001good evening and welcome to the school committee meeting it is october 14th the time is now 701 pm and all members are present so i'd like to start in our meeting minutes does anyone have any questions comments or additions revisions to the march 4th 2021 regular session minutes [Music] okay i'll entertain a motion to approve the march 4th 2021 regular session minutes as presented by john second advice stacey moved by dawn seconded by stacey oh so um all in favor so you're gonna do that now i okay okay oral communications does the school committee have any individual comments they'd like to make this evening no central administration i just want to mention that we started a strategic planning process and we had three successful focus groups this week parents have come administrators and also our
002municipal leadership so thank you to all the people that arrived this week and next week we'll have additional focus groups and we're excited to begin the five years refugee planning process with the community can't hear me sorry about that i'm thinking with projecting further so the strategic planning process has started and we'll have focus groups next week as well and we'll be continuing our planning process throughout november and the beginning of the new calendar year okay we have next on the item agenda we have the opportunity for public to address the school committee but i'm going to move that until after the presentation so that you have an ability to actually talk about you know or ask questions after that so i'm going to start with jonah falcon who has a presentation he'd like to
003give to the school committee jonah good evening can everyone hear me my name is jonah feldman i'm a junior in holliston high school i am the junior class president at the high school i stand before you today because we are requesting for the 2021-2022 school year for junior privileges to leave during lunch to be brought back into your or into the handbook pardon this was a thing that was around last year due to covid and spacing guidelines and we want to bring it back this year for a few various reasons so in terms of spacing in the building i think there are various students that have approached me that have just mentioned that they don't necessarily want to stay in the building for lunch whether that be because they don't want to remove their mask
004indoors or they find trouble having a good space to eat during the day and the ability to leave during lunch now that many juniors have cars would be very beneficial because it would give them that opportunity to take that mass break leave but also it would free up more space for the freshmen and sophomores that do remain in the building so having juniors leaving for lunch would not only allow those juniors to get a mask break space out from other people in the building but also would allow more freshman sophomores to space out that stay in the building so that they have more opportunity for that i'm happy to field questions that anyone might have does anybody have any questions is this for just lunches or study halls as well so this would just be
005for lunches so this would be for the first second and third lunch blocks during the day so right now it's senior season for lunch correct yes only seniors only seniors and this is just taking an example correct yes and is this something that juniors were able to do last and yeah so um our current juniors as sophomores last year for the first three quarters of the year were actually leaving when everyone else was they were going home they were eating lunch at home and then they were zooming into their last block class in april when we returned full and in person then the current junior the juniors actually stayed with those privileges for the rest of the year so our juniors right now as sophomores for the first three quarters of the year were leaving
006they were going home they essentially had privileges because of the kovitz situation and then our current seniors as juniors last year when we returned in april still had those privileges so we've had essentially the last school year to demonstrate the abilities of our students to leave and come back to be able to either zoom in last block or to return to their last block class and i was going to ask if have there been any issues you know i mean no issues other than occasionally someone's a little tardy coming back which is something that is difficult right right i imagine that's a life skill that we want our students to learn as we graduate out of here i did a little bit of research and i did notice that hanover wayland newton north newton south
007and brookline all have something similar considered an open campus policy and in fact newton north says the open campus policy is a key piece of our educational philosophy we believe that part of our work as educators is to teach students independent skills understanding rights privileges and responsibilities within an open campus is one of the ways we help students to grow and mature so is this something um it was without issue the last few hours for a younger student correct and what don mentioned is that something that you are looking forward to going forward as well or is it just a policy that you want during the family um i think in terms of my end ideally i think to kind of fit in with holliston high school's vision of a graduate and sort of building
008that independence piece i think this would be something to be considered in the future however for the time being we are just requesting a change to the handbook for this year nice work for getting envisioned as a graduate and thank you i commend you to come and advocate for the junior class on this issue thank you so um so my question to the committee is we have a couple of things we could do we could vote to allow this through this year as a covid related issue or we could vote to make a permanent change to the handbook that's what those are usually held for the summer because this bottle usually comes before us and brings a whole host of things that we need to approve during the summer so either any of those are
009up for grabs i think i'd prefer to do it just for now and it had a little more and get some data to make sure look how it goes okay so i'll entertain a motion that we approve junior privileges for the academic year 21 2021 2022 um and we will revisit this issue at the end of the year with some data from his bottling group my dom second advice stacey okay all in favor okay harris thank you great [Applause] [Music] good evening again everyone and tonight we have a presentation from our director of sel and equity on safe and supportive schools but i wanted to introduce the topic a little bit and tell you a little bit about the why behind the work that we're beginning here so this past summer we had our administrative
010retreat and we redefined our definition of educational equity and the holliston public schools defines educational equity as an intentional systemic approach that ensures successful outcomes and experiences focused on academic social and emotional well-being for every individual of our holliston community and we really want that to encompass not only our students but our staff all of our staff in holliston public schools as a community so we also redefined some of our focus areas you'll hear us talk about this in november when we present our district plan our goals and our improvement plan so we look at our overarching bridge our theme for this year is building bridges together at holliston public schools and so the bridge has four focus areas innovative teaching opportunities teaching all students equitable safe and supportive schools and communication and again we'll
011present more about the details of this at our november meeting but as you see the equitable safe and supportive schools is a very integral part of all the work that we're doing here and we'll clarify more about that so this is tied very intricately with the strategic plan that i mentioned earlier this fall we're having our focus groups community surveys we're collecting all kinds of data throughout the district at all levels and then we'll develop we have started to develop our strategic planning committee you probably saw that i sent out the 20 members of our team that will be working in november and december and planning this whole five-year plan together in the fall and winter we'll be developing a new mission and vision with goals and priorities and district-wide improvement that we want to
012focus on as a community not just the public schools but the whole community together embedded in this that important arch of our bridge is the equitable safe and supportive schools along with the other focus areas that we identified through the strategic planning process in the spring we'll be sharing out the plan that we develop as a community together and then at the end of the year we'll be putting forth a proposed five-year budget if there are needs that are prioritized throughout the strategic planning process we'll be able to plan five years out what are the goals that we develop together and how will we get there as a community next fall we'll begin the implementation of that plan and we'll put together a review cycle probably mid-year and end of the year each year annually
013to make sure that we're on target to meet our five-year plan so this this work that we're having darielle darielle vernae our director of seo and equity do for us is very important in the strategic planning process and because this is a new position and we're working on a new plan for how we're going to do this work we invited jarielle here tonight to share the vision that we have and how this works going to roll out we don't have all the pieces together yet because as i mentioned we were fortunate to be able to hire this new position and jario vernet has been a very great addition to our team but right now we're still in the beginning stages of what the work will look like so thank you jerel good go ahead so
014uh thank you guys uh for having me uh first i'd like to just say um i've appreciated the wellness the well wishes from the community i've appreciated the extended hands and the emails welcoming to the community so thank you i'm hoping today to share a little bit of our trajectory for where we want to be headed when we talk about equitable safe disporter schools i want to talk about what does this mean how might this look like and talk about our why like why do we believe this work is essential as we head into the future so one of the pieces that i think is essential anything we do in school should be about relationships it should be about impacting relationships in a positive way so i wanted to share with you guys a little
015bit who am i right because i'm hoping to develop relationships with you our community with our students with our educators so i want to share a little about me so who am i ken soyo i was born in puerto rico but i grew up in massachusetts specifically springfield massachusetts the home of the basketball hall of fame basketball was an integral part of my life i played youth basketball played collegiate basketball and to this day i coach youth basketball i think sports and the arts are ways that we could teach real life skills in real ways and impact the youth in many in many many ways my mom is one of my biggest role models uh she herself was a school adjustment counselor just like i she retired as a school principal in springfield um and
016showed me what it was like to be to be in a family and lead and achieve and look towards the future my wife is from cape verde we are a family of five three kids my wife is also an educator she's an esl teacher we work extremely hard to have our home be tri-cultural so what i mean by that is we want all of our children to be able to identify and walk all the spaces of being american being caverdian and being puerto rican and to be to make sense of that for them i love doing this stuff i love doing professional development i love just having conversations with educators you'd be amazed at just the creativity that happens when we could just sit down and have conversations to problem solve and then of course
017why do we do this work we do this work for smiling faces we do this work for our children there is no perfect playbook but i think that seeing kids and seeing kids being inspired is what drives all of us and drove all of us into education so that's a little bit about me so let me share a little bit about what i've gone to know about holliston so holliston is actually in many ways hollison is diverse all of our communities in some ways are diverse but what does that mean in holliston so in holliston nineteen point four percent of our whole student body uh deci considers to be diverse right that's twenty percent of all of our students amongst our student body 11 of first language not english almost 17 students with disabilities high
018needs 25.3 economic disadvantage 8.4 why do i say this i say this because diversity is beautiful and we as a community and we as schools we have a more obligation to make sure that we uplift every child that walks through our doors and just acknowledging the fact that in every community's diversity um speaks to the fact of why we mean to make sure that this work is at the front of what we do every day so the next pieces are why right like why do we want to do this work so i want to share with you a little about that this work is not new this is not a new concept i want to share with you some data because i think that what speaks bigger than anything is actually looking at some data
