture and climate is is about okay so the next three slides are about special education i'm not going to talk about them right now i know it came up in the superintendent's um report last week and they'll

069be um a large section in the written report about special education i want to jump to some other things that i want to talk about i'm not going to talk about that one either i want to talk about belonging because belonging is belonging is really key right belonging is one element that you have to have that feeling of belonging um before you can achieve and belonging is the extent to which students feel appreciated validated accepted and treated fairly within the district school and classroom so what did what did we find do all students feel like they belong at their school well most students do feel a sense of belonging for many students this sense of belonging is not strong this is particularly true for students who identify from historically marginalized identity groups especially lgbtq plus

070students of color and students who qualify for special education services so as you're reading this chart and you can see that what i have is the top line is all students middle school and high school and then since we didn't do an elementary school survey we did ask families of elementary schools whether they felt that their child belonged and so that's the response of the family and caregivers of elementary school and then you can see the difference between students who identify as white and students of of color where you know the difference of strongly agree is 38 percent of white students strongly agree of all students of color strongly agree lbgdq only 13 of those students feel like they they belong strongly and 44 of their straight peers feel like they will strongly agree with

071the statement that they belong feel like they belong and then you can see the difference between students with ieps students with 504 plans and then those students not receiving special education services and you will see that throughout the um report when you get it that when we start asking these questions and we start breaking it out by the historically marginalized identity groups that you will see a disparity um in in the answers um so then what comes next right so um i always like to finish and think about what comes next when we ask students like so what happens next and what we heard from students is um one they want their voice in the conversation so that's why i included take teenagers thoughts seriously two they want students to learn about diversity equity inclusion

072and belonging issues um and then um the other thing is um i included in here one that says focus more on mental health there was a lot of responses about kind of the academic pressure at hamilton and whedom and um and and mental health issues in student responses um so it's not necessarily um an equity issue but um it is a diversity issue in a sense when you think about students who um um have experienced some trauma that may be a piece of diversity um so i'm going to stop there you can ask me questions on any of the slides or anything else i i i'm painfully aware that i am standing in between you and a celtics game so i wanted to um i wanted to keep my time to my limit so um

073questions thank you so much regis and unfortunately i don't think we're going to be no matter how quick you were we have a long meeting thank you for that and i think i'll just open it up to questions and uh julia thank you so much um so uh when i read this i mean i think most of the committee members will echo this i was pretty i wasn't surprised but i was pretty shocked by some of the findings um but i have a specific question where does religion fit into this because we have had several complaints from the jewish community specifically um so i just was wondering where maybe religious differences and um equity around you know of religious observances comes into play in the survey questions yep so um there um when i when

074i listed like some of the questions and you'll have this all of the serve as part of the report all of the survey questions will be in in the report so you can see how the questions were asked um it is like you know are you discriminated against because of your race your religion your names right so religion was there it didn't rise to the it didn't rise to the top with that said there has been a number of comments in the open-end responses to the surveys about um which religious holidays religious activities at school it also came up actually um in our advisory committee meetings also it was also a big comment also so you will find a piece of that in the report because once again we have a small community it doesn't

075always rise to the top of a voice and one of the slides that i skipped at the very beginning is defining what diversity in your district is and i think that um many in your district um like to think about diversity in kind of these very narrow terms right um but i i might have a religion one here i don't know maybe i don't um but you know a lot of people talk about me you need to think about neurodiversity and this is the one about the trauma at the bottom and we can't just think about diversity in terms of um state and federally kind of defined categories and a great one for hamilton wenham is um free and reduced lunch right that's a really narrow care category when you think about the income diversity

076in your district right so the challenge is how do you want to think about diversity and the think about what are the groups of students that we think that we're always talking about when we sit down because there are issues right um and um think about it that way so one of the big pieces of work is what does diversity mean in our district and as you define it you also have to be able to tag it and count it right that's why you'll see data we didn't talk about it but data shows up a number of times because to be an equitable school district you need to be able to measure and track let's have two quick quick questions so should we be concerned about the sample size of 250 responses for the family

077family and caregivers um so you should um it was actually i mean i was i was happy i got 250. so you shouldn't be consider you shouldn't be um concerned about that but i don't know who we got who answered right i know that you had about i think there were about maybe like 19 of the people who responded actually had children in special education so i'm comfortable when i'm talking about this is this is how family and caregivers have sped children are responding okay um we didn't have a lot of i i'm trying to think off the top of my head now i cannot report what families of students of color um because we didn't get enough responses from that i don't believe we had enough responses for families of free and reduced lunch

078so that will be part of kind of the recommendation is like as you move forward i know that the district is planning on doing some strategic planning in in the fall it's about thinking about how you get people to participate in different ways you've got to reach out to those other voices to make sure they're participating exactly so that's really on on us yeah okay and my my third question is so the first slide you say you will suggest effective ways and identify existing practices and that's going to come in the june 30th so this is more for us to reflect digest the responses and then there will be some action steps for us to take so the action steps are going to be um it's not going to be something like um you need

079to adopt this program right suggestion it's going to be you need to something like this you need to get more when you get student voice or when you get family voice you need to make sure that these fam you need to try different strategies right there's a lot of work that needs to come out of the strategic planning that builds the specifics because it's not for me to give you a specific strategy as opposed to a recommendation about how you go about formulating what you're going to do does that make sense absolutely thank you so much uh david frankel thank you um i'm curious how you and also how you think the respondents defined success you know when you talked about expectation of success how how how many dimensions were that we didn't if we

080didn't um we didn't define it wasn't defined it was a it was just the question about um success and how do you define that how do i define it um it's not for well i'm like this feels like i'm going to punt it back to you but which in a sense i am it's it's a community defined definition of success right so you when you so so you might define success around you spent a lot of time this year developing what a portrait of a graduate is right and then figuring out how do you measure all of those things within the portrait of a graduate and that's how you would define success you've made that first step in defining what success is because this is what you want your graduate what does that mean at

081the third grade level what does it mean at the sixth grade level right tracing it back and figuring out what the metrics are around that so i would say that you've kind of had a hot you already have a high level definition in your district about what success means for a student thank you uh jen included in your recommendations um are there going to be recommendations about how we could modify the curriculum to make it more inclusive and also will there be short-term recommendations and long-term recommendations because i mean obviously this is not where we want to be yeah it's not a ship you're going to turn around overnight either yeah so um so no i the the the recommendations will not be as specific as you need to adopt x's like textbook because that

082is you know the curriculum that's for your curriculum committee the but the recommend what you'll see is is that um right now your curriculum according to your staff is not diverse right so i can recommend i probably will recommend some well state of massachusetts has some tools that they offer to how to review a curriculum for diversity um i'll probably put in there resource by nyu which also has on that so so i'm not going to recommend a particular kind i'm going to recommend that you know the first thing you need to do is you know before you start kind of supplementing is where are you right this is what staff believe this is what they're telling but you know you need to do that curriculum audit piece thank you anna thank you uh thank

083you regis for all of this um i have so i have two questions and sort of an observation um my high level observation is that the data around marginalized groups and how they feel in the district i knew that we had some challenges there but i will say candidly that the percentages are even higher than i expected and that's worrisome um because when you have more than half of your lgbtq students reporting feeling corrupt i mean that's that is statistically worrisome i would have been worried if it was you know for me i'd be worried if it was one percent but i think to see something as high as 50 is um yeah you'll see that um when you get the full report that the um the lgbtq um responses are always um kind of

084like higher or lower depending on what the question is being asked right so when we asked you know um you know do you feel um stereotype depressed in these particular categories they're high across they're higher than everybody across all categories what you see in this particular slide is the categories that are particularly associated with their historically marginalized identity yeah so i mean that those data points um are not totally surprising at all but the severity is there so that's sort of a high level observation um i could talk a lot about this there's two questions i have though just to wonder if our district and your experience is any sort of anomaly i guess one of them has to do with sort of the staff perceptions of other staff i am surprised to the degree

085at which other staff do not think that their own peers have the same idea for success and i do agree there is no community definition of success and i think that that even with the portrait of graduate might be hard to do that and success for one student looks different for another that's actually sort of the point of equity right it's not supposed to be the same which is why which is why you have faculty looking at other faculty and not thinking that there might be um that expectation of everybody has that has that level of success so that i think that to me it's that's that was a surprising piece of data in your experience with districts in our position is that unusual to have that kind of cleavage amongst the staff no i

086i see it quite quite a bit okay and it was interesting because that question was i had to read it about 17 times to understand the nuance between it's okay uh you know what is perceived amongst how people believe about themselves versus how they see their peers like it was it's a really i don't think we i don't actually think i asked what you see about yourself on this particular one right but the difference between the first part and the second part is there's a really um complicated piece of nuance there yeah so you know 100 of school leaders agree their staff the school believe to some degree students could associate only 50 strongly believe this and then sort of you know the difference between not so much strongly versus not strong way but it

087just seems like there's a there's a real gap between what educators might think of success for themselves versus how other people their their peers are achieving that or not achieving that so i i want to i want to unpack that a little and i would be curious to hear the the leadership teams and superintendents thoughts about that when we get the full report so um yeah so let me i just you just reminded me that so there's two questions here right the first question in the survey is um you know do your peers you know does you know does the staff at your school believe that all students can succeed right and the second question is are your staff invested and take ownership of the success of all students right so one is a belief

088and the other is an action right you can see them next to each other right and so you can believe it but you might not even be taking action around it right so the belief is high and the action is lower right and the sense of personal ownership is low right like what only 67 percent somewhat agree that people are taking ownership which is you can't have success without ownership for yourself no but but i think so so one of the things that i do want to say yes the this is a problematic finding but i think that it's a foundation that fits really well for moving forward right because you do have a hundred percent of leaders somewhat you know in that agree category and 85 percent of faculty saying yeah most of our

089staff kind of like agree it's a place to work from right it's not like a huge trial right but it is still a statistic that you need to be concerned about right because even strongly agree is not an absolute right it gives wiggle it gives wiggle room yeah that was one data point that intrigued me the other one um you had a slide that talked about disproportionate representation of stead of economically disadvantaged and male students among students with disabilities that one really surprised me could you unpack that a little bit and i'm curious to know if that is something that you see often in districts or is that also oh yeah i think it's a sped slide let me see if i can find it yeah right so if you look at um in 2022

090right this is 61 of males um percent of total is fed right so so this is the male enrollment right and this is [Music] this tracks national data right economically um disadvantaged students um as well as male students are disproportionately represented in hamilton wedding and in most school districts across the country you'll find that in national data now why is that the case that's the thing you need to unpack right why is that the case some of it um if we had the categories and i don't know if we had the categories you might find it under learning disability behavior disability boys are over you know are acting out they may it may be an unconscious bias coming into play that are putting male students in a special ed category rather than dealing with the

