001there's mr pratt good evening everyone good evening so we're waiting for curtis ursula will not be here tonight so there'll be six of six of those committee members curtis usually pops in right at the last possible moment he's very punctual there he is hi curtis hello so as soon as it start it turns six we can get started because everybody is here i think we um for cindy will be joining and um [Music] i don't know if jake is going to come on or if his co-chair is going to come on to talk about their school improvement plan so okay all right so i think we can get started i would like to call the mount greylock regional school district school committee to order it is thursday june 10th it is 6 p.m we are
002meeting remotely via zoom for governor baker's order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law mglc 30a section 20 the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting the meeting will be broadcast on willy net tv channel 1302 in williamstown and it will be posted on the mount greylock regional school district youtube channel within 24 hours of the meeting at mount greylock regional school district our mission is to create a community of learners working together in a safe and challenging learning environment that encourages restorative based processes respect inclusive diversity courtesy integrity and responsibility through high expectations and cooperation resulting in lifelong learning and personal growth next up on our agenda is public comment we do not have anyone signed up for public comment tonight so we will move on to the
003student spotlight in order for me to share the student spotlight it's a it's a recorded video message and it's me to share it i will just need uh screen sharing permissions i just made you a co-host so that should get you there right yep i think i'm gonna be there all right can you see charlie we can charlie mcqueeny of mount greylock regional school here we go uh hello and good evening everyone at this time tomorrow when you all are watching this video i will probably be making a klutz of myself at prom so i can assure you all i'm not in a totally enviable position of missing out in a school committee meeting uh that being said though uh this will be my last update as the student council representative uh which is a
004bit of a bittersweet moment for me uh i've greatly enjoyed being able to come to these meetings to advocate for matters that are important to students and to share with you all a little glimpse of the student perspective uh at mount greylock uh i want to thank each of you for the time you've taken to listen to me your questions actions and dedication to the school district uh i have great faith that you'll be just as responsive to the concerns of next year's student council representative who i'm very excited to announce is gonna be molly sullivan uh molly has been an instrumental member of student council um and i'm sure she'll do a far better job at this than i ever did but before i hand things over to molly for a proper update i'd
005like to leave with you all with two final thoughts uh the first is a bit of a request and that is over the summer in the course of the next school year this committee seriously examined moving back the monkey lock start time uh my two biggest takeaways from remote learning were one the importance of in-person instruction um and two how much students value the extra 30 or 40 minutes of sleep they got from not having to get up and commute into school this is an issue that has been incredibly important to students for many many years and the science on this has only become more clear but i believe this committee can be the committee that's responsible for for taking this important step uh and moving back the start time uh the second thought i'd
006like you all to i'd like to leave with you here uh are some of the closing excerpts from a history of williamstown in the surrounding area uh written by robert brooks uh i'm paraphrasing a bit here but brooks roughly writes but probably the most effective single force in bringing and holding the town or i should say towns together is its public school system it is impossible to overlook the unifying and democratizing force which free public education has brought to bear upon the character of the community this unbroken thread of common purpose unites the town within this common purpose liar hopes for a better community a better nation and a better world as this committee moves forward i only ask that you remember the incredibly unifying and equalizing force free public education uh can have thank
007you all very much for your time i'm very pleased to hand things over to molly now that was great molly we will turn it over to you welcome to the school committee meeting thank you so much for having me i'm super excited um i there's not uh i can't really follow that but i will try my hardest um so i'm a sophomore at greylock i will be a junior next year um i've been on the student council all years um of my high school so next year would be my third year in student council and i loved every step of the way i enjoy making changes in the student body's lives and i enjoy taking their ideas and bringing them to student council um i'm also in register educate vote which is a club i'm
008sure you guys know about it it kind of says in the name i'm in the garage multicultural student union um i write for the uh gorilla gecko and um yeah i mean i'm i play soccer and basketball so i love getting involved um you could probably find me in the library a lot finding new books for ms barrett um but i'm super excited to be here and to be with you guys um next year and um thank you so much for having me i don't know if you want me to tell you anything else or if you guys have any questions but thank you thank you molly any questions from the committee for molly we're excited to have you join us and we will miss charlie okay moving on to approval of minutes may 13th
0092021. do i have a motion to approve the may 13th 2021 minutes so moved okay curtis moves julia's second discussion julia so on the um page four by looking at yes um the last section about the wireless communications tower uh this the first sentence ends with something about um the tower would be on school property i thought it was on property adjacent to the school the the cur the tower that's currently under a conversation is is adjacent to the school julia if it says they're going back to like 2011 2012 there was discussion of a of a communications tower on campus but you're correct this the one that is in conversation right now is adjacent to the campus so so maybe if that could be amended to say since the tower would be on property
010adjacent to the school okay thank you carrie thanks christina on page two number four student spotlight um the students names are jonah hain hayne h-a-n-e and catherine with a c mcallister mca so it would be good to note that and instead of saying two students i think they were identified as two juniors but that's less important okay thank you and then i wanted to make a clarification uh let's see if i can find it now my suggestion was not to include the full documents in the future minutes but the references to the documents um just wanted to make that clarification anything else okay so we have a motion from curtis seconded by julia with some amendments all in favor roll call vote alphabetically oh and i conrey i constantine i elephant by an eye green
011i thank you that motion passes okay do i have a motion to approve the may 21st 2021 special session minutes so i moved julia moves do i have a second second seconds discussion julia um i wonder i know we're going to talk later on the agenda about minutes format um but as i looked at these i am i i'm always grateful when steve includes uh the commentary that people have given there's i wonder though for these if it should read instead of what steve read being embedded in the minutes um if it should read uh steve read a prepared statement expressing his frustration with the process some something about what he read and then including the full text as an attachment um as i read them it felt like because of the real estate of
012the minutes that the vast majority of the meeting was that um and i and i don't remember the meeting um you know be feeling that way so i i don't know if that's like a i don't know i don't know if that's an amendment that's an appropriate amendment or yeah i i don't know if that's something we want to bring into our later discussion or as long as the general content is correct now in these minutes i think it's okay to approve them and then bring bring that discussion into the the minutes discussion later in the meeting is everyone amenable to that okay so we have a motion from julia seconded by curtis all in favor bo and i connery i constantine i elephant and i green eye okay thank you that motion passes so
013next up we have principal updates jake should i leave it to you to call on folks because i don't know if everyone's here sure i'll i'll be happy to i i do believe we have uh andrea malone who is good enough to uh present the uh to talk about the mount greylock regional school school improvement plan but before we we uh hand over to andrea um you know we we had this school year goes without saying although we've said it 50 times even in my short time here this has just been a school year unlike any other so um the school improvement plans did not ask the principals to bring fully formed um ready to go to the publisher plans here tonight although i suspect we will see one or two that are maybe like
014that but we did just want to take the opportunity as this is the the last meeting of of this school year to uh to touch base on and get sort of a where are we with the school improvement planning process so um very grateful to the principals and and to andrea uh the co-chair of the of the uh school council at mount greylock for joining us tonight and uh but please do understand that this is these are uh works in progress that we are looking at here this evening so with with that with uh andrea if you would like to to talk about the mount greylock uh regional school plan that would be awesome thank you for doing this sure it's my pleasure um i know i know jake shitz would love to be here
015but he is chaperoning prom so he's with charlie um but i i just want to thank you all very much this i feel like this year has been a tremendous year in terms of what you all have accomplished and from the perspective of the school council we've been listening in on all your meetings and feel like we've gotten all the kinds of strategic direction that we needed a district level from you guys and we appreciate that very much um so we have we're going to be presenting with uh to you five goals for your consideration for next year for mount greylock um two of the goals you have basically seen already fleshed out because in january we presented to you a short budget implications uh presentation and that went into some detail on our social
016emotional wellness social emotional learning goal um which included the recommended hire of an additional social worker which you all approved and thank you very much for that and also our hopes for expanding our data analysis um and acquisition capabilities for um for mgrs um we're not sure uh how that would be funded yet and whether that's really a district question or whether it's just specific to our schools so we look forward to seeing how that might unfold in the next year goals three and four are carryovers from last year one of them is academics and that goal you will see we're going to spend a lot of time next year trying to figure out which pieces of remote learning that we saw worked well and that we might want to carry forward in the future
017and also mining as much data as possible to figure out where holes are in academics and where improvements can be made the second is diversity equity inclusion and belonging i think you will see immacule a lot of building on what we presented last year and also as much incorporation as possible of the district goals um so you will see some familiar language in there um from last year's plan and also from what we've seen at the district level and then the fifth one is the arts um this uh there's been a lot of exploration done within the school council this year looking at what the arts at mount greylock look like and how we might improve upon leveraging the resources that we already have for the school and if there are any other essential arts
018related resources that are not available that we might recommend so those are our five main goals we have a final draft ready we are meeting on tuesday and at that point we will hopefully sign off on our final draft and then forward it on to jake mccandless who would then forward it on to you great thank you thank you so much uh andrea thank you for doing this tonight and thank you for your leadership on the school council um nolan would you uh like to go next from lanesboro elementary school please of course um do am i allowed to share my screen is that something that is permitted i believe that is permitted if uh christina can can share that that right with you you should be all set so as i pull it up
019i have three goals to share with you uh first i'd like to give a huge shout out to our school council we've been working hard the past couple of months to flush out exactly what we want to focus on and narrowed it down to three things uh the first being to create more access to social emotional and deib learning and we do that a couple of ways the first thing we want to do is we purchased a new benchmark system which is called fastbridge which has an sel benchmark in it which will allow us to gauge where the students are at and how this work is impacting them throughout the school year we're also we are right in the middle of hiring a social worker to help implement some other cool things that we are
020doing like in column c which is each week we will now have a community circle run by the social worker it will start with some core curriculum like anti-bullying stuff like that and as it progresses we hope that we hope it builds into relationships and talks about you know the all the deiby stuff that needs to happen in order for it to be a really welcoming school environment and then lastly we updated the referral process to account for mental health and how that impacts a student's education so that is our first goal our second goal is to implement multi-tiered systems of support so what that is is teachers will use data to group students for about a six to eight week period and they'll be grouped and by what instruction they need to target the
021gaps they lost in the last school year or school years before that to really help bridge the gaps that were created specifically last year to make this happen we'll have to continue with benchmarking we'll do benchmarks in math and in ela to see where the gaps are but i think it's really important to note that we will not only be using this one point of data we'll be using student work and other pieces of data that we get um through these time periods to make accurate decisions on how to group these students and to determine where their gaps are we plan on having pd for the teachers to know how to use fast bridge but also um you know how to look at data efficiently to find the gaps and to create groups of students
022with that we need a intervention block which is i'm in the process of planning for next school year we have a cool new schedule next year which is really going to be consistent across the board which will really impact student learning and then as you continue to um work on this reflect on it and see if it's working and what adjustments need to be made then our last goal goal three is to develop community partnerships with a focus on sustainability about four weeks ago five weeks ago we had a fourth grade group start a les cub les clubs called the lanesboro environmental squad and they're all about being environmentally friendly looking at what we can do within the school and that kind of inspired this goal within our school council uh trying to reach out
023to community partners to see what they have to offer just build a partnership about getting people in the building and doing field trips to see um other places that are doing sustainable efforts i know they're putting in i believe they're putting in a solar field and skyline which is right down the road maybe that's a trip we take to talk about how it works and you know it's a two-hour trip that we can make that help impact these students and help them learn about sustainability and the biggest part of this goal is to give students a tool the tools they need to implement sustainability within our school and then in the greater community so i talked i do have more i want to say about what's at you know the end of the year i'll
024pause now and what questions do you have for me any questions from the committee for nolan okay so hearing none i will move on to like what has happened what is happening in the end of the year stuff we finished the mcas which um you know students work so hard on this test and the teachers ramp it up and it's just great to have it done and over with we also finished our kindergarten orientation and screeners i think we right now we have 21 projected kindergarteners coming in uh big things coming up tomorrow is luau day so all the students will be wearing hawaiian hawaiian gear we can't do the traditional lanesboro luelle which is a big huge event that happens out front we are celebrating the lull day by dressing up in hawaiian gear
025and we are still doing the town famous basket raffle we have i think 13 to 15 baskets that are being raffled off um and that the raffle will be held live tomorrow at 5 30 via zoom the link can be found in the wyvern weekly email blast the pre-k has a celebration day coming up it's not really a celebration day it's an art gallery it's a really cool art gallery students made abstract self portraits of themselves like full body huge self portraits like they laid on the ground and they did a chalk outline um and it's based on poems that they created and these poems represent what's most important about themselves and what the what their peers find most important about them so i think that's a really cool project the kindergarten celebration today is
026a small it's a bunch of small skits and songs that the parents will attend it's outside it'll be about an hour on tuesday and then the big one uh the crossover ceremony the graduation we have a whole week kind of planned out we have seal day on monday which is social emotional artistic learning we have miss kik planned about five events we have a drum group coming in we have um a meditative breathing practitioner coming in to help you know focus on some of that social emotional stuff then we have some small little group stuff like um i'm trying to take a good one the one i'm doing is the tale of little red rod and i know the big bad wolf sorry i didn't grow up with fairy tales um big bad wolf and
027they're telling this uh telling the story from the perspective of the big bad wolf we're going to do a lot cool events like that tuesdays the student celebration day there's gonna be a cookout and that's all i'm allowed to talk about with that one i'm really excited for the cookout there might be a kickball game happening at the end of the day and then lastly 10 a.m on wednesday the sixth graders take the plunge and going to mount greylock and their graduation ceremony so what questions do you have for me what was that that's me echoing but i just want to preface this by saying literally sincerely thank you for all the work that that you've done and your team has done this year i just had a question about um and i'll ask this
028question from just the perspective of of members of our community both here and elsewhere that that may have some concern about luau day and whether that's that event will incorporate any um you know education or sharing of information of native hawaiian culture at least putting putting that day into some kind of contacts that that could be educational for the kids i think and i'll just cut to the chase i think the worry is is that uh you know these celebrations are a misappropriation of native hawaiian culture but but i'll leave it there we can definitely work towards that in the future um it might be a little late to you know have students have teachers teach about it tomorrow there was no plan to talk about it but we can definitely maybe do a blurb
029in the morning about why we you know about the history of the welsh thank you all right i don't see any more questions if there are no more questions oh carrie did you have your hand up okay um i i will just say to nolan before we we hand hand off to cindy um i had a wonderful opportunity to to talk with the leadership group from the lanesboro environmental squad and um the that is a powerful group of young people with lots of ideas and uh we we had a a a a lunch together one day and um they are really thinking they are looking to form partnerships with uh with the high school you know i talked to them about a a similar group that exists at berkshire community college and that at some
030other neighboring high schools and middle schools so uh yeah stay tuned for what that group of uh of young power people bring to the table and the ideas that they generate so thank you nolan uh cindy would you like to talk about the williamstown elementary school improvement plan and end of the year events yes thank you jake hello everyone well the worst part about always going last is i feel like all i get to do is repeat a lot of stuff you've already heard the good news about going last is you again get to hear that nolan and i are really working collaboratively and trying to make our schools have partnerships and have our children have relationships long before they get to the high school so that's the best um i do want to take
