School Committee 4.7.21

001we'll call the meeting to order it is um i would just like to remind everybody that this meeting is being recorded um we are meeting remotely due to the governor's emergency order and limitations on um group meetings however that has been expanded and we will talk about that later um the people that are currently in attendance um and participating remotely are dana o'leary michelle bailey anna zizik julia campbell peter wolzick and michelle horgan and also in attendance with us is our student rep ethan howell and our superintendent marybeth banos our director of whatever facilities right and off whatever um special ops we'll call them special ops tom gary and our assistant superintendent for all things money or as i recently read they changed the name at um elon musk the chief financial officer got changed

002to the king of coin so i thought that was a funny name for crazy people all right so tonight um we are on schedule to end our executive session at 10.05 in order to accomplish that we have set times on our agenda and we will be endeavoring to keep to those um one of the first things on our agenda tonight is citizens comments um so if a citizen would like to speak they are welcome to they need to um use the raise hand function and then we will recognize you we want to let you know that you have only have three minutes to speak and that michelle horrigan will indicate when um your time is coming near and then we will ask you to stop uh once you have spoken for three minutes so if

003jennifer carr would like to be recognized that would be great jennifer you should be all set yep can everybody hear me yes thank you yes you guys no the hamilton wenham school district has a communication issue the meeting on the 17th which did discuss the superintendent's performance we couldn't hear like literally i had to go into a room and turn my computer up as far as it will go because none of what you guys said could be heard unless it was in a quiet room as loud as i could possibly get it that doesn't give me a lot of faith that i know what you guys said in addition i thought that the email about jennifer clifford which congratulations i'm glad she got this this new position was really disingenuous on the meeting on the

00417th superintendent banos made it very clear that jen clifford would be starting her duties in her new position right after april vacation but we received an email saying she would be principal until july 1st i listen to that list of things that she has to do there is no possible way that she can do everything that the superintendent wants her to do and be principal of cutler school so if you're going to pull jen out of cutler school you guys need to be honest about that and say that to every single parent don't tell parents that oh yeah jen's going to be there until july 1st when after april vacation we're not going to see her that often that's not fair to the students and it's not fair to the parents at cutler school be

005honest be forthright and don't make people find out by listening to a meeting that was poorly recorded and that's all i have to say michelle you're muted thank you and that is the only person who has their hand raised so we gained five minutes so um great so that will be the end of citizens comments and if we can just turn off the chat that would be great um the first person uh to present tonight is our student rep ethan howell and i would like um look forward to hearing from you we did participate in the my family participated in the bertucci's uh fundraiser a week or so ago so happy to hear what's going to happen now this is barnes could you enable screen sharing please absolutely thank you ethan you should be all

006set awesome thank you [Music] march 2021 student representative report by the student body government as many of you know this week has been has marked the first in which school is being taught fully in person for the majority of students this has been a huge transition for a lot of students especially those who have been remote for the majority of the year it will be an understatement to say that the mood surrounding the return is mixed from my fellow students i've heard equal parts excitement and anxiety regarding the return while some students are happy to see their friends and socialize others are worried about this reduced social distancing and recent rising cases i still strongly believe that pool testing is necessary for us to remain safely in school and i would encourage every single parent

007and student watching to strongly consider signing up for pool testing you have not already accompanying the change in situation is a new schedule which everyone in the high school is attempting to adapt to it introduces three 110 minute class blocks with break times built in so as to reduce the amount of students in the hallways by lessening transitions between classes it's another shift for students and the end of the year will definitely revolve around how well the student body can handle these big changes finally from what i've seen coveted safety is a big concern for the majority of the student body and thankfully in my experience maths are on and most students are following the guidelines and being relatively covert conscious rooms like the lunchroom tend to be crowded and hallways are certainly close quarters

008however mask wearing policies are strict in the actual classroom students are still almost always separated by at least three feet i don't know why it's sorry [Music] i was on the wrong side very sorry many of our new class activities are reflecting the activities accompanying spirit week and in general the end of the school year few classes are finishing up selling their class merchandise in anticipation of spirit week in order to make sure everyone is spirited and ready to participate along with hopefully raising a bit of money for each class car washes are also being planned for april and may as weather gets nicer hopefully with outdoor events classes can make up for a year of lackluster fundraising due to cobit at the middle school an online production is being made called the golden goose

009awards and a virtual concert was held recently by the music department our deca business club at the high school has had a lot of success recently in the state competition after competing virtually by presenting projects or role-playing business scenarios 12 hamilton one of teams have been recognized by deca as finalists within the state competition of those 12 seven teams have qualified to move on for the national conference which will also be held remotely this year although i'm at risk of sounding like a broken record spirit week is finally happening next week will mark the beginning of the majority of spirit week activities although the seniors are currently in the lead after gaining points from the march hw gives back fundraiser during this spirit week the student body government has tried to create a close resemblance

010to normal years although there have been a few major changes made with coveted safety in mind large crowds will be avoided which means that instead of gathering in the gym students will be able to watch the sporting events live stream during their office hours the sporting events themselves have also been altered to include more code friendly activities to help the inclusion of remote students there will be a talent show trivia night and scavenger hunt all run remotely i cannot emphasize enough the amount of work both the student body and class governments have put in to ensure that this year's spirit week is as safe as possible there have been a few sacrifices made but i can confidently say that this year's spirit week will be totally safe for its participants i truly hope students will

011be able to find a touch of normalcy in the energy and excitement of spirit week and that coveted will not get in the way of enjoying an exciting end of the year thank you for listening does anybody have questions for ethan anna okay michelle uh thank you ethan as always um i was just curious to know the new schedule changed i've gotten a little bit of feedback from parents that it was um the classes felt long and that i wouldn't say that there was universal rejoicing about the schedule so from your perspective as much as you can tell how do students actually feel about those longer blocks now that everyone's is back in person definitely i think it's a big concern for a lot of the students and i have heard a lot of the

012same sentiments about kind of the long classes it being tough uh to focus but um i think it honestly depends on the class and i think teachers can do a lot to make it um to kind of alleviate the boredom that comes the 110 minute class so it really depends on how engaging your teacher is i think a lot of the teachers are kind of catching on and trying to move away from longer lectures because sitting through a 110 minute lecture speaking from personal experience is brutal um but i think with the with the kind of breaks built in teachers are kind of adapting better to 100 minutes but there's definitely some aspect of kind of being in the same room learning material for 110 minutes tough but i also do think it's necessary with

013kind of the transitions everything involved has the homework seemed less or more the same are you doing more homework in school or is it still homework after school um i i would say the homework has definitely gotten better the the times are meant to kind of alleviate the homework situation as i've mentioned um i in my personal experience i take mostly ap classes so it's not um kind of as applicable in that scenario but i think uh for teachers kind of assigning like shorter assignments it's really helpful for a lot of students to just kind of get it done in class focus on their work and then kind of be able to relax a little bit more at home okay awesome thanks for the report absolutely super all right so um we're on to new

014business well i just had a question i just had one question quickly sorry um are there any other fundraisers anything else we can support this year absolutely um i believe both the seniors and the juniors are planning car washes for the end of the year and i think there are um i forget exactly which class but there are going to be more restaurant fundraisers too well send it to us we'll help you publicize it absolutely thank you is it possible that girls basketball is doing a recycling event i feel like i saw that come across the bow girls is that so possible something's going on at the winthrop school i don't know sports don't usually run um fundraisers by student council so i'm not sure about the girls passing okay yeah great thank you ethan

015um okay so we're on to new business so our first item is um sort of an introduction well our it's not an introduction we've talked about it before how about a review of um the portrait of the graduate planning and this is different than the portrait of the graduate that is required for knee um certification or i think that's not called certification it's called something else but anyways it's a different thing that is just specifically for high school this portrait of a graduate is more related to our district and so mary beth has provided us with two three exhibits on this and it's going to speak on it great so what i'm going to do next is share my screen so i can speak a little bit more about portrait of a graduate um if

016any we we also have tom here who ran the rfp process so there any questions around that he would be happy to answer that but i think a good way to start is with you know just a reminder about what this concept is and why it's important so again i'm going to share my screen and and start by saying that the portrait of a graduate is something that has become somewhat of um a national trend in a lot of school districts and the idea behind it is that the district gets really clear on its vision around what are the skills and dispositions that students should have when they graduate high school one of the exhibits that is in the agenda is a recent article that came out from a number of um company ceos um

017identifying the these this is what we're looking for in new employees so as part of the portrait of a graduate process there is an opportunity to be future focused and look at again what are the skills and dispositions that students will need when they're in college and um as they enter the workforce um these as this community conversation takes place um the community gets clear about what its vision is for its school district um and i think that that's some work that that hasn't been done in hamilton went in a while so engaging the community talking about what are the outcomes that that are wanted and needed for students and then what you see here are examples of different portraits of a graduate that different districts across the country have developed as part of this

018process and the portrait graduate becomes somewhat of a north star that as you're thinking about strategic planning as you're making decisions this document and and this description helps to identify where it is what is the outcome this district is looking for um so be prior to starting the strategic planning process uh the the work of forming a portrait of a graduate would be done the timeline for something like this would be starting in late august and having a final deliverable in december again this would be something where we would be engaging a portrait of a graduate design team that would have community members students parents teachers um all coming together to talk about what is what is the vision for this community i would envision that we would do some type of district surveying so

019that everybody has a voice in terms of what the vision is and then again once this vision is complete it can be the outcome document when you're thinking about strategic planning if this is what we want for our students to have when they graduate what is it that we need to do as a district to provide them with the types of experiences that will allow for that outcome um what you haven't what you've also included in these exhibits and i'm going to stop my share for right now or i'll show one other thing one of the things that is um an approach in terms of building a portrait of a graduate is this phase the first phase is just engaging having everybody understand what's happening we would set up a design team of community members

020we would create a visual much like the ones i just showed you that tells the story of what this district has as its portrait and then there would be a formal plan implementation so that is the the process that we would go through and the recommendation that you have in front of you this evening is that we work with an organization called patel for kids that also is connected to a group called ed leader 21 and ed leader 21 was the the founding group for the concept of a portrait of a graduate um and this is the the group that um has done most of the work nationally around it so that is what you know i am putting in front of you in terms of a way to create a vision for this district

021as you'll recall one of our district goals this year is to start the process of developing a vision and a strategic plan so this process would be the first step in getting that done and maybe before i turn it over to questions and comments that you might have tom can you walk the committee through the rfp process that we went through for battlefield kids sure i'd be happy to um i believe we originally um superintendent you brought this to the committee back in the fall at that point we listened to some feedback of reaching out to some more firms um so i'm just gonna go one two three four five six seven uh seven firms that um have a focus on strategic planning in this type of work um who i reached out to developed

022the scope after interviewing superintendent banyos came up with the generic scope to be able to send to these companies so it was not favored towards one particular vendor of the seven i received two responses um patel for kids and bain consulting um bane's um response to us was that they would not be able to take on the work at this time um i did not only did i send them out i sent it out with delivery confirmation and read receipts um so kept those on file the groups we've reached out to were panorama patel for kids mckinsey partner ui district management group delaware and bain um and you know we did receive an um a pretty substantial package from patel for kids um using the matrix that we came up with they scored 92.5 points

023out of a hundred [Music] with the scoring that we include with the um request for qualifications and proposals so happy to share that if anybody is interested in seeing the document but i feel it was a fair process and really tried to get as much response and it was a little disappointing that we only got one um response but it was a worthy response to say the least wait till it comes to bus contract time you only get one response it's really disappointing great thank you i just want to note that david toledo has joined us at 7 22. um so he's participating remotely hi david we're just getting started on the portrait of a graduate so yeah no i saw that i actually had to pop off because my video was messed up so

024fantastic if i can madam chair too is uh since david is on here david was most helpful by sending along some companies um for us to reach out to so uh thanks to mr polito for that uh did help us kind of spread out who we're gonna send it to so thank you all right so um do people so we are at 7 23 so we've got about 20 minutes to discuss this do people have questions anna thanks michelle thank you tom thank you mary beth for all that information um i do have some questions and just a couple thoughts um one thing that seemed to be missing or at least for me clarity about where it would happen is the actual community engagement in the proposal there's references to uh suggesting competencies through an

025online tool and a communications toolkit those are both on page six of the proposal but in the meeting schedule they outlined i didn't see an actual meeting with the group facilitated and directed towards community engagement which i thought seemed like a real hole in the proposal can you describe where community engagement would actually happen in this process and who would lead it you know a little bit more detail there yeah so the the process would be co-led by the superintendent and um a member of the patel for kids team there there would be a an opportunity to talk about what are are often referred to as landscape shifts in terms of again skills and dispositions that that students need that information can be provided both to the community and what would be termed as a

026portrait of a graduate design group so this design team or this design group would be made up of representatives of different stakeholders so you would have parents on that you would have students on that you would have administrators on that you would have educate teachers on that and that group would be the the primary group that is coming together and trying to pull the information um into a formal portrait as part of their processes they would be collecting information in terms of community thoughts around the matter so that could look like a district-wide survey that could look like some if it's virtual zoom meetings where people come together and that that is offered at um different times and locations across the community for people to come in and give feedback they may for example rate

027of all the landscape shifts that may be happening and the impacts for what that would mean for educating student what's what's most important to you what is really from your perspective and on issue so along with the design team there would be a events and experiences planned that go beyond that single group to the entire community and then ultimately the the portrait would come in front of the school committee for a formal vote and adoption and we would be providing you the feedback that is received from the community prior to your making that decision and you'll have the recommended portrait from the design team group okay thank you for that um this question is a little bit for both of you maybe a little bit tom and i don't mean this to sound overly critical

