001all set oh and can you actually just unmute yourself and speak so that we can just hear you're coming through okay you can am i not unmuted sorry christina once again if you mind can you can you hear me there you go yep we got you thank you cool cool all right all right i'm gonna go ahead and make ourselves invisible have a good meeting thank you yep don't worry so hi joe how are you i am okay hi julia so everybody is fashionably not early it's scary steve is that you that just connected yes i will be transferring to another device in a little bit but for the beginning i'll be on the phone okay so we're just waiting for curtis there it is all right hi curtis all right okay since we're on
002sorry about this no problem since we're all here and we have um a lengthy agenda let's get started i'd like to call the mount greylock regional school district school committee to order it's thursday march 11 2021 it is 6 p.m we are meeting remotely via zoom per 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 um the meeting will be broadcast on willingness tv channel 1302 in williamstown 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 i would
003like to propose to the committee if you are amenable to switching the agenda items a little bit um and having the public comment that is unrelated to the budget hearing come first because we do have quite a few of those and then do the presentation and any public comment related to the specifically related to that budget presentation afterwards would everyone be amenable to that sure yes christina i'm not sure i understand that we have we have several we have i think five or six people signed up for public comment um on items not related to the budget hearing and because we did this meeting um usually this the the public comment really related to the budget is usually a more flowing thing but we have these very specific public comments that are not related to
004the hearing i thought we could read those then have the um the budget presentation and then have any public comment that was specific to that presentation afterwards it seems a little backwards to me only because um the public comment on the budget presentation could help to inform some of the remarks that are made during the budget presentation whereas the public comment the rest of the public comment is really on the rest of the meeting which follows the budget presentation right i mean we could say the budget presentation is 45 minutes and anybody who wants to make comment on things other than the budget presentation could come back at that time right it just seems backwards my concern is that we have these lengthy public comments that are not related to the budget and we because
005we received those first we have to go through those first so i thought we could do them prior to the presentation and then take any public comment specific to the budget after the actual presentation i see what you're saying okay got it okay thank you and i will read the first there are several that the committee will read and then some people um have actually signed up to speak so this first one is to be read um good uh and i'll read the first one good evening to all in the greylock district i'll keep this short and brief the massachusetts board of elementary and secondary education bese voted that remote or hybrid school time will soon no longer count towards required contractual school hours this supports what the majority of the parents led by the
006physician community has been stating for over six months now i write you to simply state that the entire mount greylock district should be back in school full time before the end of 2021 school year this is to set the stage for a return to a full in-person year and 21-22 the physician community have submitted overlap overwhelming consensus that this is the best scenario for the health of our children i trust this committee will continue to hold what is best for our children as your guiding principle for the path back to in-person learning for all grades in the greylock school district for further documentation i would encourage all to review the powerpoint presentation given at the 3-5 bessy meeting it includes a letter signed by over 300 doctors and their expert testimony about what is safe
007for our kids our teachers and our schools i include a copy of the page below thank you brian and kendra drake of williamstown mass um would somebody like to read the next public comment which is a read aloud i can do that thank you carrie so this is from john and wedding d skavlam and it is a proposal for our senior class that's the subject dear school committee member superintendent mccandless and principal schutz this letter is for public comment and concerns agenda item 8b time on learning regulation changes update we strongly request and support recommendations for a return to in-person teaching for our students in the district as soon as possible with a special request to prioritize the senior class of 2021 like many families in the district we have been quote unquote hanging in
008there with some days better than others but no days that are great an okay day is a big victory when it occurs but as the calendar marks one year since our students were sent home we are past hanging in there especially as things have significantly improved with respect to testing and vaccinations it is time to bring our students back to school in person every day recent cdc guidance disease experts guidance state guidance and a year's worth of knowledge about the disease confirm that the risk for children being out of school are far greater in fact we have heard this for months now from our own local pediatricians here on the ground reporting record cases reflecting a mental health crisis in our own community along with significant detriment to physical health in terms of weight gain
009especially all representing harmful lifelong consequences let alone the loss of learning in school mindful of where we are in the school year we are specifically requesting that seniors who have roughly only 10 weeks of school left be prioritized for the return to in person at mount greylock school students are defined as a class and many of this class of 2021 have been in school together as a class since kindergarten or even prior being a class means being together and sharing experiences in learning of all types in the classroom on the playing field on the stage in the parking lot at the lunch table and in the halls together the pandemic is robbing this class of many things but perhaps most of all their identity anything that can be done to preserve even some amount of
010class unity and togetherness before they graduate is imperative to how they remember their class and their friends and how they identify with mount greylock their high school for the remainder of their lives from a practical standpoint this is a small class of only 84 students meaning that providing them in full in person represents only an additional 42 students per day if all elect to return and some may well elect to stay remote meaning it could even be less than 40 additional students additionally as the senior class they are motivated to make this work and can be given the responsibility as their senior status suggests to lead the mount greylock student body and set the example of appropriate safe behavior for all you could treat them like the young adults they are and grant them respect
011and appreciation we owe it to them and to send the message that their school and their community cares about them and wants to afford them some assemblance of time together as the class of 2021. last spring there was an enormous outpouring of support for the class of here and everywhere that was truly incredible to date the class of 2021 seems to have largely been forgotten even though their entire year has been compromised without a single normal day the simple fact is that none of our kids get this time back it is truly lost and as such is most pronounced for the senior class for whom school ends for good come june the transition from high school to college or a job the real world is hard enough without a mixture of deep emotions both happy
012and sad you're leaving the nest one way or another in most cases many will honestly probably be more than ready for this after spending the past year confined at home with their parents but all will probably wish they could have spent more time with their extended family of friends teachers coaches and other mentors in person at school and they will all be the better for it it is not too late to afford them some of this invaluable formative time and celebrate the class of 2021. thank you for your support and consideration of making this a priority john wendy scablon parents thank you for reading that comment carrie the next um comment is coming from kim nicholl and she will be reading it herself hi good evening can you hear me okay yes i never know
013with zoom if the technology is going to work or not okay my name is kim nichol and i'm here to read a letter written and signed by a group of parents and caregivers from the mount greylock regional school district dear dr mccandless and members of the mount greylock regional school district school committee we are a group of concerned parents and caregivers who have come together to form an inclusion diversity belonging and equity action network the two recent incidents of racial bias that occurred at mount greylock underscore the intense need for parents and educators to join together to combat systemic racism and oppression to be clear these two incidents are incredibly concerning but they are not the extent of negative experiences students of color have endured in our communities despite mount greylock's troubling history and handling
014racist incidents our group remains hopeful that under your new leadership we can work together as a community to create a safe inclusive and anti-racist environment that prioritizes belonging and productive learning in all of our schools your recent responses to incidents have included forthright transparent and timely communication for that we thank you you have promised a commitment to diversity equity inclusion and belonging in our district we believe that any potentially successful plan to combat racism has to draw on resources and input from the community we therefore we are therefore writing to ask you about your district-wide inclusive inclusion diversity belonging and equity plans goals and strategies and how you plan to engage families students and the community in developing these plans more specifically we ask that you model the goals of inclusion and transparency by integrating
015the community into the process of determining plans rather than simply reporting about them in that spirit we offer two recommendations as you prepare the district's budget for the upcoming year first we urge you to dedicate ample funds to hiring an idbe consultant or group to conduct a needs assessment and training for faculty staff and students these would be immediate steps that could provide a foundation on which to build future initiatives second we also urge you to hire at least one full-time staff member in the district who has extensive training in dei and belonging work in the k-12 education sector our students and teachers need support that is embedded and continually happening in order to be able to confront and dismantle systemic oppression and racism moreover these suggested hires would serve as resources for students to
016learn in productive ways about debates that unfold nationally we understand that teachers cannot cover all of these issues on their own and specialized staff should play a pivotal pivotal role in this endeavor as the district works to reassess this is a quote and refocus our multi-pronged approach to change mindsets and behavior around equity and confronts systemic oppression and racismism as set forth by the school council in our school improvement plan end quote we ask that you include all of us in those efforts you have promised to extend and foster relationships with community resources we are here to be those resources and to connect you with others as we all seek to hone an efficient anti-racist strategy strategy for our school district and beyond we understand that there is great urgency to begin this work please
017bring the community along as you and partner as you begin yours in partnership shayna adams el gebley annie art karima barrow daniel birdstresser peter chang sharon claffy rahim elgably aaron kaiser clark amrita lash carrie lyda nickel me molly polk nicole porther nina preto corrine quirk dejong neil roberts adrian st john and melissa zuroff we hope that you will hear this letter as an invitation to conversation both with families on this list and with others in the mount greylock regional school district who would like to partner to make our schools as safe and inclusive as possible for all of our young people and while this is coming before the budget conversation we do think it is related to the budget conversation which is why we wanted to make it here tonight thank you very much thank
018you kim our next public comment is from janine laidlaw and i see that she's on zoom i don't know if she intended for us to read it or okay would somebody on the committee like to read this letter curtis oh julie who's offering sorry janine is saying she wants to read it oh she is okay i can't hear you're still muted janine okay i'm muted now awesome okay thanks okay um since the year 1983 i have been a teacher although i'm not currently teaching although i would i would happily go back to an in-person classroom even though i have hit age 60 and i actually have a comorbidity but i'd still be happy to go back to an in-person classroom at mount greylock i worked as a substitute teacher in literally every classroom in the
019school i served as a regular classroom teacher in in math hi julia julia started her career in my math classroom french latin english and what we called exploratory middle school classes in both logic and theater my three children are proud graduates of mount greylock so this endless limbo of remote screen based learning breaks my heart and it breaks my heart for nearly endless reasons i will try to describe the two reasons that most constantly gnaw at me first my own classroom experience informs my opinion and i tried to maintain a lively classroom so for instance in latin classes i used to hand out these two by three cards and the students had to fill them out with quick correct latin translations and then they came up in a sort of fun slightly chaotic line so
020that i could immediately stamp them with the coveted star punch and if if that wasn't correct i would i would very quietly send the students back for redos that was instant feedback quick corrections and no embarrassing public raising of hands it was no public airing of students incorrect answers and no one was left out it wasn't just the smart kids answering things it was just a quick star punch or a circle of the error while the other students were milling around focusing excitedly on their own two by three cards you can't do that into in class we made these these verb wheels which are they're too fussy to explain to you and they're also too fussy to do by zoom but they are extremely helpful in mastering those challenging latin or french verb forms kids
021were always up and down at the whiteboard they were doing challenges that they thought were games we threw a set of foam rubber dice to see who would go to the board next because these kids went up the board random random dice or no i could always see which kid was coming to the board and i could thus select each specific challenge well depending but maybe could select specific challenges and calibrate the difficulty of the challenge to what i judge to be the difficulty of the random child who was at the board and i could set that child up for success in front of his or her peers in one year's class we made we made maps with a substance milex pk 67 that existed only in our imaginations in english classes we threw beanie
022babies from kid kid during discussion groups students thrive on immediate and physical interaction it helps with student bonding and i could go on and on my second dismay is that i think of the kids who are not part of the financial and educational elite of our community as well as those who are but whose family situations may be difficult in ways that we don't understand it's always been true especially here in berkshire county that there are kids you can just shove into a dark closet with a flashlight and a calculus text copy of strunk and white and the riverside shakespeare and they will emerge four years later as rhodes scholars our best and brightest will be fine no matter what well hurrah and god bless them but not all children learn effortlessly not all come
023from homes where the family has the time and resources to support those students as they learn remotely from a screen those kids are falling behind they are losing months and years now years of quality education and my heart breaks thank you janine thank you next up on public comment this is coming from kathy keating hello hi can you hear me yeah okay um so i'm commenting on agenda item 8b um dear school committee members i'm writing again to voice my support for return to a more robust in-person learning educational experience for our children it has truly been a lost opportunity this entire year to not have had our kids in the building more we have had consistently low community prevalence of covet 19 and it's been demonstrated over and over that there is a low
024risk of transmission of covid in a school setting with mitigating factors in place including mass social distancing and now testing i agree that vaccinations would have been appropriate to give to teachers earlier on and was disappointed that they weren't but that by no means should be yet another requirement to teach for teachers to get back in the building with students full-time our children continue to suffer the negative mental educational and physical consequences of this district's educational policies this year this is only bringing greater divisions between the children and families who have resources needed to try and do this at home and the ones who don't this seems in stark opposition to the stated mission of the district read at the beginning of this meeting please make this right as soon as possible our kids deserve