031a moment first to celebrate the humans in my building um we've survived eight and a half months eight and a half months of what many thought was impossible eight and a half months of changing all instructional models to various different things teachers trying to create curriculum and trying to disseminate information through a screen that they've never been done before people who we know could have benefited from a year of professional development before they ever had to take this on um and i think i'd love for everybody to just take a moment and celebrate the people within the building because we have been able to accomplish the incredible um we've been able to you know have everybody be a team our building and grounds crew our cafeteria staff our substitutes our teachers our paraprofessionals our nurse
032our office staff i mean look what we've done in eight and a half months look what we've been able to provide the children in our community look what we've been able to do with the families in our community i mean i know this has been a tremendous year i know there will be a million things that we will all have hated about this year but there's also a lot of really incredible things that we need to celebrate our children did what no one thought they could do our littlest kids in preschool in kindergarten learned through a screen and they did learn our teachers despite all different levels of technology skills were able to instruct children through a screen and our staff was able to navigate through a million different learning models with grace with a
033lot of stress but still with the ultimate goal that we want to be able to serve the children and the families in our community because that's what we're here for and that's what matters and i think you know when you see the people who work in the buildings please thank them please give them a shout out because this has been incredible and i will forever be proud of this year i'm always going to be proud of what we accomplish but i just think this year has been something that has really taught us incredible things we are able to be a team we are able to accomplish things that we thought were insurmountable and i think that's important to definitely recognize to start this off um as well just take a moment and actually applaud all
034three schools for this accomplishment thank you cindy for spelling it out like that but everybody unmute let's hear the applause thanks so going into our last couple weeks of school i mean the fir the next thing after celebrating our staff um i have to be honest i don't think that there are two more excited people that mcas is over other than nolan and i um as this being our first year i am pretty sure i'm on a first name basis with the state and the mcas service center um anyone who tells you that mcas is easy sending it back for nolan and i has been one of the most incredible feats i've experienced professionally to date and have taught for a really long time so that's definitely saying something we're proud of our kids for
035hanging in there we're proud of the staff for hanging in there but i know that the two of us feel like we have definitely had a massive accomplishment being able to mail off the no less than 10 000 boxes back to the state so definitely something that we're proud of um we were able to have our kindergarten visitation day this week too um we of course picked the hottest day this week to have people come to our school inevitably it always works that way but i think what was amazing was you know i have 44 kindergarteners who are registered for next school year and to watch the front steps of our building fill up with children and their parents despite the oppressive heat everybody was excited to be there the kids and the parents were
036riding the school bus and we know that can be a sauna in the middle of any sort of heat event and watching the kids faces be so excited to be part of our school community and looking forward to coming with something that i know as a first year principal is something that i will never forget and i think being able to pull off a visitation that if you again had asked us eight and a half months ago if we would have been able to do i don't know that any of us on this screen would have said we would get here and here we are with a rising crop of upcoming kindergarteners and their families who are supportive and excited to start to join our williamstown elementary school community um as we prepare for the
037last couple days of school we are incredibly focused on our sixth grade class um all of next week will really be focused on all of our sixth graders doing special events with them um they're gonna have a day that again i'm not giving a lot of details for because the kids don't know the details but the teachers and i have been working on a day for them to be able to celebrate together bring more of the fun back that they haven't been able to infuse throughout the school year and you know continue to work towards graduation the kids are preparing they're rehearsing their reading speeches and are equally as excited to get to graduation for a number of reasons they're excited to go to mount greylock but also i think many of them are really
038excited that they'll always be able to say that they were the sixth grade class that graduated from elementary school in a pandemic and in reading their graduation speeches um we will be recording that and i would love for all of you to really listen to those children's speeches and to listen to their words we know that our kids words are really powerful but listening to different perspectives of what the pandemic did for our kids is pretty remarkable um and i'm proud of them i'm proud of them for hanging in there i know that they have a huge transition ahead of them but i'm confident that our kids if they can make it through learning in a pandemic middle school should be a breeze so i'm happy for them to get started on this next you
039know kind of chapter in their education and as we finish up next week we will be preparing for the launch of our new ela curriculum that we're bringing to both of our elementary schools so our teaching staff will participate in an all-day professional development on the 18th as well as at the end of the day we will be celebrating the staff and our retirees we're also gearing up for our summer programming that we will be having this summer it's a little bit of uncharted territory for us we have always done you know some programming but this year we're trying to really test the waters on what kind of programming can we offer to support all of our students and it will be an incredibly reflective time for us to be able to look back and
040see what worked what didn't work and what could we do going forward to make sure that we're offering program programming to continue to do targeted instruction to make sure that our students are all you know maintaining and also continuing to grow in their skills i think when we come back in the fall as well you know it will be incredibly crucial for us to take a look at where all of our students learning needs are and again i'm working with the best people possible and i'm excited for our teachers our paraprofessionals and all of our support staff to be able to come back to school and hit the ground running and really meet the kids where they are because that's what we do best and that's the area where we shine i know people are
041worried about it i'm pretty excited about it incredible things happen and this staff is going to make this next year incredible for our students as far as our school improvement plan i can share my screen if you would like me to totally up to you and in developing the school improvement plan there were many things that you know as i'm trying to figure out what's going to be great for our school what are the things that i really want to be focused on and you know i had two paths i could write a lot of goals and come up with 100 different things that i would like to achieve next year as any teacher or administrator could possibly do or i could choose the path of picking things that i feel like are the most
042valuable the things that will affect the most people and impact change that's positive within not only the walls of our school but in that partnership with our greater community and our families um give me just a second and i'll share okay so as you're looking at this um the three goals the first one very important to me across the board i think just as a human this the goal of creating a respectful inclusive school environment and part of me i know this is an incredibly broad goal but for me i wanted it to be broad some of what we're trying to do is yes we are trying to focus on diversity equity inclusion and belonging and we keep saying those words but for our elementary school how are we going to do that and what
043are we actually going to do to achieve a school that is focused in those practices and for me um you know we can put all the curriculum in place or books or all of those types of things but at the heart of it is continuing to provide professional development for our staff we have to be able to provide our staff with resources with dialogue with materials to be able to have them help them generate conversations with our students and it starts with our staff it starts with being able to provide them with the things that they need in order to instruct the children who are in front of them to that end um we are always looking at our curriculum but i do really think that we are looking at our curriculum with a really
044careful lens we're trying to understand are we representing material accurately to our students that is representative of all people everywhere and that's something as educators as people who are consistently professionally developing themselves that we should always be doing but it's something across the board i would like to see us as a staff be looking at from pre-k through sixth grade and the next one is reviewing and expanding literature representing diverse people um i spoke about this a little bit before but this piece for me is really being able um i've written a grant trying to get literature within our building and the goal again is being able to get 150 titles that represent those principles of diversity equity and inclusion and belonging to get them in the hands of our children we we can't talk
045about it but not have resources for our children so being able to get a diverse set of books within the library but also carefully curated books at pre-k through six so that within each grade level there are books for our teachers to be teaching from there are books that will be able to have prompts and you know different questions to help our students have the dialogue that it requires to start to get our children to really you know think outside the box and to be able to think deeply and carefully about who they are as people but also who the world around them is um and to that end yes we're talking a lot about diversity equity and inclusion and belonging and that belonging piece for me really hits home coming out of this pandemic
046year um i really feel like we have a lot of growth that we're going to be doing trying to rebuild that sense of community just within our staff within our students and within our families and one of the ways that i'd like to see us do that at williamstown is to really kind of define develop broaden our pto expand our membership really start to focus more on how can we get more members of our community and our teaching staff to be part of that to be able to start to have different events for our students where it's not one small group but instead it's many voices and it's all of us really working together to build experiences for our staff for our students and on our and for our families lastly developing roles and expanding
047members on the school council the school council is still pretty new to me um but my understanding of it in comparison to the other two schools within the district is i find that at my school not many people know that we have one as far as internally and a lot of the people who are on my school council have served for multiple years because there was not the ability to get new members and so part of that for me going forward will require me to really provide the education around what school council is but also be able to solicit feedback and trying to have try to have a more robust school council so that when it comes to a time to develop a school improvement plan it's many voices it's more collaboration you know again
048focusing on getting as many people as we can to work together for the good of our kids and the engaging paraprofessionals and recess strategies um we will be having a company called play works come in august uh the company is really going to work with our paraprofessional staff who are outside at recess with our students to be able to give them tools and strategies in collaboration with our pe teacher to talk about how do we help our kids play how what games can we do how do we help our kids build those relationships that we talk about all the time outside of the classroom um goal number two curriculum and assessment um i've talked about this before we are really launching this new language arts curriculum and anybody who tells you we can launch it
049and be done has never taught a day in their life um and if you notice i have the timeline of you know three years i'm hoping it's three years three years feels safe but one of the things about being able to do this and do it well is not only to have a really effective rollout initially but it's also that ongoing support we cannot provide our staff with here are the books and here's how you teach it good luck the biggest piece of this is being able to have not only our teachers support each other but allowing time for our teachers to have the dialogue around new curriculum share the lessons what's going well and that time piece we never have enough of it but we've got to be able to do it in this
050next school year and for the next two to three years to make this program what it really is intended to be which is a language arts program that's rooted in the components of reading instruction to meet all learners needs and do that with authentic text where you're not focused so much on reading a script and that's incredibly valuable um nolan talked a little bit about doing a new online assessment tool called fastbridge he and i have talked a lot about the different assessment tools that we utilize at our school you're always looking for an assessment tool that is going to give you valuable information and data to drive instruction yes it is one piece of data but it's still we want that piece of data to be something that's useful to our staff useful to
051he and i as the administrators within the building but also useful as a whole so that we can take a look at what are our kids doing well and what areas do we need to improve on um and what we've been able to experience so far in you know kind of brief engagements with fastbridge and learning about it he and i have been really pleased to you know try something different and we've been pleased with what the data shows that we could possibly be able to use with this new program and part of it as well as there's a an sel component of fastbridge to support students that we've never had before so we're kind of anxious to learn more about it and we're anxious to really learn along with our staff one of the
052best one of the best things about fastbridge with professional development is all of their professional development is are recorded sessions so they are within the system if teachers forgot about something or if teachers aren't sure how to do something those professional development videos will live consistently in the system for the duration that we're using fastbridge and as we all know i mean i don't know how many trainings you've sat through but i've sat through a million where you're ready to go and you leave and the next day you can't remember those three things that the presenter said so the value of being able to be reflective and have those professional development videos at your fingertips is pretty invaluable and the last one technology this is something i feel like i would be remiss if after
053the year that we've had that i didn't revisit technology um one of the biggest things that we've learned is trying to plan for the expansion at the kindergarten level we are a school that is incredibly fortunate we are incredibly lucky with the tools that we have in regards to technology but from the pandemic one of the things that really was highlighted was whether or not we have the expansion of technology at the kindergarten level and that's something our kindergarten teachers are really looking for and being able to provide their students with a different medium to learn and i'd love to be able to start to examine that for this next school year to see what we could possibly you know in the future put in place um the last two i think it's incredibly important
054that we continue to provide training for our families technology is going to be a part of our life we've learned a lot we've grown a lot but it's something i think i feel strongly we need to continue to support our families with it only helps our students and it only makes the connection between home and school greater and then the last one there or the middle one i should say um i'm really focused on trying to do collaborative partnerships within the community that are going to give our students especially at fifth and sixth grade education behind how to use social media what about bullying what about cyber bullying what about online gaming um what i have learned in my very short three and a half months as principal is that our children are going to
055do a million different things but part of our job is being able to provide the education and being able to show them what different social media presences look presence looks like what does different forms of technology look like so that when they go to the middle school in the high school where there's you know more kids are getting cell phones or more kids are exposed to things that we've at least done a good job foundationally at the elementary school before we send them along um there's a lot of things i could have added to this to the school improvement plan but i feel really strongly that i want to be able to pick things that are important to williamstown elementary that i feel like will make a huge impact on everyone within the building so
056i'm hopeful that you know as we go into this new school year i'm hoping the year looks a lot more normal quote unquote but i also feel like the goals within the school improvement plan speak to the people who are in the building and speak to what we need as a community questions julia thank you cindy um that was uh also a great report um my question is i i'm not sure it's actually to um nolan cindy and andrea or if it's to jake um and and joelle and the team at the district level um when i look all the school improvement plans have a laudable goals important goals um and the activities and the activities have measurable outcomes which are indicators that that activity has happened which is fantastic but the connection between are
057those the right activities to achieve that goal which would be determined by a measurement for the goal itself feels like it is missing and that's that's not really about what cindy nolan and andrea have presented per se but i wonder how we as a district can support the measurement of the ultimate goal yeah julia i'm gonna i'm gonna leap in on this one and say you know we we have those same conversations um and then you know you all and i will have that conversation around the superintendent goals for the 2021 school year and the district goals um you know we are we are working um with uh with ben klompus later on this summer and doing some work on going through the year just trying to evolve to the point where really everything we're
058doing is is a aligned and and the gears are in meshing all of the gears are meshing together and b where not only the the activities that flesh out the goal are measurable but that the goal the large goal itself is measurable i don't think we're there but we are working to be there right and that's a that's a that's a great observation and and one that we discuss thank you carrie uh my question is also for jake um wondering going back to the remarks that charlie made at the beginning i'm wondering in the context of the pandemic whether there has been any discussion um amongst the superintendents and perhaps within the district as well with the principles about flipping the schedule um yeah personally that that feels to me like after after working on
059that as the superintendent of lee and then of pittsfield and now coming to mount greylock that feels like the third rail that um everybody everybody knows we should do it and very few district schools people have done it i don't there there's been no county-wide conversation about that uh i think with with with charlie's uh plea to us on his uh way on to to his next chapter um i i do think it is worth whether it's by the school council or or some other body it is worth taking a look at is there something we could do within our two communities that could make that work and make that possible so so no not conversation about that up to this point i as far as i know either here locally nor on a on
060a more regional basis but that is not to say that we could not um continue to to chip away at that because all of the science suggests it's the right thing to do it's a matter of having the the logistics and the plan catch up with what the research tells us is is better and healthier for kids and you know the the conclusions i have reached every time i've gone down this pathway which is several times is that the the simple flipping of the elementary in the middle and high school schedule does not tend to be an adequate solution for the community and the clients that we serve unless there are some other things put into that mix and some of those other things could be greater greater availability of free before school after school