028so i understand that you went back to the rfp process um because i was the one who raised a concern in october but i have to tell you the list of companies that you bid it out to mckinsey deloitte bain i mean those are among the biggest international consulting firms in the world and it does not surprise me one iota that we didn't get a call back on most of it because we bid out a 25 000 to 35 project to companies that routinely handle contracts you know 20 times that scale like this is nothing so i have to tell you i i'm not surprised based on that list and i'll i totally appreciate the effort that went into it the fact that we only have one viable bid still troubles me because i still

029have concerns about the bid i'll set that aside for a second but one thing i didn't see addressed in any of this that i had mentioned back in the fall is that desi has a planning for access whole whole tool kit that the state provides and they have a plan and they have a structure and they have a list of massachusetts-based consultants who help facilitate this so i guess to part one i i'm not convinced that the rfp process was as robust as it should have been and i think the results we got reflect that but two why didn't we go through the state built planning for sex success module that exists for this very purpose yeah i will speak to again the what we're trying to look at is a a portrait of a

030graduate and in engaging in work with folks that have that have led this type of community formulation prior um so the the state piece i do not believe is targeted to a portrait of a graduate outcome um so that that is this is the i would say the gold standard of of organizations related to portrait of a graduate work um there may be other versions of it but this is again the group that initiated this type of national level work they are well organized their outreach in terms of communities uh are are really is really strong and they are you know and so we did put it out i mean i i stepped out of the process because i have worked with patel for kids and asked tom and vinnie to take this over and

031manage the procurement so that there wouldn't be any question as to how we've conducted this search so um i'll stop there and see if you want to add anything no that makes sense i mean i just want to raise that as a concern and sort of self-fulfilling um and i don't we don't need to go back to that but i will say the plan itself um as i raised before i'm still sort of fundamentally troubled by this proposal um as someone who looks at grants and applications and things like it is full of just i would call it hollow industry speak like a whole bunch of words that don't really explain anything in particular so i still find it kind of thin to be honest like it's still to me there's not enough meat on

032the bones i also have a little bit of concern about some of the price points on it so in building back through what they're going to do they're clearly existing templates and formulas like they have a whole formula that they apply so they'll put hamilton one on through their formula even looking at the design work there's a clear recycling of the templates almost every single thing has the central logo and then there's a circle and then there's some core values around the circle and it's sort of color coded but just from an overall like process it feels very formulaic to me so i have a hard time looking at that low level bid price of thirty two thousand dollars for when i looked at it carefully there's one orientation meeting four design team meetings a

033closeout meeting monthly phone calls there's design work with two to three options and two to three rounds of iterations and then some creation of these digital tools so if you look at all those and they gave i was actually i was really helpful they gave hourly estimates so if you take those six formal meetings and i gave them the benefit of the doubt i rounded up to three hours each that's 18 hours monthly phone calls there's five months between august to december that's two hours each again i figured that's a long monthly phone call so that's ten more hours and then for sort of the recycling of the design work i i felt like i was pretty generous as a consultant and i said i'll give you 40 hours there right of like work to

034run this through so i feel like being fairly generous that's 68 hours of work at 32 000 like that's almost 500 an hour that we're gonna pay out to do it so like i i have a really hard time with that number and that was for the digital only option that wasn't even hands-on which i think some of this work does need to be hands-on so i'm not loving the proposal and now that we really only have one i am concerned um and then this last question kind of is more nuts and bolts about the budget i know that when we passed the last budget we talked about twenty thousand dollars for porch for the graduate i think was in the superintendent's line item budget venny but i'm not sure or is this going to

035come out of the fiscal year 21 capital plan where is the money coming from and is 32 actually what we budgeted because i thought we had only budgeted something like 20. let me take that mary beth sure and then i can add to it if you need me to yep so i'm opening up right now but i believe you're correct we did budget 20 000 for portrait of a graduate but that was included in mary beth's uh discretionary account that i believe had about another twenty thousand dollars in it so i believe she has it was like forty thousand seven hundred dollars yeah so i think there was 20 already there for her kind of discretionary spending and then we added 24 uh this and i believe she has a plan to kind of get

036get herself through the year uh based on that proposal that they gave us okay thanks tell horrigan and then julia hi thank you very much for the um the presentation mary beth do you feel that this is a very aggressive timeline i'm just thinking coming out of covid um with everyone being at their max is this doable um yeah what are your thoughts yeah i mean i think that that the timeline itself from august to december is enough time to get this done um and certainly we're we're anticipating coming out of covid i i think we all know it has been a challenging difficult year and any new thing is something that should be looked at pretty carefully given that uh but when we talked about the district goals in the fall um and i

037think as we continue to have conversations that one of the things that's absolutely critical for this district is the formulation of a vision and a strategic plan so what i would guide around this is that if you're going to prioritize anything new for the fall that this is the work that gets prioritized and if we're careful about what else gets added to the plate i do in fact think it's doable okay and can i just follow up too and it's you are working closely with the leadership team um to create this along with other stakeholders and students and teachers but you're it's collaboration with everyone correct absolutely this has value when it is seen as a collective community effort and that everybody has buy-in that the committee has buy and the leadership team has buy-in

038the entire community has buy-in around this is the vision for our district thank you julia hi i think it's so interesting that i think anna and i have the same issue but we come at it so differently um i i'm not questioning the hour well first of all i am a consultant i should say that and i write rfp i address rfps all the time write proposals all the time my concern is not necessarily the price and the hours and the you know the nuts and bolts but what is the deliverable so when i read this i wasn't really sure what exactly we are walking away with and is it a road map um is it a set of directives and how is it like could we potentially maybe do a strategic plan without this

039so how is this required and necessary for the strategic plan that was more my question was more around what is the tangible deliverable that we're going to walk away with yeah so i think i hear two things there julia um one is is this required and then what is the deliverable so to your first question do districts create strategic plans without a clear vision and without a portrait of a graduate yes so could it be done yes um do i think that that's best practice no i think it really the strategic plan if you you know where you're headed becomes a far more powerful document um and and knowing what you know beginning with the end in mind when you're creating a strategic plan i think makes a lot of sense um so i would

040say that no it's not required but it would be best practice for some type of vision setting to occur this is um a standard again nationally that's being used in a lot of places um that um place even places like niask are using it so that it is a good solid well-regarded way to set a vision um and then the the second piece that you were asking about in terms of deliverables so there there is part of the deliverable is the community conversation that happens the presentations to communities all of the the work that's done to solidify a lot of the research about what's shifting in terms of um the skills and dispositions that are needed now in students um you and and so that all of those presentations are um provided as part of

041this process um the the final deliverable is is a document that outlines what the the again characteristics and attributes of a graduate would be for hamilton when and then descriptions as to what are the specific details so for example if one of the things happened to be a global you know a strong global citizen what are the the sub bullets underneath that that we all agree are important that help to get to a different level of detail again that helped to inform a strategic plan so there the actual document is an outline of what the the community came up with what its feedbacks worries were and then a a graphically designed portrait that can be communicated across different schools and the community thank you and yeah i guess my other question is i wasn't here

042in the fall so i'm sorry um about the rfp process and i know the rv process is arduous and terrible um i i don't know i guess i just wonder because there was only one submitted rfp if it if there are other different firms that could do this and that's definitely not my expertise so that's just some a little something hanging over my head so um i guess i would just i would just say i just don't know if if desi could help or if other school districts have done this that could offer their their vendors or if there are massachusetts vendors that could do this um and that's really that's kind of um that is one of my kind of sticking points here just wondering if there i don't know if there are more

043perspectives that could be more firms that could be solicited but i understand we're under a time crunch so i don't know and i wasn't here in the fall so sorry i just wanted to um clarify uh just some language first is that this wasn't actually a request for proposals per se it was titled the request for qualifications so one of the reasons why you don't see the deliverable and the response is because the deliverables were stated in the request for qualifications right like so the district reached out and said this is what we want for deliverables we want to see that your firm has the qualifications to carry out this work and that's what was responded to so we didn't just reach out and say hey give us your best proposal for a portrait of

044a graduate we wanted to see what the firm's qualifications were and back in the fall um i believe that's what i informed the committee the approach was going to be it was more of a request for qualifications okay i just wanted to make sure because that one letter is distinctly different with procurement so definitely thank you david did you have something yeah um excuse me you know sorry obviously i jumped in late and uh didn't get to hear the whole presentation stuff to catch up on that but you know obviously i uh have caught up by some of the discussion um you know and for julia's sake back in the fall um i had sent out a list i have a colleague from the city year board who was uh the director of strategic strategic

045initiatives for boston public school district who uh had previously been a consultant for the detroit public school systems when he was working with parthenon and asked him for a uh a comprehensive list that we can you know be looking at for an rfq process and that's where um you know and there are also some senior partners in here that's like deloitte and um you know bain some stuff like that um where those came from monitor i actually used to work with them at um city year so that's where some of the people from this list came from and i had forwarded that list to um the school board and the superintendent uh because you know when we were talking about this in the in the fall i didn't like the idea of sort of going

046at this with a no with with no bid you know um and you know wanted to go through some sort of rfp rfq process uh to make sure that we're getting what you know the best we can get and give ourselves options you know the i i while i'm sort of bummed to find out that we only got one bid back it happens we have a budget we have to pay attention to that right we have a timeline too so like to keep this open and kicking it down the road just doesn't do us any good i love the fact that ann actually mentioned the sort of graphics and recycled graphics because that's one of the first things i noticed i'm like oh this looks like some of the you know some of the stuff

047i've taught my students to do for uh infographics um into sort of not reinventing the wheel um but i mean you know what i'd rather save 10 grand and not have a custom design package and you know get what we need um you know coming out the end like i said what i love seeing more um you know more bids come in sure but i mean we we have to get what we get you know and and i do appreciate the fact that mary beth actually did step step back from the process having worked with one of the vendors before so it's not to sway anything um you know and i i just think that sort of going in with a a budget and just sort of sticking to our guns that way is the

048way we have to go right i mean i would i would love to drive you know a lamborghini but i drive a dodge because in the budget that's what the budget allows so um you know it gets me where i need to go and you know um does a lot of good things so you know i think that's something we have to sort of look at and say that okay if we want to be moving forward this is we we've we've now sort of even though we're not totally stoked with the uh results we have to accept the results for what they are and be able to move forward now that we have them all right so i am going to remind you that there is one minute until our time for this is up

049and do you see peter's hand peter are you going to speak or no i was i didn't know i was recognized am i limited to one minute the committee is trying to keep on track let's see what it takes okay so mine is a i guess my my question is a two-part question about the process so this is the the portrait of a graduate is the trend across the country we know what education is looking like we know what dashi dusty's initiatives are you know if so many portraits of a graduate have already been completed across the country one can we study those and look for commonalities and two can we can anticipate some aspects of a portrait of a graduate we have an army of education experts here in the district so can we

050get a jump start on some aspects instead of letting all this time go by for instance a learning management system i mean for instance introducing language earlier into our education or younger to younger students or inviting students from out of the country or out of the district to create diversity moving away from this 100 year old model of education so can we study other portraits of a graduate and can we already get a head start rather than waiting for this company to do something for us that i think we we already know some of the answers to peter i can offer a couple thoughts around that one is that if you actually look at the portraits of a graduate that different districts have created you do see some remarkable similarities because the reality is there

051is a pretty um solid understanding of what critical skills are you also see unique needs for each community based on their their student population and the oftentimes the the location of the community itself and what resources it might have available to offer students um what what i have found with this is that the value is in the dialogue right that whenever you take something that somebody else created and processed through and debated whether this was more important than that you know that doesn't have the same value as when you as a committee community do that work yourself and have that local debate so i think that the answer is you know both things are true you are right i would be really surprised if there isn't something related to communication critical problem solving you you

052almost always find that when you start to look at what what are the skills and dispositions students are going to need but there there are elements of debate around what is prioritized over one thing over another and then what do we mean by skillful communication or what do we mean by critical problem solving what are the elements of that that are really helpful for students and it's that dialogue that actually is the most beneficial part of the conversation um but i i again i would recognize that you do see a lot of similarities given that the the body of information about what are the skills that are important in the future is is what it is right yeah there's a lot of expertise out there already we might as well draw from it rather than

053trying to duplicate what they've already their efforts that's already been done why reinvent the bicycle when we can just buy a bicycle i just my concern is that too much time will go by if we if we drag this on for a year or two the the plan for here this would be that the portrait of a graduate would be done by december well the deliverable right but then we would have to implement it right and that's the strategic you know then once you have the here is our um outcome beginning with the end in mind right then the strategic plan is developed around that and develop a budget vote on it yeah no i i you know one of the phrases that i i think sometimes is helpful is to go fast in order

054to go fast you have to go slow at the beginning right and really work some of those things out and that's part of the strategic planning process and i i can appreciate the desire to get going on things right away but that that real thoughtfulness and that consensus building about where you're headed and why actually can pay off dividends as you move forward all right well thank you yeah i just like there's so much expertise that's already been shared with this i'd rather see us doing what we can now and then you know tailor it to us as we move forward thank you i'm going to say that um we're going to vote on this you know um do you want to go ahead dana i i do really want to move towards voting i

