MGRSD School Committee 5/13/2021

001um uh i think we're just waiting for curtis who else are you waiting for jake i think that's it there's curtis let me see i think i think we're all set i'm sure that uh the the one last person that that will be showing up on agenda will be jumping on presently so i think if you want to go ahead please do chris okay great i'd like to call the mount greylock regional school district school committee to order it's thursday may 13 2021 it is 6 p.m and we are meeting 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 this meeting is being broadcast on willynet tv channel 1302 in williamstown and

002it will be posted to the mount greylock regional school district youtube page 24 hours after the meeting has concluded 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 have three um folks signed up three people and group signed up for comment and first up we have andrews skinner who is from williamstown and speaking to agenda item agenda item eight uh marijuana cultivation in williamstown okay good evening can you hear me yes we can okay great uh yeah so my name is andrew skinner from cluett drive in williamstown

003i'm a parent of four children one at mount greylock one who has graduated and two on the way up from west and i also went to mount greylock i just wanted to give a quick update on the evolving landscape for marijuana cultivation excuse me near the school uh just a couple weeks ago the state opened up agricultural preservation restriction or apr lands to cannabis operations apr lands adjacent to mount greylock include the fields wrapping tightly around the west and south of the softball baseball and jv soccer fields as well as the hillside orchard and fields across route 7. these lands are already on the market and the cannabis companies likely have the deepest pockets and greatest incentives of any bidders so while the focus has been on the eligible properties to the north and west

004near the cross-country trails and the track and the school building itself the school is now virtually surrounded by properties on which the proposed bylaw will allow will allow subdividing and leasing and land sales to cannabis companies to be clear our current bylaw allows that as well as you know i already had many concerns about placing outdoor growing's wide-ranging externalities into rural residential zones and especially around mount greylock i also worry on top of externalities what kind of cynical message would we send to our students with marijuana grows beside the school these concerns are falling under an ongoing steamroller of victories for industry lobbyists starting with the planning board veering to 100 000 square feet from last town meeting simple majority vote for 5000 on a farm then in november the cannabis control commission changed the

005school buffer zone rules from not allowing cannabis operations on immediately adjacent properties to now allowing them and that has now been followed a couple weeks ago by this decision to allow cannabis operations on apr lands i don't think the planning board necessarily anticipated both of these seismic shifts when they ignored the majority of last town meetings voters and headed down their current path but with the school now maximally exposed i think the outdoor part of the bylaw is clearly and woefully inadequate i should also point out that mount greylock is a regional school drawing from some neighborhood communities neighboring communities such as lanesboro whose voters chose to ban outdoor growing i think we as a town need to be mindful of putting students from other towns in a cloud of cannabis odors for the benefit

006of a few lucky williamstown landowners those students don't get a vote at our town meeting nor do their parents but this committee can speak for them here tonight after two years of unresolved debate about outdoor growing it's at least clear the learning curve is steep and there are too many issues with the outdoor proposal to safely repair it on the floor of town meeting so instead i think the outdoor part of the bylaw needs to be rejected in the coming year the planning board can if they desire make another stab at taking the outdoor issues and these recent events as they affect mount greylock more seriously i would be happy to discuss this with you if you have any suggestions thank you thank you very much next on our um public comment sign up we

007have dave armette ralph hammond allen jesuit janine layla donna weed um from williams town speaking on item 12b professional development activities pertaining to deib i see janine laidlaw on the call um will you be reading the letter janine i hadn't planned to but i guess i can go ahead and read it thank you for the group oh stop it phone um can you hear me yes we can okay uh well thank you first for the opportunity to comment and i'm sorry that i'm looking kind of sideways at you my camera is funny on my computer so we speak for a group of citizens who strongly support a bias-free mount greylock regional school district we have some concerns and those concerns are shared by many other citizens not expressly named here on this letter so how

008did we come to comment here tonight a number of us noticed in i berkshire's april 14 2021 the district's proposed calendar and budget for next year included is an emphasis on diversity equity inclusion and belonging the deib initiative we have also become aware of some well-publicized outrage from concerned parents and teachers at elite new york private schools at the loudoun county virginia public schools and many other districts across the country so the charge is are we indoctrinating or educating families caregivers teachers students and taxpayers are deeply concerned with the approach some schools have taken with regard to their diversity and equity initiatives thus we were prompted to ask a number of specific questions of our district as we awaited answers from the district we came upon mount greylock high school's current mission statement we wondered

009if members of our communities were familiar with the concepts of restorative based processes and inclusive diversity a very quick and admittedly very informal survey indicated that many were not in addition we learned that the mount grillex school council's diversity equity inclusion and belonging planning committee is facilitated by a member of the williamstown dire committee his public comments appear to us to align closely with the very philosophies that have sparked the controversies mentioned above now please understand we have no concern whatsoever regarding his inclusion on this planning committee but facilitator we have today made two previous written inquiries about the underlying philosophies upon which mountain real initiatives should be based to date our written inquiries including those about the underlying philosophies that inform the district initiative have not all been answered to our satisfaction and several

010of the terms used in those responses indicate that certain of the concepts that concern us have already been accepted and adopted we believe that our inquiries and the mount grillock responses are all a matter of public record so any interested member of the district community can see the details of our shared communications and of course we would be happy to share those with anyone this last year or so effective communication has been complicated if not impossible in part because of covert restraints in part because of lack of print material addressing several critical civic issues for northern berkshire emails and zoom meetings are no substitute for frank and free person-to-person communication and many people do not or cannot or choose not to communicate via electric electronic platforms given this context we question we do not given

011what we actually know about the plans in our district challenge the initiative when we freely admit that we and apparently many others may have missed important efforts at community outreach we believe that all of us are potential stakeholders in the education of our children we need to be informed we need to understand we need to know how we can participate so we are here to ask again what the district has done to date regarding the initiative i believe that's on the agenda tonight and what plans it has for the future of such efforts do you anticipate any significant curricular or programmatic changes related to mount greylock's initiative we are particularly interested in the how of what is planned we request a listing of and copies of probable training and classroom materials to be used we

012request information regarding the diversity consultant's job description and specifics on the process by which the job description was developed and how the consultant's position was posted what were the hiring criteria was the hiring by committee or by an individual how widely was the job advertised what are the salary and benefits what is the term of the position how did the aforementioned planning committee come to life were community volunteers recruited how is the committee facilitator selected importantly the district's stakeholders are keenly interested in the entire projected cost to taxpayers thus far estimated at up to 95 000 but it is not clear that this cost includes district staff and faculty time for in-service training what is the current cost estimate including not only training and classroom materials and presenters and the cost of the consultant position

013but also the entire cost of faculty staff and administrative ftes dedicated to the initiative we ask in addition that you clarify how much student time will be redirected specifically to the initiative gleaned from other time on learning and where this time will come from i.e at the expense of which academic and or co-curricular subjects if you're in the process of discussing or even just now considering some of the questions we have asked please just say so we respectfully ask for this information as soon as possible and ask parenthetically might it be ready in a week's time we wish to be reasonable we hope that both the school committee and the matt grellick administration will support our good faith efforts to learn of the district's goals and processes we encourage you to reach out again if

014you've already done so to inform the mount greylock community about the deib initiative information especially based on fact diffuses controversy as one of our group noted to a member of the high school administration recently we are confident that our group agrees with the district on the goals we stand with you and behind you as we all commit to a school community welcoming and free of bias as the district progresses with its diversity and inclusion efforts we trust that we can constructively discuss the process as well as the product reasonable people inevitably want and support what is best for their communities children and the collective wisdom and common sense of reasonable everyday people is most times breathtakingly shrewd and on point let's get this right together once again thank you for the opportunity to address the

015committee especially your indulgence for this particularly long letter thank you uh next up we have public comment from the deib parent caregiver action network from williamstown and they are also speaking on agenda topic 12b uh uh activities pertaining to dei b i don't know who will be reading their comment is it kim nicholl okay great thank you okay um good evening everyone can you hear me okay okay great thank you um my name is kim nicholl um i am a parent of two children in the mount greylock school district and i'm reading this letter on behalf of a group of parents and caregivers from williamstown lanesboro and other towns that send children to the school district dear members of the school committee the mount greylock regional school district recently announced goals to build a more

016robust curriculum including principles of diversity equity inclusion and belonging deib in light of recent social media controversies that were elicited by the announcement of the district's deib plans and initiatives for the coming year we the members of the deib parent caregiver action network right to express our unwavering support of the mount greylock regional school district's initiatives to ensure the security celebrate the diversity and promote the mental and social well-being of our children every child deserves to feel safe both physically and emotionally at school we appreciate the efforts that the school committee and the district are making to ensure equity is a cornerstone of the education of our children we believe that having a deib strategy is a human right that we owe to our children as the entire nation is being pushed towards a more

017equitable inclusive society we cannot regress or accept any push towards isolation and rejection of diversity equity inclusion and belonging embracing ideals of a colorblind ideology and emphasizing equal opportunities ignores the reality that differences in access to power are real and undermines the more important work of engaging with and enhancing diversity such an approach is a transgression of the rights of our children and denies them the opportunity to understand the complexity of the world they inhabit and in which they will be called upon to serve by offering our children education about the diversity richness and complexity of their social environment we are preparing them for a better and more inclusive future we cannot afford to have mount greylock regional school district fall behind in bringing a focus on diversity to the curriculum to do so would

018be a failure to live up to the standards of a modern and equitable education it is not surprising that some members of our community might be against diversity focused initiatives in our schools through unsubstantiated accusations of indoctrination and misusing public funds we have seen how detractors of these initiatives has sought to undermine the fundamental work of equity and civic engagement that is at the core of deib the attack on proposals and projects that steer our community toward an inclusive direction that appreciates difference and builds on it as a strength rather rather than as a source of weakness speaks of xenophobia and notions of white supremacy which have no place in our community we believe that a school system that pays attention to the differential power dynamics inherent to racial social linguistic economic gender and cultural

019difference is the only one worthy of our children's time and attention in school education beyond providing children with the skills to read write and count is foundational to the kind of society we want for our children a society where they learn about and emulate values that seek to uplift instead of tearing down and stigmatizing others we support a school system that protects the fundamental rights of our children to celebrate their identities and their peers through the intentional centering and appreciation of differences as they come to a better understanding of their world thank you very much for your attention signed members of the diversity equity inclusion belonging parent caregiver action network thank you thank you very much and that concludes our public comment agenda item next up on our agenda is the student spotlight hey everyone

020um good evening so tonight i would like to recognize three of our students um recently these three students graduated from the northern berkshire community coalition youth leadership program otherwise known as the ylp i believe two of the students are on but the the three students are 11th graders uh jonah hayne catherine mcallister and alexis toomey so the ylp is a place that students explore how they can make positive changes both in their own local community and globally so this program brings together students from across the county and they learn leadership skills and conflict resolution skills they practice goal setting and assertiveness so the program runs from october to june and they meet twice a week for a couple hours so i am excited to add to the list of mount greylock alumni graduates of the

021ylp jonah catherine and alexis and i believe jonah and catherine are going to come online and share share a couple brief thoughts about their experience at the ylp so jonah would you like to kick it off um thank you for the invitation first of all to be able to speak tonight about the youth leadership program i'm very happy to have the chance to be able to share my experience with the program overall well there are a lot of things that i took away from my time with the ylp i think the main thing that i learned was the power of diversity in every sense of the word when you have a dozen different people from different walks of life with different stories behind them and you have us all together discussing and working towards a

022common goal you start to see something incredible up here all those different strengths and ideas they add up and unify and it winds up with an end result having a powerful impact great beautiful thank you jonah catherine i i can't see if you were on but if you are would you like to make a make a statement about your experience so our wi-fi is a little bit spotty so i'm sorry if that affects anything but um i also very much appreciate being invited to talk to you all on the call today um i think the biggest thing i was able to take away from the program was the ability to be able to speak with a lot of other kids in our district that we don't normally get to see um especially with covid were

023all pretty separate in our schools and we got to work um in a like collaborative effort on topics that are really important so we got to work on topics such as bettering the environment and working on a common goal throughout the entire year that not only supports a national and global effort but also a community-based effort very good thank you catherine so again um the three graduates from jonah hayne catherine mcallister who we just heard from and not present tonight alexis toomey thanks for joining us thank you very much congratulations i'm sure you can see all of the air clapping happening happening right now thank you okay next up on the agenda is approval of minutes um we have april 8th april 27th joint meeting with select board and april 27th special session do i

024have a motion to approve the april 8 2021 meeting minutes miller i so move miller moves do i have a second second elephant open seconds any discussion hearing none um roll call vote alphabetically by last name please owen i connery i constantine high elf and buying high green eye oh am i next sorry i didn't know who's going to malloy i thought i was still just last milla eye she slid right in there to the second to last slot there thank you that motion passes do i have a motion to approve the april 27 2021 joint meeting with select board minutes make it easy we'll move again okay miller moves any discussion okay all in favor bow and eye conor eye constantine eye elephant eye green eye malloy i thank you that motion passes do

025i have a motion to approve the april 27 2021 special session minutes miller so move miller moves do i have a second owen seconds oh bow in seconds um the only thing i wanted to note on this was if i think there were some documents related to this special session in the notes if we could just include include them the attachments that we had for that meeting that would be really helpful um in the future um i have some comments yeah um so mine are i don't know if they're mostly clerical i could actually just send them to steve but under number three on page one where it says have documents in packet i think that actually refers to uh the when we talked about it in the finance committee so um i would take

026out have documents in the packet oh actually now that you um okay now that i'm thinking about it in relation to your comment it actually does refer to the fact that we had them in the school committee didn't we i think we did yeah right yeah okay so sorry about that i think still um to to clarify that we walked through the documents in the finance committee earlier that day so that's page one it's under number roman numeral number three second paragraph you could say school committee has documents in the packet finance committee walked through the documents okay all right um then on page two and oh goodness how to identify this it's right in the middle of the page it starts other modifications there's a paragraph okay um it's just it's a little unclear