061care um uh you know particularly for our elementary schools so i there are some ways to do this but but but we're not there at the cusp of of how to do it or being ready to do it okay any other questions before we move on to our next agenda item okay so next up on our agenda is the policy subcommittee update and i am going to turn this over to the chair of that subcommittee who is jose i think christina do we have the report on the tiered focus monitoring review yeah you know it's in the past am i working off a different um it's the next thing on the agenda yeah sorry i skipped over it my bad thank you and i and i'm happy to introduce this one and i apologize jose
062for for um pushing off your time a little bit but uh as all of you know we we did uh undergo a a tiered focus monitoring review this year which is a um i think if i were talking about this or or the equivalent of this 10 or 15 years ago earlier in my superintendent career um i would be using words like uh audit and like um jumping through hoops that that deci put in front of us speaking about it here in 2021 and uh and and i would say going back even four or five years uh i to me the department of elementary and secondary ed has really evolved and worked hard to become less a monitoring agency and more a genuine partner in helping districts understand what their strengths are where their challenges
063are and and then working to develop programs and systems for helping us address our weaknesses and our challenges and i i know that pat would agree that um the folks that happened to run um this this particular process this tfm this time around uh you know and i'll just name elena podmore from desi um we're we're were really wanting to help us understand ourselves so that we could better serve students and better serve families and so i would like to thank dussy for this opportunity and i say that with 100 genuineness and i also say with 100 genuineness thank you to to patrick priester uh our interim um director of people services this is a this was a big lift for um somebody that has been doing this job for three years or five years
064or eight years and for patrick to transition into this position um and to to help facilitate us through this is simply uh it was a wonderful piece of work patrick and so very publicly i say thank you to you and i would certainly be remiss not to thank susie gelati as well who is who is you know equally uh equally shares the credit for helping to get this organized helping to make sure everything ran smoothly making sure everything was ready for when desi uh came on site to look at this and then finally a thank you to the to the parents the teachers to the staff to the families who engaged with this process so that we could could learn more about ourselves about how to better serve our communities so um patrick with tremendous
065thanks and congratulations um hand over to you to to talk us through this a little bit if you would thank you jake and um thank you everyone for having me present our findings um can i share my screen okay all right can everybody see this all right um so as part of our tfm um let's go around we're in the group a universal standards and part of that deci looked at student identification our iep processes our individual education program development our programming and support services as well as people opportunities as part of our civil rights review the self-assessment phase consisted of our district reviewing special education civil rights documentation for required elements including uploading the documents to the portal we also reviewed sample special education student records and selected across grade levels disability categories and
066levels of need upon completion of those two internal reviews we submitted our self-assessment um to the department that was supposed to be due again last spring it didn't happen till the fall because of the closures but we got those in and the second phase of this was an on-site verification review so an on-site team came out and conducted a review using their standard department procedures and determine whether procedural and programmatic requirements are being met it included a review of student records for special education those records included ones that we submitted and ones they selected and some of those were surprises so it was good that they were able to look at those and let us know you know the ones we weren't able to prepare beforehand so and those came out pretty good too so
067um and included a survey of parents with this of students with disabilities um interviews of staff consistent with those criteria selected for the on-site verification as well as interviews of members our parental advisory council our pac representatives and other telephone interviews as requested by other parents parents and members of the general public some of the information that was reviewed uh is called they're called indicators indicators 11 12 and 13. i spent the better part of my first year in the district working on these and i'll gladly say that i had them submitted before we went out on closure and i'm glad we did that um indicator 11 looked at evaluation timelines so when we get requests for evaluations we have certain amount of timeline we got to get those out and get them processed indicator
06812 looks at our early childhood transition so the kids are turning three coming up from our early childhood programs in the in the um communities and referrals that come from them and then indicator 13 which is secondary transition so they look at transition for kids after high school or post graduation and it was a great pleasure to announce that mount greylock regional had no findings and no corrective actions that need to be taken regardless review per this review we are full compliance as our special education civil rights standards were determined to be fully implemented and in three years we'll be reviewed again for group b standards that include special education and it's more bantered civil rights for the group b procedure so that's pretty much my review does anyone have any questions regarding this process
069yeah julia so it's not it's not really a question but um i just wanted to maybe reiterate what jake said and therefore um underscore the uh gratitude uh to patrick and susie and all of the team because i know jake said it used to be more of an audit there still is a huge audit component to this where there's a lot of details to manage but not only that everything behind the details and the work has to be strong so i'm i'm just so um impressed patrick uh with these results and and appreciative of the work that you and your team are doing well thank you we really appreciate it and i'd love to reiterate um the special gratitude and thanks go out to suicidal body for all the help and support she's given me
070and my introduction in my first couple years in the district especially through a pandemic and through a tfm process and many other processes we had to go through this year so but thank you and with great gratitude we accept your uh your um your thank you anyone else okay i'm having just trouble getting my hand up oh steve yes so i just want to repeat what everyone said um i can't imagine how challenging it is this year you know all that's going on to begin with and just wanted to you know again express my you know appreciation for all the stuff that was being done i was wondering if you could help try to put what's going on in context of previous years to help you get a sense of where we might be next
071year i don't know if this is a fair question to ask now um in our previous reviews because i looked at that data the most recent one that looked at these standards we were found in full compliance with those two our district has the processes in place our staff are very our veteran staff so they know what to do and it's just the job of our office to make sure it really gets done um the timelines are met and we do everything that we need to do that's kind of what the tfm process comes and reiterates i'm just trying to get a sense of and again if this is not an appropriate question to ask now please just let me know are we seeing more cases than previous years are we seeing uh more you
072know students in trouble and just trying to get a sense of what that might mean for resources that we might need to allocate in future years you know so for example how many cases went to dusty for resolution this year how does that compare to last year the year before um i it's hard for me to say because i wasn't here for previous uh you know resolution cases uh the ones that we had were this past year were included in the tfm assessment they looked at that information and we were able to resolve many of those prs complaints okay and then you know one of the reasons i want to ask this question is just so that your people who are listening at home or people who are you know reading the write-ups for this
073meeting know how are the available services being communicated to members of the community how do parents know what to ask for and what services are available um we do that through the team process we meet with with individual you know families and talk about their student the services we can provide one of my long-term goals is to get that information out more public i just participate in leadership academy and one of my projects that i would like to do is to put our referral process on the website get that information out to the public also explain that we have an ongoing child study process which uh you know i think it was known that referred to as part of the mtss english institute in the school we do have these processes in place it's just
074we recently combined into one district so i'd like to standardize these across the three schools and make sure that we have common forms common language and common processes so but basically we do that through the team process right and yeah i've experienced you know similar communication issues in my job and just you know if somebody had a question what's the best contact that they should use and where should they start asking they can contact our office or the principal and the principal can usually refer a concern to us and we start that process there we also have the child study process in all three schools they do have a different name so i think in williamstown it's called the teacher assistance team in lanesboro it's the child study team and at the high school it's
075a student support team but basically they they function um pretty much the same if there's an issue a teacher will put in a referral the team will meet and discuss the needs or the concerns that the staff has regarding the student it's an ongoing process and from there we'll you know refer all either for special education or for other services that may be necessary for that student thanks and then just one last question uh just for the people at home is it too late if somebody is thinking about additional summer resources for their child for summer programs uh no they could reach out to our office and express those concerns we do have a process of identifying students for our esy or special ed programs that would run in the summer um this summer like
076we touched upon earlier is a little different because we are running a gen ed we're enrichment programs so it was finding that middle ground for some of our kids that are more inclusive which program would be would be more beneficial to them an enrichment program or our esy services and some students have a foot in both of those programs this summer some students are strictly there for esy services some students are there for the enrichment programs but we we they can reach out to us and let us know the concerns and we can discuss that any other questions for patrick sorry for skipping over you patrick this is the problem when your printer breaks and you're using your electronic devices instead of your nice handwritten i can follow along on the page well we've had
077to move over a lot of technical difficulties this year trust me so okay so now we're moving to the policy subcommittee update which jose will be leaving sorry jose no worries at all thanks christina thanks patrick and thanks thanks jake the policy subcommittee met on wednesday of last week and uh you can see on the agenda we've got five items that um we will be discussing uh first we're being asked to vote on an amendment to the face coverings policy we have three first reads that we'll go through with uh the full committee and um and we'll be looking for for feedback from the full committee and then finally we have a recommendation as a as a subcommittee for a uh a future retrieve um that we would like to propose to everyone so on
078the uh first policy subcommittee agenda item what i'd like to ask is for joe to um give us an update on the proposed amended language that we see in our packet for face coverings if that's okay john sure absolutely so uh you all have the proposed face coverings policy in your packet it is mostly identical to what you reviewed a couple of weeks ago although a couple of weeks within deci's time right now for updating its mask guidance is uh is perhaps a week or two too long so desi has since we last met updated its guidance again specifically around adults um it's updated guidance reads effective may 29 2021 fully vaccinated educators do not have to wear masks when outdoors and unvaccinated educators are encouraged to wear masks when outdoors in alignment with the
079state masking advisory that updated guidance led to us discussing whether or not it was prudent for us to attempt to ask for an update from you as a school committee on the face covering policy around the treatment of adults within this policy and so if you scroll down to what is the third page of the pdf the bullet that reads for that starts with four adults the updated language that we're proposing reads for adults fully vaccinated adults are not required to wear masks outdoors unvaccinated adults are encouraged to wear masks outdoors if appropriate distancing of six feet cannot be maintained so this is trying to align with the state's guidance while more fully detailing what what distancing is so we used our standard distancing language there so that's part one of the change since you
080last read this the other part is down at the base of the policy and we've seen other districts utilize language like this and i realize that we only have a few more weeks that this is really impactful for us but but we do have the summer coming up where our policies are still in effect and we will have students and staff working together all summer or for much of the summer we are proposing that you accept language that reads instead of this policy will remain in place until rescinded by the school committee we're suggesting language that reads the superintendent has the authority to amend this policy following massachusetts state guidance guidance from the department of health deci or other governing authorities the superintendent shall notify the school committee of such amendments that are made under
081such authority so those are the two modifications that we're proposing since you last read it and tentatively authorized it a couple of weeks ago was that everything that you needed jose yeah thanks joe any questions for for joe should we um make a motion to approve the policy so then we can further our discussion yeah thanks christina that uh yes do i have a motion to approve the uh suggested amendments to the policy proposal and uh do i have a second a second if these were brought forth by the subcommittee do we need to go through this they they were that's a great question steve the the subcommittee did not have an opportunity to review these amendments and so we we never passed a motion to forward this to this to the full committee any
082questions for joe or or points for discussion that folks would like to raise christina um i mean carrie sorry so my question is for um well jake schutz isn't here but given that graduation is coming up um if we pass this tonight is that going to alter the protocols for graduation or other senior week activities uh carrie jake and i had this conversation and of course as soon as we you know get this guidance from dusty we immediately uh make sure jake and colin have it um this this it doesn't substantively change what what their plans are or how graduation is going to work it it it does hypothetically allow for a little bit more um you know i i suspect that we will see few to no face masks as graduation is you know
083face coverings as graduation is outside and it just gives a little more flexibility to um really everybody that is that is on grounds for athletic events which hypothetically can run through july 3rd uh and for events like graduation for events like the crossover slash graduation ceremonies that are outdoors at williamstown elementary in lanesboro elementary but it doesn't substantively change how things will actually work so it doesn't mean that more people can attend for instance um i don't know that there is a limit for the high school graduation um i will have that conversation with uh both of the elementary principles prior to their end of year exercises for their sixth grade uh just to make sure that the spaces that they're using and the plans that they have um you know we we really need
084to and you understand this better than most i think we you know you you can't completely upend the plans that have been being developed for weeks and weeks but i will i will do a little deeper dive with the elementary folks but the the high school i don't think there's really any substantive change any other questions or points that anyone would like to raise if not i believe uh we can we're ready for a roll call vote in alphabetical order to approve the amendments to the face covering's policy bowen i connery i constantine i elephant by an eye green hello so i believe the i believe the um amendments have uh have been passed as presented to us or at least been approved by the by the full committee good job jose thank you christina
085thank you so much i i i always often look at uh in carrie's direction because i i worry that i test her patience when i do this job she looks but that's true um all right so uh i'm looking at curtis here so curtis i didn't know how this process works so i will just uh just lay it out for you and i this will be helpful for me to reiterate this but um the policy subcommittee will be presenting three first reads to policy amendments that the subcommittee is considering we will be looking for feedback from the full committee and we will be taking that fee back into consideration in a uh for a following subcommittee meeting where we will um consider those uh uh well at least uh consider amendments or or prepare ourselves
086to present um amendments to the full committee for for vote did i get that right carrie this is where i look to you karen to make sure i got the language right yeah that's right it also gives the public an opportunity to review the changes and present feedback to the administration or the school committee prior to a vote on the final policy thanks kerry and thanks julia who i also probably test julia's patience too but um on that note i i did joke that i was going to ask julia or carrie to to read the longest of these policy amendments but i i'm gonna i'm gonna do that for us so the first on our agenda is the uh policy bedb agenda format first read uh and what i'd like to do is and i
087think what's required of us is to fully read out the agenda format policy in this case um and then open it up for discussion is that correct i believe so well on that note i don't know if it's worthwhile for me to share my screen would that be helpful you think sure okay i can help you do that thank you christina okay i think we all can see um the policy amendments in the in the the policy as as we're about to read the bedb agenda format the superintendent conferring with the chair of the school committee will arrange the order of items on meetings agendas so that the committee can accomplish its business as expeditiously as possible the particular order may vary from meeting to meeting in keeping with the business at hand the committee
088will follow the order of business established by the agenda except as it votes to rearrange the order for the convenience of visitors individuals appearing before the committee or to expedite committee business items of business not on the agenda may not be discussed any school committee member staff member or citizen may suggest items of business a school committee member may submit their request to the chair of the committee the inclusion of such items however will be at the discretion of the chair of the committee alternatively a school committee member may utilize a standing agenda request agenda item during a meeting to request an agenda item for a future meeting a staff member who wishes to have a topic scheduled on the agenda should submit the request to the superintendent a citizen who wishes to have a
089topic scheduled on the agenda should submit the request through the chair of this of the committee the inclusion of items suggested by a staff member or citizen are also at the discretion of the chair of the committee all agendas will include clear indications of all items that will be discussed and note if an item will receive a vote regular meeting agendas of the full school committee will include public comment and other items for discussion not reasonably anticipated by the chair 48 hours before the meeting item note this item shall not be used for action items or topics that may be controversial or particular interest to the public the attorney general strongly encourages public bodies to postpone such discussions to the next scheduled meeting agenda an agenda requests ida the agenda together with supporting materials will
090be distributed to school committee members no less than 48 hours prior to the meeting to permit adequate time to prepare for the meeting i'll stop my share because i believe we all have this within our packet and uh and i and i the the policy subcommittee would welcome feedback from our fellow school committee members anyone have questions yes steve i like the idea of having a lot of items as just standard default on the agendas this protects us especially in the cobalt era when things can happen quickly and i like the explanation that the 48 hours is supposed to be used truly for things that arise with little water it is not meant to circumvent your deliberative process it's not meant to uh avoid having the discussions we should be having in public so i