055just want to point out i didn't get an opportunity to speak and i know that you didn't either michelle correct um but in the interest of time i'm i will accept that we need to move to vote thank you can you make a motion sure um i think we're going to vote to accept the recommendation to award is that what we're voting on is it to accept the recommendation of this specific vendor or is it to accept the portrait what what are we accepting oh you're you're accepting the vendor um i move that the hamilton one regional school committee accept the uh portrait of a graduate planning uh as vendor as presented by patel for kids as presented on the agenda did you hear a second a second seconded by david palito um we discussed

056before a motion so we'll go ahead and vote um david yes michelle yes julia no peter um no anna no uh dana yes michelle bailey yes and is four yes three no that passes um we are on to the next item which is the superintendent's formative evaluation we have set 30 minutes for this um so we have seen some of these documents preliminarily before um and so today mary beth will run through them quickly and then you can give any fees back great and i'm once again going to share my screen so that i can pull the exhibit up and let's do that quickly okay so what what you have as a committee and what the community has is a list of the superintendent's annual goals um most of these goals are in direct alignment

057with our district goals so i'll give you a broad overview of where i think we we are and i am with each of these goals and then would be happy to take questions and any feedback that you might have um the first one is related to developing a process and a timeline for strategic planning and to develop the hamilton oneham portrait of a graduate so we just finished an item where we are moving the portrait of a graduate work forward and that that is the the design is that that is the precursor to the work for the strategic plan um so that that is where we are in the process right now you've seen the the rfps the bids um that so that's where we are with that particular goal the next goal has to

058do with district um communication issues so improving communication with stakeholders um so where we are at that at this point one of the things that that was put into place as part of this goal is a weekly superintendent's update um you have examples of what those have looked like over the course of the year you um i also send out as you know a weekly update to the school committee around a variety of different issues that would be important and targeted to just school committee members there have been one round of principal and superintendent coffee hours um that it is unlikely that i'm probably going to get to three this year i'm hopeful to get to two um to hear more feedback around that i've tried to jump into conversations that i you know had

059anticipated would be particularly challenging so for example when we were going remote one of the worries was how would how would elementary apple students feel about that so that was a meeting that i attended um the you know one of the other pieces that we've been working on and certainly i've heard lots of feedback and couldn't agree more with it that our website needs a lot of work we've been doing background work looking at you know who and what vendors may be appropriate for that and one of the things that you'll see after april vacation is a survey going out to community members trying to understand more about how they use the website what is the most important information that they want to see there to help inform our particular process as we look to

060get this issue addressed you know we are hopeful originally we were hopeful maybe we could get it done by the end of the year it has been a crazy year i suspect that we are probably going to have to push that off until the fall um the other thing that we've been working on in terms of communication is also increasing our social media presence so we we have increased traffic at facebook and our twitter accounts and so that's another place that we've been working in terms of the communication piece third goal is related to restoring the curriculum instruction and assessment leadership in the district we've been involved and i know you have been involved in lengthy conversations about that um you know started with surveying staff we had a vetting group we had a lot

061of one-on-one meetings with different groups of stakeholders within the district i presented the structure to the school committee i believe it was in october november then there was a conversation regarding this during the budget process and so at this point we have a plan to restore the curriculum instruction and assessment leadership for the 2021-22 school year and we are we also have planned to be able to move forward to work to have that structure in place for the fall so that we we can hopefully hit the ground running as we begin the new school year goal four is related to providing high quality instruction in a hybrid remote learning environment this was a goal that many of our teachers took on our leadership team took on um and there have been a number of different

062areas where we have been working on that we have offered courses related to that we've had blogs where teachers and administrators are sharing ideas about how we best do that and one of the things that that we still continue to struggle with is the fact that this goal is related to a hybrid learning environment and now we're not into the hybrid learning environment um so we're continuing to refine our practice and work on practice given the multiple different modalities of learning that we've been asked to shift to over the course of the year one of the things that that is just getting finalized right now is a summer course that will become available for secondary teachers and the intent of that course is to actually step back and reflect about what is it about virtual

063learning that is worth keeping what do we learn that is really valuable and we want to continue to embed into our practice and and what are the pieces of this experience that we want to let go but there have been things that we have learned that that can improve our practice long term and having a set aside time in the summer where teachers can step back and say let me integrate what's just happened over the course of the year is another way in which we're trying to address this particular issue and then finally i am part of the new new superintendent induction program in massachusetts that group meets monthly with different coaching opportunities and so that is something that i continue to fully participate in so brief overview of where we are and i would

064be happy to answer any questions that you have or hear any feedback in terms of how i continue to work on these goals moving forward great and can you stop the screen share for us absolutely thank you dana do you have anything you'd like to add um i do and i want to um before i start i want to say i did spend some time speaking with dorothy presser because i haven't been through this process before and so i wanted to really understand and i also watched last year's school committee meeting um where this process was gone through with julie so that i could try but i will as um mary beth gets to accept feedback i will accept feedback if if the committee feels like i'm i i see that going first is you

065know i may not be on track and if i'm not um please let me know if you feel like please feel free to interrupt me if you feel like i'm not on track um so my understanding from dorothy is that this is really just supposed to be a conversation in which we might be um asking questions or um giving a little bit of feedback so i had on three of the um goals i had some comments or questions the first one i had is on the portrait of a graduate goal the um strategic planning goal number the first goal and my question mary about what is that sort of big picture as we look towards this and this is kind of a little bit forward-looking but my question to you is how would you have

066used a strategic plan if we had had one in place when you entered into our district in a crisis um and my reason for asking that is just to sort of understand how and why you see this as essential yeah no it's it's a great question dana so one of the things that i outside of kind of crisis management how do you keep the district continuing to move forward and having clarity around where this district is headed would have been really helpful we voted some goals in october and november those were based on my initial findings for entry um there had been some some initial work done but there wasn't uh any kind of map about here's where we're headed and here's how we intend to get there um with a document like that that's

067something that somebody can step into and say okay i'm going to pick it up where it was here and have a conversation with the committee this is what you intended to get done this year as part of your strategic plan let's prioritize if we have to back off of some things what would you like to back off of what are things that you absolutely essentially want to move forward so that there is uh that getting the the district headed in the the direction it is intended to head in um and having a document that allows for those conversations to take place would have been really helpful the other thing that i think is particularly valuable about a strategic plan is as we know there are never enough resources to meet all the needs and wants

068of the community and our parents and that strategic plan when you are trying to make difficult financial decisions is something that you can fall back on and say what did we collectively decide was the most important thing and how does this document inform the really difficult choices in front of us thank you um so and then on the communication goal um i just had some feedback which i think is similar to what you actually just articulated but um my feedback is that i have seen improvement in the communication and movement forward um but i think we're not there yet um i think that we're still needing um a lot of work in that direction um and that both things can be true right that we can be improving and still really still have quite a

069ways to go um and then on the curriculum goal um i guess this is sort of what i'm hoping to see um i know that it's you know we're just getting started on the curriculum goal but what i would like to see and it may be again maybe this is too forward-looking maybe it's something for next year but what i would really like to see in i could imagine it being in a meeting perhaps is i would like to see what do our leadership teams what do our teachers directly see in the classroom what impact is it making how is their classroom changing how are their students changing specifically tied back to the curriculum changes as we go ahead and make them so i'm i'm i'm just i guess it's a suggestion that that would

070be something that would be useful um to me to have someone coming to present to us perhaps at some point about these are the things that i can directly see how it affects children and students i mean and teachers um and just to clarify to make sure that i understand what you're saying there dana so as we put these new curriculum structures in place what you would what would be helpful to you is to have folks that are actually engaged in implementation and and working to start to get our curriculum solidly aligned and in some cases built out that that that the committee has direct reports from the people that are being that are engaging in this work and having them report to the committee how it's benefited benefiting kids in our programs articulated the

071way that i wish that i had said it yes um yes thank you that would just that's just my feedback is that going in the future that's something i would like to see thank you okay we have um 10 minutes left on this topic um are there others who want to speak um yeah sorry but i also think it's important that uh we give this to due time um it deserves it it's it's pretty major and i know i don't want to be pushing this agenda but maybe a half hour was a little bit ambitious um but you know there's only a couple things that i really want to um say you know i i'm wondering in a sort of you know to as dana said talking about the communication goals and how i feel

072that we're sort of getting a little bit better um but i'm also a little bit nervous about how much you know i'm looking at this as like as a personal okay i'm sorry i'm just trying to think of my thoughts here because you know i'm wondering how much i i guess it's it's bothering me and i'll just come up with in with the fact that we actually hire someone to help with their communication in the district uh i understand the difficulties that we've had to you know obviously firsthand um had to overcome this this year um with code and not but um i i think that i mean we hired professionals and still had poor communication for a great deal of the year and just because it's getting better i still don't think it's very

073good um and this year especially that that's a pretty key thing um you know especially with all the confusion that was coming out from the state levels i i think that you know in our workshop on saturday was put out put really well where you know you're getting information from desi and then two weeks later it's changed and you know in in you know when that filters down to the community they really have no idea what's going on so that then it falls on us right and um and i think we we failed right if we were my students right now we would get an f um you know so that's something to sort of look forward to but like it bothers me that we actually have professionals that are helping us with that at

074the same time you know um and now i'm starting to think of myself as i'm saying this out loud is this a direct review of you as a person because i have been viewing this as okay well how has your communication been personally or am i am i viewing it as you of the ceo of the district um and how has the district communication been okay because because that's two different two different animals and i didn't think about that until until i just started talking so that's why i'm sort of um a little hesitant in my voice because now i'm really you know and that that's something that's really worrying me i i like this sort of i i do appreciate that you know what the district improve um really thinking about like the the

075district the overall the portrait of a graduate in in strategic planning that you've always really held your ground well on that um and i can appreciate that because you know in some ways like get this stupid code of it out of my way i have real work to do um and and and i really i do appreciate that i like the fact that like i said i'm still not scoped that we only got one you know bitter for that portrait to graduate but i mean it it is what it is we you know we asked you to um not to to to put the process out there to actually try and find a vendor and and you did and you know we're moving forward on that throughout all the difficulties we've had in just circumnavigating

076the year so i can appreciate that um you know which again just sort of goes in that student improvement goal i think this is something that we're failing on as a district so again this is something that we need to think about um that i need to think about in this review process on is that is it a personal review or is it a district review right that you're the ceo because i i don't think in in this is you know upsets me and we were talking about this the other day this sort of lack of immediate data access right the lms argument again about like our student approving goals i i don't think that our students had a very good year this year right and so that again reflects poorly on us so we

077have to sort of take responsibility for it um you know and then i i do probably appreciate that you know you went through the new superintendent training induction program and that every single superintendent in that room is having you know a very similar view right now i would imagine right because it hasn't been a good year for anybody um you know those are sort of my thoughts on this on this process sorry if i took up too much time did you have your hand up actually anna was before me so i'll see the floor and then i can speak after anna thank you thank you michelle and michelle um and i also just want to support david i do think we should let everyone sort of say what they need to say here um so

078i was like dana because i'm new to this i also went back and re-read the guidance and looked at the masc to try to make sure my comments were going to be appropriate for this point of the process um so um even though i could drill down on you know super detailed elements of the goals i know that that's for a later time so i'll just say um i'll just touch up on a couple and then i do actually have a couple questions for you mary beth um and i'm also a little bit with david i feel like the superintendent's evaluation is about the superintendent and her her success or failure in executing and making the district functional right so it's not just about her individual performance but how effective is she at getting other

079people to do what they're supposed to be doing right because that's what she's fundamentally an executive she's a manager so it's not just about her work but other people's work as well because she's the leader you know so i i kind of agree with david i say this two part high level for me i'm struck by the number of specific deliverables that you have not met and i don't think have the ability to meet given where we are and part of me was thinking about the conversation we had on the 17th about saying well you know but it was covet it was hard it was just not and i keep coming up with that as sort of a hollow rationalization because the goals were set in november and in some cases i remember that meeting

080i was really pushing to add more criteria um and we scaled it back and i think we ended in a happy compromise but you know some of these deliverables are you know they weren't they weren't heavy like coffee hours three times a year it's not a high bar and yet you still didn't get it so i'm struggling a little bit with um you know trying to see the bigger picture but also you know the whole point of setting specific performance criteria is that you're supposed to hit them and objectively when i look through the list of the deliverables there's so many that you haven't you haven't hit um so i am concerned for you in a way because i feel like we don't have a lot of time between now and the summative assessment to

081to offer feedback and i appreciate that ideally this would have happened earlier you would have said oh wow thank you committee that's great feedback now i'm going to go back and do this so you know i can see that but you know just looking at each goal i think i've made my concerns about the rfp process clear i won't go into that more but like one of the goals that came out of goal 2 was around managing conflict and when i think about that goal and how you might adjust it now i almost kind of feel like the dye has been cast you know there are conflicts that have been erupting all over the district with parents with teachers with the unions and particularly sort of troubled by the mistrust with the union that's been

082verbalized so i don't know how you fix that between now and a month from now so that's one example um the goal three with the curriculum instruction part i'm very uncomfortable proceeding with that as a done deal before the budget's passed i know that you've talked about needing to jump start that process but um one of the pieces of feedback there was for part two e the fiscal systems and the fact that we have no buy-in from the teachers on it is sort of a criteria there is troubling to me um so that one that one makes me nervous i think you sort of checked that off as like yes it's it it's going to happen it's like well it is happening like i have a question there i have a question about the teachers