025better than what this district has been giving them this year when we moved here nine years ago we did so in part because of the strong public education provided i worry that the district is going to suffer in terms of academic performance overall attendance and reputation given what has happened here this year please correct the course have ufc this year now to avoid more negative consequences for our district but more importantly for our children they're depending on you um i'm looking forward to some discussion about this topic this evening amongst the budget discussion thank you sincerely catherine keating oh okay i can't hear you christina our next public comment is from rebecca green would somebody on the committee like to read this julia read it thank you uh dear miss connery i'm submitting a public
026comment in reference to agenda item 8b time on learning regulations changes update if you could plead read this for me i would appreciate it my name is rebecca greene i'm the parent of a west 6th grader and a teacher at a local school i would like the committee to know that i am strongly in favor of a return to full in-person learning for our elementary and middle school students our schools have the ability to meet the guidelines for safe full in-person learning established by desi studies have shown that for the majority of students hybrid and remote models for school are not as effective for student learning in addition the loss of normalcy the lack of access to school-based resources and the loss of socialization have contributed to an increase in mental health disorders in students
027or have exacerbated already present mental health struggles as long as schools can meet desi's guidelines for in-person instruction there are no science or public health-based arguments for keeping schools functioning in a hybrid or remote model at this point there has been little evidence of in-school transmission of covid in schools that have been opened fully in person throughout the pandemic i trust that the mount greylock school district has the ability to open and run our elementary and middle schools following the guidelines set forth by dussy i know that my son will be as safe as he can be and have a significantly improved learning experience once wes is open fully in person i encourage the committee to support the transition to a fully in-person model on april 5th thank you rebecca green thank you for reading
028that julia and the last um sign up we have here is from john spellman with somebody from the committee like to read this last one curtis thank you uh subject meeting today john spellman i am the parent of two elementary school aged children one of them attends wes the other was removed from west out of concern there would be insufficient in-person instruction this year i am disappointed in the minimal amount of in-person instruction that occurred this year there is no valid reason for why in-person schooling does not occur on wednesday i also feel that we should move past the hybrid model and should have children in elementary school attend full-time best john spellman thank you curtis so that concludes this port portion of our public comment um so next up on our agenda agenda is
029mount greylock regional school district fy 22 budget presentation and i believe i'm turning this over to joe actually i think tonight jake is the superintendent mccandless is going to take the lead here great i will happily follow yeah jake and joe show um and i i will this is the the literature major portion of the program the economics major portion of the program will come afterward when i hand over to uh mr bergeron so um thank you all thank you all for attending this meeting electronically tonight committee members and uh and folks that are uh friends and neighbors and and who care about who we are and what we do here uh this is uh i think 15 or 16 slides to sort of embed our budget in a in a philosophical context and in
030a uh and in a working context about who we are and how we approach the budget as a new leadership team here in the mount regional mount greylock regional school district and then we will be handing over to uh to mr bergeron to to walk through uh the particulars of the line items so you know a good question to ask is what is a what is a school budget what's the point you know as a public entity of the commonwealth of massachusetts our school committee elected by residents of lanesboro and williamstown this is one of the the three or four really core legal responsibilities that a school committee has i won't read all the the legal stuff there on the right of this slide but um so this is this is one of the functions
031that a a fairly elected school committee is obligated to undertake and that's really the legal and kind of the bureaucratic answer but but a school budget also you know must reflect throughout its lines and in its totality and this is an interesting way to to think through when budget reductions are called for as i've certainly been in position to to need to think through in the past a school budget has to reflect what are we legally obligated to provide our students and our community and our staff what are we morally and ethically obligated to provide what do our staff students families and the larger community need and want us to promote through the budget we have legal obligations ethical obligations then we get into the stuff that that people want uh and then there's everything
032else and in my experience from from i think this is my 16th or 17th budget as a superintendent almost everything that that gets discussed in school budgets fall within those first three bullets um so that's what a budget has to reflect our budget work and our budget process has to reflect some additional pieces and this is certainly not an exhaustive list this is just you know some some thoughts as we move forward this year our school budget work has to reflect that we are respectful and humble stewards of our community's resources we have to keep in mind that our individual neighbors individual households uh individual businesses in the two communities that we serve lanesboro and williamstown essentially they they make all of this happen through paying their property tax bills the the rest of the
033commonwealth's residents help out to some degree in a community like ours not as great of a degree as as in maybe some more urban districts that that tend to have a greater proportion of their educational program paid for by the state because of differences in property values and abilities to pay our school budget work also has to reflect um mindfulness that communities fund a host of services for their residents every superintendent probably wishes that school departments were the only thing that towns and communities and cities had to fund but but towns and cities have to fund a lot of things to meet a lot of needs um and and so you know we see this relationship that we are building we see a positive close communicative relationship with the finance teams the finance committees and
034the finance executives in our neighboring towns as being really vital both in the short term and the long term our well-being as a school district and our dependability is the school district for funding from year to year and these relationships are really vital in fulfilling our vision so a school budget is not a set of commandments that are intractable and written in stone a school budget is moving to the right of the screen it's a document that has to be flexible because it reflects a vision and a pathway so it's it's not a a map that we absolutely have to follow or can follow i can tell you during budget preparations in in for fiscal 21 i'm not sure any of us were thinking that we would be in the midst of a pandemic as
035we prepared fiscal 22. so we have to be flexible a budget is not simply a bureaucratic document that ticks the boxes for the state and our member towns but a budget is actually at its heart a reflection of what we believe what we value who we value and how we consider our role as educators last bullet a school budget is not a document that we simply adjust from year to year tweaking lightly to hit a new bottom line but instead a school budget is actually a document that requires deep annual thought reflection and processing that reflects who we are and and where we are as a community of learners as taxpayers even reflecting what's going on in our larger society and i i borrowed a photograph of something that anybody that frequents north shire bookstore
036up in manchester abroad seven nothing is written in stone particularly a school budget we do have a bottom line that is written in stone but the way we expend that bottom line has to remain to some degree flexible so we can be responsive reflective educators and practitioners so what are we working to do with this fiscal 22 budget in the mount greylock regional school district we are working to better represent where costs actually happen what we mean by that is you know there are there are expenditures that happen in individual school buildings there are expenditures that happen in the district office and there are expenditures that happen in the district office that have deep impacts on school buildings and we're we're working i think it will be a multi-year process but we're working to actually
037illustrate that with more clarity through our budget process and we also want to bring just more clarity more transparency and more understanding and understandability to the written budget document itself we want to rethink naming conventions meaning what the end of individual lines that you're going to see later actually we want to have the lines be as clearly indicative of of what they do and what they're paying for as is possible within department of elementary and secondary ed guidelines to allow for better clarity and better readability by the folks that actually pay the bills we want to rethink budgeting processes to to be really exclusively almost focused on academic social social and emotional and cultural competency goals you know the bottom line is is outcomes for our students um and and we know that a budget
038works best and serves students best and actually serves the community best when there's really tight alignment between district improvement plans individual school improvement plans that school councils are advocating and working toward individual educator plans including the superintendent's educator plan and the budget the the more tightly that all of those items are coupled the more the budget is going to reflect that it's doing what we actually wanted to do for our students and then generally our final goal of what we're working to do with our budget is we just generally want to increase the rightness and the correctness of the budget in bureaucratic ways because we want it to be perfectly clear where our money is going uh and why and and in the future when there's shifts in that why but we also want it
039to be just more readable more correct in human ways because that serves the community best serves our students best and it's really the most fair to the people that actually serve in the school district people that do the work every day in uh school buildings to have an understandable budget that is right and that is correct so what does our school budget say about us i believe the budget plan we're putting before you tonight says a bunch of things and again this is not an exhaustive list but i think this budget says that we value the people who work directly with our students the people that actually come in and make school happen we value recovery from a difficult year for our students for our families and a difficult year for our staff this budget
040says that we understand that we serve students best when we infuse and saturate the budget and soak the budget with opportunities to become more culturally competent and build a better sense of belonging for all students and families and make sure that all students are represented in our curriculum and in our materials whether they're curricular or in the library and in our approach to teaching and learning we value and keep classrooms at the center of our efforts i think this budget says that and you will see that unfold we understand that students will return to school in the fall and in the spring ideally physically with needs that differ from any other time in our history and so social and emotional learning needs to be infused throughout our budget again same way the cultural competency and
041cultural proficiency really have to infiltrate every bit of our practice from the central office through to individual classrooms playgrounds gymnasiums music rooms auditoriums so too does social and emotional learning and support for students wellness and then finally this budget says that we value greater clarity in the way that we budget and we value real clarity as to where our town's money actually is going and why so uh this this gets into sort of the new things that we're asking for within within this fiscal 22 budget new investments a focus on recovery and growth um of course one of our aims is to honor wherever possible school council requests members of the school council offer their their intellect their energy their experience their reflectiveness in so many ways and and we think philosophically it's important to
042honor those requests and you'll see that tonight uh we know that our investments need to address short-term needs but they also need to to express you know a wise planning process and a long-term investment in our students over time as they progress pre-k through grade 12 and beyond in the mount greylock regional school district this budget reflects that we have to maintain the things that matter and you will see that evident in this budget and this budget has to reflect that we are responding to school community and larger community wants and larger community needs and we hope that you'll see all of that there's some things that you're not going to see probably as fully realized as you would like to uh and we're still waiting on some information and and when we gather again
043on uh march 25th we hope you will see a fuller realization of some things that you that you may have a nagging sense of of incompleteness about this evening new investments as we focus on recovery and growth this is really i think probably the slide that that some of you have been waiting for you know what are we going to do that's new what are we going to do that's different as we try to get through the school year we're doing and use the the little energy we have left after that on on planning for the year ahead so what you will see tonight is a request for a school social worker at lanesboro elementary you will see requests for a full day pre-kindergarten teacher and paraprofessional at lanesboro elementary you will see the same
044request a full day pre-k teacher and paraprofessional at williamstown elementary school you'll see a request for a school social worker which is actually a teaching social worker at mount greylock regional school you'll see embedded within the budget tonight within the lines a full-time student resource center teacher at mount greylock you will see a request for ela curriculum work at lanesboro and williamstown elementary schools you you may not see it as evidently although on the 25th we are very hopeful you will um investment in diversity equity inclusion uh and and uh sorry i meant to have belonging where that second equity is uh work and planning you know our real vision for this work and and certainly mindful of um the the excellent letter that was shared uh by ms nichol and and the many families
045who undersigned that letter um we we know that we need to have some very visible real tangible things going on and between tonight and the 25th you will you will see that tonight you'll see sort of a vision for where we want to go with that but we also know that uh that the the real power is that we have a culturally competent culturally proficient staff from pre-k through grade 12 and at the central office in that that is infusing into everything we do and it's evident in the things we say and the things we don't say it's evident in the way we practice and in the ways we opt not to practice it's evident in our investments that we make in curriculum and materials and programming and it's evident in what we take a
046pass on in curriculum and materials and programming it's evident in the way we hire people it's evident in the way we uh word job descriptions so that they are inviting rather than excluding and um and we hope you see that tonight and and if you're not feeling like you're seeing it please hang on until february 25th uh and then finally an investment same thing it's showing up in a lot of different lines all over the place because jesse doesn't really give us a particularly neat place to to stack this um summer programming for for uh special needs students um and above and beyond for special needs students and for probably more regular ed students than than we have offered in years and years i'm guessing if mount greylock is like most other school districts so
047i'm gonna take three or four slides to work through this piece uh because this is this is heavy duty um and it and it may be on a on a human scale the most important work that we are undertaking in this district and maybe the most important work let me rephrase that that we are continuing in this district because there are many people who have been carrying uh this mission with them close to their their their heads and their hearts and their hands for years and we really want to honor that encourage that empower that and bring the larger community into the conversation around diversity equity inclusion and belonging we understand that we have to emphasize the importance of listening we understand that we have to help our school community develop the tools for engaging
