001good evening I'd like to call to order the um Wednesday February 12th 2025 school committee meeting superintendent could we have a roll call Mr M present pres thank you let's stand for the pledge of allegiance to the of the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation God indivisible and justice um superintendent thank you tonight we have three memorials if you could please keep in your thoughts and prayers the following individuals and their families a former uh quiny Public Schools Employees the first is Gail Morgan Elli 14 years as a secretary at quinsey high school and then at North quinsey High School next is Rita Nell special education teacher at aod and how Elementary School for 17 years and last as Richard Dick Val IT staff member here in the
002main office and all over the district for 24 years if you could keep these individuals and their families in your thoughts and prayers thank you at this time we're going to be opening the open form section um this is an opportunity for community input regarding quinsey Public Schools community in this context is defined as a resident of the city of quiny a non-resident parent of a student who attends the Quincy public schools or a non-resident employee of the Quincy public schools after giving his or her name and address each speaker may make a presentation of no more than three minutes to the school committee an individual may not exceed their time or yield to others residents or non-community persons May submit written statements of up to 300 words to the school committee at QSC open
003Forum at quiny publicschools.com by 4 P.M on the day prior to the posted school committee regular meeting written statements may be posted on the school committee section of the quinsey public schools website by noon on the day of the posted school committee regular meeting and just um just to confirm that the three minute um timeline will be honored mostly just to make sure that we're making sure everyone has the same amount of time and we're not favoring anyone and giving more time than others so if you have um something you want to say please come on up hi my name is shiv prit Singh 511 Hancock Street I'm here to support Lunar New Year as a holiday in the QPS calendar so um this is my statement I start from a personal experience I was
004born in a sick family and completed my education through grade 12 at a Catholic school I'm married to someone who practices the Hindu faith and I and I now reside in North Quincy where the community celebrates Luna New Year growing up in India we embraced each other's festivals as our own we fostered a sense of unity with which fostered a sense of unity within our community we celebrated Diwali holy Eid Christmas as if there are personal festivals and and now I celebrate Lunar New Year In The Same Spirit the reason I share this is to emphasize that sharing culture is the most amazing way to build a robust connected happy Community festivals are the easiest way to connect and de dstress the community we are not benefiting anyone by keeping the school open on a
005day when 50% of one of the high school population is absent it does not help the community the the students the teachers or even the taxpayers in closing my question to the school committee is this do we want to build a happier more integrated Community or do we wish to Foster divisions and distrust by pitting one culture against another thank you anyone else good evening my name is jori Garcia I live on ad McGrath about a block that way uh my wife and I have lived here in Quincy for 12 years I'm a veteran teacher with 12 years of experience who's had the honor of doing my student teaching at North Quincy my 8-year-old child attends rdlc and has been part of Quincy public schools since he began school I'm here because I want to
006make sure the members of this committee and the members of our community are aware of the potential impact of recent Decisions by the federal government literally yesterday Elon Musk who reports to be a government employee and receives control of the dispersement mechanism so the United States government has stated that he intends to eliminate the Department of Education as you are all aware our school district receives funds that come from the federal government through the Department of Education especially when it comes to students who have disabilities given that Mr musk has already used that control to eliminate various federal funds we can only take this threat seriously furthermore the current Administration has made it clear that it views all children with disabilities with a certain amount of hostility as addition to viewing transgender children and undocumented
007children with hostility fundamentally all of the children in this community deserve our protection and our love it is my hope that this board will take ownership and that's as a leaders this community needs and deserves to ensure that all of our children receive the education that is their constitutional right as well as their right as a human being thank you [Music] hi my name is Karly briten I live in Ward 4 I've been in quinsey for um almost 20 years I think and I have two children in the quiny public schools I'm just here to voice my support for adding the Lunar New Year as a holiday at a day off for Quincy public schools I think it's an important um recognition of our community and um it will model you know inclusion inclusive Behavior
008to our children thank you good evening my name is Amy senson alawad I live at two rude Street and have two children in quinsey public schools I'm here as an ally to Quincy's Asian families and support of Lunar New Year Lunar New Year as a school and City holiday has become an emotionally charged issue for our community especially those of us who have been advocating for it for an officially recognized holiday for the past four years and for you members of the school committee who have stood in opposition you've indicated you don't even want to talk about this issue anymore and are looking to make a policy change so we can't we all know we have several schools including North quinsey High that have over 50% of students identifying as Asian we saw a huge
009increase in absences on Lunar New Year recently across the city demonstrating the importance and significance of this holiday as elected members of the school committee you are beholden to us your constituents who voted you in we are the parents Guardians caregivers family members and alumni of QPS we've spoken and voiced our desire to add Lunar New Year to the calendar in polls letters emails and open forums like this one time and time again so I ask those of you especially who have consistently voted no to please hear us be responsive to us and agree to add Lunar New Year to the calendar as an official holiday the time has come thank you hi Kylie 42 president Z good evening mayor Mary Koke Vice chair kahill policy chair gutro and fellow school committee members I have
010two children in quiny public school one in Lincoln Hancock and one in Southwest Middle School where I serve as PTO president my parents and I left our homeland when we where we celebrated weeks long Lun New Year I grew up in a New York City Chinatown class sizes of 30 made up of 90% Chinese Luna new year was not a day off back then and perhaps one or two classmates miss school we my family friends and most our schoolmates did not have the privilege to take that day off from school any day not working for my parents is the day they would not be paid does that mean we didn't celebrate we celebrated at night phone calls to overseas and on the weekends throughout Chinatown that was back then now I have the privilege to
011address you the school committee times are different now there were stat shared where over half of North quiny High and substantial numbers of our students in other schools absent on Luna New Year I applaud the teachers and School staff for maintaining a positive learning environment under those circumstances I can't imagine what North queny High was like with half of the students missing based on one of the school committee meetings that sat in on back in October the scho the students missing school are likely our best performers can you imagine your workplace where for your best performers are out on that day Quincy has a large Asian population and gives us a unique opportunity to share our culture with others in the city and Beyond we have the upcoming new New Year Festival held at North
012Quincy High and also I'm delighted to see Lun New Year and its tradition shared in the schools via line dances where some of it's being funded by the PTO along with other activities so thanks to the city for putting together the Luna New Year festivals and PTO groups who are seen and we appreciate you New York State signed Luna new year as a public school holiday back in 2023 prior to that New York City led the way in 2015 I understand New York City did it in an Innovative Way by combining two half school days to make that happen perhaps that's something worth exploring if there's a concern about extending the school year do we need a official holiday to celebrate the New Year in luding New Year in quiny mayor K and the city
013councilors made their view clear in 2024 they voted unanimously yes pto's stepped up providing funding for Ling uh dances now the school committee is on deck and I hope you can bring this home thank you for your time and the leadership you provide for our students and teachers anyone else I I have um some paper to pass out if I may I'll pass them I I'll pass them up go ahead you start speaking good evening grace young J six Florence [Music] Street I've passed out some a paper and I'd like to share this data from this paper which are the districts um that recognize the new new year as a holiday it's broken down into multiple categories and I'd like to draw your attention to category one which is in green as you can see
014um on the left hand side um the these districts recognize Lunar New Year as a full holiday there are nine in total Lexington being the biggest Asian population um others in this C category include Westford acting boxboro hopkington [Music] Brookline Newton Welsley whan and Boston my point is quinsey has a larger percentage of Asians in its District than eight of the nine in this category therefore I believe it is time for us to move Luna New Year in a full holiday to a full sorry to a full holiday and join this list of category one thank you my name is Chu li 24 C Street I just wanted to express my disappointment with qpf um on uh January I believe 29th was the luny New Year celebration there was no communication from QPS vaguely if
015you celebrate let us know but um many parents did not know that they could take the day off and so I believe that I had come to you at the beginning of the month asking that there is clear um communication to let families know that uh it is a day that students can take off to celebrate the holiday that didn't happen there was a lot of confusion also data was uh shared on quiny moms and they showed that half of the population at North gy High School had taken the day off many of them are actually non Asian-American because they know that when they go into the classroom similar to last year there would only be one or two students there so again a waste of resources heing genit um custodian work teachers um that
016is a disappointment to me because I I I did preemptively ask you to do that and that didn't happen um I also want to applaud all of the students advocacy I spoke to many many students and they were actually the ones that spoke to their friends who told them their friends that they have been supporting the parents who been standing out here because they're at home doing homework but they believe that they should also have the day off and they advocated and they spoke to their friends they shared on so Med social media so that they encourag their friends to take the day off so that we have numbers to show you that this matters to them so it's not just a bunch of Asian-American parents here saying let us take the day off students
017are also saying it and they're advocating for it so I do hope that the numbers that you're seeing is showing that the students are standing up for something my fourth grader is telling his friends to take their day off because it's their holiday my eighth grade is telling their friends to take the day off because it is their holiday so and all of them they are their friends do believe that is a holiday many schools in the City of Quincy are also celebrating lunar year um by doing lion dancing because the teachers and the school staff understand the significant the importance of this holiday so teachers students everybody seems to understand the significant of it but it seems that the school committee doesn't seem to understand that so I'm not sure why they're they're not