091behavioral issues but it's not it's not unusual you said it's tracks nationally national yes i am intrigued by that one just in terms of the bias questions because that's i do feel like um just anecdotally you i hear so many more parents you know when boys are acting out or boys are having challenges you know this sort of casual like i was just boys being boys and boys always rough and it's just i do wonder about bias there yeah there's a disproportionality and discipline also oh wait i gotta make sure i'm getting my districts correct i believe that there is a disproportionality and discipline also i need to go back i need to go back and look at it but it it wouldn't surprise me right because um um we generally are more apt to

092discipline a boy i will say though one of the interesting things that i'm quite fascinated with and it will be in the report is um the difference between the way the high school boys move through school versus the high school girls they have a higher sense the boys have a higher sense of belonging than the girls they have a higher sense that they're being supported by teachers than than than the girls do um it's a real it's a very interesting um dynamic i think that's how you've actually been able to measure that uh through survey questions i look forward to seeing the fellow report there's a lot here to them thank you um anybody else just just a quick comment absolutely have a higher incidence of adhd but that's a that's national so that's part

093of what drives that difference in behavior and that um you know that may be a piece of it too as i said this is the disproportionality um we need to take a look at like what is driving this by looking at the different category categories jen sorry last question um i've heard that before i promise did we look at the breakdown in terms of how students feel supported by subject because it's not uncommon for girls to feel differently about math and science than they do about english and humanities no bias is definitely there no we did not look at by subject ok okay anybody else um well i just i actually just wanted to say um a lot of the things have already been said but i wanted to say that i really appreciate it

094and i think the most for me the most important slide i think was your first slide or maybe your second slide about the journey that like this is what we signed up for was hard truths right and that's a really important step in the journey is being willing to hear it having it said out loud and like it does it feels a little bit scary like where are we gonna go but i i'm so appreciative like that journey quote that you had at the beginning i know it's helping me like this we don't know what this is gonna do and and what's gonna evolve but it's exciting to to dig in if i if i came back with nothing it would be amazing so and and that would be i would imagine to be honest

095impossible right yeah it can always get better well and also equity is something that's very deliberate you have to be really deliberate about you need to be thinking about it and you need to be systematic about it i mean i was really kind of um i was actually oh brian's not here anymore i was really kind of excited to hear about the changes in the um the the dress code what is really fascinating is is that in many districts and we constantly in the student open-ended responses hear a lot about dress code um not one response no not one student mentioned dress code so i thought it was interesting that it came up there so um i and that's why i always like to end with student voice like the more you can involve students

096in this conversation and the changes that are being made really really important all right thank you thank you much appreciate it and we look forward to the full report at the end of june thank you regis thank you okay eric i just i just want to follow this up thank you regis i appreciate the presentation and and the work that you and your team has done along with our team stacy and liz and ryan and kristen lazaro who have been working all year with a number of different groups and committees and trainers trying to get the work done while also working with regis to get the information to her i think it's important to note there are a lot of people in the district involved and i i really want to caution people it's it's

097this is not putting us in a negative light it's bringing the things that are important to our district to everybody's attention and i think that's important to note because it's easy to go oh look at look at hamilton want them and the reality is we have a lot of work to do we know that but it also works well with our mtss work in our work with with the eib and also along the lines of what we do in our schools through the strategic planning process so it'll all really wrap together well and we'll just have to work together to figure out the kind of the best ways and the things we want to attack first the priorities if you will so thank you very much thank you okay i think the rest of our

098audience is going to present so um i think if the turf committee is ready we're ready for you congratulations um so can i ask you to um make sure when you're speaking into the mic so that um for the recording because you're being recorded um and um and uh and introduce yourself please introduce yourselves and also thank um yeah just to start i'm tim fazio i'm the current president of the hamilton wyndham little league and peter can introduce himself i'm peter gordo uh just a volunteer and i live in hamilton excellent yeah i live in wynnum so um all right great thanks eric so uh we won't take up too much of your time but are here for as many questions as as you have we came here to give you an update on what

099the you know high school field improvement working group has been doing over the last for me probably around six months and for folks like peter 10 years i mean for a long time this sort of project has been going along in fits and starts but actually making a lot of progress as you'll see as we walk through this overview presentation we're at the point now where it's time to do something it really can come to the fore especially with the folks here to get this get this moving so if we look at the first points so the goals of the project relatively straightforward right bring the students events back on campus it's been year over year that hamilton wenham athletics have been going all over the place right and in doing so sort of feeds

100to the next um pieces of sort of the trickle-down effect been using up town resources town parks having extra cost for the transportation of students it's just really worn on the athletes on the parents on the coaches on building the sense of campus community on building the sense of team really on just having a good school experience for our kids right and that's not just the kids at school at the middle school high school but that's the town kids that's the people in our towns that don't have kids that want to use our facilities that can't because they're either in poor condition or they're being used by the kids so it really has this tremendous you know trickle-down effect that we're all i think trying to stop and rectify in addition and as eric can

101probably talk to you you guys probably know much more than i do there are some serious accreditation issues with the status of our facilities at the school um so we really need to combat that and again sort of the final piece is just the overall sense of you know pride and community that we all want in the place that we live and send our kids to school which this is hurting next please so what we've done is and we i say we and i include myself when it's not really me an entire group of people have gotten together we commissioned a civil engineering firm to uh start some project planning a while ago they've updated it they've done a fantastic job this is the current schematic you can see it's really the only thing there

102that is quote unquote new is the tennis courts the um that's sort of in the central piece you can probably see pretty easily everything else is already existing footprint it's just going to be made modern made safe made accessible lighted it's going to be what our students need and deserve for modern athletic competition what our town frankly needs um we can go back to this whenever you like if you go to the next slide please so the details right the the new state new stadium and i say new meaning it's going to be the same footprint but the entire stadium is going to be redone turf field new track new track and field you know amenities for the different events that they have ideally a full amenities building that includes bathrooms finally right storage good

103concessions the baseball and softball fields will be turf and the for the baseball fields that sort of includes the following bullet the all-purpose fields it has will have an ability to host all kinds of sports whether full games practices what have you um the tennis courts uh they'll be i believe there's four um which is excellent and they fit all right into the area by the project adventure course now with little to no impact um as far as we can tell on the project adventure course which is great because it'll move our and i think i think the girls are playing the state championship in a day or two i mean our fantastic tennis team back on campus as opposed to shipping them out all over cape ann for practices for the last i don't

104know how many years so that would be tremendous the um and then for the we have the the practice field or practice field ability where the baseball field would be and then almost as important as a lot of this is adding some lighting not only just to it's not simply about being able to play games later it's about keeping our kids safe it's really the the lighting situation around there is terrible um and it's out in the back it's off the road i mean you really want to just sort of brighten things up and make things you know a safer more attractive place for people to be okay so that's the that's the overview we have a a great and we'll show you the link afterwards faq that the committee has spent a lot of

105time drafting and putting additional details in and then if you go to the next slide please okay we go to peter and he'll give you a little more detail on what uh gail has helped us with as far as project financing and a plan for the go forward and i have tim got to tell you what we get and i get to tell you what it costs that doesn't seem fair but so and i'll get to the detail in a second but the the overall cost of the entire project that tim just described softball field multipurpose baseball field stadium um the the support buildings new track the lighting is in the is between 12 and 13 million that uh that's based gale has provided our civil engineer has provided us with that estimate based on

106current projects that they're working on they're constantly updating their database so they have a reasonably good handle it also includes a substantial contingency and what i would describe as an escalation component because as you're all aware construction costs are a little bit out of control right now and i think it's just prudent to to carry something for you know the increase in cost over time we of that 12 or 13 million we believe that the funding you know really can only come from three places one is the community what we're calling a debt exclusion fundraising which we're committed to and grants you know state and local i think you know state may be a challenge but local certainly uh both cpcs have expressed support there may be other avenues as well uh we think that

107sort of a one-third two-thirds model is achievable uh one-third private fundraising and grants two-thirds community funding so eric if you'd go to the next slide this is a breakdown of the overall budget by component general and i'll walk through them quickly general conditions is a is a construction term but it typically includes everything that uh isn't being you know isn't being left behind it's it's a bond to secure the project it's the general conditions of the of the contractor things like fencing temporary toilets trailers that kind of thing uh the the contractors overhead and profit and their mobilization and demobilization erosion control site prep demolition it's the stripping of all the soil it's the rough grading of the site that sort of thing the track and field project is approximately a 2.6 million dollar component

108of the baseball field a 2.4 million dollar component before tennis courts just under 300 000 uh the new softball field uh which is lit a million two and we have put in an allowance this is one of the areas of our budget that i would still consider soft this allowance for storage press box and amenities we have reasonably good information about the storage building and the press box the amenities building because it's a vertical structure gail isn't as well uh versed in so we've carried a million and a half dollars to cover those three things uh gail has indicated that they think that's a reasonable sum uh so that that's a 10 million dollar sort of hard cost budget on top of that we're carrying a 20 contingency for the unanticipated things that will inevitably

109uh come up as we go through this process it may be that we're dealing with soil conditions we didn't anticipate or it may be there are components of this that you know we haven't yet anticipated that need to get added but there's 20 percent of contingency there on top of that we've added another 10 it's it's almost 10 percent more for this cost escalation idea inflation is currently running in the neighborhood of three quarters of a percent per month we've carried half a percent per month for 18 months the engineering is the cost the design cost and i should go back the reason we're carrying less is that we think that you know my own feeling is that the inflation trend can't continue indefinitely so that's why we backed off a little bit from what's

110what we're seeing currently in the engineering services we need to design the rest of the project to get to the point where we can put it out to bid and buy it so that's the that's the balance of the engineering services so that comes to just shy of 13 million dollars with almost you know 2.8 million dollars worth of what i would describe as contingency going forward i think we're here tonight as tim said to update you we've been working on this project for you know the in in this this phase of the project for about eight months uh gail has been working on on their study and and updating it for about six um and so we felt it was time to come back and and brief you folks on on what we've learned

111i think we now need direction from the committee in terms of how to move forward we need our recommendation is that this should be a one-phased 13 million dollar project uh obviously if budget you know budget's always an issue but if for some reason the committee said there's only eight we would have to go back and figure out how to phase this i think phasing inevitably leads to greater overall costs and probably some significant inconvenience down the road as you try and you know work around a to get to b um but certainly you know we there are ways to do it um we've laid out what we think are some reasonable target allocations of funds or of funding for the for the three buckets you know the the two thirds being that eight and