048in productive listening and productive conversations we understand that we have to facilitate those conversations across school life but also real life and bigger life and larger community and region and world life we know that we have to encourage the good that comes from a more actively communicative and supportive school community in the larger communities we serve and we understand we have to engage we must engage with voices and build relationships with people outside of our school communities and even outside of our local community to expand our own experiences our own awareness and our knowledge and our understanding so that we can best serve the students that we have the honor and privilege of serving um summer of 21 and 22 this is where we're really laying out our our vision for where this work goes
049we want to plan and identify situations where we can listen and collect perspectives from the people that we serve make investments in pd for our staff that acknowledges their fears and challenges in participating in and leading conversations around differences i think sometimes the the heart is very willing and the head is very willing there is a fear that comes from stepping into facilitating conversations and answering difficult questions there is a concern about saying the wrong thing and we need to support our educators and support our students as well in helping them gain the tools to be able to have these conversations in in safe powerful and meaningful ways pd funding a lot of our pd funding is going to go directly to these both grant funding and regular budget funding we think it's vital that
050we conduct some equity audits that include a look at academic outcomes social and emotional outcomes curricular and co-curricular participation and outcomes to identify areas where bias a lack of a fair opportunity and equal opportunity or other barriers to full participation and engagement in school life for some students exist we know that this is there we we need to uh and we owe the community to quantify that so that we can have conversations in the community and within the school community to uh to actually do something about it uh we know that we have to engage in a re-evalua in a re-evaluation of curriculum and learning materials for ways that may fail students and may fail our community and ultimately fail everybody involved investments again in professional development new curriculum materials in the hiring of new
051staff including new social workers for uh two of our three schools will all be focused on the core of diversity equity inclusion and belonging and you'll see a little bit more about hiring processes in in the next slide or the slide after this continuing uh we want to continue we intend to continue and reach out and build stronger relationships with neighboring institutions and organizations that allow our students our faculty and our staff the opportunities to participate in talks lectures programs and other learning opportunities and i can say from being here just for a few months the number of opportunities that have been passed along by our neighbors at williams college that we've shared with students that we've shared with staff that we've engaged in ourself uh uh it's it's there's such a strong current of
052that existing and we want to build that and increase uh the partners that we're engaging in that work with so we're very grateful for what we have and look forward to building more we need to undertake a detailed review of hiring practices including our job postings how they're worded what are they saying in words and what are they saying in uh in subtext that may or may not uh alert uh potential candidates that we are a place that um values all people and thinks that all people uh are are are worthy of working here um we want to review our recruiting and advertising practices sorry my lights just went out so i'm gonna move a little bit apologies you know i don't know how you just do your magic arm wave and snap and it
053comes back on i do not have that yet um apologies to everybody watching for that uh we we do want to look at our job postings how we recruit where we recruit how we advertise where we advertise and and we we see a need to consider expert recommendations uh for best practices is how to best approach and invest in this work so that we are appealing to to the folks that we want and need to appeal to and then we want to create safe and easy ways for members of our community to note where and when we continue to operate in spite of our best intentions in ways that um show that explicit or implicit bias in personal and or organizational blind spots exist we know that they do we know they will continue to
054and only when we have a safe easy mechanism for for people to let us know that whether it's me as the superintendent or a practice in a school or or something else we we will not get better these blind spots will not take care of themselves uh unless we are paying attention to them and and and carefully reflecting and hearing um how how our words and our actions and our practices and our policies are impacting the people that we're here to serve uh and so we want to be able for folks we want to be able to receive and process this information in safe and respectful ways that leave the person who is who is sharing this with us who is who is taking that step with the knowledge that they're part of a positive
055process and part of an iterative process that informs itself and and helps all of us as individuals and as an organization grow and be better servants to this community we are currently working with or attempting to work with new consultants on a long-term strategic on long-term strategic planning work we have a zoom meeting with a i think a nationally recognized consultant on monday that we are looking forward to we have worked with several community-based partners so far in the greater berkshire county region for helping us to consider and reflect on ourselves our practices and our planning for dei and b uh we include within the current budget uh that that this reflection in this work is embedded in in several lines of the budget curriculum lines pd lines purchasing lines a real area that i
056think all all school libraries should be focusing on and i i'm sure that ours have and we want to encourage to continue that is to make sure that that students um and voices uh all the voices of all students in the way that that students are and and community members are are represented in our in both our curriculum and our library materials and we are committed to using in-district funding sources as well as developing new partnerships locally or or caring for and caressing existing partnerships that will support deep and continuous long-term work and ensuring that all of our places all of our spaces and all of our opportunities including the opportunity to come to school hassle-free is existent for all of our students and all of our families and and we certainly need to be
057welcoming respectful we need to be celebratory of who our students are uh and who their families are and and we need to send the message everything we should we do should be saying that that we know we're we're here solely we exist our work exists solely to serve each and every one of you as well as all of you i looked to the school committee for a recommendation on the hiring of a diversity equity inclusion and belonging full-time director or coordinator my personal recommendation is that i am really excited about this um i'm one of few superintendents in western massachusetts that actually have a track record of creating funding and hiring for this position at our neighbors down the road in pittsfield so i am fully supportive of this position for me the timing of
058it and and seeing it come to fruition as a result of a community informed strategic plan so we are really getting exactly who and what our students and our faculty and our community needs of this position um that is that is something i would i would be able to advocate for um but but i am certainly uh open to to the excellent comments that came in tonight and that we've been receiving in an ongoing basis for really the whole time i've been here since november and look forward to that conversation with the school committee and on march 25th we will bring forward a a full funding plan as a part of the final budget presentation and adoption that that may include further sizable requests from the annual school budget and or school choice funds uh
059as well as being reflective of partnerships we are trying to grow in this particular area so getting back to our new investment focus after taking several slides on something that that i see as among our most important work on a human scale we are investing in social and emotional learning support we are honoring the requests of the school councils at both lanesboro and mount greylock regional school for additional student mental uh and social wellness staff we have as you saw maybe five or six slides ago we have budgeting for school social workers in both of those schools and at mount greylock a student resource center facilitator uh and then finally this is um i occasionally you know i'm never quite sure how to prioritize things because in in my world everything and everyone is important
060um this is really uh this is an important um set of bullets here we are advocating tonight in this budget plan full day pre-kindergarten at lanesboro elementary school and williamstown elementary school or should i say we're advocating for one section of full day pre-kindergarten at each of those schools currently the schools are served by by half day programs we are advocating that we in addition to those half day programs we had one full day classroom at each of our two wonderful elementary schools our current census information indicates the potential for 52 pre-k students in williamstown and 37 potential pre-k students looking for placement at lanesboro elementary so i think the number of students that are out there and families that are out there looking for this suggests that this is a wise and pro and
061appropriate move to me and i'm a high school teacher by trade with with that literature degree that i mentioned earlier one thing i have learned and has been a joy to learn as a superintendent over over the 16 years i've been doing this is that the the absolute best investment that a school district can make in its communities and its children and its families and in its own academic future and own future academic outcomes is to invest heavily in pre-kindergarten for our youngest students that's an investment if we have a three-year-old we get to see the return on that investment year after year after year for more than a decade and i think there are you know when you're talking about high quality preschool and at lanesboro elementary in williamstown elementary we offer the high
062highest quality preschool we're very proud of those programs and the people that make those programs happen on a daily basis this is just a great investment on every level and the time is always right to do this but we think the time is particularly right this year as we know that even our youngest students and their families are going to be trying to rebound from this year that we're hopefully putting behind us soon our intent for these two new sections of pre-k one at each elementary school is to offer these programs free of charge it's something that that the community and the school district are offering to the two members of the community who are parents of young children our intent is to prioritize the the students who come into these programs we would prioritize
063for students with special needs we would prioritize for students who are experiencing economic difficulty and challenges at home would prioritize for students who are who are learning english and working to learn english even as they and their families are adjusting to so much that's new and different uh you know culturally linguistically in terms of work perhaps even in terms of climate in terms of available food you know we we really want to prioritize the students that we would that i think we would generally perceive need these services the most and so we're approaching the the jake the the jake portion of this the closing of it which may come as a tremendous relief to some of you um and so i will close before i hand over to to joe bergeron or our school business
064official with uh a quote from rasheed ogunlaru and it's a quote i really like from a book of his called uh called soul traitor putting the heart back into your business it's a business he quote he's he's a writer about business and a life coach but i really think this applies to how we perceive the budgeting process here at mount greylock these days see money currency is the flow of energy and giving that cycles between you others and me now let it flow kindly fairly and mindfully and if we can um meet these aims in our school budget then i think we have met our legal obligations we've met our moral obligations we've met what people want us to do and expect us to do in these communities and we know that we are putting
065a a good product forward for for the families that call williamstown home that call lanesboro home and for the people that actually um make all of this possible for us the residents of those two towns so uh i don't know if there are questions on on this piece of the uh of the presentation certainly happy to have questions or we can allow joe to walk through the uh the finer points and the details of of the line item budget and then we can have questions um however you you would like to run that school committee i think it makes sense to let joe do his presentations and hold the questions till after okay i will stop my screen share and and hand over to joe following dr mccandless is always a challenging thing to do
066and doing it with with lots of numbers uh feels like an impossible task so uh please bear with me as i attempt that um christina i do need screen sharing please okay sorry you don't already have that it's all right is that good i believe so yes it is i just need to figure out which of the many windows i would like to share all right so uh as dr mccandless indicated we did upload our draft budget to the district's website roughly 48 hours ago and all school committee members have this pdf within their packet as well the watermark draft is especially appropriate here tonight because given all of the change that we are seeing as we attempt to plan for fy 22 and all the work that we have before us i think it's
067important to note that this is a work in progress and that there will be changes over the course of the next couple weeks there will be additions to the expenditures that we would like to plan and there will most likely be updates to the ways that we hope to fund those expenditures so all of that indicates that i think that this is our good first cut at it but i'm going to highlight at a high level where we stand right now and then also speak about where we think this budget is for and its presentation will head over the course of the next two weeks so taking it at a top level within this pdf i'm going to give you a tour of of how to read this regional school district's budget because our our
068regional school district is a is a special entity in and of itself amongst even regional school districts here in massachusetts and so i think it's important to give people a lay of the land of how to read what we have here in front of us so uh the pdf itself is currently a 13 page document the first page is is is perhaps the most important if you only want to spend a few minutes looking at a at a budget and try to understand what it what it means for the member towns and and for where we are headed financially um here you have two primary sections fy uh the year that we're we are currently in and fy22 which is the the school year contained by the calendar years 2021 and 2022 as we look
069at the top line of this cover sheet the gross operating budget represents for each of our buildings as well as for the district as a whole where we and how much we are planning on spending for the operations of the schools if you slide down about three quarters of the way down the page you will see the gross capital budget which is in our district's case it is the amount that we require in order to operate within the debt payment schedule that we have for the new mount greylock regional school our two elementary schools are they were built when the elementary schools were a part of the the town school districts and any remaining payments on those buildings come straight from the town's budget and the town's debt owned debt schedule as opposed to coming
070from the regional school district's budget so if you only want to look at a few super top level numbers you would be looking at these fy 22 gross operating budgets as well as the fy 22 gross capital budget for mount greylock regional school right off the bat one thing to note is that we are representing the long-term capital budget for mount greylock regional school here as i'm circling it with my cursor here in fy22 whereas last year that represented both long-term and short-term payments related to the school the short term the bond anticipation notes have per auditor moved up to the amount greylock regional school operating budget so right off the bat there's actually 180 000 that's really just transferred between two cost centers within the overall budget so it's important to note that that
071is not it's not that we're paying a whole lot less for the building in this year it's actually that we've transferred those costs and the way we represent them to a different part of the budget that's part one part two is as you then look at how we plan to fund the gross operating budgets you'll see that we have a variety of sources of revenue that are applied against that gross operating budget before you eventually get down to the net operating assessments to our member towns the net operating assessments represent the amounts that we require our local tax base and our local towns to fund hopefully through through assessment and votes at our two member towns town meetings so if we start from the top here if we just start to look at the differences
