School Committee 12.16.20

001all right so let's call the meeting to order it's six o'clock on wednesday december 16th um let's see meeting is being held remotely due to the governor's emergency orders this meeting is being recorded i'm assuming by hw cam because they are on yes they're here um we are all participating remotely and um we will be going into executive session and then coming back into open session while in executive session um each member will attest that they are in a room where no one else will be hearing so um with that i would move that we vote to go into executive session for purpose number three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation is that it maribeth is it also gonna be something else um no i bet you take care of it

002for today um and to reconvene in open session uh do we have a second for that second second by dana to a roll call vote um dana yes anna yes michelle yes peter yes julia yes david yes fantastic do uh michelle do we want to tell the public what time we anticipate returning um no all right so um i don't know that it matters but um peter you're because you used my link your name is dana i don't know if that matters to the public if they can't tell us the apart but how do i change it on an ipad you know i can change it for you yeah you can't on an ipad that's what i've heard all right so um we're back in open session it's 6 40. for those of you who

003did not join us at the beginning i just want to remind you this is being recorded i don't see the recording button though but hw cam is recording it so we know that's happening um and all the other things so um we do have some time set aside if there's a member of the public who wishes to make a comment um they can raise their hand and um that will allow us to see you at the top of the participants list and to recognize you we just want to remind you that um you would have three minutes to speak and that michelle horrigan would indicate to you by waiting uh that your time is up um is there anyone who wishes to speak no there's three attendees with their hands up so um anastasia jewett

004oh yeah and i'm realizing possibly what that's about so good okay anastasia you should be all set anastasia and stephen jewett j j-e-w-i-t-t 28 burnham road wenham how do i get my picture i don't know if you can you might just be allowed to speak but not a participant okay um we are here collectively my husband and i because um we're still wondering what happened to the nearly three thousand dollars that we've never been refunded from the trip to spain that my daughter ava maria jewett was supposed to take in eighth grade and the middle school in this back at last spring the trip was canceled and we have received nothing i have been in contact with you michelle um in july and then again uh in october and then also on facebook and i

005was told that kevin sano would be getting back to you and that i would have some kind of uh there would be something today at this meeting so and i see nothing on the agenda it's um it's going to be a year i think in march that my daughter was supposed to go on this trip and it's almost three thousand dollars that i have seen nothing back to yet so i'm just wondering what the deal is uh is the school committee not the place that i should go it was a school related trip and um and my emails have gone ignored and we're actually not very happy are we steve and the company that arranged it so not answering their emails refusing to give us a refund so what do i do and i think

006that in addition it looks like the the replacement trip will probably not go ahead because of the issue in europe so it's not just the people that canceled back in may or april of last year it's gonna be everybody on that trip is going to be looking for some kind of refund and the companies only offering vouchers which are virtually useless you you can't use a school trip voucher for anything else but a school trip and uh no point in going to spain when there's nobody there to meet you at the other end that's the question do you know when that's going to be scheduled um i can i can give a little bit of information about that i have spoken to kevin um so the the situation there first of all i know that

007she had shared that the company is currently not staffed because of the current um situation with covid so they are not in the office right now um but the the the issue here is twofold and they they are intending on coming back once the um travel situation improves um but the what i am understanding about this is that there was an opportunity for families to take insurance um and if they did insurance would not have covered that miss banios so insurance would not have covered a pandemic so this this was not this is not an option and this is over a year that i started to pay into this this is not acceptable what i can do with you is what i know right and then then michelle i will defer to you as the

008chair as to what action you want to take on that but what i know is that there was an opportunity for insurance some families took it some families didn't the what i am understanding about the situation is that there was an initial replacement trips um trying to be scheduled for this april to your point that given the way that the pandemic has unfolded that that trip will not go forth and they are now looking to schedule an alternative summer trip um either this summer or the following summer as a way of trying to provide families some some service in that situation part of the issue as i understand it from kevin is that there's a lot of work that is done prior to the trip that had already been done by the time that it

009had to be canceled so she is working with the company to attempt to have a replacement trip scheduled for either this summer or next summer is my understanding around that but that is where we stand and michelle maybe as chair you could direct the family in terms of what they should do if they're not feeling comfortable no we were we were told like we're going to be written about refund about an over a thousand dollar refund which we've never received i've sent all the emails to you miss bailey so you have them all and it's not acceptable no this is not acceptable so mary beth um you're going to do nothing been requesting to have kevin come and speak so that we know what the schedule is and i'm requesting that that happen but it

010was supposed to happen at this meeting michelle i also we want we want a responsibility my daughter had played paid for a plane ticket i mean even just the the plane ticket we want a bit of a refund we we did not sign an agreement saying that we would take another trip at another time we didn't agree to that we never agreed to that this that was not acceptable who have been giving vouchers to people that have booked airline tickets and they've in several tech cases gone to court over it and the airlines have lost every time so but basically what what you're saying is you're not going to take any responsibility at all so we have to sue the company let's arrange the trip and try and get their money back the money back

011from them all right well that's actually what i was just going to say now um just this past week i believe the attorney general of massachusetts uh settled the case with another um travel agency the same scenario right obviously we're not the only district that's been affected by this um so i'm actually curious i i do remember hearing something about being part of an attorney general uh investigation earlier this summer but i don't know where we are there i'm not sure if kevin can help us with that but i mean it is you know above in sort of out of our hands but we are you know willing to obviously help work with you to try and resolve this because we understand your concern and you know it's it's it's not right and it's not

012fair um you know and we're happy to try and sort of track this down like i said just this past week um i saw something in the paper about the um more hailey uh settling with the company uh for refunds um for uh you know just different school districts where this same exact scenario happened i think if you look at the company's headquarters you have to we have to go that's beyond the time but we have if if it's required for us to vote that this be put on an agenda we will um it was my anticipation that this was going to be here and it's not so um i think we should put it on the agenda so um not just this trip there's also a trip to peru that's been talked about and

013just in general what you have said that it's unlikely that many of these trips will go forward that we really need to just talk about what spring travel is going to look like because um before we get first off i just just like to tell you the company that is arranging these trips so running this from a residential home so it can't be true that they're not operating because of covet i think they're very close to bankruptcy and you shouldn't be offering any more trips from any school representations for the future because they're clearly not going to be able to honor their trips in the next 12 months all right the next person is um linda carr okay let me just move one second off thank you anastasia and steven elinda you should be all

014set hello um my name is elita carr and i live on five meridian road um wenham so i would like to talk about crew um crew is supposed to bring remote students together and create a sense of community this is not the case first of all this is not the teacher's fault crew only lasts for 15 minutes and starts at 7 40 in the morning anyone who can make a bunch of middle schoolers um excited to learn at 7 40 morning is probably using dark magic i believe that crew would be more liked and appreciated if we could have it later in the day such as from 2 30 to 3. this would also help with the constant lack of sleep most middle schoolers suffer from as we grow older our sleep cycle changes and

015we go to sleep later and get up later so even having an extra 20 minutes of sleep would help exponentially it also may be more likeable if we could talk to each other and perhaps play games that involve learning while still letting us get to know each other this time would be better used if the students had more time to ask each other questions and just talk about our day-to-day life thank you for your time and i hope you take my considerations into account thank you very much um can i say something just because my daughter is on crew too so hi elita my daughter does crew at the middle school and um she's voiced some of the same concerns so we're hearing you you all should be coming to my room at 7 40

016in the morning because we have dark magic going on yes yes and i from what i understand just from what i understand about crew is that it's supposed to be sort of a convening for the morning getting everybody psyched about the day getting everybody on the same page um but i mean i i could be wrong i'm not a middle school teacher but thank you awesome okay so that was everybody who had their hand up do you can committee members speak as a as an audience member yeah go for it you have three minutes no i only need a few seconds um no i just as speaking as a resident i drove past patton park and there was another basketball game going on half a dozen students or more without masks it's just it's it's

017frustrating that we're taking all these steps to protect our students and our teachers uh just to be negated by some students not wearing masks fantastic okay thank you thank you we would encourage everyone to follow the governor's orders both regarding math and also to stay off the road so thank you to mary beth for bringing joy to the children of the land um for tomorrow so um tonight we have with us ethan howell ethan howell is a representative um from the student council at the high school and i believe you're actually the president of the student council and um you are going to just give us some updates on some of the things going on with students we are absolutely grateful to have you here thank you he is brilliant and um will you need

018to share your screen at all yes please that would be great super we look forward to seeing you regularly um it does say that the screen sharing is deceiving yeah just one moment and i'm no problem sorry i'll be able to i'm gonna make you a co-host and that should enable you to share your screen got it hello my name is ethan howell and i'm a senior at the high school this is the student representative report by the student body government school activities are occurring less frequently because of covid but that being said there's still a large effort to raise money for classes and keep as many clubs running virtually as possible the junior class had a successful fundraiser at chipotle and many classes are planning to follow suit due to restaurant fundraisers being one

019of the few reliable means of earning money many classes are also releasing their merchandise for the year with the seniors having just released christmas merchandise and the other classes soon releasing their own apparel lots of activities related to clubs are sadly halted in both the middle school and high school due to coveted safety some clubs that have done a great job coping with the pandemic are the social justice club and the coding club both of which have utilized online communication to continue educating the student body in order to adapt to a lack of opportunities within the school the middle school has also begun working with the library and rec department to try and provide after school activities for its students i am proud to say that the hw gives back initiative has thrived this year

020during the high school's accord food drive our school was able to donate 1489 items which surprisingly surpassed last year's total donations this is doubly impressive during coven and i would like to give a big thanks to mrs rogal and the hw gives back committee for making it happen the coats for kids fundraiser is also underway which recently surpassed 100 coats ready to be cleaned by anton's and donated to kids in need this christmas as i'm sure everyone is aware covet has been tough on students the staff and faculty are doing a great job with accommodating the student body but the fact of the matter is that online learning is difficult and although the hybrid schedule provides opportunities for social interaction it's easy to feel fatigued from staring at a screen for the large part of

021the day something that does a great job at highlighting this issue is the mood meter survey which was administered by guidance on december 4th students were asked to state their feelings according to the mood meter on the top right which graded their feelings by both energy and pleasantness what resulted were the words seen on the word cloud blow within the survey there is a 50 50 split between positive and negative feelings described by the students and even more concerning 70 of students felt they belonged in the low energy quadrants of the mood chart with the word tired appearing 40 times from the 300 students that were surveyed which is nearly 13 of all students saying they felt tired student wellness and fatigue caused by more time spent in front of a screen is something that

022everyone should be cognizant of when thinking about this school year and how students are affected on a more positive note there's a lot to look forward to in 2021 and the student body government is brainstorming the best ways to raise spirit in the high school coming right off of winter break the senior class is planning on a trivia night with the proceeds going to a charity of the social justice club's choice later down the road we are planning to hold a spirit week in the spring hopefully capturing the excitement of spirit week while participating in socially distance and virtual activities personally i'm really excited about making this as fun as possible for the students even if we aren't fully in person and i think it's incredibly important to give students something to look forward to

023in the later half of the year we're always looking to improve spirit and morale around the school so the student government is trying its best to provide coveted safe activities to engage the student body thank you for your time thank you ethan um thank you does anybody have questions for ethan i may have a quick question hey ethan nice to see you hey mr walzick uh uh do you know if the we're partnering with the league of women voters to do the civic speed this year i have not heard anything about that so far we should i think that's some i was just thinking that like when you were talking about the trivia thing i was like you could totally do kahoot massive multiplayer kahoot no i'm totally open to it yeah i civicsb is

024always one of my favorite nights of the year so i would definitely be excited about making that my son was so disappointed because he had gotten third the year before and he was like this year we're gonna win it and then it was canceled so yeah not good um i'm curious i've been thinking a lot lately that we've heard a lot from administrators we hear from parents from time to time we haven't really heard from students about how things are going do you have a sense of like other than that survey just i would i i get a general sense of students that we are like i said before we are really really tired you know when you ask someone i've found that when you ask someone in the halls like how are you doing

025i find that i less often get a reply of fine and i more often get of a pie of you know so you know we all really do know and i think we're trying to just kind of get through this together but it's been tough on the students and yeah i think we're gonna definitely we're definitely gonna survive this year but it's it's a little bit more fatiguing it takes a little bit more of our energy so i think thank you well hopefully we'll be having a great big party at the end of this year to celebrate all of your classes successes um so thank you you're obviously welcome to stay on for as long as you would like of course there's no school tomorrow so we know you have nowhere to go so thank

026you ethan ethan when you're president make me secretary of squirrels i'll go around the country counting squirrels all right so tonight we um are going to be recognizing a few of our uh student are we going to have yeah student athletes and coaches um around some of the great things that happened this fall while we were so fortunate to be able to be playing sports so um i think craig is going to tee that up for us yeah so you know every year we have coaches and student athletes that do great things and we have collective teams that do great things and we have lost your craig you froze craig you may want to try turning to off your video i'll shoot him a text just in case i know he's probably there making a

027great presentation no that's what i wanted that's why i wanted to say it oh yeah we can hear you craig yep all right is we good i'm so sorry okay let me start over um so every year you know we have student athletes and coaches that do amazing things that get noticed in the paper and around the community we have student athletes and coaches that do great things that don't get acknowledged around the community and they're always to be commended um this year across the cape and league across the state across the country we had um you know there were student athletes that did amazing things every day and um we were no exception and i think it's you know i think it's important to recognize um these folks and i am grateful that you're

028giving me the ability to do that um the first team i think we should commend the girls cross country team um they won the cape and league for the 16th consecutive year coach sawyer who couldn't be with us because he has a family situation to deal with um uh was again named coach of the year i once asked him how many coach of the years he won he just laughed and said i don't know i said where do you put all the awards he said i don't know they're in some box they're probably like 75 boxes full of these things um see but you know we never want to take that stuff for granted the fact that the girls did so well is amazing um i want i think i don't i was looking through

029the participants earlier i'm not sure if the captains are here galen rios and katherine weiss were the girls cross country captains um incredible student athletes and leaders in every way um and really it has nothing to do with sports and how much they care about their teammates uh and ava cody was named the cape and league uh runner of the year performer of the year and was a boston herald all scholastic so um quite a bit of success on the girls cross country team which is very easy to um take for granted because again they just win forever and ever but um you know they should really be recognized yeah so craig um i i i do think that catherine is here because i see weiss in the um oh good participants listed we wanted