091think these are really good additions and i strongly support them um i like the ability to discuss agenda requests for future meetings it's can you talk a little bit more about how that would work because you can't tell people in advance what you're going to want to discuss and so before the request yeah that's that's a great question stephen and my uh fellow subcommittee members can can certainly fill in but um if i understand your question correctly i think it's regarding the the statement where alternatively a school committee member may utilize a standing agenda request agenda item is that is that the line that you are right if you want i i can tell you how i'm interpreting it i'm interpreting it as there's a standard item on all agendas for future meetings for agenda
092requests where someone can just bring up i would like at the next school committee meeting for us to discuss uh whether or not we should serve purple punch at lunch you know something like that and you can't go into the merits as to why you think the punch should only be purple but just this is something i would like to discuss right so i i that's a great a a great question uh again i'll all my my fellow subcommittee members um can can fill in and incorrect if i get this get this wrong but i believe this this line that we have um i'm sorry am i interrupting someone i hope this apologies uh this line that we have here um was uh in response well an attempt to address a hypothetical scenario where a
093school committee member asks of the chair to have an item placed on the agenda for a you know for for an upcoming school committee meeting hypothetically if the chair uh doesn't grant that request this gives a school committee member a chance to make that request in front of the full committee the full committee then can consider that request can vote on that request and if the full committee agrees that that should become an agenda item then that agenda will appear as an item on the following or a following school committee meeting if that makes sense so we wouldn't do it i that went a little further than what the policy says there's no vote right so there's no vote on an agenda a cred request at least as the policy states now the agenda is
094still within the full control of the chair but there can be discussion by the committee as to the merits of an agenda request that can then be heard um you know by the committee so you're not discussing the item you're discussing the merits of requesting the item for a future agenda okay and then uh so stephen some maybe the question i have for for for you is is you know in this in this hypothetical scenario does that you know well what what's your response to to hearing carries uh and to hearing you know what's literally written on the page right now in terms of in terms of this this policy amendment so i mean the way i look at it is you know we're all in this together we're all working to try to make
095the district as strong as possible and i trust my fellow committee members the cheer is the servant of the committee i trust that if there is a public discussion and there is strong support for a agenda item i would trust that the chair would add it and i don't think we need to necessarily have your formal vote what i greatly prefer to do is rather than put in a structure with detailed restrictions on what has to be done let's just try something see if it works and if it works that's wonderful and then there's no need to be more formal and i think if we just have a discussion and you can see that two or three committee members feel strongly that something is worth discussing then i would you know trust that whoever's chair
096would take that strongly under advisement in setting the agenda and i'm happy to leave it like that um i was wondering in a related hi steven let me just interrupt you just i just want to make sure i uh um i think what i heard you say and i just wanted to make sure this this is what you were you were communicating is that the line as you've read it and as carrie um explained it and corrected my my misinterpretation of it um you're happy with that line as it reads right now right is that right now we're not having any formal votes to add anything to the agenda we're just having a discussion and you know whoever happens to be cheer your if you have you know four people three people who strongly support
097something you know i'm happy to trust that the chair would add it if it turns out that we're in a situation where you know five people are consistently requesting something and it's not added then you revisit the policy but i don't think there's any need to put in a real formal structure like that now i think a discussion is fine there was something else i was going to add um maybe as commentary to this so that there's no surprises uh if there's going to be an agenda request should the person who's requesting it submitted to the chair 48 hours in advance so that other committee members know what's coming i'd i'd love to hear from from uh carrie and julia uh in terms of their response to this question if they still wish to pursue
098that wasn't something that we talked about i i actually brought this up in a broader context as well that um other committees that i've served on you know previous iterations of school committees there has been a standing item which is for a gender request and it's often used if something comes up during the meeting and it seems like it would be good for a more lengthy discussion at a future time you can make an agenda request at the end of the meeting and that's usually where i've seen a gender request um happen right so at the end of the meeting you can say you know is it would it be possible for us to go back to you know this topic that we talked about briefly um at a future meeting you know preferably in
099the near future or could be six months out you know so it's a way to keep track of things that are worthy of conversation um but maybe not just in that moment so that's another way to think about this item so in that sense no you wouldn't have it in advance but in the other sense where uh the the way it's spelled out if if you're using it as an alternative to a perhaps a failed request by an email then no you wouldn't necess i mean you could submit it in advance as part of an agenda item or how would you do that um you can't deliberate it but you could let people know i think we should have a discussion in a future meeting on topic x and in this way when people go
100to the meeting they could have spent a little time thinking do i believe that this is an item the school committee should be discussing you're just trying to minimize surprises and again there's a difference right yeah to be done and what's a good policy i think if you right i suppose if you submit it sorry i'm just sort of thinking out loud you could submit it to the secretary of the district right and for inclusion in the packet right you know for that specific agenda item right but then you're submitting it after well yeah i don't know it's worth discussing that's a really interesting point yeah i was going to say stephen i think that's a oh sorry julia go ahead all right my i think it's an interesting point and i don't i i
101almost want to go back to what you said um steven earlier like let's let's assume it's not an issue and if it becomes an issue then try to address it oh sorry i i wasn't saying to put that language and i'm just saying almost like the federalist papers the commentary yeah would it be useful if somebody knows that they're going to be making a request to submit it beforehand again we try to operate under the no surprises because we can't discuss the merits of the request we can only discuss if we want to discuss i think this is this will be great for us to this the policy subcommittee to to to explore in some detail you know i think my initial reaction i could see that being being just fine as well as the
102the surprise report agenda request items you know for for when someone you know um hasn't one one possibility is that you know if if a member requests of the chair that they want all water coming out of the water fountains to be bubble gum flavored and they want this discussed at the meeting and the chair says no that's not relevant to the work of the school committee and that member could then say well i would like to submit this as a an agenda request for discussion under that item right and then would the chair be obligated to include it as an agenda request i don't think the chair is obligated if it's not in the packet that member can still bring it up right um but but that would be one way to do it
103right and stephen in your reading of the policy amendments as they as they've been presented to you do you would you like to see um some language that clarifies this possibility or this yeah for committee members to submit an agenda request item is that something that you'd like to see in this i i guess i'd like to see that almost as a commentary not as part of the formal language is that you know i think i can i think we can all trust each other not to abuse this and just some general guidelines as to what was the intent when we created this and that's one of the reasons why i wanted to discuss this right now because it's often hard years later to remember now why was this done uh when no one is
104on the committee who was on when that was originally done when i was in grad school it turns out that we had a parking fee to pay for paving that happened in the 1960s which was supposed to have been stopped as soon as that was paid off which just somebody found this by going through the old minutes thanks steven any other comments i'm sorry stephen do you have others sorry yeah i had i had one other comment going back to an older policy of the school committee that i have brought up in the past it's extremely difficult and for good reason to discuss things outside of school committee meetings because of open meeting law requests you know if you're on a subcommittee of three you can't talk to anyone uh for a committee of seven
105if you talk to three people that's the max and you can't have any email chains going more so if you look at the policy we used to have you used to be able to have it an item added to the agenda if two school committee members supported it and it used to be the policy of the committee before regionalization where that was done and i was wondering if the policy committee looked at restoring that so we did talk about that and we were trying to remember why it was removed and as i recall it was on the advice of the person from the masc that we were working with in our policy review because of the risk of the violation of the open meeting law which you just talked about right so if two members
106if if a member wants an item on the agenda and they go to one other member and that member says no and then they go to another member and that member says yes but then that member talks to the second member you've already violated the open meeting law because you have a serial communication so the deliberation outside of the meeting um the risk of deliberation outside of the meeting was the reason that it was removed and we talked about it um in the policy subcommittee and thought that that was still a reasonable um that was still a good reason to keep it out of the agenda um i can see that argument but we're warned so many times about being careful about not talking to too many people i think it's reasonable to consider restoring
107this and you know again this is not something that i think would be used that often it actually drives home that this should only be used for an issue of such overwhelming importance that when you basically take your one shot you find somebody who's sympathetic and you will go to the person you think is most likely to support and if you can't find someone like that you know then that's it because as you said you know the open meeting law you can't talk to someone else so the advantage of having something like that is if you do have something that's time sensitive you know right now with the agenda request if the chair says no you can only have this discussed at the next meeting as a agenda of request item and then discussed in
108full detail at the next meeting which could be over a month later and that's why i'm saying i think it's worth restoring this in my time on all the committees i think there's only been two agenda requests that i know of that have been denied so it's it's not a huge number of items and i would like to believe if there's some item that two school committee members believe is important and worth discussing in a timely manner that we give them the benefit of the doubt and if we find that this is happening too often and our meetings are getting cluttered by too much discussion on what should the water taste and what should the water look like then we go back and we remove this but i would you know put this in with
109the expectation that it's not going to be used that often stephen i think i think we'll certainly consider it when we deliberate on this on this policy um as a subcommittee jose look like christina wanted sorry christina thank you thank you carrie oh no that's okay i just i do i i do have some concerns about the serial impact of reaching out to a committee member and saying do you support this and if they say no and then you go to somebody else and then just by you can you can accidentally create an open meeting law violation very easily and that's the only thing i'm worried about we as we as we've all seen the school committee changes over we have four-year terms but people can't always make that four-year commitment and then you end
110up with a younger committee who may not even have gone through the programs that we need to go through because we're given a six-month period in which you learn about open meeting law violations and all those other things and it it's very easy to accidentally create that serial conversation and be in violation so that would be my only reason why not to implement that particular um uh you know rule or amendment thanks christina stephen i i definitely see that point and i see that concern but you know again i i think we can trust all of the members here you know you know we really hammer home the point you cannot engage in any type of correspondence that reaches four this goes for all the issues that face the committee you know when we're discussing
111things that are going on you know we can reach out to very carefully people but we have to make sure that it doesn't get up to four i think it's it's not just the four if you're within three but you've had if you've connected the triangle that's a serial communication even amongst three people if a talks to b and b talks to c you're in a serial communication which is a violation of the open meeting law even if you are in the minority of you know if you haven't reached a quorum so i think it's a different definition of a violation of an open being law we can go and i think jose let's double check that but that was the impression that i got from the masc when we talked about this last time
112yeah so stephen i just just have a question for you just just well sorry please make your point but i just had a question okay so i i think i have a simple solution when we if we decide to you know go with language like this to say that two school committee members can request an agenda item just explicitly state that if you are going to reveal yourself of this opportunity you can only reach out to one school committee member and if that person says no then you agree not to push it so you can ask the chair and if the chair denies you can then ask one person and one person only okay um the question i have for stephen is just just thinking hypothetically that and imagining a scenario where the the policy
113subcommittee um is very sensitive to the the danger of violating open meeting laws by just just imagining by by adopting language that would allow this in the poll in the amendments that you see before you do you see this as an improvement that would one improvement to allowing school committee members to to see agenda items appear on the agenda that may have had difficulty in in in getting items on the agenda i think i think i think i got my question out but do you see this as an improvement it's uh it's absolutely an improvement and it also helps the public because the public oh can that can the public use the agenda request as well in the public comments or later this is only for school committee members because the public can only comment
114on items on the school committee agenda and so i i think that's that's an issue for a later day um i i definitely think that this is an improvement and you know again i i don't expect that these things are going to be used that often i think for the most part you know if your people are concerned about something you should be able to make a good argument we should be considerate and listen to each other and if somebody feels that this is truly worth studying and debating be willing to give each other the benefit of the doubt and say okay i trust you i i know you won't bring forward something like this frivolously you know as much as we love spending all of our time you're in these meetings you know this
115is why i seconded your motion at the last meeting yeah well that's i think it's really useful feedback stephen and i think i'm i'm sure the subcommittee um appreciates it any any other feedback or comments or questions regarding the uh amendment to the agenda format policy amendments i should say to the agenda format policy okay thank you all we will move on i do believe to be to the next item which is a first read of amendments to the minutes policy and i will share my screen and ask my wonderful colleagues one of my wonderful colleagues if they wouldn't mind reading uh the amendments or the the the providing the first read of the the minutes policy as we have in our packet i'd be happy to oh curtis thank you i don't i don't
116see any reason i'd love to hear your your voice all right let me let me share my screen uh in its entirety uh in its entirety thank you uh sample policy suggested additions changes are in red file bedg minutes the meeting minutes of the school committee and subcommittees constitute the written record of subcommittee actions they are legal evidence of what the action was therefore the secretary of the subcommittee will be responsible for reporting in the minutes all actions taken by the subcommittee the minute shall contain what is done and not what is said they shall be written in the third person using a template provided by the district office and will include one a statement on the nature of the meeting regular or special the time the place and the approval of the last regular
117and each subsequent special meeting two names of the members present or absent annotated as to arrival and departure times if during the meeting three a complete record of official actions taken by the subcommittee relative to the superintendent's recommendations to communications and all business transacted resolutions and motions will be given in their exact wording accompanied by the names of members moving and seconding and a record of the results of the vote reports and documents relating to a formal motion may be omitted if they are referred to and identified by title and date 4 notation of formal adjournment copies of the minutes will be sent to all subcommittee members at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting at which the minutes are to be approved the approved minutes will become permanent records of the subcommittee minutes
118of public meetings and minutes of executive sessions that have been declassified will be in the custody of the superintendent who will make them available to interested citizens upon request and then there are some legal references mgl uh 30a colon 22 and 66 colon 10 and cross-referenced kdb public's right to know thank you this has been npr you know i i might pay pay to hear your voice i can see i can see some sort of audible subscription that'll be five cents thank you curtis uh any uh questions or points for uh feedback or or any any um anything that you'd like to report back to the subcommittee regarding uh the suggested amendments to the minutes policy steve so i think this is another example where the onrush of technology changes what we do and how
119we should be doing it for instance we are recording the minutes i'm sorry recording the meeting right now so if anybody wants to find out what was done you can watch the video and if you want to know what was said you can actually go to youtube you can open up the transcript and you can search for keywords so a lot of the need to have you know full records i actually prefer to have the written your full transcript rather than watching the video because i can scan for certain parts but you know given that we have the videos available the need for detailed minutes is much less and you know from a selfish point of view somebody who's been typing up a lot of stuff i would be very happy to minimize this the
120difference i see is the committee versus the subcommittee is that we don't record a lot of the subcommittee meetings for instance we've had a lot of conversations on the fields over the years and it has been very valuable to have extremely detailed minutes for those in terms of what was discussed because we don't have those videos available would there be a willingness to record subcommittee meetings and archive those as well that's a that's a good question and something that uh i think might be above my pay grade or the pay rate of this of this subcommittee um and uh um i think we i think i asked this question very early on maybe at our very first subcommittee meeting um and it was was i'm not sure how how well discussed it was but carrie