072between fy 21 and fy 22 that we are proposing we are proposing an expanded use of our tuition revolver and our school choice revolver which are both sources of income for the district as a whole they are funds that we are allowed legally to carry from one year into the next and to use in a situation especially where we're attempting to expand our program and expand our opportunities and gradually place that overall cost to our towns or hope that the state or federal government will pick up costs so you'll see an expanded use of tuition and choice here in this year you'll also see a significantly expanded use of grant funding currently we have the sr2 federal grant funding that is administered by the state of massachusetts planned for fy22 that is coveted relief oriented
073funds that we are able to utilize for a variety of purposes in bolstering or bolstering our academic programming as well as more nuts and bolts related activity to prepare for fy 22. something that's important to note with respect to grant funding is that we do keep hearing from the state that additional federal funding is on its way that k-12 education is a priority for the federal government and that additional relief will be on its way we do not know what form that will take or or what volume that will come in but it is something that we continue to hear from both state and federal legislators as we continue down through this once we pass through the net operating budget numbers we get into state aid a b and c chapter 78 chapter 71 transportation
074aid and charter tuition reimbursement those are three forms of state aid that we will touch on towards the end of the of the budget document here in that we as a regional school district do apportion that state aid to our three school buildings based on a formula that is embedded within our regional agreement so how how those funds are portioned out across our schools that's embedded within the regional agreement and then the last line here transfer from excess and deficiency excess and deficiency is the revolver that we are able to um to operate within the regional school district that results from funds that we're able to save from certain sources of revenue from one year to the next and and the goal there is too similar to tuition and choice have a fund that can
075travel from one year to the next that is able to help us begin to fund costs or fund one-time costs as we as we navigate from year to year so once you travel through all of this you get down to the net operating assessments to member towns the net operating assessments to member towns represent the funds that we are asking our towns to directly pay for through money that is appropriated at the annual town meetings of the two towns how we determine what portion is being requested of lanesboro and what portion is being requested of williamstown is again a subject of the regional agreement and i will walk through how that is handled here in a few minutes so we travel down through the operating assessments we we get to final numbers in terms of
076operating assessments for our two member towns and then we need to apportion the the gross capital budget again how those costs are shared by our two member towns dictated by language within the regional agreement once you travel through all of that you get to what most most people within each town pay attention to each year which is how is the assessment changing from one year to the next um and as we look at what we currently have in draft form and i'm going to keep on saying draft draft draft all night long because i think it's important to note that this is still a work in progress here right now currently we are exhibiting a 1.13 increase for the town of lanesboro over its assessment for fy 21 and a 1.67 percent increase for the
077town of williamstown in its assessment for fy22 i just traveled through a lot of numbers and a lot of technical language pretty quickly if people have questions right now at this level i can certainly answer them otherwise i'm going to scroll down to the base of the document and walk you through how we do the apportionment of the various revenue sources as well as the the assessments to our member towns looks like jose has a question you we don't have to be formal about this part anyone can ask questions without me butting in sorry christina i'll i'll i'll button um so i just wanted to um just to clarify and uh you know i can maybe do this on my own but you probably know the answer but i'm just curious about the 1.67 increase
078in terms of what we're asking from the town of williamstown is that because of our increased asked for for operations at west or in terms of the bulk of that that increase i'm curious about why that number looks so different from from the lanesboro number why the percentage increase would be different between the two the two towns um that well the the underlying math there is that one yes the the operating increase request is more significant at williamstown elementary school right now um in absolute numbers as well as as a percentage than it is at lanesborough elementary school the other side of it is that the the way costs are shared across the two towns generally any any shift that we see overall will will end up being a portion more to the town of
079williamstown as a result of the the math behind calculations around its ability to pay which is a part of the state's calculations it's also a part of of how we utilize the numbers that we have at our disposal internally around the equalized valuations of the two towns and the student enrollment that is that is provided by each of the two towns um but but the the vast majority here is is currently the accounting for how williamstown elementary school spending is expanding thank you joe i think this is just a typo but in the furthest right column should that be fy 21 to 22 yes it should be draft draft draft but yes fy21 fy22 uh joe i had a couple questions i don't know if now is the right time so feel free to tell
080me later is a better time um as i i don't have a sense of whether we're drawing on a similar amount from tuition choice and e d as a typical year um and what i'm thinking about is the important presentation that dr mccandless shared and the investment in all these positions which i concur with um but wondering how sustainable that is over time um and what what is left in our you know accounts that i think help fill the gap when when there's a when there's a need and a quick answer to that is that i think over the course the next couple weeks we will internally develop a more sophisticated presentation around current fund balances where those can head between right now the end of this year the end of next year and what
081we might be suggesting as far as a multi-year expansion of the requests from our two towns to try to ease the the one-year impact but but know internally and and know in terms of what we project what that means for the towns and and their finances so that's something that is that is underway right now we're trying to make sure that we stop a lot of the ground from moving underneath first so that we can then then put numbers out that we can we can stand behind with with confidence thank you any other questions at this level right now yeah i just have one last one and it's it's uh this one i think can could be answered by either yujo or jake um i believe it was two weeks ago and we we heard
082from the then principal of of wes about the identified need or the need identified by both the school council and the school administrators for an additional sixth grade teacher because of um i guess a variety of issues needs at the school but i i i didn't see that in either jake's presentation and it's and it sounds like that's not included in this budget now i wanted to um to see if you either of you had a comment or uh um about that why that doesn't appear in this in this request yeah i'm happy to weigh in on that jose and i i'll i'll start i'll try to be brief but sort of you know philosophically the the the school committee builds the budget you know the the school councils do send their recommendations and they
083are that their recommendations uh i i think uh uh in in in most cases a superintendent a finance director a school committee really honor the work of the school committee or the school council and we certainly do indeed honor the work of the school council at all three of our schools when we went back and went through the number of students that we currently have the number of students we anticipating being back from remote from home school allowing for some degree of of new students moving in [Music] we really could not justify the need for that i think working with the data they were working at at the time it was a sound recommendation but as we continued to thresh through that data uh it it just you know and included the the the notion
084that we do have teachers returning in the fall from the remote academy back into the physical building that that request was was what was not one that we would recommend um enacting at this point it's certainly if if we are taken aback by by any class size data as we approach the fall we will you know look to our flexible plan and figure out how to address that because that's what um good practitioners do from from the central office but but right now we just the data just did not really support that that was that was the best use of of um are our resources right now and just to follow up quickly jake and and i just wanted to um confirm that this is this is what you what you just what i think
085what you implied is that the remote academy as it's provides a service for for families during the pandemic will will not exist during the next fiscal or academic year if if we are ordered to do so by the commonwealth it will exist uh but but you're reading between the lines on my statement and and there's also i'll also add another layer after i answer your question our intention is not to unless there is unless we are responding to something that is deeply alarming related to the covid situation the remote academy will end um as of uh i we may run aspects of it this summer for students that want and need summer programming um but but that will that will be condensed and and it will end as we enter into the fall uh ideally
086in person in the fall and with all of our students um the other piece that i think your your question gives me the opportunity to to address is that i i would guess if you went through the history in the past decade of williamstown elementary school there is some there is some transition of teachers every year from one grade level to a different grade level in order to address larger class larger cohorts and smaller cohorts going moving up in grades so so between um you know even like getting a little further into the weeds we may find that that actually allows us to reinstitute the full day uh that that that type of logic allows us to to to open up the the full day pre-k section without actually needing to hire a new fte
087that's not reflected in the fy 21 budget so that remains to be seen but we think that potential is there and i hope i i addressed your your concerns no thank you you're welcome all right any other questions here as we venture forward so right now i'm going to scroll all the way down to the third to the last page of of this document um actually before we do that i'm going to go to the second to the last page the fy 22 chapter 7071 and charter 8 apportionment to school budgets headed page so this again guided by the regional agreement um uh guided by the formulas that are embedded within it is is how we determine how we take the lump sum funding that comes in from the state in chapter 7071 in charter
088reimbursement and a portion that across our three schools it's based on a blended vision of the equalized valuations of the two towns and in fy 22 we do have an updated eqv set from from what what was available last year at the time of budget development and acceptance that the eqv has come out every two years which is worth noting that these will be the eqvs that we live in for this fiscal year upcoming as well as the one following um and then the foundation enrollments um the foundation enrollments are the enrollments that we tally as of october 1 for reporting to the state that indicate the students that are present from the member towns at each of our three schools so based on on those formulas we we then calculate how much of that
089revenue from the state we will attribute to each of our three schools that's part one part two is once we um once we apportion that revenue to the schools and again all of this flows through onto that cover page that that we that we looked at when we first got going here we also need to determine within the school that serves members of um or community members of both of our two member towns we need to determine how to further apportion its operating and capital requirements so looking at its operating requirements non-credit lock regional schools operating requirements once we take all of the other revenue streams into account we apportion the remaining costs based on the five-year trailing average of each of the two member towns contributions to the population of mount greylock regional school
090and as we look at the fy21 to fy 22 movement it is visible that the town of lanesboro is is comprising a a slightly larger percentage of the overall student population at um mount greylock versus the town of williamstown that's a shift that is a bit of a reversal from the trends over the last five to ten years and then as we look at the capital costs associated with the new mount greylock regional school the splits there are based on both the five-year trailing average as well as the relative eqvs the equalized valuations based on the residential and commercial property values of each of the two towns and what you end up here with in the bottom right hand corner is how we split the the capital costs at uh or for mount greylock regional
091school and that again because of the the fluctuations in both the enrollment numbers as well as the eqvs of the two towns lanesboro is seeing a slightly larger percentage of the mount greylock regional school costs there than they did in previous years now if we jump back to the third from the last page it is this is the the detailed view that again feeds into the first page of how we apportion the net operating assessment needs from our three schools to the two member towns for the two elementary school well let's let's take first the minimum local contributions minimum local contribution is a a number provided by the state for each of our two towns dictating the minimum that that town is expected to provide for the operation of the regional school district that minimum
092local contribution is because of the way the regional agreement needed to work apportioned out to each of the two schools that that member town is responsible for funding the percentage of the minimum local contribution for the town of lanesboro with the 2.363 602 expected minimum local contribution from the town of lanesboro is apportioned out to lanesboro elementary school and now greylock regional school based on the percentage of lanesboro students are at leansborough elementary school versus the percentage of students from lanesboro that are at mount greylock regional school that determines the local contributions and then how how those are apportioned out to each of these school buildings and then the above minimum local uh required contribution or requested contribution is for the two elementary schools it's simply the um the full amount so the the local
093town funds the remainder for its local elementary school while the two-town share in the mount greylock regional school costs based on that five-year trailing average of the two member towns contribution to the school population at mount greylock regional school so all of this right here then feeds into that first page that we were looking at in terms of the the operating assessments broken down from greylock regional school and for each of the two elementary schools once we're able to put aside all of all of that math that determines how costs are shared then we can get into the nitty-gritty of breaking down the gross operating budget into line by line detail now it's my preference tonight to not attempt to scroll down to the through the 506 or so lines that exist in this budget
094what i think is helpful is one knowing that what dr mccann was presented at the outset represents the the commitments that are being made within the budget that is before you the other thing that's important to note is that over the last two weeks or over the next two weeks we are going to undergo a significant renovation to the descriptions of those accounts this is something that the district has been looking forward to for the last few years when when we brought the the three districts into one k-12 district um part of part of what happened as a part of bringing that together quickly was that the the chart of accounts all of those names that are in the descriptions they were brought together um nearly verbatim from where they had been previously now what
095that does is it leaves us where there are many lines that are like across the three schools in terms of where funding is going but they carry three different names which makes it fairly difficult to understand how the same type of thing is being what type of expenditure what level of expenditure exists at each of the three schools we also have situations where we have duplicative accounts that make it relatively challenging to figure out what is going where and that's something that that the team internally has been really excited to try to move forward with and so what you can expect over the course of the next uh two weeks is that we will perform a fairly significant renaming of these accounts and we will provide a document that does a crosswalk from old name
096to new name as of right now you have a document that maps directly on to where we were in fy21 fy20 in terms of account names so another reason to not dive into every line item tonight if possible is that those line items and their names will change over the course the next couple weeks so um trying to to memorize and determine specifics right now would perhaps not be the the most rewarding effort when you when you look at the final budget that will come before you in a couple weeks so that was a lot of monologue joe we can also note that um not yet another reason to not dive into every line is that the finance subcommittee did go over um if not line by line then many of the lines um in