112a half million dollars to the school and then another four between private fundraising and uh local grants uh we've talked how to how to move this forward um we've talked with eric a little bit about that maybe this gets somehow presented not necessarily incorporated into the elementary school project but presented to the community as part of that um or as you know as a holistic you know academic facility upgrade eric could probably describe how that would work better than i can but obviously we've got a lot of work to do educating town boards once we once we have some direction we need to build some consensus and get some education because you know both towns are going to have a lot to say about what we can afford and what we can't and eventually or

113sooner rather than later we'd like to get to town meeting and put the project four town meetings so that we can uh know what we're going to build whether we you know have have the support of the community and can go forward with the project you go to the next slide eric so what we'd like to leave here tonight with or you know at a future meeting if you need to deliberate is your you know what what support we have from the committee um we would then once we know that direction we will begin the fundraising process we'll begin the local grant process and we also need to begin the we need to begin the permitting process a portion of this project was permitted back in 2017. there are two new components the tennis courts

114the softball field and those we now need to bring those to the town boards or to the plant to the planning board in hamilton common hamilton and yeah i think eventually they'll sort of look at the whole thing as one project they won't look at those discrete elements although we do have permits for the stadium the baseball field and so forth so with that i think that's i think that's our last slide um i just i was looking through a study we did back in 2014 that gale we commissioned in 2014 and gail did it and they were talking about the condition of the fields and the use of the fields and i read that you know the appropriate use for a grass field is in the neighborhood of 200 to 250 uses per year

115and a use is a practice by a team for an hour or two most of our fields we're getting in the most of our fields at the high school we're getting in the neighborhood of 350 to 375 uses per year the turf field with lights will support up to 750 to 800 uses per year so we're going to get a tremendous amount of utility out of these turf fields if we can pull it off so i think tim and i are happy to answer questions okay thank you um i have some questions but i'm gonna let the committee um start uh amy thank you so much for laying all this out i think this is a great project and i agree with a lot of the reasoning why we need to do this project i'm

116wondering if and i apologize if this has been asked and answered in the past but is there a breakdown of costs incurred as a result of not having these facilities so that when we are making decisions about budget we can say like oh having this will save us x amount per year on transportation et cetera we haven't unless i'm not aware of we have talked about all of those things the busing costs the mowing costs the you know the repair costs all those things i think we could assemble those and portions of them have been pulled together i don't think we've ever done a comprehensive this is what we're spending because we don't have the right facilities but we certainly could okay thanks uh anna um just to follow up i bet you craig and

117vinnie and tom together could probably put those numbers together pretty easily and i do think that'd be a really compelling piece of data um i'll just say right at the top like i support this a thousand percent i mean i'm really happy that the committee made this a priority um over the last couple years and kind of restarted it so i think i'm cautiously optimistic that we can get the community support we need to do this my one um my one sort of tactical question is the private fundraising component of it and maybe the turf committee exists or maybe the ed fund could take on this role does there need to be a new incorporated entity to receive those funds could they be given straight to the district what's the mechanism for private fundraising and

118is that something that we need to kind of work through so i think the the expectation is that we we have a we have a 501c3 that's ready to go the pick works all done it has not been filed but it's a matter of you know it's a matter of filing it and we're good to go so the 501c 501c3 would receive the funds and then turn those funds over once the once the project is you know assured of going forward okay um and i guess the only other comment i would make um just in looking at all this is i like that you've you've sort of laid it out as altogether and this is really an expectation of what we need and i think it's going to be really important to position it to

119the community that you know we've deferred this project for so long that it is now a liability not having these fields anyone who plays any kind of sport knows that our situation is just woeful compared to the rest of the cape and league and other even other youth leagues you know i'm a board member for youth soccer and you know the iron rail fields are great but the this is that can't support everything you know so i think that in positioning it to the community really explaining like this is the moment to really ask for what we need and it's a high mark but in the scheme of what you know the value would return it's really important so thank you so much for your work on all of this um and i just have

120one other tactical question jen carr is now our new representative right since michelle horgan who i see in the back of the room had been on this committee gen car is now the committee's official liaison to the turf field committee is that right i think so yes awesome thank you guys great work um do you have a question well first of all i love the project i love the idea but it would be irresponsible of me to not ask finney can we swing it that has to go to the voters i understand that but will we require an override to get this passed the voters definitely need a debt exclusion exclusion wouldn't technically be an override and i believe you have to go to the ballot right the debt exclusion also how i would have

121to pass the time meeting and at the ballot so this would end up being a private uh like a separate loan that gets voted on that the payments of the loan is what actually would be paid out of the school budget um layman's terms right it's it's also important to know that none of this is covered by the state so this is a this is a sole pro prog uh project excuse me project that we would undertake um without any support from the state there's no reimbursement like like the um school building project so that that's important to keep in mind i think the the contingencies that are built into this are important uh to support that and you know when you when we look at this project and you say okay we're gonna just

122use their number from the slideshow we're gonna raise 2.5 million the rest is is coming from the communities a portion the same way we would apportion the budget so realistically once once the debt exclusion is approved then the apportionment process would happen just just that's where vinnie would pick it up so that each community would get i don't if you remember in that in our budget process each community we get their pers whatever their percentage is at that particular time um and then we we also have to look at creativity and the the uh the way we finance or bond there are a couple of different ways we can do it um but the debt exclusion also keeps it from driving the levy limit so there's a lot to look at in a bigger um

123a bigger forum i think where we can sit down and hash through it we also have to get together some realistic language that's acceptable so we have to go to our attorneys to get some language acceptable for tom meeting realistically looking at april i i would say to get something on that april warrant in both the communities and and it's again it's it could coincide with that second module of the msba project that we're in the first module now so my my recommendation to the committee is would be what will be and um to kind of put these together along with the high school roof project because at some point the next two years i would say we'll probably get accepted there so we need to really be realistic rather than trying to go back

124and then ask for another special meeting and ask for another special meeting i think the the probability is is much higher if we look at it all together um there are there are some caveats we we don't know exactly what will get reimbursed from the from the msba project so that that makes it a little bit difficult to nail a number down but i do have a meeting next week with the two to the town manager town administrators and all the finance people to to talk about not only the msba piece but this this portion and the roof portion moving forward in the the most realistic ways to do it and um last question obviously i really hope the fundraising works but if it doesn't is the school district back on the hook for it

125i think the presumption the presumption all along has been that uh nothing would move forward unless all the sides you know were able to perform that's i think if if we were only able to raise a million and a half i think that'd be a decision that would have to be made you know at the end right um so can oh go ahead i was going to jump in on that yeah it would probably be built in as a not to exceed situation so you'd go to the towns for say 12 and a half not to exceed a particular number say 12 and a half million and then whatever they get for for donations would offset that cost so the idea was try try to give them a realistic window and keep it within that

126window and then and then if 2 million comes or if a million comes then we have the ability to stretch that out if we need to thank you it's a little more complex than that but it's just kind of simplifying now you've given me the general gist yeah i appreciate it eric would you mind going back one slide i i realized that i did a lousy job of trying to explain what the schedule was and and this slide is probably a lot more confusing than it needs to be and there's also a couple of typos in it but i think the the most likely scenario is that we try to get on the warrant for the springtown meetings we get you know presumably hopefully we get support from the communities they say go forward we

127would then authorize the engineers to prepare construction drawings which they would do say in the fall of you know the summer and fall of 2023 it would then go to bid at the end of with the anticipation of a project that would start in let's say may of 2024 to be completed in the fall of 2024 it likely disrupts one high school season um or at least a port you know some portion we'd have some fields but wouldn't necessarily have others um and there's one other thing i was going to say about that there there is a the reason we put those earlier dates in there is if this committee said we got to have those fields within the next you know 14 months there is conceivably a path where you still go to the

128springtown meetings but you're starting you're starting construction next spring i think it's incredibly unlikely that all those uh all those ducks would line up but that's why we put those various dates in there i think the the more likely is that we're we're building in 2024. um so i have a couple of questions um [Music] first is about the fundraising so i i don't know how it was a couple size bags about your so you have not begun that process we have not begun that process so we don't know what we're fundraising for so this is a genuine cause this is just a genuine question because this is there's a lot of different hands in this so and maybe you don't know the answer to this but do you anticipate or would it be possible

129to begin say with a pledge not people actually giving you money but to actually start soliciting pledges so that you have commitments um i mean has that already begun that has that hasn't yet begun okay but yes certainly that i think that wouldn't be uncommon at all in the fundraising world yeah i think the risk you run is that you know only a percent only a certain percentage of pledges eventually understood but what right understood but i know um i mean i'm not a fundraiser but i know that our community does have some pretty strong fundraisers in it that there are people that have real knowledge about that um i had a second question which is when you were talking you were sort of just now when you were you were sort of saying and

130then we will get the bids and we'll get the but in reality the turf committee at some point has to turn the direction over right in other words at some point i think someone mentioned it the man anna might have mentioned the ed fund at some point the turf committee is going to act very much in the way that the ed fund acts just in terms of because we deal with the ad fund a lot so we understand like that it really is going to be the turf i'm just making sure i understand at some point the turf committee is going to give a donation for this specific project to the school committee or to the school district rather is that correct some of this got hashed out in a in a memorandum that got

131drafted two years ago pre-covered postcard forget which but uh and i i don't know how much of it survive you know how much of it will survive in terms of the way we work but some of that was thought through in terms of it'll be kept separate until we know this thing's going forward then we'll turn it over right just because like obviously the the turf committee has done this tremendous amount of work but the reality is i don't know who i'm looking at maybe tom the real that the turf committee can't manage the project that's no we would we would receive at the same time it wouldn't be i don't think it would be i don't think it would be unusual to have a building committee right exactly and exactly that some members of

132the curf committee were that makes total sense oh yeah okay okay anna i think organizationally my understanding based on that original um mla and the school committee you know all of these committees are advisory to the school committee and i think it was i think i remember even taking a vote you know two years ago we voted to create this new committee and appoint michelle and all that so i think to your point everything eventually comes back to us um as the final overseer but i think your point is you know having community buy and input and i remember when we talked about convening the group getting the sports leagues involved and you know credit to mr fazio who i know is involved with multiple sports and there are lots of people on that committee

133one other financial question though i just want to bring back to the front my recollection is that the donation or the sale of the patent homestead did not not introduce 500 000 into the coffer for potential field project would that fall under the category of the state and local grants of the 1.2 to 2 million target so we already sort of have five hundred thousand dollars banked because of the patent homestead sale we decided that we on the fundraising side it would really it would be really nice to be able to say we've already got 500 000 raised so we had put it originally in that bucket um that that money is a little bit complicated because it needs to be matched by a wenham component when it was when it when it was accepted