027um relatively small money on making sure that a water line that is not potable slash for irrigation that had existed um semicolon leads to the 30 000 plus water cost i i'm just not sure what what it is that we're reporting there um i know that this was a conversation that we were reconnecting a line so maybe that's um maybe we just need to and that the total cost of the reconnecting wasn't that high right okay um [Music] and i know the 30 000 plus water costs came in just that day so maybe you know just if i were reading this not having been there i wouldn't really understand what was being talked about here but there are two important points one is that it was an existing line that we're reconnecting and that um

028it wasn't much well and that it wasn't much money but that there's also this new cost thirty thousand dollars um to bring in water was that yeah it was thirty thousand dollars to bring in water just for that um for this for the sod yeah so that was a that was a surprise so i've added so i've added the following note added 513. this is for an existing line that we are connecting and that it wasn't that much money but there was also a new cost of 30 thousand dollars to bring in water which was just noticed great thanks all right and then i think my last comment um was on page three no sorry i have a few more so page three um middle of the page again jose question on watering truck [Music]

029um never involved perkins eastman and their team never directed them to include a new set of irrigation wells as the set of their work i think we talked about um the fact that actually i'm not sure why i highlighted that sorry no problem i'm gonna go further on page four um three paragraphs up carry rather than making a motion should give the administration the authority so i think here i asked for clarification from joe on why he had suggested that we not move the documents in front of us so i guess that's what you're saying here rather than making a motion should give the administration rather than moving the documents that's what it is rather than moving the documents before the committee comma we should give the administration the authority to put the bid out

030okay so here i'm asking the question okay so i'm asking joe why why did you suggest joe bergeron why did you suggest at the beginning that we not move the documents and rather give the administration the authority to put the um the uh the bid out so if you could just clarify that it's that whole thing is is a question to joe well here's one she then answers note added 513 asking joe why did he suggest we not move the documents and instead give the administration the authority to put the bid out perfect thank you yep i think it's better to put these as notes afterwards because that way it's it's clear what this is coming from okay and then i guess my last comment is um about the placement of the vote so i

031think um it's it happens later so you have the vote passing unanimously but then there jose is asking a question and i'm saying point of order we should vote on the motion first but according to the minutes we've already voted on the motion so i think the vote is just appearing earlier in the minutes than we actually voted okay so i think the vote comes last okay so let me move that down then great thank you steve okay so julia and steve are you okay with those changes okay and any other discussion hearing none all in favor oh and i connery eye constantine eye elephant by an eye green eye malloy eye miller eye okay thank you that motion passes next up on our agenda principal updates and i do not know who's going first

032you want to pick you want me to spin the spin the wheel since you spoke first no i'll go first alphabetical it's always alphabetical um so uh quick update now let's say here so it should be rather quick on april 28th we had the vermont family network join us virtually for a couple of different assemblies the first was a puppet show for grades k through three on stress and anxiety and students in grades four through six participated in a workshop about stress and anxiety uh the cool thing um on the administrative end is they had the students participate in a chat about what stressed them out what's bothering them which me and mrs vowell got to see which made us you know gave us some good insight on what our students need from us especially

033around academics another news mcas starts next week grades 3 and 4 will be participating in the mcas next week grades 5 and 6 will be the week after that the remote academy will be taking the mcas on the week of may 25th grades three and four will be on tuesday and wednesday grades five and six will be on thursday and friday with the science exam happening the week after that kindergarten orientation is on may 25th with kindergarten screening on june 7th and 8th a lot of kindergarten families have been reaching out to us i think we have 19 or 20 already geared up to come in and then the big information graduation these sixth graders have had a absolutely screwy year we're doing everything we can to make it special for them they didn't get

034the cape cod trip which i know is like the pinnacle of elementary school especially in western massachusetts so we are looking to make the last three days special on june 14th we are having a seal day and that is a social and emotional artistic learning day which will be led by mrs miss kik and our school psychologist they will have a bunch of artistic social emotional activities i think the focus is on decision making and making good decisions in tough times uh june 15th is still a little bit top secret it is going to be a organized day by mr bradley and miss mello with a bunch of different uh teamwork activities uh the one piece of insight i can give you is we will have a socially distanced cookout not a safe socially distanced

035cookout um i'm hoping we have some hamburgers and hot dogs and maybe some potato salad because that stuff means summer is here and lastly on june 16th at 10 a.m we will have a graduation for our sixth grade class outside i'm thinking on the basketball court we are still working on a safety plan and logistics so what questions do you have for me this is how i do this sorry yeah um i have two questions i would like to come to the barbecue because that sounds really fun next year i'll be there next year then well if parents are allowed anyway um how do the remote academy students take the mcas i'm just curious is that done at home remotely or do they come into the school for that so this i could talk for

036hours on this so the way that it is being done is they will have their zoom open and a a browser with the test nav url typed in and they will have their username and password emailed to them via their google classroom the day of they open up their zoom they have to have their screen on and the test nav open at the same time um and they take the assessment they take it at home yeah so special accommodations like human read aloud and human they actually the proctor has the same username and password they actually log into the zoom of the student and type in the answers or read the assessment to them in a one-to-one zoom well sounds like you guys have everything figured out that's awesome sure i don't know who gets

037to call on you is it christina you could do it nolan okay thanks nolan and thank you christina um and welcome ursula so we haven't had a chance to say that uh nolan just a question because he brought up the remote academy and this is um only because i'm curious about um the state of our remote academy especially after we've transitioned to fully in-person learning at least uh you know transition from hybrid to fully in person how many students are currently enrolled in the remote academy and then are we what's the support or how is the support um change or has a support change in terms of teaching staff dedicated to the remote academy so i just talked to joe about these numbers yesterday i believe it's 14 and 28 14 lanesboro students and 28

038williamstown students to support um hasn't so in terms of the personnel change um the same number of teachers same number of paraprofessionals the way the support now is it works now is it is it is more targeted so we created google calendars for teachers to sign up for academic support for their students and in that sign up they say this is what the student needs to work on this is a workshop like this is a page in the book and this is you know he's struggling or she is struggling with x y or z so they can but they have slots to fill in the afternoon morning as well as their special education time and specialist and then the the mcas results that we will get um i'm assuming we'll be looking very carefully at

039how our our students who are in the remote academy have fared relative to to their to their cohorts who who are in the in-person hybrid i think yes but i think we're going to be looking for learning loss all over the board just to make sure we cover everything that we missed this entire year thanks okay any other questions for nolan sorry i do have one more i i'm gonna preface this with i'm getting my information from facebook so i don't know if it's true but i thought i read that i thought i read that um the remote academy was not going to be offered next year starting in the fall is that true everybody will be back 100 jake you want to take this one i would love to take that sorry this isn't

040the right i i just you know no i i think it's a fine time um we we are you know public public school most public schools are not tooled to offer in-person instruction as well as fully online instruction particularly to elementary students uh our intention at this point administratively is not to offer the remote academy in the fall i've spoken with a few parents about options that are out there for students that really thrived via remote instruction particularly at the elementary level um the the state is and when i say the state i mean the department of elementary and secondary ed has thus far said we're not requiring districts to do it as of right now that could change tomorrow that could change a month from now that could change three months from now as

041it stands at this moment in time we we would we would envision ourselves putting our resources back into serving every child in person in our buildings understood thank you okay i think steve might have a question even though he's on mute yep um do we have many sixth graders in the remote academy we have six okay and are we including them in the graduation plans at lesson west or are we doing something different for them cindy and i have not talked about that yet it's on our to-do list to see the safest way to make sure those families feel included okay and then i know this is a very different year i know in previous years there's been school committee members at graduations are you looking for any school committee participation either remotely or in

042person um anyone that wants to give a speech no no no um if you i mean there will be at least one two school committee members there already because they are parents i believe okay i don't miss anyone but if you wanna i'll i will find space for you steve if you want to attend you will not be obligated to do anything okay thank you okay who wants to go next for principal updates all right i'm jumping in go for it hi everybody um it's been an incredibly busy last several weeks at williamstown elementary school as i imagine it is everywhere um i want to point out first that last week we had our staff appreciation week it was definitely a time to recognize everybody in our building i have to be honest what we've

043accomplished since april 5th and really since the beginning of the year is nothing short of remarkable and the only way any of it happens was under incredible teamwork by everyone involved so i would love to give a shout out to you our cafeteria workers our building and grounds crew our substitute teachers all of our paraprofessionals our office staff our teachers um everybody who has really come together um the idea that you have a job description anymore in an elementary school seems a little bit of a a joke in that everybody in every position has done no less than one million things that were outside of your purview before this pandemic so i am incredibly grateful and incredibly lucky to be part of a staff and of an entire community at williamstown that really has embraced

044trying to get us through this pandemic and i want to make sure that i give all of them a thank you because they matter and it's made a tremendous difference in us being able to come back to school successfully in person next our fourth graders have been very busy working with shakespeare and company this week has been the week when they are recording um as you like it by shakespeare this has been nothing short of amazing i shakespeare and company is impressive in a normal year when we're in person but walking into the auditorium this week and watching students on stage performing their lines while there's a computer off the stage while shakespeare is zooming in to give directions and coaching while the classroom teacher becomes the cinematographer to actually video the different scenes was

045amazing i was really concerned of what it was going to look like and where the kids going to get what we wanted them to get out of it and it again was nothing short of amazing the kids were so excited to have memorized lines in shakespeare um shakespeare and company was able to do lessons through zoom weekly with the fourth graders and they were still able to achieve that magic of trying to understand shakespeare but also getting the kids their first taste at trying to do a performance and it was incredibly impressive we're hoping as soon as we are able to get the clips put together and the actual full length video from each of our you know our fourth grade classes together we'll be sharing that out with our families and with the school

046committee because it's pretty amazing the next thing i do want to talk about is our renzi award winners so there's a committee consisting of administration our fifth and sixth grade teachers our specialists in art music library phys pe and technology they determine the sixth graders who best exemplify the qualities of a good citizen that we value at williamstown elementary school that encompasses kindness enthusiasm and helping others the award was originally established by a citizens committee to honor the career of a longtime williamstown elementary school teacher and administrator helen renzi and it's something that we are happy to celebrate each year this year's renzi award winners are ward bianchi noah fredette reese raymond and nora stricker so we're incredibly proud of our four students and our four recipients this year um next we are very proud

047to say we have survived six weeks of negative pooled testing results that's been a really big deal a deal at williamstown elementary school i haven't had to write any emails or any letters around covet results so we're really proud of that and we're incredibly grateful to everything our school nurse and joe they are working around the clock to make sure our results you know all of our tests get sent out and it's it's definitely a process so we're grateful for all the work that our nurse and joe have been doing um our kindergarten registration is well underway um as i was told early on when i took over as principal to check the census but don't rely on the census and i have definitely learned that it has not been a good enroll good indicator

048of enrollment they do not match up at all so far my kindergarten numbers are are looking pretty good for next year and we're planning our kindergarten orientation on june 9th we'll be coordinating with our bus company and trying to do a somewhat traditional kindergarten orientation where students will come in they'll take a bus ride around the community they'll be able to see the playground they'll be able to also see inside of a kindergarten classroom after meeting with our kindergarten teachers you know that idea of trying to bring back some of the normal and also trying to bring back some of those you know events that really make school what it's supposed to be and things that kids look forward to in kindergarten orientation is really one of those milestones so we really feel like we

049can do it and we can do it safely while still following all of the safety protocols to keep our students and our staff safe as nolan said mcas testing begins next week we're going to keep our fingers crossed as it's nolan and my first time through mcas so wish us luck on that um our teachers are ready as ready as they can be uh we're really glad that there's only one session of english language arts and math and that we don't have to do multiple sessions this year but you know you can keep our students and our teachers and your thoughts for the next two weeks as we get through mcas testing we would greatly appreciate it um and then lastly is our sixth grade graduation we have a similar plan to what nolan laid

050out our graduation will be june 17th at 1 pm our plan is to have the entire event outdoors in our tent outback we're going to be giving our families updates on information as far as number of guests as we work out the logistical pieces and then leading up to our graduation we'll have some of the traditional events where our sixth graders do a walk through through school we play music they're supposed to really take a look and walk through the halls of williamstown elementary one more time and then we have a super secret event that i don't want to give any details about yet because even our sixth grade teachers don't know yet but it's something we felt like was a good celebration for our sixth graders to try and have them finish up their

051time at williamstown elementary school with something special that's unique for them to celebrate their accomplishments and help them get ready for middle school so a lot of things going on but you know we're really proud of what we've accomplished this year for sure any questions jose thanks cindy and i'll reiterate reiterate your your gratitude that you you expressed for for your staff and and i'll think i can speak for for the school committee in thanking you and nolan and jake and and and the entire administrative staff of mount greylock for for this incredible year that we we have been through uh honestly thank you so much um the question i've got is just a simple one and it's just it's i think it's it's more for clarification and maybe to check in on on the

052status of well to hear you hear you describe uh how well staffed you think we are at west earlier uh in the academic year your predecessor reported to us um about a desire to hire a new a sixth grade teacher to help um to help with the staffing at west and we just heard from you that the kindergarten class that you expect the numbers look good how do you feel about our what's the staffing situation like uh at west going into next year how do you see how do you see things playing out um i would say my overarching statement of it seems to be rapidly changing week by week and some of that is a factor of we had um two positions that were known retirements but as we go along towards the end

053of the school year there's definitely a staff member who is considering retirement and we also have people whose life plans are changing a little bit and that will greatly impact what positions i end up hiring for um we have a second grade teacher who is now retiring and so we were planning on internal shifts within the building to fill the sixth grade position but since that second grade teacher is retiring now we will be looking to hire somebody and truly it really is a day-to-day um operation as far as looking at numbers uh right now i'm going to be hiring for a school librarian and i'm going to be hiring for another classroom teacher but i could have more than that depending on what the next couple weeks look like with staff sounds busy cindy