097deep more detail last night so we did review and represent the school committee in terms of that due diligence thank you carrie and joe correct me if i'm wrong but at this point normally during this process the public would be able to come up to the podium and ask questions um i don't totally know how to do that um but i guess there's there's some way and i apologize i know michelle can explain this to the audience i know there's a way to raise your hand but i've never been able to i just do this i'm very technologically savvy um christine it should be in reactions okay um depending on the the software okay sorry that's siri depending on the software that people have it may be available in reactions yeah i see it as
098a clapping hand not a but julia is raising her hand which is great michelle do you want to i was just going to say you can do it through reactions but you can also open participants and at the bottom of the list of participants says ray's hand great so i would invite anyone who would like to ask a question to raise their hand knowing that we will go more in depth in two weeks right joe yes i i think the the upcoming meetings of the finance subcommittee we we will continue to go line by line as as that evolves um at the full school committee level i i hope the the questions and the comments will will typically veer more in the direction of programmatic changes staffing changes what what that means for the district
099as a whole um just so that we don't get too bogged down but you know everything is fair game for sure great thank you it looks like julia has her hand up i initially did it to just test it and then i thought no i do have i do have a question um i in jake's presentation he asked that he looks to us about the db everyone uses a different order of the words but the d-e-i-b the that position and we certainly heard public comment um you know seek that position and i first just from a process perspective is now the time we should okay um and so maybe it's less of a question but maybe a point of advocacy i might make um and that is i really appreciated how jake described a desire
100and commitment for that position but a need to clearly define the position first um and i think i i probably am one who would say let's just go hire the person because we know we're going to need someone but um i i appreciate the desire to take our time to do it so i'm just gonna i don't know if it's a point of advocacy a question or a statement but i want if this is the time to talk about it i want to make sure i got that out there thank you julia okay oh jose has his hand up you're on mute jose [Music] too many buttons here i can't i can't raise my hand and unmute uh no i'll just just follow on from julia and i think this is just a question for
101for jake here um just for feedback or or maybe no uh a request for some detail about the consultants that the district is looking to hire um i think from my perspective and my experience the district has a lot of work to do in terms of building trust with families of color and families who have students of color in the district and also who choose to to send their children to schools outside the district i think there's a perception that there's a need for a professional who who truly understands both scholarship and practice in diversity equity inclusion and belonging and so i think my initial reaction is that you know we we should pursue this position as soon as possible to get that expertise embedded in the district to support both the professional development that
102you laid out as being a need that has been a need for a number of years and been a practice for a number of years in our district i think some folks would would would say that that practice has been ineffectual you know perhaps because we haven't had that that expertise to lean on and inform and direct but um going back to the consultants that the district is interacting with and is considering um to hire um you know jacob in terms of how you see things playing out um you know there's the potential well the feedback we'd get from consultants feedback we get from the community that would all inform the description of the position that we're looking for is that how you're you're seeing things um i'll stop speaking because i'm just keep speaking
103so i'll hit mute i don't want to interrupt you in any way jose so um you know our our hope is that the some expert facilitation by way of a consultant or a consulting group um you know certain certainly we would we would value the opinion of the consultant on on on what how who this this position should be structured but i think in some ways leaning more on the consultant to help us facilitate the right conversations the right way with our community because we know for certain that i'm just going to speak for myself purely i don't want to i don't want to put a shadow or anything over anybody else so so speaking for me as a superintendent as a person as a leader as an educator i know that i have the
104potential in many ways to do harm when i'm trying to do good because i am who i am and my experiences are what my experiences are um so and i also know that we have earning trust is a magnificently important and big job and you cannot afford false starts or ask for do-overs you can and in many cases you will get a do-over or another do-over however i i respect this work and i respect the individuals that we are trying to better serve and their allies better and more than to accept false starts so so i guess yeah i i'm looking for the for and and again this is a community conversation um but but ideally for for for my vision which i think represents where the represents where the administration is we would like
105some help with facilitating the conversations themselves and allowing you know community voice to deeply inform how we structure this position what we ask of this position how we how we even go about hiring this position because i know there's expertise in this community about how to build job descriptions advertising postings that are inviting rather than excluding so i i don't know that i've answered like the heart of your question but that's where i am with this but but i like you i see some real merit to let's do this now let's not wait even until the fall let's do it now um i i will though ultimately say it may not be a matter of if but for me it remains a matter of when and and how we get there and and i and
106i i i think the larger community including the voices that have been advocating for this position but but even beyond those voices would be really helpful in in how we think through this how we structure it how we hire for it i'll just follow up quickly with a question about process in terms of how you envision these conversations happening and how you envision um the district being informed by the community uh community needs and experiences and uh is that i was going to ask the do you see this as being a process that takes place over the course of a year for instance meaning that by the end of by the time we we were here in 2022 you know we we feel confident that we we know what we're looking for and a year
107from now we're ready to or do you see this should in essence should we be budgeting for half a year's worth of a position or during this fiscal year would we be ready to look for someone at some point during the next academic year that's a really important question no the answer is no on on is there a need to to do a year of process for this i i think by the next time we meet as a as a you know with the school committee we will have a better idea of some some other partnerships that may bear fruit in in giving us flexibility to do that to do just that that if we get to october of and we're there we can do that um you know the the the expert facilitation for
108the conversations though i i is a is a happening this spring and summer thing so we hit the ground running ideally by mid to end of summer and we're opening the school year that way with with student voice with family voice with with community voice so i i appreciate that question because that's really i don't envision us needing to wait a full year but but when we may have means to do that that sounds great to me thanks jake thank you there's a community hand up is that aruna or hi uh i'm i'm priya de souza i'm a student at greylock um i i just wanted to sort of add on to um what jose was saying initially i i really do encourage a position like this but it uh i think regaining the trust
109of a lot of the you know non-white people in this community is really important because i think we've been uh you know as the you know non-white inhabitants of berkshire county we've been feeling sort of left out in a lot of these conversations regarding um diversity and racial equity i i just i just want to you know i hope that when you're looking for consultants that um you're looking for consultants that perhaps aren't um white are people of color you know i think um talking with my peers who are non-white and even talking with you know parents and people at williams college um it's been difficult for young people to adjust to like high school middle school everything without um a network of uh non-white instructors which we you know we really don't have that
110uh here so um i just hope that behind the scenes as well uh if not you know uh interacting with students there will be um non-white people in this you know um uh this process for you know um deib stuff thank you thank you okay i don't see any other questions um next up on the agenda is school committee discussion of the fy 22 budget um which we've sort of been doing i don't know if anybody has anything else that they want to add okay so moving right along next up is approval of minutes do i have a motion to approve the february 25th 2021 school canadian minutes so i moved julia moves do i have a second oh second michelle seconds any further discussion hearing none hold on one second steve did you want
111me to clarify what i was saying for the medical personnel are we just gonna leave it as a on the second place on page 10. i think my brilliant idea there was that they're non-covered facing healthcare workers and i stand by that statement actually thank you for that clarification any other discussion okay all in favor roll call alphabetically please bo and i johnson eye okay i think we've lost steve but that motion passes thank you okay next up on the agenda is mount greylock regional school principal update and i see mr schultz is on all right good evening everyone so i i have a brief update about us our most recent survey and then i'm going to yield the rest of my time to one of our student groups the gmsu so uh our the
112most recent survey that was done in january closed on january 25th and i recently sent that out to families but um we didn't have the complete data by the uh the last school committee meeting so i just wanted to update folks so it's allowed us to examine our approach to both the hybrid and remote models and i think it's important to to review this and to note it even though we are moving towards a more and uh to more in-person learning so specifically it's allowed us to identify areas that students staff and families are experiencing both success but also areas that we can re-examine and try to provide more support so first when it comes to our staff it's clear that what they need aren't isn't um physical in nature it's more focused toward pedagogy
113and pedagogical support and although this staff has have access to resources and support we need to broaden and enrich the type of professional development that we offer staff it should be it should aim to help them build their their bag of tricks their repertoire of strategies that they use in a hybrid sort of environment i'd like to specifically call attention to the our pacing report provided by the staff so we asked staff on a one to five scale one being way behind in content or curriculum of previous years and five being way ahead of where they typically are in previous years our staff average was a 2.4 so 2.5 would be right where we normally are and so we're just about there and again this was um feedback provided by staff talking transitioning quickly to
114families and students their their responses indicated that the content covered time with staff and pacing of the day was just right it was just right too much not enough survey the feedback prompted us to examine our homework structures specifically um we had some mixed results about this process so this is something we are continually exploring with our curriculum leaders and with our staff um and one another another indicator although it wasn't a majority there were many families that reported feeling overwhelmed and so there there were there were no specific um comments in that area so we are going to dive deeper um and we continue to dive deeper on both individual levels and across the board to provide not only the necessary but more precise support albeit academic social emotional or behavioral and on a
115side note i would encourage families that are that they report feeling overwhelmed to reach out we do we do often have folks that reach out and we examine what we can do on an individual basis to help support both families and students in a general sense the the survey showed us lots of things to celebrate our students have a healthy attendance rate uh i think it was um 84 or 85 percent of our students have a ninety percent or higher uh daily attendance rate they're satisfied with the pacing and the content they're satisfied with their time with staff and the delivery of curriculum that um in the delivery of curriculum is on par with where we normally are in years past so with that being said we do understand that the social and emotional struggles
116that families and students face are very real and we are committed to doing what we can to support them and in the while we're doing that reflecting and improving our practice and our protocols so that sums up my my brief summary of the survey so the the next section i would like to um introduce oh do we want to do questions well i have a question about the survey specifically but i can do it at the end if you want uh we might as well do it now then because i'm going to turn it over to to priya okay so i just had a cure i'm curious in terms of the response to the survey um how many responses did you get like what percentage of the staff and what percentage of the parents staff
117it was it was um i don't have those numbers on the top of my head but i can get them back to you it was it was a decent amount um staff was pretty high and students i remember it not being an issue when we were analyzing the data but i don't remember what it exactly was okay thank you i don't see if there's any other hands up so i guess i will just keep going so the monk raylac multicultural student union or gmsu for short the gmsu helps educate students and staff around diversity issues in our society and aims to help destroy common stereotypes our advisors are miss mrs mary mcdonald and mrs liza barrett and tonight um the prie de sousa who we've all just met who is an active member and i
118believe one of the not founding members because the the the group has been reinvigorated and so that has helped the group become more active and and prevalent so priya i will yield my time to you um the floor is yours thank you um so as mr schutz said i'm sort of one of the uh reinvigorators of the gmsu i was a soul member last year um i'm very glad that this year we have had uh more than one person in uh attendance of our meetings but um so we've sort of we've had like a spike in membership since the initial um zoom bombing incident um and since then a lot of um other people from outside from both inside greylock and outside greylock have uh asked to speak with us and work with us we've
119you know we've talked to people from the school paper and uh you know we've had joint meetings with the student council um but we've also uh were in the process of um talking to uh oh her aseal albuoub from the davis center and um uh you know people on the williams campus who are interested in working with a group of high school students about racial equity issues we've uh beyond that we were recipients of a c fund grant so we've been using that to bring back former a better chance students to speak with our club in you know closed meetings but also have open meetings to the student body to talk about their experiences [Music] and uh beyond that we have been speaking with a um a performance artist who's now based in new york
120but grew up uh here and is a mount greylock alum sasha yano and a member of the uh diversity includes inclusion and racial equity committee um the sort of select board committee uh bilal i'm sorry um they got a contract with willy net um to uh film a multi-part uh sort of series sort of discussing the events of um you know discussing the sort of history of racism in williamstown and the events in williamstown uh surrounding the wpd and um you know the the sort of police reform and uh the discussion around racial equity in our community over the summer um and uh the gmsu will play a part in that um filming will start sort of after the school year ends for me at least but um we're hoping that uh you know gmse
121members will still be interested but um we've you know we've been trying to branch out as much as we can to to be a more um robust organization because we've you know a since uh since the um initial sort of zoom bombing incident we've found that um even you know that people are still vulnerable in a way that we didn't imagine they could be um now that everything is sort of online um so uh i think like our main sort of goal i think for the past few weeks has just been um trying to you know make our the you know black and brown students at our school feel like they have a space um because that that has been really uh important to us that is i think especially the for the you know
122non-white members of the club having a space where um you can sort of speak freely about experiences can is really it's really powerful um you know i think um being in a room full of people who don't necessarily look like you or don't come from the same background as you it can be exhausting um it to just you know have to sort of function uh function in uh sort of terms where you have to assimilate to uh a sort of a cultural monolith that is expected uh of um students at mount greylock even though you know there is this um there is i i think um out of i've moved around a lot as a kid and out of all of the places i've lived i i feel like uh greylock has been a really