030a chance to raise their hand and we can get them right to the top yeah absolutely super okay and then if you want to present them and then in a second if they want to speak they can just by raising their hand so if you're out there catherine you can raise your hand there she goes she is she's under her mom's name hi catherine you should be all set hi catherine how you doing you're a mute bud oh there you go great did you want to say anything catherine oh her microphone's not working rats we're just going to get to see your smile you may have to go out congratulations catherine okay great go ahead craig thank you no of course um it i mean if you've ever been to a cross-country meet it's the

031greatest experience in the world everybody's smiling they finish i'd be killed over in the corner uh i think we all would and they're just like you know they're they're in a normal year they're high-fiving the opponents and everything it's just it's so fun if you ever get a chance to go to a cross-country meet down at patton park on a gorgeous fall day with the leaves i highly recommend it um the other team that we had that did an amazing job was girls soccer um they were the wire to wire league champs they pretty much shot out of the gate fast and never looked back um they had some incredible players as well and their coach coach nancy waddell nancy i i see when the panel is here i think this is your sixth year

032and i think it's your third league title um i know you've been coach of the year before um we talked all the time and i couldn't possibly be more thankful for you so um nancy's catherine's issue where madeleine ross and abby term and nancy's here in the panel so it's got you know i don't know if she wants to say anything but um or how that works but i'm here and i would love to speak if i could have the chance can you hear me yeah um i just i many thanks to the people who made this season possible the school committee who allowed the season to happen craig for putting all the pieces in place and just an amazing team and assistant coaches who showed up every day despite the masks and the rule

033changes and me yelling at them for being too close and everybody did the best job they could and this was the year that it paid off the best that we could was a cal championship and so well deserved by all of these players so thank you all great and maddie rostad has raised her hand and abby sturm is right under her but she didn't raise her hand but that alphabet really helps abby there you go all right ladies if you want to unmute and have anything you want to say congratulations thank you very much yeah just going off of what nancy said i think it was super nice to have a successful season this year because it was definitely a positive amidst all other things going on as i'm sure you all can tell but

034it was just it was a super great experience and all of the girls and i were super close this year and were able to sort of feed off of each other's positive energy so just being able to be successful by the end of the year i think was super amazing and it was a great experience that's great and abby did you want to say anything yeah to adolf town and maddie i feel like it was just such a fun year and we were able to go to practice every day every single day and we'd all have fun with each other just laugh and stuff and in the middle of a pandemic it was kind of hard to like get that social interaction but knowing that you had like so many of your good friends on

035the team you just like come to practice with a big smile on your face made all the difference this year awesome thank you congratulations michelle can i say something about nancy and the team yep um i think i want to congratulate nancy and all the players but nancy is probably the most humble person i know and for those who don't know we are so lucky to have a coach and a player and a student athlete in nancy waddell who sets such a high bar she herself is the real deal played college soccer princeton captain played in what you know eventually became a professional league so nancy's not just a coach she's a super coach player athlete and an amazing leader and for all the girls in the soccer stream i want to know partly because

036my house is 12 degrees but partly because i love soccer and i love women's soccer i'm wearing my favorite portland thorns ptfc represent tonight for women's professional soccer so i just want to give a shout out to my soccer girls and to embarrass nancy ever so slightly please forgive me fantastic great craig yeah so um and you know we were lucky enough this year or not lucky it was a lot more than luck but every team did have um some first-team all-stars um some of which i know are here and i see them in the attendees thing um what i wanted to say about them collectively um and they and hopefully they can all get a chance to speak i know there's a couple that are about to start basketball practice and waiting anxiously to

037get on so i'll be brief but um the common thread around everybody you'll hear tonight is that they always put their teammates before themselves they always put their team before who they are and it's one thing to be talented and it's another thing to be a great there's nothing better in this world than being a great teammate it's what everybody will remember 30 years from now your stats and all the other junk doesn't matter um i'm incredibly grateful for these people um and i want to get them on because i really do know that some of them are getting ready to start basketball practice um and then i just want to say one quick thing at the end but um maybe we could do uh sarah cook first uh she was a first-team all-star from

038field hockey she's also she won't tell you but she's gonna be playing softball in college it's her best sport she's amazing um but if we could get sarah cook up here first i know she wants she's anxious just raise your hand okay good oh well wait a second nope she just appeared at the bottom oh no no she should be great i see her okay you should be all set do you want to unbeat it if you can um mute we'll be able to hear you but hi i'm in practice thank you great job sarah sorry you're the best bud all right yeah see she wants to get right back into drills and like forget about us so good for her um the cross country had two first-team all-stars um the other common thing among

039all these student athletes is by and large they're multi-sport athletes which is getting more rare as the years go on um eli labelle and harrison are both uh basketball players and um they're on the boys cross country uh they're on the boys cross country team they may not be here yeah sarah's finishing they may be ending maybe ending but um i'm not sure if they're here but harrison and uh eli we love you guys and congratulations um michelle horgan i'm gonna put you on the spot she promised me that she would drag james to this uh i don't know if james is here and he's in the audience if he's not then you can turn on your own and yell at michelle but i tried you tried he's the fourth i give up sorry yeah

040james a pretty humble guy um you know he's on the hockey team they they practice every morning at 5 30 in the morning over at essex tech so for the past three days he's probably gotten up at 4 30 a.m um those guys do a lot of work just to have a team and so he's you know if he needs a nap i don't blame him uh but congratulations james for being a boy soccer cat a boys soccer first team all-star um girls first team all-stars for cross-country we mentioned ava cody who was the run of the year also alexis donovan um who again i didn't see in here but um you know 16 straight league titles there's nothing to sneeze at so congratulations to you ladies and uh for golf we had two first-team

041all-stars peter gobert and andrew winch um and for girls soccer we had three first-team all-stars uh jackie chatelain jane mcguire who may have been with sarah cook at basketball practice and claire nissel so congratulations um to you as well claire is here if you don't want to say anything she can raise her hand come on claire we'd love to hear from you i think she did nice hi claire long time no see hi i just want to say thanks on behalf of all of us we really appreciate the recognition and it was great to have a fall season thank you all right bro does that wrap that up for our student athletes yeah in in like you know just to echo kind of what nancy said and what some others said i just wanted to

042thank you know without the school committee support without eric and brian's support trish in the office trish maven in the offices you know we're always rescheduling things and scheduling things and things come out the last minute so for everyone that kind of helped do this um this was an important year for kids to be able to be with their friends and teammates and so thank you for that great and if you can just stay on um for a minute eric hi everyone i have the pleasure to um certainly introduce mr genualdo now as the athletic director of the year the new report athletic director reached out to me because he knew that craig would not tell me uh that this had happened so kyle reached out to me and and you know said some some

043kind words about craig i think we all say the same thing and you saw it here tonight craig would stay here all night and let every kid speak and every kid be recognizing every kid be part of you know what's going on and i think that says a lot about him as our athletic director and the the time and the commitment he puts in i mean he comes in early in the morning with all of us and he is going home late at night when games are over and everybody else went home and he's closing the gym and putting away the the chairs and all those things this is uh certainly well deserved i thought he might have gotten it long ago because i've worked with him he's he's been a super champion for athletes

044and a super champion for all of our generals not just high school kids just trying to get kids involved and certainly we appreciate that and congratulations to you craig thanks boss good job thank you and a nice article in the paper last week for you so good job can i can i just say it's just so important um we look at the whole child you have academics you have athletics um extracurricular the drama the course all this is the beauty of our small district um everyone cares for each other we may not always agree um but we care for each other we and we care for the child and i think this is a great example with both mr manning mr tracy here supporting mr general waldo mr general supporting kids it's it's it's wonderful

045so in the midst of this pandemic thank you all for doing everything you can for these kids and going above and beyond what was uh in a normal world so thank you uh so the next thing we have on our agenda is um the beginning of probably what brian manigoni would describe as a nightmare is to introduce the uh course catalog um for the next scheduling challenge of the year and so that is um being presented here as the school committee does approve the um what do you want to call it the curriculum offerings uh for lack of a better word so um are you gonna cover this eric yes i will take care of it all right thank you um all the changes are in red i tried to keep it very simple this

046year there was not a lot of reasons to to try to create anything new given what's going on we really have a lot of work to do to get back in the groove if you will and i i have to publicly thank brian for manipulating the schedule in ways that i didn't think were possible to come up with cohorts and class stacking and stacking of remote kids last year um unbelievable job pulling pulling that all together and pulling it off so this year we think will be easier for him he won't he won't have half as many problems um we say that every year but the schedule does present our issues but in this version of the program of studies there there is a um a couple of highlights to note some you know minor

047changes if you as if you've taken a look at it one of the biggest changes is the rewording of the computer science course just to keep up with with the times and try and keep kids interested so we reworded that entire course description and then our history social studies department flip-flops courses like colleges do so that one year they'll run a set of courses and then the following year they'll run the opposite set of courses so the kids get get opportunities to to try out um different types of uh courses throughout their four years at the high school they're all they're all electives they're all opportunities for kids to take something of interest or to learn something new or take a risk and outside of that the changes are extremely minimal this year i'm going

048to give my annual plug i've said it to social studies before um but social studies does a great job of offering a variety of classes and yet they require students to take the same classes so you might have a student for instance taking ap us history at the time same time as they're taking junior history and it seems quite insane to me that that is the case so um i commend them for offering many varieties but i really think that they're not within the spirit of our graduation requirements which is just three credits not three specific credits so um hopeful that someday someone will look at that does anybody else have comments anna yeah thank you michelle thank you principal tracy um i do have a bunch of questions i broke them down by um

049my content so some of this might be new to me right this is not new to everyone but it's new to me so i apologize for that um looking at the english curriculum there's no ap 11th grade english offered is that something students are able to take through the virtual school if they wanted yes okay um one of the things that struck me in looking at the course offerings um the ninth grade classes appear to include classics by some female authors minority authors but the 11th grade english canon is the traditional white male same old catcher in the rye great gatsby stuff that we've always read is there any discussion about actually modifying those reading lists or offering a contemporary literature class uh that focuses on marginalized minority voices so there actually is discussion going

050on bob hickey has done a lot of work with his department over the last year there's been a little bit of a stall with with all the stuff going on with pandemic but um the course initially aligns with our us history course of the same grade the 11th grade u.s history and it also um those two courses combined together for the humanities course so they they generally walk hand in hand so there's work happening on both sides if you will on the on the social studies side and on the the um the english side okay because i know that the um the student leaders again i think from the social justice club revamped their reading list last summer and really put a lot of time in so i'd love to see that um looking at

051math i'm assuming the question's the same there's no ap calculus bc could some someone take that through the virtual school if they wanted yes we have a number of students that do that during the year okay um in sports marketing and uh again i've tilted my hand with my nwsl scarf here it's a little bit strategic on that too is there any emphasis given to the rise of women's professional sports and the unique economic and marketing challenges that they face it really cuts across all sports there's no specific sports there's no you know it's not like one a one sport deal it's really based on student voice what kids are interested in a lot of the projects that they do both in marketing and sports marketing um deca are based on student voice and choice

052so students can really bring in their interests into this class and um you know laura wheeler who teaches the class really does a nice job pulling those things together for example bringing in speakers that span male sports female sports um people that run sports arenas people you know females in in executive jobs with athletic teams so those types of things are happening all the time within her classes it's actually uh she does a great job bringing in outside speakers every month and and actually shares them with through the school so any kids that have the ability and the time to to join in those discussions are able to do it okay that's good because the last year or so has seen such a massive growth there so i just want to make sure that's there

053um looking at science and engineering where do climate change and environmental science fall into the curriculum and has there been a conversation about having climate change specific classes it's in eighth grade i can tell you that yeah i was just going to say it's a start that's in eighth grade okay and and if you look at the science courses specifically for an environmental course we i can't remember the year one of the years i was here we tried to run one and didn't get enough numbers some of the kids take it through um vhs and then we also have um the some of the environmental pieces built into believe it or not our technology education side where they'll build um and develop alternate energy projects related to solar and wind and any of the alternate

054energies that are that are out there so jeff walsh runs that program as part of the science department and it looks like some of it might have been covered under um organic chem too i saw some reference there just a little bit a little bit and you'll see that pop up in biotechnology as well okay um looking at social studies uh and again i think everyone knows i'm a i have a master's degree in american social history so if there's one part of the content i'm gonna really dial in on i'm curious why current american conflicts in contemporary history history are not being taught this year but perhaps being taught next year and related to that facing history and ourselves through the world through world affairs seems like it covers similar ground and i think

055that is being taught this year so is there like a purposeful alternating of those two classes those three classes yes as i mentioned earlier if you look on the chart at the top of the history social studies section you'll see red asterisks next to some of the courses so we switch like colleges do we have so many elective offerings in the social studies department that we switch them every other year so that kids can take things that they're interested in and they can take things that family members have taken they can take things that associate to maybe their history fair projects at that time so there's a lot of options for kids but because we i mean we have six members of the department so we're kind of limited to the number of courses they

056can teach outside of the three required years but um we we try to flip-flop so the kids get more opportunity across the four years okay and then this question i think michelle bailey is going to love um kind of related so is law and society our version of civics and is that is there any discussion that might actually be required civics is eighth grade cervix yeah civics is an eighth grade retirement but we also um kristen borges is is working on civics projects for both high school and middle school that as you know are required now by um state so that prod that's a kind of an ongoing thing right now where um they're putting together a uh i guess i would the best way i would call it is like a booklet or a

057pamphlet to help kids to uh develop their projects create them and then um do presentations of them depending on the class they're in so that is that's been ongoing for about a year the the history standards have been difficult to deal with because they constantly change and no one wants to nail it down so um kristen's been a little bit frustrated by that and she's done a lot of work in that in that civics area okay um for foreign language if students wanted to take something other than spanish or mandarin is that also virtual school yes okay yes we also we also work with um i'm sorry to cut you off we we also we also work with colleges um so middlebury college is a college we've worked with in the past they offer um

058either two or three levels of different languages like you know students might come to us have taken japanese center out of the school and they might want to continue that so we try to connect them up with middlebury college so we use them um here and there we've used them more three years ago than we have recently but we do give i try not to trap a kid if kids if kids come in to us and they've already taken two years of a language and they want to continue on we try to we try to find a way to help them to do that okay has there ever been discussion about uh partnering with neighboring districts that might be offering different languages and sort of doing a collective approach there so we we have um

059two years ago we had a discussion at the the principal's level and again it comes down to logistics with scheduling so if we did a course like so this is a great segue into what we're doing now in school and how we can use what the changes that we're currently making in the future with kids so offering different courses across multiple schools at varied times based on the combination of synchronous and asynchronous learning so it's kind of a cool opportunity for us to all look at as a local schools and you know sharing sharing different resources yeah totally okay just a couple more i promise oh do we offer any streamed instrument instruction if i wanted to learn the violin could i yes we have we have violinists we have cellists um and they they