121do you have a uh response to that stephen's question so yeah i think um with zoom with the meetings being virtual it doesn't cost anything and it's really just a matter of pushing a button and then uploading it to youtube and putting it on the district site when we go back to being in person there's a dollar figure attached to it and that's the reason we don't record subcommittee meetings because we have to pay a camera person to be present so i believe um that's the issue yes steven but i i think we could still record them even if we were in person uh just having a computer on and just having it recording i mean i i think it would be a worthwhile experiment to try and to just see how this is a
122good question and i i don't know where in the school committee policy guideline where this might sit i'm going to look to joe and joe might know where some some mention of policies mention of the public's ability to record a meeting but they need to indicate that they are doing it and it needs to be noted by the chair so that everybody is aware um that that is a part of a policy i would need to dig it up but i i think what what kerry had indicated around traditionally when we're in person subcommittee meetings are often held in smaller rooms rooms that can be found around the building as opposed to the main meeting room with the camera setup so the i think we'd be at risk of having subpar recordings where perhaps then
123allegations would fly around well i couldn't hear someone on the microphone the whole time um or something to that effect which which would be another issue um so i there would be a lot to think about that's all i'm saying and again i'm not saying you need to think through it very very clearly in detail right i'm not saying that this should replace the minutes i'm just saying could this supplement yeah and uh and and just uh we're just gonna make this this point i think um and just to recognize that i see carries carrie's hand the i think this could be something that the policy subcommittee could consider as a separate you know agenda item for us about the policy regarding you know recording of of meetings committee and subcommittee meetings um but then
124going back to to this document which are the amendments to the minutes policy i think you're another way of phrasing your question stephen is that without a recording of the sub committee meeting is there a worry that you're you're articulating about the public's ability to discern what was actually discussed at a subcommittee meeting is that without a detailed transcript is that the concern that you're raising right and you for instance for the fields there's been a lot of discussion back and forth on what has the subcommittee investigated over the years and it's very useful to have a detailed discussion where we actually talked about all the things we looked at what were the pros but with the cons and i'm just worried that if you have just a real bullet line some of it that
125you lose a lot of the conversation okay and carrie sorry carrie i wanted to ask that if stephen but uh you had a question or a comment i was actually just gonna ask you know it looks to me like the the um [Music] few lines in red above the numbered points the minute shall contain what is done and not what is said they shall be written in third person using a template provided by the district office that appears to be separate from the fact of whether the meeting is being recorded or not right and not reliant on it so my question is where did that language come from and if it's recommended from the state um what is the rationale i think joe you can oh sorry julia i think jake was actually gonna say
126something oh okay yeah i i believe that language is is actually from the masc the the school committees association that uh you know particularly in the day and age of of meetings being uh televised in most communities that uh you know the purpose of the minutes is to record votes um and then you know things that were that were voted on and thus done or not done um to to steve's point about the fields which was you know many conversations and long conversations and detailed conversations uh it it is certainly appropriate to include presentation that were given to document you know what what in the fields for instance what was looked at what was not looked at what were alternatives um but carrie an answer to your question that really comes from the masc and
127and i think it's it's its motive is is to make the minutes um usable and useful so that so that they're doing what they're really designed to do which is document what was actually done by the governing body thanks jake julia um so i didn't know it also came from masc but i'm pretty sure this is what the attorney general um advises and to go um this is this almost echoes the cons not concerned but the the question i raised earlier in the meeting around the minutes um it there is a possibility of the note taker um you know taking notes in a way that gives greater emphasis to one conversation than another if you try to record all the comments um and so keeping it streamlined and simple is the most um clear and
128unbiased way um in my mind this this kind of policy i take steve's point to heart that the subcommittee for the fields you know as a new committee member who had to vote on that within weeks of joining and i was desperately trying to read anything i could um it was very difficult to find all the materials despite joe's herculean efforts to organize everything and stacy's herculean effort to organize everything online and so i do think there's a i wonder if it's a policy or a you know i don't know where we put it but um making sure that the supporting documents for meetings are thorough and clear um and so or maybe there it's not just high-level memos but there are sorry high-level presentations on powerpoint or in slides but there are like memos
129that explain logic um because that that would also um be able to be read at a later date and just sorry yeah sorry steven i see i see your hand and joe but joe had his hand up uh as well but julie just want to make sure um i'm not sure if this is something that we would articulate in this policy framing but it sounds like we there's almost a request that supporting documents be be detailed and informative you know almost reading as miranda is that is that something that i mean it's hard because i would say if it's going to be a controversial issue but you never know something's controversial until it becomes controversial so um i you know i i don't i don't know but i i guess i take to heart steve's
130point and i wonder what we can learn from that and how we can think about it differently um without actually changing um minutes being very straightforward and simple okay yeah i think julia joe the edger and uh uh i was just gonna say i'd point out that i think good minutes actually take more time than typing a transcript unfortunately because that attempting to boil down and summarize and make sure that all points are recorded um in a way that allows someone to understand what happened that that takes a lot of effort and i think that's just one of the core challenges for all committees um so just trying to create the standardized template and attempting to standardize the the rails that people need to to run on i think that's probably the most that this
131committee can hope for right now with respect to minutes at least so one second uh stephen so i i love the idea of a standardized template and you know i love the idea of you know answering the question you know what is the purpose of the minutes what are we trying to do if it's just to do a quick summary of what was done then you know that's great when i take the minute i try to record what everyone said so that i'm not playing any games of emphasizing one point over the other i'm recording everything so everything is there what worries me is especially for subcommittees if we meet at a time that's not conducive for members of the public to really come and you know and attend you know especially if we start
132going in person and that's why i'm wondering you know is it possible to consider recording just all subcommittee meetings i mean you could even do the ridiculousness of having a zoom meeting with everybody in the same room and i just think it might be worth considering something like that and just investigating and again i'm happy to you know help investigate i know some people i can talk to of just having you know recordings available of all subcommittees so that if somebody really wants to go back from the public and find out what happened it's there yeah thanks steven i've got i think the question i have is regarding the masc guide guidance for for minutes meeting minutes as you hear my three in the background is whether this guidance was written with the knowledge that
133full committee meetings are are being recorded and they're thus you know represent archives of of the details of of of you know what happened in a meeting or or not i think i would i don't know if we know the answer to that question right because to me it's very different if there's a video recording of the meeting that you can go back to versus this is the only record you have of what was discussed it could be i think that the oh sarcastina um i'm i'm wondering if this particular conversation around recording meetings would be a valuable tidbit to take out and put into the retreat where we start looking at practices and protocols because i think it's more of a practices and protocol and it's something that we would probably have to talk
134to our technology director about what what we have that we're capable of using in order to um record subcommittees and if if there's any issues behind that um so it might be worthwhile tabling this conversation for those for a retreat setting and focusing on the format of the minutes themselves yeah that's thank you christine i think it's a great idea so i think um certainly the the feedback that we've gotten and may continue to get on uh these this politics policy amendments will be considered by the subcommittee um and uh and we will certainly be reporting back to the full committee the the details of that discussion any other uh discussion or or points of feedback for the amendments that you see for the minutes policy right we are moving on then to the first
135reading of amendments to the use of electronic messaging by school committee members um would you like me to read that jose thank you julia let me get that up and share my screen no curtis and there will be no podcast of school committee policies in the near future but i will do my best okay so suggested additions and changes are in red this is the bhe uh use of electronic messaging by school committee members as elected public officials school committee members shall exercise caution when communicating between and among themselves the electronic messaging services including but not limited to electronic mail email text messages social media postings internet web forums and internet chat rooms under the open meeting law deliberation by a quorum of members constitutes a meeting deliberation is defined as movement toward a decision
136including but not limited to the sharing of an opinion regarding business over which the committee has supervision control or jurisdiction a quorum may be arrived at sequentially using electronic messaging without knowledge and intent by the author school committee members should use electronic messaging between and among members only for housekeeping purposes such as requesting or communicating agenda items meeting times or meeting dates electronic messaging should not be used to discuss committee matters that require public discussion under the open meeting law under the public records law electronic messages between public officials may be considered public records therefore in order to ensure compliance the district office manager should be copied on all electronic mail correspondence between and among members of the school committee the district shall also provide district email addresses which are archived and must be used
137for all school committee business and correspondence school committee members who do not have a computer or access to these messages shall be provided copies on a timely basis and there are some legal references at the bottom thank you julia i what i'd like to do is ask uh jake for uh to speak about some of the the language that we see in terms of amendments vitamin j sure you know the language that is that is seen and the amendments to this policy is simply to um for the most part it codifies one single position in the district for inclusion on a cc in communications it doesn't name an individual it names a a position that will outlast the individual's time here we do currently provide email addresses district email addresses to school committee members and
138certainly as the policy states would be happy to provide things in writing and or there are school committees in the commonwealth that provide chromebooks or other types of laptops for folks if they're unable to provide that for themselves just you know for the sake of clarity we do follow federal and state regulations in terms of archiving all of our emails which are public documents for seven years so to some degree this is a redundancy but we think if there's a a place to have a redundancy it's certainly appropriate to do so in governing body communications uh among each other or between uh the governing body and and the superintendent or the business school business official or any other uh member of the school staff so that's really where this this um this really just the
139the heart of this is and it identifies an individual position that is to be cc'd on correspondence so so that we have a and and i hate to use this word but so that we have a an easy record of of communications uh among in between the administration and or the governing body thanks jake um feedback and points of discussion stephen so i'm just trying to understand uh what is being said here should this be just between school committee members or school community members and the superintendent my interpretation would certainly be you know your public officials who are elected i'm a public official who is appointed by the the elected public officials so so my interpretation would be between the school committee or among school committee members but also between the superintendent and uh school
140committee members right i was wondering if that should be added because it says right now just between and among members of school committee that's that's a great point stephen thank you for bringing that out pointing out that good point yeah because we should not be talking to anybody directly uh who works for the district we should always talk to you first we should not be emailing the principles directly we should not be emailing that's correct and then the other thing is i'm not quite sure if this is appropriate for me to ask but on our home page it lists you know who's on the school committee and it says your school committee app mgrhs.org to email all of us could we have the individual school committee member email addresses placed there as well yes thanks
141yes i think they are there but you have to click on them um i i'm there right now and the individual people are not listed or at least known on the page i'm on if you click on their names it doesn't pull up there huh no no i think the shot is disabled if you go to the contact us page is it there um we'll check and see i mean again this is something that doesn't need to be discussed at the full commitment but i think your point is that it should be that that information should be more easily available figure that out and get that get that on there i can email you and copy stacy there you go as a reminder thank you any other points of feedback or or anything that folks
142want to discuss about these amendments to this policy okay if not then we are at the very final item on the policy subcommittee update agenda um and that is regarding member ethics protocols um update discussion uh i will do my best to summarize this and i will ask my uh wonderful subcommittee members to please fill in but the uh motivation or what we are what we'd like to recommend to the full committee is that the full committee commit to a retreat in the in the future uh as an opportunity to review and examine school committee ethics and protocols this retreat would also give an opportunity to our committee members to evaluate and reflect on basically any element regarding our existing ethics and protocols we see this as being something that the full committee would would
143do periodically it could be annually we you know i think this is something for the full committee to decide uh this is something that we recommend or um are certainly offering as um well yeah carrie did you know philly or julia my subcommittee members but that's something that we would like to recommend to the full committee and to our committee chair i actually will just add that the school committee protocols i think were last reviewed in 2019 and it's good to review them annually and have each committee member sign off on them and to adopt them as a committee they're not in the packet um unfortunately but everyone should have received them as part of your part of the many documents you receive when you join the school committee from from stacy and um i
144think the i'm just gonna say that the how much time we want to spend on reviewing the protocols and changing the protocols um is is a point of conversation um i think the last time these were developed um a fair amount of time was taken and looking at other uh what other school committees were doing at the time and masc keeps a lot of protocols you know from various school committees um on the record and they have them handy and you can you can always request them so a good place to start would be simply reviewing the ones that we have and seeing you know what are we missing but we also talked about um for the retreat maybe um looking at you know kind of how are we doing right with these um so
145how how do we evaluate ourselves or assess our how we're doing as a group and as ourselves as individuals as an exercise that we might do prior to the retreat and a way to come up come into the discussion um having thought about it just a little bit and i'm julian and i might just add um i think implicit in our conversation maybe not explicit was um an idea that i may not realize i'm violating one of these ethics or policies um there are four of us who are new on the committee who we may be even more likely to you know violate these policies um and not because we try to violate a policy but because we're trying to figure things out but i feel like there's a part of this that's how do
146we also support each other in ensuring we are each like how do we give each other feedback on that in a in a respectful way so that we can um ensure that we're all you know playing you know using the same guidelines um effectively so yeah any any comments or feedback on this uh proposal for a a retreat ethics and and protocols retreat yes could i just add to it before taking questions that the other thing that we talked about doing during this retreat was using as the time to set goals for the school committee um so we had it in the ethics policy the protocols and goal setting and then the other thing that we need to do as a committee is to talk about the superintendent evaluation process but that seemed to be
147a separate topic and not really one that was wrapped into these particular conversations so we thought maybe that would be a different um a different workshop and i do have that under as a quick discussion under our upcoming meetings because um depending on where this conversation goes we could um maybe try to talk about calendars when we get to that point if we want to try to um i think a retreat is and i'm sorry to interrupt you steve but since i already started you're both saying things i was going to say so um i think a retreat is a really nice way to um have a more informal discussion um about how we're doing as a group and i think it's a great idea and i know you know as things have you know
148things have gotten thrown at us and um you know all of the unexpected things that have happened we get out of the habit of things so it's nice to even have written somewhere that we should review um our ethics and our protocols once a year you know maybe it's in maybe it's in november right after or in december right after we have an election or whatever the case may be but it might be nice to start plugging that into our master calendar so that we keep that um in view and it gets carried from year to year it doesn't get lost when we have sort of these moments of crisis which you know we don't ever expect a moment of crisis but they happen and this would be a nice way to you know get
149get those protocols and procedures down in some way and be able to track them so i think it's a great idea thanks christina stephen did you did you want to raise your point for her i mean one of the things i was going to say is that if we're going to have a retreat i think there's several things we should discuss uh were you envisioning that this is a in-person retreat uh that's a great we we had not uh considered the format of the retreat i think um you know certainly something that i think our chair and i'm not sure how that how that conversation plays out but i don't think that was something that we we had discussed or decided upon i would just like to put in a pitch for an in-person retreat
150if we're going to do it the governor's order is lifted on june 15th and while there's legislation pending um i think it only gets us through september for now so i think it was actually extended to 2022 but it's still i don't know that yeah because they're trying to essentially what it sounds like they're trying to play out is across the state and i've heard this in a lot of the masc meetings that i've been to so many people are participating in school committee meetings and other and other governance boards that they're really trying to trying to figure out if remote meeting is an effective way to disseminate more information to more people so they're they're talking about extending it even further than that i think the last order jake might notice april april 2022