123sort of uh it's been inclusive but it's also been colorblind in a way that i think is problematic i think there is sort of this desire to be one sort of one culture in a way that i i'm not sure has been helpful because i think that like even even then there's still an expectation to assimilate and not just be um just be a person um but uh yeah i think i i mean having having a space where you can just not have to worry about like oh is it gonna sound weird if i say this or like oh will people think i'm overreacting when i talk about this um that's been really powerful both for me and you know younger members of the gmsu have been reaching out to me on social media through
124email and saying like i i'm really i really appreciated this conversation we had like it feels good to talk about the stuff and not like be judged when i talk about it um so yeah i i just wanting to protect um peers is really has been really important to us and i think wanting to protect our underclassmen has been really important to the upperclassmen um for the past you know uh for the past year um that's been you know our our biggest priority which you know considering the the zoom bombing incidents both seem to have happened in um sort of classes that are younger than me that's been like sort of important to me um so yeah that's that's kind of that's what we've been doing for the past few weeks we've our meetings are
125every two weeks so the past month or so has been focused mostly on um planning next steps and then talking to abc students thank you um priya before we open it up um if any members have questions i just want to say that we we appreciate the the opportunity that the group provides for um students to learn from one another in addition to the forums and the um uh the forums and the uh educational advocacy that you guys promote around diversity and cultural awareness and i don't i can't see if there are any questions i jake if i could just say thank you priya for speaking and being so honest and open it is really appreciated um deeply thank you thank you i'm really i'm so happy to have this opportunity i've you know i've
126been sort of getting more involved in local activism in the past year and um just like feeling like um voice like my voice and voices of you know my peers are being included in these conversations means so much to me if i can just add to that priya um first to echo christina and my gratitude i'm sure i speak on behalf of all um for you coming here tonight and sharing so openly of your own experience and importantly for the leadership that you're taking on in the school i i i consistently am impressed by mount greylock students who are going to show adults what needs to happen and i think you are an example of that and um i i look forward to seeing all the ways in which you are able to impact the
127school community um you are i your this work that you're doing is so critical and so important and i hope you heard we all want to support you but at the end of the day it's you who needs to help lead that way and so i'm so grateful that you're stepping into that jose yeah i'll just just follow up and and and start off by reiterating priya we owe you so much um and and the collective that you have helped organize and galvanize at mount greylock what i want to i think something that is uh is true it clearly at greylock and and across campuses across the country you know where students of color are frequently persistently being asked to be their own advocates for social change and equity to carry that burden um i
128think we heard in statements earlier today that you know their i think the administration the district looks to your group either gm gmsu for for feedback guidance and advice i worry that that's not fair i worry that that puts an unfair burden on our students of color who are just just trying to navigate the space of mount greylock and trying just to be as you said a person you know who just to be themselves and what i'd love if you feel comfortable sharing with us today at this moment you know what you would like from the district and for them from the administration what you'd like us to hear about um the support that you you'd like to see that you don't see but that you would like to see at greylock and across across
129our campuses um i'll stop there and just finish by saying we we owe you thank you so much thank you um i think you know i think the the biggest thing when i i've talked to you know members of the gmsu and then just you know my friends about this and i think the one thing that everyone sort of sighs and wishes they could have is you know a a non-white member of faculty and staff which is not possible like or not not impossible but it's sort of a a big ask um uh you know we we sort of were aware that that could be you know not um possible but you know i think it's really wonderful to have um spaces where you like where you're listened to and where you feel heard but
130in the in the end it's really sort of difficult to find that support from white people if that makes sense like it's really sort of there's people can hear you but that hearing you can only do so much i think um a lot of my peers a lot of my peers and myself you know we we having someone who has those shared experiences who has experienced those uh you know these microaggressions we've been talking a lot about microaggressions um in the past a few months and you know having someone who's experienced those who's not just you know read about those or heard people talk about those or like seen those happen to other people but who's had those you know who's had these interactions happen to them these interpersonal reactions you the interpersonal interactions these
131you know experience systemic i i think you know having someone who's known those struggles has is really important and um that sort of support finding that support beyond you know our parents can be uh can be difficult just given the geography of you know where we are um uh yeah i mean i think that that was sort of the the biggest thing we you know sigh about but um i i think i think it has uh been overwhelming that so much of the response to these issues um of you know racist violence against our peers um has been you know relegated to us um we are we are kids there's not a single um member of the gmsu who's old enough to vote um uh you know we um yeah we we uh it can
132feel like a lot but you know i i also do really i i've really appreciated the um support that we've received both from you know the mount greylock administration um dr mccandless has been really helpful uh in our responses to you know these um incidents and um the davis center at williams college has been um a really great resource and uh drea finley who's also on the um dire committee has been uh you know reaching out to us and they've been super helpful uh with you know dealing with some of the the pressure that uh some of us have been feeling from that um so i i think just you know uh i think it can feel like a lot but we have we have a network of people who um are willing are willing
133to help us uh so i i think just you know uh extending that network um would be would be helpful thank you priya all right so that is all i had for my update thank you jake okay we will move on to the next agenda item which is superintendent updates can i can i just make one one quick little priya thank you so much and one thing that you said has really just stuck in the bottom of my stomach instantly i mean among many things but one is that this district should be able to and must employ people who who can have those shared experiences and who can represent each person within the district and so it's it's not an aspirational goal it's a it's a must and i think that's incredibly important important for
134you to hear but for us to do and until we do it you know it's only words but but that's um i didn't want to let that pass just because it really stuck with me so thank you thank you i i will add my voice to the thanks and to the admiration for priya and uh and her colleagues um what what a what a hopeful thing to hear you speak here tonight uh and uh what an optimistic thing about our potential to to to be better and do better for everybody so thank you so much thank you so much and with that thank you now i'll go into boring the socks off of everybody with with yet another uh lengthy superintendent's report um so let me share my screen and find the right screen to
135share this looks good can you see that had not thank you thank you thank you ah let me get into presentation mode so um just just really four items tonight uh here's sort of the table of contents a very brief school choice of update a very brief mcas scheduling update of a brief zoom incident update with the most recent zoom incident and then a much lengthier time on learning regulations update for all of you and for the for the community so school choice i i believe i led you to think at the last meeting that we would be bringing forward our our school by school grade by grade uh openings for a vote tonight that is we're simply not there as with much of this year we're we're still trying to sort through layers of
136information uh and sometimes misinformation to identify school and grade specifics related to school choice openings so we we are confident that we will have enough data and have done the right things with it to bring forward the school by school grade by grade choice opening slots for you to vote and approve in april um we we do anticipate that that not being fully sure what what this upcoming year is going to bring uh that that most slots will be for siblings and for inter-district school choice needs that allow families lives to work we may have a few openings that are just true school choice openings but i do not anticipate a a large large number because we do have a number of siblings that are making requests and we really want to try to honor
137those as much as we can mcas schedule update again this is very brief we we just received this information uh very late last week mcas as as you likely know uh will be offered this year it will um at least as far as we know right now although i i think the federal government may be making some overtures about freeing states from the requirement uh for this year nonetheless there's a large part of me that is hopeful that we do press forward with mcas actually uh because it's it's non-punitive this year and i think it would give us some very helpful information about how how our students actually did this year and how far they progressed but um you can see the dates here for grades three through eight grades three four and five ela
138math and science technology and engineering tentative dates for may 10 through june 11. grades six seven and eight those dates are still to be determined and high school testing dates are to be determined at this point as well so i just wanted to make sure that the school committee and anybody that's interested in the public was was updated on that the the most recent zoom incident um i have a a genuine level of disgust that uh our our students and our neighboring students who you know whether whether they were the actual perpetrators of this most recent incident which uh which happened in a classroom um this this this really has to stop it is it is so humanly inappropriate and whether it's racially motivated or whether it's uh you know under that that big umbrella
139of of while i was just fooling around it's deeply offensive on several levels and so um this most recent one happened in a class there were not many kids in the class it was a deeply offensive song with with um racially charged lyrics and sexually charged lyrics um the the ip finally being traced down was a was a vpn that was out of north carolina was as far as we could get the police department is again uh helping us look into this and and leaning their investigative shoulder into this and if we are able ultimately to identify a person or persons who made this happen we will move forward in the way we move forward which is being being clear with our community about it um if it's a younger person making it a learning
140opportunity as well as an opportunity to experience a consequence so that they can reflect on the on the hurt that they have caused others and um and we do keep trying and successfully just tweaking zoom to make this uh more and more difficult so i i completely wish that we could bring you uh great clarity into who did this and why they did this and what we were going to do about it um i am as unsatisfied as as i'm sure many of you are the high school administration the middle and high school administration are as unsatisfied uh as as all of the rest of us and we will keep doing what we need to do to look into these events when they happen i will say to our student community enough is enough um
141you're at best you're interrupting learning and at worst you're deeply offending people and hurting uh another human being who has feelings and just like you do as the perpetrator and we will continue to make um work around being more humane and and better human beings and making sure everybody is included uh as a full part of our community in that work uh and now the the most lengthy time uh that i will ask of you in this report this is this is related to the time on learning regulations that i believe were adopted about a week ago in a meeting of the board of massachusetts board of education i believe these passed by a fairly overwhelming vote of eight to three i did watch the meeting what i was able to to fit into my
142schedule a lot of good give and take and i do believe the final vote was was eight to three so the the way that these next several slides are going to go is kind of a call and response uh the direct quotes from desi are in bold and are in quotation marks from the guidance document which was i think 16 or 17 pages long our responses and and interpretations are uh included in a bulleted list beneath each uh bolded quoted um piece from the from the desc guidance and then of course the the entire document is available at this link um so if uh if you you you know google even um massachusetts board of ed time on learning regulations or or put that into a search engine it will certainly come up so now
143digging into the meat of this the the plan will begin with a return to in-person school for elementary schools grades k through five in our case we are looking at that as grades k through six because that is the structure of our elementary schools as of april 5 2021 the department will require elementary schools to use a full-time in-person learning model for instructional hours to count toward structured learning time so this is not optional this is not subject to overrule by by the superintendent by the school committee um the committee and the super via the superintendent can request a very temporary waiver granted in only the most extraordinary of circumstances and i am seriously doubtful that that um more than a small handful of waivers will be granted uh if even a small handful so
144i am moving forward anticipating that this is the law and we adhere to the law as practitioners of education here in massachusetts time that is not spent in learning uh learning in person will be required to be made up sorry for the typo i left out the word up via a longer school year mandatory summer programming or additional school hours in the fall i suppose hypothetically saturday sunday school you know could also be an option the the point is for these gr for this grade span remote time will no longer count toward the 900 hours of instruction or uh 180 days or in this case of this year 170 days exceptions that can be made to this time not counting if an individual within the class needs to quarantine if a cohort or an entire
145class needs to quarantine that time does indeed count for that student in that school but that's really the only exception uh the next quote from desi importantly families will retain the choice as to whether to send their children to school in person or have them learn remotely through the end of the school year districts may also apply for a waiver from deci waivers will be considered in a limited set of circumstances described later in this document i do believe we touch on that later elementary families in the mount greylock regional school district at this point as we look toward this first milestone of april 5th we'll have the option of transitioning students from hybrid into the remote academy um that will be the the loan means at the elementary school of of going remote should
146a family choose to go remote uh in a reaction to uh this april 5th date that is looming before us a student that is going to be remote in k through 6 pre-k through 6 will only be able to do so through the remote academy middle and high school families when we get to that point will continue to be able to join classes via zoom as they have been all year a survey will be going out by the middle of next week to gather families intentions on whether they intend to send their students full time to school or whether they intend to go fully remote we are not asking about summer programming and this at the time that i put this presentation together we anticipated that the survey would ask about summer programming we did
147not want to convolute or confuse the survey so we will be asking about summer programming at a later date uh the next quote from the dec since june 2020 deci guidance has consistently noted that three feet in classrooms is a safe standard for physical distancing when masks are worn and other mitigation strategies are in place based on guidelines from the world health organization in the american academy of pediatrics our guidance balance the urgent need to bring students in the commonwealth back to in-person learning while minimizing the risk to students staff and the families and their families while districts should space students further than three feet when feasible evidence demonstrates that the additional risk associated with six feet as opposed to three feet is low when masks are worn and other mitigation strategies are in place