134by the town and put aside for you know athletic field improvements uh by hamilton part of the part of the vote was that it would need to be matched by wenham so there's a it's a fair that's a somewhat it's sort of there but sort of not there well and one other thing too i'll just say this publicly because i know that people talk about it all the time and saying oh you can't use that money for turf fields it's really important i'm glad that you put the the schematic project sure maybe you can't use that funny for the turf field but there's almost 13 million dollars of other things that are not necessarily the turf field so i think when people i'm just sort of trying to get ahead of the pushback that will

135happen when you say you can't use that money for this you can use it for other things as part of the project i just don't think you can you know you understand like i just want to get ahead of that a little because i know that's been a criticism that may very well be with the that particular money i don't know but that issue has come up with the cpc funds and yes i mean the um the the general piece is that you cpc funds are limited to certain things not necessarily buying has been described like the actual turf rug that goes on top right but all of the other land work and things like that the tennis courts are very expensive a lot of that is to my knowledge acceptable that's also i'm just

136affirming i think that is my knowledge so for the public that's watching this later just bear in mind there are other components besides the actual turf the turf surface that's going on the field so and i don't believe there's any restriction on the hamilton on the patent fund money that would restrict how it's used it was fairly generally for that's what i saw that's what i thought so so look we already have if we can figure out how to unlock it from the coffers we have half a million dollars somewhere so um so i guess um just in the interest of time um i'm not quite sure what exactly we you are looking for from us this evening or what we need to do this evening in order to move forward i i think i'm

137not quite sure well offer my two cents i think we need direction that yes you know a 13 million dollar project is financially feasible given all the other things that are going on and that that's the direction we should continue to move um in that case you know we're relying on you guys to say we can we can work this you know within our budget that kind of thing or i don't mean to say necessarily within your budget but we need we need to know that it's financially feasible uh and that's and that you want us to go in a one-phase direction and i think that's there anything more we need i think that's right so i i just want to bring up that um you know this particular plan which is fantastic and much

138more robust than the last plan that came through is actually not that much more than the high end of the last plan and you're getting a lot more out of this and i know i have heard nothing but where is this project for the past five years or so excuse me i do think that linking it in together with some other school projects is really important for a couple of reasons right one we want to be looking at a total town facilities upgrade right which this represents even though it's technically on the campus of two of our only two of our schools it actually you know as they really did a great job tonight pointing out has a good trickle down effect throughout the community the other point is that when you know if we

139do move this forward which i believe we should move this forward tonight name it right own it and give these guys our blessing um to start that process um then we send out the big dogs over there in the corner to go start drumming up support from the community and then come the spring right we're going to have the people we need in the tents to put together the vote to get everything done right um the like the price tag is not going to get any better um this the the one thing i love about this and that david spoke about before um even in addition to the elementary school project is as we're moving forward that elementary school project we're not going to see a building for ted you know the better part of

14010 years theoretically i mean not impossible but like you know theoretically you can start seeing these fields as as soon as next summer you know this is going to be very tangible very quick you know um once the money's actually sort of allocated um you know again that's a very the sooner part of the timeline but that this will happen way faster than everything else and it's going to be a much better sort of sentiment for the community as they're actually seeing what they're getting for their taxes you know for a change you're actually really legitimately getting a tangible return on on an investment um and you know we've all i think everyone in this room has you know been to towns like clinton field and seeing these you know the towns are like why

141don't we have this in hamilton one up and you know we can be that envy of those towns you know of those towns in 18 months so you know where my vote is yeah well no and i thank you and i i mean and i that's helped that was helpful and i agree um and i am also in support however my my real logistical question is i really am not quite certain what it is that we can actually vote on i mean in other words and maybe eric might like in other words are we voting on that we the committee would like to support eric's general timeline of bringing this to town meeting next april and that that's what we're voting on because we in my view we can't really vote and say oh yes

142this is the project we we're not i mean we're not in a position to but so i'm not sure what you're looking for if the minutes could reflect that the board supported you know conceptually supported the the approach that's been presented this evening i think that gives us what we need right that was really my question is like is that what you're looking for that's something that's just a like the board is in support and we might i'm putting forward that we might want to say that the board's intent potentially is to bring this to the april town meeting we want to name it and own it tonight we don't need to sort of well i wouldn't be comfortable voting saying 100 percent we commit to the eight and a half million i would not

143we wouldn't we're not committing anyway that would be something that has to go through the town anyway the approach right okay if i may it sounds as though what the commit it sounds as though the will of the committee if i'm listening to everybody mostly we haven't heard from this side of the table very much but we're just looking for conceptual support that we want to support a project of the scope as a one-phase project that we're willing to push it forward to town meeting as soon as is reasonably possible with the timing direction from the superintendent and mr gary and vinnie to make it feasible sort of deferred to our professional experts but what it sounds like everyone is looking for is is this committee tonight willing to say we want to move forward

144with turf field project at this scope this time and we want to push forward i think that's what david is saying about owning it is not deferring it to some other thing like do we want to go forward or not i think what you're looking for and i i agree with david 100 i want this too i think we need to say yes this committee is willing to support this approach this prospective timeline and we will defer to our experts in the room about making it financially feasible and bringing it forward to town meeting et cetera et cetera one more thing okay and then i've got david frankel too i apologize i just want to say i really like the idea just move back of sort of renaming this and actually owning it as the

145athletic facilities improvement project i think it makes it just shows the size of the project yeah i think we would do we would do well to lose the word turf i think exactly well i think it would conform to the goals that we already have so i agree it meets our goals david thank you for your patience i love the whole project idea and i fully support it but but what i do think we need to do is the budget and analysis what what what's the likely terms of the bond what would its annual impact be on on the budget and what else do we have to squeeze together to actually get it through so well in principle we don't know the numbers and and i wonder if and that was sort of my right

146and i wonder if that's part of us doing that tasking you know the district with those questions is moving it forward right yeah just put it on so i think that's a logical next step this is a great idea which i totally agree but now we've got to work out how do we make that work without driving the select committees crazy right and that's part of i mean i like that and that's part of moving it forward is saying like we're gonna by doing that it becomes more in the public eye and it moves things forward it might help fundraising even like it starts to talk eric did you have something i was going to say i just want to double check it's thursday i believe it is next thursday i believe um this is

147part of a conversation i have with the town manager town administrator so that we can go back to select boards and fincom's ultimately they're going to drive the numbers we can we can pull numbers from the state the state databases and they have tool calculators for each community on the state website the reality is looking at all of it because it's hard to drop a number on an elementary school right now you can't just say oh it's worth x millions of dollars so i need to just figure out how to take the concept and make it realistic in a number sense so that we're not shortchanging ourselves or having to go back to the town and say we need a little bit more i don't want to do that i want to be able to

148put it all in a straightforward format so that we can say yes we're doing this athletic facilities improvement project we're pursuing a school and pursuing a roof and these are the the costs for it's it's um it's time and it's doable and realistically the committee i would suggest just direct me to pursue that and i can i can manage the rest with my team at the district office okay so does anyone feel like they could make a motion from that i do i think i have an let's hear it anna and everyone take a pause after anna speaks before we second it so yeah okay go ahead anna okay be gentle this is a great first effort i move that the hamilton oneham regional school committee authorized the superintendent and the athletic facility improvement project

149committee to pursue the plan as presented in tonight's exhibit with the expectation that we will bring forth a completed plan permitted and a funding proposal to public meeting as soon as reasonably possible it's only committing can we add an intermediate step my authorized the superintendent too i was gonna say that because that's only committing to bringing the plan a more robust plan to a meeting so that's all we're committing i know but that's what i'm saying i'm i'm sort of clarifying yeah yeah not overly so everyone's yeah it's not overly binding oh yeah yeah yeah just to pursue that they continue authorizing right as long as the budget numbers don't bypass the school committee like i don't want this to go directly to tell the media we don't have a second yet so we literally

150just yep right second okay second by david polito okay jen go ahead that's actually why really the reason i pause um like i said i just want it to come back to us before we send it i think it has to yeah um did that feel like it met your needs i was sort of saying to authorize them to pursue bringing this to public meeting as as soon as reasonably possible but we'd always get a chance to vote on the warren in the language and i would anticipate that the superintendent would be updating us okay on the progress yeah and realistically just like any other time meeting we have to come back to you for approval of the actual article whatever whatever it may be whatever we want to get on the warrant so it's

151it's got to come back at some point before it yeah we're probably looking at four or five pretty large steps that we need to all agree on before that even leaving us at that point so and i think if i remember what i said right because i only wrote down half of it it's to pursue the feasibility of bringing this forward as soon as possible so it's i think there's yeah does that work for you guys yes okay thank you all right are we ready to vote okay all those in favor and that is unanimous and the motion passes um you can spread the word that the school committee wants you keep going thank you everybody appreciate it thank you so much for your time thank you to the athletic facility improvement project committee [Music]

152okay excellent um all right moving along okay uh that's to you eric the draft district goals thank you very much um did she leave i put this i put a memo on top of these goals purposefully so that needs to come back i could be very explicit in the direction that we would like to go and i think for the benefit of everybody just looking at all of the pieces of the puzzle right now the superintendent's entry plan the district goals report the upcoming equity audit the knee ask accreditation report we have a mountain of information and if you if you're paying attention that seems to now connect i use the word dovetail last meeting things are dovetailing fairly well with this information so what i've asked the leadership team to do is put together

153some draft goals but also really think clearly and carefully about the the work that we're putting on our teaching staff it was clear in the information i received from them uh this year that there was initiative overload was real um and i've continued to talk to teachers even to this day and try to get information um about how they're feeling how they're how they're you know what they're thinking about the future and realistically they're thinking about next wednesday and shutting off and that that you know our teachers are burnt right now and i think it's important for us to really hone in on what is important for us now so these draft goals are very drafty if you will and realistically just to start the ball rolling i'm going to start the ball rolling tonight

154and i want you to look forward and give me the opportunity to be able to stitch this together over a number of meetings so tonight is just really here is here's what we're starting with and keeping in mind that these goals will evolve and change over the next three months uh actually two months now but really looking to take advantage of a leadership team retreat in june on the 28th where we will continue the work we're already doing kind of behind the scenes on action steps deliverables and cleaning up our goals so that they actually are considered smart goals so that we have some targets um so that works actually going on in the background right now but we just wanted to bring kind of basic goals forward so taking advantage of the june 28th

155leadership team meeting taking advantage of the two other have split the leadership team into two elementary and secondary groups for august early august i'll be doing meetings with each of those groups for the entire day a huge chunk of that day will be focused on these particular goals for their goal levels and then the fourth piece of it is the school committee retreat i think it's an important part of this process so that we can get direction and some clarity from the committee as we as we move forward so that on august 17th when we have the it's august 17th i don't know why that's not jumping out but our next meeting in august um we will be able to have a clear and concise set of goals moving forward um so that's it's kind