018matching right and also we've been fighting this for four years and we want you to advocate for the community 30% Asian-American so four years of asking for this and I don't believe that you will even be following or listening and and doing this but I'm going to be continue to fight now with what's going on with our nation our vulnerable immigrant students how are you going to be protecting our student and keeping them safe from other things so please think about that thank you good evening um member of the school uh quiny school committee my name is TW I live on Huntley Road and I have three children in the public school quiny Public School uh I stand before you tonight not just as a parent but as someone asking you to understand the important
019of Luna New Year for thousand of family in quiny for many years my children have gone to school on Luna new year last year my son Tyler a third grader told me he didn't want to miss school because he didn't want to fall behind my older son Evan worry about a quiz they were proud to have absence they they were proud to have no absences on their report cards but at at what CA they had to choose between their education and their family's most important holiday this year I made a different choice I let them stay home and for the first time we had a real Luna New Year together the night before we sat around the table with their grandparents sharing a long warm meal no rush no homework no worrying about the school
020the next day the next morning my children woke up filled with excitement just like kids do on New Year morning I mean on Christmas morning known that they will be gathering with their family open their leasi or home bow full of money and take part in Tradition that bring them Joy that's what Luna New Year means to us it's just not another day it's family it's history it's identity I ask you to think about what Christmas morning feels like the excitement the tradition the Deep sense of family and togetherness that's what Luna New Year means to so many families in quiny and for those who choose to attend school that day is not just a wasted resource for those who choose to attend school that day it's not just a wasted resource or an unproductive
021day when half the class is missing it's disrupts learning leaving teacher unable to move forward with lessons School are open but functioning at half capacity no child should feel guilty for celebrating their culture no parents should have to choose between education and family recognizing Lunar New Year as a school holiday isn't about taking a day off it's about acknowledging the reality of our city today 40% of quiny students are Asian this is their Christmas morning their Thanksgiving their time to celebrate the tradition that Define who they are it's time make Lunar New Year a recognized School holiday thank you anyone else is that it okay thank you super intendent okay thank you good evening everyone hope everyone is doing well uh the superintendent report the first item agenda is our QPS registration for the 2025
0222026 school year is now open for kindergarten in grades 1 through 12 registration information can be found under the family tab on the Quincy public schools website um at your places are the preliminary QPS enrollment projections for the 2025 2026 school year on the chart each school is colorcoded green yellow and red schools highlighted in red are at or above their building's capacity and so open en roll will be very limited at these schools schools highlighted in yellow have some grades with high enrollment and other grades that have available seats schools highlighted in green have availability in most or all grades enrollment projections highlighted in beige are the most likely to change as the majority of new registrations are typically for pre kindergarten kindergarten grades 1 six and nine part of the purpose of sharing
023this information with you tonight is to highlight open enrollment and particularly North quinsey High School with the growth in enrollment over the last few years and the fact that registration for next year is just beginning open enrollment decisions will be made in July for all grade levels so we have the most accurate information possible about the number of available seats North Quin High School is extremely tight and really at capacity already so in previous years obviously the high school families were notified in February but I think this year it's very important for us to take the time to make sure that our numbers are extremely accurate before informing parents of the ability to either have uh Acceptance in open enrollment or unfortunately not have the ability for open enrollment um and these are uh the
024numbers that uh are obviously before you in North quiny you know is the most concerning in red of course the exceptions to this are the students who um who are open enrollment siblings of students already enrolled at both high schools and those individuals and families have been notified that they can attend with their siblings as is in keeping with school committee policy and this will also be completed in March for siblings entering kindergarten in grade six uh we will present a further update of course of enrollment and projections um before the end of the school year but I wanted you you to be aware of where we stand currently with regard to our uh open enrollment numbers and you know we continue to grow and um if anyone has any questions I'll be happy to
025answer them oh I do want to thank obviously Laura ens as well for compiling this information laa does an excellent job with regard to managing the Open Enrollment and open enrollment invitations and I do want to thank Laura for this because it is a very huge task and it is very detailed and La is uh obviously does an excellent job with that thank you Mrs kahill um also to Second uh Mr M's Commendation of uh Laura's great work on this front for sure um I just was hoping uh maybe we could just a suggestion as we're going into accepting um open enrollment requests for North quinsey versus quinsey if we could just um communicate that to parents a little bit better that I know for a long time it was pretty much a given that
026you could get into either high school that you wanted to and I think it's um even though it's always been subject to availability I think it's just because it's been so long um that it used to be an easy choice to kind of get into either one uh if we could just articulate to parents send something home that just says if you do want to go to another high school you have to you have to ask for that um and it is subject to uh to space availability just to again um bring parents again I know know it's not a new policy but just to remind them uh if we could do that um through Aspen or through maybe the community newsletters that Mrs Owen sends out sure uh that would be great thank you
027thank you uh superintendent I know you and I have talked a little bit about this uh but it is part of the Roman issue and as we've seen the high schools uh grow in number uh my concern has been those students that ought not to be in a district that are living somewhere else and I know that's challenging difficult for the team but I want to make sure you have the resources to do that we know that the district to the north struggles uh and uh people try to get into our schools and uh you know we we're pretty full and I want to make sure that we are uh maintaining that effort uh to keep it for quiny kids absolutely thank you for that Mr Mayor and of course um you and this committee
028have been very supportive with regard to giving us the resources to make that happen of course we do that primarily through our school um attendance officers we have a full complement of three plus an additional um resource through the Sheriff's Office to help us with the school visits and just the day-to-day um review of all attendance data to make sure that every student and family to the best of our ability are uh living in the city uh and resting their head at night in the city as the law requires and therefore eligible to attend the quiny public schools it is a large task and I do have to thank all of our attendants offices and of course all the SLT and all the other and the principles and really all the staff that help with
029regard to monitoring this um but we do um work very hard at making sure that everyone attends the quinsey public schools are residents of the city of quinsey and um will'll continue to keep working at it and unfortunately we do have situations where we do have to ask um students and families uh to register in their home town uh if they don't live in the city um and that happens um pretty regularly uh whether that's at initial registration or um after a lack of residency is discovered during the course of the year so those tough decisions do have to happen and we understand why they have to happen um but I I do want to assure you the mayor and the committee that we are working hard to make sure that every student that lives
030in the that is attending the Quincy POA schools lives in the city thank you um to Mrs cus a statement of what we could do to uh communicate to parents I was just curious what we currently do do to traditionally to communicate this type of information to parents so we do we do communicate there's a page on the there's a page on the website uh that details open enrollment and the process for open enrollment um and at this point the families who have already completed open enrollment requ requests we can notify those families that we're postponing the decision to July so I have email addresses for everybody who has already requested open enrollment to date um we don't solicit open enrollment requests like we don't advertise you know that open enrollments there um but traditionally
031we have not advertised it okay all right thank you very much um okay anyone else oh Mr Bing thank you at the uh High School level in particular um those who do not get their open enrollment requests honored are leaving the district and they're going to private schools so I don't know how we can um get around that but I'm just letting you know what what the facts are there ien I haven't seen that happen I can tell you maybe some individual cases of that but have seen that in in large numbers but we can we can provide you with that data uh with regard to open a rollan request and whether or not they continue to attend school in Quincy that's certainly data we can provide you okay next all set yeah uh next
032is North quinsey High School's NES collaborative conference report report was shared with school committee in their packets of course next steps for the school is to review and implement the findings and recommendations as well as develop a plan for future growth two of the key areas that of course North quiny will be working on is um making sure that they um present a um a view of the north quinsey graduate that's very similar to what quinsey high was tasked with doing so Quin North quinsey High is very confident that they will be able to accomplish that task fairly easily um BAS basically a description of what the North quiny High School graduate looks like and of course the other aspect is just the alignment of our Curriculum maps as you know we continue to work
033on those and that is a similar issue that was at quinsey high and North quinsey High is making great strides and making sure that their Curriculum maps are aligned and that any other concerns relative to um the curriculum at north quinsey um is being complied with with regard to the nas um uh recommendations um you'll see that with regard to the rest of the report North quinsey High School as with quinsey high school is doing very very well um with that report but the the uh the work continues and of course there'll be a follow-up visit um and of course NES will typically reach out to school committee as well and invite you to be a part of the process as they did with quinsey high and we appreciate your participation in that event um