148so you know our interpretation of this is that six feet is no longer the rule three feet is now the rule six feet however does remain the rule for when students are eating or drinking and it remains the recommended appropriate distance between children and adults and it also remains the recommended distance between adults in a school setting so the three feet is really particular to the distance between children and adults our children with each other the recommended distance we try to shoot for um six feet between children and kids uh and and then between adults or children and adults and and then between adults and of course masks will continue to be mandatory for the full day with the exception of of lunch uh and or snack and um and and and outdoor mask breaks
149uh we are just for your information we are looking into a host of solutions to try to make lunch work uh safely we're we're anticipating a return of the middle and high school so we're also looking for solutions for our upper grades as well but the real priority for for what remains of this week is for our elementary school students uh and staffs the next deci quote and it's a it's a lengthy one this is really the uh the timeline so i'm not going to read this quote word for word um i think most of you are aware uh that the elementary school phase grades k through five pre-k is actually exempt from this we'll touch on that in a bit um grades k through five the the day that we begin in person full
150day full classroom education is monday april 5th for middle schools which the state defines as grades six six through eight in our case it is grades seven and eight districts and schools will be required to shift their learning model effective wednesday april 28th 2021 that's the week after spring break um students that who have traveled to restricted states over the spring break are we are allowed to request that they shift their return until april 26 which is a full week after the um after the break i believe i'm just looking off to my calendar wednesday the 28th i think that might be a okay so students would be learning remotely for the entire week of the 26th if they have done restricted travel when or quarantining and so they would be back in on monday
151may 3rd uh and at the high school and uh i know we all hear and we're we're gripped by the the community input about what this means for our high schoolers particularly our seniors who will not get another bite of this apple the state has not weighed in on when that is going to happen they have promised us two weeks of advance notice if we believe we're able to do that or do some piece of that safely before the state mandates it we are certainly working toward that and and as i said we're we're planning particularly around lunch and monitoring lunch and making sure lunch is safe and making sure classrooms can accommodate bigger students with three feet of distancing we will do so so this is a road map for the uh for the
152timing this is a suggested road map there are some hard dates in here um desi is certainly encouraging us to move more quickly than their plan outlines if we feel that it's appropriate to do so and we are having those conversations for those of you who may be watching or watching this later who are parents or caretakers of high school students the commissioner has yet to weigh in on events like prom and graduation although mount greylock held a very successful and meaningful graduation last year so we would fully anticipate at least that for this year but i do know as the parent of a senior myself and another school district uh at this point the prom is about the only thing that uh is is occupying her world so uh other than you know successfully
153finishing the year academically so the college of her choice will continue to to hold by their acceptance uh moving on the the next quote from the desc and i will read this in its entirety uh because regulations have the force of law once the commissioner makes the determination that hybrid and remote learning will no longer count towards structured learning time a school committee vote on which learning model to adopt is not necessary because full-time in-person learning will be the default required model remote learning should only be provided should be provided only if parents guardians opt out of in-person learning for the remainder of the school year and for students who must remain home due to a covet-19 related issue if the district intends to submit a waiver request dussey encourages the district to hold a
154school committee vote on the content of the waiver that this is a local decision i assure you i will not be moving forward with a waiver uh unless directed by the school committee to do so um that was an editorial that's not a that's an editorial comment by me not a uh a quote from desi given the need for rapid implementation superintendents may submit a waiver request to deci without having first secured a school committee vote as we said before earlier in this presentation this is not optional this has the full force of law and regulations behind it uh i was in a zoom meeting with with many other superintendents and the commissioner yesterday uh he walked through his thinking for and his team walk through their thinking for potential waivers uh i i think
155getting a waiver is going to be like um throwing a a spiral pass with a football through a go-kart tire um from 50 yards away i think that's how likely this is going to be uh including that deci will send in-person teams out to come and measure and lend you technical support to help you fit all of your students in with three feet of distance if you are making the claim that you simply cannot do that in multiple classrooms a temporary waiver may be approved as i said in extremely limited circumstances but but i will just be gobsmacked if if waivers are given in in any number at all particularly in and i look at our school district you know our buildings are are newish as school buildings go in the commonwealth we have done
156lots of uh actions to mitigate uh against the spread of covid so you know whether whether i like this or not is immaterial i think at this point whether the committee likes this or not is immaterial and i don't say that to be offensive or jerky i think it's simply true because this is now law and this is now regulation if indoor and outdoor spaces at the school level are insufficient districts should look at other spaces not otherwise used by students within the district if available and then consider spaces within the broader community for instance individual grade levels within a school could be moved to local community spaces including non-profits businesses or other spaces to expand the physical footprint of classroom space this makes sense for some of for one of our schools in particular
157uh that uh williamstown elementary uh this this is a tougher one to wrap one's head around for mount greylock uh and uh or for lanesboro elementary school however we are examining options that include using existing school spaces for purposes other than what they were designed for i.e as mount greylock has been doing all year the gymnasium becomes a satellite cafeteria an auditorium becomes a satellite cafeteria rooms that are larger by their very design may be used for alternative purposes other than for teaching classes we are also examining using outdoor space for lunches and or for learning including looking at renting large tents particularly for meal service strategic use of community resources that are within a reasonable distance of one or more of our schools and then we are certainly trying to be as creative as
158we can be we get lots of feedback from the community about things to consider and we appreciate that feedback and we hope it continues to come in so we are thinking as broadly and as expansively as we can in this regard waivers will not be granted for districts that indicate they cannot return to in-person learning due to space constraints or feasibility issues but are maintaining a physical distancing standard in classrooms of greater than three feet districts must also have completed an updated survey of families with the information about about those students have elected to return to in-person instruction and those who have elected to learn remotely in addition in limited circumstances where a district is granted a waiver the waiver will be time limited and i'm going to break from quoting here our understanding is
159that that is incredibly time limited talking about days not weeks back to the quote all districts and schools should expect that they will need to change their models to move closer to full-time in-person learning five days per week uh there again both from you know i'm giving you kind of the greatest hits version of of the lengthy memo that came from the commonwealth i've also been involved with with um some local conversations as well as a webinar or a conference with the commissioner there are incredibly limited reasons that desi will even entertain uh to even consider granting a waiver um a locality is not allowed to say well we still believe in six feet not three feet those waivers will not be granted they will only be granted if we if a district i don't
160mean we if a district can prove that three feet is not workable in enough spaces so as to perhaps not allow the school to function appropriately it appears very unlikely to me that based on our data on our space availability and other factors um including incredibly low community transmission rates um both this week and in the past couple of weeks that we will even be in a position to consider a waiver or even a very temporary waiver as i've said here before i think lunch is probably our our greatest concern on a number of levels it's actually been our greatest concern as we've as we got back into a hybrid model uh so we're going to have to be really creative around how we do lunch without completely disrupting um existing school schedules but we
161have a good team of people here working on it and and we will continue to do so until we find appropriate safe solutions for our community and our students and our staff um so that's that's um sort of what what i felt uh we did an administrative review of of all 16 pages of this document earlier this week um this was called down from the the hour hour and five minutes that we spent uh doing that all together on a zoom meeting and uh of course this these documents are available at the following website and um certainly based on emails i received today lots of people in the community already have uh accessed this website and are and are familiarizing themselves uh with uh with the new time on learning regulations we would uh anticipate
162that uh you know as as we head into fall barring barring an outbreak barring people just throwing in the towel and living life as usual and not continuing to be cautious and to use common sense you know we're very hopeful that the fall sees us kicking off a school year that in terms of number of days a week and number of students in the building looks very much the same it could be that we're starting still with masks and that we're we're continuing to treat lunch and snacks with kid gloves uh and our real hope is is that that's exactly what the fall brings so full return in our sincere hope is also that our graduating seniors head off to a work world or a college world that offers them a a fuller experience than
163uh than than has been offered this year uh so you know in in concluding this i'm not going to read this to you yeah i am subject on a daily basis and i'm grateful to to be in the position to be so um i'm subject to 360 degrees of thought and opinion on this and i'm subject to uh and many of us are in the district and i think you are on the school committee as well you're subject to 360 degrees of opinion of interpretation of facts and of emotion because i get it as a dad i get it this is emotional and um and and and the the full spectrum from being deeply afraid for your child's health and well-being or that of your family to just absolute outrage that um that that we
164are continuing not to be fully in person and i know that our staff the people that we treasure so much because they serve kids day in day out in person remotely um they they hold that same range of emotions uh about their own work and their own health and their own uh concerns so i i i don't know what the answer is we will continue to work to find it we will follow the law that is i think an ethical practitioner in a position like mine you followed the law and we do honor and listen to and i try to respond to every thought every opinion every consideration and i'll continue to do so and i'm actually quite grateful to folks who help who help inform our thinking through sharing their thinking with us we
165will continue of course to be responsible and respectful we will continue to be humane and we will continue to work for the best ends for our children and for the people who love our children and care for our children and serve our children and uh i thank all of you for your your close attention to this and i'll stop the share and we'll happily entertain uh questions about any of this michelle uh thank you jake i know that's a pretty complicated really long memo um so i appreciate the cliff notes um my question is whether or not you're going to need additional resources for supervision of these remote spaces that aren't typically like normally you'd have one or two people in the cafeteria supervising the kids eating but it sounds like they're going to be
166a little more spread out than that if if you have three or four cafeterias then you go from needing a couple people to needing eight or nine people uh and so yes that is part of our planning for this um you know the the the uh uh yes i'm getting tongue-tied here as i enter my 13th or 14th hour of the work day but um and i'm gonna i'm really not gonna try to editorialize on any of this because nobody cares what jake thinks they care what the superintendent thinks um yes we i i think the resource is necessary to do this in a way that's safe and appropriate and respectful of health and safety in the ways that i think we need to be it will absolutely require additional resources and and we're prepared
167to ex and i think have the capability to expand those resources as we approach the end of the year because it's really important yeah so that was the follow-up question do you anticipate having the resources to actually use i i always say yes and then i try to gauge by how far up on joe's head his eyebrows go i've uh misspoken or not i say that in jest uh we we have been in many many conversations about that and uh with with esser money and with we will money will not stand in the way of this uh uh um the availability of people to come and help could and we may be me asking for some help of the community but uh but we will do what we need to do to comply with the
168law and serve our students thank you i mean i think we've had several volunteers so i think that's a possibility for sure yep looks like carrie has a question uh okay thanks christina i have two questions um one is just to clarify this was implied in the presentation and i haven't read through word by word uh the regulations but it sounds like even though the schools will be penalized if we don't provide full in-person the families will not be penalized if they choose to go remote so by by requiring essentially we're required to provide a remote option and we're required to permit families to choose that option which means that their kids will continue to progress through the grade level so there isn't a penalty that i guess that's what i mean by a penalty
169yeah uh that's an excellent point carrie and thank you for saying that there there are i i hope the way i answer this doesn't doesn't confuse more than it helps but but you are correct families maintain the option to send their child to a full five days with with all you know all students that want to be there and are comfortable being there being there or they can choose a fully the remote academy um or at the middle and high school they can continue to zoom in as we have been doing all year and there is no penalty to the families should we so that that's a period after that sentence this is without penalty to a family um it there will not be a grade penalty an attendance penalty there will not be um
170a a a situation where students ask to repeat a grade because they have chosen to be remote as opposed to being in person but while we're discussing penalties should we as a district choose to go down the path of not complying with this rule then it's very clear we would have to make up this time and i do think forcing families in essence or or pretending like we can force families to make up time could indeed be perceived as punitive by families if we say we're not going to be ready for elementary school until april 26th and we continue hybrid through april 26th the state's message to us is that's fine but you will need to now add those weeks on to the end of your school year which i suspect would run us into
171some contractual issues since contracts tend to end as of june 30. um so and there are certainly penalties for the school district that could include a withholding of chapter 70 funds and while we're not as dependent on chapter 70 funds as some communities in the commonwealth of massachusetts uh it's several million dollars and and so any action taken to reduce money coming from the state by the chapter 70 program would be a significant penalty to to the district to the schools and to the teachers who serve children and to the children themselves because we would have less money to work with thank you so my second question sorry is about staffing do we anticipate having any difficulty staffing our classrooms um you know i know that we have pool testing and i'm hoping that affords
172a degree of comfort um but we also have a disconnect between vaccinations and the rolling out of this regulation so i'm just wondering if we know where our teachers stand on this yeah we seem to have a month a month's worth of disconnect between prioritizing educators and demanding that educators are back in person five days a week with full classrooms and and there's uh you know evidence that that we can do this and do so safely do so very safely um we have been working with the the majia the union leadership from day one i spent a good part of my day answering emails around concern about this and and sometimes just responding that you know i i hear you and i understand i spent some time with a few teachers today who expressed real