019and saying is there a need and then i want to share some voices from the field and then provide some some theoretical context as to why we believe that this work is the right work to do so i'm not sure if you guys have taken a look at these documents but we have in most districts a bullying prevention intervention plan we also have a district-wide improvement goals and three-year roadmap that both were established in 2019 and if you take a look at those documents which are available to the community those documents call for this kind of work it calls for us to build schools that are safe and supportive for our students but i'm gonna get into that a little bit deeper specifically if we think about the purpose statement that was in our three-year
020roadmap plan you'll see words such as collaborative problem solvers being self-aware being curious creative resilient increase to be able to contribute to increasingly complex and interconnected ever-changing worlds that statement screams social emotional learning that statement screens resiliency it screams that in order for students to be curious to to show the knowledge that they have to to be um spontaneous thinkers to be able to advocate we need to create spaces where that is fermented every day in our classrooms that speaks to the need for safe and supportive schools this work when we talk about safe and supportive schools and i'm going to provide more context it's about all students but it's also about all staff members and we also wanted to include our community as well our parents our grandparents our community stakeholders creating a safe
021and supportive school should be part of a safe and supportive community right schools do not sit independently of our community we are part of that community but here's the thing this work does not happen by accident right how many times and this is just even outside of education we might see a plan that sits on a shelf this is about taking real plans and real actions and putting them into real life which means it takes coordination it takes focus it takes collaboration across sectors it takes conversations from school to school it takes engaging with our community to talk about why do we believe this is important and in many ways that's why i'm here i'm here to think about how do i help and work collaboratively with our amazing with our amazing leaders who we
022have in our buildings with our educators with our students to think about how do we make this work actually come to life every day and the last thing is i'll say about this is that this is not about perfection but what this is about is about every day thinking about how to continually grow our district and our system to create another better day for another student for another community so i talked about um data right data speaks louder than words so in 2018 and this has happened for many years every two years the metro west community does a health adolescent survey that happens at our middle schools and high school so i'm going to share some data that when i had a chance and i've been here for about three months when i had a
023chance to look at it it it was striking to me and i believe it'll do the same for you so school connectedness we know that students who feel connected to their schools do better and do well we also know that when students do not feel connected to the schools they're more at risk for negative life interactions the data from this survey this is from 2018 pre-pandemic says that when we think about our middle school youth and our high school youth students who are not connected to school are more likely to experience some of these risk factors this is mental health and substance abuse i have children i'm an educator when i see this data this to me screens we need to always be working at this work the other part because this is done in
024the metro west community and is done across communities one of the things that they found is that adult support on school connectedness is lower for some communities for some students who answer these questions specifically in the metro west for non-white youth lgbtq youth youth with disabilities youth of lower economic status so that tells me that in the metrowest region there are some student groups who answer these questions who are saying that they are less connected to adults into their school which leads them to be possibly more at risk for some of these outcomes and if we make that if we if we understand that that means that students in our house and public schools could be could be experiencing this as well the other piece that jumped out to me is you know stress stress
025can be a healthy thing i think we all experience the stress but toxic stress also impacts our health outcomes and we know that as adults when this was asked and this is over 1200 students who answered this survey 18 of our middle school youth and 35 of our middle school youth said that they were experiencing uh very stressful experiences in the last 30 days it's a lot of students specifically we see a huge jump from 10 to 26 percent from in middle school to 20 to 48 percent respectively in our high school and i know we can attribute that to some of the rising demands of our education and academics but we also know that our our social situations our technology that our kids are experiencing every day we know that's impacting the lives of
026our students how is it impacting the lives of our students well that was another question that they asked specifically many youth feel so stressed and anxious and worried that it impacts their daily functioning we see we see the huge jump from middle school to high school of how much it's impacting them but it's impacting their energy level in the classroom having trouble sleeping trouble concentrating in school poor appetite nutritional issues if we as a district which we are high performing but we want to continue to make sure that our kids are achieving to the levels that we can this to me is data that we need to pay attention to which is why we as a school district and as schools need to make sure that our schools our school our classrooms our environments are
027that safe and supportive where students who are struggling experiencing this have a space to communicate and build some skills so i know that was dramatic but the data calls for that kind of conversation but i also wanted to say voice i wanted to share some voices from the fields i think a safe and supportive school is one where everybody's voices whether it's staff parents and especially students um are not only heard and respected but also really matter and they're valued and they add to the richness of the community okay so to answer the question what does it or would it feel like in attending a school that is safe and supportive where you experience a feeling of being welcomed valued included and in a sense of belonging um i'd say that is definitely grams rams
028includes everybody we have multiple different clubs such as gsa different things like that um there's a lot of group activity and social and you have a sense of belonging it just feels you feel like you belong there and you feel like you would want to come to school more hi i am going to voice the opinion of one of our grade 8 students who could not be recorded but did want to share openly her name is malia harris she is a grade 8 student and when asked the question what does it or would it feel like in attending a school that is safe and supportive were you experienced feeling welcomed valued included in a sense of belonging she said attending a school that is safe and supportive would feel in no better word to describe
029amazing school is stressful but if you only have to worry about the next test instead of worrying about being included or safe that is so important rams is an inclusive school and i am truly grateful for that so i hope others feel like they have a place in this school as much as i do hi safe and supportive house and public schools are places for me where all children from all backgrounds and identities different races ethnicities family structure sexual orientation gender identity abilities disabilities don't just get by but they thrive and that our schools play an important role in developing students ability to support each other become engaged active citizens to address the issues of our times that's what schools need to do my name is robert principe three of my six grandchildren are in
030the holliston public schools and more importantly i'm a citizen who knows this work is so important and needs to be done for the future of our town city state country thank you i'm so um for those you know other educators who i asked for videos i apologize um i'm a talker right i love just doing this so i i had to cut some of it down so i had to pick some voices but as the year goes on i'm going to be asking for more voices because this work is not about my voice it's not about a voice but it's about augmenting the voice of our children of our adolescents of our youth and our schools the voice of our educators the voice of our leaders so i wanted to uh share i wasn't going
031to take too much time but i just wanted to share that in this powerpoint this will be available online and something that we're going to make sure we do this year is have an ongoing like terminology definitions available because we acknowledge that even outside of our school walls there's a lot of conversations happening about about what education should look like and be like so it's important to root what we're talking about in in factual definition of how do we define this work here in holliston so although i'm not going to go into necessarily the definitions of it i want to let you know that we are going to start making sure that those definitions are available for our community so when we refer to them there's a context of what do we mean so what
032is a safe and supportive school in many ways those voices that i share said it actually probably better than i could right for that student who said it would be amazing absolutely i want my child to go to that school too but really what is it so here's the thing it's not a quick fix it is not a curriculum it's not something that we could buy and do and be done in a year this is a constant process it's a constant process of building schools building classroom building experiences where students walk into our doors and they feel safe and supported period that's what this works about it's a whole school approach is making sure that our educators have voice at the table and not that table but the room the space the conversation making sure
033that our leaders feel supported and aligned making sure that we have a vision that speaks to pre-k to 12 plus making sure that we're working continually to make sure that that aligns for every student this work is about community connectedness in relationships if we think about the survey data that i shared you that needs to be of the utmost work that we do we want to make sure that our students feel connected period we know that that has healthy outcomes and benefits for all students and when you look at research that shows students who are high achieving students they often report having strong relationships in their schools that's what this works about we this work should always be constantly changing and reflecting right we want schools that can adapt to the changing needs of our
034students did we ever think that we'd be listening to a pitch about juniors you know because of covet having to to take lunch off campus or did we ever think that we would be in a pandemic and experiencing and having a school committee with mass we need schools and we need a community that's really too ready to adapt to whatever the needs of our children are this work is about creating in in creating learning environments that spark joy and how do we spark joy we spark joy by making sure the students are able to see themselves in our classrooms that we make sure that students are able to voice their voice discover their voice for learning to be curious about learning and to feel safe at being themselves the same for our educators and the
035same for our community the last piece of a safe and supportive school is making sure that we're looking at data that drives the work this work cannot be about gut right it can't be about things just feel great we need to know that we're moving in a direction that every day we're getting better that's one of the things i love about education i love about schools right i don't think i've ever been in a school that says we're good we're done we can walk out the door our kids have learned everything we schools are places that every day some things continually think about can we get better at that is there a better way to teach that is there a better way to introduce that that's what this work needs to be about but we
036also need to make sure that we're looking at data that tells us are we getting better at building classrooms and schools that are safe and supportive for our kids you know one of the things that i love to do is walk through our buildings and have had the opportunity to uh last week i took a walk through buildings and i just took a walk art pictures i mean i took a snapshot of pictures why did i do that because this is the signage that our kids are seeing every day and at times we might feel like it's just a picture but these pictures say a thousand words how do you how do you want to feel today that tells students that they have power in their voice that they can express how they feel that