034but everyone is on Target and we expect to meet all of the nas uh recommendations and requirements so that we reach uh accreditation by the end of the two-year process thank you I just wanted to uh congratulate Mr Gilbert and his staff um at North quiny this report is full of amazing things that they're doing right and doing well um and just the level of detail that the neas staff went through uh areas they looked at um and just they were really detailed in their um their comments and just a lot of really great things things there that they should be really proud of so I just wanted to congratulate them um and though there is uh some there are some things to work on I I think this is positive and I think this
035is really great so I just want to congratulate them great thank you okay okay next is upcoming Quincy public schools in City of Quincy invents they include the following the Middle School stem felds will be held starting the last week of February and continuing through March school committee will be send calendar invitations for these important events um showcasing of course uh the stem fear uh projects of all of our students the next Parent Academy on Behavioral Health Navigator will be held on Tuesday March 4th at 6 pm on zoom and feature one of our local Community Partners the previous presentation highlighted the Quincy public schools collaboration with Quarry and will be shared on the QPS website under our District academic programs tab so we want to thank quari for their participation in that event and
036of course everything quar he does for us throughout the school year they're a great partner next is the Adam speaker series continues on March 4th at 5:30 pm at Quincy High School with the program on the impact of us first ladies on American presidential in global history specifically quiny own Abigail Adams and Louisa Katherine Adams so this should be a great event and I hope everyone will uh attend the third annual remember the ladies event will be held on March 8th at 2 M at quiny high school each year five women from the quinsey community are recognized with the Abigail Adams award this year quiny public schools has two recipients the first is Leslie britson of course our amazing homeless coordinator that you all know and she does so much uh for our students and
037families with regard to homelessness in the city and uh we can't thank Leslie enough for everything she does and of course I'm wanted to also let you know that our very own Laura Owens is also being recognized and awarded for everything everything Lura does uh day in and day out so many different hats but we thank laara for her dedication not only to the Quincy public schools but also to the City of Quincy so congratulations Laura and we look forward to attending that event and uh previous QPS recipients of course include assistant superintendent Dr Aaron Perkins principal Courtney Mitchell and former School Committee Member barara isol as well so again we're looking forward to that event in honor ing all of the uh the great honores uh lastly I just want to add um I
038along with Dr Perkins special education director Julie Graham principal Carrie Conley and assistant princial Simone Buckley gave a tour of the Richard De Christopher learn Richard to christop our Learning Center to the Randolph superintendent today and her team in order to explore the possibility of tuition in students into the Learning Center as you know we've already begun doing that with two students from wayth Randolph is extremely extremely interested they have 32 students on the waiting list for programming similar to what they would need and would be serviced four at the Richard De District Richard De chrisara Learning Center rdlc um so um the superintendent her team were extremely impressed with the facility they would like to invite their own school committee members to see it so that they can show this um Center as an
039example for hopefully doing something in their own community in a similar way because they understand not only the impact it's going to have on their special education students but also the impact on the um economic aspect of um being able to maintain the massive tuitions that are associated with special education especially with the um P potential looming Cuts in those areas so um the superintendent wanted to express from Rand Randolph wanted to express um you know her her great um somewhat surprised at how great the facility was was put together with every detail that was done in order to support our students she was really Amazed by it and is hopeful in our collaboration and partnership for T tuition students into the district so uh thank you to to the Randolph Public Schools for that
040uh with that that concludes the superintendent's report and I just want to say um you know we should thank the mayor the city council um the administrative team you Mrs per Dr Perkins and her team um for making that absolutely you know Rand wants to make it happen but it's a huge investment it's it's vision and um and we're we're lucky enough to have the support to do that so that didn't happen because of us as much as it happened because of the support of the city that's true so thank you thank you for that um next on the agenda oh I'm sorry Mrs huy is that I just wanted to make a comment that um it's great that the um Randol school committee members want to come and and view um one of the
041Randol School commit members is actually a North quiny High School graduate oh really interesting so that makes coming U Mr yeah ankle ankles ankles I think is his last name Jamie is his first name we'll be setting it up nor quiny highr oh that's good to know thank you for that all right next on the agenda we have old business um Mr gutro let me get you on the mic and um the first on the agenda is the proposed revision to the committee policy book section 911 five high school promotion and graduation requirements um we haven't we just have to vote right we're not having a presentation so correct okay Mr I just want say the we have four items that were in the policy committee over the last couple of months we've had deliberations
042in the three member policy committee all were voted out they've sat before the school committee we've had dialogue discussion they're eligible for vote tonight so on the first matter Madame Vice chair the the uh promotion and graduation requirements I ask for a motion to accept motion Mrs Lio second second Mrs Hubley roll call vote Please Mr moli yes Mrs Cahill yes Mr Gat yes Mrs Hubley yes Mrs Libo Mrs peros yes and Maya Coke yes okay thank you and then all in favor just what we just we need a uh I believe we need a vote to wave and suspend the school committee policy 2.5.6 which would second so that it can be implemented immediately yes roll call motion second roll call Mr boli yes Mrs kahill yes Mr grro yes Mrs huble Mrs Lio
043Mrs perdios and Maya Koke yes thank you all second item is a proposed revision of the school committee policy book section 9.2 school year school calendar is eligible for a roll call vote I ask for a motion second Mrs leeo roll call vote Mr boli yes Mrs Cahill yes Mr Gat yes Mrs huy yes Mrs Lio yes Mrs peros yes and Maya Koke yes third item is on the QPS school year calendar for 2025 2026 was voted out of committee ask for a motion motion by Mrs hu is there a second second by Mrs Lio on the motion please Mrs peros thank you um so I'd like to propose an amendment uh to my colleagues tonight um on this calendar that's before us tonight uh Luna new year as we know Falls during February break
044um so having a conversation about school versus no school is sort of a moot point for this current calendar we're looking at right here um but in the meantime what I'd like to propose is um an acknowledgement to all the people that have spoke before us this year on the topic and to all of our Asian-American students and families something that says to them we see you we respect you we appreciate you um so I'd like to propose that we change the letter V to a letter H for Tuesday February 17 2026 second that Mo we need a roll call vote we do on the amendment y Mr B no Mrs kill no mro yes M hu no M Leo C yeso yes so now motion motion yeah the motion does not pass so we
045we have the calendar before us to take a vote do we need a motion to I think we already had a motion in second so it's just a roll call vote on that yeah we want to on the motion want to have a some conversations I I really want the community to to understand that I have been listening and I have some significant concerns because when I look at the the number of people who took Luna new year as a cultural holiday this year at the elementary level 4,645 students in our elementary schools 149 or three point2 took it as a cultural holiday that means the parents of 4,496 elementary school students would have had to find child care if they weren't stay-at-home moms or dads and that's who I'm thinking about when I vote
046for this calendar I'm thinking about the population that would have to provide some sort of supervision that's also the the lower um Middle School grades a high school student wants to take a day off that is fine nobody has to be watching them but 4,496 parents of 4,496 Elementary age students would have had to find child care or some place for their kids to go if we had made that a holiday this year and so I'm very very concerned about that my other my other concern is that I've read all the letters that came in listen to everyone speak I know we've been celebrating Luna New Year in the city for 37 years I would say quinsey high school has been doing a cultural holiday or cultural fear for longer than that every single year
047having a cultural fear and I think that when you share it when you go when you when you go away for the day you're not really sharing that holiday with your community everybody else gets a day off but they're not celebrating I picked up kids from elementary schools on lunia and they all came out with something that they had celebrated that day in the school with their classmates with them they weren't Asian kids they were they were celebrating with Asian kids but they were they were all celebrating together but if we can make it a holiday then the Asian-American students go home everybody stays home they celebrate but there's no there's no feeling of the celebration for the rest of the community it's really not being shared so I feel that their Heritage is really
048recognized in our schools case and point the lion dance I saw it at North quinsey High School it was amazing and a couple of letters said all all of our families should be valued I agree with that all of our families should be valued all of them I don't think we should pick and choose which ones we're valuing and we should be sharing cultural festivals and that's what we do we share cultural festivals so I'm I'm I'm a little insulted when people say say that we don't recognize these people or this whole population but I think I have to worry about those 4,496 parents of those kids who would have to find one more one more way to take care of their children if they were working and that that was a half day and
049still only 149 kids took it as a cultural holiday so it doesn't look like it's a big thing to me in the elementary school so that's where I stand on this just a response to that I I for um election day that was a new day off uh last year or the year before um and that had virtually no conversation at this table about child care so I just want to put it out there that this we have done days off like that without worrying about that and without having 55% of our kids out of CAS point the reason we did it on Election Day was for the safety of all of Elementary School children's because that's where the voting was taking place and that's where where accidents were happening just saying the rules can't
050change depending on the holiday it was for the safety of the elementary school students motion's been made and seconded correct no I want to say something okay I unlike Mrs Leo I have to read my comments so the school committee has heard from many who support making Luna New Year a school holiday as a way to recognize and acknowledge the Asian American community in our district tonight I want to share my view on why I voted against this proposal on January 29th 2025 the official start of Luna New Year of the 9,873 students in our district 1,040 students took advantage of the policy for allowing for an excused absence to celebrate the holiday with their families this policy applies to all the holidays that our students in the quiny public schools celebrate in contrast on