083supporting of it um so i have a hard time moving forward from that and then you know some of the things you're touting as evidence of good news i'm kind of with david like the good news stories twice a month we didn't quite hit that number okay fine but it's my observation and this was really made clear in the winter sports update that the good news story about winter sports was produced by craig and the pr consultant that we're paying and so it's sort of like the thing that's supposed to be your work product wasn't actually your work product it was someone else's and to david's point we had to pay a consultant to do it and what was interesting to me about that is that when we initially authorized that pr consultant it was

084touted as crisis coveted crisis communication it wasn't feel good pr stories so from a budget standpoint i've always been a little uncomfortable with that so you know and i think the other part that is troubling to me is some of the high quality instruction i know that we're moving into um everyone being in person which is great that's not true for everyone there are still some remote families but i still still feel like we have to evaluate what transpired between september to now and if you look at some of that you know some of the goals again as evidence of of success or you know using lexi and dreambox for their adaptive qualities and i don't know if i would call that high quality instruction and it was things that we were doing last year

085anyway so you know i could i i could go really deep but i won't now i know there's a later place for that so i guess my high level feedback for you is i would really look back at those goals and try to figure out what parts of them could still be salvaged between now and the next phase or what could we try to improve i do agree with dana i think some of the communications have gotten better but there's there was some really low hanging fruit that we didn't quite even get like it aggravates me to no end that the website i'm not looking for an overall re-haul but you know there's information on there that's literally now three years old and as the chief executive of an organization i would have expected you

086to go to alan and i t or the web vendor or i'm not sure who straub it is i know it's not yours personally i don't expect you to go into the code and fix it but i would have expected you to say wow in an era of digital information to have website information about the prior superintendent search still on our home page it's just a bad look and i would have hoped that you would have said i don't alan don't rebuild the website but hide that page you know delete that page or the issue that came up recently with the school start time like that was a really important piece of basic information so i do share disconcerned that we haven't had a new website like we were promised and we were hoping for

087june 2021 like that's example where i don't know that we're gonna have a new website by june 2021 objectively you're not gonna hit that mark but i'm frustrated that really basic things haven't been done and i'm trying not to be unfair but you know objectively there's some things that are really lacking so my advice to you is to really look closely at those deliverables and see what more can be done um and you know i am concerned that the goals you set in november we haven't really hit and i don't have a lot of sensitivity to the timeline because we set them in the midst of the pandemic you knew what you were up against we knew we were up against and both i think you as an executive and to davis point we as

088a district i give our district like a d plus c minus you know like we're making it through but i don't i'm not loving where our district is and it's one of the people who feels really responsible with the six the rest of us like i don't think our district is nearly at the performance level that i know it's capable of i know the students are i know the teachers are somehow or another we've got to move it forward and that would be my sort of advice for the next couple months here thank you for your feedback anna appreciate it all right um so we are now on to the next item um we've allowed five minutes for this which is to vote um to change so that we would have no school um i

089guess it's monday right so today i think i think michelle did michelle did you horgan i'm sorry i thought you wanted to talk after anna but i don't know no that's fine my comment sorry i didn't want to speak for you but i've yet to have time left for me so we can move on um so uh do i make a motion dana um i'm not sure what you want to make the motion on the calendar okay i okay i'm i'm uncomfortable that peter has his hand up and is not if you guys would like to say that you want to spend more time on this this is fine but my takeaway was that we should put times on here and try and stick to it so if you guys want to continue someone make

090a motion and we'll continue i don't know if we allow make there has yet been time for me to speak so i think you should have time to speak too i move that we extend continuation of this topic until every committee member has a chance to have a chance to speak it okay peter are we voting right now yes so yes julia yes joe horrigan yes david yes yeah yes dana yes sean bailey no all right um peter i'll just be very brief um everyone knows that i'm promoting myself to citizen soon and i i hope the the conversation as we move forward this summer includes the discussion of a learning management system because i think had a learning management system in place the superintendent would have crushed goals two three and four because improved

091just you know a learning management system is a fantastic way to communicate with stakeholders every parent every student every guardian every teacher every administrator would know exactly where every student was at at every point they would know where they are what work is due what their grades are so that's a fantastic communication tool it would have horizontally and vertically aligned our curriculum and ensured all students were learning this the same thing across grades it would have improved high quality instruction because it creates an individual iep for every student based on their own unique combination of multiple intelligences it creates a snapshot of every student so we know exactly where the learning gaps are and i'm just yeah i would have liked to have seen the learning management system because i think it would have addressed

092in large part goals two three and four so thank you michelle horrigan my comments were addressed by dana and peter i'm sorry dana and david regarding communication so i'm all set thank you thank you all right so i just want to go back and look at the item while i'm speaking so i would um like to say with regards to goal number three that when those curriculum people leaders were removed from the budget last year it was meant to be temporary um and that mary beth walked into the district with in sort of a chaos time so the fact that she did look at our personnel the talents that we have and find a way to [Music] restore that leadership in our district should really be recognized as something that is important and has been

093done well and i'd like to commend her for that i also agree that the communication has improved and has been very good i feel that mary beth's willingness to have individual phone calls with school committee members helps us to understand the agenda items um before each meeting and that we have had really timely information um sent from her and i appreciate that she's been sending the weekly communications to parents and has been including the numbers related to covic cases so that it's um easy for people to access and um with regards to providing high quality instruction on the um hybrid and remote learning environments i would like to see just some more um what do you call that data um more artifacts that's the word i'm looking for artifacts um related to what has been

094done because i know from being on the committee and from being a parent in the district that we have done quite a bit to improve hybrid and remote learning throughout the year and um that mary beth is not taking credit for that and the last thing is that um when dr harvey came into the district i i was parent here and um you know he took the first year to kind of evaluate things and then we had that big meeting at the library and we looked at facilities and developed a strategic plan out of that so it's a long process and i think that mary beth is right on target for the timing and that we are moving in the right direction on that so i appreciate that anybody else want to speak to that

095julia um yes i just i don't really have anything substantive to add um i would just want to echo what dana said around the curriculum instruction and assessment i would love to see more of that tying to i would love to see more you know how it's actually tying to student improvement maybe how all the goals are are kind of working together and tying together i was not here when these goals were created so i look forward to being a part of creating some new goals because personally to me and i know this is in the past like participating in a program i'm not sure if that's a goal that i'm like very comfortable with for a superintendent only because i'm not sure what that means and i don't really know how to evaluate it

096and i it's it seems to me like yeah that's great and it's very helpful and clearly it's useful but for me the goals i have some issues with the goals this the second thing that i did want to say is i do want to push back on this negative view of this family and community engagement person i don't know if i'm the only person that really i think there's so much potential here for this person um and i i just think it's how we it's like it's powerful and i think it's how we wield it and i think if i think that this this person has this fantastic opportunity to truly be this linchpin in the community or at least reach out to more communities i don't know so maybe i'm just idealistic and wide-eyed

097but um i i really think that that position has huge potential to improve um goal number two you know to improve to actually work on a few of these goals or to actually help communicate the purpose behind these goals so i'm really hopeful and um i i do see improvement in several areas but i mean i know it's just a formative assessment so we're not going to go too deep in the weeds but i just wanted to say that thank you thank you all i appreciate your feedback all right so we um moving on to voting on the calendar you are you want me to start with a motion yeah that would be easier uh i move that we amend the 2020-21 school calendar to have a uh a no school day on april 12th

098is there a second for that second second by michelle horrigan um so the purpose of this day is to allow families to plan to have this day off versus waiting until the night before and finding out that you know we have a significant number of people who um are not going to be able to work on monday and not be able to staff our buildings appropriately so michelle if i could just quickly add that we have about 120 people that are getting their second moderna vaccination and for other members of our community that have gotten the vaccination we're running about 50 percent who have to take the next day off so we can anticipate we would probably have about 60 people out and we would not be able to run the district in that under

099those circumstances okay so dana do you have a question about it well it's actually just a technicality and i'm okay sorry to bring it up but if you i and i discovered it at about 6 58 this evening that at the bottom of the exhibit um i don't know if anyone else has already noticed that it there's a scribner's error there that it says um it's correct on the calendar but if you look at the very bottom of the exhibit in yellow it says um the date to include 12 17 20 snow day and 4 11 no school day but the date is the 12th which is correctly reflected on the calendar so i'm wondering if we can make sure that that's correct um yeah excellent thank you um all right so to give families

100notice we're gonna vote tonight on um just this change in the calendar um i'm not sure if david's there so we'll start with michelle yes peter sorry we weren't having any discussion um yeah i was going straight to a vote oh my only question was are we making that day up at the end of the year dana said and they yeah dana said that in the motion yep yeah okay um okay yes thank you okay david thank you for letting me know you were there sorry i'm just eating um yes it's busy tonight julia yes hannah yes dana okay and michelle yes so there you go kids a snow day in april um all right so then our next item is um is tom going to present this yes it's going to be um presented

101by tom geary he has sent us a request regarding advertising banners at the middle school sure would would you like me to share the memo on my screen so sure we can see it you could just have that capability one second here we are all right can you folks see the memo yeah excellent excellent um so i'm coming before you tonight uh because i had a request from the hamilton wenham little league uh to hang advertising banners on the fence at the miles river middle school softball field this came up in conversation with the little league as you know they were sharing their plans to uh volunteer to cut back the overgrowth by the fence lines rehab the softball field this is all done by the volunteers through the little league so it did come

102up in conversation about being able to place banners for their season as i listed in the memo of course this would not include any distasteful business or slogans and no beer liquor or cannabis advertising um i have also informed the contact for the hamilton went in little league you know that if the school did object to any of the advertising um that we would hold the right to be able to take those down um i can add that the funds that the little league does collect they do find their way back to our students for example i believe the little league today was going to take a vote from their board to purchase hats for the baseball team at the end of the year they plan on giving the softball team a gift and of

103course you know those funds just don't come out of anywhere they are raised through advertisers and other fundraising i can't say enough about how good of a partner the little league has been since i started here because of the volunteer work at our baseball diamonds and our softball field we were able to defer some of those district what would have normally been district costs have been now handled by the volunteers so um because you have pop policy regarding advertising policy d4003 uh behold me to come to you for approval for this concept right do you need a motion yes can you make them in motion please um i can um so you're going to make it in the affirmative that we have no i want to make it in the affirmative and um i guess

104do i need to ask i'm going to make it and you guys can second it or not um so okay um so i move that the hamiltonian regional school district accept the advertising um proposal as presented by tom garria for the 2021 spring season second by anna okay so before we tom can you stop sharing please thank you yeah i'd be happy to so before we um start discussions i just want to give anybody who would like to recuse themselves the opportunity to do so yeah i i i think i might need to here i i do sit on the little league board and i'm actually also the manager of uh the senior softball team which actually directly uses um the field in question i do just want to add um though that this year

105um the the softball teams do use um the middle school fields and um the field over at cutler and this year the little league is actually um voted that it's actually the works happening this saturday i believe that we're actually tearing up all the infields and putting in new clay and re-leveling all the surfaces um and you know funds are a little tight this year so there's actually bigger projects in the pipeline for actually replacing benches um some fencing dugouts things of that nature um you know so we would there's really a big commitment to really upgrading the girls facilities um on school's ground so i just you know in with that i just wanted to sort of say that i think i i think it probably makes sense for me to recuse myself from

106this vote okay um so i'm going to go first on this one i spoke to legal counsel today and she wanted me to let you know that if you allow this you are creating a limited public forum which means if little league is allowed to hang banners there you must allow everyone to hang banners in the same manner so since we currently do not allow um our own football team to hang banners in this manner we would be giving them a preferential treatment and we would need to change our practice for everyone so as you're going forward and thinking about this you will need to keep that in mind so dana so this is a question and that was helpful so this is a question is the reason i made the motion the way that

107i did which was to add specifically that for this season was my intent was that i have a lot of concerns about this but i also see the value and so my intent was to have it be a one season with the intent to then evaluate and ask ourselves how did it go and do we have concerns um so i guess in light of what you just said you know is that how does that fit in with what i don't know that was my intent was that because i do i do think it's a bigger issue and also not necessarily one that i feel like we're really ready to like it's something i could see us taking on over a long period of time to really evaluate i don't know michelle so as michelle said

108we don't allow our football boosters to hang their sponsors signage throughout the season they put it up for a game and they take it down after the game um i think that's fair for if there's a little league softball game um at the field behind the middle school i think that's correct we can't we in my opinion we can't say it's okay for little league to hang their softball banners and not our football boosters to hang up the banners throughout the season we need to be consistent that's it anna um tom can you go back for me a step and explain and maybe this is good context explain what motivated literally to ask for this request in the first place and i guess i'm curious to know that we don't allow the football boots just

109do that for something that you know sort of benefits the family so i guess that's sort of a question for tom and a little bit a question from michelle bailey about understanding where that prohibition has come from sure i can first explain how the conversation came up it was really a matter of having the time to do the prep on the diamonds before the games right so they were you know the the rep conveyed to me that they have a finite time between the time school gets out in the time the game starts and there is raking the diamonds prepping them laying the chalk down after school and they were finding themselves tight on time when it came to hanging and taking banners down as far as the other sports i'm going to plead ignorance

110on this one because i did not the the question really hasn't come to me before i just felt a duty to bring it to the school committee because it was asked of me and i did not have that decision-making authority since you have policy on it i i do have insight just so but if you're recusing yourself you can't participate in the discussion so if you're not recruiting yourself that's fine i'm refusing myself from the vote i can have the discussion recusal means you don't participate in the anything but so you can make that decision um and then yeah can you um go back to the history about why why we haven't allowed that customarily for our own teams and boosters i mean i could i i was just saying because i remember i remember