037it's okay this one captivated me over a bubbler to fill up your water fountain around uh what do you what to tell myself when i'm feeling discouraged i sat there and i was like i need to tell myself this a couple times too right but creating a space where it's okay to tell kids you can be discouraged and let me help you figure out what that what to do with that because that is definitely a life skill this to me was such an amazing sign this was outside of a classroom i didn't get a chance to walk in and ask the teacher who this was but this said you are amazing love saved wonderful right telling kids and giving them affirmations but here's the best part you're the reason i'm here letting kids know that
038i'm here for you right this is social emotional learning at its best providing messages and inspiration for our children to let them know that we're here for you artwork that just says hey there's friendship here at our school for you division of a graduate prominent through the high school right every one of those six characters character traits within the vision of graduate call for us to create environments where our kids are inspired every day where they feel safe to be innovative thinkers to be to consider themselves a global civil citizen to live a balanced life i mean i don't know about many in here but even as adults we struggle to live a balanced life i know i do right so helping our students think about what that looks for them when they step out
039of our high school as a graduate that's such an amazing learned experience for our kids and um miller both practice shine and cares in which they're looking to always positively reinforce our students to let them know we see you and we appreciate the effort you're putting in every day this was just one that i love and i'm sure if you've worked around education circles you've seen growth mindset but just having a visual where maybe you're walking out of the launch room and you're saying i want to give up but the vigil says i can try a different strategy sometimes just providing that language to a child to an adolescent to even a staff member opens up a whole new world of possibilities of what you can do with that information so these are the signs
040but how do we go from science to practice right that's the work so specifically how might that happen here in holliston number one our goal is to create a safe and supportive school district that is combined of safe and supportive schools across the board that's how we become that kind of district so how does this happen number one is being focused on outcomes but it's aligning our systems with our practices and then making sure that we have the right data to understand is the whole system working i actually like to look at it almost like if you see this picture on the right you may not be able to see it but a system of gears one slight tweak to the right of data can help us look at something completely different to our systems
041and practices enhancing our practices can shift our data everything within this circle impacts another and in the middle that is the safest support of school the work that i'm hoping to engage with this year and i've already started doing that with our schools is think about how do we make sure that this is coming live and well at every school starting from where they're at utilizing the structures that they have in place to think about how we continue to get better to make sure that this is the kinds of conversations we're having a global one a whole school conversation so how does that happen number one it's every school developing either a safe and supportive team or enhancing a team that they might already have to have these kinds of conversations we want to be
042looking at climate and culture data we want to have conversations around what are the social emotional learning skills we want to develop to get us to that vision of a graduate what's the educator and staff professional development that we want to have every year right this isn't me sitting here essential often saying we're doing this repeating no this is us at every school having conversations and then aligning our conversations to say what kind of profession do we need to get us to a place where we're more safe and supportive today than we were yesterday it's developing tier one approaches so when i say tier one that's another educational term that means all kids so developing developing approaches for every single kid who walks through glad for but it also means having conversations about some of
043our higher tiered students who might need additional supports and additional interventions both those conversations have to happen simultaneously but they both have to happen to creative safety for the school environment it's almost like i've seen the analogy of a dentist right we all might go to the dentist for a cleaning but we all don't need a feeling and then we also all don't need a root canal right there's different supports for different needs and as a school we need to develop that kind of system where we can support as needed but make sure we're also offering supports across the board for office and then why is this important right this work is important because as a system and as a district everything that happens at placentino directly affects the trajectory at miller and everything that
044miller wants to do they need to have direct knowledge and understand what's happening at pasadena and the same when our kids are leaving miller and going to the rams we want to make sure that ram knows fully how to support our students as they come up and we want miller to know okay rams is working on this let's make sure our kids are ready for that as well and the same trajectory for the high school this is about creating not not identical systems but system to speak to developmentally appropriate but they are aligned so we see that vision come to life at our schools so what work will i directly be leading and supporting number one as a leader i don't see my leader as i'm going to tell people what to do my leadership
045style is i collaborate i collaborate with all of our schools i collaborate across the community to say tell me where you're at and let's have a conversation about where we might want to go together so number one it's working with each of our schools to think about what a safe and supportive team looks like and then think about how do we establish that it's about supporting the conversations around pbis becoming trauma sensitive and using trauma-sensitive practices in our classrooms stress reduction practices if you recall the data i shared we definitely need to think about how to reduce stress for our students and how do they learn that and internalize that for themselves culture proficiency making sure that our educators and our schools understand how do i acknowledge the beautiful diversity that every kid walks through
046our door and how do i use it in my classroom to enhance my instruction in education and then just creating inclusive learning environments that are beneficial for our kids and for our educators it's thinking about how to sustain current seo practices you know our schools have been doing a lot of hard work in in many ways i've been amazed by the work that's happening here my work is not to come to a school and say hey we should do blank we should do b let's just say tell me about that approach tell me about open circle at our elementary schools let's talk about second step at our middle schools let's talk about advisory i'd love to learn about what advisory looks at the high school and then through those conversations having conversations about how do
047we continually enhance those you know one of the things that that is that is key is making sure that we're utilizing data to drive the work that 2018 metro west survey we do that every two years we're going to have another round of metro west survey happening this year and it's going to be essential that between myself our schools and our community we talk about how do we make sure we have when we get that data we utilize it to enhance what we're doing right that work should be driving where we go i plan to start at utilizing the structures we already have in place if you recall i shared with you the bullying intervention plan and the three year roadmap already had descriptions of what satan's border schools are it talks about professional development
048it talks about supporting marginalized communities if identified by data it talks about making sure that we have classrooms that are inclusive just for everything from bullying to harassment it speaks about making sure that we're having conversations school live to drive that work right so that's where i start i start where we're at i start with where where schools are saying they need support with and then the biggest piece is just making sure that wherever we go we don't create silos this work is about making sure that all of our schools and educators feel we are a system we are doing this work pre-k to 12 plus i would never want a school to feel like we're just doing our own thing so part of the work that i want to do is make sure that
049i can help that happen or help make it or help happen in a more efficient way so with that we've arrived at the end of the journey for today but i just really just want to say thank you i want to say thank you to our educators who open their doors to me just have conversations i've had clubs invite me to just come and listen i've had student clubs invite me and say hey you just want to sit in the back and listen to what we're talking about i've had community members reach out and say hey do you just want to grab a cup of coffee mast or outside and just share with you our experiences so i just this i will need that feedback and i will need that collaboration for us to get
050to the district where we want to become and that doesn't mean that we're in a negative place but what it does mean is we always want to be getting better right and that's the passion that i bring to the work and i'm hoping that as a community you guys support that work as well thank you [Applause] you know i don't want to be labor things but you know when you look at that metro west data from 2018 i've raised four adult children myself and times were not always easy one of my sons is gay and he wasn't very well accepted in our environment but his family accepted him he out of my four children i have to say has the most confidence and seems the most well-rounded and i think it's because of the environment
051we provided at home the school wasn't a safe environment at the time he didn't get the support at school so you know we have to do better for our kids i look at that data and just thinking about the students that are in front of us now this data is from 2018 pre pandemic we know what happened after this right we all know what we lived through things shut down kids were isolated we had a lot of students remote last year that is why i really strove to get this position in place year one the focus is really going to be on that social emotional learning the equity work is incredibly important as well but we need to kind of pick up where our students are and what their entry levels are and developing those
052tier one two and three interventions so i have asked jarielle to really focus a lot on that work we are doing lots of work around equity we're looking at curriculum there are so many areas we're focusing on but this data is telling we're not unique as holliston this is data we see in this town in the commonwealth in the country we hear what's going on around us right we can't ignore it so this work is important for all of us to jump into dive into take it seriously but that data as an administrator with 27 years 15 years as a teacher i worry about kids and i'm so thankful that we found someone of jaril's caliber he has the background i said when i built this position and we put the job description out are
053we going to be lucky enough to find someone that has very strong skills in developing social emotional learning that social worker background we have our adjustment council background here but not only that you know again i said we're not going to find the perfect person it's a little early to tell y'all come to us with such cultural proficiency as well so i think we picked a great person for the position i'm really happy to have him here and we just want to make sure that he stays with us a long time to do this very difficult work together so with that we're very happy to answer any questions that you might have for us tonight so we'll start with questions um you guys don't mind i'd like to defer to the public have answered their
054questions first and then we'll take the school for these questions do you have a list of people yes i have a list of people here if you signed up to do public comment that'll come after this so just say a public comment when i call your name as opposed to a question about a jrf presentation the first on my list is bonnie steinbetter oh steinroeder i didn't know that it meant we were going to comment but since i have the opportunity tonight hi i'm bonnie um i'm interested to know since we talked about you know you were talking about the uh the transition back from covid like could you say a little bit about how that's going for the students and um because i worry about that too i am you know i'm an older