051that day nearly 8,000 students were in school and many had the opportunity to celebrate and share in Luna New Year traditions and to learn about its cultural significance in the Asian community that is almost 80% of our student population both scenarios in my opinion observe the Luna new year with awareness and respect for the importance of that day on a personal note my grandparents immigrated to this country from Italy with my 10-year-old mother and her younger siblings all of them were non-english speakers unlike today there were very few resources for my mother and her sisters to help them navigate school or for her parents to communicate with teachers my mother's only translator at the time was an Italian girl from Sicily who was in her class and who she barely understood because due to the
052fact that they had different Italian dialects I'm sure my mother's academic experience would have been vastly different had she received the depth of support that the CUNY public school provides our students and families today the the quinsey public school district demonstrates its commitment to diversity every single day through elll classes family Liaisons translation services and parenty these are examples of the significant supports available to our students and families this is how we genuinely acknowledge respect and more importantly invest in our diverse um student population cultural and religious holidays are a beautiful way to gather family and friends in order to to observe honor and preserve a family's Heritage and traditions the policy of excused absences allows all of our families the opportunity to do just that like many immigrant families who came to this country
053my family worked really hard to build a better life in America and my parents and grandparents made it a point to keep us connected to our Italian roots to those advocating funa new year as a school holiday to my friends in the Asian community and to all the families in system please know that my vote is not a lack of recognition as a second generation American I understand firsthand the C the challenges of assimilating into a new country while continuing to honor our culture and our heritage however I firmly believe that our responsibility as school committee members is not to establish holidays but to advocate for what happens in our classrooms and to give all of our students in our district the tools that they need to to achieve academic success and I'm going to
054end with this our school committee's mission statement is as follows the purpose of the school committee is to establish policies and make decisions on the basis of educational philosophy and goals the most crucial of these being facilitating the optimal learning experience of the children enrolled in our quiny public schools and I am using that statement as my guide when I vote thank you roll call Mr Mrs yes Mr yes no okay next on our agenda we have to have vote on the Y yeah we have one additional item from the policy committee it's school committee uh meeting calendar 2025 202 six we discussed it it's eligible for a vote I ask for a motion motion Mrs hubly second by Mrs Leo Mr yes Mr yes yes okay um new business Dove collaboration with Quincy public
055schools Miss Bolton and Mr tag Larry not good to go welcome go ahead good evening man Coke Vice shair kill members of the school committee superintendent mby I welcome the pleasure to share about a longstanding collaboration that we have with with Dove uh seated with me at the table is the newly minted uh executive director of Dove MC h um Jen Bolton who is the director of pres uh prevention and education and Kelly Trung who is a youth speak Specialists with us as you know Quincy Public Schools benefits greatly by all the contributions of uh local businesses and organizations and let me just say that Dove is just a terrific model of an organization that really makes direct contact with our kids it makes a significant impact uh they have peer-led um peer-led initiatives they're
056involve their involvement with uh training uh student leaders is amazing and uh their collaboration with our health teachers to provide direct instruction to our students in middle and high school um all for the purpose of promoting healthy relationships um it's just a remarkable partnership that we have and let me just say our students know who Jim Bolton is our students know who Kelly trun is um and it really just speaks to the relationships that forged over these years so we're so grateful for this partnership uh I believe I was going to pass it to Jen uh pass it right to right to the new executive director uh Mick H and to you know give you some more details and some highlights of what's happened over the past year thank you good evening again my name
057is Mick hir and two weeks ago to the day I became a proud resident of quiny living now at 285 handc Street I came to quinsey as was stated to become the new executive director of Dove which is such a fine organization Dove provides direct Social Services uh housing and economic empowerment and legal services to the uh the region uh we also provide prevention education and in just a moment you'll hear from my colleagues uh from a presentation about the amazing work that they have been doing um I've been doing this work for over over 20 years and I have to say that uh in just the the two weeks that I've been here this is uh among the best if not the best staff that I have ever worked with and uh I am
058so excited to embark on this journey with them I also want to just underscore that uh I'm beginning my tenure during a month that is of very special and importance to me and that is teen dating viol awareness and prevention month and I think that's such an important issue for our school systems and my uh my colleagues are now going to give a presentation and underscore that as well thank you right good evening everyone so nice to see you all thank you for having us back um we uh have some slides here for you all and I think uh you all have a copy of them as well most of you are familiar with what we do at Dove we are very happy to continue this partnership we have been connected to the public schools
059here for um beyond the time I've been with Dove and I think probably close to 20 years and so um have really greatly been able to expand our partnership in the last couple years because of the support from uh you all on the school committee so we really appreciate that I am a a quiny resident my kids go to school um at a and how and uh this all feels very connected and very um meaningful to be able to do this work and be in the community where we're uh talking to students about this really important issue so uh Kelly's going to share a little bit of some of the elements of the uh youth speak program and then we're going to share a little of what we did uh the last school year in
060each school good evening everyone um so first um I just want to talk about how prevalent teen Dating Violence is and the reason why um some of our lessons are very important for this community um we have three big numbers here that I wanted to share one in three young people will experience either an abusive or an unhealthy relationship within um some point of their lifetime over 1.5 million teens each single year experience physical abuse from a dating partner and then about 68% of teens experience some form of educational interference when they're in intimate um or abusive relationship with someone so by educational interference we're kind of talking about for example maybe a dating partner forcing them to drop out of clubs or activities they care about maybe skipping school um or even things like
061changing postgrad plans in order for them to maintain power and control over that person um so these are some three um big numbers that we want to share to show how um important this issue is so uh some of the elements of the youe program uh we have pure leader trainings that we do in schools where we work with uh guidance counselors to select students that are interested in diving deeper into this being uh peer uh leaders in their school peer Educators talking to other students about uh this issue we do classroom presentations faculty training we offer uh parent support sometimes teachers connect us to parents that have um student that are experiencing abusive relationships uh we do awareness projects with students and then we're also going to talk about the summer Summits that we
062do so this here is kind of a breakdown of the different uh presentations we offer to each grade um so starting with sixth grade we start off by introducing um healthy and unhealthy friendships to them and kind of making the connection over to what is a healthy dating relationship and what are some characteristics to look out for um moving on to the seventh this is where we start to introduce the topic of healthy and unhealthy dating relationships here we talk about um the red flags of dating abuse and also how to support a friend and also get connected to resources in case they're experiencing a situation like that part two of seventh grade um is where we aim to build skills for them to have a healthy relationship and with this Workshop we focus on
063healthy communication skills and conflict resolution um in order to maintain a healthy uh friendship or relationship moving on to the eighth grade we also um introduce some of the same topics here and you will notice that part two and part three of the presentations are additional workshops to skill uh to build other skills such as consent we also talk about how to have a healthy and safe rig up with a person and then these topics are also reflected on the high school level which just some changes that are more appropriate to their age group as well so the next few slides we have uh numbers for each school we won't read all the numbers but um we've been going into uh quinsey high school and uh talking to students during their long block we did
064some peer leader trainings there so I've really benefited from uh the two Health teachers there and kind of working with them on how to uh put this into their curriculum okay um at North quinsey High we have um started a new model there for their training so we are actually doing um these full day sessions with their students where We Gather in the library and we have about 50 students that go through a full day of training with us so we talk about healthy relationships breakups consent and we also bring in a Survivor speaker as well so these numbers are reflection of our work with them last year and we also held a six-week cycle educational group um that was U meant to kind of further educate students about healthy relationships and other topics the
065next few slides we have uh Atlantic Middle School we had four 44 presentations there to sixth seventh and eighth graders can go to Broad Meadows we had 31 classroom presentations uh one of the biggest middle schools or the biggest Middle School uh we reached 530 students last school year we've really been able to develop uh close relationships with the um Health teachers at each school which have been great in um connecting us to to students or to parents that might need more support and has been really great to have Kelly like in this position for a long time and um like you said students know her and when we're out in the community people are saying like we know you you came to our school and so that kind of recognition and students and families
066knowing that there is that support uh for them in the community oh we got to the end there did we mess okay uh and then point Webster we had 28 classroom presentations and Southwest um 27 share some people so here so at the end of each school year we'd like to send out a a survey to our school Partners just to kind of assess our work within the community and see if they have any comments to share with us any feedback here are some comments we have from some of our school Partners here um I put the biggest one right in the center here awesome work what a fabulous group group thanks so much for sharing this material with our kids and all you do for our community and then on the following slide here
067we have um a couple pictures from what some of those uh full day training sessions at North quiny looked like and these are quotes from our students that we trained um that we collected from evaluations so uh which comment I guess one comment I would um probably bring out here is you know I enjoyed the skits that were played out by our classmates I also liked being able to spend time with my friends while learning about healthy relationships so our goal in delivering uh these lessons is not only to have them be informative but also for them to also be fun and engaging for students that way they can really build skills um in a Hands-On way and also be able to relate to the topic as well this is a flyer from um this