111we looked at this policy for the filming um the streaming that craig brought to us before and i remember looking at it very carefully and thinking about it so it's a little surprising to me that i mean i totally understand why i wouldn't let some random company put up an ad at the football field and call it good that makes sense but for our own boosters our own teams for little league that as you know david before he recused himself you know puts a lot into this like so i'm curious to know where that ban on the football boosters for example came from and what was the thinking there it comes from the policy and it comes from the fact that we cannot market to children in public schools and by having advertising on the

112facilities at their school you are marketing to them and in the and up until four years ago we didn't even allow the banners from the football boosters but they came a couple years ago was it was it the first time the first year you were here with julie i think i i don't recall being involved in the conversation right um could be wrong so so lots happened over the past years i know it's hard to remember because i can't i remember it was recent but i don't remember if it was with julie or maybe it was at the end of the time mike was here with so peter's waiting to speak oh peter sorry i thought dana had her hand up first but i but going back to anna's question and your answer michelle it

113says the school committee may grant position permission for advertising of commercial products or services in school buildings or on school property under guidelines or regulations it may approve but then it goes on to say otherwise no advertising so we have it in our purview to allow this right so so to me according to naomi if you allow it for one group you must allow it for everyone what what i was about to say is i don't mind setting this precedent um because i think it's it benefits our students so i plan on voting yes for this great dana so i just want to ask a question about my own motion so that it can help me to know how to vote um because if if we were to approve this motion i do understand the

114concern from naomi but does the fact that i limited it to this season allow us to revisit it after this season i don't know i had a two minute conversation with her and what she said is if you allow them to do it you have to allow anyone else who wants to to do it but we would need to vote on you i mean we always vote like in other words we did allow we did talk about like the football boosters it's not that they're hanging up hamilton one of football banners they're hanging up advertising banners so and they're taking them down during the time that it's being used as a school building i understand that yeah but if if if the if any other school sport wanted to do that wouldn't they still come

115to us and ask it's not even any other school sport it's anyone else i know but what i'm saying is it would still be a process they wouldn't just do it they would come to us and ask correct yes so we would not be able to deny it well we could ban it all together i don't know like anyway i don't want to go i called her before the meeting to ask her about something else she asked me why i was asking it i told her what we were doing and she told me that that would be creating a limited public forum and you would have to allow everyone else if we want a written opinion from her we certainly can put this off and get one from her i mean i'm sorry i didn't

116no no no i i mean i like i said i i feel like i'm not a lawyer and then i called her about something else and i don't know and and i think we should just everybody talk once or whatever and then we should vote hannah um thanks michelle i think my confusion might be similar to peter's and the last time we went around this is that our policy explicitly does give us permission to do this on a case-by-case basis so while i understand what naomi has said it seems like her advice granted quickly and not necessarily around this it seems like her advice conflicts with our policy so that's interesting to me that she would say that in light of what the policy itself says i also think that i like very much the

117way dana worded this as um a moment to sort of stop and think about this and given the you know the contributions but i don't i don't see the conflict because of what the policy says i'm not as troubled by this because it's you know it's clearly giving such discretion to do it and to some degree i feel like we have this sort of case-by-case opportunity i mean if that's not right then if what naomi is saying is true then our policy itself would seem to be out of compliance with the law which is interesting that the masc and all these years would have done that so like to me i feel like there's a discrepancy there that i'd like to resolve but i also feel like to me given what i understand our current

118written policy to be gives us authority to do this if naomi's verbal opinion conflicts with that that might be something to explore but according to what we have in place and have had in place for years i think we have the power to do this and i feel like just in terms of precedent we just did it with the streaming thing and i think we have some discretion and i guess philosophically like i i do kind of feel like this helps the community and i have some confidence that the advertising will be tasteful and local and you know i'm okay with it and i would like to maybe follow up about the policy itself maybe as dorothy or naomi together but i don't see the conflict given what the policy says but i appreciate that

119naomi disagrees i hear you there michelle did you speak already i did and julia i don't have anything i don't know anything dad that hasn't been said peter did you want to speak again i i just want a clarification for something you said if we allow our sports teams to do this you said we're allowed we have to allow anyone to do it what does that mean anyone like that is what naomi said i i can get clarification from her if you would like she said it creates a limited public forum and you must allow anyone to do it i don't know what that means anyone anyone associated with the school or anyone even not associated with the school i do not know i'm happy to ask her that it's just that word anyone was

120vague to me i'm happy to have her write us an opinion but i i like i said i called her on something else i mentioned this and she said oh if you do that you're creating a limited public forum and if you do that you must allow anyone to do it so a politician could put up about banner everything has to be approved by the school committee yeah it just seemed that anyone is that it was too big and um like i said i'm okay with this i'm okay with setting the precedent i i don't see us allowing anyone but school-related business or sports ever hanging aside to be clear this is not a school team this is a not-for-profit team in town yeah but it's our students that's what i'm saying not necessarily any

121you don't have to be a hamilton wedding student to play in the hamilton when i'm little league you need to live in hamilton we do okay for little league you do correct but you do not have to attend the schools so okay are you ready to vote um david is you're gonna recuse yourself right okay uh michelle horgan no peter yes julia yes anna yes dana yes michelle bailey no motion passes four to two um next uh we see i received a request to sign a document allowing uh well actually mary beth as well allowing us to have a co-op agreement with a manchester ethics softball first up for girls softball and um so i wanted to bring that here for a vote basically we have enough students of our own to field a um

122team but not really a jv team and manchester essex doesn't have enough really to feel the team so if we all come together then we can have two teams um this is very common we we do some co-ops with others for hockey and things like that and you know swim teams and things like that do it as well so um i just need to have your approval in order to sign that so if you want to make a motion dana and then we can discuss it i move that the hamilton regional school committee approve the request for a co-op to create a cooperative agreement between manchester essex and hamilton one of regional high school in the sport of softball for the 2020-2021 spring season second second by michelle michelle horgan does anybody want to discuss

123this i just want to state if i'm sorry if i jumped in i think this is that's another another great opportunity for us to give all kids in our community and beyond our community a chance to participate and make the best out of a horrible year for them so um david i'm standing oh okay great thank you um michelle yes peter yes julia yes anna yes uh dana yes shel bailey yes okay um capital finance subcommittee and tom geary um have a proposal for us uh related to sort of the athletic complex and you know how we sort of deal with and move that forward so um who's going to present that is it tom tom do you want me to or do you want to do it it's your baby we can we can

124co-op on this if you want so let me i can go okay i think we have to approve co-ops though tom yeah all right let me uh see i don't see i'm sorry i'm doing a bad job of pulling this up oh i'm sorry there it is i can just fill in while tom's oh there is never mind i stopped talking sorry about that a lot of the exhibits were all smooshed together in uh on the page having trouble clicking on it um so as a result of our meeting this past monday with the capital finance subcommittee this is a variation of the exhibit i provided to that subcommittee basically trying to get the wheels in motion on an athletic facility improvement project so presented to the subcommittee the need to set up a i

125guess a subcommittee of the subcommittee which could be considered a steering committee um that would involve the folks listed on this page uh we would be looking for the athletic director uh craig genualdo sean timmons the hamilton one and recreation director someone from high school administration which may be served by craig in the same capacity depending on bandwidth of our folks at the high school representative for the turf fundraising group we'll be looking for a representatives from both the hamilton and wenham community preservation committees representative for the hamilton one and regional high school tennis staff representative from the hamilton oneham youth soccer league the little league youth football and youth lacrosse as we view everybody listed here as equal stakeholders in this project um they'll ultimately um you know the the sports groups will be

126the end users um at some point in their sports careers so i would be looking for the school committee tonight to adopt this approach and we as the administration can send out the invite letters to everybody listed here so we can shoot to get something going in the near future yeah i'm just going to jump in and say um those that weren't on the committee last year um we were able to through the work of stacy menon and jean lee created an mou with the turf team but then kovit hit and our attentions were directed elsewhere so this has been put on the back burner for a little bit but now the budget season is over or not over now the budget is on the way to go to town meeting we've decided to really

127move forward with this and really start to engage the community and this is a great way to start with the steering committee and also the subcommittee we bantered around names back and forth and it was decided that i would if as if i was recommended by the school committee would be the representative from the school committee so that's it anything else tom or anyone else so that we can see each other thanks sure thing [Music] um no i don't think i have anything else to add um okay so dana can you make a motion that the school committee would create a steering committee and then we'll discuss it is that the whole motion that just we're just creating it because i want to make sure we're done it's to delegate we would create it because

128eventually we would affirm the members okay yeah i move that the hamilton regional school district uh create a steering committee for athletic facilities improvement is there a second for that second david um let me just check the time here okay um i'm gonna go first um why are we including hamilton one of tennis and then all of the town non-profit organizations but not including the other teams that would use the facilities like hamilton won them soccer hamilton won them football hamilton won them baseball no not the high school the high school football team the high school baseball team the high school why are we only including the high school tennis team yeah michelle oh i'm sorry too yeah i think i think michelle and i might say the same thing so michelle let's see if

129i get it right we'll we'll co-op this together um michelle the thought process there was that craig is a representative of all the high school teams that the high school principal is a representative all the high school teams so there are some things there we discussed that was some very clear specificity around the tennis program and the number of students and their particular facilities needs so that was sort of a particular point of emphasis we talked about for a while just that program being somewhat unique and what what their current challenges were and their sort of radial impact so we felt like that was a particular point of emphasis because that particular facilities element was um you know has served slightly different needs from uh from the the lawn sports crew like the tennis sports

130have sort of different needs so that was the thought process there as i remember it but yeah yeah and also um also too that in the last go-around and i wasn't on it but the tennis team program was neglected um and a little bit like the step child but you look at it it is a community as well as a high school endeavor um so it really does need to have its own um representation well maybe we can get it to be on grass like wimbledon yeah we'll work on that all right thank you peter yeah thank you i guess mine's a two-part question is it appropriate to put anybody from the towns on here because this this is indicative of the the death spiral that i've been talking about for three years that we

131just do not have the money to even maintain level services so we just keep cutting programs we've cut language and we don't have the money our our field is unusable the tennis court's unusual the track's unusable where do we expect to ever find the money to fix any of this with the town in a debt spiral and having its revenue problems is it so is it appropriate to have invite somebody from the town on here or or a private private groups who could donate i mean is that part of the turf funding fundraising group i just don't see how we're ever going to get the money in the budget because we can't even maintain level services without an override um so if you see um um peter we do have the turf fundraising group is

132on there that's the private citizens that we've secured mou with um in addition we do have the cpc people on it from both hamilton and wenham um and ms um anna we talked about uh the planning board is involved well i think tom gary clarified that we discussed um we discussed having the other town person that we noted who is on there is sean from the rec department is technically a town employee for both people so that peter to your point that was purposeful to kind of show that this project wouldn't won't get off the ground without buying from the towns and potentially looking at other sources of funding so that was when tom first brought it to us that those folks were not there and so the subcommittee purposely added i think we added

133the cpc folks we added tennis and i think that might have been it there was conversation about adding more people from the town but it felt like that is getting to be a very large committee and the the buy-in was sort of there from those three towns people um but we talked about someone from the fin comms we talked about town manager or town manager delegate but decided that the cpc and sean were probably the most important town stakeholders to be there but that was on purpose and that came out of monday night's meeting yeah no i agree athletic facilities improvement is is critical because i just don't know how we're going to do it without increasing revenues in our towns yeah one thing i can add to if it gives anybody comfort is having

134experience working on public building committees throughout the years there may be phases in the project where you bring in different stakeholders for example you know the fire department to talk about access to the facility town managers to talk about different items that they may have so there may be i mean this will these will be open to any for anybody to attend which i think is important to note as well um we'll be noticing these meetings and you know i think we are going to have to bring in all sorts of different stakeholders um throughout the process so david do you want to speak uh yeah i actually wanted um this conversation is sort of timed after the last conversation is pretty pretty convenient um when we changed the advertising policy four years ago it

135was actually as a precursor for this discussion and it's one of the reasons why it's written the way it is um knowing that at some point we were gonna have to change and that's why i was like sort of antsy i should never tease myself when i did um so it it's funny because that little league vote actually is something that needed to happen not necessarily for little league but at some point to um begin the fundraising because we realize that they're we're going to need a lot of community support um advertising you know possibility of naming rights everything like that uh and that's where that policy originated from it probably does need to be updated now but like it was sort of that that foundation that we knew seeing this coming down the pipeline

136um you know so so this is a this is a great next step so i'm i'm all in favor but yes i do worry about it making the board too big right too many chefs great all right so why don't we vote on this and then um we'll anticipate having a list of names of who the exact reps are sometime in the future so um we had a motion to create the steering committee um and a second so we'll vote on that um a vote in the affirmative means we'll create the committee and then we'll populate it later julia yes david yes joe yes peter yes get to work anna yes dana yes michelle bailey yes okay so you may be the lucky person to be on one of those committees if you're watching um

137great so we are going to um sort of discuss tonight um a definition of equity it's been a lot of discussion about that over the year and we are trying to think about how equity impacts our particular um district and so we have had um various groups well various individuals from our committee collect various different definitions from various groups and so we wanted to go through a process where we sort of called through those um definitions and ideas and came up with like what are the things that speak most to you so that we can build our own best definition so um we had the idea of a way to organize this so that we could accomplish it in a relatively short period of time um to have each person share out and i think