055adult and i've had a lot of trouble transitioning back into my work you know my work in my life and so um you know do we have special supports in place right now for students to transition back and then just how do you think that's going overall yeah each school handles the transition supports differently but one of the things we are starting to put together right now is trying to look at academic data for some of the skill sets that children have you know some of the setbacks they've had there as well as what children do we think might be really struggling more than in the past and as they re-entered our schools this year and that's why we did put together um we got some funding from the town using some of the opera
056funds we got a hundred thousand dollars worth of grant money and we're starting to develop some interventions that way so we don't have all of those set up but they're in the process of we're trying to have at least five different groups at each building and ongoing throughout the day at the upper levels we'll do that more during the school day some of it might be offered before and after school at the younger levels so we're still in the process of developing that but in addition to that there's work going on at all schools and i i would not be the one to speak to that just because each building is handling it differently but i don't know if jerry you had anything else to add yeah i mean i i i think that what
057i would add is that number one one of the things that i've been so impressed with is our leaders have amazing collaborations with their counselors and one of the things that they did when we entered the school years they started from the beginning of the school year how we're going to make sure that our relationships are the first thing that we're working on because what we know about relationships and what we know about the trauma-sensitive methodology i didn't get into today but what that means is that one of the biggest buffers to trauma is positive relationships so if there was any strategy that we could do when kids were walking through our doors it was to work with our all of our educators our teachers and our counselors think about what does a positive relationship
058look like in a year like no other we've never come back from a pandemic so we had to create what relationships look like this year so what i can say and you know it would be a conversation for each school to kind of answer how they're using their teams but i can say that that was a focus of the work is acknowledging of what's happened in the past to say how do we enhance our relationships right now thank you you're welcome um next on the list is sean mullen public health okay uh brittany miller public comment okay [Music] okay [Music] jeff garadello how you guys doing this evening jeff cordell um i just have a quick question i read the job description i know this may be is more for year two [Music] sorry can
059you hear me yeah okay just sorry i'll speak up a little bit i know it's hard no problem um so i've read the job description i know we're kind of talking about year one here in your presentation but i guess i'm a little bit more concerned with the equity part in year two there's a lot of verbage of anti-racism and anti-bias that we're going to look at the the current curriculum with the staff my question is how's that trickle down to the students what does that look like for the students because we started off talking about building bridges here right in our community in our classrooms my concern with we use words of anti-racism and anti-biases i hope we're not going to put that on our children right because kids are kids k through 12
060right they're not perfect neither are we but i don't think we'll be building bridges if we segregate the way some kids think about whether it's kind of evaluations or tests or anything like that so you could briefly just go through how the curriculum exercises with the staff trickles down to the kids i greatly appreciate that thank you so much one of the things when you um with the job in particular a lot of the work that we've defined and we're going to do is really building capacity of our staff as well and administrators so the terminology we use our with our staff is very different than what we'll use with our students and it's age-appropriate right it starts from a very different place in pre-k all the way through 12th grade but that being said
061we all present with biases i know i've done a lot of work myself and my education but it's not that we're bad because we have biases it's just about getting to know what they are what they mean how they shape us and part of the work that we do is acknowledging that we have them and it doesn't make us bad or good it's just they are present within us so that is a lot of the work we start is what do those conversations look like for the adults we work with and i'll let gerald talk about more about that capacity building but a lot of that work starts with the staff and the work around equity and your device and anti-racism will be with professional development staff and then age-appropriate will introduce topics within the
062curriculum but it's about embracing the diverse that we have in the district and making sure that all students needs a mess so it trickles down in many different ways and it's not very simple and easy to express it but that there's a lot of work we have to do to even get to that point to have those conversations yeah and then um not that i'm pitching here to my teammates but one of the things that one of the things i'd like to share is that part of the role around looking at curriculum and reviewing curriculum is something that um our superintendent joni menard uh processes that she builds so why don't i pass it over to maybe just the curriculum review thing sure so we have a process that we go through i'm lucky enough
063to work with some very talented people within the district at all four schools that have been identified from their principles and superintendent as the curriculum leaders for those schools so there's been amazing work done for years and this this console has existed for years and i'm not quite sure how often how long but we get together we've only got together once and we get together on a monthly basis and that committee together looks at the frameworks uses massachusetts has put out a curriculum review process that they call curie and the massachusetts [Music] dussey has vetted those curriculum resources as being sound and aligned to the massachusetts curriculum standards so then we would start there and then have rich conversations going back and forth at all levels would this meet the needs for holliston students yes
064or no jerielle will be involved in these conversations as well as dan macleod as well as kelly camp dan is our tech director kelly's our special ed director and all the principals as well that we come to a consensus it's a collaborative process again how jeriel said it's not him making the decisions it's not me making decisions it's putting our collective heads together of our educational experiences and knowing our kids and deciding what's best going to work for our kids within the con within the um [Music] combines it's not the word i'm looking for but i'm sorry i can't think of a better word right now within the structure of the massachusetts state frameworks you know are there are parents are parents allowed in that process at all is there any um room for the
065parents but i'm more than happy to meet with parents and get feedback i'm more than happy awesome thank you email me hello thank you thank you thank you um the next name is chinmaya or all good i'll be coming okay uh dawn dernie hammond probably cameron dawson okay robert prince to pay paul tom evans public comment that drummy call the comment charlie coughlin coffman uh charlie coughlin um well first off i want to say thanks to the school committee for i was i was a board member with the town and recognized you know you guys aren't getting paid for this it's uh you know not an easy job so appreciate what you guys do um so you know i my kids we got 10 and 12 year olds we feel like we raise them the
066right way we're you know they're pretty stable kids etc but um really my thing goes to for us as parents aware of what you're going to be inserting into the programs you talked about if you can share with um you know individuals but share with the community and what what will happen after year one what's the curriculum going to look like what sort of changes are going to be in place and i guess my question is you know how would that be communicated out how do we as parents understand what my 10 year old what my 12 year old what's additional is being being put into the programs so we are working together as this curriculum console and we're starting to hopefully by the end of the year we will have something that's public for
067you to view on the website and that will keep evolving dr kuska is developing a district newsletter so i will be putting updates in a district newsletter of the curriculum [Music] gains we have made or work that we have been doing so we're kind of looking at a lot of different vehicles and then also um on the website itself i would be putting it under the curriculum tabs itself which i have not started to do yet i just want to say a little bit more when you think of curriculum people always think of the materials and the resources right the curriculum is the state standards we are obligated to teach the states yeah i'm not using the terminology right now i'm just saying i just want people so there really is no boxed curriculum that
068you purchase or resources that are purchased specifically like buy this program and you can teach it to buy it right you know it's not it's not as simple as that it's really looking at the resources that we have right now and how can we make them more reflective of the students that are in front of us and part of the work that i think is really critical i look at our staff our staff is far less diverse than our student body right 19 of our students are students of color our staff is a much smaller number so part of the work i need to do better is how do i as a superintendent attract and retain and support educators of color professionals of color and we've already started to hire more people we're really encouraging
069that students deserve to have role models in front of themselves that they can look at and realize that they can become a teacher they can they can do these great things so it's not as much as looking at the simple curriculum it's about how do we bring in things that reflect who we have in front of us right now and sometimes that's as simple as let's look at the books that we're having in our libraries are there books that can reflect uh students that come from puerto rico that students that come from brazil it's all of those things so there's really i think people i think we're going to just take and put something on top of and that's not the plan at all we don't throw out what we're already doing well it's just
070how can we enhance it in many different ways so you're not going to find us saying this is the new curriculum but but as resources come up and we want to share those resources yes that's that's what you'll hear these are some great things that we're sharing out to families that we're doing with our students to help this work uh yeah i think it really goes to visibility for us as parents i mean we're i'm on top of it my wife and i are on top of our girls but visibility to everything else that's going on the other question is and i'll make a quick guys around data like how do you how do you determine what's if this is working right it isn't working like what's you talk a lot about data yeah so
071so some of the data points are necessarily you know for instance if i look at some of these data points that may not directly talk to how efficient our school is right but these data points our data points for us have conversations about even as parents and as educators to say what do we do about this that's some data points another data point is we need to make sure that we're asking our students how are they feeling right because we're having conversations around everything from equity to safe exported schools but we need to make sure that we conceptualize from our students how does it feel like to you when you come into our schools that doesn't mean interviewing kids but what it means is being able to develop systems we do have an opportunity to
072gather data from our students where they can either answer surveys et cetera in a meaningful way across the district to know do our students feel safe and supportive when they walk through our doors right because if we if we don't if we're not able to capture that data how will we know right one of the first things that i always do when i'm working with our schools to say so how do we know right i asked that question because before we before we jump in any trajectory we want to first think about how do we know we got there how do we know we got to whatever the goal was and if the goal is to create safe exported schools we need to make sure they're capturing data and who is that data from we
073want to hear from our students right so we want to develop feedback mechanisms where we get to hear from our students about how they experience school and if in that data it tells us there's gaps right for whatever reason for example let's say at the high school female students feel differently so let's have conversations about what we can do about that right whatever the data says that's what we address it's not in us it's not coming from assumptions or from what we believe is coming from those data markers right other markers could be behavior right if there's behavior spikes in students because of let's say covet what do we do about that right to me data is not a gotcha data is a what do we do about that right and as schools that's our