054thank you very much definitely busy okay i don't see any other questions for you cindy so i think it's jake's turn all right good evening good evening again i'll try to bring it home here so graduation for mount greylock seniors is june 12th at 11. attendance is by invitation only for mount greylock staff graduates and their immediate family we will have of course school committee representation there the ceremony is going to take place outside rain or shine speeches and issuance of diplomas will also be streamed live we're working out exactly how that'll be streamed but it will be um provided to the to the wider community um at the end this the ceremony will conclude with a parade uh through williamstown ending at wabika um and then from wabika the lanesboro and hancock fire and

055police departments will escort the lanesboro and hancock students south into into town so second point may is a busy month we have the entire school body back spring sports are in full swing co-curriculars are continuing both in person and remotely we have a full schedule of mcas with 7th 8th 9th and 10th graders along with some select 12th graders we also have ap testing going on and sats just recently wrapped up so it's uh we're close to the end but it's we have a we have a full plate um i'd also like to thank uh our specifically our students families and staff just like nolan and cindy said but uh but they made it work and um although difficult um i think we had a very successful year and last but not least i just

056want to mention our summer programming we just finalized our co course offerings we'll be offering multiple summer school credit bearing summer summer school classes at mount greylock and we'll also have a host of week-long enrichment and remediation camps so that was just published and sent out to families this afternoon also one point to know about the the summer program the week of july 6th through july 9th is we're going to target that for a um a middle school transition week where we hope to get current sixth seventh and eighth graders on campus um to to support um and encourage a smooth and um hopefully anxiety reduced transition to mount greylock for the programs everything is is free of charge tuition's free of charge and there will be transportation from williamstown and lanesboro so pending any

057questions from anybody that is all i have for tonight uh i think steve has his hand up it's kind of hard to see i we can't hear you steve you're muted thanks uh same question as before i assume that the remote students are going to be incorporated into the graduation ceremony yes and so there's once you will be there in person they'll be sitting outdoors say that one more time sorry the uh students who are coming to mount greylock in person will be sitting outdoors together for the commencement everything will be outside yes excellent um so bring there's good there's there's lawn seating there'll also be um you know seating in the um in folks cars so if it's raining make sure you either have an umbrella to sit on the lawn or there's enough

058room in in your car i see a question from carrie yeah um you said there's a parade after you i assume you're talking about a car parade and the parade goes through williamstown so is this kind of like what happened last year that they're driving all the way down into town in the upper road and then down route 43 to wabika and then parting ways yes exactly exactly like that nice okay cool okay i don't see any other questions so i think you're off the hook jake thank you very much okay moving on to the next agenda item appointment of a new member to the finance subcommittee so when um michelle departed from the school committee it left a open spot for school committee members specifically from lanesboro for the finance subcommittee and i am

059hoping to appoint our new member ursula malloy to that finance subcommittee so i would be looking for a motion to appoint ursula if she is willing to um be a part of that subcommittee julia i'm moving that a great do i have a second second elephant oh thank you any discussion ursula are you okay with that appointment sure okay all in favor thank you very much and again welcome ursula we're so glad that you've joined us thank you okay next up on the agenda is discussion marijuana cultivation in williamstown and possible vote christina i am happy to to start this conversation um we just felt as we approached the williamstown town meeting um that we ought to have one more opportunity to to give the school committee a chance to weigh in on uh outdoor

060cultivation of cannabis um very grateful i've i've had the great pleasure of of being an observer in in several planning board meetings uh thus far in my my six months here on the job and uh you know we have a very very dedicated well-informed hard-working uh planning board in williamstown and i and i'm sure in in lanesboro as well but but uh you know i've been spending time with the williams town planning board and and we of course and i think i can speak for all the school committee when i say we're very grateful to them for their work uh i think i can likely also speak for all of you when i say we understand completely that the the farms and the family farms that surround us on this magnificent campus here of the

061mount greylock regional school are part and parcel of what this community is and who this community is part of its history and we are we are very hopeful for the sake of the good of all of us and future generations that that these family farms are part of the future as well uh in williamstown in the berkshires and in western massachusetts cannabis cultivation is uh is allowable by state law now we see neighboring states i think likely surrounding us 360 degrees with the exception of the atlantic ocean to our east we will have um cannabis cultivation and sale legal in new england and new york state and and so joining us tonight we're very grateful to to him for taking his time to do this and i'm even more grateful because i told him i

062thought we'd be ready at 6 30 and here it is seven and we're and we're getting there uh his attorney joel bard who has represented the town of williamstown as town council for i think a year or two or 20 or or 30 uh perhaps um and and we asked uh very grateful to attorney bard just to see if if the school committee had any questions uh about this i i will i'm not going to get the question ball rolling but i will say um you know with full understanding that uh that the law of the commonwealth allows this um i'm not sure there's any school administrator uh and and i don't know that there's any superintendent although i'll only speak for myself my hope is that we are not uh deeply impacted by cannabis

063cultivation um close by to our high school and to our middle school lots of reasons for that um you know none of which are are meant to to impugn anybody that's been working on this and putting in dozens of hours and none of which is about not having tremendous respect for our agricultural community and our agricultural neighbors but um i i my hope as a superintendent is that the community proceeds very cautiously uh before it allows uh it's it's a regional middle and high school that represents um children and families from several towns uh to to to be deeply impacted by this however very grateful for all the work has been done very grateful to attorney bard for being here tonight um i think attorney bard i don't mean to speak for you but but

064he can answer specifics to this bylaw specifics to the cannabis control corporation uh in the state and really answer questions about what this means from a state level at a local level uh and with that i will hand it over to you christina to call on people to to comment or ask questions thanks i think i saw julia first and then carrie can you hear me all right yes okay great um so uh thank you jake you definitely spoke for me um i can say when you said you know that we don't want to have um cannabis impacting our students um and i share ander skinner's concern about what message we may send to our students so my guess my where my head is at and i really want to just check these facts thank

065you attorney bart if you can just do that for me is my understanding is that doing nothing is actually more puts us at greater risk of greater impact near our school than pat than supporting this particular bylaw and so doing nothing is actually the more um impactful negatively impactful thing potentially negatively impactful thing for our students so that's question number one and the other question is um we've had four my understanding is we've had four years of outside companies that could come in and they haven't done it so i just want to confirm those facts that i've been hearing in in and around town uh yes so answering question one you're absolutely right right now there are far fewer protections than there would be uh if you pass and and let me make clear you

066know we're we're policy neutral but what is proposed definitely uh limits the areas specifically around the high school but generally around town limits the areas where marijuana cultivation can occur that's absolutely correct and as to the second question there have not been any agricultural uh licenses if you will then i'll call that but granted by the town and as i'm sure you all know there's a retail outlet but out on route two but there are no approved agricultural marijuana grows in williamstown okay carrier next thanks christina so my questions are actually similar but not exactly the same as julia's so um [Music] the folks such as the comments we heard tonight who say that this is not restrictive enough even though it is more restrictive than what we have now that the proposed bylaw is

067not restrictive enough there's nothing to stop the planning board from passing further restrictions in the future right so if we pass this bylaw they can continue to work on it um or is that misleading is that is is this sort of a one and done that the the goal of the planning board is to stop here so that's my first question my second question i think you kind of already touched on with julia's second question which is that even if this is past the um anyone who wants whether it's a local farmer or an outside grower they're still going to have to come before the town to request permission to establish any kind of a growing situation so this is not going to automatically approve any specific grow that is yet another step of approval

068that would have to take place so those are my questions thank you okay well just to mix things up i'll answer the second question first that's right the um anyone who wants to have a cultivation facility will need a special permit from the board of appeals so that'll be a public hearing process typically well there may be one session there could be more than one session but there'll be an opportunity for folks to make comments whether there are butters parents of students or whomever can show up at the hearing and be heard um the first question was oh right the um uh no well your question was will this uh zoning bylaw amendment if passed be the final word uh no not necessarily what's going to be before town meeting will be a proposal to

069amend the zoning bylaw to specifically address cultivation and the zoning bylaws can be amended at any time there's a process where the planning board has a public hearing but ultimately it's town meeting that decides the planning board proposes or reviews someone else's proposal but town meeting would decide and if for example people find it gets for example if this gets a doctor gets voted at the upcoming town meeting and some people are finding it concerning in some respect they can petition to have the zoning by law further amended steve uh yes um i just wanted to clarify something that i was told is that if we try to change uh the proposed bylaws on town floor that there is actually a danger that we could propose something that the state would then reject later and

070then revert back to what we currently have well of course that would depend on the nature of what somebody proposed part of my job at town meeting is to advise the town meeting if some proposal has gone too far in one or another respect so um hopefully that won't happen because it means i was asleep at the switch i mean typically that's not what happens so there are two ways in which a an amendment proposed a town meeting could run into trouble one is if it's what we call outside of the scope of the warrant so you're going to have as you may know there are two different proposals but um uh someone may attempt to make an amendment that is just completely uh well outside the scope is the phrase but just goes way

071beyond what has been proposed and in that case it could be rejected for having been outside of the scope frankly it's uh unusual that that occurs so the other way in which it may be deemed illegal and i'll give you a very concrete example and i know that this is a cause for concern so the bylaw uh requires that any uh that any marijuana growth facility be at least 500 feet from uh from the school specifically in any school for that matter so we're frequently asked well what if we want to make that a thousand feet and let's say to really be extreme so let's say somebody gets up a town meeting and amends it to say that there be a 3 foot buffer so the state regulations say 500 feet and they do allow

072communities to amend the bylaw to make it less than 500 feet but it's silent as to make it greater than 500 feet and most rules of statutory interpretation suggest that when the bylaws speaks to going in one direction and allows it it uh and is silent as to requiring greater setback requirements than probably the uh law and the regulation uh did not intend for that to happen so if town meeting were to vote an amendment to make the setback requirement 3 000 feet you would see me get up you'd hear me get up and say in my opinion that's likely to be denied disapproved by the attorney general tom meeting is not bound by my opinion so if tom meaning were to go ahead and vote that then yes you would see that bylaw in

073my opinion uh disapproved by the attorney general so that's an extreme example and i think the answer to question generally is that that's unlikely to happen uh but in an extreme case like that that probably would happen thank you jose thanks christina this is i think a question about uh i think process is the theme here or the where my mind is thinking so jake you you've i think you've you've asked us as a committee to um to publicly consider the planning board's proposal to to the town of williamstown it's unclear to me what it says i think in our agenda a vote is possible um i'm i'm going to guess that the vote would be more a statement by the school committee declaring a um an opinion about this this this bylaw is is

074that what is that what your intention or or what's your sense of how you think this could play out i i i had a couple of layers jose of of intentionality around this one is that i think it is important that the the select board the planning board residents of williamstown and potential voters at the town meeting hear what the school committee has to say as this is a topic that that can and perhaps will impact um the students that we are all here to serve i'm appointed you're elected but we're all here to serve those students um so really one one layer of this is to simply just have one more conversation that that will inform where the select board is where the planning board is and where the town meeting uh voters will

075be the second layer is that should the school committee decide to do so there is certainly no action that that we could take um that is appropriate trying to be directive around this that's that's not the school committee's role uh generally a school committee could adopt something that would be along the lines of a resolution that would suggest to to to town officials to town meeting voters um that that you in general you know would resolve that this is an okay thing and we would support it or in general you know the school committee resolves that this is not what is best for the children of the community and um there's nothing that can be done to to force this through or to prohibit this from happening but the conversation itself and potentially a resolution

076should the school committee opt to go in that direction could say very firmly this is where the elected officials who are elected to represent the best interests of children caretakers families taxpayers in this community this is where this elected body is on the issue yeah if it's okay i just like to follow up i think where my my struggle is is that um and i believe i'm not sure we can call upon andre i saw andrew had his head his hand up but um you know we are um some of the information that we're receiving uh from from town members is that uh you know my sense is probably collectively as a committee you know we would not generally support cannabis cultivation near school grounds or within the proximity to you know it's you know

077close enough to the school that there would be a a noticeable real impact to our students but what we're being told is that um if this bylaw doesn't pass it's unlikely that the planning board which has other you know issues that it needs to address it's unlikely the planning board will will revisit this and that we could be left with the worst case scenario meaning that there is no you know there's nothing really to limit how much cultivation can happen how close to a property boundary so it's it's unclear to me um how to evaluate the information that we're receiving um and i'm not sure that that joel you you could help us on that maybe maybe you could but um you know maybe the question i can i can ask you joel that would

078certainly help me is if the bylaw doesn't pass do we have sufficient mechanisms imagining that what if what we want as a town is to prevent cannabis cultivation near mount greylock regional school do we have enough mechanisms in place in town to prevent that if this bylaw doesn't pass well you know as i mentioned in one of my earlier answers the planning board may have lost its appetite to um develop a bylaw but anyone can petition to amend the zoning bylaws so that would be the mechanism in other words the planning board is not the exclusive agent for change as far as the zoning bylaw goes and if if no bylaw gets proposed by by any entity citizen or or group in terms of what we have on paper right now are there mechanisms in

079place to prevent cannabis cultivation sort of this widespread cannabis cultivation that um that some of us have been told could happen without the bylaw passing well not really because the bylaw allows it in certain areas if someone were to apply and they meet the criteria of the current by-law if they're uh you know of sufficient good standing so there are there are two approvals required i mean people may know it but i should state it they would need the local permit then they also need a permit an approval from the state cannabis control commission so they would have to go through those two processes but there would not be any other way to prevent it i mean sometimes people bring litigation to try to do it privately that way but in terms of what the

080town can do it would be limited to going through that public hearing process and vetting the proposal and imposing conditions that might make it more palatable at least to to some people carrie yeah but just to just to clarify that the public hearing process can be very effective right we've already had at least one public hearing turn you know be resp or responsible for you know um uh declining to grant a permit is that correct yes i'm asking for it's a while ago now well my understanding i actually wasn't involved in that is i think the applicant withdrew in the face of a lot of opposition i'm not mistaken so that's that's the mechanism is the public opposition so i mean if if this is more restrictive than what we have now and the um