060do one of two different approaches they could start young they when i first started here years ago there was a fourth grade program and kids grew up grew from there or kids do it privately do we have a number of kids that take uh private lessons for our stringed instruments do we have like an orchestra like this we don't we don't that would have been great during the pandemic though i mean the thing that doesn't require breath just observationally um and last two are both well wellness related can competitive athletes for either school teams or outside private clubs can they opt out of pe as a class if they get a waiver they cannot according to the department of education they cannot terrible actually anna they can as long as no fees are charged correct

061i was getting i was going there next if we had no fee system um then then we could write a policy for that but because we charge a fee the department looks at it as paying for play fascinating i'm going to add that to my quiver of why i'm against the fees um and then the last question is a little bit of a statement but also a question um i'll be honest i strongly object to the choice of abstinence plus instead of comprehensive sex education if there was one part of this that honestly was like a jaw drop i was like oh my gosh i couldn't believe it um you know comprehensive sex education is almost universally recognized as having better long-term sexual and emotional health outcomes and that's particularly regards to issues of consent

062relationship building lower teen pregnancy lower stis and especially inclusion of the lgbtq community so i guess my question is why are we why are we not offering the most medically accurate culturally inclusive curriculum especially with the fact that state law allows people to opt out so if you don't want to have that you can always opt out why are we not offering what's recommended by the un and ngos around the world as being the best curriculum speak as a parent i can tell you that that curriculum is varied it's very very comprehensive and it provides a wide exposure to all sorts of issues and topics yeah but the term abstinence plus as defined by sort of universal health experts is abstinence with some focus on contraception but that's really it i mean the terms mean

063different things i'm just curious there's even a bill in the legislature to require comprehensive sex education for the state of massachusetts so it's way beyond that yeah and the reality is we follow both the massachusetts frameworks for health and national health education standards so that's where generally where our um courses and course descriptions are built from our our curriculum is built from that um that's so that's been the history of it generally those two sources are where our teachers lean on for their information their standards their course development so i guess this is maybe back to the one of the issues i had before is if what we have on paper doesn't match what we do then it sounds like maybe what we are offering is more comprehensive sex education why don't we just say

064that because abstinence plus has a very specific curriculum definition and it's very narrow so if we're not doing that then i don't think we should say we do that because it means something specific fair enough i mean i i would bring it back to danielle petrucci and her group to to take a deeper look at but right now i can only tell you that they lean on those two sources the massachusetts health frameworks and the and the national standards all right okay those are all my questions thank you anybody else so i think we would be remembering um i don't have a question but my my one main note was about abstinence plus as well just a concern with the term and the confusion that might be caused using that term um also just a

065general i think confusion around the description of what exactly is taught and the curricula and you know the materials and the other comment i have that i didn't have because privilege right and that anna brought up i did not even notice that there's not a single um african-american author cited in any of the english curricula so i wonder if that's something that um teachers bring in on their own so this might be a question is it at the teacher's discretion is it at the student's discretion is there an elective course to you know as anna said highlight marginalized voices i love the scarlet letter i love the great gatsby i love the adventures of huckleberry finn but there has to be a way to highlight a diversity of voices i think especially in our community

066so i don't know um and i might have missed that if you answered if it's just at the teacher's discretion it's actually a departmental push each of the each of the department members depending on the level they teach generally rebuilds annually rebuilds the course offerings and some of the course excuse me the literature that's available so yes we we have begun to get away from that um and i think you know one of the pieces of feedback i bring back to to bob hickey is you know read read this description and uh it it probably doesn't accurately reflect what's happening in our classrooms and i i have to say the um the kids that have made the push for our summer reading program are currently working with our english department to integrate 30 books actually

067more than 30 now and they also are in the process of writing a grant to get these books in the hands of our kids and our teachers so that so that we can use it and we're generally guiding them and kind of helping them with with with you know when they need it they they're super independent and um really are passionate about making these changes across across the curriculum i think one of the the beauties is over my time i've seen that that change in just in our student body um in in eight years that's been pretty dramatic and i think that now our kids and given the voice that we're giving our kids and they're really starting to drive that so you will you will definitely see those changes and you'll we're even doing

068our summer book groups which everybody kind of keeps we're doing them next week um we're doing them next week at a volunteer base just to say if you if you read this book jump in and check it out um our kids also last um half day we had did a seminar i don't know if anybody on the committee was was able to catch it but he did a fantastic job um doing they did the seminar and they really um covered a lot of ground and i think a lot of important ground for our community to see here and begin to have conversations about that i think will dramatically change our our curriculum um through the next few years and that's not just in english i think you'll see it in in other subject areas as

069well fantastic thank you so much principal tracy anna quickly um yeah quickly eric i guess my only comment on that is um because i you know the the social justice kid and the groups like it's great that the students are having leadership and i feel the same way about the sports marketing too like it's great that there's some student direction however i think for me personally as a committee member and as a an adult leader i think that we have an obligation as the adults in the room to also lead by example or push that envelope because i think it's great the kids are doing it but frankly the kids shouldn't have to drive the bus the grown-up should be driving the bus and she'll be working together so while i totally appreciate what you're

070saying and the awesome work that the the students are doing um part of me is kind of saying why should we wait for why should we have to wait for the students to do it if that makes sense it's not meant to be of criticism but yeah but but somewhat insulting to our teachers our teachers have done a lot of work and a lot of hard work through the years working with changing the offerings that are available to our students so they are doing the work and i i think that's um presumptive to say oh that they're not doing the work they are absolutely working together every single day to come up with different ways to integrate new opportunities bring in social aspects current social aspects and then to build on the voice of of

071the students which i think is extremely important i i wouldn't disagree with you and i'm sure that's happening i think my point is and kind of julia made this if that's true that's not reflected in the document that we're looking at in terms of representation you know the only authors listed for the 11th grade 11th grade english class are are white male authors so if that i guess i guess that's my point is if that's really happening and i don't just believe that like i'm sure like i i think that's phenomenal we should show that in the representation of our materials that that's all i'm not meaning to insult the teachers at all um i'm just reflecting back what you were saying about the the students and this and that like it's obviously got to

072be both ways but if that's the case we should revise what our course offerings say because the written words matter that's that's right one of our challenges around not having some curriculum support is there's no one reviewing those you know regularly to do that so um all right did you want to say something quickly maribeth just super quickly excuse me um to to both eric and to ann's point and his point um i think a perfect example of this is the the book selection that the teachers and students pulled together over the summer and the real focus on diversity which and i have spoken to many of the teachers who are personally very very passionate about this work and to your point michelle in the middle of the pandemic with all curriculum support gone what

073what may look publicly like there's not a lot of work being done here i i can speak with a high level confidence that there is um and that you know as things settle down as we talk about curriculum instruction a little bit hopefully we can get our documents to more accurately reflect the quality work that is happening great um and then one thing we usually ask you are are there courses that were in the catalog last year that did not run and i know that brian stepped in to save the day on one of them but are there any that did not run in last year's catalog you mean yeah there were a number off top my head i don't remember maybe brian can jump in but they're they're they're all they're always between 6

074and 10 or 12 depending on teachers we had a couple of teachers cut last year so we had to reduce our course offerings we um we had teachers go on leave which we had to make some adjustments but um yeah there are always some courses either due to lack of sign ups or um not having the ability to teach the course based on the number of teachers in a specific department all right um so dana would you like to make a motion um to accept this as the course catalog for next year sure are we accepting it or approving it let's call it approval i don't care of approval i move that the hamilton regional school committee um approved the hamilton windham regional high school 2021-2022 course catalog as presented on the exhibit on the

075agenda we have a second second i think that was the second by michelle horrigan um any more discussion about that great julia no oh vote yes sorry i thought you were asking if i had any more discussions no so sorry yeah like i don't know what i'm supposed to do here yes yes anna no for real no michelle yes peter yes david yes michelle bailey yes that's six yes one no all right um now we uh the previous at our last meeting we um had a vote to have a 20-minute discussion on um learning management systems so we'll turn that over to you peter to tee it up that's great it's my pleasure to introduce dr hoover uh anybody who knows me knows that i am you know on the committee to help create an

076innovative effective you know go-to district to help our students and teachers thrive and so it's my pleasure to introduce dr hoover he's been he authors adaptive learning technologies and on lab simulators the last 10 years he's conducted digital pedagogical research under the nationally funded stem and gates foundation grants his research focuses on the efficacy of student learning and faculty teaching and the online environment the results of his research have been published in ecampus news east e-school news journals for the past 10 years he served as the as a digital faculty consultant for mcgraw-hill education helping programs implement quality matter standards into their courses he has been selected as a speaker at national conferences such as the ims global learning consortium accessing higher ground educause campus technology and the human anatomy and physiology society he was

077chosen as one of 50 individuals across the world to speak at oxford england at the annual round table discussing the impact of technology and higher education and in education in general he was also awarded the nisod award for teaching excellence in the private industry council's pic achiever award so it's my pleasure to introduce dr hoover and to say thank you for being here sir great thank you for that introduction peter and thank you all of you for entertaining the opportunity to share a little bit of my knowledge i know it's really important that we just share knowledge there's no sales pitches here whatsoever i do do this for a living in terms of educating schools you know across the country so i'm going to share with you the things that i believe as an educator

078really do make a difference uh you know whenever an lms is used my students are my children actually uh like your students range from 11 to 14 years old so they are you know in a hybrid model so i understand what uh google classrooms can do um you know some limits of google classroom so i think most of you have been using google classroom so um i'll share just a couple of you know things that are a bit different between um let's say the google classroom platform and you know an lms and what it provides an institution like yours um you know number one uh google classroom does not currently provide a way for parents to have administrative rights you know to be able to see certain things that your district may want your parents

079to be able to see um you know in real time you know how was a student doing how many of their assignments have they completed i know for me it's very challenging to get that information because every teacher has a different class in google classrooms and i just cannot collectively figure out what's been you know turned in what hasn't um they use aspen as well so i struggle with that um two the nice thing about an lms is that you have central storage of all of the content the performances of your educators as well as your students lms's provide you ada and 508 compliance for the learning materials and assessments that you would be delivering it provides an integration with the publisher publisher generated content i know you may or may not be using textbooks

080i know there's been you know a big call for open educational resources but our students still use i would say at least two-thirds of the classes are still using content and that content as i'll show you in just a moment can be filtered for because it's tagged it's tied to things like learning outcomes bloom's level of learning topics question types um because you can layer you know the learning based on those question types um lms is provide which to me is most important real-time self-help features you know for your students you know whenever they are completing most importantly formative you know assessments that's basically your homework or your practice activities because then you can identify where those learning gaps are based on those tags that were placed you know on each of the topics and

081learning outcomes you know so these students will be provided with guided uh solutions where they'll be provided hints not just the answers they will have the opportunity to check their work and see how well they're doing on an individual question they will have remediation whether it be back to the actual textbook or to a learning resource from open educational uh resources like a youtube video and then also there are adaptive learning uh reading assignments so one of the big frustrations that i have with my kids uh you know using google classrooms is the gradebook there really isn't you know a gradebook northeastern published um a study that showed that the average time for a child to receive feedback from their teacher is between five and seven days that's on average now they're obviously very good

082educators and maybe your district is really good about getting back but that's just a national average so not having a grade book that can actually integrate you know all of the assignments that you know the the students are completing and then weighting that gradebook in such a way that with a snapshot at any moment in time you know that a student knows exactly where they stand if they need tutoring or they need help you know would be extremely helpful and that's what an lms does um there are some things that would be very helpful you know to the teachers themselves uh in terms of you know creating subgroups within a group you know just that organization you know when i look in google classroom for you know my kids classes there's just like a big

083long running list you know of activities but you know you can create let's say homework activities and then you can list those and then you can have you know quiz activities and you can you know post those extra credit and you can post those so um there are just many more features uh the discussion forums i know that um you know for asynchronous learning you definitely want to have a robust discussion group where you can create rubrics for you know for grading where you know student must post but also read additional um threads and then also be able to uh respond to those and then have those organized in such a way that you know teachers can quickly access them so um in a sense you know you're you're looking at a more robust system

084that your students will eventually be using whenever they you know go to college i heard uh someone talking about articulations with local colleges and universities for advanced placement you know ap courses being able to use a management system and sharing that information you know or sharing courses you know with them is you know a tremendous advantage as well so without further ado i would like to if i can have permission to share the screen to show you uh some of these features just so that you understand how much more robust feature sets there are see if i can the host has disabled participant screen sharing is that something that someone can yeah it should be corrected okay there we go and i'm just gonna share my desktop okay all right so um what i'd like

085to show you is the uh the power basically that you have within an lms let's say from a teacher's perspective i know during the coven environment it was very challenging for you know teachers to actually get on board with their courses and to be able to build you know activities well there's basically an asset map that lives behind all of this content so that you know if a teacher wanted to go in and see what they could use as material you know they could basically choose from interactive information where everything if you look over here on the left hand side you have all the different question types that they can filter for so if they wanted students to be able to identify things they would choose the labeling but then we also look at you

086know what types of accessibility do we need keyboard navigation for um you know students who have you know learning disabilities of any type we look at the activity type if they are you know animation or if there is an application concept uh that needs to be covered bloom's levels and you know this is uh you know bloom's level one is pure memorization versus bloom's level three which is application but you kind of want to layer those assignments but very easily with a click you know you're able to filter for the pre uh built you know activities it's not to say that that's the only thing that you would want to use but because there is all of this tagging on the front end you know even for things like learning outcomes then you're able to

087basically um you know run reports on the back end to find out how your students are doing based on these tags so if i can show you um what an assignment let's say from the student perspective uh would look like because my big thing is i want them to be able to have that remediation and that real-time help you know as they're going through um the activity so if we open up one of these homework assignments and we try it from a student's perspective these types of learning assets i would say would take you know teachers a great deal of time you know i heard you know just in the curriculum alone you know there are hours upon hours of you know educator time you know being uh dedicated to these types of activities so

088you know if you have these to choose from you know where um a student if they can't identify this part of the cell if they hover over it you'll see that it gives them you know a hint right and then if they drag things into place and they want to see how well they're doing at any given time you know they are able to check their work and see how well they're doing and you can set these parameters okay oh they got two right and feedback while a student is actually doing their work is extremely helpful and keeping them engaged and keeping them on task okay so again there are many many many different question types you know but i wanted to show you those types of features so if the student runs out of