074philosophy it never should be using data for a negative to to school the classroom or a teacher or student it should be about something's not working here what can we do about that so that's what i mean by data the other thing is i don't want to jump in and say exactly these are the four data points right because one of the philosophies i have is i want to make sure that i work with our schools to say what are the data points that are most meaningful for you as a school to make a decision to think about how do i improve my classroom every day you know what i mean so i think that as we go into the future i'm sure there'll be more opportunities where i'll get to share with the with
075the school committee or with the school around what are those data points looking like and what are we doing about this all right thank you yeah thank you next name on the list is susan rose followed by deborah ann digiorno [Music] um tina and travis heine james robinson so thank you for the presentation just two quick questions so when you talk about the stress level that our students are going through i think when you look at this generation compared to when i went to school i think it pre pandemic was stressful for lots of reasons and even like my friend's parents say like raising a child is so much harder now so like when you look at our kids are more stressed i think that just overall like society wise we're more stressed but when
076you take all that into effect like i know you haven't been here that long but like are we red yellow green from uh when you walk in here and you look at our our student body and you're concerned about like one thing is stress like do you walk in saying like we've got a small problem a medium sized problem or a major problem and and the first thing is like what's that measurement and then and then how do you handicap it considering we're in a pandemic so what's your assessment so far so um hey i don't have an answer to that direct question right because i haven't done that kind of assessment but here's here's what i'll say number one i'll second that our kids have a lot of stressors on them even before a
077pandemic i remember having a conversation with someone uh this summer or i not this summer but before the pandemic we moved into a new neighborhood and i told my son once you go outside and just go play like get off the technology and he said to me play with who there's no one outside everybody's inside behind technology and you know what that tells me that tells me that our kids are practicing less social skills they're practicing less problem solving at a basketball court or at a playground they're figuring out how to do that behind technology which tells us a lot about even the coping skills that they're going to be developing because of our transition to this age and then you add the pandemic to it where we put it across across the united states
078we have to jump right into technology so our second your comment around i'm really concerned about the stress levels now when it comes to um how stressed our kids number one we will have some data later this year because the metro west survey is happening again this year yeah um so we will have some more meaningful data but here's the thing if i look at that high school data when it says report stress are higher higher among females and males that to me is concerning 48 percent of 1200 students i don't know how many of those were high school but 48 of those female students that year we're indicating high stress right um and when i think of when i look at this trend line the trend line is going up so what i see
079myself is not as like an educator we need to solve this but as a community what do we do to make sure that we're impacting our students to be able to navigate a world that's becoming more stressful around them for whatever reason we could say technology we could you know a lot of things right so that's what i would say i also would say that as time goes on um we as a district want to want to have conversations for like how do we know that we're impacting this if we decide that this is a major something we want to work towards we also need to decide how might we measure progress in that area right and what might be some of those skills we develop right how do we help students de-stress and that's
080not just about his life right test taking my wife as an educator took some of the um the educator exams two three times and she knew the knowledge but she struggled to put it on paper behind a test right so these are skills that are bigger than just for this these are skills that i think our students would benefit when we focus on this work okay um it might have been asked in a different way but so this is kind of uh i guess you know this is an important position from the town and you're like you said you're just starting out like i asked you a question you said you don't you don't have the answer yet and that's that's you know not not an issue but how are you going to communicate to
081the town because i think a lot of us are going through the learning curve in your space like if we were talking about hiring a phys ed teacher right like we've all taken phys ed we we know how that works but like at least speaking for myself uh i'm still trying to learn and appreciate the value of why you're here and part of what would help with that is to see like you producing deliverables like what so how are you going to communicate to us like let's just say with year one to say like what you're doing what you're seeing so that you haven't been able to answer my question today but i'd expect by the end of the school year you could tell us like hey we're whatever red yellow green when you compare
082us to other towns we're like doing well we're ahead of the curve or we're in the middle of the road like are you gonna are you are you are you gonna how are you gonna communicate to us what you're seeing and what you're doing yeah so unfortunately i won't be able to fully answer that question for you today okay number one is i do believe in data transparency so i do believe that any data we collect we need to think about how we share with the community because that in many ways justifies the work that we need to be doing the other piece is a lot of the work that i'll be doing is going to be in direct concert with our schools so part of also the sharing and communicating is also going to
083come in partnering with our with all of our schools to think about what are some of those i don't say just data points what's the work looking like at our elementaries at our middles and our high schools to make sure we're building a stronger safe and supportive school right so will i be able to contextualize some of the things that i'm helping lead sure but also my gains are schools gains so i would never separate and say this is what i produced or this is what i'm doing it would always be in concert with our schools to say here's what we've done together okay and the last question is maybe more for the superintendent so is this gentleman's job and his objectives baked into like how do we know the teachers of being successful like
084are you integrating his program and his measurements of success into um how you measure your staff well he'll be working directly with the staff yes so that's respect that's a given but i'm saying how are you is he going to be integra is his goal is going to be integrated into the school's goals you know like the teachers goals like how do we know that the middle school is doing a good job how are we know each teacher is doing a good job is it part of their goals like is this program going to be part of their goals well i want to say it isn't a program it's it's really it's i can't call it a program it's really just how are we looking at the work that we're doing right now and how
085can we enhance it and make it better to provide a safer environment right okay with that i will say we have already put together our safe and supportive goals for our focus area within our district improvement plan for this year and that's directly tied you'll hear our principals talk about this and they also have goals within their schools for safe and supportive schools and then i will be giving my goals very shortly to the sprint the school committee which is going to have an explicit goal tied to this work as well as my principles are all going to be having goals focused on this work and yes that will trickle down to the staff as well okay they may not all staff may pick that same goal but there is an expectation as much as
086possible as we can do this work together and it fits the work that you're doing as an educator tie it into this so many of our staff will have almost the exact same goal worded differently that i do and the principals do in the work they're doing as well but some may not because it may not reflect the work that they're focusing on so his role is to help help those individuals that have that goal reach that goal is that what the purpose of the hire was yes and we want them to we want them to feel safe to voice i need more help with this and directly reach out to him and or their principals if they need more supports with it because it's we're in this together you know it really is it's
087a collaborative process we just want to make this a better place for all students instead thank you for answering all my questions nice to meet you nice to meet you too thank you so is there anybody else on this subject who wanted to ask a question that didn't sign up okay okay so we're going to now move on to um actually i should ask you guys we have questions first and then we'll move on to public health okay stacy go ahead so darielle yes i really your energy was what i needed tonight so i will say first of all thank you so can we just beat this elephant out of the room there's an elephant in this room and what i perceive is going on in our community and i don't just mean hollister and
088i see it all over the place is that there are two very extreme narratives that are going on out there in the world and nobody came to talk to the school committee or you or susan and so i want that i think that's why for me tonight i did not want to come right i did not want to have to sit with this elephant in the room this has been going on for months i am so glad that you are here and i hope that people understand that the schools are not one side of this very um you know separate narratives like to the extreme i'm not an extreme person i am right down the middle sometimes i'm flatlined could you maybe help the community understand because really some people what they really want to
089ask but they're too afraid to is are you going to shove this thing called crt down my kid's kids grow are you going not you personally this isn't this is are you district so can we just like get this out onto the table and get it out of here and move on with this year because we have great work to do and i think we have hired the right people and if the community doesn't feel comfortable with that then they can do you know they can show us that through election cycle but can we maybe just address that elephant you i think you know very well but i'm hearing as are you yeah so let me say this um i'm not here to speak to the conversations that are happening outside the building but here's
090what i will say safe and supportive schools is not about a curriculum it's about a philosophy that is not something we will buy it's not something that we will put on top of is not something we will force on anyone it is a philosophy in a belief that our schools we have a more obligation to support every kid who walks through our door period with all of their beautiful diversity they walk through our door that's our that's our more obligation we are not teaching and we do not utilize crt critical race theory there are many abbreviations in school systems right everything from iep 504 etc unfortunately crt sounds like a lot of other things too i've even said the word cultural proficiency that is not crt cultural proficiency is us utilizing and understanding the beautiful
091gifts that all our kids bring with them and making sure we enhance those in our classroom spaces that could have been for example a teacher for me growing up knowing what it was like knowing that i was puerto rican and thinking about when i do a math lesson how do i bring up some concepts of puerto rico so that any other student from puerto rico understands that they're visible in my classroom that's not forcing anything that's utilizing the beautiful gifts that we all have right that's what this works about and i can't one of the things that i've said one of the things i've always tried to approach this work is that unfortunately i believe that with truth and with with honesty and compassion that we can get to a different to a different place
092that we can often have great conversations my role isn't to change the mind of our community my role is to say this is what we are doing and this is why i believe we're doing it and this is the data that i believe will tell us here's our why i was hoping to share with you community the why the data the voices the work that's the why that's what this works about and for all the time that i've been in education i don't plan to have conversations about the political conversations happening around us but here's what i do plan to do is if a kid walks through my door i want to be working with my school to think about how we support every child how do we support every educator a strong powerful educator