068past Summer's youth Advocate Summit we hold this Summit every single year um this year we were lucky enough to actually have all of them in quiny um and two of them actually first were held at quinsey High School in the president's Cafe so these are the topics that we talk about during each Summit everything from red flags um we also bring in guest speakers to talk about things like um consent uh and also we discuss things like gender roles and stereotyping and it's a very fun opportunity for them to gain community service experience but also to build connections with other students who might be coming in um from outside of quiny as well every year these sell out so we really enjoy doing them and have students that want to keep coming back even if
069they've done it before one event I want to share um that is I think a display of our wonderful connection to QPS is this panel that we held last February for teen Dating Violence Awareness Month um this panel actually featured four students from the quiny public school system and this was an event where they basically shared um more information about what dating as a teen is like today just for adults and other people to know um and this was a really great conversation where these students come up with their own questions they kind of asked each other kind of like in a Q&A format and it was very engaging and informative conversation as well and then the last couple slides we have here are just pictures from the summer Summits that we hold so these
070are 4 day long 20-hour Summits where students from quiny uh and North quinsey High School come together spent a lot of time with them building relationships developing leadership skills and uh really talking about what makes relationships healthy unhealthy how to help a friend how to access resources in the community if you all want to follow us on our uh Instagram page Kelly puts a lot of this great content up there um from stuff we do in quiny so this is our last slide this is just what a continued partnership um would mean uh presentations in all the middle schools and high schools in quiny continued leadership oper opportunities for students on-site Summits relationship building and support for staff uh and uh recognition of uh teen dating violence and how to prevent it so thank you
071so much for having us back and we love doing this work we're very happy to do it in quiny and really so value the support and uh partnership from the school committee so thank you thank you mayor uh thank you very much for the presentation thank you for the partnership we have um you know we're celebrating act 400 this year and a lot of quiny first will be talking about in the course of the year and uh I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the late Bill delahunt who was a congressman but he was a district attorney being selected by governor dakus for the vacancy in 1975 one of his P first priorities was to get going on something in place for to deal with the domestic violence he combined with Al Kramer District Court
072chief Frank finnn at the police department Joyce Baker and other members of the community stepped up to be founders of of the dwe home home we know of today in the program so I know it was uh those were the early days um but we ended up the city of quinsey ended up in 60 minutes because it was the first across the country uh so I'm just I'm just proud of the city and it's passed and I appreciate all you do thank you so much go look that up I will that's amazing that how used that Mr gutro thank you uh I'd like to welcome Mick thank you and and welcome back Jen and and Kelly and and thank Jen and Kelly for their good work um many years back I was a city counselor
073in Quincy and I got familiar with Dove and and the good work and you know came to know Sue Chandler and Jen and uh was privileged I think it was 12 years ago to briefly serve on Dub's board and really get to know the amazing work that you do and um in 2018 17 I I got elected to the school committee and when I got here um Mrs Libo and I shared a passion for the great work of Dove and and what we thought was the importance of integrating dove into QPS and uh thanks to the support of the mayor and the school committee as well as the superintendent and others that partnership is is really come to fruition and blossomed and what you showed us tonight is exactly what I had hoped would be
074integrated in QPS when we originally talked about it um I'm super proud of the work that you're doing you're I know that you're influencing so many different students and you know you're improving relationships and it's just going to have a lasting impact throughout a lifetime and so what a great partnership in my eyes to have you here and I hope it lasts a long time thank you appreciate that Mrs Leo thank you Mrs yeah I I want to reiterate what Mr gutro said and first of all I also want to thank the mayor because we came to the mayor and said we need we need this funded and he as always he steps up when he sees the need and um it is it is such an interesting thing I said we had a presentation
075from Mara pel earlier and I said I didn't hear any mention of Dove and she said well they're just us they're us they're us they're all part of us so that's why I might not have mentioned them but they're always here they're us and so you have become a part of our school system really an integral part of our school system and the work you do is amazing and um I'm sure the kids do love them because who couldn't you know really who couldn't love them they're just uh so warm in in caring um we're very lucky the community is very lucky to have you here I think uh I'm very proud that quinsey was one of the other first in the city of quinsey that quinsey started this and um you have some big
076shoes to fill Mick so good luck um but it's a it's a great organization in the city too you know the I love the I like we I still call it Divas dance for dove because we'll see you did sattin biting boys a few years ago but I still go with the I still go with just girls Divas danced with them so it's a great organization and uh always a moving night always a moving so thank you all thank you thank you all for your work appreciate that M she thank you thank you so much for being here and thank you for coming back year after year we absolutely love having you love having you in our schools um I I have a question um so something very dear to me been following is trafficking
077issues um I recently saw a um an individual who gave a presentation who had been trafficked who started off um with a single partner relationship who went into an abusive relationship with this partner who then became trafficked by this partner and um at this presentation when she was giving her um her her talk um the Foxboro police were there and they said this is becoming an issue there that they're recognizing and requesting help to come in and help them with this issue is this something at all that you touch upon in your um education yeah um so you're absolutely right that it so often starts with a you know dating relationship where it's two people that are dating and and becomes that um so it's something that we have a guest speaker who's another Dove
078staff person that uh comes to the Summits that we do over the summer so we do a whole workshop with students on what human trafficking is how it's not this necessarily like kidnapping you know scenario and that it's more often someone starts dating someone and um is coerced into that uh and so how to help a friend you know how to notice those signs but I think it's also something that we could uh possibly at the high school level be integrating into the the classroom presentations um depending on interest or or for appropriateness and I just say that my my professional background is I'm a trauma recovery specialist and my expertise is in is in trafficking oh wonderful to hear that's great thank you so much thank you Mrs peros thank you thank you just
079want to Echo the um Sentiments of my colleagues and great work that you guys are doing and we really appreciate the partnership and all your hard work um I'm just looking at the number of students that you're reaching at the middle schools which is most it seems like most of them um it seems I was just looking actually at the superintendent's enrollment number kind comp them but looks like we're a little shy all the Middle School kiddos but um the high school how do we reach more of the high school because it looks like there's about 364 at quiny 322 at north um but we have 1500 kids at each school so how do we reach more at the high schools yeah so we're presenting to all of one grade in high schools and so
080I think at quinsey high we're doing all of the sophomores that's when they're cycling through health class and so so anyone that's in high school will you know for those four years will will cycle through a program with us um and then at North quinsey it's a similar format where they're it's in their health class and so we have been talking about how we can offer um workshops that are just available to all students so that they can get additional content outside of their health class and of course they're welcome uh to attend Summits um but yes it would be wonderful will have another touch Point um in high school that would be great I think a lot of this stuff um you know having one middle schooler and two high schoolers I feel like
081it it hits home in high school right um a lot of this stuff you know might be very applicable to some of the middle school kids where they're at but I think it's really gonna kind of they're really going to tune in when it matters to them right when it's relevant and a lot of that high school um your high school four years is is kind of when you're going to want to kind of circle back to this stuff and you know you're probably not going to want to hear about traffic or even understand what that means in sixth seventh eighth grade but you know if you're maybe seeing that in 11th or 12th um and you've already had your Dove time that you know you kind of miss that window so I'd love it
082if we could kind of creatively try to find more ways um to hit those high school kids just so they know what's available I mean how to end a relationship is just is such useful knowledge for anyone right I mean so I think it's um they're all really really helpful skills and I'd love to see more high school kids um be a be a a recipient of that yeah it's something we talk about a lot of this mix of you know wanting to talk to students before something like this happen so that we're preventing it you know with the middle school but then also um how are we having these conversations when it is happening and so uh yeah trying to to find that balance of of doing both yeah that's great thank you okay
083um okay great thank you so much thank you for everything you thank you okay QPS policies and practices regarding student information Dr Perkins thank you just all alone what's that all alone all alone today I know okay thank you very much for having me uh tonight to talk about our policies and practices regarding access to students and student information I do just want to begin by um letting everyone know that obviously in quiny public schools our first priority it is student safety always so I there's obviously been you know a lot in the news in terms of immigration and things like that but in Quincy public schools student safety for all students is our absolute number one priority that's what we focus on that's our goal every single day students cannot learn if they're not
084in a safe environment I think we do a phenomenal job of creating a safe environment for our students but I just wanted to make that that clear here before I begin the presentation so tonight we're just going to talk about uh the goal which is to provide equal access to education in a safe and supportive learning environment for all students regardless of their immigration status um and so I'm just going to briefly go through the relevant laws that govern that because this isn't something that's new for us this is something we've been doing for years and years and lots of the information that you are going to hear tonight is something that we have consistently implemented for years for as long as I've been in the school system um so I'll talk briefly about student