156of the process of of where we are right now and like the ball is just starting to roll and um if you take a look at the the goals the first one is is really all about strategic planning and there's there's a lot to that there are a lot of pieces to it and it's a good opportunity for us to begin to formalize all these documents that we have take advantage of the information we're getting integrated into into a greater plan kind of an overarching plan for the entire district and then determining timeline is it three years is it four years is it five years what does that look like over that timeline and i think it's important to note that the goal we have um we've contracted with tla uh teaching learning associates which

157is a local agency of retired superintendents that just works on strategic planning helping kind of guide the way so they'll work with us they're meeting with us on the 28th to to give us an overview of here's the process and here's the data collection process so on top of the big documents that i just mentioned there are a whole bunch of little documents that we need to go find and bring together and look at that includes the mission the vision and our what we don't have now is core values so par parts and pieces of this as it grows will get us in this mode of reviewing updating and making sure that we really believe what we say and you know the equity audit will help with that the superintendent's report will help with that

158i think there's a lot of pieces of the puzzle the second goal mtss structures this is a long-term goal we've been saying it since the start we've got a good head start on it we've been able to identify the pieces at the middle school level now to formalize like the elementary did so that we can now carry that data process into sixth and seventh and eighth grade um it's there's the pieces that are there are useful to us uh to use as data points and as i said a couple weeks ago panorama and some of these other softwares that we're looking at will give us the opportunity to aggregate and disaggregate that data so that we can look at it realistically and not waste time digging through it or or entering numbers it becomes a

159much more sophisticated system that we can use to meet the needs of our kids intertwined in that mtss is the social emotional piece and i think it's important to know that that is is also kind of one of those strands of rope if you will if you can imagine the deib the the social emotional piece um the mtss structures and supports in the classroom for learning all those kind of twists together so that we can better um respond to kids needs so that that process will continue on and then deib i don't think we need any any discussion about that we know what we have to do there's a lot of work to be done there i think the the tricky part will be deciding what to do first we are not going to be

160able to eat the alligator all at once so we will we'll have to trust the committee the deib committee right now to to look at some of that and break it down for us and then make some suggestions to the committee so that work will be ongoing and then improving learning environments and that you know we just we just had the best segue ever to roll into that as much as we're we're talking about athletic fields those are fields we use for classrooms too so i think it's important to note that that project impacts not only athletics but our classes at our high school and our middle school it gives kids opportunities that they wouldn't wouldn't other other otherwise have accreditation report will buttress this i'm sure to to to say you know these are

161things that need to be done and allow us to be able to use that as leverage as we move forward in looking for financing options or even support within within the communities um so we're really looking at those four goals so that we can do this well and also do it without overwhelming our staff i really want the staff to focus on what's going on in the classroom and not have to worry about i gotta go do this today and the next one is i gotta go do this and the next one is i gotta do something else and that tends to be what happens in schools because you have this finite timeline of you know one to 180 days boom go and i think it's it's important for us to manage that a little

162bit differently for our staff next year um we took on a huge huge order with our goals this past year and you know we had to move some things around and you know i think i think that everybody did everything they could to get everything done but in this case i think this is also manageable doable and sets the stage for our future for our future growth along the probably the next five years hey all right questions oh my question is we we're going to be um creating these maybe in more detail at the retreat correct or giving more well i think detail feedback first the leadership team is going to do yes before we see them okay the leadership team is going to work through these and flush them out a little bit yes

163and then we'll see them at the retreat so similar to last year's goals we started working on actions and deliverables um we did not want to put that out there yet it's just really not time because we want to see the equity audit like the whole equity on it and see okay how can we create some actions and deliverables that meet those priority needs so it's a it's a little bit of a tricky balance but i think the the bigger piece of it is having all the information in hand so they are working on it i did share it with dana yesterday we meet up on wednesdays and she was able to get a quick glimpse about what the team's working on and it's just like this big so we need to really hone in

164on reality so that nobody gets blown out of the water either i think it's a great direction so thank you david frankel yeah um as input into the the town master plans which hopefully will be some somehow brought together you talk right into the mic yeah sorry the as input into the master plans it would be helpful to have an ideal projected long-term plan not necessarily one that you think right now could be pragmatically funded but unless they know what you think the ideal is they don't know how much of a gap there is that they're going to try and fill with other sources of of revenue and so it's sort of an envelope the idea would be here what turns out to be pragmatic might be here but but that gap would help them

165to because such a big percentage of the town budgets helped them to define what kind of revenue additional revenue goals they they should shoot for without blowing through the two and a half percent override and all that sort of stuff yeah i think i think it's important to to keep the relationships like that's been really my number one goal with the towns is to continue to meet with them i was at one em select board a couple weeks ago just really continuing those conversations about this is really coming this is real and then same in the communities but then as you'll see in tom's report later he has the multi-year projection about some of those costs as they go that aren't even included in goal four they're just things that need to be done along

166the way um to run a school system so i think you know it's important to be able to manage that i know hamilton has a tool that they tell i don't i have never seen it but they have a tool that they plan to use in their master planning project that a model yeah it's a modeling tool that they plan to use and i think part of a huge part of that is going to be the realities of what's happening within the schools so you're yeah you're right and it's just really working with the town managers town administrators meeting with the select boards and fincom's and yeah i was just really trying to encourage you to not be inhibited in defining what you think is ideal yeah this is what you think is pragmatic and

167and let them kind of stretch of course of course yeah thank you any other questions yeah well i just had a sort of a comment excuse me that i was thinking about and really this idea of the teachers feeling overwhelmed by all these initiatives right i think that we really need to take that on ourselves as being a problem that that starts here at this table because realistically as i'm looking at the goals from last year and i'm looking at the goals from this year and the presentations we had tonight um we have to realize that we're actually you know these these aren't four separate silos right we want to be realizing that we're more in a pyramid and that i think at that top of the pyramid you know is really that idea of

168the equity right and and making sure that every student in this district is getting you know the best education they can you know equitably and everything else that we're putting in here is a tool to get there right so i think if we start thinking about that mindset about what this ultimate goal is right this this idea portrait of a graduate right you know it's that everybody sort of comes out with that same robust education that same positive experience from here and what tools that we have right strategic plans or is it is a tool right i mean there's a process to actually create the strategic plan but the strategic plan in itself is a tool that we're using to get to the ultimate goal and i think at any time if any of us

169at any level starts getting any sort of pushback i think we owe it to our teachers especially you know but also our students in our community to make sure that we're taking a step back as they say that and looking to make sure that we're working towards one common goal and we're not working in silos right and and so i don't know if we need to have four you know i um or afraid needs to be one with four subsections right um and i don't really care it's more about sort of making sure that that that goal you know um because then we're all working towards the same thing we're all working towards one same thing and we don't need to worry about well this you know this wednesday we're doing this this wednesday we

170do this like this wednesday we're utilizing this tool to get here next wednesday maybe we're going to be utilizing another tool and that's all it is right we should be building up we shouldn't be piling on so that's just all i wanted to say well said i think if i could add anything i would say continue to you know to visualize that rope they really all bind together as one as dave saying like this is one thing overall um it's just we're twisting it together and that rope will give us the strength we'll give us a foundation will give us that opportunity those opportunities to move forward and there are already things that will that we do naturally that i think sometimes teachers think they're initiatives but they're really just what we do it's part

171of our job so as as we we start to look at that we can sort those things out too like this is really an initiative and this is something we do as our job like assessment or but but then we own that because then we're not presenting it to them right in the right way right right it's so so i think that's where we have to sort of take that ownership that it you know it falls on us we want to make sure that we're giving them the toolbox and that it's that it is they see it as a toolbox and they don't see it as another box they have to check of something else they have to do otherwise they have to do instead of going home and taking a nap that's this is

172more of a comment than a question in goal 2a line 3 where it says elementary level by building and strengthening a cohesive multi-tiered system of support i think we should add monitoring there like we need to make sure that that is working correct otherwise we need to figure out what's not so i would just add monitoring in there okay anybody else all right thank you um okay are we ready okay okay uh next up we have the superintendent evaluation um i all sent all of you we had to put the watermark on it i felt it was really important to put that so that everyone knew it was a draft but i did send you all clean copy so that you didn't have to be trying to see around that watermark um so um i

173am open to well first of all i'd like to say michelle horgan is joining us for this portion so yeah why don't you have a seat i don't know she's been and she's back oh she's back where she's usually sits exactly there you are um okay so um first of all i want to thank everybody for all of the work that you did on this and um i've thought a lot about this because as you've all read the composite it's fairly long i and i know that this meeting is fairly long at the same time i've really thought a lot about this i do think this is you know one of the three things that we are tasked with doing and i think it's really important that we spend a little bit of time really

174going through this and providing eric and also the community with some feedback on on this report so what i'd like to do and i will take um you know direction from the penny but what i'd like to do is i'd like to just read the notes and methodology out loud so that um that's clear and then what i'd like to do is go through the force i don't know how you all did it but i when i did mine i then went to the four standards and went through each of the standards so i'd like to start off by doing that and then we'll kind of go from there um is everyone comfortable with me just reading the methodology and then you can out and then we can ask any questions or comments okay on

175march 3rd 2022 the school committee agreed that all current members would be invited to participate in the superintendent evaluation process those members who departed the committee on april 7th were asked to submit their evaluations on or before their departure new members who were elected on april 7th were not eligible to submit evaluations and six evaluations were submitted dana alera julia campbell jennifer carr michelle horgan david pelito and anna cedzik when evaluators differed on their ratings the compiler calculated the median mode and mean and rating for that item when all three measures aligned that score was reported when there was a difference between the three measures or when a rating fell between two categories the compiler evaluated the scatter of ratings and the written responses to select the rating that best represented the group you'll see

176later on i did explain that in a couple of places i did also want to just note that as a new superintendent it's typical to have a professional practice goal of full participation in the new superintendent induction program when setting the goals the committee gave mr tracy feedback that while it was expected that he complete this program the committee did not feel that it needed to be included as a formal goal nevertheless some members noted that mr tracy had participated actively in the program and used the supports of his coach effectively i added that very specifically because if you look at the very top of the page one there are there is a place to put professional practice goals and um eric actually did not officially have a professional practice goals but a couple of

177people checked it off anyway and a couple of people commented on it anyway so you'll note that i did not check it off because it wasn't formally but that was all right did anyone have any questions about the methodology or what i just okay um so what i'd like to do is move down to standard one okay which is instructional leadership um and i'd like to really focus on the week dana don't we have to read the full evaluation into the public record well this is going to be my question is that i'm willing to read it i've actually timed it reading it straight takes 15 minutes i just didn't know if we had to i'm michelle bailey i don't think that is the at the will of the committee so i um if as