093impacts a strong powerful classroom that's what the work's about thank you does anybody else have a question i just wanted to get if each of you had something to ask about so um now i'm going to bring it up to public comment we have 11 people that have asked to speak so um just to understand that public comment is an opportunity for you to express your views it is not a time for everybody to engage in a debate so you're just coming up and speaking whatever your mind whatever you'd like to say and we're going to give each person two minutes to speak and don is going to be my timekeeper and we have 11 people so 11 times 20 whatever so that's how much time we're going to take today no additional names at
094this token so can you be the first name absolutely sean mullen and as you come up for your two minutes please let me know if you want a 30-second reminder before your time is up i don't think i'm going to need an extra 30 seconds hi i'm sean mullen i was part of the citizen committee that helped to interview the candidates for this position um and i'm super thrilled we wound up hiring gary l i wasn't quite sure we were going to be able to get you very competitive i'm also the father of three children in the halton school district two of which are high needs the oldest is a hollison high school student who has anxiety tourette syndrome severe adhd we move to holliston for its expertise in social emotional learning so i am
095thrilled to see that we are continuing to invest in that and your awareness that children growing up in an age of social media are basically struggling with mental health issues in public 100 of the time is reassuring to me that we recognize this issue i also have a transgender child so uh as i mentioned i am just very thrilled that you're here and you're having these conversations about ways in which we can support each other and our children so thank you [Music] brittany miller hi um so actually my question was more about that elephant so thank you for throwing that out there i have won kindergartner right now and bringing to it actually to massachusetts so learning everything about new england these days um so i guess i've had inconsistent messaging when asking about are
096these kids being taught critical race theories so i actually want to thank you for asking that question i put my mind at ease a little bit i appreciate your presentation a ton so thank you so much for that moving from the midwest i've heard so many amazing things about massachusetts schools so i'm looking forward to the growth here you know you talked about mental health a little bit obviously that's extremely extremely important i think this is one of the toughest times to be a child and in school drastically different from my days but um you know in speaking to the mental health piece i think that we do need to revisit the masks and i from what i understand november first is the discussion date is that correct for revisiting meeting what's that i'm sorry
097number 18 okay all right um so that is being revisited in regards to the mandate for all school students then at that time well the november 1st is the date that the board of health has mandated masks as well for this for all public buildings okay and the state also has dates out so for now our next state to discuss it as a schooling would be november 18th and then we'll determine where we are at that time and we'll be working on policies okay all right i planned to you know be at that one i think um so that was more or less my top of the crt for this obviously but i did just wanted to say thank you for that um but then i plan on speaking to the masterpiece at the future
098state but i do hope that as we move forward and you know my kids five and four are running around outside and then the neighbors are saying i can't play with you because you don't have a mask on and we're sitting outside and i just hope that we're truly truly thinking about the impact to these kids and the future so yup that's it thanks welcome to massachusetts [Applause] so i understand your claims that crt is not being taught in holliston schools however what is being taught are principles of critical race theory lessons on white privilege and systemic racism those are advancing crt ideology even if they are explicitly labeled crt diversity equity and inclusion is what you have changed the name to in order to make it sound appealing and subtle for us parents your
099values and morals are not something that needs to be taught to our children we refuse to allow you to indoctrinate our children the job of the school is to teach our children a baseline education including reading writing math history we do not send our children to school to have them taught your values that's our job as parents there are laws that have been in fact for decades to protect those with disabilities race even sexual orientation in implementing this dei it seems that you're telling us that you're not complying with the laws that are already in place in fact when you continue to use those words equity which you know means just and fail and you would also know that this is subjective who decides what is just unfair i believe most parents should know that
100this is completely arbitrary and will eventually hurt our children equity is based on the same outcome for all we want our children to be challenged academically for a successful future not indoctrinated into bigoted and racist in sexist beliefs thank you [Applause] [Music] thank you for the time thank you folks for all the great work you're doing you're one of the reasons i moved to this town jarriel i was part of the committee the that that worked with all the applicants i'm very glad we got you like sean was saying it was i think this is a cool that we got you so excited about that you talked about teaching cultural proficiency in my mind i'm the living example i'm an immigrant i moved to this country a while ago a long time ago i spent
101a lot more time in this country than where i was born this is my country now cultural proficiency is seeing past that seeing me for who i am not the color of my skin it's not about what has been um what's been talked about i'm not going to politicize the issue it's not about politics let's keep them out of the schools i want my son to walk into the school and feel like the american he is no ifs hands and butts irrespective of his skin color irrespective of whether he chooses to recognize himself as a male female or non-binary or whatever irrespective of any of that stuff and last but not least i don't think um i have a master's my wife has a phd i don't think either of us is qualified enough to
102teach everything my son needs to be successful in life so i trust the educators in the public school system to do that i'm not sending if we want we can send my son to a private school but i don't i believe in the public school system and the equity and equality that it teaches the kids thank you go on during hammond yeah hi i just wanted to say that i'm just thrilled that we have this position focused on diversity equity and inclusion and social and emotional learning um seems so important in our multicultural complicated world that our students be developing these skills and i wanted to thank all of you on the school committee and the search committee and everybody who kind of lobbied and built support for this position and gerald i'm so glad
103that you're here thank you [Applause] robert principe good evening hi everybody holliston this tonya is with me as a member of what i'm actually is reading a letter that 119 house citizens signed i'm going to do excerpts from it uh basically the 119 are signed on in full support of ever to the school district to advance social emotional learning and equity as a means to build safe and supportive schools for all holliston children and all house and families um we appreciate the the the the conversations that's taking place across the this the uh holliston about examining the curriculum because we should do that so we look closely at the curriculum frameworks to look and see what the state says it actually is versus what it isn't um and this is framework number two uh for
104the entire state an effective and this is a framework for history and social science effectiveness history and social science curriculum incorporates diverse perspectives and knowledge of perspective perceptions and events are affected by everybody's perceptions are affected by race ethnicity culture religion education gender identity sexual orientation disability and personal experiences [Music] the superintendents specifically state that's designed to strengthen student skills to be informed citizens capable of engaging the issues of our time participate in the political system these things are so important it took 19 before campaigns before 19 consecutive congresses in 72 years to get women the right to vote in this country 19 consecutive citizens ran those campaigns the disability act in this country was not signed until 1990 before that time children with disabilities could be segregated in our schools excluded in our schools
105it wasn't until signed until 1990. robert thank you for your comment so um the letter is submitted to the school committee and we're signed on in full support of the work thank you very much for what you're doing evans hi uh i'm a hollison president thank you very much for your presentation i just wanted to say that uh i've worked at a high school for 30 years i was an administer their administrator there for 10 years and we had a program very similar to this it is extremely rocky road but it is definitely worth it people are filled often with a lot of doubts a lot of fears it causes a lot of confusion but it's worth it and i just encourage people to hang in there uh and and just sort of accept the
106fact that people are on different parts of this journey and there's going to be a lot of uh conflict but in the end i think it's worth it thank you [Applause] thanks for the time uh welcome i'm looking forward to speaking with you live in the in the coming weeks so my i i'm fully supportive of safe and supportive schools that the concept is is easy to support the issue is the implementation the key is implementation the issue is the implementation is underway today so you suggested earlier that it's very early in the process i would suggest the opposite my observations show me the opposite we are not at a balanced and neutral place here today we have uh i've heard terms in direct conversations with the schools that we need to protect let me
107check my notes here protect marginalized groups by protecting marginalized groups we're creating marginalized people the the inclusion piece of it is creating exclusions there are transparency issues the the the use of pronouns for example it's it's perfectly fine to address pronouns as they need to be addressed there's no issue with that but the way that i've observed this through my child my three children in the schools second third and sixth grade is that pronance has become sort of agenda driven it should be a a almost a one-time event to understand what the pronouns that want to be used are and that's it but there's been repeats with asking for pronouns there's a wellness survey that has thankfully undergone some revisions because of some feedback but the the content of that wellness survey was very very
108inappropriate for an 11 year old sixth grade student and the transparency issue is that i may not have even known about the content of the survey if there wasn't if there was enough time for it to be completed during school so i saw it because it wasn't completed during school there are questions about are you comfortable with your sexual identity not appropriate for the school to ask that question of a child without the parents awareness of that there are questions about whether an 11 year old feels comfortable talking to their romantic partner crazy crazy kind of question to ask an 11 year old girl the survey at its first the first time i saw it didn't even allow for someone to say not applicable or i choose not to answer it was really sometimes always
109probably so just the structure of the survey itself was inappropriate so i think transparency is is the key and there needs to be more balance neutrality education needs to be first the social culture cultural political issues that i see in the schools literally [Applause] choosing rows hi i hope it's okay that my um my comments are a little bit off topic tonight you can talk about whatever you want okay two minutes okay thank you my name is susan rose and i'm part of i'm a parent of a child attending holliston public schools and i live in holliston please deduct any response from my time and the cobin 19 injection has caused 752 800 801 adverse reactions per the cdc is the number of deaths that have occurred as a result of the coven 19 injection
110per the cdc when death is listed as an adverse reaction to anything one should always have the fundamental human right to give consent without coercion all american citizens are protected by the united states constitution and to infringe on these rights is a direct threat to our liberty and freedoms on sept on september 9 2021 the holliston school committee voted unanimously to require all holliston public school employees to get vaccinated against cobit 19 or they will lose their jobs this is coercion and it's also bullying the holliston public school student parent handbook states very clearly that harassment and threatening behavior of any kind that creates an intimidating hostile or offensive environment will not be tolerated miss kuska you are in direct violation of your own policy signed by you mr kuska and the school committee will