081if there's an applicant that's within you know proximity to the school it's upon the town to oppose it townspeople to show up and voice their their opinions and you know prevent something from happening that seems problematic for for our schools is is well there's that and there's also the ability to show up and be assured that even though the property is you know yay big they're only going to put it over here in fact two or three thousand feet away and they're going to have voter controls and they're going to have you know a b and c kinds of they'll stipulate to certain controls so that people might be satisfied that it won't be visible it won't be harmful it won't be odorific and so forth that's a word julia did you have a question

082um i i take to heart andrew's point that we are a school committee that represents two different towns and i don't want to put the lanesboro members on the spot but i also i recognize that all of the questions and commentary thus far have come from the williamstown members and so i just wanted to name that i take that to heart and i'm if you had anything i would love to be hearing it if you had any thoughts curtis i i will say i do feel out of place not being a resident of the town of williamstown commenting on policies decided by the town of williamstown but there is a very potential impact on the quality of life for our students at our school um i i i find myself thinking a lot about uh

083when i taught in california there were a lot of ordinances about the minimum distance for liquor stores to elementary and high school campuses and then i think about williamstown and i think about there's a liquor store right there on on coal avenue just a block away or so from the school uh but that you can't smell the liquor store from the school and that's that's a a factor that uh i i just have a hard time wrapping my head around how to both provide a safe buffer around the school property without infringing on the rights of the people who live in the town and have farming property in that area so i i on the one hand as an advocate for our students uh and faculty and staff i i do feel like the school

084committee is in a position to recommend perhaps revisiting the idea of the buffer around school properties that that was decided against but on the other hand uh as a person who doesn't live in the town i do as the wilt it's your town i you know i'm i'm torn in terms of being a lanesboro resident and a member of this committee in that regard so that's where my head uselessly is at julia i'm i thank you curtis and again i'm sorry if i put put you on the spot um i i guess this is a question to attorney bard um that i thought we were unable to put a buffer around the school more than what it's set at and so i guess that's my question to you i thought that was not possible well

085that's our opinion you know i had addressed it earlier you know i gave you that brief analysis of uh and so our sense is that a court well you heard me say it earlier but that a court would say well the regulations clearly allow for lessening the buffer but not expanding it and right yeah okay thank you as i said some of those issues could be addressed through the public hearing process sort of nudging the facility further away and i would guess i don't know i shouldn't speculate but you would hope that an applicant would be sensitive to that and julia i i would have to say that i i echo what what your sentiment is and what curtis's sentiment is as a lanesboro resident i think the school as a school committee member we

086from lanesboro we at this point we are able to at least say as a as a resident of lanesboro with children with students that go to the district this is our only way to express the safety that we feel they require um we can't go and vote at a town meeting um and so and and like curtis we respect local farmers and their need to be successful and survive however our role i think as a school committee member is is single-minded in that it is for the students and um obviously we are a regional district so we want to keep both we want to keep williamstown hancock new ashford and lanesboro students safe um and and definitely you know if we could put regulations in place that would push these growers further out then it

087would make everyone more comfortable but it sounds like we don't have that capability jose thanks christina i think um it seems like we're close to making a decision about whether we put forward a motion for a resolution or we pause debate and and leave it to the williamstown planning board to make its case to the full town um and and then and then uh and then see what happens at the town meeting um i think i think if we were if there were a motion for a resolution i have a sense of how the committee might might be swayed but um it's unclear to me whether whether we we need need to pass a resolution i'd love to hear from my fellow committee members about how strongly we feel about passing a resolution julia let's

088steve go yeah go to see first i i i agree with not passing a resolution i think this conversation was valuable and i think this conversation serves the purpose i think this is also a great opportunity to encourage people to come to the town meeting to inform themselves of the issues to look at the scientific research specifically what does the research say about the odors and have this discussed on town floor thanks steve julia swirling in my head oh we're losing your audio i can't hear you do this for a minute um the debate that's swirling in my head is this combination of um i under absolutely we are here for the students that is our job um and and while we i understand the plight of farmers and i want to support farming our

089job as elected members of the school committee is to make sure we're doing what's in the best interest of the students and i guess that's the piece that i'm struggling with um in that if the option is this bylaw or no bylaw then this by law isn't in my mind is in the better interest of our students and so i'm i'm trying to understand if it's not is there another is there another um likely alternative um and if the challenge is that trying to bring something to the floor i think that's what happened last year and it got i missed unfortunately i missed town meeting last year and it didn't so nothing happened because somebody tried to amend it from the floor so if we do nothing then i i worry we are um you

090know we're going to end up in the same place we're in and i'd rather move us forward to better protect our students than do nothing jose all right thanks julie i i i you know i uh your your perspective really resonates with me my worry is that uh um if if we don't for instance i mean that this is my worry if if hypothetically we we don't as a as a committee um pass a resolution that effectively recommends that the town rejects this this proposal are are we um by default saying that we're okay with cannabis cultivation in the proc you know in proximal to school grounds and i think that that that worries me that without without our committee issuing a definite statement about our our stance on cannabis cultivation near the school um

091are we not doing what we should do as a school committee i think i think i said something there i got lost in my transport gary did you want to jump in so is it possible uh for jose for instance to propose a resolution that takes a position on cultivation in proximity to school grounds as opposed to taking a position on the bylaw amendment does that i mean let's do what we can to make clear our position on that and um then we know it's up to the town to vote on the bylaw amendment but at least we're clarifying our job as representatives i think you've got that i think you've nailed it that's the thing to do okay go for it jose thank you i was gonna ask ask our good friend joe whose

092voice we haven't heard from yet um in this this hour and a half that we spent together joke is it any bunny chance could you offer up an example of language that might that might uh be effective in terms of the resolution that uh we might like to pass as carrie i think has as has described it i i think the impossible position that you're in is that the the towns council has indicated that it's highly unlikely that any resolution or any any bylaw could be passed a town meeting that would create a larger buffer around the school and so given that that's not an option passing a resolution that suggests that is an option might lead to some voters who are not as educated as we are here thinking that that's the biology pass

093so that would be my concern um a motion that you could pass would be to say that you want something that is at least as restrictive as the proposed bylaw preferentially something that is more restrictive and would make it less likely that growing would occur within close proximity to the school and just leave it at that but i it's a totally une this is the least uh i am not educated on this topic and the way you might you might desire carrie yeah that's our that's a really interesting point joe thank you for um for pointing that out but my thinking was more that the um thinking about those next steps right so to say that we would like something at least as restrictive might also invite more um amendments to the amendment on town

094meeting so to clarify that we would support i mean we could say that we support this amendment but that we hope that the um [Music] that any attempt to um come within proximity of school grounds and future be met with very strict scrutiny on the part of the town you know that's essentially what we want we we know that there's only so much we can get through the bylaw and that there those those other steps those other approval processes are where we need to ask people to take a stand and if not reject outright then at least scrutinize to the best of our ability and to our utmost to make sure that we are ensuring the safety of our kids jose that really resonates with me as well i think my um then the challenge

095for me becomes you know if we if we go this route and we we hope you know that uh whoever is going to be approving you know a a farmer's petition to to to cultivate cannabis will protect the school we ended back to the place where we are now where you know where the public where the town um during uh what's the um joel can help me here what happens in the town when someone puts forward a request to grow cannabis as it stands but that the town step up and and publicly push back against any any proposal to grow cannabis it seems like if we if we pass a resolution as a committee that supports the bylaw but requests that the town protect the school as much as it can that's effectively where we

096are now more or less i think that that's my worry so i guess the question is where are we at do we want to pass some type of resolution or do we want to let the discussion stand where it is um i think we're all pretty much on the same page in terms of where we would want to draw the line the question is do we need a formalized resolution or don't we and if we do want to make one what it what is the language that i think just stepping i think that's a great question i think i could see three things happening at you know when jake first introduced this to us i was hesitant for us to get involved but i i feel like we would be um i'm not sure the

097right verb here but but not you know holding up our end of the bargain living up to our responsibilities by not um but not making a statement about our position on this bylaw so i think you know if we if we move a resolution that is a committee we recommend rejecting that the town rejects this by-law if that fails meaning if we don't you know if the majority of our committee doesn't it doesn't improve that resolution there could be a another motion for a resolution along the lines of what carrie had just posed so i'm going to stick my neck out and and i don't even know the right verbiage here but you can help me out christina to um make a motion that as a committee we pass a resolution that recommends that the

098town of williamstown rejects this bylaw because of its real impacts on you know yeah because of the impacts that cannabis cultivation will have on our school is that is that possible did i just do something is what i'm asking you so before we before there's a second can i just make a comment that it's not a it's not a by-law it's a by-law amendment so we have a bylaw the town has already passed a by-law permitting cultivation so this is an amendment to restrict um you know the parameters for cultivation so your amen your your motion is to um reject or by law to make resolution yeah exactly yeah right in in because you know to just to offer up context um we should second it sorry i'm gonna step in for christina here we

099have second before thanks gary thanks gary i'm not gonna second it do i have a second on that motion okay so hearing none oh oh sorry steve i can't see it over there yep so i'm not in favor of this but i will second it so that it can be discussed okay so we have a motion um to make a resolution to reject the by-law amendment um that's been moved by jose and seconded by steve discussion jake yeah thank you thank you for allowing me to enter this discussion i know it's the school committees to have um to me the most important thing that can come from this conversation is is some general agreement whether it takes the form of a vote or not i think it's it's actually already taken the form of a

100conversation among um people who are passionate about the community's children but the most important thing that can come from this is a consensus from the school committee that the school committee's expectation of the community is that any consideration of growing cannabis within proximity to the school is taken with the utmost seriousness and with the with the wellness of of children and mind the health of children in mind and how it impacts the the the 80 or 90 adults that come here to serve children on a daily basis how it impacts particularly in august and september and october and maybe even into november when when my understanding is the aroma is at its strongest that it impacts the williams cross country team that uses our course how it impacts the the dozen or so other high

101schools that come and run cross-country here and play soccer here and the the the families of those people um so i i don't know it does strike me attorney bart i would please ask you to correct me if i'm wrong it does strike me that this particular bylaw is more protective of of the school than than the the current state of affairs in williamstown that seems clear to me so i i don't know that this bylaw not passing offers us any at the town meeting offers us any additional protections in fact i think it's likely that it offers less so again i'll reiterate to me the most important thing that can come from this conversation is the elected school committee's expectation to the rest of the elected officials into the the community we serve here

102in williamstown in lanesboro that that gravity is expected every time there is the potential for this to happen within proximity to the school and our students and our employees well i have two two comments yes i agree with your summary that that's exactly right and uh again my role is not to get involved in policy but perhaps to be helpful i could suggest that the committee could vote to authorize the chair or another spokesperson to say essentially what your interim superintendent said to say that a town meeting that it was the consensus of the committee and then someone could look at the notes of what was just said and report that to town meeting jose thanks joel and uh i'll just just for the record our our very much full time superintendent we got confused

103the interim town manager sorry jake didn't want to uh no no don't don't don't scare him away please i thought my gig was up there for a minute i was uh thank you jose no i i'm glad we're having this this discussion and i think it's important that you know our towns see how we vote on this and understand why we're taking the stand that we do that we that we will take um you know my you know that there there are a number of competing perspectives on this i think the one that overwhelms me at the moment is that by not taking a firm stance against um this proposed bylaw amendment i worry that by default we you know at least um you know we're inviting canada's cultivation in proximity to the school we

104can ask that favors be done for us and behalf of our students staff and teachers but there's no requirement at the moment that the deciding boards you know have to have to do in quotes right by us and i think at the moment where we stand in terms of you know public engagement with any proposal as the laws currently stand for cannabis cultivation they seem to do a sufficient job at at least deterring potential cannabis growers in town so that that's my that's my my stance but um i honestly the things i've heard really resonate with me across the committee if i may my understanding is a little bit different and i'm not going to be voting on the bylaw amendment but i just want claire i just want to clarify my understanding my understanding

105jose is that the bylaw amendment will make the restrictions tougher for cultivation closer to the school and if it doesn't pass it'll be easier and so i think the resolution i was hearing we wanted to make was to support the bylaw amendment but also put forth we want the town to remember that the middle high school sits in the middle of this very productive farmland and our kiddos and our staff and our administrators and visiting sports teams and williams college kids are going to be confronted by the potential odors of this particular crop of um plant and that was my understanding of where we were going not that we wanted to reject it but that we wanted to support it yeah i think i think christina thank you for that that question i i'm torn

106and i respect many of the um members of our williamstown planning board that uh are proposing this to to the town um i i can read it as something different i can i can see this as just the way you've pitched it but i can also see it as we are making are the mechanisms to allow existing farmers to cultivate cannabis you know where we are making that process much more efficient um and enabling and supporting you know it's being pitched to us as a mechanism for supporting our small farmers if it were not a mechanism to support our small farmers meaning that you know there's nothing to stop our our our the farmers of williamstown to cultivate cannabis now um it's unclear to me why they would be pitching this as something that would

107be beneficial to our farming community in williamstown um i see steve's hand up and then julia thank you so i i basically agree with the discussion that's going on in terms of the consensus of our concerns and this is why i don't think we need a formal vote i think we're pretty unanimous on our concerns and then that can be communicated this is a complicated issue that i think is better discussed in detail at the town meeting where you have the planning boards where you have the people who have the proposed modifications and this can all be discussed where both sides can present thanks steve julia so i just want to respond to jose's question maybe and and uh or interpretation and ask i guess attorney bart if you can just confirm that how i

108thought about this or correct me um jose i hear you saying this has been positioned as something to help the farmers so it's going to help the process be more efficient so more likely to generate the request for you know the grow permit my understanding is the positioning to help the farmers is about the debate of should it be five thousand or should it be a hundred thousand square feet if that's the right space not should we have the amendment or should we not have the amendment um and so you know i don't i did not understand that this would make it easier for people to get a permit or a more efficient process and i guess that's the question to attorney guard well the process will be the same it will be a special