178i was gonna look at the narrative i'm happy to read it i don't think we have to read it it is entered into but right i agree with jen i think it's available to the public i do not feel the need for you to read it into the record personally okay like i said i read it to myself at home took 15 minutes was fascinating after having written it myself i do want to just comment that unlike any other writing that anyone does the goal of this document is that it ought to be filled with things that feel like plagiarism to you you ought to i'm hoping see some of your words some of your quotes um in here i hope that that feels true because that was what i intended to do um so

179if we don't really want me to read the whole entire thing here if that is the feedback that i am getting um i will just start with instructional leadership and i will say that you can see that well maybe i'll just put it out there to you all to talk about standard one if anyone has any additional comments about either the where the check marks are which all fall in this particular category all fell into the proficient range or if anyone had any questions or comments on this standard and you could direct them directly to eric if you wanted to provide feedback or to me if you have concerns about the composite you're kind of disappointing me i spent a lot of time reading it out loud you did such a good job that we

180don't have any questions or concerns okay excellent i mean for me i'm just speaking for me but on standard one at least all right standard two which is management and operations and again um i will say this um again all all the check marks fell into the um overall into the um proficient range um i again comments i'll just make this general comment about both of the first two standards and kind of overall i i definitely see myself in this but what i can also tell is that other people wrote similar things in slightly different words and like well that's the same idea but that's actually went back to my own to be like did i write that i was like i didn't write that but someone else in the committee clearly did and had

181a similar idea so i'm sort of struck by um the consistency of it and i hope that eric you see this as a positive that you know this is a group that tends to have spicy conversations so for us to actually be kind of like he's doing great we don't have any problem i i hope you see that i absolutely do thank you that's a real testament but i love reading my own thoughts from someone else's words yes i will say that was very that was very true throughout i did see um similar thoughts and different wording um and and also you know it's sometimes voice is difficult we all have very different voices so sometimes you didn't it's not a direct quote sometimes it's a mush of two or three people saying the same

182thing all right other comments on on in on the um management and operations okay all right standard three um family community um this um as you will see is a is a theme that i did highlight in the in um in the beginning part where i um that communication was certainly a theme throughout and it came up certainly interestingly some some of us chose to highlight that communication that was seen as a strength by all evaluators some of us chose to highlight it under standard three and family and community and other people chose to highlight it more so under professional culture but and some chose to do that under both but it was something that everyone mentioned so are there other things that people want to highlight about family and community or questions then this

183is not a reflection on your hard work you just all agree because if you could know the amount of like i know you quoted every we all feel heard and seen i think i would like to make a comment on this point just because we know from dorothy and coaching that the reading of exemplary really isn't something to give out lightly right so i think it's noteworthy that so many of us despite hearing dorothy in our ear say you really shouldn't give someone an e unless they've really really gone above beyond and i think it's really noteworthy that superintendent tracy has been on the job for eight months and yet enough people in this committee who have a ser you know especially considering um how difficult the last few years have been i think it's

184an amazing credit to you eric that so many people gave you an e in this area because i think some superintendents go their whole careers without ever earning that and here you've already done it in the first year so you're setting yourself a very high bar but i think it's really worth noting that we knew not to give someone an exemplary rating lightly and yet we chose to do it anyway and i think you should see that as a huge public statement of your strength as a communicator which everyone in the community across the board every there is one theme that i hear it is we love how he communicates the depth the complexity the sophistication the intelligence um the grammar all of it people love the way you speak and write and yeah and

185a huge difference in this gesture i will i will just note that um to that feedback that that um almost everyone specifically cited the um weekly superintendent reports um i think i wrote in here and i don't even remember which one of you actually said like he's a good storyteller but it was a theme throughout lots of people told that said that in different ways and that that was an important aspect it isn't just that the report is clear and timely and has the information that we need which would probably be fine but in addition that people it was fun to read and that that was important to people that that was the feedback that i got from um okay other people anything i would just like to say that i really think um one

186of the things superintendent tracy has done exceptionally well is to rebuild trust in between stakeholders in the community because it was pretty much at an all-time low and to repair those bonds as quickly as you did is amazing i mean it just really is okay um right so i do want to look at standard for professional culture um again like i said that um it's the communication again um was really highlighted there um as well as other things but that was a highlight anyone have any else thing else to add on that okay um all right then if you are willing then i'd like to go up back to the top um and if you see um i did explain so on some of the i'll just quickly go through the um the goals the

187superintendent performance goals um so some of these um you know i don't know if anyone if everyone read and appreciated that some of these did require me to make a decision as the com you know and i'm willing i'm open to draft so um i will say so i do want to just read a little bit here so the multi-tiered system of support the ratings on this goal varied from significant progress three people picked that to met which was two and exceeded was one and um so well i'll just say well i wrote while this scatter makes it unclear we're best to check the place the check mark the narratives were all positive about the amount and quality of the achievement and in my opinion it really was that people made different interpretations on how

188best to convey that they thought that there was a good deal of progress but that it was a two-year goal um so um i mean i made the decision to put it i just met um indicating that none of the evaluators noted that there were any concerns about the amount of progress made during this year i'm hoping that people feel comfortable with that but i'm open to other things yeah i think that was one was just challenging because it's a two-year goal so you can't specifically say this goal has been achieved but there's work this goal has been achieved in terms there's work going forward on it right and and like i said when i really read people's narratives that was it didn't really appear to me that there was actually a lot of difference

189in terms of what people were trying to express their just their check marks fell in different places and i want to make other one more comment that the evidence provided was just exemplary like really helpful for us for me personally because i felt that there was so much to work with and it was very detailed and very high level so i think that really helped me personally grade and do the evaluation so thank you okay um all right just to go through the rest of the goals the um maintaining momentum during transition um this one fell neatly into met improving communications and relationships this was equally split 3-3 so i this is what i i'll just say every evaluator i just said that every single person really highlighted this um and the enthusiasm just came

190through and then so i really tried if forced to choose i chose exceeded um again it was a 50 50. so you know and then the future focus really was i felt very very similar in terms of the mtss goal that the ratings did vary um but that the feedback really reflected and this really was that the timeline of this goal did shift so we were looking at the future focus goal as written at the beginning of the year and the timeline actually did shift and those who know those who commented on that expressed that they were pleased with the slowed down timeline and felt that the timeline slow down was a positive um so there was no real negative feedback about that but again some people chose to rate that as significant progress whereas

191some people felt like that they it actually exceeded the progress that they would have anticipated on the goal um so [Music] i chose significant progress to acknowledge both that it was selected by the largest number of people and also to reflect that there are benchmarks still to be completed on this goal again i'm open to feedback okay all right so just to wrap up that top we're just looking at all those top check marks there that um for the overall standards all of them it was clear where to place that overall each standard gets one check mark and all of them that was clear where to place it um which is that instructional leadership management and operations and professional culture were all rated as proficient and family and community engagement was rated as exemplary also

192the overall summative performance was rated as proficient this there were four rankings of proficient and two of exemplary um so it was pretty clear to put the rating in provision and i do want to note that there were no overall summative performance ratings below proficient and then finally i will not read this to you but i did you've all mentioned it already there were some themes that emerged and these are just quotes that i pulled out so hopefully you see yourself heard here here um but some themes emerged which is that there was a smooth entry and transition [Music] that communication was a strength um relationship building which i think jen just mentioned um i wrote in conclusion the school committee recognizes the work that mr tracy has done in taking the reins after a

193turbulent three-year stretch in the district the entry plan was ambitious and he lives his mantra of execute execute execute his full engagement in the hamilton wonder regional school district and his genuine caring for all its students has created a much needed shift in the community superintendent tracy has approached his new role in hamilton wenham with remarkable vigor and determination to move the district out of the difficult pandemic years and into a new era of growth modernization and stability okay anybody have any more feedback for eric please keep it up michelle horgan hi everyone um i just two things um i think you look at arrogance he's almost it's like you look at a really tall five-year-old child you're expecting to be a seven-year-old kid and when he doesn't meet those expectations you're like oh he's

194still five you have to remember that eric has only been in this position for eight months and that grace um should still be given to him because he still has his exceptional job as he has done he has so much more to learn you have to remember that i know i'm singing to the choir but just keep that in mind and secondly if you guys don't nail him down this summer you guys are stupid so get on it emoji don't hesitate just do it because otherwise yeah is that emotional before like emotions she's causing trouble so that's it that's all i have to say thank you michelle um oh that's great um okay anybody else i have just one more thing to say i didn't see it in the the composite evaluation but it's it's

195probably in there but i didn't see it um i think something that i commented on that i just really want to highlight is the fact that eric has not passed the buck ever it's very much like this is on me this is my responsibility this is my decision i'm being held accountable and he doesn't shy away from really tough decisions and i know that's something i really appreciate in a leader and i think that's something that that we can you know maybe everybody can learn from but i just wanted to say that that's one of the one of i think um his biggest strengths and i totally agree with michelle um i'd like to add on to that too and i'll give you a really specific example from the last meeting where um because i

196wrote similar things you have a real sense of personal responsibility it's clear that even if it's not your fault you embrace the idea that you're the leader of the district so the people who work with you and for you you're responsible for them too so i i don't ever actually foresee you saying well i'm not in charge of that that was so-and-so's department because you recognize that ultimately you're in charge of the whole district and i actually think we as the committee can learn from that as well but i'll give you a specific example where when wendy was here talking about school lunch and there was a moment where she asked a very logical question to you know in a normal supervisory capacity like oh is it okay for me to present do you want

197to do that and you without even pausing you're like no you go right ahead like you you have this really kind of charming blend of humility and empowerment for the people who work with you when it's tom's turn to speak or jen's turn to speak or someone else's 20 percent vinnie is a great example you know you let people show their strengths and take credit for that but you get the sense that you are right there for backup and if somebody were to come after them let's say that vinnie for some reason was i don't know under attack from the auditors which i'm just trying to think of the craziest example ever let's say vinnie was under attack from the auditors i don't ever see you saying like well you know that's vinnie's fault because

198benny's the finance guy and i'm just over here i feel like you would you would protect him and take responsibility but you also are empowering and yet humble it's a really beautiful kind of blend of leadership that makes people feel comfortable being themselves this is my impression perhaps other people in the district disagree but for my observations you seem like you'd be a really great boss and i think that's important and i think the accountability piece that julia was talking about is really huge because people want that in their leadership they want someone to say i own this but i'm here to help and i'm being part of it and we're working together and you i think you do that really effectively and i think to michelle's point that's just who you are i don't

199think that's going to ever change i think that you are incapable of not being that way in the same way i am incapable of not speaking long sentences all the time but it's a beautiful talent and i wish i had it thank you also i'd like to say i i told anna that hers was long and mine was long but in reality it was julius it was long [Music] there it is and i really like writing it and and mine was long okay other comments anything else all right um so michelle's going to go watch and see what the celtics are doing thank you michelle thank you so much so my uh understanding is that the new members can vote correct we didn't accept yeah we did not exclude them from voting to accept so