151the date i don't i don't recall but i i know there's several people on this call right now who have taught students simultaneously remote and in person and so it might be worth having a retreat where there is still you know a zoom component for people to come in but i i think something is lost in all the zoom meetings where we don't get to interact with each other in the same way if this had been pre-coded when we were talking about technology i would just strain a little bit like this to look at rob in the back and he would give me a thumbs up and let me know exactly what he's able to do and you know that's something that we're not getting in the zoom meetings and i think it would be
152really good for us as a community you know to come together not all the time you know but you're every now and then to have one of these in person meetings especially for topics like this yeah i think we'll have to look at like availability right because sometimes it's really hard for lanesboro folks to get to williamstown and if we were to have it in lanesboro you know there's a considerable time um thing that we have we can consider there but definitely worth um talking about in terms of retreat because there is there is something nice about in-person meetings for sure yeah um i think i'm very close to passing on the baton to christina the only question i have is regarding the process of setting up the retreat which was or at least um
153i think that's that's completely in your court is that right christina or is that something you would do in conjunction with with the policy subcommittee well i think um if there is an element of that retreat where you want to collect data from the full committee that i think the i think you as chair as you met with your subcommittee would sort of determine what that information information was if you wanted to do like a google survey prior to the retreat i think you guys would establish that and then you know you and i could work together to get that out i don't know kerry so another element of this is whether we want to involve our masc rep you know in some of these conversations and that may [Music] help determine the timing of
154it and how best to organize it i think then on that note that is all from the policy subcommittee i'm going to look at carrie and julia to make sure i didn't forget something um thank you all for your patience christina it's back to you thank you thank you jose okay so next up is the finance subcommittee update so i can pass this back to kerry great um so we met last week i believe it was thursday and we reviewed vouchers and accounts payable as we do every time we meet there was not anything extraordinary that we discussed we also talked about a couple of standing items one was the bid documents which were not ready at the time that we talked about it so those are now actually in joe's court in the next
155item and then we talked about long-range campus planning so the um the fields has already come up in conversation tonight the conversation about how we have the conversation is where we're at in terms of the finance subcommittee it's not clear to us what is the best uh way to go about doing this for the district um joe has been talking to the staff the facility staff and the ground staff about long-range planning in terms of the buildings and the grounds and things that may be coming up in terms of maintenance and repair and replacement so that work has been ongoing and joe can talk about that more specifically so the the question that we have i think for the committee is how to have the conversation with i've also we've also been posing this to
156the superintendent um how to have the conversation about the needs of not just the athletic infrastructure but the campus in a way that is constructive and productive and can move us forward towards some decision making should the committee want to make any decisions in the fall in terms of the williams gift the fiscal year closes on june 30th but the new numbers so to speak are not known to us until october so we think that the fund has done very well in conjunction with the williams endowment so it stands to reason that we have at least as much as we thought we would have of course minus the expenses of the project on the accessibility and ada compliance and safety issues assuming that that goes to bid and that a bid is approved by this
157committee so you know the numbers are still a little fluid because we have some wheels in motion and we don't know what the new numbers are going to be all of that said if we wanted to be in a position to make any kind of recommendations or decisions in november let's say or december even that would be in time for you know doing work over the course of the next summer right the next so you know you always want to back up from when you're going to have any facility you know in use and so the facilities that have been part of the discussion have been you know a potential for a synthetic turf field and a potential for a track and we're assuming at this moment in time that we're no longer talking about
158ada compliance and title ix and safety because we've dealt with that so how do we as a committee um i'll go back to the original statement how do we have the conversation um in in a way that is both constructive and productive and moves us forward toward a goal of making decisions if we choose to do so should we choose to do so so part of the conversation has been around sort of general strategic planning with the district right so one of the criticisms i would say not a criticism one of the comments that came up during the last round of conversations was that um it wasn't clear and in fact julia this might have come from you it wasn't clear [Music] how the um athletic infrastructure [Music] projects the potential projects fit into the
159general strategic planning for the district or and then others other comments were um that it wasn't clear how it fit into the general academic programming of the district right you know when we built the building the academic program drove the educational programming drove the building so how does the educational programming drive the athletic infrastructure if that's what we're talking about so this is the sort of upper level of these conversations that we've been having and we don't really have a charge from the school committee at this point in terms of how the committee would like the finance subcommittee to go about furthering the conversations so i'm going to stop there and see if jake or joe want to add anything to that not tonight on that topic okay so that's some more by way of
160information that we've been having that conversation and also that joe is going to be spending some time catching up ursula because she's not been part of of the um conversations up to this point so um she she needs to i guess um do a little bit of homework on that as well jose i care i um i'm trying to stop myself from from from some from suggesting this but i think i'm going to do it anyway but i wonder if um and this is definitely inspired from the conversation that we had regarding the the policy subcommittee you know i see the retreat that we'd like to schedule for the policy subcommittee as an opportunity for the full committee to engage in what the policy subcommittee engages with in in detail more perhaps more regulated in
161the full committee i don't know but certainly in the case of the finance subcommittee i wonder if uh uh a retreat that allows us to think creatively about about the questions that you've asked us if that would give us the bandwidth the space to you know to yeah to to you know engage in fruitful discussion and and maybe um to provide the kind of guidance that you might like from the full committee i don't know if that would be welcome or or useful julia um i like that idea and i also think this would be a um there are experts out there who lead this type of work and i think we would benefit greatly from hiring somebody who can guide us in this have tools to facilitate a meeting where we all are able
162to express what we're you know what questions we should be thinking about et cetera so i would just encourage us to consider hiring somebody to support this work yeah i wonder if like the the wreck carries recommendation about well the idea about involving an masc or mesc rep at a policy retreat if this this could be you know this person or consultant could be could be involved in a finance retreat of some sort yeah julia it sounded like you had someone more within the more specific in mind do you want to elaborate on that um so i don't know enough about the skill sets of the masc folks but um there are people who specialize in strategic planning um there are people who specialize in uh bringing groups together to um discuss our values right
163like i think any decision that we make has to be grounded in our collective values as a as a body as an institution as a community um and i think there are um i don't know the skill set of masc folks but to me this feels like a more specialized skill set and i'm happy to be happy to find some i'm like i can put out my network but jake may know people who you know who do this yeah i i i it's an excellent idea to to you know it's it's like lots of areas of work that we do we're we do a lot of things as a district administration as school committee members but there are people that do this professionally for a living and where we have maybe done it once or
164twice or aspire to do it they've done it 500 times so uh you know i would certainly be open julia to talking about in comparing networks about who's out there to do this work but but it is definitely work that would benefit from professional facilitation no question i i think both on the on the on the overall strategic plan for the district but also perhaps even a a more focused and strategic plan for the the campus or or the campuses of our three schools as well yeah i think that makes a lot of sense other thoughts on this um otherwise i think i can just turn it over to joe for the business administrators update unless christina you want it to come back to you first no go ahead you do it carrie it's all
165you all right all right so now you're up thank you uh so under business administrator update uh two things um first off uh uh an update on the bid process for the ada safety and title nine fields project um we have gone through um more revisions than i care to count at this point with perkins eastman and traverse trying to get these bid documents ready and out as of last week we finalized those documents so that they felt faithful accurate clear um suitable for for distribution um they're in the process of going live right now um officially uh the the timeline for contractors to review those documents and submit support submit proposals we'll transit through june 30th and on june 30th bids will be opened that is the timeline that we're operating under right now
166which is much tighter than than we ever cared to make it the design team continues to indicate that this kind of a timeline from bid opening to um contract start date which we have listed in the contract as july 5th or in the bid documents as july 5th that that is not unreasonable that is their expert opinion we have formally asked the email and received confirmation that if this process fails to produce either an adequate number of bidders or prices that are consistent with the estimates that that have been put out by the design team that we have the right to re-bid this without any additional costs incurred with that design team and they have confirmed that that is something that they would do um and so you know that that is really a worst
167case kind of kind of opportunity unfortunately because it it's not as though we would bid it another month or two from now it's something where we would need to wait until next year when it might be roped into a larger project depending upon the will of the committee so that's where we stand right now and it does mean that we will be asking the committee to try to find time right there at the end of june or beginning of july to review those bids once they're opened and either select one or reject all bids your review and selection is really only based on um making sure that the bidders are are qualified and eligible and then selecting the lowest cost so you know your process there is not terribly detailed um but but it is
168significant as far as making a determination as to whether or not the project will go for it so that's something to to keep on your radar for the end of this month um and we can start to think about meeting dates that will that will fit now that we are getting those bid documents out um so that's my update it's it's a somber one but that's where we are julie what's the um that's the contract start date and then the what's the expected time to do the work and therefore is there like a plan b for fall athletics if fields aren't ready the timeline as specified within the bid documents allows for all preseasons and then seasons to proceed as as planned with the one exception being that cross country might need to push its
169first home race back a bit depending upon the speed with which the turf takes hold and is able to take that kind of a pounding so that that's the one thing within the the timeline that has some variability everything else is actually baked into those bid documents so it does not negatively impact our fall sports i i have a very quick one steve it sounds like we should add july 1 as an upcoming meeting um to the list of upcoming meetings christina july 1 is a thursday yes july 2nd friday i will be coming to you from my first official vacation but i don't mind [Laughter] steve and uh for the bid documents is there going to be some kind of clause that would specify what would happen if they are not able to meet
170the timeline they agree to yes their there is a damages clause related to not meeting the timeline um i'm not recalling the dollar value per day off the top but but that does exist okay all right so if there no further questions i'll pop into the next one which is which is uh much more upbeat but bittersweet upbeat in that we have two financial assistance within the district um one has traditionally handled payroll and benefits the other one has handled payables and and one of them brenda rondo who has been with the district for 15 years serving virtually every facet that we have within the business office earlier this year announced her retirement which it it hurts she is she is the heart she is the foundation she is someone who has seen it all
171um she is uh it's it's now public knowledge she's moving to texas to be closer to um her her daughter and grandchildren um which is a wonderful thing but but we will sorely miss her um she is her last day in the office will be july 9th so that did lead to a process of attempting to figure out what to do once she departs and we were fortunate enough to to receive ann donati who had been with the two elementary schools as su-71 for seven years as as their primary bookkeeper she had then been with the regional school district um once we regionalized pre-k through 12 for the first six or so months of of that process and then she's been in williamstown town hall within their accountant's office since and so she she returned
172uh beginning of this week june 7th she is now our financial assistant in charge of payables um and arena sharma who was our financial assistant in charge of payables um has transitioned to to take on the role of payroll and benefits and she's been working closely with brenda within that transition process for the last uh six weeks now um so we're we are extraordinarily grateful to um to rena for taking on that challenge for ann for coming back to the district with us um and and we're gonna miss brenda a lot but that's the that's the financial assistant update that i've got for you thank you okay so the next two items are on our agenda are kind of housekeeping items we have to do them yearly at this time um the first one is
173to appoint the district treasurer and the assistant treasurer uh so i would like to make a motion to appoint donna neary as district treasurer and rina sharma as assistant treasurer of the mount greylock regional school district second second oh go ahead julia okay julia seconded any discussion hearing none all in favor bo and i connery i constantine i open by now green thank you that motion passes and the next item is the authorization to borrow so i would like to make a motion to authorize the district treasurer and or assistant treasurer under the provisions of the general laws chapter 71 section 16g as amended by chapter 134 of the acts of 1972 with the approval of the chair of the school committee to borrow money from time to time in anticipation of revenue for the
174fiscal year beginning july 1st 2021 and to issue a note or notes as may be given for a period of less than one year in accordance with the general law second seconds any discussion all in favor roll call vote please or when i thank you that motion passes next up on our agenda is the superintendent report thank you christina um i have several items here tonight more than actually appear on the agenda i will try to move through them quickly the the first is going to be just a brief brief presentation on where we are with school choice and enrollment uh and class size i know that's that's vital information for all of you and um so that will be the first piece of my report tonight and then the other pieces will will move
175through uh pretty quickly so i'm going to share my screen and present this as a presentation and i will you know certainly ask anybody who has any questions along the way just just pipe up and verbally let me know that you have a question or a concern and we can stop and address it um just you know where the last few slides are going to talk about the number of school choices that we're at the number of school choice slots we're actually opening up this year the rest of these slides are really how we arrived at those numbers sort of a base in philosophy and what we were thinking about so as as we consider opening up school choice slots or not opening up school choice slots we look at the purpose of school choice
176we look at the need to protect the investment that lanesboro and williamstown residents make in their homes we need to ensure that we have adequate space and and are protecting the investment that people from our two member communities are making but also have adequate space to serve students from communities with whom we have tuition agreements and then of course we have to protect class size because that is good for instruction it's good for student achievement it's good for the well-being of our students and for that matter it's good for the well-being of our staff very briefly you've seen this before the purpose of school choice is not to be a money maker for school districts school choice should never add labor costs it should not add to administrative costs it should not add to facilities
177or utility costs and it should not negatively impact the organization or operation of any existing classroom nor a school nor the district school choice as it is envisioned in massachusetts is really to fill in for lack of a better term um empty desks in classes in classrooms where there could be another student or two uh this is a way to to fill those slots um and and have some financial recompense for doing so um we do owe it to the residents of lanesboro and williamstown to protect their investment while school choice is an excellent way to allow non-resident neighbors to become very welcome members of our school community we do have to be careful about about the numbers that we let in school choice has some really positive benefits including that it can sometimes increase
178the diversity in a number of ways of our student body however individuals and families who have made very specific choices about where to rent or purchase a home reasonably have the expectation that their choice of home location and the school that goes with that home location is honored in many many different ways likewise people without children in the communities of lanesboro uh where whose children have already been through through school in lanesboro and williamstown she can and should expect that the investment that they make in their schools every single year through paying their tax bills is nurtured and protected so you know just as a bit of baseline information the mount greylock regional school district historically tends to spend between 17 to 18 thousand dollars per pupil on the students that we educate school choice
179tuition is generally capped at five thousand dollars per student thus we we get back to the beginning of this slide where we really owe it to our residents to protect their investment in their schools for the children that live in their communities we also have tuition agreements as you know the lanesboro elementary school has a tuition agreement with the town of new ashford the mount greylock regional school has a tuition agreement with with the towns of new ashford and hancock these agreements guarantee openings for students from both of these towns uh and and these agreements also much much more closely approximate our per pupil expenditures than does the five thousand dollars associated with incoming school choice students class size class size is one of several variables that that can and does impact student achievement there
180is much much research some of it conflicting but i think in large part most of it reaching a pretty general consensus in our common sense as parents and as educators and just as people suggest to us that class size matters um teaching is a hard job being a paraprofessional is a hard job and splitting your attention 12 ways is a very different thing than splitting your attention 23 or 24 25 different ways particularly with younger students protecting and ensuring reasonable class sizes particularly in the early grades pre-k through grades three and four it's an ethical responsibility of our school districts to really be protective of those class sizes and it's an ethical responsibility to be protective the entire way through high school of class size another piece that that you know coming from a place