111you be taking full liability and responsibility for any adverse reactions or deaths that occur in any and all public school employees from the covid19 injection i'm sorry we're not having a back and forth it's not a debate it's just you have to make a statement are you done it's a simple yes or no who is responsible who who accepts the liability of something happens to our teachers if they take this vaccine and something happens to them whether it's death or an adverse reaction thank you for your comment your time so nobody's going to respond public oh i don't want to debate i just wanted an answer that's awesome deborah ann digiorno for the correctness it's colin deborah hyphen ann colin d hyphen giorno if you're unable to remember that he may address me as judge
112or your honor this is a copy of the porting treaty of my live life claim authorized by the postmaster general here is my document contract federal postal vessel federal court venue performance contract flag this is my court what this porting treaty means is i am authorized to stake a claim for i am with the knowledge of the correct sentence structure communications parse syntax grammar performance unless you are with deporting treaty you are not authorized to stake a claim you don't have authorization to think i will speak in plain english for the remainder of my time i'm going to go right to evidence uh the trial court of massachusetts juvenile court department sent a notice addressed to deborah degiorno indicating the claimant as holliston public schools even though i mailed conditional agreements as directed about whether
113or not my son is going to be attending house in public schools nobody replied to my letters of conditional agreement now this document here is actually fraudulent it's written in fictitious grammar and use of fictitious grammar under violation of u.s code 18 section 1001. use of fictitious grammar activates bank fraud mail fraud and offense punishable by 30 years in prison so who actually is holliston public schools who is responsible for this fraudulent claim 30 years in prison who's responsible for this i want you to know members of the school committee thank you [Applause] oh i basically said in spanish welcome to our community because spanish is my first language english is my second i am a first generation american i also happen to have come to education later in my career everything that has that
114you shared with us about social emotional learning and it's all very top of mind right now students are struggling staff is struggling we're trying to figure out how to get back into what was a couple years ago and that should be the focus honestly the other things about diversity and inclusion the school i work at i'm a middle school stem teacher we have a every week there's a new student from brazil that doesn't speak english how do i get them incorporated into our school our community and get them learning something and try to make them feel safe and welcome so things take time i'm looking forward to seeing what the results our school will do the metrowest health survey again and hopefully we'll get those results and be able to work on things but it
115it's hard it's hard work and we can't do it all at the same time and it's not a box curriculum as you said so i just wanted to say welcome and thank you for this opportunity to share your um opinions or not opinions but sort of perspective and philosophy with the community i think there are going to be many more opportunities like this will be needed so thank you [Applause] so at this time i will close public comment and we will move on to the next item on our agenda which is a policy so i will turn it over to you dr custa about policies v c r d tutoring for pay this is a first reading so i don't know catherine if you were going to read the policies sure do you want to
116take it you want to take like a minute while people you know exit right is [Music] is [Music] english [Music] i'm ready whenever you are catherine all right so we're just going to do a first reading catherine you're going to take it away all right this is um well i checked and checked first this is the one that you put in our packet is the correct one right i don't have it in front of you gcrd yeah it's that yes last time we did this yeah but we didn't make changes to the mask policy so masc well this is the gcrd the tuition for pay all right i'm sorry for paying yes okay so [Music] yes this is the good part um all right file gcrd tutoring for pay definition tutoring means giving private instruction
117or help to an individual or group for which the teacher receives room for roots other than through the school committee a teacher cannot recommend that one of his or her own students gets tutoring and then be paid to tutor that same student in a second job a teacher may a teacher may not tutor students who are currently in their class even if the teacher does not recommend that the current student receive private tutoring the teachers should not tutor current students teachers and other public employees may not approach a student or the student's parent guardians seeking private tutoring work a teacher may provide tutoring when the relationship is initiated by the parent or guardians or a student as long as the student is not currently under the teacher's authority a teacher cannot use school resources such
118as classrooms or materials in connection with a private tutoring business a public school employee cannot use a district or district's website to advertise private tutoring services schools cannot send home brochures for a particular tutoring service for the children tutoring is not to be recommended for a student unless the appropriate teacher of the student involved is consulted and agrees that it will be of real help if tutoring seems advisable the principal may give the parent or guardians a list of persons who are willing to tutor the list may include teachers but not the t the student's teacher of the subject in which he or she is being tutored tutoring for pay is not to be done in the school building do i need to read all that stuff at the bottom no that's fine does anybody
119have any questions or comments about the first reading um mini go ahead so anyone who is related to directly related to the teacher and also not tutor like someone who's related yes for example i'm the teacher and then i'm recommending my son to tutor the child who's in my class okay like a relationship will be happening yeah [Music] yeah well this is the first reading so it's you know just thoughts about what we can do to update it so um my initial response was that you know we just started out with a definition we didn't really talk about what the purpose of the policy is so we might want to add you know a first introduction um as to why we're having the policy maybe yes and i can speak okay just a little distracted
120of course yeah i have it up in front of me now so i actually initiated this policy because when i looked on our website we do not have most of the policies for personnel which many districts do have a number of policies in that area so i think it's an area that we should focus on but the state ethics training guides people about what they should and not should and should not do related to ethical dilemmas that could put us into a math state ethics violation and one of those is tutoring so i felt it was very important that we get this explicitly on the website even though we are having all staff do their bi-annual um state ethics training every two years all staff have to do that and we are uploading that and
121getting that work done i think it's important that we put the palsy in place and get it out to staff as a reminder just because it gets a little blurry and a little confusing and we need to be a little bit more explicit about what it means okay okay so i guess i would just ask that we just kind of have a just an introduction as to why we're having the policy just because we tend to do that with all of them written at the top yeah i'm sorry i didn't want to know too because i didn't really know what the genesis of the policy was um but yes i'm you're well aware that there's like very few policies in the tv section which is about personnel um so yeah so that would just not
122be my thought about it i'm sure that there's other towns i don't know catherine whether you're going to take a look to see what you know other surrounding towns have for a similar policy if they have one to help you there's no sense of reinventing the wheel i think nate has it i can find out more okay and actually if you go on to the mass association of school committees there are multiple policies from multiple districts that you can go in and post and see if there's one that you'd like better than another borrow the language right and catherine you can look at useless abusive facilities policy there's a section on tutoring in there you just want to make sure they're insane that's all we want to have that policy i'm sorry in that policy
123already that policy yeah facilities so we want to put that as a legal reference well it's a cross reference that's what i mean yeah but you just want to make sure they're also in sync you may need to amend it based on what you've got okay okay is this a policy that you think you'll bring back in november in november is that what you're looking to do is to bring it back in november the 16th i think is our next meeting we're meeting that week of the 18th okay have another meeting yes we can okay we can massage this i can't get my word you know okay we'll work on it okay sounds good anybody else have any other comments or questions all right um do we have anything for personnel dr koska i don't
124have anything i do not okay so um reports from subcommittees um communications i know we have a newsletter i think we're gonna talk about that after the i'm just going to save it till the end um policy we just talked about uh lisa do you have a budget update you'd like to offer or no nothing this time and we don't have anything for superintendent's evaluation well i guess we should just get though and remind people that we need to attend town meeting on monday evening at 7 30 in the high school um as it is now meetings yes it is we all need to be there for that and our budget items our capital requested by people yes and that is this monday october 18th 7 30 p.m in the high school auditorium yes and
125we are posted for us to meet a half an hour before i believe you could for seven months yes okay um so lisa posted us for seven o'clock just in case we have something to talk about when i went to the open meeting law training that um dr j toleran and um select word put on they said that we should be um hosting as a school committee cause we're all supposed to be there so that if we did have to have some incidental discussion while we were at town meeting that we were covered because we posted for it so typically we usually meet beforehand and then we all just go in and there's not really usually much discussion that happens once we go into the meeting because the town meeting is not our meeting it's
126the town's meeting so um and then we would just adjourn at the end of that meeting it's you know i'll say motion to adjourn to all of us as we're scattered around the room and we'll be here in the library um we'll start here in the library and then we'll go into the meeting yeah thanks okay [Music] okay um superintendent's update dr [Music] there's open a lot going on but honestly it's the biggest thing i think i wanted i mentioned it earlier but i really i think you know given the topic that we discussed tonight around our safe and supportive schools it's really going to tie nicely with the work we're doing on our strategic plan and this is not work that we're doing that's brand new i think that's something that maybe was not
127driven home enough earlier when we talked but there are threads of this work that's been going on for years in the school system it's just what are we doing pre-k to 12 plus to make sure that we're consistent and articulating it in a way that it transitions with students all the way up so i think people think that we hired someone to just do brand new work and dump curriculum on and that's not what we're doing right so i really think when you see our work on the strategic plan it's going to help us we're getting data from all of our parents in the community that the survey is going to go out hopefully on monday joni and i have been working on that with our tla team dr gary maestas dr borstell and mr
128lee and this the survey is going to be open for two weeks parents will have the opportunity to put any info in there related to culture community engagement you know all different topics anyone in the community can submit survey information and comments and concerns in all those areas we would like to make sure that we get some way to reach out to some of our former alumni we talked about maybe the students that have been within three years i would i think it was one to three years so if there's any way to get it to students that we may not have emails for but anyone that people in the community know if they can send it to former students that maybe are in college right now or in a career and graduated within the