089check my work opportunities they can actually be remediated back to a source that will show them you know where this content is being covered so they would have once again another opportunity to receive the assistance that they need whenever they're not you know with the teacher even in a hybrid environment you know students need some type of um guidance as to where they might be able to find the help that they need so for active learning we say that we want them to be able to identify what they don't know and then be able to go and find those answers so with that said from the actual student perspective and the course creation side i just wanted to show you a couple of very quick um reports that you can run you know all of

090these learning outcomes have the ability to be you know tailored to the things that you want to be able to provide let's say to your district to your state to your departments so if we look at something called um well i can't really show you that because that one we have an at-risk report and in this at risk report it will show you how many times you know the student has logged in how much time they spent on a particular assignment what their performance was it gives you a great deal of feedback so that you can identify and with a heat map it will show you which students you should be reaching out to to be able to help them if they're falling behind or not performing so well but from a teaching perspective one

091of the um reports that i really really like is the item analysis report so that if we look at let's see here we go we want to take a look at this report because of all the tagging that was done we are able to see the actual learning comes or questions that students struggle with we can see what their performance is and then we can actually click on one of these activities and show it live with the students and be able to go through that activity with them um step by step to see you know where they struggle so it becomes almost like a teaching management system as well as a learning management system for the students because the time that you spend in the synchronous environment will be much more valuable and useful whenever

092you're using the lms any questions so far so that um key tracker you have does that actually get report could that get reported out to um principals um you know possibly um special ed coordinators whatever for you know tier one support intervention absolutely that's that's what we do we um we use this student at risk report that goes to um a support center uh you know at the institution and then the institution has directly from that report they can click and send an email to each of those students individually or collectively and be able to you know set up an appointment you know or a time to meet with someone um you know and lots of times we find that students who come from single-parent homes you know the ones who aren't necessarily getting the

093support that they might need you know during that time so then we can make arrangements for them to be able to get the assistance they do need that that was going to be actually my follow-up question was uh demographic reports for database i mean for um yeah to have database like learning in actually different management of um you know learning systems for just seeing how we're doing it different demographic groups sorry i'm actually thinking one thing and saying another yeah the the beautiful thing is that all of this content is actually you know been filtered for and you can even create your own topics to tag for them right so that so that if you have a specific type of report that you want to run you know for your particular department or your particular

094district you can run you can create those tags and then whenever you need that report it's it's a simple click of a button right so i've you know filtered just here for learning outcomes and you know i can choose a particular chapter or a whole course and um you know find out you know what that you know what that here we go learning outcome and then we can view that report and then that will tell me you know based on the actual learning outcome you know what was you know how many students you know actually attempted well i didn't give a quiz in this particular chapter but it would give you a breakdown of how many questions there were what learning outcome it was tied to what their performance was so it gives you a

095robust you know reporting uh feature set that you know google classrooms can't give you but again i think probably one of the most important things is that you have a dedicated gradebook that you can weight your assignments you know to let's say if you say quizzes are worth 20 of the grade you can you know set that ahead of time before your course ever begins for your students and then at any given point in time mom and dad if you give them administrative privileges you know the student the faculty members you can even co-teach you know courses which i know is you know pretty big now where we have maybe an overlap between um literature and let's say science you know and they're approaching the heart from two different you know perspectives you know they're

096able to do that with a co-teaching administrative right you know so it's a much more robust system i would also say that one of the benefits of using an lms and its integration with um whoever is providing your content you know from your textbooks is that they have dedicated implementation consultants that will be assigned to individual teachers individual groups of teachers and they will do anything from leading webinars on how to or to provide how-to videos that you can deliver to your students or to other instructors and it's all free of cost there's there's no charge you know for any of that and it can be done you know pretty much any time of day and even the weekends you're talking about a specific system here um i mean i i understand that you're walking

097us through one of your courses um whereas we're i think more interested in benefits or potential benefits as a district in general and i think one of the things that i definitely have a question about is how this would help us at a district level um besides just inside a classroom you know we've had a lot of turnover the past couple years um you know how can we utilize a system like this to help onboard new hires and really take over some hr functions and help coordinate that central office very very very good question and the nice thing is is that we well let's say how we use it um you know at our institution is that we create course templates and it's not to say that it is untouchable um the course template is

098sort of a framework that if you're hiring someone new who's never taught the course before and you're expecting them to build you know a course from scratch it's very very challenging to do that you know whereas right here i can go to you know copy this section or this course to someone that they have something to start with and if you want to you can say here are the learning outcomes that need to be covered you know and then as that educator matures over time you can give them more and more freedom to be able to do um you know to make changes to reflect their own teaching style so they still have academic freedom but you can kind of assure that someone hits the ground running rather rather than saying well here's you know

099here's the syllabus and here's the the book good luck you know build it any way you want to and within this system you have the ability to copy particular assignments so if one educator says i've created an incredible you know learning activity from um you know from uh a source you know online they can actually share that with every person who's teaching that course you know in um in their district you know so you can track that you can also through those reports take let's say all of your science courses and see how individual courses you know let's say the hybrid the face-to-face and the online courses are doing in comparison to each other you know so you have you have that framework with which you know you can copy those templates over you know

100to uh you know new individuals who are coming on board you know which then gives them i can tell you right up front that gives them a great place to start i can attest that creating a new curriculum is hundreds and hundreds of hours for teachers per year figuring out what you're teaching how you're going to assess it and you know how you're going to instruct to that and it's uh and gathering all the resources to do it it's hundreds of hours for teachers and the nice thing to be able to do this too is that whenever you give the course template you can give options right so you can see here that there are several different labs for a science course being listed it's not to say that someone has to use all of

101them you know it's to give them let's say from your department perspective and to make sure that you're meeting those learning outcomes like i heard someone say that you want to make sure that there are opportunities to use uh assignments that are from you know people with color you know that that have created um you know some incredible you know works of literature um you want to be able to you know make those available within the course template so that you can leverage it so that whenever you say okay whether a student has taken this teacher or this teacher is going out on leave you know for whatever reason that they're still going to be getting the same level and degree of education that they've always were expecting to receive other questions i have i

102have a handful but i didn't know if you were continuing are you ready yes yes first to be mindful of time we've um been at this for 20 minutes so far i i respectfully say that you know when when we talked about the course catalog uh we went well over that time so i'd like to ask my questions please um so dr hoover can can parents be given access to see how that each child is doing i think you said that right and yes that's right they have administrative privileges and i think you know if you're looking at outcomes and you're trying to make sure that um you know your students are getting the assistance that they need i mean you know parents want to be hands-on so they can definitely be given you know

103administrative privileges to see as much or as little as you would like them to be able to see excellent and um are grading rubrics used yes yes especially with things like discussion boards you know where you want um you know students to be able to you know meet the expectations of the educator you know these especially when you're talking about asynchronous learning you want a grading rubric for formative assessments that will not only you know get a whole picture of what the student has learned and not learned but you want to give them the opportunity to improve in those areas and that grading rubric you know can be implemented and preset you know in advance can we ask you to stop screen sharing just so that everybody can see your brother thanks oh yes sorry

104about that um i i think i heard you also mentioned do assignments so for the formative assessments and maybe summative assessments do assignments autograde and report to our gradebook i think i heard you say yes yes they do you know um one of the big problems with google classrooms is that you have to have a separate gradebook um you may find an app but you have to copy those grades you know here you're able to um make those assignments the students get instant feedback so do uh the parents if they have access so you can see how well they're doing you know did they complete their homework how much time do they spend you know completing their homework all of that goes into um you know a very robust gradebook and that leads me to

105my next question so if there's there is one how robust is the dashboard for student performance so the dashboard is robust let's say as david would ask you know from let's say a district level you know how are students doing in particular courses you know where are they strong where are they weak where can that department then you know address those issues but they're called actionable dashboards which means that you can insert remediation and pre-insert that so that if students are weak in certain areas and certain learning gaps that you can pre-load uh the remediation so so that the student can with one click you know get the help they need whether it's a learning tutorial an animation or another activity excellent and um just two more questions um so does the lms permit teachers

106to assign content and assessment that accompany the the courses yeah that's what i was mentioning earlier you know that all of that pre-tagged content allows them to filter they can make a very robust layered activity or layered assessment in a matter of seconds you know they wouldn't have to spend you know hundreds of hours you know creating these things and they would know that they are subject matter expert vetted uh you know what they're choosing from so yeah that and that leads me to my next question so what type of training is there for teachers when it comes it's i thought you said i heard you say there's no cost yeah there there is no cost um there's several layers you know into the training uh that exists and um anything from an individual and

107you know teacher that needs help just with content in their course they'll get it from you know subject matter experts who are dedicated to that uh particular discipline all the way up to let's say a lunch and learn you know where an entire you know department can be brought on so if it's you know people dealing with chemistry or sciences of any kind they will you know provide a team approach you know that will make sure that everyone is brought up to speed you know at the right time they can also provide um library courses so that someone has something to start with um they also provide training for policy settings so that you know how to get the most out of your students so there's there's quite a bit of training and it's provided

108at no cost excellent i i was one thing that i was that caught my attention to in your presentation was that teachers parents administration have up to the minute you know information on the student status their performance that you can look by class by cohort by grade yeah and i'll finish with this because i know you guys have more to con to cover tonight um just a good example my oldest daughter 14 was going through english and the term had just ended but she still had eight assignments that did not have a grade yet and the teacher had said that she had graded them but they weren't showing in google classroom they weren't showing in um you know an aspirin and so for me it was really frustrating because i'm like well if she doesn't

109get the grade that you know she probably could or should there could have been an intervention at some point but whenever you can't see that real time and it's as simple as that auto grade feature that allows you for you know immediate feedback you know i know some things you know take a little more time handwritten papers but i mean for things like you know quizzes it sure sure would be nice to be able to get that feedback instantly great dr hoover thank you very much you're welcome yeah thank you it was actually really nice to not hear covid mentioned in a school committee meeting for a half hour well i mean i i know this is all exploratory for you um if there's anything in particular that any individual person from your committee um

110or group would like to go down the path a little further you know i'm available so peter knows how to reach me i'd be happy to to assist in any way i can thank you thank you very much thank you everyone um some rethinking of how our central office might be structured um to help with some of the management of that mary beth do you think this is going to take a half an hour um or do you think longer um no i can keep it to a half an hour okay folks need a break or well that was my question if people needed a break let's go for a half an hour and then we'll have a break so david i am happy to report that this presentation will have not will not have

111the word coveted in either [Laughter] so there's a little uh light here um this is actually a more forward thinking presentation so i'm going to share my screen i also wanted to let the committee know and the community know that there is an exhibit in the agenda that gives some more details around particularly the central office proposal but let me walk through this please feel free to stop me at any moment if you have a question and if we don't have questions during we can finish at the end and hear thoughts comments and feedback one of the things that i want to say is that the intent of this presentation is to talk to you about a conceptual model around where where it appears to make good sense to head both in terms of curriculum

112instruction leadership and central office tonight there's there's no request to approve any positions in a budget that would happen during the budget process but we need a conceptual model in order to create the budget to bring to you so i'm looking for feedback in terms of where we have landed i do want to share that both of the models that you're seeing this evening curriculum instruction and in central office have been vetted by by staff by teams by surveying so there's been a lot of work done to try to ensure that members of our system feel that what is being proposed makes good sense let me just go back for a sec so first i wanted to share some key ideas um first what are the things oh david sorry um one of the things

113that we do see right now is a level of system instability so what's driving that um we are in the middle of a global pandemic crisis um last year 50 56 of central office staff were new to their position the district is on the third superintendent in three years we had 22 positions eliminated from the budget in june of 2020 and in the past six months this leadership as well has seen three of the seven school committee positions turned over so what we see is is a a real instability within the structure of the system and that has impact on kids and learning and teachers another key idea that is here and is to try to think about resource allocation and so this this conceptual model is built on the idea that we want to

114keep central office staffing as tight and as efficient as possible while adding in some capacity for communications and some capacity for hr but you're purposefully going to see no recommendations for specific positions in that because what what we're really trying to do is to put push resources to the to the schools at the school buildings because that's where the students and teachers are and that's where we want to put as much support as possible so before i move on here one of the things that i did want to just share in the exhibit you'll see a breakdown of central office positions in 1920 what we have this year and what we're recommending next year one of the things i i think is that you'll see pretty quickly is that that sense of instability and how

115many of these positions were new and how many actually by next year will have been um staying the same in three years um and i think we have like two um but one of the things that we are looking to do is to re-assign an individual who is an administrative assistant to a curriculum position in at central office to more of a communications more of a connections person at central office i really want to speak and recognize tom geary's efforts to be a support as we're trying to get communications at a functional level looking at social media looking at website development so this this plan also would have tom uh taking on some additional responsibilities in communications and looking to have a contract with a hr company that could provide us with higher level consult

116if we need it in terms of hr a significantly less expensive option than a person we get less for that but again in knowing what we are sitting with financially this is a model in which we we think we can we can do what we need to do um certainly would like to see full-time positions in both of those areas but the reality is that that is unlikely to be financially realistic um another key concept is the idea when we start thinking about how do we hire into some of these positions and i i really want to speak to the value of the internal talent and promoting within and and one of the things we know is that that helps provide consistency in this instability we have lots of really talented people in this district

117that have historical knowledge of what has worked and hasn't worked and really in this model thinking about how do we bring people in our system up to new new challenges and new types of work um and again the other part of that is really valuing teacher leadership um and how can we have our teachers be both formal and informal leaders in a lot of the work and decision making that happens in our district so in terms of the curriculum instruction and assessment structure one of the things i think is valuable is to quickly review what is it that curriculum instruction and assessment does and what the first slide talks about those strategic responsibilities that are really involved in the oversight of a pre-k 12 guaranteed and viable curriculum and that is that is a heavy

118lift a pre-k 12 assessment system how do we support teachers in their practice how do we bring new new folks on so that whole question of supporting people in their practice or coaching this department typically oversees supervision evaluation and all the professional development that occurs in a district then there are also what are called management functions of curriculum instructions so things like course approvals tuition that are related tuition rate to tuition reimbursement and lane changes homeschooling approvals entitlement grants new teacher orientation and mentoring all the budgeting and resourcing and ordering the report cards the testing systems such as mcas and uh a process we have in our district called senior status management so there are these big overarching areas of responsibility and then there's a lot of technical work that also needs to be done

119so the model that is put in front of you before i have a pre pre-reductions what we saw is we had a 1.0 elementary curriculum coordinator a .75 math curriculum coordinator and we had elementary teachers that were full-time teachers but got a small stipend to try to do some work after school um basically for ftes that meant that we had close to three administrative positions at the elementary level what i am recommending at this point is to replace that with a 0.8 elementary curriculum director who would do a lot of that strategic work and also some of the technical work that has to be done and then put an instructional coach in each of our elementary schools with a model that has three teacher leaders and point eight of administration i'm a little surprised you