181like pittsfield that that has great impact from students choicing out um being a responsible respectful ethical neighbor is also a value we should embrace when we're making school choice considerations when we bring students into our community to go to school those students are leaving their home community and that has impacts in many different ways that go beyond finance the go beyond class size so looking ahead to the next school year we really had to dig in and consider the year that our students families and staff are just finishing up and as uh cindy sheehy said a couple of years a couple of that feels like a couple of years ago a couple of hours ago when she was talking about her school improvement plan this was quite a year that we just finished we also
182consider the year we need to have in the upcoming school year and i included a link here to the desti acceleration roadmap so you can we'll be talking more about that over the summer but you can get an early preview of some of the things we'll be doing next year to make sure that our kids are on track or back on track um we have the return of families who chose to home school over the 2021 school year if you'll recall last year the year that we're in now that we're just finishing up we we had 60 students homeschooling 60 plus homeschooling right now the paperwork that we have in for plans that are either already approved or looking to be approved we have only five families representing students that are looking to home school
183across the entire district from both of our towns so this has an impact on the number of students that are going to physically be in our schools in the fall um some of you understand this in much deeper ways than i do because it's your profession the real estate markets in lanesboro and in williamstown and in in the rest of the berkshires and in many areas really can is continuing to be an evolving situation with remote work becoming a real possibility and potential for people people no longer needing to be absolutely linked to washington dc to boston to new york city and so we have reason to believe that there's just a lot of houses changing hands right now and that a lot of those houses that are changing hands are um coming with gifts
184to our community by way of young people who will be attending our schools and then of course in williamstown on coal avenue we have i believe 40 plus new housing units that will be opening up at some point over this school year so in short i would say regarding school choice as we put our heads together and work to figure this out this year we're entering this summer and fall with many unknowns that have to inform how we approach school choice in the upcoming year so to cut right to the chase um this is a chart very simply the grade level the number of openings that we are recommending at this point for the first round of school choice and the current requests that we have sitting on file you will notice that at lanesboro
185elementary we are recommending no openings in any grade level at this point now i'm going to quickly uh switch screens here and hopefully um yeah so this is a chart we're going to concentrate on this 2021 section here underneath the yellow umbrella this is our total enrollment uh grade by grade and the number of students in classrooms and i think this becomes kind of self-explanatory about why right now as we head into the end of june we are recommending no new school choice uh seats at lanesboro elementary in fact we're actually quite concerned with um where grade four is shaping up looking at 23 students in each of our grade four sections and then grade six 22 students in each of those so those are items that we are going to be keeping a uh
186a very close eye on really on a daily basis as we as we go through the uh summer so for lanesboro we're recommending no new school choice openings for the 21 22 school year looking at williamstown elementary we're recommending very few school choice openings at williamstown elementary we are recommending one opening in kindergarten we have 11 requests currently uh we're recommending two openings at grade one we currently have five requests and we're recommending two openings at grade two and we currently have two requests and for grade three four five and six we are recommending no no school choice openings for the upcoming school year and again just to um take a look at this on a williamstown um there it is uh you know again we're looking underneath this yellow umbrella of 2122. you can
187see where where our classes are are looking 49 total kindergarten students right now we have 16 students in each section 14 in grade 1 13 and grade 2. uh again where we're we're keeping an eye on a couple of these grade levels um you know just to make sure that we're not getting getting big to the point where where it no longer makes sense or feels fair to the kids or to the staff who are staffing that um so you know getting back to the presentation again really only recommending five openings at williamstown elementary one in kindergarten two each in grade one and grade two uh looking at mount greylock regional school our middle and high school we are recommending at this point zero openings in grade seven five openings in grade eight three openings
188in grade nine no openings in grade ten which is our our largest grade uh going to be our largest grade our current freshman at the school we're recommending um three openings of grade 11 and recommending four openings at grade 12 and this is what we will base our our lottery um on and uh so really that's the that's that's where we are um again just as you know i i believe um you know last year around this time of year i i suspect that this district like many districts made the choice that there were simply so many unknowns that you're going to keep school choice uh really constricted um we are we are making that same uh choice i do have one more slide that i want to share uh that i that i did
189skip so if you'll entertain for one more second moving forward so per school committee policy the first round of the lottery for the few openings that we do have will be held next week the second round of the lottery is held the week before school starts so that will be the end of august again per school committee policy um just as a reminder to you and anybody from the public that's interested mass general law [Music] part 76 section 12 b subsection j states that any sibling of a student already enrolled in the receiving district shall receive priority for admission to said district so where there are openings siblings of current students current school choice students will receive priority and we will not be holding a lottery if siblings take up those slots we will continue
190to watch enrollments really on a daily basis at this point to track the ups and the downs so we're ready for later on in the summer we will continue to watch enrollment again daily to see where other considerations may become necessary considerations such as perhaps adding a section to a given grade level or should a grade level contract removing a section so that we can use that staff and add a section somewhere else where it's perhaps needed more we would suggest that the current openness or or probably more appropriate put lack of openness for school choice is not a permanent pathway um but that you know we we suspected we'll be going through sort of a bit of an agonizing process like we did this year um annually to make sure we get this right
191and that we're balancing the needs and and and what our our residents deserve what our students that are tuitioning in who have guaranteed slots deserve and uh making sure that we are uh you know just being protective of the investment that lanesboro and williamstown make uh in our in our uh school department and in our campuses and in our schools so um of course happy to take questions take comments uh julia i thank you um i know this is likely a set of agonizing decisions uh keeping everything that you described in balance um i really just have a technical question sure when you say the first lottery is you know there's two different lotteries once somebody is on the wait list are they then the next lottery just adds to that list is that how
192it works yes and that's not that's my understanding julia yes and then over the summer are you able to take people off the wait list if you for example discover a family moved away i think we it would depend on the size of the wait list at that specific grade level and at that specific school um i i i i would guess that based on the numbers of requests we have we still will need to hold a second lottery later in the summer sure i'm thinking more like fourth grade at west a family moves away maybe fourth grade's a bad example i'm just curious about them because there's nobody coming in but you decide there actually is a space and you have a wait list but we haven't approved spots being filled do we have
193to wait till august to do that joe do you want to weigh in on this please yeah so a couple things the the school committee policy on school choice the the school committee determines whether or not it's going to participate in the school choice program or not the administration determines the number of slots that will be made available so that's in the policy manual at the state level if we're participating and if we're opening slots then the first lottery is required to be held prior to july 1. if we choose to have another lottery the only rule is that we need to hold that prior to november one right so those are the parameters that we need to work within which means we we could do the administration could say in august we feel comfortable
194opening up another two slots we're going to do that because we'd rather do it prior to the start of school instead of after the start of school which i think makes sense for everyone if it were to happen so we we will be as i said we will be keeping and and we you know our central office staff the principals um you know we we that class size is really important um we we understand that that the schools in lanesboro and in williamstown and then our shared school of the middle and high school is why many many families um relocate to our towns and so we we understand the class size is an important part of that of that calculus so we will be keeping a eagle eyes upon that as the summer progresses and
195and i've had probably 20 conversations with families who are looking to choice in and we have we have just been very honest right from the start that you know we encourage them to apply uh but that here is our reality as i see it at the moment i'm speaking to them and that my advice as a dad is the same as my advice as a superintendent if you are committed to having your child go somewhere other than where you live please start looking at other options outside of of our school district because we are going to have very limited slots available jose thanks jake and uh i think it's always for the thoughtful informative presentation the um just just thinking about the the staff to student or student to staff numbers that we're seeing in
196lanesboro i think fourth grade was one that you highlighted and i'm sure there's another grade level that you highlighted if if that number which i think stands at above 20 23 from what i'm remembering um you said you're you're looking at that number um but i don't know exactly what you what you mean by by looking at it how what what is uh what are the options in terms of responding to that number increasing yeah so i i just pulled that back up on the share screen jose and i think this is probably the one you were referring to as the the the 23 at grade four um students per class so you know really to to put that in as as plain of language as possible that there is a point i i don't
197know exactly what the point is in this school district that there is a point at which we would say okay we have one section of fourth grade at lanesboro that is let's say it's 26 students i as a superintendent at that point would say um that does not feel okay to me i don't believe that is going to best serve our students i don't believe it's going to best serve our families i don't believe it's going to best serve our staff so at that point i would be sitting down with joe and with mr pratt the principal and looking at how how do we find funding to create another section and add another teacher to the staff and and that would that would be true for for any of our three schools but that and
198it's that's what we're talking about jose and then just to follow up i i i'm sure i i think i know the answer to this question but i'd like to ask it just to uh maybe to clarify matters for for for all of us but um there are real reasons and place why students from lanesboro couldn't attend west to help alleviate some of these these stresses on a particular section does that is that i think i is there are there there are genuine reasons why that's and i think there should be a question mark and then in that statement the regional agreement speaks to that just before jake talks about any philosophical thing that the regional agreement has some pretty clear language there and modifying the regional agreement would require a vote of the two
199towns in the affirmative yeah so so for instance jose thank you for that joe because that that's the that is the correct place to start um there is a process by which a a hypothetically a second grade parent from lanesboro that perhaps works in williamstown can apply for within the school district school choice and they that that request is treated just like an out of district school choice um but per the regional agreement we we cannot say to a family from lanesboro or to two or three families uh or the family that has triplets who are in fourth grade uh we need you to go to williamstown this year um so so does that answer your question between the two of us yeah absolutely yeah thank you thank you any other questions or concerns on
200that um i'm i i hope that next year where i have my act together steve so yeah i just want to make sure i heard you correctly you said that no one would be asked to go to another school if we did have a situation did i misinterpret did i miss here no no that's true we we we cannot for the regional agreement say to a family right you're not going to lanesboro you're going to williamstown right i was wondering and this could be opening a terrible can of worms available to someone as an option a family can request that and and and just just like somebody can request school choice right and and um if if if openings exist in those grade levels where it's requested it it is certainly something that could happen
201and if you did that would then then put you in the other school for as many years as you want i would need to dig a little deeper into our policy manual i believe the way that we treat that inter-district school choice i believe i believe we treat that legally and ethically the same way we would treat a student coming from pittsfield central berkshire clarksburg and so once that space was granted that space would belong to that student until they either graduated matriculated onto the next school or the family chose to end that relationship yes yep and just just to follow up on steven's question i think the again to just just to clarify matters if the lanesboro family were to request um that their that their child attend west they would have to enter
202the school choice program and they would be treated just the same as any other family who were participating in the school choice program so they would have borrowing siblings already in the receiving school have have equal odds as any other family um whether it be a williamson family who wanted it in lanesboro or or the other way around they're effectively is that right yeah that's correct jose any other questions on that as i said next year we will we we hopefully will not have the amount of uh of of churn and tumult that we had this year with with the in and out uh of folks so we will and and we will of course keep you updated over the summer as to where we are carrie so sorry i just wanted to go back
203to the question of homeschoolers potentially returning to the district so we have 60 homeschoolers this year and i think you said we have 14 or 15 next um do we know that those are all the difference between those two those those are all students who are returning [Music] to our district or not necessarily yeah a good number of we we asked um via a letter that went home to all of our homeschool families earlier uh in the spring we we asked them to please contact the school and begin the registration process by a date late in may if their intention was to return back to school that the the choice to home school was really a one year because of the pandemic and we got a a really brisk rate of response on that um
204as as stacy and i were looking at the the homeschool families this week uh the the the 15 students we have currently though those are students that that have traditionally homeschooled from year to year for the most part i think uh 11 or 12 of them would be in the category of their parents have submitted a plan every year i think three or four of them are perhaps new but they are their families that are new to the area that are desiring to homeschool their children does that answer your question it does thank you you're welcome okay if there is nothing more on school choice and enrollments and all of that really important information i do have a few more things uh mostly thank yous but just a quick staffing update um as you know
205uh very grateful to to patrick for um for for getting us through these these tumultuous months and getting us through the the the tiered uh monitoring the tiered focus monitoring program but uh patrick has been serving as an interim and we will have our first round of interviews for our permanent director of pupil personnel services beginning on monday we have two days of interviews and then we have a second round with with several administrators who who will comprise our finalists we have about 13 or 14 people from the community teachers parents representatives from the pack who are who have helped us develop questions helped us develop scenarios and who are actually sitting on the interview committee so we we hope that by our regular july meeting we will be bringing forward a recommendation for the
206permanent uh director of people personnel services for the approval of the school committee um i do want to thank sorry i have a whiny dog here to my left i apologize if you hear yelping i promise he's just being nudgy not being maligned in any way uh i would like to thank both of our town meetings the lanesboro town meeting and the williamstown town meeting for approving our budgets i'd like to thank those of you who were able to go and and cover for me as i was not able to be there uh and i i would really just um uh and and this will make him blush i would like to thank joe for just um i think we've heard herculean uh put on to joe's efforts in a couple of other areas here
207tonight um getting the budget ready during the the turmoil of this year and translating that budget to the town finance committees um and and and getting to uh you know two two really positive affirmations from our two uh member town town meetings to to get our budget passed uh just really nice work so very grateful to joe very grateful to his team very grateful to all of you for your work on the budget and the finance subcommittee and very grateful to the folks who went out to the town meetings and supported our budgets and to the town finance committees and and to the town leaderships uh of williamstown and lanesboro for supporting us in and what we consider to be just some of the most important work that happens on any given day in our
208towns which is public education um i would like to add my thanks to uh to to our earlier round of applause and thanks to uh to our to our staff and our team of teachers here is this is our last meeting before school is out this was a remarkable year and um it it took remarkable people to get us through this remarkable year and um very grateful to just our entire team here uh in in shakespeare's play as you like it duke senor says uh sweet are the uses of adversity and if you google that quote you'll get a kick out of the rest of of what duke senor has to say let's just say it involves venomous toads but i'll just take the first part of shakespeare's line sweeter the uses of adversity this
209year this adversity has taught us much about ourselves and about working together we've had some vehement disagreements in our communities about how to approach education during the pandemic and one thing it's proof to the new superintendent is that these are communities that can um agree in very strong ways and in very substantive ways but these are communities that keep talking and keep communicating and keep pushing through and keep learning and keep refining uh their thinking and so i i think the the the uses of this adversity to to all of us at the school department are very sweet indeed and we're very grateful to everybody who helped to get us through this year including all of you including our union colleagues including our our team of employees and our colleagues here in the district and
210including our parents just who showed amazing flexibility uh and to our students who likewise showed amazing flexibility and grit and determination and so our thanks to all of you uh i would like to thank and announce that jose constantine has been asked to serve on the panel that will be choosing the williamstown uh town manager and uh we're very grateful that the leaders in town included a member and elected member of our school committee to engage in that work because that is a just a key crucial relationship and we're very grateful to jose for giving up uh you know uh you know you must have oodles and noodles of spare time jose uh we know that's not true which makes it even more precious and special that you would be willing to do this so