129last three years because their perspectives are also very helpful so we want to gather as much information to inform where we want to be in five years and then let's work backwards and what would we do this year just getting the wheels in motion but year one would be next year implementation and it's a five-year process and will help align that with the budget process as well but i think you're going to see that the work that we're talking about tonight with safe and supportive schools is going to be very much embedded in the five-year process and it's not new work i think people think this is brand new this is not a new topic this work has been happening for probably decades in holliston public schools but in very different ways and we just
130want to make sure it's more explicit and consistent in that as jarielle had said earlier that it's transitioning so when i when my students exit pre-k to 2 and transition over to miller that miller is accepting and knowing the entry points of those children coming into their building and then as they transition through miller and exit out of miller into the middle school similarly the teachers and the administration at the middle school know what to expect one of our what do our students know and how do they relate together and what are their needs social emotionally culturally all of those things and again as they train this in high school we're fortunate in many ways that we have a school system where there's one building that transitions in so the kids are all getting the
131same very similar experience going into the next transition level and that's a good thing in many ways but it also creates a very sheltered environment where they're all together all the time right so you know those are all things that we want to make sure that our students aware that no matter which building they're in throughout the community that they're embraced and accepted and really that's the crux of the work that we're trying to do so over the next weeks as we start rolling out the strategic plan i really think people will start to see the connection as to why this work is so important and that's going to build upon you know the work and the reason why we hired a director of vessel inequity is to have someone that is really looking at
132it critically because i love this work and i wish i had the time to do more of this work but it's work that we all have to do together as well so you know i think the strategic plan will answer a lot of the questions that people have as well and you will have your chance next week to talk about that with our facilitators as well so the the survey that you mentioned is that going to be put like on the website so we could link to it or is it that you would send the survey to our specific email we could forward that on to former students if they wanted it it's going to be a google survey so we'll send out the link more than once but yes then you can forward the
133link out as well i'm sure there's a mechanism to find out who like the class presidents of those classes were and often those folks are in charge of like um keeping in touch with alumni and like organizing class reunions and that type of thing so they might be an easy source to be able to reach out to them yes and i did talk to our high school administrators were here yesterday in our focus group and i asked them if they have a way and they did say that they have a way to get it out to students already so it may be even easier than that and i was lucky enough to be part of that focus group about parents on monday so i'm really looking forward to when we get to meet with them
134and just as a preview they kind of did a lot a lot of getting input from parents about what some of the challenges the strengths the opportunities in our district so that was really thoughtful it was insightful to hear from different voices especially some of the younger horses this survey is going to include information from parents but also students is that correct parents students community members municipal leaders i mean really anyone in holliston can fill this out as a resident or as a stakeholder in the school system and is it tailored to different ages or different schools too are we asking the parents of presenting yes different things than we would at the high school yes and we actually just made an edit the other day to make sure that because we want i've also
135talked to administrators about can we send this out in school to the middle school students so that they can submit it and get you know what what do you think's going well what do you think's in the same at the high school i think younger than that may not we may not get as much detail but certainly the middle school and high school will be helpful so i appreciate the overlap of having a meeting time where we could be in person but really there was you know maybe two dozen events so the survey is a great mechanism for having this and i think it's open for two weeks yes is it possible with maybe three or four days left to get an idea of how of how much participation so that we can really you
136know make another go of it and reach out to we just want as much data as we can so if at all possible three to five days before it closes if we can have some kind of idea of how much participation we've had so we can we can push for more yes because again i'm going to plan on sending it out hopefully on monday and then probably the following monday and then a reminder as you see me do the day two days before one day before it will get those reminders as well but we will have the numbers and percentages of who was already submitted and then you know if if we don't think we have enough participation then we are also talked about some other ways and other things we might do after that
137to get more data it was my understanding where the principles were going to put in their newsletter to your language yes so it would yeah it's going out multiple things as well as every school the more the area lisa question so um we didn't talk a lot about hoba tonight which is awesome i think that's a good sign but i did want to see if there's any updates on pool testing and actually you'll hear me tomorrow tell you that there were a number of a number but there were um i think it is nine cases this week throughout the school district so we did see a little bit of an increase and most of those were coming over the weekend so it helped us in the fact that it was weekend and we had time
138to do the contact tracing but it does take a lot of time and we have a number of kids testing and staying right now so if you if you saw governor baker's report yesterday he has now engaged the national guard is supposed to be the next route that we're going to be getting help from the national guard to do pool testing because as i've shared with somebody before the state had unfortunately over promised the ability to help all school districts that submitted for this and i think we are now our nurse leader mr jordan and i have received i think seven different names of coordinators so every time we engage with a new coordinator that we're all set to go then that person is no longer with us and we we just yesterday received the
139next coordinates supposed to be able to support us so it's in a very frustrating process and we do not have the the staffing in place to do that on a regular basis so i'm hopeful with this new coordinator we might get some answers and i hopefully will have better information for you the next time we meet and maybe a quick update next week if we can add that in but i i may have more answers because i may know when the governor is hopefully getting some of the national guard if they can come out and do the testing for us on a regular basis and that will certainly give us the ability to start it sooner um i just wanted to ask the coordinator comes from where that's through the cic okay and that's the
140deci program that this is the program that was hired by the state and as i said unfortunately like they just don't have enough staff themselves and then they did say well if you want to collaborate with other districts and you can provide the staffing well the whole point is we don't have the staffing so we i can't provide this i'm just going to ask whether or not you've been able to fill the floating nurse position no we're still working on that we've met with a few people i have some more tomorrow but just so far it has not panned out and then the board of health is supposed to be helping with getting teachers vaccinated to do that i saw something tonight that i really had didn't have time to read but that was about
141flu vaccine yes so i did see an update that there i think it was at mansfield was it no i didn't i have to really the border health is working right now i believe on helping with flu vaccine yes so yeah hopefully we'll have that information out to staff as soon as i can um yeah so missy jordan is working with the board of health to try to coordinate a flu vaccine clinic for maybe multiple clinics for our educators and staff members in the schools i think that's really important and i think you know whatever the board of health needs in terms of support advocacy from us yeah and cynthia and i certainly shared that with some of the board of health members um but i do i think this is really important this is
142a public health issue and we're a community and we need to help one another you know best we can so i think the biggest impediment apparently for them at this point from my my attendance at their meeting this past week was that they don't have electronic record keeping and that is now a requirement so you know how they get the funds either to procure it i don't know if that's a yearly thing or if it's a one-time you know cost for them but i feel like it's something that's really important that we need to start talking about that about how we can support them from the town's perspective so that they can support all of us sorry okay how do they not have electronic keeping how do they i'm sorry how do they not have
143electronic record key yeah okay yeah but i know they do they need it i mean this is they need it so what we're i'm there we're here to sort them so i told josh mandel do what i can okay um [Music] okay so in new business we are moving our enrollment report to our november meeting that information is not available at this time so let's see um we're going to save to the very end okay so then i guess i will do if we don't have anything else i'm going to move on to warrants before you do that yep is anyone attending masc in person because it's before our next actual meeting because the next meeting we have is our focus credits yeah um who is actually physically attending if anyone needs um the conference
144yeah all right so i'm going to read off the warrants i have a cafeteria revolving account bill for the amount of 280.98 a [Music] it's a warrant for school department why does it not stay oh it's a cover sheet i'm sorry okay it's a school build warrant in the amount of 477.59 a school bill in the amount of 209 and 383.34 cents a activity account replenishment request for 6391.63 at the high school do i need to say that yeah an activity bill replenishment account for 620 and 22 cents is this also from the high school [Music] miller school sorry the miller from the miller school and a school bill in the amount of 314 and 34 that cents have signed on behalf of the committee okay all right [Music] okay so um items of information
145in your packet there should be two copies of minutes from the policy subcommittee from this past summer one from august 17 2021 and one from august 24 2021 items for discussion at our next meeting will be the school enrollment data i think we're going to start talking about budget drivers dr koska some other items for discussion at our next meeting on november 18th should be starting the process then right mr mate yes okay so we'll talk about budget drivers for as we move into the budget process and i guess that's it are we discussing test results both mcas and the more recent um tasks that were we were going to do that on let me pull up the do you have the timeline i'm sorry i know we're doing the um district improvement plans and
146school improvement plans so i don't think your plan is i think she's in december and instruction i believe it's december you have it on the agenda we have a calendar though to present okay okay for december okay great um we do have a brief executive session after this meeting so are you guys prepared to do the newsletter now or should we adjourn and then we can also do our news i did we have time at the beginning and i actually asked her to put the newsletter on for monday so so we need someone we just want to find out some additional information about executive before we can complete one section i think we may have some additional information to put in regarding this evening's presentations okay it probably makes sense since we have the meeting
147um scheduled okay so we'll defer it for monday we'll discuss the newsletter and content then because then we'll have all more of the information okay all right so with that i have nothing more on my agenda so i would entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session from which we will not return move by talking about stacey second and by stacy all in favor oh sorry roll call vote dr savard yes the time is now 901 this meeting is adjourned thank you everyone have a good evening you