138it's three things that um seem to be the most important thing to include in equity and then we would create a list that we think is important and then have a google form that you would vote on what you think is the most important and then we'll use that information at our next meeting to pull together our definition um because you know if we have 21 or even 14 different ideas it'll get to be so cumbersome that it won't be as meaningful and impactful as some of these that we've seen that are pretty um you know relatively short within a couple of sentences so um does someone want to kind of explain what they think i said so that i can make sure that i said it right i have a question yeah um so

139i i liked anna's definition i don't know anna did you is this something that exists somewhere or did you write this for us as an example i wrote it for us based on having looked at all all kinds of different things i should have asked before yeah no that's okay no that's a that's a custom seed sick right there of those fat one two three those five bullet points i wrote okay or for this purpose for this moment based on um looking at all the other sources and thinking a lot about it okay so i really like to me i want to go from what already exists so i'm not i'm not michelle i guess i'm not sure what you're asking us perfect this is what i'm trying to do i kind of i mean

140i just i would love to just go off something that exists i sent some examples in because i didn't write anything myself because i didn't feel like i i could so i can certainly express how i feel about certain bullet points but um i'm not sure what kind of feedback you want yep so the question is more or less if you were starting from scratch what three ideas would you want included because it may be if we went around and expressed our three ideas we would all have the same three but that's unlikely but it's possible if we won't go around and all share our three ideas that we all might have one in common in which case we'll know that has to be in our definition but then figuring out which ones of the

141other ones really belong in there we could spend hours debating or we could if we were in a room together we would say okay put them up on the board okay let's vote which ones do you think are appropriate or we put up post-it notes or we put up tick marks or whatever to sort of narrow it down um but because we're not all in the room we can't do that so the way to do that was maybe through collecting them and putting them in a google form and voting i'm sure we've all done something like that before david what did you want to say um that i i'm not sure where i'm not sure this is the right discussion to be having i i in and i appreciate the discussion so but what the

142discussion i think we where this need should be going is what we would like to see as a board in terms of improving diversity right and inclusion in our district right because i'm a cisgender white heterosexual male you know with from you know um upper middle class socioeconomic economic background i could say i you know done a lot of work with in urban environments and i you know didn't come from the city when i was younger but like you know i i i can't speak for you know um to to the parties within our district that are feeling you know slighted and and i want to make sure that i hear their voice to make sure they're it's all included i think rather than us coming up with that definition is is really coming up

143with what our goal is right and and sort of some steps we should be taking to accomplish that goal right and then that this is where that idea of sort of you know um you know coming up with the with the with the proper surveys and in in the proper process of having voices heard um you know and i think that's what our goal should be right as opposed to sort of as a definition what our group of you know not overly diverse school board members you know um via you know what we view and thinking equity inclusion is because i actually think that's um you know but i i don't think that would be the most helpful thing to do i guess the the best way to put it peter peter no i i

144agree with david um there there are countless hundreds of doctoral dissertations out there people smarter than myself who can define what um diversity and equity and inclusion is and i just yeah i agree with david i don't think we should it's our place to define it i think that it's already been defined by people a lot smarter than myself i'd rather just focus on what is our goal in our district i also think it's fluid right because it's our community and our community is constantly changing right so what we we have to sort of see what's going on with it with our community especially in regards to the schools right so that's what we're talking about in regards to schools how are students feeling right in regards to representation um in in what we're teaching

145them in our curriculum right in in treatment of um by teachers and by coaches and by administrators and just because we come up with this sort of roadmap this year with this particular people doesn't mean that the needs of the district are going to change right and i think it's about beginning and again i love this discussion right because we're having it and i think this is an important first step it is realizing how important this sort of fluidity is right and realizing hey okay so as a school board what can we do to help facilitate this right to set up the guidelines and to really sort of help bring this into um you know into our schools and into everyday practice right and then be able and then be able to adapt as it

146as it changes as the needs change michelle so david i'm going to um put you on the spotlight because you said that your district where you're currently teaching is rolling out this initiative so i would love to know the genesis in your school um you know how how did it not even so much how it started but like what were the steps um you know so it's not rocket science we know how to be kind but there are there are steps that we have to take engaging the community engaging people and engaging students so i i when i went to masc to ask them to help us with this they were at a loss they're talking about people that are in their mid 50s and older you know in it's it's just not um commonplace

147for them they're evolving as we all are and some of us are more involved than others because of age and and where you live but i think if you could shed some light and i don't know if today's the right time or if it's a workshop on the 28th right yeah i mean whatever the chair thinks because i have some thoughts obviously i wasn't and i will preface it but just saying that like the chair thinks she's waiting for you to call her back about that question all right but yes i'm happy to talk about it so yeah marybeth and then dana i just want to offer to the committee when we had the the workshop related to diversity equity and inclusion one of the things the committee had decided at the time and it

148made you choose to choose change its mind but the month of april was going to be dedicated to defining a working definition for the school committee about what equity is and in may the plan was to develop a goal associated with that um just that was the outcome of the workshop um again you may decide to take a different path but i just wanted to um remind folks of that yeah so um dana did you have something yeah yeah i um so i actually am like i feel really excited by this conversation and i want to reframe a little bit david what you said because i wrote down what you said because michelle said oh i want everybody to come up with you know three areas that are really important and what i when i

149heard you talking what i heard you say david is i want to make sure every single voice is heard and i want to make sure that we all understand that this situation that this definition is going to be fluid um and um to me those that's that's the ant those are the those are your answers right that like part of what you want to do here is make sure that those things and so like even though i actually really want to create this statement of equity and i know you're saying you're hesitant about it i actually think we're really seeing eye to head about the importance of having the conversation um and i get like i'm excited that like i think that the things that you said are critical and important and they're also not

150exactly what i wrote down and that's really cool like so i'm energized by that um and then i just wanted and i actually could answer your question if you wanted michelle but but i also wanted to just say to peter like you're so right that there's already a million definitions out there and yet i think there's so much value even though you're totally right that they're all out there there's so much value in us trying to walk through it and do it ourselves even though in the end it might look really like that same definition i just think it's really there's a lot of value um and i don't want to talk too long but i'm really i do do this kind of a vision statement with individuals and i shared this with somebody i

151think anna maybe like oftentimes parents vision statements end up sounding all very similar but they all get there in different ways and it's really important to do that work so and now well yeah and it's also when you when you have to write something yourself and you whine and you complain and you hate it and it's painful it's because what you're doing is really understanding it so as we are coming through that process together and having a shared idea we'll all understand it better i think yeah anna thanks michelle um and i don't know if it would be okay for me to share my screen but while we've been talking i pulled up some of those other districts that have done this work already because the statement that i wrote um that you know um

152julia was asking about the preface to it if you remember was that i looked at sector alignment so you know dei thinking is all the rage in every sector so i think what's applicable in the manufacturing industry or the aerospace industry or even the for-profit sector doesn't apply so i put took my cues from looking at what are other districts that are doing this well because to peter's point in david's point and you know there is there is a textbook definition of equity like i think the idea of us trying to reinvent the definition of equity is to some degree a little bit um not necessary but i think dana's right that what we need to do as a district is to show and internalize why do we need to do this what does it

153mean to us what does it look like here in our district what are the value propositions that underlie it what are the pitfalls that we recognize as a predominantly white cisgender heteronormative community like we need to be aware of those biases so that was the place that i was starting from um because i think if you look at what other districts are doing really well that's there's there's a commonality of those things so in those like six or seven examples i gave which i i can share on my screen if the public or other people are going to bring them up or you guys can google them but there's they they start similarly and then they have programming and whatnot so when we initially last talked about this i kept making the suggestion that we

154really don't have to reinvent the wheel and it's a little disheartening michelle that mac kind of said sorry i can't help because clearly there are districts out there that have done this and have done it really successfully and so if we're hitting a roadblock there um you know one citizen i have would be to reach out to some other people and i have some ideas of people who could do this there's a lot of consultants but also districts nearby that have done this well and get them as a starting point but i think to some degree if you look at the end game and the p the district that i think is really knocking out of the park is lexington um and looking at what they're doing it's pretty clear where we want to go

155and so it's just a matter of like looking at what are their building blocks and most of them start with sort of um similar to this five bullet point thing you know it's not exactly the same but they have a statement of their values and their purpose and what does it mean here and why they're doing it and i do feel like um we need to have some buy-in on that and some group thinking on that but i also think we don't have to overthink it and michelle the process you're describing with the google form and this and then we vote on values i mean it's sort of that sounds really kind of cumbersome and somewhat unnecessarily contentious like this this should really be a joyous process and so for me i i didn't find

156anything painful about this at all like i i felt like the ideas flowed because to me it's it's so clear where the path needs to be and um so i i think i'm approaching it from an opportunity and if you look at our webpage on equity versus the lexington web page on equity like you know it's clear where we need to go so i would i would say reach out to the districts that are modeling it well and ask for you know ask for some help but i also think this actually i think we're making it much harder than it needs to be i think the themes are pretty common and pretty straightforward and i do think david's right that some community buy-in would be really helpful here um and i also think hearing to

157some degree from those voices and students who feel like we have major problems which we've tended to silence you know we've gotten a lot of feedback even this year from families who don't feel like they've had an equitable experience and i think unpacking that a little and saying what's going on in our district that's creating this feeling will help us also define the goal so um you know i tried to follow instructions and write up something right up something that sort of made sense to me and to some degree i feel like maybe if we take a pause and you know reflect internally on that and look because i actually think that we might actually already agree because there's already so much common thinking on what equity really looks like so ask them for their

158portrait of the graph the way the way to find out if there's commonality is first to go through a process and share what we think is the is our definition and we may find out that it's not as clear and as common as one person thinks because we have seven different people so i've sort of offered up my first take on round one so you know why so can you state what you think are the three most important topics to be put in well i came up with five i don't i think three is an arbitrary number um so i mean i think that's one of the exhibits is in there is i i can read what i wrote if you'd want me to do that i mean i guess they're that is fine okay

159um so again this is what i this is what i wrote um hamilton won a regional school district commitment to diversity equity and inclusion one although i didn't number them because that implies a hierarchy that's non-existent um we will provide every student the individual attention and support they need to maximize academic potential fuel intellectual curiosity and develop the self-confidence to inspire a lifetime of learning we recognize and affirm that social economic cultural rational racial neuro-positive and emotional factors directly affect student opportunity achievement and success we honor and value the unique needs backgrounds and contributions of every student in our district we actively reject bias discrimination and inequality in all forms individual systemic historical and contemporary we work to create a district culture that celebrates diversity prioritizes fairness and amplifies freedom of expression that is affirmatively

160inclusive we have a shared responsibility to seek diversity equity and inclusion in all aspects of our district and we hold each other accountable for our words actions and silent complicity in the face of injustice and we recognize that equity of student experiences requires collaboration thought partnership and embracing perspectives that differ from our own our success as a district is not a finite goal but rather an ongoing process of discovery self-reflection improvement and commitment to the greater good for our entire community so if you decide you know pull that all apart you could probably come up with i don't know 12 different core values i don't think i could boil it down to three but kind of like dana said like that was my starting point so i'm you know i i've i've spoken a lot

161i've provided some examples i'm not quite sure how to move forward from here maybe the next step is for everyone to also write something some more or think about i mean that to me feels like the next step is like we all write up what it seems to be and we compare and then kind of like we do a policy subcommittee to be honest like we look at like the policies and say okay these four bullets are about the same i really like the way julia wrote that i really like this i wrote that and then maybe we put it up and actually this might be a great topic for a public forum and actually have some feedback from the public specifically on this exact moment like those would be my recommendations but so that's

162where i would go from here dave i'm gonna say one thing and then i'm and i'm asking david a question then we'll have dana and julia speak um david what anna just said is what i thought i heard you say which is that we really the seven of us shouldn't be defining this alone that we should have some sort of a public forum and discussion is that what you were saying yeah i mean i like i you know when i read anna's you know five bullet points i thought they were fantastic i thought they were really well thought out and i thought they were very thorough you know but what worries me in um is the seven of you know i know it is our job to sort of do this but the seven of

163us making this decision for everyone that's not to say that we can't use this as a blueprint and go off because i really do think it is wonderful and as far as like i can see you know it's pretty all-encompassing um but i mean i think it's something like this is just this you know it it really like data said it's this wonderful exciting opportunity to really be hearing in it and i know anna feels the same way and you know and i see everyone on their hands this is this opportunity to really be listening to the students and even the teachers right like in in because it's everybody in our community and and i want to make sure that you know as we're having this conversation sure you know i'm all in for us

164guiding it right and however that whatever that looks like um you know but i just want to make sure that nobody feels like we're railroading this i guess is is you know and that's all where i'm coming from like i said i think that anna really laid out a beautiful blueprint here um you know and just sort of how we take that to the next level because i really do think you're gonna get you you you know i i at least i i can really see us hearing from voices that aren't often hurt in our community and really feeling like they have a a safe place to to actually represent themselves and and that's that's i think that our ultimate goal right so i forgot which order i said it was going in dana or

165julia but if one of you remembers then just break we'll go and talk dana i was like we can go alphabetically we can go by whatever you want proximity to the center so i agree i think anna we are way over complicating this also i was um i was not clear as to exactly what we were discussing but i mean there there is a definition of equity so like we're not defining equity um per se what we're doing in in my mind because equity and like what i wrote down is you know equality means treating every student the same equity means making sure every student has the support they need to be successful and then where we come in equity and education requires putting systems in place to ensure that every child has an equal