120had no questions for the last presenter the three slides past slides i saw fall directly in line with benefits of introducing a more robust learning management system into the district i was about to say the same thing this is what like i mean it's like verbatim so one of the things that we've talked about is that at some point a more robust learning management system could make sense one of the things that that can enable folks to do is it can be a source of how we organize our curriculum curriculum documents it can be a source of assessments in terms of what assessments we know are going to be most powerful from benchmarking to summative types of assessments um so certainly one of the things that may occur um and and would would certainly be

121something that i would say that we would want to consider is looking at a learning management system there are lots of different models and you know what would be the right fit for our district would certainly be something that our curriculum folks would want to look at but i think probably the first step is to get the people in place and then figure out how you want to build the plane yeah no because i i do think that um in that brief time one of the things i was thinking about was when i when i spoke about the hr possibilities wasn't necessarily even replacing a teacher though that made a lot of sense in his explanation but what happens when we hire you know looking at and i always think from a central office standpoint

122when we're hiring some people in the you know the paperwork that needs to happen can i be set up right there right and uh what's that onboarding process look like and actually having that all right there i mean i i just do think it makes sense you know it from a rollover standpoint just having it all centralized which is something that you know has been pretty obvious for a little while now but it's really interesting as i'm looking at this i looked at this earlier and it said one thing to me and then now looking at it again after hearing the last presentation it's saying something completely different to me yeah and one of the things david that we know we need work on particularly in hr and again if you look at what's happened

123in that department and the amount of turnover we don't have good systems there right now um and so we are contracting with a an hr organization to come in and help set up all of those systems for us so that we do have a way of okay we're onboarding here's the checklist here's where everything goes that's something that we know is really important um and and so trying to get that system levels in place and that's why we would need that higher level of expertise and a consultant for an hr part of what we want to see is can we actually manage it with that level of support as opposed to bringing in a full other position because we know the realities of the budget so that that is something that is considered there so

124this is some thinking at the elementary level at the middle level what we saw prior to the reductions was a director of curriculum position um a 7.4 curriculum coordinators at the middle school in high school which meant that we had 2.8 teacher leaders and a full-time administrator what what we are recommending at the new model is a 0.5 secondary curriculum coordinate a director a middle level coach and then where where our six through twelve curriculum coordinates are now they are at a point two so maintaining those there so we would have two point four teacher leaders and point five administrators currently um the majority of the curriculum coordinators are high school teachers which means that support is is more heavily weighted at the high school level and then at the the high school instead of

125again having that director of curriculum and 7.4 positions we would have that secondary curriculum coordinator and because most of the curriculum coordinators are housed at the high school we would be we we would have the 7.2 6 through 12 curriculum coordinators leading to 1.4 teacher leaders and 0.5 administrators a couple other concepts and then i can happily go back to any slides i know this is a ton of information and i've tried to think about how to do this brain dump in a way that feels manageable but i do want to take a couple minutes to talk about what the research tells us as it relates to curriculum and instruction um one of the the educational thinkers and researchers that is highly regarded is a gentleman by the name of robert marzano and he studies

126the educational studies and what he has found is the most important school level factor for student success is a guaranteed and viable curriculum um and what he what is meant by that is that guaranteed means that specific content is taught at specific grade levels regardless of the teacher to whom the student is assigned so what you get doesn't depend on who you get right and the other part of guaranteed and viable curriculum is there's actually enough time to teach what you've identified that you want to teach because what often happens in many programs is that there's so much content that there is no way anybody can get through that and so in a situation like that people make different choices about what's important um so a guaranteed and viable curriculum is teachers working together with

127coaches thinking about pacing what lessons worked well what are the critical outcomes and paying a lot of attention to that work um i also want to reference the work of john hattie who's out in new zealand he is also somebody who studies the studies and what what his information has shared is that he uses the term teacher efficacy which means that when you have a system where teachers are getting together they're looking at data and they share this belief that through collective action looking at data okay if we here's where it's breaking down for a kid here's what we're going to do then they can't and they believe that in doing that they can ensure that all kids learn when you create that kind of culture you get a remarkable impact he uses something called

128um effect factors um and when you look at collective efficacy 0.4 is a standard year's growth and you can see that that this paying attention to this type of culture has a remarkable impact on kids um finally in terms of coaching um what we know about coaching and and i really want to emphasize that coaching doesn't mean that you've got some outside expert that comes in and and says okay doing this right doing this this could be better but what's valuable about coaching is that when teachers try new things that there is a person to be able to talk about the work right that they have an opportunity to reflect and interact with somebody after they teach a lesson what worked well about that you know i just taught this and this worked well and

129that didn't work well and boy that's the students didn't learn what i thought they were going to learn and having that person available shows remarkable impact on kids and this is um older research but but still a gold standard in joyce and showers research and what they found out is that if you do pds like for example if you take a course where there's a lot of theory um but there's no modeling of the practice then then what you get and there's no opportunity to practice you you get about 10 knowledge gain but in the classroom nothing happens right you have this pd nothing much happens if the class has theory and some modeling you get a little smarter nothing happens for kids people have an opportunity to practice it you might see a tiny

130transfer with kids but what their research has shown over and over and over again is that when you combine this and then you have another colleague come in and coach and work on this new practice you start to see significant impacts on kids about 95 that's why that coaching becomes so critically important so tons of thoughts here it's a long meeting going back right now i want i wanted to get a sense of conceptually where we're going so if there's something here that feels like it's way off track as we start to model it model a budget i need to know that so i can make adjustments so i'd be happy to answer questions take any feedback that you have so i will stop there and i'm going to stop sharing also yes let me

131do that all right i would have to say that the last presentation was like the answer key to this presentation i mean just everything about database decision making guaranteed and viable uh learning that you know whenever a new teacher comes in we know exactly what's going to be taught and how it's going to be taught and you know talking about equity and equality um i just felt like the last presentation was the answer key to this presentation and i just hope we can move forward with the discussion get administration teachers parents students all discussing um the possibility of moving forward with a proper learning management system anna um thank you mary beth that was really helpful uh i have a couple questions and then just some feedback the three elementary instructional coaches i i know

132you had a slide about it is that intended to be three new people or we're gonna move existing teachers or add on to teachers help me understand that three questions so the the intent here would be to have three classroom teachers move into these positions right because these are these are teachers who know our curriculum know how things are working um that we i would be really hopeful to hire in people that have their colleagues have a great deal of respect for that would want nothing more than to have them in their classroom working with them to um improve instruction for kids so and that gets back to the importance of internal talent um so what you would then see under a model like that is then that the positions that they currently held would

133become open and need to be backfilled okay um and then so my high level feedback is i actually like your approach a lot um i i'm really happy to see some of the burden on vinnie especially uh move to some new hires in central office i think that that makes sense on a high level you know yeah i don't like outsourcing hr but i like what you said about putting the money next to the kids closer to the kids that makes a lot of sense in light of the cuts from last year um i think as much as i appreciate how technology could help us for me one of the things that i feel like we're learning in this moment is um and i don't want to frame those oppositional i don't like binary thinking

134in general um as much as i think we could use some technology in some cases especially at the elementary level the kids need humans like they need people like the benefit of a teacher is there like i think that i think the technology is a tool but the tool is only as good as the people who are using it so i like the approach um i have two questions like actual questions well one question one more concern so in terms of special education that's the one part of this that i don't see at the moment any additional resources i also and maybe it's a different part of the budget but i'm a little concerned about um we had some add-on special ed positions one at the high school and one at the elementary school and

135i guess i'm wondering if that seems sufficient for next year or do we need to build more special ed capacity because i know that's a really good way to keep those out of district costs from going up is to invest more so that's one question the high level real problem for me it's not a problem i don't disagree with this i have no earthly idea how we're going to pay for it because the the uptick on the fte just with this model at central office and curriculum is already 6.35 and i don't see that it's adding back any of those middle school teachers that would allow us to get back to the middle school model so that theoretically would be more fte um so i guess my my dilemma is that i like your approach

136i feels right i like the investment in people i don't think we can afford it and i'm wondering if you had to pull something back what would you pull back and why yeah let me if i can offer some thoughts and then i i can respond to that question but first of all special education is it's its own department and curriculum and instruction is a separate department just usually by design so we did not look at the special education um like budgeting model in this process we will do that as part of the budget um and we we actually were meeting with stacey this morning to go through some of those things so when we get to the budget part of that we'll talk about that department and whether or not we think we need

137to see any changes there what we were trying to focus on here is the structure for curriculum and instruction and so that's why you didn't see sped references that's not not because we're not going to be considering them but that's going to happen in the budget a different part yeah it's a different jesse category right it's broken up differently exactly yeah so the in terms of the budget and this was one of the things that i think is challenging for to do and i really struggle with how to best do it because you are right we have to really be thinking about is this a model that could actually be afforded and and i can share with you that vinnie and i just have spent a lot of time together and i think there is

138a possibility with a lot of moving pieces that we could afford it um so i did i haven't put anything in front of you that's pie in the sky there's no way that's going to we would be able to do it um short of um really large budget increases which we all know is going to is not going to be something that's going to be able to be to move forward that being said in order to to figure out how to pay all of this there's a number of different budget pieces that are moving that we want to present you as a whole during the budget process and even if we do that that we may walk through this and say you know what we're still not where we need to be and then we

139you know is this the place you want to look do you want to look at another part in the budget um you know there are three instructional coaches here i think that there is tremendous value in having that person be in the school and always accessible to the team in that school um you know that is one thing that you could potentially look at is to have them share between schools i don't think it'd be anywhere near as impactful but those you know those may those will be i am sure some of the many questions that the committee is going to have to grapple with during the budget process but in order to build an initial budget um this would be the concept that we would be budgeting out we may put it all together

140and it may be at a level that i would say you know this is not something we can put in front of the committee we have to fine tune it is this where we'd make a fine tune i i'm not sure so i i if you can hold on because january's coming i know that's i just wanted to offer i wanted to offer support for the concept but a concern about the cost yeah so i i appreciate that and and i understand that and it i think it there is it is possible am i going to say for sure we can fund this no and i don't think we'll know that until we get through the budget but i i'm not putting anything in front of you that i i don't think at least has

141a possibility of being able to be funded thank you michelle horrigan um i'm going to say the warrior cobit sorry david um i know it's the covert year but have you heard from teachers and building uh leadership the impact of our cuts to the curriculum leaders last year because it's a tough year to assess that but have you heard or just seen anything yeah all of this work is harder you know things take longer um what i think one of the things i've shared that i i see is that we're making this work as a result of superhuman effort right our teachers are are killing themselves our administrators are working non-stop all of us are trying to pick up the pieces of the puzzle to make this work for this year and absolutely there's been

142an impact on that you saw all the functions that somebody in curriculum curriculum instruction team does and they're all gone right and the other thing that i would say is that curriculum instruction it's a little bit like an oil change in your car like you know maybe i can get away with another couple thousand miles and i'll be okay but if you don't replace that oil that car is not going to work and the the purpose of public schools is to educate children and these these are the leadership positions that build that educational system so if you eliminate those it is a it's often you know it's often not visible to the community but it is a the core of making a high quality educational environment for students and i think also to some of

143what we had talked about when you have those coaches in the building you can go to them with an idea and they can do a lot of the leg works to make the idea come to life and then you can work together to put it in you know in place in a in a classroom or a lesson plan or you know into the curriculum map but without them you know the teacher has to work on their own and it's a lot more difficult to do that time-wise and just idea-wise it's always great to have someone to generate ideas with um so mary beth you're generally looking for us to say we would like for you to try and build this model into the budget um i've actually had my end up looking for yeah go

144ahead david um so i in our uh agenda the link we have is um to a different chart than what you'd shown yes um my question is really based on um like some of these numbers and then even like when you're talking about moving from like a point four to a point two are you saying that it's going to be a role of someone teaching point eight and then being a coach 0.2 um so those are administrative functions um so i would envision that that that would be a administrator that would take on that role and so that would not be uh those would not be teaching positions the point two for curriculum coordinators is how we have it structured now so if you if you are a curriculum coordinator at the six through twelve

145level and eric feel free to jump in here as well but if you have five classes you teach four and then you have a period free to do some of the curriculum coordination work so that model is already in place okay so and then the administration the 0.8 or 0.5 those would be administrative functions all right but so would those be new hires um again part of what i am looking at is i think that there's a lot of talent in this district i think there's a lot of history in this district um and i'd like to see if there's a possibility of getting that that filled internally first right okay well i mean my my thought process here is sort of you know that old adage of like you know don't don't buy cheap

146tools right in in what i say what i mean by that is like when you're looking at like 0.8 positions 0.7.8 positions uh it's a dangerous thing because if you get someone you really like and they're working out really well you know they're they're looking for that 1.0 position in that you know what i mean so that's why i'm wondering if it's like a 0.5 in this role and then 0.5 in another role or if we're hiring someone at 0.5 because at hiring 7.5 we're going to be hiring someone every year or two to fill that as they roll over and do it another position someplace else yeah i i do want to let you know david that that's something that absolutely have considered um there's some other budget pieces that may be moving that

147would help help to see how this might all go together i would agree that hiring a 0.5 would not work so i would there's some other things that we're working on that would have that be a 1.0 and so i i can talk more about that but i want to let you know that in trying to look at this model i too was thinking about is this something that we could hire into and could we have high quality people in those roles right yeah you know not to say like you know this is a rare um [Music] field where you might actually find someone who would prefer a lesser role but it's like that that it's a you know fine line right in in that um but like like i said you know buy the

148quality tools once right and it pays for a little bit more up front where you're going to get such a better you know uh more consistent better um job and person out of it in the long run that it's still it's the worthy investment that that was really the only thing that that uh sparked my interest so thank you yeah it's ideal to match the candidate with our need and like one time we had a part-time um assistant principal at the middle school and she was great but then we needed a full-time one and she didn't want full-time so then we lost this great prince assistant principal so it's like some people super value that part-time some people super value full-time and you got to find the right person that meets your needs and you

149know we got and sometimes you have to change your needs to meet the right person so yeah the one thing david i'll just share a piece if um in the curriculum in the central office one of the things that that you see is that currently this year there was a 0.5 payroll position in the budget um we don't have a payroll person for exactly the reason you're talking about we couldn't find somebody that was a skilled candidate for 0.5 so what we've done for next year is bump that up to 1.0 so that we can get a quality candidate so i i absolutely hear what you're saying and i i want to let you know in our considerations that that is something we're we're thinking a lot about okay um so mary beth are you