085records and student privacy what are the exemptions to student privacy our procedures and then the things that we've done um most recently in terms of our action steps so just to briefly go over so one of the biggest laws that governs uh student confidentiality um is Massachusetts General Law chapter 76 Section 5 and um in this in education in general in this uh law just briefly states that every person shall have a right to attend the public school in the town in which they reside no person shall be excluded from or discriminated against in admissions to a public school schools must provide equal access to education to all students regardless of immigration or citizen Citizenship status and schools must avoid policies that discourage or deny access to the school on the basis of immigration status
086another law that um is extremely important and that we actually train our staff on every single year uh is furpa and so it's the family educational rights and Privacy Act of 1974 it's a federal law that protects the privacy of students educational records and to sum it up it basically it what it basically says is that schools cannot disclose either orally or in writing a student's personally identifiable information meaning their name their address the social security number their student number their date of birth or their mother mother's made a name you know as a few examples to third parties without the students parent or Guardian specific informed consent unless there is a specific exception permitting disclosure and we'll talk about what those are and lastly in terms of laws and reg regulations uh we also
087follow Massachusetts uh student record regulations which is 603 cm4 23 section5 and again just quickly sum it up it basically says that schools are prohibited from giving either orally or in writing a student's personally identifiable information contained in education records to third parties without the specific informed written consent of a parent or Guardian so these are things that have been in place for years and years and things that we at Quincy public schools take extremely seriously we train our staff every single fall on these regulations um and the staff actually have to sign off that they have participated in the training so the these things are all in place and have been at Quincy public schools so some of the exceptions to student privacy um so generally fer and student record regulations prevent school districts
088from leasing any information contained in a student's educational record some of the exceptions are as followed so a Jud a Judicial order or subpoena if we receive a judici Judicial order or uh subpoena where a lawfully issued judicial judicial order or subpoena is presented schools must make a reasonable effort to notify the parent or the student student if the student is 18 years old or older of the order before complying with it to allow the parent an opportunity to seek a protective order or other relief in court so that's one exception exception to uh fer and student privacy and so when we give um prior notification those prior notification is not allowed in a couple of circumstances or not required and that is if there's a concern that the person involved um in the order
089is involved in a terrorist act um or other you know specified offenses in the regulation or if the parent is a party to a court proceeding involving child abuse and or neglect or is involved in any legal actions against the schools so those are the times where we would not provide the parent with a prior notification to a Judicial warrant typically that might involve like a an abuse case things like that um and so the other exception to student privacy is for police and prosecutors the Department of Children and Families and the health department only in cases that involve the health or the safety of the students in the building uh and so you know one of the times if it was a disease or something that may spread you have to contact the Department
090of Public Health uh if there is um a DCF investigation you know um that would be a time when we would need to release student information and so that would you know constitute an exemption and the last exemption is directory information so uh we do release directory information it means information contained in an education record of a student that would generally not be considered harmful or an invasion of privacy if disclosed and so some examples are students name phone number grade level dates of attendance um students participation and officially recognized activities in sports any honors or uh rewards that were received by a student and I think a good example of when we do this is you've all seen in the quiny sun when the honor roles are published so that's an example of directory
091information um so parents and Guardians May opt out of including their child's information in the directory by notifying the school district in writing within 30 days of the beginning of the Academic Year and this is stated in the handbook um and the you know that is available for parents so now to talk about the procedures and how we would handle uh a third party or an outside person who is not uh a guardian or a parent of a student how we would handle that if that person came to the school and requested access to a student so we have pretty specific procedures um and all principles have been directed to follow the following procedures so if someone were to to show up at the school and you know um the principles would immediately inform the
092person that they can neither confirm nor deny a student's personally identifiable information so we would not give out student information we would not even confirm that that student attended that school the principal would inform the person that the protocol for all staff is to refer this inquiry to the superintendent's office as well as legal counsel and ask them to report to 34 cottington Street we do that on purpose because we do not want our principles getting into altercations or arguments with anybody that's uh showing up on the doorstep of the school that's something that the superintendent or myself we can handle here at codington we can use a space here to kind of figure out what's what's going on this the principal will then immediately contact the superintendent or design who will discuss with legal
093counsel the best course of action the principal will also immediately contact the parents or Guardians of the student the principal will will request proper identification and make copies of the credentials so that we are able to review those with legal counsel if the per person has a warrant for an arrest the principal would request a copy of the warrant and send it to the superintendent which we would then immediately send uh to legal counsel the person would need to have a valid judicial not administrative warrant authorizing the arrest the warrant needs to be signed by a judge likewise if they seek personally identifiable information regarding a student it should have a valid subpoena or court order um and it that should be also be immediately forwarded to the superintendent's office principles may ask the person
094to come back at a later time until such time that the scope of the warrant or The subia subpoena or court order can be confirmed with legal counsel if the person does not present a Judicial warrant then they are not permitted to enter the school and we are not asking principals or any staff to to differentiate between a Judicial warrant or an administrative warrant that's why they would immediately send it to our office and we would work with our legal council that's what we have them for and so um just to highlight some of the things that we've done um so far so we have provided all principles with guidance documents and PowerPoints from the Attorney General's office and all legal advisories that have been issued from our Attorneys at Murphy hessy Tumi we have
095provided principles with the procedures that I just talked with you about a minute ago should someone try to gain access to a student or a student's information uh principals and representatives from both high schools the behavioral health Navigator and member of members of the students uh superintendent leadership team attended attended the guidance webinar provided by the department of Elementary and secondary education we actually watched it in the professional development room uh we've met individually and as whole group with our principles to talk about the guidance and answer any questions we've provided the guidance to all family Liaisons who have been reaching out and supporting families with attendance and safety concerns and family Liaisons in collaboration with school counselors and the principles have worked with individual families to address these concerns we have provided also resources
096um to support families to our counselors and finally you you do have um a one-page document that's kind of a summary that we put together to be shared with staff and so the principles have shared that with their staff um so the staff know what the procedures and Protocols are but again this is not something that we want our staff to be dealing with we really want the message to be that if there's a concern it should be immediately forwarded to us and to let us handle it uh we don't want our principles or our staff you know getting involved in in any that that we can take off their plate um and so that um in a nutshell is our our student confidentiality and uh safety procedures so happy to answer any questions question
097this Leo not not question so much as a comment thank you very much Dr Perkins for this um I've heard from several parents who are not parents of immigrants who are very concerned about this and how everybody in the school would be traumatized so I'm it's great I think I think that you all know what you're doing and you've been doing it for years and I think this information here going out to all staff I don't know if there's some way we can get it out to everybody I I you know without being I don't know Overkill but I think that there are parents who are concerned that not only are those immigrant children going to be really traumatized but if somebody else sees somebody being taken out every kid in the school is going
098to be TR every teacher is going to be everybody will be traumatized and so I think it's really important that everybody in our community understand this and I'm not sure what the right way would be to get that information out we can at that because I I you wouldn't want to have to give them something yeah I wouldn't want to call because right now we're doing very well with our families attendance wise and working in individually with families that may have concerns but I do understand yeah that the the general perception out there what I wouldn't want to do and I know I've gotten feedback from other superintendents where they send out a letter and it may be misinterpreted and causes panic and then all of a sudden people stop coming to school yeah so
099it is a it is a balance and we're trying to strike that balance and thread that needle um but we definitely don't want to cause additional panic and I can say right now in meeting with our principles we're in a really good position right now with supporting uh students and families and our attendance levels um seem to be uh very very good right now and we're and we're obviously addressing concerns with individual families and working closely with them and assuring them of their safety and that we will have their safety as our primary concern every day and that it's okay to come to school and we'll make sure that it's safe um but that we do we do worry about sending something out especially with our El population where something even though it's interpreted may
100be misinterpreted and we're super concerned about that because we have heard from other superintendents and US superintendent groups where they have sent out you know letters they thought would be helpful and they were scary but it caused the Panic throughout the district that's understandable so we are concerned about that and my my other concern here is we don't have pedestrian traps in all of our schools once this person's in the building and you're asking the principal to get identification and take copies of it in the building I I just worry about them in the building so just generally speaking in the Attorney General's office spoke on this if it is a federal law enforcement official it's the it's very very unlikely that they would just show up um it would be something they would probably