211thank you for doing this uh important important work um almost done here i i would like to say you know uh charlie mcqueeny did a did a lovely video for us and i think inspired us as he thanked us and he certainly gave us something to think about with school start times and he and he left us i think with tremendous words of wisdom about the power of public education and the necessity of public education um and so i would like to thank uh charlie that i would i would just like to thank all of our seniors and um all of their families and everybody who who helped to get our seniors through um what is a year that i i don't know who else in in in american history has had a year quite
212like this year's high school seniors and um i guess one of my re regrets this year is that uh i did not get to know these seniors in the way that i generally like to some of them i've really just seen their face or uh the first time not on a video screen many of them but um rest assured that the communities that that provide their treasures to our school via our students in our senior class have provided us with just a remarkable group of treasures this year and i i just always take pleasure in seeing what the next two or three or four years bring and seeing what the next five to ten years bring because there are just some remarkable human beings uh making their way from our school into whatever is next
213for them and so congratulations to our seniors congratulations to their parents and their guardians and their caretakers um the community has has raised a remarkable group of young people to send into the bigger world and they will do our communities very very proud and then finally in the superintendents you just went just muted yourself by accident jake i am sorry although that might be welcome relief at this point in the evening uh i would like to honor let's see one two three four five six seven eight oh he muted yourself again thank you okay i'm just gonna hold this paper because apparently it's just heavy enough to make my my mute button uh nine retirees from the mount greylock regional school district this year uh these nine retirees account for almost 250 cumulative years of
214service to the community um to the town of lanesboro to the town of williamstown to students and families that join us from elsewhere uh but but most importantly this represents 248 years of excellent dedicated service to children and for me i i can't really think of of any any pursuit that is a better use of a professional life than to help the next generation get ready to to lead and to help the next generation maintain in our society what works and to get the next generation ready to fix the many things that are broken and so tonight uh we'd like to honor michael ferris who is a paraprofessional from greylock regional school who is retiring with 18 years of service of serving students that you know paraprofessionals serve people that really really need to be
215served and so michael congratulations and thank you and i will remind all of these people that are our substitute lists are open and awaiting their names and we we definitely hope to see them back so congratulations to michael the next name on this list um i was six years old when this individual started working uh for mount gray lot susie gelati has been the assistant to the pupil services department for 44 years we honored susie briefly tonight as we talked about you know the state process that we've been going through but i have to tell you i i think to you know even in my short time here if there if there is one person who has just left um left nothing uh on the field in her pursuit of helping students and families it's
216susie giladi and uh susie thank you and congratulations to you and uh yes well well deserved applause and susie can absolutely count on probably 50 to 150 phone calls emails and in-person visits to pick her brain next year in the year after because she simply is a master of her craft and we will miss her lynn hayden has been a paraprofessional williamstown elementary school for 32 years when you consider the number of lives that have been enriched and touched and made better when you consider the number of students whose opportunities have been made greater the number of students who have had a more a more equal footing to their peers um and then you consider that lynn has been doing this work for 32 years it's simply staggering um if if if we had a
217hall of fame i think most of these people that we're talking about here tonight lynn included uh would be in that hall of fame uh ellen kaiser has been a social studies teacher at mount greylock for the past 25 years a quarter of a century of helping students understand history understand society understand cultures and understand their place in the world ellen just a remarkable career a quarter of a century of serving students ellen will be with us through the first part of next year but we wanted and she wanted to be recognized with this group of folks who are retiring with this class of remarkable people and so ellen thank you and congratulations you've certainly made our little corner of the world and the world a much better place sue lynch is retiring as the
218librarian of the williamstown elementary school after 28 years um i don't know about all of you on on this zoom but uh my elementary school librarian remains one of the people who is is deepest and firmest in my heart uh that that's the the the gift that sue has given to students in terms of of through opening the doors of the library and welcoming children is in essence giving lots of kids particularly the book lovers it's it's giving kids the keys to the kingdom and it is and it is literally giving them a passport to a trip around the world into other worlds and um sue we thank you for your 28 years of uh just opening hearts and opening minds by helping kids open books uh and thousands and thousands of kids over nearly
219a 30-year career and we may or may not find a librarian to take your place because librarians are few and far in between but i suspect that nobody will truly replace you sue and so thank you for that work um the next retiree that we want to honor is uh i will miss him sharing uh some of his own artwork through email and uh we have had some lovely conversations consider him a friend as well as a colleague uh michael powers who has been a visual arts and technology teacher at mount greylock for 26 years uh again uh mount greylock has some remarkable students thousands and thousands and thousands of remarkable students and i know that all of them have their happy places and i suspect that there are many many over the years whose
220happy place has been in the visual arts and the technology center with mr powers learning to express themselves uh understanding how how um how art can open doors how technology can open doors and how art and technology can combine to again open doors and open minds and uh michael i i sincerely hope that uh just me to you i hope that we get to stay in touch uh but but i hope that you have a very happy retirement it's certainly well learned after more than a quarter century of uh of of teaching students at mount greylock regional school um i'm going to come back to brenda rondo last uh and i'm gonna gonna skip over brenda for a second uh tracy ann spencer is retiring from the williamstown elementary school after 27 years of uh
221of of teaching students uh in several grade levels um i i know that this was a difficult conversation uh in a an internal conversation for uh tracy ann to have i remember the day that we got her her email notifying us of this one could tell that this was a this wasn't a oh gosh i think i'm going to retire it was an agonizing decision and again when you consider the the uh the gateways that elementary school teachers particularly open up for students and when you consider uh 27 years of opening those gateways it's simply stunning and again i i if i were a billionaire i think i would invest in in statutes to honor uh you know our educators the same way that uh countries honor uh soldiers and saints because certainly uh tracy
222anne 27 years of serving elementary school kids no finer way to spend a professional life than that so thank you and congratulations and a very happy retirement uh linda wadika retired i didn't take it personally but she retired about a week after i started so she and i had a nice conversation about you know was it something i said was it something i did but uh linda retired in uh in mid-november linda was a paraprofessional at mount greylock 33 years of serving students at mount greylock um just again simply stunning there is there there are people that are put onto the planet with just um the the just the right combination of of intellect and dedication and a gigantic heart to love children uh and and to love children some of whom really need to
223be loved and need to be supported and linda um you've you've been enjoying uh six or seven months of retirement we hope and we hope you enjoy decades more well deserved after 33 years of serving kids as a paraprofessional and then um you know coming back to brenda uh brenda is our is our lone retirement out of the central office i think joe kind of said it all when he talked about brenda earlier this evening that brenda has uh has done everything there is to do in finance uh in our office and um i am just grateful that the universe allowed me to get to know brenda and to get to work with brenda for six or seven months because she is just a special special human being and um she has forgotten more about
224municipal finance and regional school finance um than most of us will ever know she has forgotten more about the very complex software that we use to make sure money is accounted for and people get paid um she probably could go and quadruple her salary and be the top consultant that exists uh with the with the software company that makes the package that we use uh and on top of it all brenda is just a lovely warm uh kind human being and as the new guy uh she made me feel like i was part of the team from from before the moment i started and i will always be very grateful to her we wish her uh years and years and decades and decades of of a wonderful time of splitting her her time between her
225home in vermont and now her home in texas where her heart really is because her grandchildren are there and so brenda uh congratulations and thank you for 15 years of making sure that we stay solvent and stay legal and we will miss you and brenda like susie gelati can probably count on about 150 phone calls and desperate emails next year um to ask questions that she will have right on the top of her head and so to all of these educators uh for their 248 years of amazing service in uh taking care of and caring for children and helping children reach their potential and and helping all of us uh operate as a school system we say thank you we say hats off and we say have a wonderful and lengthy retirement and that is
226the end of my superintendence report christina thank you jake thank you everyone okay uh do i have a motion to move into executive session with intent to return to open session pursue it to mgl chapter 38 section 21 a2 and 21a3 to conduct contract negotiations with non-union personnel and to conduct a strategy session with respect to collective bargaining majia all units so moved carry moves do i have a second julia's seconds and um joe will help us move into breakout rooms and then we can declare our aloneness um yep i just wanted to say that before we voted all in favor oh bo and i connery i think we might have lost some folks but all right marty popped up that's why it was some people already went to room one oops well if you
227vote i think we'll be okay we can move into executives i'm bringing kerry back i've got the power to do that that's magic elephant and i did are we there i think so yep gotta go out of border for once yeah go for it [Laughter] did we get moved out too quickly yeah it's your turn to uh we you're the last one to vote green eye okay thank you that's now we're gonna join it is 9 29 we're moving into executive session yes thank you and christina shall i pause the recording yes that would be great did we get everybody back we're all here right okay it is 10 13 p.m we are back in open session and the next item on our agenda his non-union personnel unused vacation discussion um and i think we
228can make a motion at this point i would like to make a motion to authorize the superintendent to work with non-union personnel to resolve the unused vacation time for the period of 2020 2021 school year due to the coba 19 pandemic okay carry seconds any discussion for the impact of minutes for i would just like to um state deep gratitude for the um sacrifices that people made through this year um to push themselves and not you know yeah sorry that was thank you curtis um to push themselves um i you know to the to the limit for the for the benefit of our children in this district and um i appreciate that tremendously thank you okay all in favor good boy connery eye constantine eye by night green eye alive thank you that motion passes
229okay we will try to get through this next um agenda item quickly upcoming meetings finance subcommittee meeting june 17th at 4 pm is that correct carrie um tentative school committee meeting this would be a regular our regular session meeting july 15th at 6 p.m um and i should backtrack and say because it's not on here we did discuss the possibility of having a special session on july 1st for the bid documents there may be another special session in there too at some point um but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it um anticipated august school committee meeting august 12th at 6 pm and then we should we can talk briefly about um dates for potential august workshops and then the other thing i want to talk to you about and i know it's
230really late and i apologize is whether or not um i i think we have the idea of two different retreat slash workshops um the one that we talked about with jose and also the one around um evaluations and it may make sense to honk that into two different two-hour sessions on two different days or if everyone would really rather just go ahead and get them get it all done in one afternoon their their um mind taxing discussions so there is some [Music] there there is some argument to do it two different afternoons um but i can understand it's the summer time and people have limited um and hopefully if you have families like mine that are finally fully vaccinated um you might be excited to get away a little bit this summer i know i
231am i haven't touched um an ocean for three years so excited to do that but um so i just wanted to briefly talk about that and then we could talk about uh if there are particular times within the summer months that would be better um for people um so thoughts around that or maybe everyone's sleeping i don't know i think my preference would be um two two different meetings for fear of falling victim to meeting fatigue not that i'm falling victim to it now but i might they're both important um discussions and so i do agree with you and if it makes sense we can we can um you know ask stacey if she can circulate something with availability to carve that out because i know we're encouraging everyone who hasn't taken vacation to take
232vacation and i know of two people that need to do that um so you know and we may be leaving on them some too so um if that makes sense and people want to do it in two different chunks and i can work with stacy um and jose in terms of timing for the policy committee to to have that discussion and decide what what they might want to do if they want to do a pre-survey and figure out how to how to get that done okay so another thought we had talked i think at one point about having a superintendent evaluation subcommittee and the superintendent's goals have to be done in open session as part of a regular meeting so this is really more about training the school committee to um on how to do
233the superintendent's goals and evaluation within the current framework of whatever that framework is in the state system so i don't think jake needs to be there for for that session unless he wants to be unless he thinks it would be helpful to hear what the school committee is hearing but my question to go back to the beginning is do we want to have do we want to delegate this to a subcommittee that can then um do the bulk of that work or do we want to do it as a full committee which is the way we've always done it yeah so i think i think that's a good question i think i think it's important with i guess my thought would be and obviously everyone can agree or disagree uh there are so many new
234members it might be really important it might be valuable for us all to go through the process together just because it's new to everyone we haven't done it um i've been on the committee for three years and it's you know i don't fully have a grasp on it so it might be beneficial for the full committee to go through the process together um and jake may have some input in terms of how the process has worked for him in the past um so i don't know okay well that's also potentially something that we can cover in a school committee meeting in the fall right when when jake presents his goals for the year so i think i think that well i guess what i'm trying to say is the the retreat or retreats should focus
235on work that the school committee needs to do either on itself or for itself if there are specific things that we need to do yeah i'll just leave it at that okay okay so let's just schedule one for now on the policy or the policy protocol ethics and school committee goals and for me the question is do we want to try to work with someone from masc or do we want to just do this internally [Music] and is early august a good time for people like maybe that first week in august before the um regular meeting yeah i'm currently slated to be out of town for both those weeks i i'm ordering the first two weeks of august uh okay but i don't i mean i just can't imagine we're gonna find a week where
236somebody isn't out of town so i don't know what to do with that well about the third week in august we can try we'll be in town for the third week of august you will be i will be for the third week of august for sure so that's the week of august 16th i'm in town jose yeah i should be here okay hey steve out there we might have lost steve yeah i'm looking on the calendar and i've got a bunch of commitments in august but worst case i should i should be able to at least zoom in for for two hours okay although this is the one steve that you'd wanted underneath i know yeah i will the problem is i'm looking at my calendar right now there's a bunch of things with question
237mark yeah happen or not and so my feeling is most of these things will end up being zoomed themselves and so i should be able to do this in person okay so we will aim for august 16th and then try to figure out some time to workshop around um goals and evaluations for the superintendent how that all works and then we can in terms of the masc rep we can certainly invite them my thoughts are almost i would it it might be nice to have them participate but it also might be nice for us to drive the conversation but have their input i don't does that make sense i apologize i had to step away no worries so in terms of the masc rep carry my thought is for us to drive the conversation but
238have a rep so that if we have questions they might be able to you know give us some guidance but have the conversation being led by us so not have masc come in and do a presentation on policies and rights right and i think that's something that they're happy to do okay okay all right sounds great so jose and the policy team will sort of figure out what that agenda is and i is that how that would work harry and then i would um i can reach out to rmase rep and find out if um she has availability that week okay sounds good all right awesome um oh i was saying that this is the last thing but there is one more thing um within the items not reasonably anticipated by the chair within 48
239hours and that is the letter that is in your packet um we have to as a school committee and carrie you can explain this process a little bit better but when we receive gifts the school committee has to approve of them and i don't know if it's over a certain value or if it's all gifts it's cash gifts if it were equipment or buildings or you know there are different roles for different kinds of gifts i mean within that policy there are different categories for different kinds of gifts and this this happens to have been a cash gift and um i just completely forgot to submit the letter um so that's why it's within 48 hours because i only sent the letter to christina today so that's that's on me i'm sorry about that so
240the only question i have is i think we can't vote on this but we can we can generally agree that it's something that we would approve right and then vote on it officially in the next meeting or how does that how will you work i mean i don't i think it's there um so that it can for it's there for sake of transparency so that it can be shared with you all and with the public in a timely fashion but then we can just vote on it at the next meeting okay unless that's an issue in terms of the uh fiscal year i don't remember when our fiscal year ends it it ends uh june 30th but it i don't think it's a problem at all to recognize to recognize it afterward yeah okay yeah
241okay great great so that's it um not something the state will care about all right thank you everyone do i have a motion to adjourn curtis moves do i have a second second julia seconds any further discussion thank you joe for sitting through um three over four hour meetings in a row three days in a row wow man he's forgotten already he's looking at you like he wasn't keeping track christina what are you doing making him feel worse well i i was capped out at two so i'm i'm impressed with him being able to do it three nights in a row okay all in favor constantine i opened by an eye green eye july thank you that motion passes it is 10 28 pm and we are adjourned and thank you everyone very much let's
242go red rocks