200i'm going to ask amy for you to make a motion okay i move that the hamilton modern regional school committee um accept the draft of the superintendent evaluation as presented this evening second okay seconded by jen carr all right is there further discussion eric do you have any further discussion i just want to say thank you everyone i appreciate it thank you we will continue to get better and thank you so much dana for thank you you're welcome it was time consuming but not hard you guys did a great job it was not hard all right are we ready to vote okay all those in favor all right and that is unanimous and the motion passes okay and then um i will figure out what i need to do with that document um quick point

201of order do we have to move to extend the meeting because it's been almost three hours i was gonna say that but i thank you i appreciate that okay so it is 10 p.m and i would like to just say that i did i did warn you um but we do need to take it out um so i would like i guess aisle can move i would like to move to extend the meeting for up to half an hour second second by anesthesia is there any discussion no hurry okay all those in favor all right that's unanimous and the motion passes um thank you all all right moving along uh the custodial contract uh that's either eric or david you did most of the work we voted david to be the chair now go ahead

202okay um we've been working on the custodial contract i think for almost this entire time i've been involved maybe actually beyond before that started well before that yep with um superintendent benios so it carried over we've changed some uh personnel along the way we've changed negotiators and it's just been kind of a change of table yeah we changed yeah we changed the table we negotiated at everything so we finally were able to come together we got we got some language sorted out which is in this red line document that you have in front of you um most of it fairly straightforward and um stuff that was was hammered out again before me these these were some of the language changes were inherited from the initial rounds when they had first met with afscme so we

203picked it up from when i took over october 1st and i and and then the original negotiating committee during my during the fall carried through as much as we could it was hard to get asked me to the table but we were able to finally hammer it out last just a week ago and this is these are the numbers that you see reflected in the the changes i mean reflected in the uh the contract a couple of the the bigger items was really looking at how custodians were evaluated they had this kind of complex evaluation system that was could we thinned it out we worked with a smaller committee of of the two groups and thinned it out got it to something excuse me it's a little more reasonable and uh easier to to manage

204for everybody um and then a lot of just language changes on how when people were coming in whether it was during a weather-based emergency or not a weather-based emergency so some of the things we learned with snowstorms and some of things we learned with covid and then certain ways we handle when people get called back for instance how they get paid before this this contract when teacher excuse me when a custodian that called back for instance at the high school the alarm goes off at one in the morning there's a list of us that the alarm company calls and whoever kind of is maybe not smart enough to answer the phone but whoever answers the phone has to go in it's generally chris stowy because he's first on the list so they would get paid

205for having to come in we adjusted the language a little bit where they would get paid to come in and then if they got a call in another hour they wouldn't get paid another increase in pay so it's kind of how it worked previous we sorted that language out a little bit and then um really tried to just work some some smaller things in increasing their clothing allowance that they they they're they go through clothes and sneakers like nobody's business because they're cleaning and chemicals and especially in the summer time they'll go through sneakers and boots and things like that so we were able to increase that incrementally over a three year uh period excuse me and then a little bit of of uh kind of clothing that we supply we supply certain goods to

206them and just when they got it is was clarified in the contract there's never anything been any timeline to say it should be there at this time um swapping out reading putting the proper name in washington's birthday is not a thing so we changed that to president's day and then we were able to change out good friday for juneteenth similarly to the way we did it with the teacher contract and then excuse me uh some of its language change it was old language in in like section 2200 evaluations there was a a line that was put in there as a placeholder to say yeah we'll agree on something by a particular date we took those out because it never actually got agreed to we but we we had uh sorted out with the subcommittee and

207then the on the final pages the incremental increase is between 21 and 24 because this contract had lapsed a year ago they'll they uh we we will pay them for the past school year this 21 22 school year for that two percent increase it also reflects a market rate adjustment in that first year and then we removed the maintenance working foreman pay because we don't have one anymore so we just took that all completely out of longevity they were the only group that didn't have a longevity option um so we were able to add that into the contract and then an additional two percent for each of the following years next year and the year after um for increases so that's kind of in a nutshell um union did ratify on tuesday i was notified

208by their representative that they they did ratify their contract on tuesday and now it's in our hands to vote our side okay anybody have any questions just a quick one on page 22 should it be listed as columbus day or an indigenous people's day i actually believe in massachusetts so here's here's the situation right i was asking questions sorry no no it's a good question um it the situation is that they've already ratified it and there is a there's a lot of good reasons for us to try to ratify it in this fiscal year that being said you're correct um you could do a quick sidebar letter july one yeah i would say on july one i can't exactly yeah right i i don't anticipate i mean in other words there wasn't a lot of

209debate about washington's birthday being changed to the correct thing correct name as many times i read this damn thing oh my god oh man especially since how we joked about washington spent a lot of time in that section because we were going back and forth with good friday and then you know anything else anybody have anything else that's why you need fresh eyes everyone's going i'll blame you it's my fault i'll take the blame um all right can we have a motion uh yes we i move that the hamilton venom regional school committee approved the 20 to 2021 to 2024 custodial contract as presented this evening second second by anna seedzick is there further discussion okay all those in favor and that is unanimous and the motion passes thank you all and uh david will

210be busy riding the uh side park i'll take care of it okay all right now facilities [Music] tom thank you so much for being here in the middle of the night um [Music] tom do you want to present it uh yeah okay i just thought it might be easier for you hmm there you go thank you for inviting me tonight to present uh the 2023 to 2028 facilities roadmap um it is it was the main goal of for the district under our district goals displayed ahead the overarching goal you know as stated on the board here is that students and i apologize for reading it but i think it's important to lead off and say it so students in the hamilton wentham regional school district will have access to learning environments that are safe clean

211and sustainable district learning environments shall be a source of civic pride for the entire community the district shall collaborate with both the towns of hamilton and wenham to plan significant capital investments effectively and as you saw in the draft goals we're looking at continuing that mantra the deliverables will change of course so i want to lead off first by explaining the structure of the report and i know it seems busy but it does have meaning right first i'll start by saying that i constructed the graphic and the thought process almost like you would construct a building so on the at the bottom you'll see the foundational work that was used to come up with the different ideas in this report of course you have the 2022 state of the school facilities report that was presented

212back in march a 2022 portrait of a graduate which i was you know proud to participate in that process and also the deib audit that was presented so i think those are three main documents that should be used as we look at our facilities in the future so the foundation being laid i now have the structural columns within this graphic broken it down into four categories that is renew improve reduce and welcome all of those as symbolized on the graphic are linked together right and finally all of those columns hold up the overarching goal right so to get to that overarching goal i feel like we have to look at these four structural columns um may sound a bit corny um but the reason why we have the dna strips in there is because i

213think it is important to ingrain that in our thought process as we're talking about these decisions so first on the renew column as we all know and we've talked about tonight we have the athletic facilities improvement project on the horizon so thank you again for your support with that i was proud to work with the group all year i look forward to advancing that work also talked about quite a bit is the cutler school quote unquote cutler school msba project where we are looking at incorporating the winthrop into that and third as talked about is the high school roof replacement project as i go through the categories on the right hand side which i will click at the end just to give you an overview is a link to the open spreadsheet which i plan

214on keeping open as long as this plan you know between the dates of 23 and 28 so the public can get access to it and see how much investment we've made any notes and the completion rate of the projects very similar to what i did back in the leading up to the fall of 2020 with the ventilation improvements made it open people can access it and see the work being done with the process with the prospect of the new school on the horizon next category i named improve so knowing the fact that the cutler and winthrop schools will likely be consolidated with a future project i think we have to be mindful of large capital investments into the cutler and the winthrop schools that's not to say we're going to be absentee landlords that is

215not to say we're just going to let them fall apart anything that impacts the safety and impacts the learning environment we will still have to take care of you know in addition to that building code requirements state law requirements we all have to stay updated on that the next category i can i um come up with the title of reduce and really the main focus is reducing the district's carbon footprint i'm not sharing any news that climate change is you know the issue of our times and i know that covid kind of derailed that for a little bit as far as the district's concern we were making headway we're talking about increasing composting and recycling and the things that we need to do aside from the waste management be wise for the district to look

216into renewable energies on our campuses especially the middle school high school and bucher school if we reflect back on that in improved slide and as we presented to the capital finance subcommittee is the prospect of performance contracting and that may you know the renewable energies may fall under that performance contract if it's wise for one of these performance contractors to take that on then we might see that fall under that and finally welcome is the final category you know all students and all occupants when they arrive to our buildings should feel that they belong in the building if somebody wanted to come to this meeting tonight if you look outside they would have to take an alternate route compared to the rest of the flow of the crowd that would come in here tonight so

217i think long term we should be looking at the ada requirements and other items once the deib final audit is presented may fall into that category as well i want people to know that i consider this to be a living document i don't want to come here and say this is what's going to happen in 2028 if i did that in and said promised what was going to happen in 2020 it would have been derailed so i think it's important to have a living document and also break out tasks that are achievable and not just i hate to say pie in the sky but i wanted to be realistic of things that we can accomplish over the next five to six years if i click on the link the spreadsheet is open right now as

218you can see we haven't reached fiscal year 2023 that's why there's no investment in that category but as we move from fiscal year to fiscal year you know we'll see the investment in 24 and 25 and 26 and then the total at the end of this how much we've invested into these specific projects um there'll also be remarks for each fiscal year uh so for example at the end of 23 you'll see the ro the amount of rooms um you know that had a special asbestos tile removal and replacement and the amount of doors that will be listed in those remarks so with that i'm happy to answer any questions i'm happy to take any feedback that you may have regarding uh the way i've structured this and i look forward to working with the

219committee through some of these projects through the budget process thank you um all right julia's chomping at the she wants to go i just have a comment i love this i well i love a good framework so i love the four categories i think it's really easy to understand and digest and that when we are evaluating a new prod project we can say oh it fits into one of these four and if it doesn't then we won't do it so um for me this is really helpful and i think really comprehensive so thank you i don't really have a question but i appreciate the synthesis of it excellent other questions or comments david sure yeah i like the structure too and my new question is under improve i didn't see anything specifically called up or

220improving indoor air quality sure let me just pull that up so under the middle school high school and bucher school um you know in the past it's air quality or indoor air quality iaq has been the term right i put in indoor environmental quality because it goes beyond just analyzing ventilation it's also cleaning chemicals that are used furniture that's purchased and the off-gassing from the plastic so i think that looking at that in a holistic way i did carry that on the schedule of um i just didn't see it that was it just may be categorized somehow differently but yeah i have it in the slides here and then um i have i think i might have it labeled as hvac only because that was i didn't make that change on the spreadsheet yet fair