109permit for the board of appeals this bylaw is more detailed than the original by-law let me give you this little bit of history that some of you may know but williamstown was if not the first one of the first communities to regulate marijuana you all know that it was legalized through a ballot question in 2016. the state was very slow to roll it out um and towns and cities were slow to adopt bylaws and ordinances and williamstown did it very quickly and said not very much really about anything other than retail and defined a a pretty narrow area where retail would be permitted there was concern that it not be permitted in the downtown around the college and so you know where it's ended up so the focus had been on allowing a location for

110retail prohibiting it elsewhere and not a whole lot of thought was given to the other types of marijuana establishments and the cannabis control commission hadn't even adopted their regulations at that time and so the town you know to its credit in a sense jumped out and said you know our greatest concern right now is not to have retail downtown and uh and it was left at that so this is a uh a closer look at regulating agriculture and it regulates it uh much more definitively i mean there are a lot of in addition to narrowing the areas where it would be allowed it has other language in there as well so it's a long-winded way of agreeing with with the way you propose the issue the way you frame the issue okay any further discussion

111so we have a motion that was um made by jose and seconded by steve uh all in favor and his motion was to reject reject the bylaw amendment so uh bowen no connery no cintina dolphin by no green no malloy can i obtain you may okay i'll assume that's abstain miller no okay so that motion does not pass um so we can leave it at that we can um make a statement about our objections to the proximity of marijuana growing near the school carrie so um i really like the suggestion that attorney bart made and i think jake has made uh some very good statements here and i think if um the chair and the superintendent want to put together a statement on behalf of the committee and have it read at town meeting i

112would be happy to deliver it or the chair could deliver it i'll be a town meeting so i can deliver it on behalf of the committee i will move that we do that okay bow and move our second section any discussion i i guess my question is given how wide oh sorry i just jumped in no it's fine i guess my question is um i is there a process by which we see the statement before it gets right at time meeting well i can jump in on that you've got an open meeting law issue are you going to have another meeting before town meeting another school committee meeting no well the perhaps one sort of thin ice here if the full-time superintendent wanted to draft something working with one member and send it out members

113could send their comments back to the superintendent but if if comments are shared among members then you've got a yeah i would suggest that jake and christina work on something based on the conversation that we've had tonight i mean i feel pretty confident that they're going to capture you know but then jake could send it to all of us as attorney berg um just suggested and people can call him if they have um concerns but you know i i think it's unlikely you know it's it's not gonna be a huge edit probably at that point great thank you okay so i have a curtis sorry no problem uh i i did want to just uh if if you're drawing from the notes of this meeting uh to generate the content of that statement i did

114want to throw on to the pile that i've heard a lot of interesting background noise i heard a lot of uh people uh mentioning like what's what what's appropriate for our students for our faculty for the other bodies that use the campus for athletics or what have you um i would consider including something in the statement that this school and grounds are a massive investment by the taxpayers of that town and i would caution anybody that is given the responsibility to weigh and approve applications for the cultivation of cannabis be mindful if that approval might diminish greatly the value of the investment that the towns have made in this school and the grounds associated with it just throwing that out there thank you curtis okay any further discussion all in favor o and i connery

115i constantine i elephant by an eye green eye malloy i miller i thank you that motion passes we can move on to the next agenda item which is discussion to review special permit for a wireless communications tower at 580 oblong road in williamstown jake thank you and and attorney bard we're very grateful for your uh time and expertise this evening that was much appreciated by all of us thank you so much thank you very much nice seeing everyone and i'm sure we'll see all of you at town meeting take care thank you good day uh again um the this uh the discussion to review the special permit for a wireless communications tower in 580 oblong which a property to which the regional school district's middleweight high school campus isn't a butter i have attended one

116uh uh planning board meeting on this and uh that was probably a month and a half two months ago um there is another meeting i believe on may 20th which i will uh be electronically attending again and uh you know just full disclosure um is my 16th year as a superintendent is it is my sixth month as the superintendent of a regional school district that actually operates as its own miniature governmental entity and that actually owns its own property and so i'm trying i'm trying to figure out your expectations of me when we have things going on in the community that will uh potentially impact our campus and as as curtis said the massive investment that that two communities have made in this in this campus and in its buildings no expectations for where this

117conversation goes we simply wanted to have a place and a space to have this conversation publicly in case the school committee as individuals or or particularly as a body has strong feelings on a a mobile phone tower abutting the school property and i and i would suggest that i believe in 2012 and and i don't know who was around in but in 2012 the school committee itself i believe was the requesting party to put a mobile communications tower on the school campus as a means of serving the community and uh generating income carrie so um i was around at that time and that that's correct i think i shared a lot of or some documentation with jake and went through some of it myself um it was not um a decision without controversy and there

118were sort of competing elements going on at that time the main impetus for um i guess for bringing the proposal forward to the committee was from the long what was that a long-range finance committee i think and the main impetus was to generate income for the district and i think we did hear from someone recently who reminded us that the that school districts are supposed to kind of have first dibs on these kinds of things um i don't remember specifically what that communication was um let's go back to their our emails but um it ended up not passing um because of the zoning board of appeals um it didn't make it through the zoning board of appeal so it kind of died and i think by that point it had lost support on the on

119the committee as well so it was not a a happy situation as as i recall and i do also remember that phelps farm was interested in [Music] um hosting the tower at that point as well but i i think that that was the kind of thing where the the school had priority over um over non-school properties but i and i don't remember why it didn't when this when it didn't pass at the school why it didn't then just get picked up by you know another entity so on that part i'm a little bit foggy but you know i think a lot of the concerns that were raised at the time had to do with health had to do with you know um obviously the health of our our school children you know what is the

120what are the impact of the signals of the um you know any kind of environmental impact um the visual impact i think is what eventually killed the proposal at that point because the cell towers were not perhaps what they are today but they were not visually appealing and in addition to being a valuable you know school building and property this is one of the most gorgeous views um in berkshire county and people didn't want a cell tower to be anywhere near um anywhere in proximity um to the gorgeous views that um are enjoyed by so many from mongolia so that's a little bit of what i remember at the time and i don't know what the visual impact is from mount greylock to the phelps farm property but i do know that they are basically

121right next to each other so i can't imagine not seeing the tower from the third floor of mount greylock depending on what view you have from the classroom can you give us a point of reference carrie or anybody as to the location of the cell tower like you're looking at the school is it to the left is it to the right for those of us not familiar with where 580 oblong road is and how close is it to the school amazing on the map that we already have i will i will pull up on google maps and show you the the property and then um joe and i can commiserate there was a um i forget what the name of the test was that was done but there was a test conducted that involves a

122balloon um a large balloon tethered to a uh uh you know two or three hundred feet of uh rope um and and i saw it the day that they so i i think i can give you a decent-ish idea if i can just have a second to to pull up a google maps and do a screen share and while you're doing that the the other piece that i left out uh from when we were looking at the potential for sighting it at mount raila there was an endangered species um that was within proximity of where they were thinking about putting the tower when they were thinking about putting it on on mount gray lock or on the on the school property so that was another issue that came up at the time um yeah so

123and again i will i will continue to to be in attendance at the planning board meetings and hear about the where this is going but you can see where i'm moving my cursor in a circle now that's the campus where where uh where our kids come to school every day this parcel is 580 oblong road i i cannot recall from the last meeting that i attended which was i believe in march or april but but the the the tower is um my recollection is that it's located and i don't know if the information that that uh that mr groff from the from the town planning office sent along to you that's in your packet is any more um designates or or julia maybe did you mention that there was a map in that packet i

124can go and look at that too but my recollection is that it was sort of um in a in an area around you know in this ballpark jose and this is this is uh eerily familiar to uh to the discussion that we just had about cannabis cultivation in that it seems like some of the arg proponent arguments folks who who are proposing um the development of this cell tower are arguing that uh you know it's smaller in scale and scope than the proposal that i think we've heard was was proposed when carrie was involved i believe this was in 2018 i believe um and the folks who are proposing the cell tower are arguing or at least there are arguments uh out there that you know if this if this fails there is nothing to

125stop for instance you know um a large corporation from from suing for the right to build a cell tower you know to support their business um and that this is the best way for for us to to both minimize impact while enabling you know um cell phone companies to uh to provide for their customers and i guess maybe and now you take advantage of that pause are we i don't know if if this is on here again for us to pass yet another resolution or or or to to not that's another resolution that articulates a an opinion by this cool committee on this on this proposal jose if i may uh christina uh again this we we always put anybody following at home you know we have an agenda item and then we have a

126vote um that vote is really a placeholder in case it's the will of the committee to to take some action or another uh again i think at this point this was really informational and an opportunity for uh individual school committee members to weigh in with with um strong feelings one way or the other uh you know or or to weigh in as a body should should there be a reason to do so um but but really it was just a space and a place to to have the conversation and and if there are questions that you again as individuals have regarding this um this proposal you can you can certainly communicate them to me you can certainly communicate them to to andrew groff directly as as residents but you can certainly get those questions and

127concerns to me and i will be happy to share them uh with uh with with andrew who is incredibly responsive and uh and and will get uh the right answers back uh with with great speed so really just a a space and a place to have the conversation should the committee desire to have a conversation thanks does anyone want to have any further discussion on this are we ready to move on to the next agenda item everyone's ready to move on okay thank you uh next up on the agenda is policy subcommittee and i will turn this over to jose thank you christina and i will be be succinct um as of monday or at on monday we the policy subcommittee had its its very first meeting i believe it might be uh the very

128first policy subcommittee meeting of the mount greylock school district and it went very well thanks to um uh the folks who were there with me carrie and julia and jake at that meeting we began discussing and reviewing various elements of our existing school policies centering on remote participation in school committee meetings guidelines for remote meeting public comment and the use of electronic messaging by school committee members that work is in progress and we hope that in in subsequent policy subcommittee meetings that we'll be ready to to share and put forward to the full committee recommendations or motions for amendments to our existing policy before we move on to a discussion of our motion on the policy for student travel are there any questions or comments from the full committee to to me or other members

129of the policy subcommittee steve just a historical comment we actually did have a policy subcommittee of the old mount greylock committee before the transition committee which then devolved into liaisons this was in fact one of the reasons behind i think the push for regionalization as we had three essentially very similar policy subcommittee discussions for our administrative staff for williamstown lanesboro and north greylock thanks stephen all right if there are no other questions i can move on to a discussion that the policy subcommittee had on the interim policy for student travel during covid policy the i will cut to the chase and say that the policy subcommittee unanimously approved a motion to the full committee to rescind or or um roll back i think is another another verb a verbage used for what we're recommending um

130this interim policy and what i'd like to who i'd like to invite jake uh to explain um some of the motivations behind uh this unanimous recommendation in motion yeah the uh point of order sorry point of order since a subcommittee made a motion that is active now and it needs to be seconded on the floor of the committee thanks carrie uh steve i will second and now i think we can ask jake i i i will you know you all know the the the the the truncated process for getting to this policy the uh the application of this policy um what was a was a challenge the policy was very well intentioned i was at a time when there was some concern about coveted numbers going up it was at a time when the commissioner

131had ordered elementary students back to school uh middle school students were were right around the bend of coming back and and it was at a time when we really wanted to get our high school students back as quickly as we possibly could so they could get all of the in-person learning in that they could but particularly for our seniors that we could get those seniors some of whom have been together since their very first day of kindergarten or pre-k so we could get them together to to enjoy each other's company in the in the remains of of this school year that's quickly drawing to a close for the seniors uh at the same time we were we were in um we had not hit full stride with our staff being vaccinated uh and and we

132we had hit full stride thanks to joe's work and the work of the school nurses in our pool testing uh and and then to to cap all of that off we had spring break uh upcoming and uh and travel to to really anywhere where folks could get to and get back in a week um this policy was potentially uh some some real overreach on my part and and possibly you know on your part as i asked you to support it uh i will end by saying two things first of all we think the policy was largely successful we got all of our kids back to school we have everybody including our high schoolers in a couple of weeks ahead of where many of our neighbors have their high schoolers in and we had no real

133uptick in in covid cases as a result of spring break travel uh this the second point that i would make before i um before i end my piece and and ask you to consider joining the policy subcommittee and voting to rescind this policy is that this policy ultimately wound up impacting about 45 individual students among our three schools and some of those students and their families really made deep sacrifices in order to abide by this policy and we are very grateful to everybody who who made an effort to to be a good neighbor and to um abide by this policy as uh as as um strange and as difficult as it sometimes got to do so so um just as a leader and as a neighbor deep gratitude to the people who who who helped

134make this policy impactful by actually following it some of whom really had to hold their noses while doing so we're very grateful to them and very grateful to the whole community for for helping us get all of our kids pre-k through 12 back into school really nearly for the entire month of may um it's it's uh it's good stuff and we're grateful at this point spring break is over and it it appears that it is time to to pull back this policy we're seeing changes almost daily on the vaccine front and who is able to be vaccinated um some some i think some pretty large scale changes coming in from the cdc today around uh the necessity of folks that are fully vaccinated to be masked indoors and outdoors it does not change our our

135practices we have not had that guidance from the state nor from the department of elementary secondary ed but it is it is apparent that it is time to roll back this policy thank you jose this is your show so you guys sorry christine thinking it was still your show oh thank you jake any other i think stephen yes thank you so i'm glad we're working together today to revisit the travel policy but i think it's important to describe in some detail what happened so we can be more aware of these issues and better serve the community as we navigate future policy decisions our adoption policy states we should have a first reading without a vote and in the second reading with a vote we changed the travel policy on families and gave them less than

136a month's notice and no opportunity for their concerns to be heard we should consider going forward what is a reasonable advance notice on future policies as many people had already made plans that followed state and cdc coveted guidelines we also created a policy with no mechanism for appeal and no considerate consideration for nuances and we had it only apply to families there were no gold guidelines for staff or for teachers and that undercuts how critical this concern was further after it was passed several people reached out to the school committee and to me with concerns i asked for an agenda item for the april 8th meeting to discuss this which was well before spring break that was denied as was bringing it up under the 48 hour exemption so two of just several issues with