150looking for what what i want to do is when i when we look at the budget when we pull things forward and this could even morph a little bit more before the actual budget is in front of you but i didn't want the first time for you to hear about these ideas to be in the middle of the budget and if i'm way way off and what the committee is comfortable with then then i need to know that before we go much further so i'm not hearing any significant concerns about this i know the devil's in the detail as to whether or not this will be something you can ultimately support but again i didn't want the very first time for you to hear about these ideas is when we're actually in the budget process

151so that was my intent is so i guess i would ask if anybody at this point is feeling like there's they have significant objections to heading in this direction conceptually anna i have an objection but i think as you're as you're building it out i would like to see some sort of contingencies based on where we might land on the budget so you know you sort of have your ideal scenario in terms of all these department positions but also looking at the teaching staff because i know that you know i know the cuts were hard um what would be helpful to me as you prepare is to have some different options to choose from so we're not locked into like well it's either this or nothing i would like to be able to look at

152it and say okay i like this part what if we scaled here but add here like i want to see the building blocks because i'm a little i am nervous about the cost um and i think that's just the unfortunate reality where i i totally agree that this is the right step i just am worried about our capacity to fund it so it will help me be better the next time to see building blocks if that makes sense yeah and sometimes we haven't done it in like it's this or this but it's like it's this comes first and if we can afford this then we get this and then if we get all of that we get to have the whipped cream on top you know i mean that's i it's it's ice cream we

153get a topping and if we're really good we get the whipped cream and the cherries yeah but i mean that would be helpful to the my framing of the budget process now that's helpful i appreciate that now we'll we'll we'll look to do that in the budget presentations peter um and everyone knows what i'm going to say i don't know what i'd like to do is somehow ex continue to explore the idea of an lms because a lot of the questions that were shown in this report could be answered by an lms which would save the district money it would save um yeah it's just i feel bad for the teachers and the parents and the students that we're ignoring this um when it could save a lot of our problems and help with our

154budget as well so i'd like that to be part of the discussion i i'm i'm gonna disagree with you for one second here peter and only because i'm actually in much very much support of what you're saying because i think that we're not we're talking about it in the wrong place i actually see this as see that as more of something that can go into a feasibility usability study um you know for long-term cost savings right sort of kick it down the road not down the road that's sorry that's not what i meant but um with some of the stuff that we already have in motion right because i i think that um when we're making those plans for new buildings actually having something like that in our plans would be helpful for our district

155and at the same time until we get those buildings made you know whichever look at 10 years down the road having this to rely on i i i see that as more of this like um operational capital um capital thing as opposed to sort of this operating uh um direct operating budget for this year because i think it's too important to not get right so i think we need to put some some more thought into it well i i agree that we need to put more thought into it i think we're overestimating how much this is really going to cost i mean this is not it's not a huge capital expense in its and it's something we need um sooner rather than later you know waiting to build a new school is not going to

156help our students you know now who are in this situation hi dana um i just want to bring um [Music] i don't want to lose i know we don't have an official motion on the table but i don't want to lose sight of that we do want to i feel like we've gotten a little off topic okay the the question before us or the concern before us is just mary beth's is whether we're going in the right direction and i'd like to sort of i like i have thoughts and i would love to engage in the conversation about you know the lms and when the right place to put that is but i don't want to lose sight of what mary beth came to us to get and i my two cents on it is

157that and i didn't really raise my hand because honestly anna really said what i wanted to say so i'm very much in support i i think this is a good vision i've just like anna said i am concerned about whether we can afford it um but i i wanted to sort of just encourage the group to kind of do that work because i don't want to lose sight of that's the purpose of this particular conversation in this moment yep and anna and then i think we'll move on because i think we kind of have consensus yeah yeah i think so i think um i want to voice some support also for figuring out the right place for the lms and i don't necessarily see it as capital but um and i see that mary adamic

158has put something in the chat that i think is really smart here which to me the right places to go back to some of that strategic planning and the portrait of a graduate and what do we want our end result to look like and to me if we're going to be involved in a massive strategic planning process at some point somehow again the voice i'd like to hear in that are the not just the parent and the students but i'd like to hear from our teachers from an instructional standpoint potentially you know having built out this curriculum leadership piece when we get to that say okay if you're a teacher how would a tool like this actually help you and is the help it would provide something that we strategically want to build into that

159portrait of a graduate so to me i don't see it as like a stand-alone piece of technology to help to me it is one of the many arrows in our quiver of creating the end result of like the learning model itself so it seems like we're building towards a strategic plan of some kind at some point to me that's where this goes is how is this powerful tool something that our district can integrate i like the modernity i like the technology i just think in some ways i'm not ready to figure out how to use it you know it's it's sort of like where do you put that in our plan and is that something that we really want and to me that feels more strategic planning than even capital but i certainly don't see

160it as a as a budget issue right this very minute given everything else we have i think we need to build our capacity in other ways first to contextualize how the tool would be helpful all right that makes sense all right um so it looks like we have consensus um and we'll see how it see if we get the whipped cream or not all right so um julia is this your first official meeting i think we had the hearing last week but this is like our first meeting meeting yeah so um julia has joined us for her first official meeting she had her first hearing last week and um one of the reasons we have julia with us is that stacy matarnick resigned and in doing that um it left the capital finance um group

161with just two members and as peter and i can attest to having two members is kind of nice but it also means like if one of you is late or sick or forgets or whatever no meeting can happen so it's better to have three it also spreads the workload out um so behind the scenes i did ask julia if she would be interested in just joining capital finance and um she was interested in that so um unless someone else was like uh let julia off scot free on working groups it would be great if dana could nominate her to be on that uh i nominated julia campbell to be on the capital finance finance working group there was that i second that great and do you accept that julia yes fantastic so let's vote um

162michelle yes anna yes dana yes david yes peter yes and julia yes and michelle bailey yes so unanimously lucky you they are this week so we're meeting monday we're meeting monday again you're gonna send me those zoom links yeah don't worry oh fantastic and it really it's a you know whether whether you're on policy whether you're on um finance working group or even if you're the secretary of the committee they're all great places to get started and really get an in-depth look and and also you develop peers that you can ask questions too so it's great um all right there's finance and operations but there's nothing under it so i'm going to go with there's nothing to be said there great and then um policy working group had a meeting this week and they're bringing

163to us the religious observation policy for a second reading uh great michelle do you want me to leave this conversation okay so um i don't know mary beth do you want to put it on the screen i'm not sure if other people have questions yeah um so just for context uh as i understand it the this policy started uh before my time on the committee it had a public hearing on may 20th i want to say there was some good feedback uh it then went back to policy we had a reading of it it came here again i i pulled it back because i wanted to revisit something at the subcommittee level which is what we did on monday and now we are bringing it to you again and uh at michelle bailey's request i

164did a better job doing the red line so you can really see final versus where we started so that's the final clean copy and there is the red blind copy so you can see exactly what we changed um the the major clause that was really changed was that one um mary beth can you move up just a little bit more yeah that one there is really the only one i would say there were substantive changes and some of it was wording um so that's the red is what we changed and um we voted on a policy and it came out with approval of a two to one vote in policy so we are bringing it to you for potential adoption tonight so just to be clear this policy the red line there um is talking

165about the introduction of long-term assignments it's not the introduction of any new material which would be where maybe the flaw was in a previous policy that we had in the past so um it does not tie teachers from introducing something new it's just if there's going to be a long-term project like you might want not want it to be the first day of a novel you might not want it to be you know the first day of a civics project or something like that and that's exactly right and michelle that was the reason i wanted to pull it back is the first time we came out we had included the due date part but not the introduction and um some parent feedback came through that said well it's also difficult if you miss the first

166introduction the first time something is there um and you know at the subcommittee level there's a lot of conversation about not having it be all content because that that could be hard um depending and open to interpretation so i think the specificity of long-term um you know assignments is there uh with the idea that it you know still says avoid whenever possible um and if you go down a little bit more i think that it's not new language but i just want to highlight it to you know the public and the committee um that you know there's not supposed to be a punitive option here and that um the last one you know encouraging students and families to work together with teachers to make sure that someone is not going to feel left out is

167not going to miss the content you know that's a collaborative process so um this is where we landed and i think i think we feel pretty good about it um dana do you want to make a motion and then i think people have questions they can ask sure um i move that the hamiltonian regional school committee uh are we approving approving yeah this will be a final approval approve the uh religious observances uh policy as presented i'd like to second great um so david and peter i just now noticed in the panelists that you actually have your hands raised do you what is do you want to say great peter no nope perfect that was from earlier as well fantastic i'm sorry i didn't notice that before um julia um i might be reading it

168sorry i have so many things open i wouldn't read again julia what'd you say i'm sorry you want me to share the screen again would that be helpful yes i was more concerned so the issue of not introducing new material was addressed or was not addressed it was addressed because yeah there was a lot of i agree with michelle bailey that that that is a sticking point and how you define that and trying to find a balance between all new material or only major new material um that it was addressed um i wouldn't say there's total consensus uh on that um and we we talked about it a long time so i won't i won't rehash what happened to subcommittee but it was addressed and this is where we ended up okay and so it's

169sort of at the teacher's discretion i did just want to point out the note that the daily just dropped into the chat about whether or not we're approving this inform or uh approval for now no i think this is approval for now but we'll have to figure out how to get it loaded because i think its purpose is to be contemporary versus being an update i mean what did you think about that david yeah no i i think this is something we want to put in we don't want to sit on especially after the discussions was it last week or the week before maybe okay just so just to clarify that just what that actually means it means whether it would take effect immediately or whether just making sure that i understand yeah all of

170those other ones we've been approving in form correct because they will be put into one big book and then we'll approve the whole book but it's like this is what we intend to put in there but this one you're saying would be in place if we were to approve it would be in place right now yeah change in policy now so i i i oh go ahead i i guess i'm i'm struggling because i i do have lots of thoughts about the introduction of new material but i also have said this before i feel confident that like i don't need the minutia of what happened in the policy meeting and i trust you guys um i could give you quiff's notes minutia and michelle horgan can jump in too no i no i i well

171i i i read in these meetings that not everything needs to be said i can i can well i can live with that so yeah well i do think there might be some public benefit to go into it just a tiny bit i promise michelle bailey i'll be brief um i think the qualifying issues were um all new content especially and the example that was used with me with a public member of the public was you know the first day that a child ever words fractions right that's not necessarily a long-term assignment it's a really crucial part of curriculum and it would be really helpful if teachers would be mindful okay day one of fractions so it might be really nice to not introduce that so that would be more of a regular content introduction

172and at first like i kind of wanted to fight for that um but you know that is that opens a really sticky door so then we sort of talked about the long-term assignments and what does that mean as michelle said the day of the junior year um term project you know that's a day you want to really as much as possible have every single student present as much as you can plan for it um but then michelle horgan you know had a really keen observation is is you know you're planning for religious observances but what if the kid is sick you know like they might also miss that day so what we're trying to do is strike some sort of balance by recognizing members of our public are observing both holidays and i want to

173draw a distinction between a holiday and a jewish holy day which is not the same thing and that was something else we talked about for a brief flickering moment peter said well maybe we should change the word or add the word holy day as well which i think has some merit but um we've gotten this far so to your point dana like i think we could make this better i wouldn't say this is like absolute perfection but i think considering where we started it is much improved it provides a lot of clarity and i think the biggest thing for me personally is someone who's always talking about diversity equity and inclusion is it's making explicit we see our public we don't want them to feel othered we don't want any member of our community to

174feel that they're being left behind so that's my cliff's notes version of minutia i think all right so i lost track did we have a motion i think we still need the motion no we did i seconded it yeah i made it okay great anybody else no okay so um what peop the screen keeps moving whenever it gets shared so people are coming in different orders so julia yes um david yes peter yes our michelle yes anna yes dana yes michelle bailey so that's yes everybody okay so that's hey i just wanna you know thank you guys i i've been on the policy committee before it's never easy but that this one was particularly important and you know particularly tricky so thank you for taking the time and really you know bringing it back and

175going going through it and you know and i i know it's not perfect but i mean like you said it we've come a long way and that's saying something but it's setting it's setting the right tone right and getting us there so thank you for putting in that work yeah i appreciate you saying that i know it was a potential point of irritation when i pulled it back but i think ultimately it was it served a public good so nope it's great so yes and also we should also say thank you to the parents who really kind of came in and said this is something that's been concerning us they met with the superintendent the superintendent brought it to this policy group um you know they attended a meeting or maybe two um so it

176was really a real partnership and and it's it's a good example of the way things can work when we're all trying to work in the same direction as like let's get together talk about the problem to find the problem and find a solution so it was good um cheers report i guess the really only thing we'll have two things one is that um we're all going to be back here tomorrow unless there's widespread power outages um at seven o'clock and um the goal will be to beat with the board of selectmen um we benny and mary beth will be presenting our information first um so but just to kind of as you know the host of thousands can sometimes get into being a bit much um so gary sean and i had to talk and

177we're just we're going to try and like the school committee will talk then the board of selectmen will talk and then the um you know the other board of selectmen will talk and then maybe defend them we'll talk and then maybe defend we'll talk i mean and not try and have it be like if income member talks the school committee member says something i support a selectmen so that we can just talk about the ideas instead of talking about each other's ideas just talk about the community ideas so um hopefully we'll be back here tomorrow at 7. um and then the other thing is of course happy holidays um looking forward to the new year we um have been through a lot while i don't believe that the end of 2020 is going to bring

178about this great phenomenal revolution i do have hope for that and um you know normally we would be together and we could share some of that with each other but here we are maybe maybe we'll sing later i don't know uh mary beth you have a couple of things you need to cover with us yeah couple things on the superintendent's report um i i just as something that's occurred as of today um folks have hopefully gotten the message that we will have a a real snow day today tomorrow that will not have um that we will need to make up at the the end of the school year but we will not be providing instruction tomorrow too much of a question of whether or not we'll have powder out power outages due to the heavy

179snow and the wind and i i think there's also a piece that there's some value to having everybody go out and play in the snow so that that is occurring tomorrow um some of the things on the superintendent's report one more for the committee's review and for the communities review and again we're going to touch much more on this in part of the budget process but one of our partners is the north shore education collaborative and with a consortium i'm sorry and they provide services to some of our students that that need services that we can't necessarily provide here in district and so they provide an annual report so that you get a sense of the the work that they're doing and then the types of things they provide to our students so that annual