101do through the police department collaboration with the police department or they would give us notice particularly with a school um you know something happening outside of school or at a residence that's something different but certainly coming into a school and breaching kind of the sanctity of a school uh to search for students I think is something that would be Beyond The Pale in something that would be very very unlikely to happen but we prepared in the case that it does happen but obviously if that person did get in our school security is already well trained and the response for that which is they immediately get the principal and the principal calls us and we immediately respond to the school and would engage that individual and ask them to come to codington to take the discussion
102out of the school and then engage with them engage with their supervisors and if necessary engage with our legal counsel and potentially seek injunctive releas immediate injunctive relief to stop the disruption that that would cause to the educational environment not just for that student that family but as you said other students would be present and see this it would be very very disturbing teach every to the entire community so it's that serious where we would do everything in our power to make sure that something like that did not happen I'm really glad we had this presentation because I know you've been doing this all along but it's just really nice to have the the comfort of knowing that you're on top of it yes thank you I appreciate thank you dou uh three questions for
103you Aaron sure um I'll ask all three questions then you can answer so the the three questions are is it the national issues and state guidance that prompted the emphasis on this guidance um is number one number two is how often did third parties seek access and number three is does any of this need to be codified by the school committee as policy uh so yes it it was definitely the I think Mrs Leo might have requested that this um be added to the agenda for discussion because of the guidance and obviously you know the discussion um out in the world today um but um in terms of third parties it's very rare I I would say hardly ever um you know do we have people coming that we don't know about that we wouldn't
104already be aware of right um so that's it I very very rare I I honestly can't even think of an instance off the top of my head where that's happened yeah um and again we would deflect them we would have them come to the super we would this principles would never let a a random third- party person into the they just wouldn't so if it's an official like that like a law enforcement official the general policy and practice in the law enforcement Community is to always reach out to the local uh quiny police first to so so as to minimize if not completely eliminate any disruption to the educational environment and and whatever they would need would happen outside of school so that there isn't a disruption to school that's with regard to iners requests
105we do get subpoenas for records but that would run the gam from special education hearings to divorce hearings and that would include a third party outside person that we deal with regularly but with regard to someone showing up to school to seek a student or to pull a student out we that does not happen I'm sorry what was your third question does any of it need to be codified as school committee policy we do have um school committee policy which basically says all of the things that I just said that's um you know in terms of Student Records um and didn't know if anything needed to be updated I I don't think so I mean I think I think it's our policy we looked at it um before this it's it's pretty clear um so
106and again I would just add to we do not collect immigration information we don't ask for it we don't collect it so even if you know if in which I think is completely unlikely that it would ever happen that someone would show up at one of our schools we can't even give it to them if they asked it we don't know we have no idea uh anyone's immigration status so we don't have it we don't collect it we don't ask it um and so you know I I think it's important for people to know that that we cannot we wouldn't and we cannot because we actually don't even know so thank you thank you Mrs huy thank you I just want to say thank you so much for the presentation I know this was concerning
107to leave a comment we get questions from parents it's very concerning so this is great information to know it's great to know that our teachers are not only trained now but trained every year on this so it's not something that's new they've been over the years always trained on it so that's great to know um this one pager is this something that maybe like we could have available for principles to hand out to concern parents who maybe went to them and was looking for information that we could give them what the protocol is so that maybe the principles could have this on hand I mean this this being part of our school committee material will probably be on the website anyway but so I was saying that if the principles could have it maybe they
108could just hand it out yeah so the principes do have it so we gave that to the principales a couple weeks ago now when that like when it when all this kind of first initially came out we actually gave that all to the principles and we and and also the family Liaisons um and so we have instructed the principles that when parents are saying they're afraid to come to school or you know things like that that they can go through the procedures like what would happen so you know in the very unlikely instance and I I really want to be clear that we really do not think that this is likely um and neither did the people from the Attorney General's office I mean this this would be extreme um and so in the very
109unlikely instance that that maybe something like that did happen uh that you know they they could reassure parents and say but this is the procedure that we would follow and you would immediately be notified so we would not let someone into the building you would immediately be notified so um they have been making those phone calls and having those meetings and so they've had they've actually had this for a bit which is why the superintendent said I we think that it has it is kind of calming down down and you know students are coming back to school and we're making that Outreach you know uh to those families that are concerned and going through exactly what you just said so the principles do have it they can give it out they've had had it um
110now the teachers have it so we're we're hoping we've covered all of our bases there great thank you thank you thank you Mrs par thank you for this thank you yeah oh sorry thanks um thank you for uh out laying this out for parents I know that there's a lot um as my colleagues have said uh a lot of parents that are concerned about this so I just to be really clear by third party we mean ice right any ice agent that were to come to a building they're considered a third party okay I just wanted to make that clear here too um for people who may not understand that so um have there been any instances at all so far since the um Federal man date or anything like that in schools yes not
111to my knowledge okay no no anyone trying nothing like that at all okay so zero so far so um but we did see the effects of it with students being out um and students coming to school with passports in their backpacks I I heard anecdotally that type of stuff was happening we don't we've never I haven't gotten I heard that anecdotally from not a teacher so I um I I have not heard that that's not been relayed to me from any principles and I I don't think the superintendent has heard that we ask the principles that too at our recent meeting and they have not heard that so we're not sure where that information is coming from there is a lot of disinformation out there and unfortunately it's social media based which is part of
112the problem because there are social media groups out there causing disinformation and panic among families particularly immigrant families which is making it even worse so we're trying to make sure that we work directly with those families so that we're dispelling all this misinformation um and making sure that they know that they're safe to come to school so it's it's it's hard to tell what is real what isn't but we have not heard that students are coming to school with their passports okay so I guess my my point more was that families are feeling the effects of it especially where we had the um the uh absences I did also actually hear um of an incident which kind of broke my heart that um so we have a lot of community police officers and we have
113you know Community Police that are in and around are buildings and they've worked hard to create those relationships at the schools and with the students um I heard that at one of the schools uh officer Don may have uh had a visit and um a lot of kids uh went home and told families there was a police officer in my building today and so I think that we do have some messaging to do where um kids whether or not they're scared on their own um are hearing it at their home from their families they're kind of getting that secondhand anxiety about it and I'm just wondering if there's any additional ways we can support the students that are in the classrooms and the the teachers so the teachers get this information which is great um
114but also are we are we and can we give any kind of social emotional support and maybe it's more of a question from Mara but any talking points or any ways to kind of um help students that are feeling that in their classroom more so and just you know not every teacher is trained and how to how to handle this this is heavy stuff and really um serious uh anxiety for families so I don't know that everyone's automatically trained or knows how to do that but I feel like just supporting those kids and the fear that they may feel even just seeing a community police officer walk into their building is going to set off some um alarms for them so I'm just wondering how to support that portion of it where it's not the
115law it's more just how kids are feeling about um that do you know what I'm saying yeah if we I did not hear about the issue with um our um uh officer Dawn um if we did hear about that we would have addressed it I I did not hear about that um and um so if if people are hearing issues relative to concerns about our offices being mistaken for something other than the community support that they to they're there to do office of dawn is part of the the Dare program I'll certainly try and I mean if you if I know the school that would be helpful yeah no I'm happy to share that it's just more I'm just more using it as an in like an example that I'm feeling like if that's the
116case that could very well be the case anytime they see a police Community police officer now so and we worked hard to create those bonds so I Would by it because off sidon is so well known in the district and he's in all of our schools and he has been since the beginning of the school year so it's just a surprise to me that someone would see officer Dawn or any of our school resource officers who are very familiar with the schools we take our school resource offices in their roles very seriously and we make sure for this very reason that they're well known in the schools in which they work and they're well known in the community so that when a student sees a police officer like officer Dawn or our school resource officers
117at the high school at the middle school they're comfortable even approaching them to ask for assistance so um to hear that students were frightened by Officer Dawn that that's obviously concerning to me I'd like to address it right away and know what school that is at um because um it shouldn't be happening obviously right I we have a lot of families moving in student didn't and I just want to make sure the information is reliable too that this is something that's actually happening so that we can address it because I can tell you right now that from speaking with our principles our students and families with a few exceptions and and we're working with those exceptions are extremely comfortable now coming to school and I just want to make sure that whatever message we send
118out doesn't make the situation worse and then we're back to trying to comfort families and reassure families that school is safe when we're at that point now right that's my only concern and I that I just wanted to address the off of dawn situation because that is extremely concerning to me especially not having known about it because I would have addressed it immediately um because we don't want us students being frightened by quiny police offices in the city we want the opposite effect and that's why we've engaged the quinsey police and the quiny police assistant across the board at all levels of our schools right and so I'll just you know we'll we'll look into that situation and and make sure that it's addressed okay yeah no and please take from my comment more that