137the policy of the following the first is as written the travel policy is only about a returns in-person instruction it is not about participation in athletics and extracurriculars there is a tremendous difference between being in person indoors with masks off while eating and playing sports outdoors masked and the second is that as written the travel policy does not allow any of our students from vermont to return to in-person instruction unless they enter massachusetts at least once a day so these are just some of the issues these concerns were brought to district council who agreed that these points are correct this was shared by the superintendent with the entire school committee rather than inform the community we continue to selectively enforce an incorrect interpretation of a policy incorrectly adopted so our failures here indicate to me

138the wisdom of two school committee policies one which is still active and one which is not and i would like to encourage the school committee that going forward we should continue the one that is active and we should have the policy subcommittee look at restoring the other so the first is that we should have a first and second reading of policies before we vote to give members of the community an opportunity to express concerns so we can discuss and possibly adjust the second is that school committee members should be able to add agenda items to meetings in the past two school committee members could add an item if we are constantly having meetings cluttered by addition after edition i would agree that it is time to reconsider such a request but in my time on

139the school committee and i believe i am the longest continuously serving member right now only twice have i remembered school committee agenda requests that were denied by members so i understand that these are challenging times and i understand that people's intentions are good but good intentions are not enough nor can we enforce what we wanted to pass instead of what we passed we have a responsibility to carefully debate these issues and weigh the benefits and the consequences we have unfortunately filled our community with this policy and hopefully we can learn from this and do better going forward so i strongly support the repeal of this policy and i also strongly support that in the future we follow our adoption policy and have a first and second reading as we are supposed to and that school

140committee members if two members want to bring forward an agenda item can have that added thank you thanks stephen any other comments or questions if not i believe we are ready to vote on the motion um by the policy subcommittee is that as i hand it over to you christina no you can take it um the policy subcommittee made the motion and stephen seconded so you can call them out perfect let's call the vote roll call owen the motion passes unanimously the subcommittee the full committee now has uh is passed that the motion to rescind the interim policy for student travel during covet thank you jose thanks racia okay next up on the agenda is business administration administrator update and i will turn it over to joe bergeron thank you very much i have i

141have four items here they are all incredibly quick and very much procedural which which hopefully will be will be welcomed um the first uh the first two are we have recently um been notified by the state that we have been awarded grants that um we had applied for they are competitive grant so unlike entitlement grants where just by existing we we receive them um these are grants where i would i would love to thank um our food services director tammy jennings and buildings and grounds director um tim sears for their work in applying for the school nutrition grant which as you'll see in your packet it it means that lanesville elementary school is receiving um a little bit over eight thousand dollars for a brand new convection oven um that will replace the one that

142that was uh put in place when the school was originally built it'll be a huge upgrade for lanesville elementary school and we're we're really excited about it so without further ado i would love a motion someone to move a motion to accept the school nutrition grant please so moved second one moves elephant by in seconds any further discussion all in favor on eye conory eye constantine eye elephant eye green eye malloy eye miller at motion passive thank you outstanding and then the the second grant um the student opportunity act um evidence-based programs grant that uh is both a summer for for this summer as well as a school year for this coming school year or sorry it's school year for this school year and summer for um this next fiscal this upcoming fiscal year joelle

143bruckner our director of curriculum had worked tirelessly on this application it was one that you had seen a presentation on earlier in the school year it is to support the early literacy initiatives at our two elementary schools the assessment the rollout of new ela programs um and uh and so when the award was announced from the state um i i think we were we were all thrilled um at the work that joel had done and um the way that we now have um it's a two-part grant so one is fifty three thousand two dollars um the other part is six thousand seven hundred and dollars and and so many thanks from from me and from all of us to joelle for all of the work that went into that so similar to the other grant

144what i would love is for someone to move a motion to accept the soa grant as awarded by the state bowen moves do i have a second second bin seconds any discussion all in favor bow and eye connery i constantine eye elephant eye green eye color eye miller that motion passes thank you all right now moving from grants to budget um on march 25th the school committee passed uh the the fy22 school district budget as presented and during it within that motion we indicated that excess and deficiency use in the amount of 240 thousand dollars will be a part of the overall budget once the necessary funds are certified if those funds are not certified the district's use of the tuition revolving account will be increased by 240 000 i can happily announce that the

145access and deficiency account was certified by the state um since then and so what our auditor recommended that we do is move and pass the motion to acknowledge that excess and deficiency in the amount of 240 thousand dollars will formally be planned as a part of the overall budget for fy22 so moved green moves do i have a second second bow in seconds any discussion all in oh sorry gary so um we are not required to revoke the budget because the budget was voted with that um yeah this is really just just reaffirming something now that it is a sure thing great thank you any other discussion um this may need to be a different item or maybe it already is but what was the end certified app the end was certified i'll need to

146pull up the exact number um 960 let me get the exact number it's uh excess deficiency was certified in the amount of my eyes are starting the family 953 beautiful thank you okay any further discussion all in favor owen i connery i constantine i green eye malloy that motion passes thank you the final item i have for you which is in your packet is the final invoice for the williamstown elementary school's erv energy replacement ventilator coils um that that was a project out of the williams elementary school renewal fund from williams college that was approved to go forward a month or two ago the contractor has since completed the work and what you have before you is the invoice it should be noted that the invoice is higher than was originally quoted as a result

147of the system requiring more freon than was originally expected or hoped so that is one one difference from what you had previously approved but this invoice is in front of you for hopefully a vote to approve payment out of the williams college the willingness elementary school renewal fund provided by williams college so moved second green moves bowen seconded i think that was you julia i'm sorry um any discussion all in favor conrie i constantine eye open by an eye green eye malloy eye miller eye thank you that motion passes thank you joe uh next up on our agenda is superintendent report and i turn it over to jake mccandless yeah thank you christina two items tonight one's very quick one is a little longer and as it should be the the legal obligation of the

148school committee relative to school choice is to annually opt whether to continue to participate in school choice or not participate in school choice we we remain steadfast in the fact that we are not steadfast in how many slots exactly we will be able to open at each of our schools as ms sheehy expressed uh lightly during her presentation um we we are a district that that from year to year has about 20 students at home school this year we have 60. we had um you know many come back when we uh hit in person instruction again we anticipate having uh students come back we know that the berkshire real estate market is um quite volatile right now which is a good thing for anybody that's that's selling a house as people realize they can work

149almost anywhere and live in our beautiful berkshires um so we are just not prepared to say how many slots we had anything we would give you tonight around the specifics around open slots would be conservative to the point of being almost meaningless and in that we would say maybe one or two spots at each school so we want to put a finer point on that but we are obligated to report to the state by june 1st whether we intend to continue to remain active in the school choice program and just to be clear for anybody watching from home or for any school committee members that this is your first time through a school choice vote a district has no say in students leaving their district in order to school choice into another school the district

150has 100 percent say in whether students from neighboring communities can come in to our school district so tonight i would recommend that that we affirm and vote to affirm that we will remain active participants in the commonwealth school choice program and that's really what this agenda item is is that we are we're merely affirming so that we can report to the commonwealth that we are going to remain active within the school choice program can i just ask this point of order um are we required to vote to a firm or is it okay so this is not i mean if we don't take a vote at all we're continuing in the program we would have to vote in order to not participate yes and and if your intention was not to participate that would likely

151trigger our need to have a well-publicized public hearing to to discuss that and to capture the community's views on that but you're correct carrie as usual that you know simply taking no action at all means that we remain within the commonwealth school choice program okay so this is to publicly announce that we are participating but we're you're not hearing about those thoughts yet because we're just not ready right julia um i 100 understand the concept of moving enrollment numbers i totally get that and i'm also curious um by when like what but what do we tell families what's what are the deadlines our our our school committee policy suggests that within i believe and i i'm i may be misquoting but really very close to the proximity of the end of the school year which

152is june 18th we have our first round of of um a lottery for lack of a better term i have had conversations with several parents um stacy has had conversations with several parents all of our principals have had and you know our advice at this point is you know please apply and we've we have quite a few applications particularly for our early grades at lanesboro elementary in williamstown elementary so our advice to families is plea please apply please don't ever hesitate to contact us to find out what's going on and when and we will be notifying you if we have your application but in fairness to families and caretakers parents to parent or parent to caretaker please make sure you have plan b c and d um active as well because you know you if

153you are not going to send your child to the place where you reside this may be an option or it may not be an option we want to be really clear and honest about that carrie so i was just going to make a motion and then we could discuss more if you want but i'll move to uh firm that the mount grey lake regional school district will participate in the school choice program for fy 22 with thoughts to be announced miller second green moves miller seconds any further discussion hearing none all in favor oh and i connery i constantine eye elf and i green eye malloy i thank you that motion passes and so for the next item is is uh you know to me the the the most important piece of business that we

154are conducting tonight and which is to uh discuss and show to you the school committee and the community what our plans are and what our intentions are around professional development activities and including some some curriculum work where it's applicable pertaining to diversity equity inclusion and uh and belonging and so for this i will again do a screen share do have a presentation and i would certainly encourage members of the committee to to please stop me at any point along the way if i can be of service in explaining a point or clarifying anything try to be as clear as possible about what we're actually doing uh here occasionally superintendents find themselves in the awkward position of there is much conversation swirling around uh our work but um we owe it to the elected school committee

155to be among the first if not the first to uh to to actually have access to that work so um we're going to dive right into this this is our presentation on our plans related to diversity to equity to inclusion and belonging uh the the real part of this work is working to better understand and know ourselves and to know uh those who we we share our community and our our our county and our commonwealth and our nation and our world with we are always with our students working and within ourselves working to build a greater empathy and understanding of not only ourselves but our history our shared history uh in our understanding of one another and we are of course always and this is an area where i i have to assume that we

156all agree uh that working to end bias and working to end hate and working to end the notion that anybody feels uh unsafe in a place like a school uh is is work that we can all agree is absolutely vital as always i will start with the with words of gratitude to the to the team that really helped us put this together i'd like to thank ellie cotts jewell brookner joe bergeron jonathan knopper several colleagues from the center for learning in action at williams um several members of the parents action group uh and others in the community who have helped initiate this work and helped us to consider this work and um yeah i i can assure you as long as i'm superintendent here and i suspect as long as uh these school committee members

157as long as you are members this work will continue this is sort of a an overview of of the framework that we see for this year but but this is work that um history illustrates clearly to us uh will not and cannot end um i would also like to thank our students their caretakers parents their families for helping us to consider this work and for helping us for helping to make the case that the safety of some of our students is indeed compromised in our school community and we're not alone in that that stands firm for every school district i have ever served in in massachusetts and virginia in pennsylvania and i think it's something that every school district in the nation if they are not working toward greater safety for all of their students

158particularly their students of color particularly their students uh who who are um transgender particularly their students that are gay or lesbian particularly their students that um suffer from from people's misunderstandings and insistence on ableism um perhaps students who are discriminated against because their religious beliefs do not jive with the majority um every school district in the country should be doing this work and finally i would like to thank the greylock multicultural student union for their advocacy and for their assistance and for being uh brave young people who uh insist that this work be done and insist that the people that are paid to do the work on behalf of students do this work on behalf of students i'd like to start off some of you know i'm a recovering english teacher with a literature degree

159uh and this is a writer who who uh has moved me uh time and time again and this is this is a quote from a piece that james baldwin wrote for esquire magazine in july 1960 it it echoes the words of one of my mentors a woman named donna harlan who is the former superintendent of the central berkshire school district who if she said to me once she said it a hundred times superintendents always have to remember that the children are watching and the children are listening and james baldwin said in the article 5th avenue uptown children have never been very good at listening to their elders but they have never failed to imitate them and that's why we have to do this work i have more faith in the generation of students that are

160studying across the parking lot from me now the students sorry the students that are attending lanesboro elementary the students that are attending williamstown elementary i have so much faith that they are going to do better and be better than my generation is and that's one of the things that gets us educators out of bed in the morning and gets us excited as we're coming in to do our work children have never been very good at listening to their elders but they've never failed to imitate them so we had better set examples that are worthy of imitation for our children why this work and why here there is not a single community in the united states of america that could not benefit from a better understanding between and among the people that live in that community

161there's not a single community or school community where the staff and the students do not need more tools to help them step in step up and shut down harassment hate and hurtful language and then to have the difficult conversations that have to follow those events there's not a single community or school community that could not benefit from a clear understanding of history actual history and the fact that threads from hundreds of years ago still run and tied directly to current events and challenges for some in our nation right now there's not a single community in the country or a school community in the country that cannot benefit from a clear understanding of themselves and what we think and what we believe about the world and the people around us there's not a single community in

162the united states that could not benefit from having more empathy for those that we share our streets with in our stores with in our houses of worship with in our concert halls with and certainly our schools with every child every caretaker every family has the right here and everywhere to be whole to be happy to be welcome and to do all of those things while they are fully and totally being themselves who they are and how they were created foundational to this work is are the following understandings there are thick pronounced threads of racism classism sexism and other ideologies and beliefs that consciously and unconsciously hold some people back from the full promise of america these thick pronounced threads are woven throughout our entire history as a nation policies practices and beliefs from days ago

163from years ago from decades ago from centuries gone by continue to haunt many people many of our neighbors people we care about policies and practices from days and years and decades of centuries and centuries ago hold back many people and continue to perpetuate fear and intolerance and that's unacceptable racism did not end with any generation racism did not end with the passing of any law or any act or any historical event or period in history racism and bias of many types are ongoing positions and ongoing poisons that lessen each of us racism and other forms of bias impact the health impact the wealth and impact the daily lives of our neighbors and people that we share our lives with unconscious bias or implicit bias exist in every one of us this isn't something to be