173real genuine concern but i think carried it to to actually answer your question um i started on november 2nd i believe serving the mount greylock regional school district i have not had a single minute since the beginning of october where i have had any reason to question the professionalism or dedication of of the teachers of the paraprofessionals of the custodians of the the food service staff of the clerical and secretarial workers that's a long way of saying i'm so taken by the professionalism and dedication of the people who actually do the work to make school happen in this staff i do believe that in the end there there will continue to be concern there will continue to be fear for individuals own health the health of their children the health of all families involved what
174i have observed of of our staff of our colleagues who who work in classrooms is that they they will show up and they will do their jobs and they will um i suspect hold some resentment about uh at the state level about the fact that um that the timing on the the opening of schools and um vaccination availability we're not in better sync from their perspective but uh but but i believe our staff will do what they need to do and and we are in uh fairly constant communication with our with our union leadership colleagues to to you know get a temperature check as well as with individuals but to make sure we're doing this in a way that that um that is respectful of of who they are and what they do and what
175they mean to this community thank you you're welcome jay can i ask a question about um busing and and the impacts that this will have on that if we have to increase our bus runs about three weeks ago the new bus regulations came out and that would i i will i'm just going to write myself a note because i clearly i maybe didn't send those to you um essentially what the new bus regulations do and they they came out about two weeks ago they essentially remove almost all distancing requirements on school buses uh um as long as the windows are open um so you know whereas at the beginning of this year we had you know there had to be a seat in between and you know you were kind of if somebody was in
176the front seat then on the opposite row somebody was in the second seat and then somebody was in the third seat on the right somebody was in the fourth seat on the left um i i will i will send those out to you um if i if i can't come up with them tonight i'll send them tomorrow morning uh but but essentially bus transportation is back to looking pretty normal masks on windows open um so so that's that's an excellent question and i'm sorry i haven't communicated the new bus regulations to you thank you you're welcome jose yeah thanks christina uh i'll start out i'm hearing it have the echo yet go stop but i i just want to start out by um embarrassing myself by expressing gratitude to both jake and joe for the
177care thoughtfulness and time um that you both have given this district that i think we're on full display in the presentations for you know the the budget presentation and as well jake is you know in this this conversation that we're having about transitioning back to to fully in-person um learning uh thank you sincerely sincerely um the question i have and i think it's it's a uh i i have and i and i it's probably evident self-evident in in in every aspect of my person i have never taught k through 12. um so i i am imagining myself as a teacher in our school district particularly in our elementary schools and the transition from hybrid to remote as scheduled is abrupt where the week of march 30th where hybrid the following week we're right back at
178it you know in terms of a pre-pandemic i'm assuming a pre-pre-pandemic schedule um in terms of are we or should we um and maybe we we should be getting feedback on the preparation time that our teachers might need to successfully transition from what has been months of hybrid to to fully remote what what are do we have options um and what are those options if we do have them yeah i i would i would struggle to lay out a menu of options but i but i can suggest a couple we we do have you know our our wednesdays which have been in conversation about the necessity and the usefulness i will tell you at the elementary level the wednesdays right now are really vital to be remote because that's when teachers get most of their
179planning time and really all of their common planning time stacked together uh i i as we're just as we're surveying our families to find out what their intentions are we have a jlmc and then a problem-solving session with the union tomorrow evening and we've certainly been in touch with with the union president who is just incredibly communicative uh and we're so grateful for that you know around concerns and what more could we be doing to to make people feel better about this and and we we will be talking substantively about what this transition looks like because you're correct i think for kids and for teachers it will be a slight shock to the system to to to not be there this week and to be there next week um it is uh i accompanied a
180group of fifth graders on a on a exercise um on is it southworth street that runs um you know from route 2 back to the school to to help them wrap their heads around the size of the universe by by planning the yeah some of you know what i'm talking about because your kids probably did it um so and i have to tell you i i told the teacher probably a half a dozen times as a high school guy as a high school person and then a middle and high school principal and then as a superintendent i i look at elementary school teachers the same way i look at professional athletes i'm glad that somebody has the stamina and the organization and the sheer strength to do that work so i i think as we
181consider you know now first of all these will likely not be full class sizes i do think we'll have some families that that will um choose to to school their children at home or to move into the remote academy because of very specific concerns um but but but i do tell you i got a firsthand view of of what it's like to be with half a fifth grade class and and uh we will certainly have this transition and what we can do to support and help right now we've simply been putting a lot of energy into communicating how to work through what feels like a really byzantine process to even get on the list to be vaccinated as an educator i stopped in a building to see a couple of educators personally today because i
182i was really i'm reading it when when like such frustration comes through in an email i tend to drop everything and go wanna be within three to six feet of a person um and and and it's very real and and people are spending hours of their time trying to to get in line for a vaccine and we want to be understanding and supportive of of all of these uh concerns and emotions and this transition but but still understanding that we we need to comply with the with the law um michelle and then jose so you know i guess i'll speak from an elementary teacher perspective um that's all i've taught so um it's i i honestly can't imagine doing the upper grades they're mouthy you know i can't even imagine um but uh what i
183will say is what i hear from my fellow teachers um is exactly what jake is saying that the announcements came in the wrong order so first we found out that we were being forced back to full in-person instruction and then we were told oh okay now you're going to be prioritized so and i will say among the teachers that i work with they they don't have five hours to sit on a computer we can't do that during the day um and so the fact that there are no no that's number one and number two if it's the two shot and on the second shot you're ill how are you going to find subs for all those teachers if they all go on the same day so there are there are so many layers to this
184in terms of hopping back into instruction um i most educators i know are looking forward to it um it as a special educator i can tell you that scheduling at the beginning of the year is a care right so once the general education schedule is done then the special education schedule has to get done and there's all these pieces that you need to fit together in order to make a cohesive schedule so that alone is a bear so there's all these little intricate moving pieces that everybody is kind of like but wait a minute don't forget about and wait a minute don't forget about because nobody has had that in their vision um necessarily uh for the last six months so from an educator's perspective that's that's the elementary educator's perspective that's what it is
185and those poor kindergartners are going to be so tired that's a long day for them in september jose i think you had a question you know i i uh especially hearing hearing from michelle here i think i as a i think i think i have some genuine concern about um about our teachers you know in terms of you know a their ability to access the vaccination and i've heard that um unions across the state and perhaps even districts are advocating for you know um for opportunities for for teachers to more easily more easily access the vaccine rather than through the central massachusetts sort of you know funnel that that folks are having to fight through um i guess you know i think um what's my question i think i'm just venting just just sort of
186a cathartic i'm genuinely worried about about supporting our teachers through this transition and uh and then wondering you know perhaps this is a topic of conversation later once we hear back from from the union about what what teachers would would like to have for support um are we or could we be looking at hitting pause during that week of the 30th week leading up to fully in person you know is is that could that be an option could that be you know maybe this is a question for for michelle and curtis as teachers here in terms of what they can imagine you know appropriate support for for getting this right what what that what what that might look like well first to speak to the issue of the the uh clog in the pipeline of
187vaccine and the fact that western mass is just a part of the map massachusetts that says there be dragons um uh the mass vaccination sites that are available on the four days for those who don't know the four days that have been set aside specifically for educators three saturdays and one sunday over the coming month the closest site is in springfield and the number of spots in that is fewer than the number of teachers in springfield um just to be clear so that first saturday is probably going to be a wash um if the district the the new pre-registration site is launching i believe first thing in the morning for those educator-specific days if the district and talk about a last-minute ask could somehow put staff on computers to try and get vaccination appointments for
188teachers i don't know how you could do this you would need their insurance information because you needed to register but if there's any way that we as as a district can expedite the process from within and even if it isn't for this saturday's first saturday's appointments which i think are a week from now uh but but you know building something like that to try and increase the number of vaccine appointments available to our teachers because i i'll tell you i i have an appointment on saturday to get vaccinated which i only through the great generosity of a dear friend who sat online for hours for a handful of us am i able to do that and i'm stunned and incredibly overwhelmed at the privilege of that um what can we do to enable the rest
189of the teachers in our district to step into the classroom with the confidence that they have been vaccinated against this and and to to follow that up for for people who are outside of the education uh game but a part of the community the fear has rarely been for teachers about ourselves it is about our families and it's about the students and i know i will be less likely to infect one of my students because i have been vaccinated it is like like look at my face i i am overwhelmed at the relief of that and knowing that it will be both doses in time before i'm in a classroom um i want that for every teacher what can we do oh i guess i will say that's true having having been a volunteer at
190a vaccination site i was able to get a vaccination and there is just no relief like that first shot um in terms of what we could do in terms of hitting pause as a special educator i'm like no way right because that interrupts the flow i don't know that a gen ed teacher would feel the same way but for me i like consistency um so i'm not sure that pause is it asking teachers what they need i think is what you need to do so they're they're going to be the people who say you know what can i have a sub for a half an afternoon just to figure out what my day is going to look like when we get back just give me some release time to figure that out and you know
191maybe there could be a rolling sub throughout the week that that relieves people for an hour or two to maybe even meet with a team and figure out what they're going to do now you guys have wednesdays already built we you guys we have wednesdays already built in um so that is definitely uh useful but they still have to plan right so teachers still have to plan for instruction for the time all of it right so this is in addition to they now have to figure out what their new day is going to look like so as a teacher i would appreciate the time um of the release time during the actual work day in order to get that that done um but curtis is right the the the biggest thing you could do i
192you know i was on the mta call where they they they they pulled all of the teachers on the call um and they said would you would you feel comfortable going back to full time in person if you had a vaccination and 99 of the people there said yes so that's all i needed to see so teachers need to be vaccinated um and then after that well it is so much easier to teach in person it's online so i imagine most teachers feel the same way julian did you have a question yeah i maybe it's a point of order um only in that i i appreciate hearing all the perspectives but i want to make sure that we give jake the space to do uh he he's he's got to make the decisions for how
193to work with the teachers and and i want to make sure that we kind of keep that line between governance and management clear um so it was really more of a point of order the other the other thing i actually wanted to name i is that maybe these are two separate things um because the commissioner the commissioner's data very clearly says and the cdc very clearly says and this administration in washington very clearly says that there hasn't been any you know schools that have been open through the pandemic had no difference in um uh outbreaks um without vaccines and so i get it like the fear is real um but i just wanna kind of name that too thank you julia okay shall we move on to the next agenda item all right so next
194up we have finance subcommittee update carrie do we have a finance subcommittee update no i think just what i said before the finance committee is looking at the line items and is available to um you know joe and jake um as we go through the budget process but uh we're here to support the process great thank you okay so next on our agenda is upcoming meetings march 18th is a special session placeholder right jake i yeah i think we we sort of held the 18th and the 25th and and i think at this point we're looking at the 25th and not the 18th okay that's good because i think there are three parents of rising seventh graders that have a meeting 18th at 6pm so you'd be down three members at least three there could
195be more of us i'm not sure um okay so march 25th there's a finance subcommittee meeting at four and then march 25th there's there'll be a special session at six and likely we won't be doing the march 18th so christina i just want to ask um while we're here if joe has a preference for meeting on the 18th or the 25th for the finance subcommittee is he still on the i think that potentially a checkpoint with the finance subcommittee if not the 18th and early the week of the of the 25th if possible for scheduling would be helpful because we will be going through a series of revisions here over the course of the next couple weeks and i think a checkpoint prior to that evening would be would be advisable so the 22nd or
196the 23rd that would be a monday or tuesday [Music] the 22nd i i think if possible would would be one but but we can try to schedule that outside of this and make sure that the public sees it on on our meeting calendar as soon as we have a date and a time okay great um i believe we might have one item other business not anticipated by the chair uh joe did you want to touch on this or jake i am happy to we we simply you know joe was the bearer of the good news but uh but i'm i'm happy to we we would just like to uh thank and we'll do so more formally at the next meeting we'd like to thank the adams community bank for a very generous donation to the
197class of 2021 help make graduation doable and more special so more detail on that next time as you vote to accept the donation but but we did not want to let this evening go by without thanking the folks at adams community bank for that support for our students thank you thank you adams community bank okay do i have a motion to move into executive session with no intent to return to open session per mgl chapter 30a section 21a3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with megia all bargaining units as an open meeting may have detrimental effect on bargaining almost michelle moves do i have a second second curtis seconds any discussion roll call alphabetically please oh and i connery i constantine i elephant by and i it is 9 13 we will be
198moving into executive session thank you um everyone who attended tonight and that is a separate link school committee so you have that okay so thank you