119it's more the anxiety is there right so if there's just ways we can support um these students in feeling that even you know I I get that but also you know and there's other uh Federal mandates that have come down about you know um lgbtq students and things like that as well so I'm just talking about just the in general feeling of anxiety that students are having in general um may just be higher and and teachers may hear about that from students first because that their point of contact so just if there's any support additional we we could do Mora has actually shared I know she did share and she's been talking with her counselors and has shared I don't know if she's yeah she's shared she has shared a lot of resources with the
120counselors to help with just that yeah I did send out like it's kind of like a one-page thing about some talking points that counselors could use with kids and teachers could use with kids just about keeping the routine I'm glad to see you're here today you know just reinforcing that they're safe um you know kind of basic but it is a way to kind of check in to make sure that kids are doing okay and the families that called and reached out to principles we made sure that the family aison had some guidance as well to speak with those families to make sure that kids were attending so we are not trying to offer like legal advice or anything like that it's more just about reassuring kids that they're safe um that parents should send
121their children to school um and to give the classroom teachers just something to say in response you know it is just a nice supportive response that will make a huge difference that's great that's exactly what I was talking about thank you I appreciate I'm glad that you've done that thank and I'm not surprised but thank you for okay thank you so much y thank you mayor I'd just like to make a few remarks some directly to schools some other otherwise but the city of quinsey has been working with ice for years their Federal agency uh and we follow the law so and we have at the police department arrest and it's determined that it's an illegally immigrant ice is contacted if it's a serious case ice may come in and take that person if not
122uh the normal process follows so we do follow the law with the federal government and that and uh we had people embedded with the DEA there is a relationship uh number one number two is um you know elections have consequences and I don't want to get into a liberal conservative debate public Republicans versus Democrats but this president said he was going to do certain things and one of those things we he's talked about getting rid of the Department of Education I'm not taking a stand on that but I want to remind people that you know essentially Congress controls the pur strings so um my interest is is that we continue to get funded with Title One Food Services and all those important services that we provide to our kids Massachusetts leads the country K through
12312 in education uh in in standards in quinsey I would argue is the best in Far urban districts go we take it seriously we support the families we invest in education so I I hope everybody can just calm down I I don't know where some of this is coming from because I haven't seen there's a lot of stuff out there for sure as you mentioned social media but I haven't seen any school in uh issue where someone's G in to drag a kid out of a school anywhere so I haven't seen that so I hope everyone can just calm down a little bit I know our police resource officers do a great job for us uh yes they are building relationships but they also are another set of eyes and ears let's not forget some
124of the incidents we've had in schools around the country there's bad people out there that do bad things so uh we always have to be cognizant of that as well so uh again we work uh very closely we're an entity of the state you know we're a district of the state we follow their rules regulations uh and do I think we need another layer of rules and regulations for the government I don't think we do we do it well here in Massachusetts but don't cut out funding thank you thank you um I just want to say two things one um thank you for bringing this forward for suggesting that we see this because we are getting a lot of questions and people want to know what what we're doing and and it's reassuring to know
125that we already do all these things um and also um I think to the point of not really amplifying this information out there to create Panic is really important because I mean it's like when you have your kids and they fall and if you if you go oh my God then they're going to start crying if you look at them and say oh you're G to be fine everything's good then it g it gives a level of calmness right so I think we need to approach this in a way that we're not getting um ahead of ourselves we're not seeing the issues we hope that we won't but we're supporting them with conversation and we're supporting them with these policies that we have in place so um it's good for us to hear it so
126that we have answers when people do call us so thank you for bringing it forward and talking about it thank you thanks thank you thanks that's me and next on the agenda we have Mr meany and um QPS fy2 Grant book correct yeah uh We've distributed the grant booklet to all of you uh I believe it was going to be referred to uh committee if there were any questions on it uh but again it's the same one we produce year after year uh the U major change this year in the grants uh was uh reduction in title one uh which is not what we're looking for 300,000 000 and obviously the elimination of all the Esser funding which was of great help to us um but we're um in good shape fiscally with with our
127current budget as well as all the the grant funding so okay so we just have to refer to um budget and finance okay referred thank you you thank you all next on the agenda is s msba accelerated repair program statements of interest um superintendent M thank you everyone and um happy to report that we will be submitting um four projects for potential for consideration by The msba Accelerated repair program I do have to thank of the mayor and maintenance department um for uh their work in identifying the areas that would qualify for the msba accelerated repair program of course uh the following are and we need an individual vote on each one but the following are the uh Point webs at Middle School windows and doors and roof uh next is the uh Parker Elementary
128School roof the Broad Meadows Middle School roof and the Atlantic Middle School roof there's no guarantee that we'll get any or uh all but we're trying to get we we're hopeful to get them all but certainly we need to submit them otherwise we would have no chance at all of getting them so uh since all these projects are eligible for potential msba accelerated repair program uh uh money uh to pay for them uh we would request that um each one of these projects have an individual roll call vote to um be submitted for the msba consideration um okay so we're going to vote on each one first would be the point where Webster Middle School windows and doors and roof do we have a motion to accept a motion by Mr boli second by Mrs
129Hubley roll call vote Mr boli yes Mrs Cahill yes Mrs Mr grro Mrs hu Mrs Lio Mrs peros and Mayo yes next on the list is the FW Parker Elementary School roof um second um motion by Mr gutro second by Mrs Lio um roll call vote Mr boli yes Mrs Cahill yes Mr Gat yes Mrs hu Mrs Libo yes Mrs peros yes and may yes next on the list is the Broad Meadows Middle School roof um motion by Mr gutro second by Mrs huble roll call vote Please Mr boli yes Mrs kahill yes Mr Gat yes Mrs huble Mrs Lio Mrs peros yes and mayoke yes and next on the list we have the Atlantic Middle School roof motion by Mr gutro second by Mr boli Ro call vote Mr boli yes Mrs kahill yes
130Mr grro yes Mrs huble yes Mrs Libo yes Mrs peros yes and Maya Coke yes thank you all on this subject thank you if I might say something on this thank you madam chair I just want to thank superintendent and the team and laa for all the work that goes into this also commissioner Hines and the team from public buildings they work very hard we have a great partnership uh when you look at the work that's been done over the last several years working in concert together as a city uh and of course being very aggressive at the state level for these grants so uh and I and I'd be remiss if I didn't say the SBA because we have worked very well with the SBA over the years uh we don't fool around we
131hire the best in consultants and engineers and and they respect that um but we also know there's limited funds for around the state uh so they do the best they can what they have so it's important we continue to get in the queue uh and fight for the projects but I want to thank everybody that's does all the work on it yes I I want to reiterate what the mayor said I you know I work with some other the school districts and they don't they don't get the stuff done they just don't get this stuff done and the cooperation between the city side and the school school side has been phenomenal in quinsey and I did when I tell people the kind of stuff we've had they're shocked that the city has been able to
132do that much stuff and it really is because of the professionalism of both sides of the uh thing so I really appreciate the fact that um the city Side works so well with the the school system and I really want to thank you all for that work um next we have a consent agenda roll call vote for um the items meeting minutes donations Grant student travel motion to approve motion to approve by Mrs huy second by Mr boli on the motion on the motion Mrs Leo looking at the out out of state travel for the trips $200 for a quinsey high school student to go on the exact same trip $496 is it because of the numbers because because of FIS students fund ra and the North Quincy High kids don't fundraise not to the
133same extent they also have a much smaller group going eight students versus 32 students it's kind of outrage we do work to make sure that any student wants to go together they are going together it they didn't fundraise together okay I was just just a very odd it was a very odd thing to read when I was going through them so thank you very much for that sort of explanation Mo oh yeah I know we group these uh and and it certainly makes sense for us for efficiency but I did not want to go by and not say 80,000 from Granite telecommunication Rob Hill continues to invest in quinsey in so many ways and I just want to state that publicly uh and also for the the grants down further I know the team works
134hard on the grant programs thank the leadership team andbody involved in applying for those thank you and also Boston Scientific too for their donations so it's great and we're going to send thank you notes from the school committee to them for the gifts approved yes yes thank you all say okay uh roll call vote Please Mr M yes Mrs kill yes Mr H Leo yes yes thank you okay um additional business we have communications upcoming school committee meetings 6:30 p.m. regular meeting on March 12th and March 26th April 9th May 7th and May 21st June 11th 2025 subcommittee meetings at this time would be at 6: p.m. we have a February 26th for athletics and Ness March 19th teaching and learning April 30th special education reports of subcommittee Mayor KO to review the January 22nd
135quarterly budget and finance subcommittee meeting really not much to report we're on track we're on track okay all good um Mr gutro January 22nd 2025 policy subcommittee meeting we held a policy subcommittee meeting uh we made a motion to approve prop propos creation of school committee policy section on motor vehicle idling on school grounds motion was seconded by Mrs Lio and there was a roll call vote all passed it will appear on the March 12th school committee meeting for discussion and be eligible for a vote on March 26th okay um okay thank you and at this time we need a motion we're going to be going into executive session and will not be returning to um the meeting so can I have a motion second um move by the mayor second by U Mrs huy
136and do we need a roll call vote Mr boli yes Mrs kahill yes Mr Gat yes Mrs Hubley Mrs Libo Mrs peros yes and Maya Koke yes thank you thank you everyone thank you to our student leaon as well thank you both