164ashamed of it's not a mark of shame we are human beings and biologically i believe we're wired to have these implicit biases that we pick up from sources starting in our infancy so it's not a shame to have implicit bias what might be a shame however is not reflecting upon acknowledging and working to overcome the implicit bias that that i believe is present in each and every one of us in case you feel like i can occasionally as a leader and as a person get preachy let me assure you the person that i preach to the most is the one human being on the planet over whom i have the most control and that's me this little word cloud that you see here you know this is describing one american and that one american that

165this word cloud is describing is this american that's talking to you right now and presenting this i'm a straight male episcopalian homeowning automobile owning married middle class guy who grew up speaking english who was born with the gender that i fully identify with i am white obviously i am well paid i am well educated and um my mother and father worked their entire lives so that my brothers and i could kind of have this leave it to beaver type of life experience and indeed we did so for me this work is personal but as a leader it's also institutional this work is always sobering and i see this work on a daily basis in my own life as vital i'm not ashamed or embarrassed to be any of these things i am who i am

166uh and i would encourage that none of us need be ashamed of who we are however while i'm not embarrassed by who i am and i'm not ashamed of who i am i do have to be hyper aware of who i am and i have to be hyper aware as jake mccandless the person of the immense amount of privilege that that i have automatically because of who and what i am that many people that i know that i care about that i love deeply that i work for and and and who i work to serve um have a very different life experience because of who they are so i don't need to be embarrassed about these things but i have to be aware of these things hyper aware of these things and what they mean

167and what they don't mean on a daily basis and on an hourly basis as a professional as a dad as a husband as a neighbor and as a human being this work requires deep reflection deep deep self-examination brutal self-honesty acknowledgement of of many things that are that are uncomfortable and awkward but totally necessary to acknowledge this work requires an open mind and an open heart and this work requires listening more than speaking so our plan that i'm going to outline in the next seven or eight slides for some our plan will not seem nearly aggressive enough uh for some our plan will not seem comprehensive enough or fast enough and i would agree uh we are we are trying to untie knots that have been uh tied and tightened over decades and over centuries for

168others all of this work may appear as unnecessary in an unwise use of resources i will just say that our district is committed to this work as long as i am superintendent here we are committed to this work our district will stick with this work because this is important to me but it's important to the team that comprises the group of people that do the work here in the mount greylock regional school district our district will continue to advocate for becoming a more anti-racist school community our district will not allow any child to be to be made to feel less than for any reason every child is a gift every child is a treasure and the culture and heritage and the person that that child represents is a treasure too and it's a treasure that

169we not only have to value and nurture and teach but it's a treasure that we have to value and nurture and learn from ourselves our district will not tolerate any student feeling unsafe because of who they are for any reason our district will hold ourselves starting with me our staff and our students accountable for our choices our words our actions and our inactions our district will work with partners so that we continue to learn and grow as practitioners who are honored enough to have the title of educator and as leaders for the upcoming school year our plan is built through multiple interconnected parts collecting baseline information on perceptions and lived experiences of our clients the families that we serve and families that we don't have the opportunity to serve because they really don't trust that

170we can educate their kids and keep their kids safe part two of the plan is learning opportunities for our staff for our students for our caretakers and families and for our larger community part three is that we will continue our school councils are vital to this work our school councils all in the school improvement plan for the year that we're currently in all featured dei and b prominently in their school improvement plans this is important to the parents the community members and in some cases the students and the administrators who who constitute our school councils and so individual school-based plans learning opportunities and approaches directed by school staff administration and school councils will really remain the heart of what we're doing our plan this year has to include some policy work what are we going

171to do every time we have a hateful incident or an incident where a student is made to feel unsafe simply because of who they are our plan will always continue it can will always include a continuous curriculum review and for anybody in the community that thinks we're going to gather up all of our current curriculum uh put it in a dumpster and bring in new items that's that's not the case what continuous curriculum review means is that we will continue to look at our curricula on a daily basis and in sometimes more formal basis and we'll make sure that all the students that we serve are represented in that curriculum we will work to make sure that our libraries that our students cultures and linguistic backgrounds are represented that there's authors in that library in

172those classroom collections who look like them and who may have some shared life experiences um we will continue to weed out materials that uh inappropriately and and without literary historical or or uh social um reason uh are are harmful representations of of different people um you know again you know it may look different at the elementary school than it does in the high school but you know the what we teach is really important it delivers a message to our students about how important they are how important their family is how important their culture and their heritage is and we will continue to partner with lanesboro and williamstown and other communities in berkshire county and beyond who are committed to being fully welcoming and inclusive communities and who are really committed to being culturally competent practitioners

173baseline information perceptions and lived experiences this work has already begun we have a meeting tomorrow with courtney who we have been uh fortunate enough to to work with and uh at least electronically get back into our community again um because she has lived here and worked here before and courtney will continue to include in-person interviews surveys and outreach from the district um to our families two individuals two students an answer to a couple of questions i've had from parents i will say no child is going to be forced to meet with courtney um i think any child that meets her would likely really want to spend some time with her and tell her their story to her but no child will be forced to meet with courtney and if a child wants to meet with

174courtney and the parents or the guardians or the caretakers wish to be there that is certainly okay we are very grateful to courtney for taking on this work and for once again coming to the berkshires and serving our community as she has in the past courtney's work will help us understand the experiences of the families we serve and it will help us understand the experiences of those who have purpose purposefully avoided being served by us ms tunis courtney will report out to the school committee and to the community later this summer and it has just been a pleasure to work with her and an honor to work with her and we look forward to moving moving forward together our plan is really rich with learning opportunities the work of becoming more empathetic more sensitive more

175responsive and more welcoming human beings who approach the world and all of its people with humility with understanding and with care is vital for the well-being of our students every single one of them and it's vital not only for our students who are going to spend the rest of their lives in williamstown or in lanesboro it's vital because all of our students at some point are likely to have experiences outside of berkshire county outside of the communities that that that love them and nurture them and welcome them the way our communities do this is important work for every child this same work is vital for all of us who serve children professionally including the superintendent including our administration and including the members of our elected school committee and there will be learning opportunities for you

176as well our learning opportunities which some of which are district sponsored through our budget some of which will be grant funded and some are we're getting an assist from local funding things like the williams college olmstead fund will include the work that follows in the next couple of slides we will have the deep honor and we've already met with her several times and i'm very grateful to joel uh brookner for for taking on the impossible task of building a schedule that works for for our teachers and our staff and our administrators and with dr joshi's incredibly busy schedule dr kyati joshi will be leading administrative teacher and staff professional development this summer dr joshi is no stranger to the berkshires she was here a couple of summers ago she worked with folks from mount greylock

177regional school district some folks from pittsfield some folks from the local colleges and we are very excited and honored to have her continuing to work with us ideally over multiple years as as we work to become uh more just just more strategic and better tooled to do this work dr joshi's work this year will really focus on teacher professional development that will start at the end of the summer that will continue through the fall and the spring we're looking at a cohort of teachers and educators paraprofessionals etc from all three of the schools in the district this will include large group instruction it will include small group consultation office hours and even dr joshi coming in and observing a class if somebody would would uh choose to take advantage of that we will follow up

178with her with this original cohort of 45 and hopefully be running a second cohort of 45 educators in the summer of 2022 dr joshi will be working with us to develop a community keynote address in the spring she is working on parent uh and caretaker workshops in a in-person gathering in the spring and she will be working uh to some degree with us in person and sometimes uh online where you know we're we're going to work hard to see what's going to work best and be most effective for the educators that she's working with he actually is a professor at um i believe fairly dickinson uh university in new jersey so she's not really that far away so we look forward to welcoming her several times in person over the upcoming year um our our

179thanks to dr joshi and our gratitude to dr joshi for working with the district um her schedule is full the need for this work is great um the need of somebody with her national reputation of being an expert in how to do this work is great and we feel very fortunate that she is coming here to work with us and here's a copy in the bottom corner of a book that is edited by dr joshi teaching for diversity and social justice invites you to check that book out another learning opportunity that we have which we're very excited about dr simran jeet singh will present to all three of our schools this fall he will be presenting about his life story he will be presenting about his experience he is a professor of comparative liter uh

180religion uh at several universities and several seminaries um and he will be presenting you know particularly in our elementary schools uh a book that he wrote falja singh keeps going about a marathon runner who is 100 years old who he knows personally you can maybe tell that he will be presenting in person to both of our elementary schools and we are simply thrilled about this he is a dynamic um electric presenter and uh this is a book that you know was uh that was written because part of his story is uh as a kid growing up in texas and going in into his school library and saying do you have any books that are that feature people that look like me and the librarian saying no sweetie we don't because nobody wants to read those

181books and here he is uh 25 or 30 years later creating that book um and having that book illustrated so no other child has to walk into a library and hear that who they are and what they are doesn't matter won't sell and other people won't want to um live vicariously for a few minutes through reading about somebody like them dr singh will do a full school presentation to the mount greylock regional school and he has also offered to meet with uh small groups of interested students about just you know young people's role in becoming advocates and activists in their own community and then we're working to uh and again have to thank joelle for for taking her magic of scheduling in elementary school with nearly 500 students and translating that into working out a

182schedule that works for a bunch of teachers a bunch of kids and these nationally known presenters so thank you joelle and we are planning a uh spring of 22 follow-up with staffian students for dr singh and we're very excited about this relationship we built with him so our plan moving forward we want to also over the course of this year and really starting right now we want to work to promote practices that ensure the hiring and retention of a more representative professional core of educators and leaders the research is clear the academic literature is clear it is good for kids to see to see people doing the work in a school building that look like those kids and not only is it good for students let's just say for instance students of color to see

183professionals of color it's also good for every other student as well in in many ways from academic to uh to social and emotional to the deib work that we're talking about we will continue ongoing curriculum and materials examination to ensure that representations of all people are appropriate honest and present in what we teach is this a throwing out of our current curriculum by no means by no means but it is an effort that we should be putting in anyway to make sure that our curriculum is as robust as it should be as accurate as it can be that it is pushing students and this is simply adding on a layer that's saying does it appropriately does our curriculum do our materials appropriate appropriately represent who our students are in the flip side of that coin

184is do we have material that inappropriately represents um recently you know over january i had occasion to to visit my mother in western pennsylvania and my stepfather and my daughter and i were looking through a box of old books and we came upon a reader from the 1930s my stepfather's first wife was an elementary school teacher for about 40 years and um my daughter was looking through this reader and um my daughter's 18 she's a senior she's um 10 times smarter and 100 times more savvy than her father is she's looking at that book and saying you know i mean i can't believe that once upon a time in america women were represented this way you know in this in this particular reader we were looking at um the the the young the young girl

185in the reader was was never out of a dress the young boy was never out of rough and tumble activities outside the father was always represented in a suit either coming home from work or going off to work and the mother was almost never represented in this 80 page book outside of the kitchen and my daughter was um was was taking note of uh wow yeah this matters can you imagine being a kid at that time and and um you know and thinking that that this is just how the world is so we should always be looking at our curricula to make sure that we're representing things not only uh as they are honestly as they were honestly but also promoting the way we want things to be we will continue to work with our

186individual school councils in the greylock multicultural student union to empower our school staff to empower our students to empower our families to create programming in all three sites and we will continue to work with partners in the community both thought partners and partners with planning activities outside of school in our own community and beyond to create learning opportunities for individuals and groups this work look this work is but before we even made this presentation this work was controversial um i i insulate and isolate myself from social media as much as i can but but i'm also um i also don't live under a rock so before we even started this work it seemed like this work was controversial but you know what sometimes being a professional educator and being a leader in a community is

187not about doing what's easy it's not necessarily even about doing what's popular it's about doing what's right there's a book that a friend of mine from a from a different school district where i served in the berkshires sent to me recently it's called what the rhodes said by a young woman named cleo wade and i would encourage you to take a look at this book it's wonderful this is one of the pages from the book what if something unexpected happens the road says to the child that's asking the road these questions keep going what if there are mountains that feel too tall to climb keep going what if there are rivers that feel too wide to cross what if my heart gets broken what if i feel stuck what if giving up is easier keep

188going keep going keep going keep going said the road this work is vital our children will sometimes listen to what we say but history tells us our children will always imitate the things that we do and imitate the attitudes that we carry with us and so we owe it to our children we owe it to our community to keep going keep going keep going and um with that that is the end of the the presentation i will stop the screen share if anybody wants to go back i'm happy to but i appreciate your your attention and and being willing to listen to a few more minutes this evening of my voice as we talk about the framework for the work that we're going to take on in the upcoming school year so thank you jose

189is that a is that a hand up it is it is change and i i really appreciate the presentation that you put together and i think um you can imagine how how important i think some of the words that you you chose to share with us today are to me and uh um and to many people i know and i'm sure many of us on on this on the school committee what i'd love to speak to at least to give you a moment to address are the the genuine concerns that some members of our community have about this approach to to education there have been members of our community that are concerned about the consultant that we are working with about the ability of this consultant to be truly open-minded and objective in their evaluation

190of our community and there are some deep-rooted concerns about how anti-racism education is is threatening or or or maybe racist that is foundation or at least anti-white is is is an argument that is posed and i'd love it if you could speak to the concerns of many members of our community who feel threatened or concerned for the well-being of their children as our district embarks on this what i think is incredibly important work sure i i am happy to and and you know jose i will take the opportunity to say uh i am not in an academic in any way on this matter or this area of work um i am a roll up my sleeves worker in this work and have been from you know the day that i stepped into my very very

191racially and economically diverse first classroom in louisa county virginia teaching a group of ninth graders having grown up in essentially an entirely uh white rural community in in western pennsylvania so i may get some of the um i certainly can't speak of this with even a tiny percentage of the academic accuracy of many people in this community but but i will say this as as a parent and as a practitioner and as a leader you know we we are not and maybe this is right maybe it's wrong i don't know we are not throwing out our curriculum and replacing it with critical race theory driven curricula now i do have two books sitting right here on my desk stamped from the beginning uh and the the uh younger person's version which jason reynolds helped uh