180report is there for the committee to review um and we will talk more about how consortiums are part of our overall special education offerings but i did want to let you know that that resource is there again both for the committee and for the community next i wanted to give some updates so um over the the community forum one of the things that that we heard from folks is you know other different ways in which you can present information would like more information so one of the things that we are going to be looking to do is to share out um not only the positive coveted cases um but also the close contacts that exist within a two-week period and to give you a sense um as of this morning um we've we had one

181positive case in the district at about eight o'clock this morning but we had 21 close contacts um and those though that means that those folks are quarantining um and if you know depending on the breakdown with students and staff that can be something that we have to watch really carefully again one the the larger issue right now that we see in terms of uptick is that close contact so we want to that seems like a number that would be helpful for people in terms of understanding that how the schools are being impacted by those rates that you see on the data chart um so tom and i will be working together to get that updated tom has already updated the um the latest statement from the boards of health those that's on our data dashboard

182as well um and one of the the other requests that have been out there is you know can we do a running tally of how many coving cases and one of the when we're looking at that that is something that we can pull the data for we we don't want folks to be confused in the sense that the state reports has slightly different criteria than we do but i know that you know that's something that you have shared has been would be helpful for people um so you know we'll look to see if there's an easy way to do that but i would and if we can we will definitely put that on the dashboard but what i would also share is that probably the the most helpful number for community members that are looking

183to say how how are things looking in our schools is that it you know number of positive cases and the close contact and the way our system is currently structured is families get a letter if there's a positive case right but they don't have a sense of you know are there a lot of people quarantining in my um in our schools so that that's a number that we think will be helpful for the community um and we're moving forward with um many of you had seen that one of the other requests that was out there in the the public forum was can we get a parent on that coveted response team and you know i heard people talk about the black box you know what happens in there and i i think it's really helpful

184to have a parent i think that was a good suggestion i i i fully anticipate that whoever that person is that they will have an opportunity to see the level of thoughtfulness and professionalism and data different data driven decision making that occurs as part of that team we have a lot of interest as of this afternoon i've had about 30 parents offer an application and i am i'll be reviewing those um and um hoping to get an appointment out by next week um next let me just see what else is on this and i did have a question and actually i have a question about that too so okay yeah i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt but before you switch topics i want to go back to a couple of things so the first

185is i want to say thank you for acknowledging the data reporting format i think i know i've pushed you really hard on that um but i think that will really help one suggestion i'd make is when other districts put that running tally they do qualify you know there's language that says this number may be inconsistent with other reporting so and so forth i feel like there must be some maybe even state provided language that that tries to explain there may be some discrepancy so i just wanted to offer that um i i have some questions about the parent appointee um that i wanted to go through so i have four questions do you want me to go one by one or do you want me to ask them all at once um how about one

186by one okay one by one so um i recognize you're trying to respond to parents which i really appreciate um but what i heard from it was more of an overall transparency as opposed to anything else and also request for more data a data driven decision making so i started thinking about it and i actually wrote down my questions to try to be more brief and focused which i thought everyone would appreciate um so my first question is unlike school committee members who are democratically elected representatives of the public this parent will be unilaterally appointed by you how would you select them yeah um you know what we're looking for in in this is i'll actually talk to some of our committee members i'll talk to our principals um talk and i've asked people why

187they're interested in doing this but you know one of the things that i i hope to be able to do is to have somebody who um is is trusted in the community um that that that folks will see is someone that um can you share i hope talk about the level of competency that this group exhibits somebody that is able to deal with confidentiality um it is a you know a complex question i'm not going to make it on my own i'm going to talk to lots of people i won't most likely know most of these folks um and get a sense of who made joe well with the team um so i will be looking for input um from folks um to try to better understand that but the reality is that we want

188to get somebody on that team by tuesday so that doesn't allow for a long involved process so i'll probably again reach out to some folks and go through the applications see what why people are interested and make the the the best decision i can in the time frame that is available to us okay um so i guess the sec part b of that question is was there consideration of simply adding another school committee member who are elected to be the public's representative through a democratic process was that a consideration it could if there's a school committee member that's applied it certainly could be and i i want you know i am open if the committee would would you know if you think it's better to have um a committee member that is also a parent

189what what i heard and what i'm trying to address is this this warrior concern about any kind of bias in the coveted response team and and someone that can speak with direct experience around the fact that this is this is a team that operates at a pretty high level um you know again i that that may be an easier selection process um again i've i had 30 applications which is a lot so you know how do you decide is a a really good question um so you know if there is a committee member that is also a parent and the the committee would advise me that that would be a good way to go i am certainly open to that okay that kind of brings me to my second question which has to do with

190um sort of the communication so all the other members of that coveted response team are either elected officials public health officers or nurses or district employees and all of us in different ways have regulated channels of communication this parent would be none of those things so my question is how will you manage the representatives public communication following the meetings and in the absence of any sort of legal or ethical or contractual limits and in the scenario i'm imagining the parents there they participate then are they allowed to voice that to anyone are they making public statements are they going on social media those are all things that would be prohibited by every other member so i'm curious to know how you're going to manage the outflow of communication once they're in the inner circle yes

191so um that that would be something that in terms of who would be participating that would be something to be important this is not something that goes on social media right that but if somebody asks how's that team functioning i think someone could answer it's functioning pretty well right but details beyond that um is not something that i think would be appropriate we would ask somebody to sign a confidentiality agreement because we do discuss cases that could identify individuals and that has been something that has been every member that team has honored that confidentiality and it would be extremely important that whoever is appointed to that position knows and understands the the level of confidentiality with which they need to manage that situation okay so it's again a good segue it's almost like we worked

192together on this but we didn't so that gets me to question number three which is if there's a confidentiality agreement and there's not a lot of outflow then essentially you've given transparency to one person only and then that person is sort of i'm not sure if they're going to do this my question is did you consider simply making the crt meetings accessible by zoom which would have given the entire community transparency which is i actually think more what they wanted what we're doing now is sort of anointing one person that they get to see inside to potentially vouch for not fast forward but they're not going to really be able to talk about it so i'm not actually sure we've given the transparency you know they wanted yeah no i i appreciate that and you

193know the the question is that you know in order to process some of these things and talk about the scenarios there are things that are confidential and that this team is able to take that information in and utilize it in making its decisions so if this is a public meeting that that opportunity which i think has some value in sound decision making would would not be present um so that is that is not something that that i i would feel would be appropriate um you know so that that's the answer to why it wouldn't be a public meeting you know other than that we do try to share what is behind the decisions um and that and i i'm struggling i'm trying to be responsive to people a request that seemed like it would help

194some people feel better um that and so i'm attempting to do that but i i'm not really sure that we can do much more than that in addition to also changing some of the data that we will share on the website but that is that is what we're able to do in this country i totally appreciate yeah and you know if the committee doesn't feel like this is a good structure for decision making around um models they can change it you have appointed me to do this um but i i think in terms of what you've tasked me to do um and and the structure that we have um gets good decisions for this district um nina do you want to add to that as a another thing i wanted to clarify for for anna

195but but really for the public who's listening because i suspect anna already sort of knows this but um is that when we when mary beth is talking about confidentiality i i think people it's not that the nurses and the public health officials are giving us names of who has coveted or [Music] they really are being able to be really frank about what they're seeing in the community and they're giving a clear picture and sometimes that involves going into some details that a person might be able to deserve to determine who the people might be you know i just want people to know it's not that they're giving us you know secret lists of who has coveted like that's not what's happening they're just because they're being really honest about what is going on in our

196community and their level of concern either either their reduced level of concern or their heightened level of concern sometimes that honesty they comes with a sense of more detail than you might feel comfortable with in a public setting so i just want people to understand that it isn't that's all i want to say no i i i i think that was well said um i think you know my my underlying point is i don't know that it's given the public more transparency and if anything we're introducing a new person who's not structurally as bound to some of the sort of those conversational things like i think the structure of the existing group is actually pretty solid and so i'll just say this does make me nervous that we're introducing someone who hasn't been democratically elected

197or works for the town or works for public health so i'm i'm raising it as a cautionary tale because there's that last question which is sort of late to that is there any consideration of adding the district's doctor to the team who's dr hugh taylor who is a really well-known respected physician been here for forever and as i understand he is the district's actual md i heard a lot of people asking about not just public health nurses and boards of health but an actual practicing family physician and dr taylor is right here and he's already on the district so is there any consideration you add dr taylor um our public health nurses have access to the state's epidemiologists so we have access to um doctors who are practicing in the field of epidemiology um so

198at this point i i i think we have the medical expertise that we need in that covered by that consultancy but if i can just interject um anna the the district physician operates under a specific scope of work and that's not necessarily in the scope of work uh for them to consult on that if i can um you know also let you know that the the nursing team they do consult with dr taylor uh one example is when we were introducing hand sanitizer on such a big scale across the district he was consulted on that uh to be able to write an order for it for us so i um i'm just thinking about the things the public has been asking us for and wanting to address them so those are all of my questions

199thank you um so mary beth i was all right well julia you go first maybe you'll ask me a question i don't have i don't have a question i just have a comment i i know that there are parents already on the covet task force you know um mayor beth tang and rachel lee and i just i think that what the public might not understand is that people have the two hats and the two roles and there are parents represented on the committee that's all i wanted to say okay you did take one of mine my one question as i was um you said something about there were 21 closed contacts when you when you say that so let's say i had covered my child is a close contact of me but it doesn't make

200does that make them on the close contact list or is it that my son had coveted and was in school and there were 21 people that were in touch with me yeah so to clarify that now that those are close contacts that have been asked to quarantine for the most part there's somebody in the family right that has covered and then the family is being asked to quarantine so that doesn't mean that there are close contacts in the school it just means individuals that for whatever reason have had an exposure to somebody who's positive um with covid and have been asked to quarantine so that's actually good because we're able to track you know i think okay that that part of what you know the concern was over thanksgiving is again the testing system wasn't

201working and it is not not working but it was it was so backed up and you couldn't get data back quickly because part of where we see those close contacts being able to identify them relies on a well-functioning testing system and as you can see in those numbers the the bigger issue here is really the number of folks that are quarantining right and that also has a significant impact on our staffing levels as well so that is a number that we talked about and realized that is not out that we haven't been reporting that may be a helpful um number for our community to be aware of all right and then the next thing you had on your list was about um the k1 and are you going to talk about what happened yesterday at

202the board of yeah the two kind of go together so the committee may be aware of the community if you're following the boston globe and all of that that the board of um board of health for the elementary and secondary education um met yesterday and imposed some mandated criteria for the different modalities of learning and basically the one that that impacts us at the moment is that a hybrid program has to have 35 hours of um either in-person learning or synchronous learning is part of their program um so we reported data a while ago in november they asked us to give learning time and what we if you took november 2nd we would not meet the criteria that needs to be in place by january 19th but as you've heard us report we've been working

203towards bringing k1 students back we've been working in terms of getting the synchronous learning up at the high school so we are anticipating being in a place to have the appropriate numbers of hours that we will need by january 19th we had a a roll out date that was um for k1 as the the plan to move forward with that that's been something that we were discussing that i was going to share with you this evening that had a little bit of a curveball with what happened yesterday so we're going to have to adjust that date so we're problem solving all of that so that we fit the requirement by the 19th but we need to we learned about it yesterday afternoon so we're we're doing some problem solving and i i will get that

204date to you and the community as soon as we feel like we know exactly how how we can adjust the current plans so those are so we we are continuing to move forward with bringing all students back in k1 um the um and that that is that is going to be a long with our intent to do that because we know our most vulnerable learners need to be in school more often we are now in a situation where the the board of elementary and secondary education has mandated these hours and we we must abide by that that is that is a responsibility that we have when we we get that type of dictate from the state so that is the latest update um changes hourly um but i did want to make the committee aware

205that the board of education had made that decision yesterday and how that will impact our k1 um start date now that so i think that one i want to acknowledge that it would be great if the stated given guidance like this six months ago so i just wanna all of us express like oh thanks that's great um but i'm a little bit concerned that you're saying we're gonna be able to meet that january 19th deadline i could see how we might be able to get there for k-1 if they come back i could see how we might be able to get there at the high school with the integrated streaming how are we going to get there for three through eight then no good question so the the actual and i i was not specific

206enough the the formula that they are using and requiring um districts to uphold to is an average hours across the state right not across the state across the k-12 spectrum so that if you have first grades coming in at full-time and the high school be full time that can offset numbers that may be less than those 35 hours in k through 5 or 6 through 8. so it is not that you need to meet that standard at every grade level they understand that programs may look different at different levels but it's the average of those and the way that they do it is they look at first grade fourth grade um seventh grade and tenth grade they take those numbers they are they add them together divide by four um and that number has to

207be 35 or more so anywhere your child would get weighed on a scale or have to turn in a medical form not they're the only ones that count okay so good to know so i guess i mean i think you can probably tell what my very next question is going to be is one boy howdy if you're a parent not in one of those grades you're probably as peter likes to say sometimes rip and mad that that just seems kind of unfair on its face again mary beth i'm not directing this to you i understand these are state regulations but structurally that's a really hard thing to hear as a parent in any of those other grades which then goes to my very next question and this is really i want to know who's raising

208their hand who is asking hwea about the distance whose to-do list is that on yeah at this point i i think that the next step around that is to get some data across all of our different stakeholders around what are people feeling about that um you know they're i know that we have parents that have concerns about that we have um sorry we have parents that have concerns about that we have teachers that have feedback we have um and i would say you have probably teachers on both sides that would have different perspectives you will have parents that will have different perspectives the board of health may have a perspective so i think the first thing that would be valuable in this moment is to get some data around what people are thinking about that

209um and so that would be something that you know we we could potentially look at right after the break um but that that i think that that would be uh a um a move that we would not yet be prepared to do um until there is a more uh a larger community discussion as to whether or not this feels right at that moment um so i i would i would say that that is the first step can i i i hear that i guess one question is it seems like the ultimate decider of that decision is in fact whether i mean the union might just shut it down from the beginning or they might say yes let's talk about it i feel like wouldn't it make sense to be more efficient instead of gathering data

210to just ask the people that we would be negotiating with to get a sense of where they are and then depending on their answer we might not even have to ask for more data because they might just say yeah that's a great idea we're willing to it or they might say absolutely not how do you i mean we don't know the answer to the question so it seems strange to me that we would prepare to ask the question and then ask and it just to me again it feels like more time when there might be a simpler answer just by going straight to the source you know oh hello yeah i'm sorry michelle say there's more stakeholders than just the union we may have parents that say you know i'm fine at the six feet