166chance for success so i think the definition of equity like like peter said like you know we've said there there's a definition there but it's how we interpret it i guess um and where we you know what we decide to prioritize and what are our three things we want to prioritize you know is it um provide every student individual attention you know recognize and affirm these factors is it actively reject bias i mean all of the things that anna wrote so to me i think um i i love the idea of a public forum but i think the definition of equity is kind of already out there but it's how we interpret it for our district and how we commit to it and the systems that we put in place if that makes sense yeah

167and dana so i agree with what julie just said and i guess what and i what i see in that is to me we need to do some work and present something for feedback from the public so i don't i think that both things are true that we need to get feedback but i also don't think we can just put it out there and say hey i think we need to do and i think we're doing it and i i know um so i interpreted and it seems like only anna and i actually like wrote a definition of equity and we interpreted it so differently right like mine is only you know this long and interestingly enough i actually went through the similar process to both anna and julia but i didn't put all the

168like in other words i googled around and i looked at all these different websites and i read other school districts that's what i did in order to create this like i didn't show my work i guess like i just um so i think to me i love everything that is all the pieces of anna's and stylistically i would love to be able to present something that's a little more concise and that i think we're we don't need to resolve that right now but what i imagine is that it would be great to be able to present something and say hey these are this is a draft and we're going to have like a community i don't know what you call it a public comment or whatever where people could comment on our draft but i

169don't think it's fair to just open it up to say like hey everybody what are your thoughts because i think that's just unwieldy um yeah so um it's called world cafe are you familiar with that term mary beth world cafe no so when um we did the housing um affordable housing plan in wenham we had situations where there were six tables i think it was and there was a table leader and you would sit down at your table and you would talk about whatever one topic was and then you would gather information from that and then you would move to another table but you didn't move with your same group you got to pick the table you wanted to go to and talk about that little thing and if you wanted to come back to

170a second table with a different group later on you certainly could and then afterwards the table leader stood up spoke what they had heard as a summary got the room to agree that that's what they heard and then from there created sort of like what the community wanted ideas so but in order to do that we had to start with creating one of the questions we wanted to ask as the table leaders so i think that's what you're um saying dana is like we can't just have a forum and say hey what's equity we have to say things like how you know can you explain to us how equity would look can you explain to us a time when you feel like equity might not have happened or can you explain how you know um

171being included feels for your family your child you as an adult um or are you saying we should have like a straw man definition that people respond to that's what i'm not sure about like what are people thinking we need to do from here do we need to create a straw man or do we need to create like topics to get feedback on should we write out um maybe our our definitions i don't know i really like what dana wrote um i think it was it was very succinct maybe we could each write two sentences and see if they're all wildly wildly um opposed to each other because i i love what anna wrote but it's implementation which i believe is the next step for us is like then this is what we commit to

172do which i'm fully prepared to commit but i think it's it might be it might be a step too far for for this for us as a committee i don't know yeah right yeah michelle did you want to say something just uh to follow up on what julia said also that we need to like we said earlier we need to hear the voice of the community members not just our the seven of our voices and that so so somewhere between what we have now and what anna has written you know we've got to get somewhere in the middle yep anna and then peter um thanks michelle i i think um i definitely think the community both for practical reasons but also philosophical reasons like we are the leaders of the school district so i do

173feel like we can't we can't obviate ourselves from that responsibility but i do feel like as a practical matter this has to be an iterative process i'll just um encourage people if you're looking at that lexington page if you go down a little bit further there's a button part of the reason i suggested that one is there's a box that says where do i start whether you're a staff member or community member just beginning your journey in understanding equity or a lifelong learner click here if you're wondering where to start i think for me and now especially listening to the rest of the fellow committee talk about this like i feel like um we're not all on the same page with each other about what we think we're talking about i think that's clear so

174i feel like i think i would pause on this for a moment and everyone kind of try to like put it into their own words and compare in some ways like i do think that'll be a thoughtful thing and then we can come back together and maybe not in a a meeting because i you know i know that we have a lot of talk about like this to me feels like a great workshop conversation again to come back around with everyone having done similar amounts of work and then try to come up with something a little bit cohesive or maybe a couple versions of it and then share that with the community and get their process but i think we need to start with something to say this is where we've landed after the seven

175of us doing our best homework like we all have to go do our homework bring it together come up with something that seems like a good fit and um and then elicit feedback you know and do that and i do think again if you just look at what other districts who've done this process before all of their home pages start with some sort of high level statement of principles like what does this mean and then as you distill it down there's here's this session on this here's for other reading here's what this great teacher did on this like then they have all these examples that implementation but all of the start of it stops it and it's basically like what is our district's mission statement around equity that's really what we're doing is a mission

176vision project around equity in our district so that's a hard process but i think it always starts with everyone internalizing it putting it into words coming together coalescing into a document that i think everyone knows and data it's really funny to hear you talk about it brevity not my strong suit and i always over document so i'm perfectly on brand but i have five bullet points not three and i have seven examples to substantiate my work like that's seasick style for you so um yeah i think we we separate do our work come back together in a workshop and then we have a public forum to really hear what other people think and then we then we take it from there when uh michelle and i met with mary beth on monday and we were

177talking about the workshop on the 28th which i want us to really get into really hands-on working on doing the evaluation we also feel like that might only take an hour and 15 to an hour and a half um and so we felt like well there's another bit of time there and i had asked david if he would you know sort of talk about his experience of going through this um but i think that would also be a good time if we all brought our definitions we can talk about that and then make a decision about how to move forward as far as like do we want our work chuck which i don't have the date on the top of my head but it's in june to be um one where we invite the public

178to speak to us do we want to try and fit that in in may instead um and then be able to do more work in june or like what do we want to do so do people feel like they could commit to reading and writing some and this includes peter because you don't get off the hook because you're not you didn't graduate yet um writing a statement by the um april 2 28th meeting so we would really want it sort of like probably the friday of break maybe do people feel like they can commit to that oh dana's like yeah i already have my homework done i'm all sad yeah i know i kind of feel okay so let's do that let's let's have everybody and and if you want to write five sentences you

179can write five sentences because we will help you edit it down and if you want to write two words we will help you elaborate and that's fine okay so that's good just copy and paste dana's yes however that you will have to cite it because otherwise i'm going to report you to polar plagiarism that's fine i'm going to the boys and girls club i really liked theirs and i'm going to model that okay um all right the next one is um oh did you still need to say something peter sorry yeah sorry i just um i wanted to emphasize two things that uh julia said one that i really like dana's definition and as as definition and i really like anna's as a implementation mission statement and i also would highly i would really encourage

180this committee and this community to recognize that a learning a proper learning management system helps promote equity because it identifies learning gaps peter is that actually when um i really think that's one of the things that flagged my district and i was going to talk about it on the 28th say that again sorry i missed that i i think that part of the um reason while we're diving into the discussion a little bit deeper is is noticing trends and patterns coming up from the lms about um equity issue potential equity issues yeah if we want to be a data driven district we need to have data and then lms provides that provides a baseball card snapshot for every student so every we know where everyone's at at any moment it would help promote equity well

181it's also what that the woman and i'm sorry i can't remember her name that spoke dr warnham yes that um you know if you want to know what's going on in your district get your data so you know yeah if we want to be a data driven district we need data right and then lms would do that okay so we are going to talk about time meeting communications and um so there is a town meeting coming up um and last year we had a big message to communicate because we had a big ask and david created um a one-page sheet for us which was great and it's lived on its graphics has lived on it's been used and reused um and so we wanted to ask the committee if they felt like this year we

182needed to have something similar to sort of tell our story particularly given that um it's been kind of a tough year so do you want to talk about it michelle yeah just in our subcommittee meeting on monday we tapped into mr leone to ask what the top things that we needed to discuss and convey at town meeting and the top three things were that this budget is the lowest increase the second lowest increase in the past 10 years um that was huge um the second one is that this budget reinstates a majority of the programs that were cut during our covet crisis last june and lastly that we are funding opeb which is huge so we agreed as a subcommittee that those were key topics so thank you benny for your guidance as always so

183so the question is twofold one does somebody want to make a sheet i'm looking like you can't tell don't be good at something or they'll always ask you to do it happy to do it and do it and if so then um you know are those the points that we want to emphasize and take the recommendation of the finance working group so um do people feel that we need a one sheet um to have at the town meeting to sort of explain things um i personally do but that's me um i think it can't hurt that's all i would say okay um and we seem to have potentially a cheap graphics person who would help us with that okay i really keeps telling me i'm far too cheap um okay so if we could task

184you with that david to maybe next week is kind of too soon yeah i mean i couldn't probably touch it until next week to be honest because it's the end of the yeah seven of the quarter this week yeah so maybe um we can just approve it at the workshop because really it's just communication of a sheet yeah so if you can just have it ready for us or or we could throw it off to a committee and you could give it to the committee to approve or something no if you can just uh if someone from that uh committee can just forward me those notes to to work off of okay thank you so that's all that is great um thank you david and um policy doesn't have anything written here but i think

185you guys are coming with some policies next week correct i just wanna i wanted to clarify i sent you guys an email but i didn't hear back we have a bunch of things queued up that we're gonna be from a while ago and then we pushed them off so we're prepared to present on the 14th like what married about three or four or maybe four or five things now i like it yeah i'll have to count them up but yeah there there are a number of things given the length of this agenda we decided to push things off to the 14th but it'll be a really hefty lift on the 14. i think it's four things and i think that all potentially could uh could be voted on but you might not want to so

186i think you know talk to janelle about whether or not you want to put discussion and vote or just first reading i know one of them's a third reading so that one should be pretty straightforward but um you know that's where they are so those are ready for the 14th if you want me to have everything all done we're good yep we put those on hopefully especially you know some of them are getting smelling like dead fish they need to be done and voted on so that'll be good okay uh then it's me um i've got three things well actually maybe four things uh first thing is that i signed the mou that we had previously voted on today and it is uploaded on the website in case people need to refer to it um

187the next thing is tomorrow is when i'm special election so if you are i want to might please vote um i forwarded you a letter that we've received from the hamilton board of selectmen which we will discuss at our next meeting it's related to the town hall project and whether or not we would want to make a statement or support that and then the last thing is um our next meeting as it turns out um as bucha returned to school they moved out of the cafeteria so the buker cafeteria multi-purpose room whatever you want to call it is available for us to use um so we would like to return to having in-person meetings um and we'll work out all the logistics that go with that um because we feel like our if our schools

188are safe for our kids and our staff they should be safe for us to meet as well um and i by then i know because of various people's jobs and their opportunities most of us are going to be vaccinated within the next month or so so um that will also be a plus for us if you're feeling uncomfortable meeting in person please please please please let me know and we will make arrangements for how that will work for you and um yeah so anna so with those shifts back to in person i know it's going to be on hw cam but i think we have really learned that zoom is a huge benefit to the public and the public loves to be able to tune in and do that and it's just not as easy

189for people on cable logistically can we work out a way so there's still a zoom link option for parents who want to listen that way or for school committee members who need to for some reason or another attend that way is there a way that we can do both because i know a lot of committees have been doing that i yeah we can try it i mean it's sort of like that question about live streaming and stuff like that you know if we have a zoom link like what's that gonna look like on the other end um because what are we going to run it off of and how will the audio work because we're not all going to be sitting around in front of a computer like this collecting the audio so yeah i

190mean there's going to be some kinks to work out so we will work we'll we'll work through that but i'm not exactly sure how it's going to work and just so people know like hw cam is on youtube so instead of clicking on the link for zoom you can just click on the link for youtube and see the exact same thing so i think it's for the i think it's for the public comment part of it that right now people can make a public comment from home and then go about their business and do other things whereas if you have to make if you have to attend in person to make public comment that might be a barrier for people to participate that's that would be my biggest concern but maybe we could do the

191zoom part for public comment and then do people can switch over to hw cam if they want to watch yeah because okay yep we will i will talk with um bill melville again i confirmed with him today that we would be meeting and then he would be able to tape it so i'll talk to him again and see what his advice is on that okay great uh mary beth i am you wanted to give us some good news and maybe some not-so-goodness uh yeah just a couple of things for the committee in the community so first of all uh happy to report on monday we had our full uh return to full in person learning um some various laboratory feeling there's a lot of celebratory feelings at our schools um our principals excuse me have

192reported that kids were excited to be back um a lot of connections with kids that oh i haven't seen that friend in a year um so there was a a lot of positive energy in our buildings another bit of positive news is that the traffic issues that we had some level of concern about have not been as challenging as we had expected there are there are not that's not to say that they were non-existent but they were they were much less than we thought may be possible and our our building folks are working out systems to address the the issues that we do have there so overall some really positive news in terms of the opening one of the things that did happen yesterday and i'm at the high school level we had three students

193that were identified as positive cases these were cases that the the they were identified outside of the school environment but what we did find in our buildings because of the three feet social distancing and we knew that this was an exposure that we would have that we had a fair number of close contacts at the the high school the latest account i have is 27 close contacts because when you have a student that's positive and if they're sitting next to someone within three feet that individual automatically will become a close contact so that that is a risk that we know is there and did occur at the high school um yesterday um on a uh on an again a more positive note we had 91 pools that went in for testing on monday and tuesday

194and every single one of them came back negative we had that information today so one it helps i think the community know how important that pool testing is so that we know what level of exposure we have in our buildings another shout out and continued advocacy for families to sign up for pool testing if you haven't already done that but it helps us to see that clear data that the idea of spreading our schools we we are seeing that it's not in our schools um in through this pool testing data so wanted to share that concern that's come up but also some reassurance that as the pool testing data has come in from the past two days we have had zero positive pools so what it that is one piece of information the other piece