192dr kendy with um you know i i am a studier of this and i am um for me as an individual i am a believer that this is this is not anti-white as a white guy uh that it is causing me a white guy to take a hard look at the fact that if in many in many ways if life is a hundred yard dash because of the way i was born i am starting the 100 yard dash from about 10 feet from the finish line and other people are starting the 100 yard dash from 10 miles away from the finish line and for for me to pretend that that is not the case is is inappropriate for my world view it's immoral for me i'm not saying that for anybody else but for me

193um and i i just can't operate that way and i've been an educator for 28 years i've been a superintendent for 16 years i've i've seen what this looks like in real life enough to know that for me and my practice i'm right so you know i would say please please trust us that that we want what is good for kids for all kids um [Music] i i would ask people just you know the the same way i i said in the presentation this work begins with me this work also begins with you and that's that's everybody as an individual looking at your own life looking at your own experiences looking at the biases you carry with you that you don't even think about and we want people to think about these things i want

194our staff to think about these things we want our students to think about these things are we attempting to brainwash indoctrinate whatever no but we are asking people to consider and and and just like medical doctors take an oath to do no harm you know we're we're going to be proactive but at a minimum we're going to work really hard to make sure that the school department the the school district which is charged with educating kids intellectually socially emotionally as human beings are going to make sure we do no harm and where we have curricula that are doing harm where there are learning materials that are doing harm because they're inappropriate representations where we have other students or our staff or our administrators that are doing harm we're going to stop that i look at

195the menu of of what we're doing this year and i want to be real clear i don't think the role of our consultant is necessarily to interpret this information for us i think the role of our consultant is to gather this information for us so people who live here and work here and and um have a life here we're the ones that need to interpret this um i'm not convinced that a a 50 year old white male superintendent who's new in town is the best person to go out to our families of color and say to them yeah trust me what's your lived experience here i think we needed professional help for that i think we needed a third party for that um i know that people will have thoughts and opinions across the spectrum

196on the um the the activist life and the professional life of everybody that we hire to come in and do this work and they may have the same for me but i would suggest that that we need to get a real temperature check on what our families particularly our families of color have experienced in this community i've been here six months i think i have been a part of five or six situations in which race played a significant role to the point where i think children were hurt parents were outraged caretakers were outraged and damage was done i don't think i brought that stuff with me i think it's here i think it's been here i think it's going to stay here unless we do something about it and so part of that is an

197acknowledgement that it is a problem and even though these are two amazing and wonderful communities it's a problem here just like it is in twenty thousand other small communities across the country so i i don't i don't know if that long monologue got at the heart of your question jose but look we we want every child to be able to come into our schools and know that they are free to be themselves without having in the back of their mind that that decision was made because i'm black or because i'm brown or because i'm islamic or because i'm jewish we don't want a child walking down the hall holding their breath that somebody's going to make a comment to them julio's going to just just have a follow-up just just very quickly it's more of

198a request that i i would love it as a district that we you know we devote resources in some way shape or form to evaluating the effectiveness of the program that we'd like to roll out you know how much more welcoming of a of a place is the district for our families from marginalized and mature you know minority identities um families of color and the like and uh so that's something that i'd love for us to focus on and i'm sure this is going to be a long term maybe even lifelong endeavor for us to to get this right jose if i could just jump in really quickly and just as a little plug to the committee we received an invitation from masc to um participate in a workshop um about diversity inclusion and equity

199and making goals actionable around the plans that we create so i would encourage everyone to try to attend that workshop i see stephen's hand up and then julia thank you um you know again i just want a second what's being a third or fourth whatever are the numbers now what's being said about the work that is being done and still yet to be done and to just you know sorry i really liked your image of your where people are starting for the race and i think it's absolutely essential that we make sure that we take into account uh you know what opportunities people have had what resources are needed to make sure that everybody has what they need to succeed along these lines i think it's you know really good that we try to be

200transparent with the community that we have these conversations to say what is going on um i think it's also important to recognize that while these are your problems and issues the district needs to deal with not every problem fits into this prism that you know there are other dimensions as well we've had issues between your students from one town and another we've had bullying when we had the issues with the sixth graders visiting mount greylock there were issues on a variety of axes including just unfortunately kids being kids i'm not saying every issue is that but it's important that we keep in mind um all the things that are going on and not try to put everything into just one prism because that's not necessarily going to be the best way to approach problems like

201this thank you julia um so i'm deeply grateful for the work that's gone in so far and i just need to always start with that um and i'm so i heartened to hear uh where this is all going um i do i i the concept of kids being kids um is one i just wanna call out and say um i appreciate what you're saying is kids being kids kids can be kind thoughtful listening you know um welcoming kids and that's what i see this work leading towards um my question is this work undoubtedly i requires a degree of emotional resiliency um and i i believe that some of the concern about the work is this and you touched on it so beautifully in your own experience that you know you are who you are there's

202no shame in who you are but um but you need to be aware of who you are right and where you you fit into this world but i think people fear that shame um and i think that that's you know one of the emotions that comes up as you're doing your self self discovery um or your reflection so i guess my question embedded in all this is how is this work linked to the sel work that you're doing with students um and where does the sel for teachers and for staff and for faculty and you know that the adults who are working with our students where does that fit in as well yeah i you know one of the reasons one of the first things i said when i when i got here and understood

203and assumed that this would be work we would need to do and if i had applied for and been hired for a superintendency in california or iowa i would have made the same assumption that we need to do this work um one of the first thoughts that i had one of the first things i said is that we we need professional help um we you know we're we're educators we know a lot of things we do a lot of things even thinking about the school committee agenda tonight we've covered cell phone towers cannabis cultivation and deib and i i got you know there are times to just remind you remind me that i'm a jack of all trades and i'm a true master of none so the folks that we have brought in as professional

204help particularly dr joshi because of past experience with people on our administrative team with her this is an important piece of what she does it is it is helping folks understand the gravity of all of this and to some degree the life and death nature of all of this but also understand where we're we're all starting from different places on this on this walk on this walk toward better understanding and more empathy and um that there are some there are some things that we just simply can't tolerate but we have to tolerate the human beings that are doing some of those things and remember that we're all products of something and so you know when when we talk about this in our administrative meetings so we talk about this with the consultants that we're working

205with all of this is embedded in the nature of bolstering all of us as human beings and some of us are going to have to be made or or or allow ourselves to be made really uncomfortable in order to bolster up people that that that history circumstances laws policies practices attitudes have have um worked to not allow them to rise up so it's certainly not forgotten from me and it's certainly not forgotten as we work through to identify who is going to be doing this work that every single person involved in this work is a living breathing feeling human being and and we're we are you know in terms of formally tying our deib work in our sei work i'm very grateful to a couple of people in the community who have worked with our

206principals around the hiring of our new the two new school social worker positions that we've brought in to help them understand how social work and this work do work hand in hand and sei work work hand in hand but i i don't know julia i'd have a tough time at this point giving you a strong answer of a formal crosswalk between those two areas of work other than to say everything we do we keep in mind that it is human work so one of the public comments that was read this evening included a number of demands for information right um justifications for expenditures of resources and how were decisions made and it's not the first communication that we've received from what appears to be a small group but a vocal group of folks in the

207community who clearly have issues with what they think we're doing [Music] i'd be curious to know if that changes after hearing some of what we're actually doing but i would like to s i would like to know how we can support you and the administration in doing the work and protecting your time and energy from needing to respond continually to uh criticism of what people think you might be doing um it's very hard to read it it must be very hard to respond to it you've done so very graciously a number of times already and i would like to know how the committee can support your focusing your attention on the work rather than on responding or defending the work and if that's a resolution right we've talked about resolutions um affirming the work that

208is being done by you and the administration and the principals and the schools i'm happy to um i'm happy to make that motion but you tell us what do you need yeah thank you care i i really appreciate that and i think everybody on the administrative team that's put so much work into this you know and first of all i would say par part of my job is to respond and part of my job is to defend and um and i i will you know in our time of working together and i hope it's years um you know i i will likely get accused of many things one of the things i i refuse to be accused of or or and some things i'll some of the things that i get accused of being i'll

209probably say yeah you're right i am that and i'm probably not gonna change but i i will not be accused and and will not give give proof that i'm not respectful that i'm not courteous and that i don't listen um [Music] and i can say as somebody that once upon a time could have perhaps been one of one of the folks that would look at this and say gosh couldn't you do something different with these resources couldn't you do something different with your time and believe me i you know i my respect for for for all caretakers and all parents who do what they think is right and put time and energy and love and care and and passion into raising their children um you you will have my respect even if you don't have

210my agreement but part part of the job is just responding to to to individuals that don't agree there may be some things i can learn but but i you know at some point at some point it almost it and i'm not saying that this is the case here i'm just saying that at some point the questions the queries the continual undercutting um can almost seem like a a strategy to take time and energy away from the actual work at hand and um and i do have a i think my my years as a superintendent my years as a principal and my years as a teacher with with with with dozens and dozens of ninth graders um i have a pretty good radar for when that's happening and when i need to say thank you i

211have received that and proceed with the work so i i don't know an answer to your question tonight but i will think about it i i i think part of the answer though is i appreciate and we appreciate as an administrative team just simply being given the space and the time to do this work and we appreciate the the support of the school committee as a body and as individuals for this work and to those of you that have said have you thought about this have you thought about that have you looked into this have you looked into that or have you have you considered this person or that person it's it's all been hugely supportive and hugely welcome and i promise i speak for the entire administrative team is we have taken these these

212for me first steps but there's a lot of people here that have been doing this work for a long time and doing it well but we do appreciate the support and we will we will consider ways in which we we we need your support or need more support or different support so thank you for that steve i see your hand up and then julia yes thank you so i think one way we can support the administration as well as engage the people who have concerns is to continue to be transparent to continue to have conversations like this so that it is clear to people what we're doing the problem is when you have many different groups with similar goals but different implementations it's sometimes very hard for people to know precisely where you're going where

213you're going to end up and this has been done very well in some districts and alarmingly in others and so it does take more time i've been on the school committee with other issues that have gone slowly because of people asking questions but in the end it's a chance to engage people and to show people you know what we care about why we care about it why we think it's important where we think we're going to go and to allay people's concerns that while you may have heard of other districts you know some of the districts in new york where things did things maybe devolved you know we do not think that this is going to head in that direction we think it's going to head towards this positive outcome that we're you know transparent

214when things happen and that we show that we're working to create you know one community where we're all mountains and not divide us up into lots of smaller ones thank you julia um thank you for those uh thoughts steve i love that concept of just remaining transparent um and i also carry your question um despite jake's answer that maybe you'll you'll get back to us i can't help but think would it be helpful for us to have a resolution tonight that says something to be effective we support the work that our superintendent is doing and you know stand at the ready to support this work going forward you know i don't know what that means but i just wondered if that that could be helpful i i think if i may christina you know in

215some ways um you know the the the real show of support we we appreciate the show over sport of support and and with a resolution or without a resolution uh our administrative team and and the faculty and the staff that believe in this work and believe that it's as important as any other work that we do we know that we're supported by this school committee um it's it's it's even more important that if if i were the parent of a child that doesn't fit if that that doesn't fit the mold of what is too often considered just a regular normal kid in in in in american schools it's really the support is for our kids our students of color we also we didn't list it on this on this uh agenda tonight but we're we're

216also continuing to do work with uh with kelly chef heck around lgbtq uh you know needs that we have in the school um dr joshi is somebody as well as uh dr singh who who will be talking to us about the fact that um you know we we have a host of of of different faith traditions that we serve as well uh as well as folks who have no faith and have no interest in uh in in in anything that that borders on the supernatural like that so the most important support that we can show is for for for families and students who feel like they may be historically by by their country by their their community by their school have not felt as fully supported or as safe so if if if a support

217of this framework in in this plan that we talked about tonight is is supportive of of of us that's great but the real power is in the individual and the corporate support for for our students and our families on whose behalf we're doing this work the reasons why we're doing this work excuse me anything else or should we move on to the next agenda item julia looks deep in thought so i'm giving her some extra consideration here much appreciated i'm good okay thank you so much for your presentation and thank you everybody else for your um contributions to this discussion um i would like to make a motion to move into executive session with intent to return to open session pursuant to mgl chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining

218mgea and as an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the public body and the chair so declares any discussion um all in favor um wait sorry are we using the same link so i'm going to explain that but um we are joe is going to create a breakout room and we're all going to slide into that breakout room the one question i had for joe was do i stop recording pause recording what do i do with that yes i think you'll need to pause recording but i will need to be a host in order to create the breakout rooms oh you're not a host jones sorry about that is this not working will it work if you're a co host or do you have to be a host host

219yeah i can i can do it now okay so um if we could we have a motion and a second um once we move it just so you know ursula once we move into executive session we'll all have to declare that we're alone but um let's call the vote sorry o and i connery eye constantine i elephant binay green eye boy i okay it is 9 40 p.m and we are moving into executive session joe pause the recording okay i have unpaused um we are now recording again and we are back in open session it is 10 09 p.m we are moving along okay christina i'd like to move that the committee approved the moa with the mouse uh what is it the majia mount greylock educators association um as presented second i have a

220motion from green in a second for miller any discussion hearing none all in favor oh and i connery i constantine eye opened by an eye green eye malloy miller i okay thank you that motion passes next up on the agenda upcoming meetings we have a may 20th finance subcommittee meeting time to be determined um in a june 10th regular session school committee meeting at 6 00 p.m christina do you mind if i ask ursula while we're here we typically meet at four o'clock but if that's not good with your schedule for finance we can select a different time okay um i could probably make that work okay maybe we can talk about it more at the meeting scheduling further so four o'clock is the time of the finance and committee meeting thank you okay i

221do not have any other items for discussion so do i have a motion to adjourn we should let us make it yeah i'll motion do i have a second all second miller seconds any discussion hearing none all in favor o and i connery i constantine eye elephant iii green eye mallory i okay it is 10 11 p.m we have formally indoctrinated ursula into the length of our meetings well i don't remember the i don't remember the last time i was up this late i got to tell you [Laughter] welcome thank you good night everyone