221enough yeah it goes beyond hvac too as you know yeah so it is part of the plan and uh hopefully we can work it into the budget cool yeah that's important okay amy did you have something yeah um thank you for this i love like everyone else is saying the breakdown of the four categories um i'm also happy to hear you specifically call out that we're not gonna neglect cutler and winthrop because you know our youngest learners there now are gonna be there for their probably whole and elementary careers so we need to still maintain those schools so thank you for pointing that out um along the lines of the reduced category i think this work is really important and i'm wondering if there's a way to align this with educational initiatives you know i'm

222sure a lot of the students would be interested in some of these initiatives i know one of the schools had an initiative to do composting and wondering if that's something we could open up to the teachers as part of um curriculum yeah i would i would welcome that these are hard tasks to take on just as the facilities team or just the administration and i'm looking for everybody's support in the district and one one comment i can make when if i take cutler school for example and the fact that we're not just going to neglect it uh past few months i've been working with the friends of cutler to look at some additional playground equipment and i go back to you know the structure when we're you know having decision making sessions knowing that a

223new school is on the horizon playground equipment usually 15 to 20 year life span so we were specifically looking at pieces that could be moved right so climbing structures and jungle gyms are typically not structures that you would move the insurance companies don't typically like that but we did look at musical elements and other playground elements that could be moved to either the new school or maybe another property in town depending on what we're looking at at the new school so that's great i just want to give people confidence that we're not just going to look cast off the cutler and the winthrop school eric did you have something yeah i think to amy's point the the reality is that it's imperative for us to build this again into that rope because if you what

224tom's been able to do here is actually fit the dovetail with the work that we're currently doing and carry that through but also getting kids involved as part of that the overall structure of all we're going to do we're going to get kids involved in the mtss stuff we're going to get kids involved in the deib stuff we're going to get kids involved we have kids involved now in the recycling they do like the high school the environmental club and the national honor society groups do a lot with that so more it's more now can we carry that into some of the other schools and and get you can you can really get groups of fourth and fifth graders to take charge of something so it's just really uh it goes it goes all the

225way back to goal one for next year as we set those goals and as we look at who we want to be and why you know who we serve who we want to be and why we do what we do those core values that we don't have now to make these decisions are are becoming a little more evident i think to people as as we build forward so by the time we hit december we have these core values that we now start to decision make with we also start to use in our planning and our budgeting and and also that goes into curriculum and into opportunities for people in our district both adults and students that's great thank you okay um well i'd like to just say that i was so happy with this this

226i mean the content is important and and i'm i really appreciate the link because that was a helpful document before and i like having it but this right in front of us this makes me so happy like that you have because this is the way this is to what david was pointing at earlier in the meeting that this this shows like all of the things working together right that this foundation that you've put at the bottom like this is the way everything in the district should be filtered through how are we serving the students using this you know this framework and so it's a model for the way i imagine that all the other um you know departments or whatever can be looking at so i'm really i was really excited to see this and

227thank you for presenting in that way and i can see that it probably took a long time to really integrate this all into something that was really coherent and and i think like you said it it's flexible enough to allow you to go into the future so thank you for that thank you for the kind words anybody else thank you and thank you for being here so late i am grateful what did you use to build it uh canva canada yeah i do just want to give you a shout out the visualize it was great the combination though of the double helix moving and then the neon structure does give you a little bit of like a dance party feel like it feels really fun and place happy despite being something really serious um the

228only comment i would make is sort of picking up on that is it's so easy to process but you've also imbued a little bit of the district values in it talking about strategic planning and visioning i mean you've used words of inclusivity and climate change and welcoming and sustainability and um you know you're in a very um deft sort of way you're you're showing sort of philosophical underpinnings of how you're approaching the management of the buildings which i really appreciate and applaud and support and yeah you've got some design skills my friend so if you don't want to continue being a facilities director i feel like i only know enough to be a little dangerous so that's what's up i didn't anticipate that that was going to move i didn't realize one of the disadvantages

229of the agenda being on paper that's right there we go all right thank you thank you for welcoming me thank you okay all right mr tracy to the school building committee and the superintendent's report superintendent's report okay um i'm actually just trying to pull up one document a few quick things the the list attached is the current list of people who have who've been volunteered by the state like me and vinnie and tom and and others who have volunteered to be on the committee uh for the school building committee what i've learned in investigating this is generally towns have uh cities and towns have bylaws that that basically drive who's on the committee where neither of our communities have any bylaws which gives us a lot more flexibility the one conversation i'm still waiting to

230have with the state is the voting member side um initially it in talking to other superintendents how they decided on who's going to vote was who worked for the town or the community versus who was volunteering so if you have like a select board member or a superintendent they would be a voting member if you had a parent volunteering who had a special skill set they would not be a voting member so use that structure but i also had sent a query to to the msba to figure out what the best way to do that is we are still waiting for a couple of uh wenham committee members we we have uh i presented to them two weeks ago to almost three weeks ago now um rick made the request for their committee so we're

231just waiting for them to give us the committees everybody else is uh is in place i just got hamilton this morning so i didn't want to change the document so what happens is this gets submitted to the state and it gets vetted by the states the state could say this person's we don't feel this person is qualified for example some of the volunteers i had to just put what they do they could say this person doesn't have the necessary qualifications and then remove that person or they could say you need another fincom person or for example so right now we're gonna we're just waiting on the the um the wenim fincom and the uh when i'm select board member to to be part of the committee and then we'll forward this to the state we

232don't need a vote on it or anything it's just a matter of uh i wanted to just be public with the document and say here's where we are so far this document will change over you know if we're getting accepted into this process over the three to four or five years people are going to come and go and people are going to be like i can't do this anymore i can't fit it in whatever so it'll change and each time it does we have to get send it to state and get get it approved so i'll just manage that as it goes um first meetings will probably probably begin with the start of the next school year august september would probably be the first kickoff meeting of the group and really just to clarify what

233we do why we do it and then um and then that the first part of the process will be october two special town meetings that we have scheduled for october 1st to really get the whole process moving so okay all right question questions um i unders wouldn't be voting members but i'm surprised that the principals and the rebecca butler and miss goodchild would not be voting members is that something is there any way that we can ask to have our professional staff who actually work in the buildings i believe anybody can be a voting member i just left it as i originally sorted out by talking to local principals i mean superintendents okay so like manchester i was talking to the manchester superintendent how they structured theirs versus swampscott how they structured theirs was different

234who voted who not but it was driven by town by laws or rules we don't have anything that drives who's who on the committee and who's a voting right so that's why i sent the question to the state to our contact to be able to say what's the best way to sort this out and i'm going to i'm going to assume they're going to push it back and say you guys do what you feel like you want to do so ultimately anybody will probably be a voting member i guess i would just encourage if we have latitude to do that just optically to look at this um i feel like the fact that the principals and the teachers are oddly not voting members but other not that i discredit the fincom at all but like

235i think if someone in the fincom has a vote i feel like this principal should have a vote i just feel like optically that's really odd that they don't and i would encourage us to push back on that too the way i learned about the way some of the other cities and towns made their decision was based on who actually had the ability and authority in their role so realistically for the district i would probably be the only one with the authority to you know start that whole process of that exclusion but like i said i i would just assume leave it that anybody at the table could vote but i just need to get clarification on that and that that'll be up to the state really if they say yeah do what you want

236to do we have no bylaws we have nothing that's that says you have to do this this and this so yeah and it might be i mean you but i mean you said something about it it depends on whether or not you're a municipal employee but because we're regional i mean it might be interesting to see how other regional well but i would think all teachers are technically municipal you know employees it's i mean they're yeah they just can't they don't have the authority to bind us in any like they can't even sign a teacher can't sign a contract for like a dj yeah it has to go it has to go to administrator yeah so there's some just there's some nuances there i just have to work out but that's i just wanted people

237to see the names okay other questions i just have one comment can you put the mic so we can yeah this happens to be an even number of photo members i don't know if that would become an issue at some point yeah well i'm not i'm still not sure i have them all yeah it could it could yeah you definitely don't want that we'll take minnie off um all right anybody else okay uh eric do you have anything else real quick thanks yep go ahead all right um yesterday we had the final gathering of the staff we had um um uh ice cream social up at the high school so people came together got together for the kind of that last end of the year thing made their sundays uh we were fortunate to get

238uh 13 different gifts donated little gifts donated by the friends groups the various friends groups so i made a little more fun than sitting there listening to me drone on but um we had a we had a just i think a really quick gathering that people needed to be able to see each other before everybody went their separate ways and um things really went well but i just want to publicly thank the friends groups and i again publicly thank our staff and faculty for the work they did this year as as i said to them this year was was was rough and uh you know together and the relationships that they have with each other and with their students and with the families i think that was important to bring everybody through this year and

239we're almost there we keep telling them three more days three more days so um national history day i just want to mention a couple of our kids have made it all the way to the national level so we have social studies department announcing mass individual documentary category 10th grade ella tran she earned a second place medal with her project the boat people debate and diplomacy during vietnamese migration and then the group website category 10th graders jacob hanno david jung and jaden wang won first place with their medal uh the first place medal with their project korean armistice agreement the ceasefire that changed the course of two careers um so there'll be an awards ceremony for them a national level award ceremony for them saturday june 18th from 3 to 4 30. it'll stream live and

240i'll put the link in in my weekly so that people can check that out if they want to and then i need to clarify an error i made on my superintendent's entry report the i i noted in my report that there was no transition from fifth to sixth grade that is not correct there is there is a transition we were actually working to expand the transition so i i do want to mention that that is that is my issue to deal with but our councils go to our elementary schools our counselors and and teachers do a move-up day so the kids will fifth grade they come up to visit the middle school there's a rising sixth grade parent meeting that same night and then um peer leaders work with the kids when they come in

241their first their first few days we have that sixth grade and ninth grade orientation day peer leaders work with them um and we're looking to enhance that and and really expand that but i i did blow that one and and um it's really important i think to put that out there publicly that there is a transition i don't want people to think like what are they doing um but so i apologize to the people at the middle school for um not reporting that correctly but also wanted to correct the the error and i'll correct the final report as well and that is all okay um it is 10 30. um [Music] i'm does anyone think that i'm thinking we could i could entertain emotion probably unless people are do you have other things that have

242to get done i move to adjourn at 10 30 p.m do i have to say something more official no i'm waiting for a second second by somebody i didn't jen all right is there further discussion well i just think we would be done with the whole meeting entirely in like less than 10 minutes if anybody has a topic for a future meeting send it to me all right um okay uh do we have any further discussion are we ready to vote all right all those in favor all right and it is unanimous and we are adjourned