195of information that i have for you is related to pool testing funding in between this this meeting and our last meeting the department of education has announced that it will pick up the cost of pool testing through the end of this year so that was great news and helps us in terms of our budget so a couple of updates for the committee and we'll keep you posted as as we continue on with our return to full in person all right so now we have um does capital finance have any more they need to let us know about nope i think that's about it policy do you have anything else you need for us to know about um maybe just an advanced warning for people who've been on the committee for a while uh dorothy made

196the recommendation and we're going to process it a bit at the subcommittee but sometimes soonish we're going to move we're going to ask the full committee to approve all of the policies that have been improved in form in this giant batch because as you said i think you know there is a little bit of a fish element some of those things are been waiting so at some point in the future we're going to try to do a bulk process to update the policy because dorothy said you know we're getting two plus years out on some of these and just sitting there so that won't be for the next meeting but soonish that will come up yeah that sounds good maybe do you think maybe the fifth maybe we wanted to go back through and make

197sure uh we had them all right because there was a whole section the financial ones we were skipped over and then there have been a few outliers like religious observances weapons that we've uh public comment the title nine one there's been a few that are like cherry picked here and there that we approved immediately to take perfect so dorothy was going to go back through and make sure that we identified which ones had kind of already been done so we're trying to get ourselves so everything is in the same state moving forward or just thinking we're going to have the bulk minutes on the fifth too so if we could bulk up that would be good okay all right super and then negotiations we'll have an update next meeting do we have anything else we

198need to yeah i have to say i my homework would have been to check with you as the chair michelle to see whether there were things that i really needed to tell the committee even though i'm the chair of the negotiations i look to michelle for guidance um with her institutional wisdom about what we need to share but yeah basically we're just continuing on and we will update yeah soon yeah and yeah yeah and we need to talk okay great um so i don't know and we do have a meeting tomorrow we have a meeting tomorrow so that is an update we do have a meeting tomorrow so okay great so we've got a bunch of warrants we've got some minutes and um we have some donations in the consent agenda i would wanted to

199see if anybody wanted to pull any of those that's a no great um i'm sorry yeah no i do want to pull the to hold the donations well hold the donations i was like that's weird people usually hold those okay great so yeah i couldn't mute fast enough yeah dana can you make a motion for us to approve a and b without discussion i move that we approve the consent agenda parts a and b as presented um and no changes shall be made second by anna um david yes michelle yes julia yes peter yes hannah yes aina yes and michelle bailey yes so those are approved um dana would you like to talk about c um i actually don't have a ton of knowledge about any of these but i just think it's really important

200to thank um each one of these organizations for their donations and if other members have specific knowledge i would definitely welcome them to speak to that so the donations for the whoopee pie wagon if you look that up um michelle mary beth and i had the idea to have sort of a celebratory thing at the um vaccination day then that got a little derailed and so then um we thought well you know let's do something on the first day back which would have been this past monday but there was some concerns about traffic and the like so um a day when we weren't going to have traffic and the like was last thursday on the teacher work day um and so in order to make that happen because you can't get stuff for free the

201friends groups were asked to donate and then um it turned out we needed some more funds but we weren't sure how much more funds so um our new family and community engagement person had engaged the friends groups and had kind of mentioned michelle and i that they were coming up a little bit short and so um we filled in the rest of the money with that um but because we didn't know how much it was going to be exactly we didn't ask the rest of you um for that but we you know obviously know that all of you shared the same sentiment about the teachers being back in school and wanting to show your appreciation so we just want everyone to know that we made that happen on behalf of all of us so that's

202what i know about the question can people donate supplies without going through the school committee or is it only cash that has to be stuff is supposed to be accepted by us also but it doesn't always happen you know what i mean okay like but like when the friends group donates stuff like color's really good about that they usually come just because what you don't want is somebody donating 20 year old computers to us right and then it becomes a disposal problem so that's kind of how that works okay noted but you know what i mean like it doesn't always happen but well thank you i want to say thank you for making that happen but yes for the record anytime that you guys are fronting money i will happily contribute portion of it so

203don't ever hesitate to ask it was a last minute thing like whoops it was a whoopee it was a whoopee on the whoopee so just and just a thank you to the pacific life foundation and the institution for savings for their absolutely constitution for savings is always generous all the time all right so um you want to make a motion for us to accept the donations oh yes sorry um i move that we accept the donations from pacific life foundation for a thousand dollars institution for savings bank for a thousand dollars and the donations for the whoopie pie wagon for staff appreciation as listed on the agenda is there a second for that second second but anna um david yes so horrigan yes julia yes peter yes anna yes dana yes and michelle bailey yes

204super um topics for future meetings just want to check the time here topics for future meetings there's nothing new on the farm um peter i'd just like to recognize that vinnie is looking very spelt i know i you almost don't recognize him right you're very trimmed uh anna um i have a clarifying question and then two things i'd like to bring to a vote to get on to the next agenda so um in the work plan that was discussed at the meeting on the 17th we talked about having dei goals discussion first round on the fifth and then a vote on dei goals for next year sometime later in may are those still things that we're planning to do oh i think we're a teeny bit delayed because we're gonna we're not gonna vote a

205definition um next week we're gonna talk about it on the 28th but we're still working towards that okay i just want to clarify that so um i'd like to move two things to a vote um i sort of gave everyone a preview of this in email so the first one is that i move we add discussion and presentation of indigenous land acknowledgement to the next school committee meeting on april 14th our second second hi julia um dana so i just my question is um on the 14th um would this be you anna outlining for us what you're hoping to do or would this be the student presentation where we would be asked to vote at the end so my intention would be that the student presentation would be sort of the thing we lead with

206and then i have additional sort of historical background that i've researched and talking to the massachusetts tribe my intention of trying to have the presentation first is explicitly not that we would vote that night but it would be part of this broader discussion about dei goals for the next year and i feel like it would be too much to try to do the presentation and then vote immediately i think that feels a little bit rushed but i think that in order to have a thoughtful conversation about dei goals we need to have had the presentation um which is the thing that's that eight slide powerpoint that i emailed around um we've presented it once at the human rights commission i think it's going to be at the hamilton human rights commission so we're trying to

207get in front of all three governing bodies uh so that we can have a conversation so my goal would be you don't anticipate asking for a vote that not not at that night i would like to i would like to have it be part of our broader dei discussion later but i don't anticipate forcing a vote at that moment right after you present because i think people want time to process and digest and i think it does need to be part of a broader conversation um so that for me feels like the fairer way to do it so i'm asking that we add the presentation to the 14th with the idea that it's part of a broader discussion that's going to happen later i would ask that we not do it on the 14th just

208we've already reviewed that prepared the agenda for that and it is quite packed but we looked at the work plan and actually the 5th of may would be one where we would probably have time to fit that in so i would just ask that we do it on the 5th of may i i appreciate that i've been asking for this for literally months and i proposed it's 15 to 20 minutes so my emotion is i'd like to have it for the next meeting so we can at least get it started and not be deferred any further there is also a student who's been holding time every time we're sort of hopeful so i you know i respect what you're saying michelle but i brought it to a vote because i've tried to work through this

209process collaboratively and it has yielded not success so i'm trying to follow the new guidance from the mesc and just bring it to an up or down vote i'm just letting you know that we've already timed out the next meeting we've already prepared the agenda and that it's timed out at around what was it around three hours marybeth like it was it was long so however the fifth is not that way so um we did because you had emailed us ahead of time we did look at the work plan to see where it would fit well and the fifth is where it would fit well so i guess i would move that we would vote that it would be on the 5th of may instead of on the 14th of april so is there a

210second for that i'll second that okay so like i said that's my my i've stated my reason my reason is that the next meeting is already long and it's already been prepared um so do we have two motions on the table now there's two motions nope there's a motion and a amendment there's a motion and an amendment so um but because we knew about this we did look at the calendar and our next meeting which is a true meeting is may 5th so we it wasn't full the next one is kind of full and the next one is kind of full and then there's one in june when that's open a little bit so um it does fit nicely into may 5th so um that's what i would say so but the conversation this broader

211dei conversation do you anticipate that will not be taking place on may 5th then that will happen later because again my entire point of getting the presentation in first was so that it would be in our vicinity of thought prior to the next step so i just want to make sure we're not deferring it over and over again we're approaching the point where we've talked about this agenda item almost as long as the presentation itself ironically when is the new school committee sworn in um well you have to wait till after the election and then it's usually the monday after is when everything's certified so when i don't even know when the election is the same may 6th may 6th oh so um so i'll be at these both of these yes you will not

212have graduated yet peter i don't know i might have a problem with my eyes i don't see myself going to those meetings i'll be there just so folks know the reorganization meeting is may 19th um so i mean i i'd like to i'd like the the presentation to be on the 14th especially if it's going to be brief so how do we how do we move i'd like it to be on the 14th as well but i don't know what we vote on the amendment nope let's pull on the amendment um so if you vote yes on the amendment then you're voting that we would have the presentation on may 5th and if you vote no on the amendment then we will go to a vote on whether or not to have it on the

21314th david yes uh michelle uh yes julia no peter so no on the for me no on the amendment means i want april 14th correct all right so no no no dana yes michelle bailey uh yes okay so we'll have that on may 5th it's scheduled um and like i said there's not so much there and we need to technically vote now we're going to whether we have one if we're going to have a presentation on may 5th um david yes michelle yes julia yes peter yes anna yes dana yes michelle bailey yes and um ryan schedule that first just because it's a student and you know yep okay uh the second thing that i would like to propose adding um i move that we add discussion of the logo revision and retirement to the

214may 5th meeting second second okay so um david not that uh yeah um you know i i my case is my view on this is pretty clear i do think that the district needs rebranding uh in the sport um i i do think that i'd like to see it sort of framed differently um i i think that this the the logo needs to be hamilton's logo needs to be updated um and you know i i i think that we want to be i don't know i i i don't know how i'd vote for this because i while my end goal would still be the same my sort of reasoning framing and approach would be very different um you know i i just think that we did the entire district on many many levels needs updating

215and rebranding um and there's a lot of there's a lot of very good reasons why this logo needs to go um excuse me but um i'm just i'm a little worrisome about um our approach on how to broach it you know and maybe this is the conversation that needs to by getting this on the agenda that that's where the conversation begins um so well and david if i can if i can say my motivation for making it is sort of similar to that like i'm not saying again that this is going to be a definitive decision when we talk about it but i think we need to start talking about it and i i completely support your feeling that there's other issues behind it again my motivation when i first introduced it back i don't

216know maybe october november was built around gender equity and also to some degree branding marketing trademarking with other generals logos like i have a lot of other issues with it um and again i want to be clear for the public who might watch this later i am not proposing that we cease to be the generals i am all in for the generals i'm talking about the cartoon logo itself so i want to be really clear i'm not talking about the mascot i'm talking about the logo um just for clarity of discussion yeah yeah i i could see the value yeah and just anna and i talk about this offline all the time as well so it's not just a dana yeah no that i was gonna have the same i i if i want to

217make i'm hoping it would be an opening discussion in a time limited one um i think it's i think i think i'm an agreement very much what david said that i think i wouldn't be very thoughtful about that this is a bigger picture than perhaps just that like it like it's a bigger picture so it would be an opening discussion i would just share that i feel like it's premature because i feel like we're going to be going through a strategic plan and i think through that strategic plan some of the things that we could be looking at are branding branding our district and even some of the visuals that possibly come out of the portrait of a graduate might be helpful for us and so i just i just feel like it's a little

218too soon but i do agree with some of the things that um david has sort of talked about a little bit you know i remember the people from barney calling up when i was working and being like your barney's just a little bit too magenta barney is supposed to be more grape and i was like are you kidding me people like you know it's it is important to them that barney was a particular color and looked a particular way because that is the image that they wanted to portray and our logo can portray our image and we have many of them david is wearing one tom gary has another there's other ones other places the twitter page has a different one so just um but i just feel like it's premature that we really should

219focus on doing the portrait of a graduate and their strategic plan and making this part of that so um all right so michelle i just i just like to add though to that i feel like we have other issues that we need to deal with and that the mascot um should not be front and center right now even even for discussion i feel it can be put off to after everything is done strategic plan and portion of a graduate series of other things to focus on all right um david yes we should have said if you vote yes then we're going to talk about it on the 5th if you don't know then we're not going to talk about it on the 5th uh peter yes julia sorry i couldn't unmute yes um dana yes

220michelle no anna yes michelle no so we will talk about that also on the fifth fifth is now getting very busy um okay so now we are moving on to the last item which um just to be clear about what we're doing we're voting to go into executive session under purpose number seven um which is to comply with another law or authority which is the open meeting law because what we are going to be doing is looking at executive session minutes and we will be hopefully releasing those minutes um in may um as a periodic review of those so just so the public knows what we're doing that's what we are doing um and that is why there is no minutes for you to read because there will be no purpose to protect them if

221you allow you to read them all right so i'm i'm well i guess i don't have to well i'll do this anyways i move that we go into executive session for purpose number seven to comply with the open meeting law um and not to return to open session so that basically i mean this part of the meeting would be over is there a second for that second second by david um roll call vote to go into executive session um dana yes anna yes michelle yes julia i don't have the link can someone send it to me and yes i think it's going to be right we're just going to kick everybody else out yeah i think we're staying on yeah we'll stay here we'll uh we'll we'll shut down the recording have been leave our

222attendees to log off sorry okay yes uh peter yes david yes joe bailey yes um my one last question is are we can we excuse finny and tom from coming to the executive session great have a fantastic night