211thing but i am not fine at four feet or three feet and so i'm gonna keep my kid home and then we may have so many kids that are deciding to go remote that we can't really staff that appropriately and it it could cause an entire collapse so it has to be in tandem all stakeholders would need to move together that's where we're going to okay if we're going to go that way can i wait dana let me just finish up one other thing if we're going to go that way can i just implore that we do that as quickly as possible so that we can move forward because again that the drag on it is slow uh one other question which is sort of unrelated the 40 hours for remote would that be applied

212to people who are in the full remote program at the middle school or high school or the ingenuity program at the elementary level because there's no way that a genuine is providing 40 hours of synchronous instruction but i don't think that the middle or high school remote maybe the high school night but middle school full remote wouldn't be providing 40 hours of synchronous instruction yeah so the way that it works is that you are you are put into a category as a district so if you are a district that provides the opportunity for some level of in-person learning you are identified as a hybrid district and you are held to the hybrid criteria if you were a district that was wholly fully remote then you would be held to that remote but you are not

213held to that remote criteria for a separate program that is serving families that have made it just okay thank you for clarifying that's helpful nina did you want to add something no i'm good okay all right super fun so um it seems like that is something we should communicate to k1 families if you haven't already before the break yeah well a part of it is the sequence you know it is something that um our our teams of teachers and administrators have been working towards and they had been thoughtful about a plan and now they have to pivot again the you know word of the day um given this new information that arrived at 4 pm yesterday so um before we would be able to give specific information we need to do a little bit more

214problem solving i am very well aware of the fact that that you know the dates are coming up people need to do planning but i want to be able to give solid information um if we can get that out to people before the the break we certainly will do so um if not right after the break um so stay tuned we met today about it i know our principals are talking with teachers we're working as fast as we can to get some clarity around that dana i said i just i just can't remember is the is the gay one is it uh four days or ever or five yeah so that what we were looking at was instead right instead of having cohort a in two days and then two days for asynchronous all students

215in grades k and one would be in monday tuesday thursday and friday i just i had a moment i couldn't remember yeah and i can share with you people are doing so some good thinking about it i was in schools yesterday um starting to prepare spaces that will um allow us to continue that six foot social distancing while bringing us all students in um there are a number of potential complications around that that we want to be as proactive as possible so for example if we go to a four-day program are we going to see a change in the families that are remote that ultimately decide i'd rather have my kids in a four-day program do we have students that may be in homeschooling that say okay i think i'd like to do that program

216and this is a numbers game right about how many deaths you can get into space so we we're we're trying to think through what could be the potential impact of changes in programming um but the work is is well underway um and this just threw us a little bit of a curveball um and again if a couple you know people are working on it and we will get back to people as soon as we've got some clarity okay okay okay sorry i i keep thinking of more questions um so just in terms of notice um can you also remind the public the covid response team is going to meet on the 30th of december is that right to make a decision about the first week of january yeah i i would say that the plan

217right now is to continue to monitor the data right we are we are planning and being hybrid um in the first week of january um but that in this world that is so unsettled that's a long way away and so we we wanted to have a set time but we had something in our calendar to review the data okay i think i would suggest that as people go into the break at some point to send families a reminder that something might change so they don't feel caught off guard if it does i think that will be important yeah you know you you raise a good point and this is a good opportunity for me to say this to the committee and i i also have a communication that i've had to send out one of

218the realities about our priority and i think it's the right priority to have kids in school as much as possible is that you you can't have that and have absolute predictability right if we're going to have absolute predictability and we were after a holiday break we would say you know let's let's be on the conservative side and be remote for that week but that could potentially lose in-person learning days um so what what the community has to understand is the trade-off is that as we try to get every in-person learning days um in as we possibly can that means that there may be unexpected pivots right and that is a reality and i i can't balance they want to be really clear with everybody that's the trade-off that we make um and so that it

219could happen that we have a a quick unexpected pivot um and that that that is a reality and then the other wild card out there is always staffing right so i i don't want to make any false promises and or nobody to interpret that okay we're good it's definitely going to be hybrid there's not going to be any changes i i cannot do that there is a reality is always out there so last question back to this average of learning hours which i just feel like is catastrophically unfair and i feel like it's going to be a source of major tension can you tell the public then how short per se we might be for those grades if it's not k through one or high school what is the average time on learning for a

220hybrid sixth grader third grader the people that might not get counted what's the shortfall there in terms of the i don't have the numbers in front of me um they i would they're pushing up against 30. i think they're in the high high 20s at the middle level and um the lower 30s at the the fourth grade level um hold on so make sure i get it right so at the middle school right now you're asserting that the middle school synchronous learning time is a high twenties number like that's what i recollect and i i don't have those numbers that's okay no but i mean i'm sure you've studied this like and among nothing else so middle school might be high choices or briefly glossed over it in the day no no but i know

221the public is going to want to know what the shortchange is so um so middle school is high 20s and then you think elementary elementary school is like low 30s for synchronously i i think an important point that we need to bring up here as we're sitting there dissecting where we are versus what these numbers are is that these numbers that just came out yesterday were met with a vote of no confidence by the teachers units across the state right these number in it's the fact that they're changing parameters as we're going so the the fact that we might not be at those numbers it seems like it's every other district in the right in the commonwealth right so to be sitting here and actually like in in like brow beating where we are we're

222in you know that they're taking a lot of flack for just throwing these out that they're for foreign yeah i don't disagree it's really unfair but i think now that we're gonna put it on frame to say we're to purposely average to comply again i'm looking out for the parents okay i want to be really clear that this is the formula every district is doing this this is the formula that they were intended we're not averaging to comply that's how it's being configured i i i understand that i just think parents and those grades in between would like to know where they think they are because this question has come up a lot about time on learning so now that as david has said very well it's an unfair but now there is a new

223imposition of an objective measure and i i mean i just think we should be prepared to answer parent questions third grade fourth grade and fifth grade whether you're the fourth grade student or the fifth grade student is the same michelle i don't interrupt we're just having a hard time hearing you and i don't know if that's just me so you know mary beth you were a little low on volume okay thank you get closer i was just going to say it doesn't matter what grade you're in in elementary school you're if you're in the grade that's being counted in fourth grade you get the same amount of ace of synchronous time as you do in fifth grade because the schedule is the same i understand it's just a question of fairness and equity across our

224grade levels that's that's the underlying point i'm getting to is equity difference in elementary everybody's at the same time except if you're going to be k-1 correct but at middle school it'll be exactly the same and in high school it'll be exactly the same right so i'm not saying i'm not saying within sixth grader to sixth grader i'm just saying the fifth graders in the district are potentially positioned to get less synchronous time than other students and from a fundamental fairness point of view that feels wrong it just feels wrong to me that's all i i mean i i know there's a lot of qualifiers but as a parent of someone in those other grades it would feel really hard to hear that we're we're boosting hours in certain places and not trying to do

225it everywhere in some other way i'm just but i'm just sharing my opinion you don't have to agree but that's my that is my take on right now i guess i just want to bring up the point that this the prioritization of k1 whether you agree with it or not doesn't have anything to do with this mandate from the state because we've been talking about prioritizing and bringing back k1 right it wasn't that our district decided to bring back k1 in order to bring up our averages i totally understand i think the thing i would i would say there is i don't think we decided k1 as as a group i i again i reiterate i i don't feel like i was part of that decision i'm not disagreeing with it but i don't feel

226like i helped identify that as the priority it's i mean i know that i know that this is sort of fast-moving water at this point but um i i don't think there was a we in that decision and now you know there's a consequence in terms of all these other issues and to me it's just a to me it's an elemental fairness participation i don't think we the school committee helped set that prioritization i don't feel like i was a part of that all right said it okay um capital finance planning you had a meeting is there anything you need to update us on um we are meeting again on monday um yay um you know vinnie is walking us through um the budget giving us the realities of contractual obligations and everything else involved

227with that and we have talked with tom about the capital plan and given the light of covid and our financial realities of our towns we are going to be taking a a deeper look at the capital plan on monday so we'll have an update for you probably in january january yeah we met we have a bunch of other things that we approved out of policy that mary beth suggested would be appropriate for the january 6th meeting something like that so i'll work to get those uh documents too was the way i did it tonight good to have the really clean one and the really red one was that was that the right way to do it is i'm trying to okay that's like helpful yeah because that way you don't have to read everything there

228yes yeah um so we have i think two or three i want to say two or three things and then um dana i'm going to go on public record i will not not i totally forgot to put data on i didn't mean to but so much time to pass so dana's gonna come as a guest speaker to our next policy meeting to talk about executive session minutes that she's done a deep dive on i can't wait i'm sure it will be riveting um so yeah so we have so policy is working hard like we're we're getting there i forget the next date but we said it it was something all right and um dana do you want to give an update on negotiations um i wasn't prepared to but i guess i can you know

229you are the moderator oh it's a new role for me um so yeah we had an executive session um where we you know to begin our planning for entering into negotiations and we did have our first um i guess meeting but i guess it was really a playing the ground work and setting up the ground rules for beginning negotiations with the teachers union and uh so far all's going great i don't know did you have other things to add michelle or david well we've got several meetings set up in january oh yes and we do yes we do several meetings set up all right uh so we're at the consent agenda um so i'll ask you all is there anything you'd like to pull from the consent agenda okay i am pulling number three because

230i feel like it deserves to have a teeny bit of discussion um so can we have a motion to approve everything except for c i move that the hamilton 1 regional school committee approved the consent agenda portions a and b as listed on the agenda so second a second and a second great so we're going to vote on approving the vouchers and the minutes david yes julia yes peter yes joe yes anna yes dana yes michelle bailey yes um all right so i pulled c um not because i think it's controversial i'm sorry not because i think it's controversial but because i just think that we need to just have tom just give it just like a little teeny thing so if you want to give us a motion to approve it dana and then

231sure uh i move that we approve the moratorium on public use of school buildings during covid as presented in the exhibit on the agenda i will also second that and so tom you had an exhibit that basically having people in the building and then especially what mary beth is talking about if we convert these generally used public spaces to classrooms we just can't have other things running and it has a kind of a detrimental effect on like youth basketball and things like that um yeah if i can give you a little context um back prior to march 12th we'll say one of the first measures we took um in reaction to david that thing i won't say the word um covid um was to put a moratorium on building you since then really hasn't come

232up right not a lot of people have expressed interest and as i said in the exhibit uh the only folks that have used our interior spaces are the town of wenham for elections um so with the need to keep our spaces flexible in addition to it being a mitigation strategy wanted to formalize that because the school committee does have policy on public use of facilities and i figured it was best to formalize it uh through the committee uh because there's policy specifies that it's the policies surrounding building use are to be addressed through the superintendent and the school committee so a matter of formality i wanted to bring that to you folks because i think we neglected to in the spring yeah so we would still like i'm anticipating that there's going to be some

233appointments of our legislative team that will leave some vacancies that will require some elections coming up in the spring um so we would still it would still be possible to have use it would just go through you guys for that yeah i could say for a one-off item like the election you know that's something our team could prepare for um but you know with the you know the constant use by a sports group or out other entity it might be difficult to set it up break it down because ultimately some of these spaces are going to be someone's classroom right so we want to be respectful of that as well yeah like boy it pains me to bring this to you because i believe in you know public use of the school facilities um but

234i just think it's the best course of action to take at this time yeah it's not forever no it's short term it is short term please come back and club please come back come all these people that would be great after your reference to if it helped you i have included a poll of uh various cape and schools um you know as far as what they're doing with public use of their facilities yeah and it's a no-go so um we had a motion and a second so anybody else great um david uh yes yes eater yes gel yes anna yes um dana yes michelle bailey yes that's unanimous thank you tom for looking out for everything um thank you so at our next meeting mary beth what kind of things do we have on the

235work plan i'll start with the big item which is budget um we will be coming to you with uh an initial recommendation for budget that that is going to be um a key focus for this meeting um and let me just quickly go through and i can share with you what else we have here so for kindergarten first grade maybe that you know that will probably be on there as well um so for one six um we are going to i'll bring something that came out of the committee meeting that's just in terms of making some adjustments to the community service graduation requirement given the the covet environment that we're in we have we'll have a special education budget presentation um michelle i heard that you would like um kevin here to talk a little

236bit more about the um foreign exchange trips so that will be on there um again we have the superintendent's budget um we are anticipating having the first first reading of the public common policy and a first reading of a weapons policy that's that's what i have to date again i would anticipate a fairly substantial amount of time focused on the the initial budget recommendation vinnie anything you want to add to that nope just get ready to dive into all the numbers that's all can't wait anything else um i have a question and then three things i'd like to add to the list for future topics um i emailed you michelle about the time for a meeting in january not the one and the six but i think the one on the 20th yeah thank you

237so i apologize so my question is we voted at seven i've sort of planned my life at seven but obviously we have big meetings and i know that it does help everyone's stamina um and i think this meeting has been actually really good and i'm wondering if it's because we started earlier but there is a night um that i have a work commitment and i i might be really hard-pressed to get to seven or i might have to call from the car or call from the tarmac of logan airport which is where i will be so is there any way that we can hold the line on the seven o'clock meeting um i think it's the january 20th date that was causing me some concern so so shoot for six o'clock on this first one

238in january but definitely not consider that for the next third okay i i would appreciate that um people feel like they're okay around six o'clock for that one with the budget oh yeah i prefer six okay great okay um and then my agenda items for the future um two of them in my mind would be relatively quick but they don't have to happen like this hot second um and one of them might be a little more complicated so the first one is i would like to have a discussion about starting our school committee meetings with a formal indigenous land acknowledgement um it would take about 37 seconds to read if that maybe even 10 so i'd like to put that on the agenda at some point to talk about a land acknowledgement i'd also like

239to put on the agenda conversation about requiring implicit bias training for all hw rsd staff including school committee members there's a lot of free uh platforms out there including a really great one from harvard so i'd like to talk about implicit bias training those two are easier the other one that i want to talk about is a formal uh dei audit so a lot of school districts across the state are formally auditing their entire operations staff hires staff retentions school climate culture and then some of these curriculum issues which you know i didn't i i think that there are some issues to discuss so um districts are starting to have independent dei auditors come in and some districts are even creating um an aura have created uh dei officers actual staff positions but i think

240the first step is actually an audit itself of existing operations so i'd like to put that on the agenda at some point can you say what dei stands for please oh diversity equity and inclusion those are my agenda items thanks anybody else at some point in the future i would like to continue the conversation about lms's here we go all right so it looks like all get to come back next next day tomorrow so we all made it if you have somebody wants to adjourn we can see everybody at seven tomorrow i move to adjourn at 1002 pm you david is there a second a second again second by anna and let's roll call vote david yes julia yes peter yes the horrigan yes anna cezak yes friend dana lara yes and michelle bailey yes

241see you all tomorrow coming your festive where