001i would like to call the meeting to order if we could stand for the pledge of allegiance please i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all welcome everyone um this is my last meeting is chair so i'm gonna tie up from some loose ends make a few comments and we will reorganize the board afterwards i want to welcome our newest member kristin o'connell so welcome to the board kristin and um i want to personally um thank this last year as we know has been a year unlike any other i want to thank the teachers the staff the janitors the bus drivers everyone involved with keeping our kids safe during covid and keeping
002our kids in school and um providing them with a with a great learning opportunity via hybrid and now that we're back in school um and now that we are back in school i just want to remind everybody that um the kids are going to be exhausted i'm sure the teachers are going to be exhausted but um kids are going to be a little bit cranky and you know they they're used to zooming in their pajamas and eating out of the fridge and cabinets whenever they want so if everybody can have a little patience that would be much appreciated i attended an mcas opt out movement zoom and it was really interesting most of the speakers were folks from larger cities like new bedford and lawrence and but it was just that reiteration that it would
003be foolish to have mcas this year with the learning environment in which our kids have been placed and just how mcast really only measures or most often measures um social status and less about learning so um i'm not sure what the final decision will be john and danielle will keep us posted but i know right now it's postponed um and we'll see what happens by may um the other thing i wanted to bring up was there is a couple in medford who is a multi-racial couple and they have started a business called lovinglittleminds.org and they have it's like a book club that you um can subscribe to and they have multi-racial multicultural books for kids like zero to i think kindergarten age but you can go to their website i just thought that was really
004interesting um if folks wanted to have some some more library books in their house for that reason okay i want to address um two huge events that have taken place since our last meeting the first being the football incident as we will call it which in which um players um to the best of our knowledge players on the offensive line used the term auschwitz as a play call and i will tell you when i heard that it was a gut punch i was sick to my stomach and i think now we are at where we are at and everybody knows that is wrong that is deemed anti-semitic by jewish people and it just had no place on the football field that being said i have been in attendance with multiple zoom meetings with um town
005players the i mean town stakeholders board of selectmen um no place for hate duxbury for all interfaith council i've attended zooms with the senior football players and senator barry feingold i've attended a zoom with the entire football team and their parents and when i tell you these boys are respectful and remorseful and embarrassed it is the truth and i am hoping as a town we are ed educators and we need to move forward in educating everyone as to what is appropriate what is inappropriate um and how we will not get in this situation again the other um situation is the john blake case and i can't speak to the case because there's pending litigation but as a mother i am heartbroken for the foley family and i am deeply disturbed by the allegations and i
006i can't imagine what the foley family has endured and what they still are enduring so my deepest sincere condolences thank you at this time oh the other thing i wanted to mention um and this is sort of um in the makitimaka school committee but there have been a lot of questions so um surrounding different cases or different instances um what school committee is in charge of is budget policy and overseeing the superintendent right and that's come up a lot because we just had an election so what i did on saturday morning in my pajamas was reread some of our school policies um and and we go through and cull our school policies at various times but i particularly was interested in seeing the staff policies so i just want to share with you if you
007can bear with me a couple policies that i think are important um policy gb eb is staff conduct all staff members have a responsibility to familiarize themselves with and abide by the laws of the state as these affect their work the policies of the school committee and the regular regulations designed to implement them in the area of personal conduct the committee expects that teachers and others will conduct themselves in a manner that not only reflects credit to the school system but also sets forth a model worthy of emulation by students all staff members will be expected to carry out their assigned responsibilities with conscientious concern essential to the success of ongoing school operations and the instructional program of the following specific responsibilities which will be required of all personnel number one faithfulness and promptness and
008attendance to work number two support and enforcement of policies of the school committee and their implementing regulations and school rules in regards to the students number three diligence in submitting required reports promptly at the time specified number four care and protection of school property and number five concern for and attention to their own and the school system's legal responsibility for the safety and welfare of students including the need to ensure that students are under supervision at all times the other policy i want to bring to your attention is staff conduct physical contact gbe and these can be found under the school committee tab on our website physical contact between employees and students at school and during school sponsored functions the purpose of this policy is to provide all employees with guidance and direction with respect
009to physical contact between employees and students at school and during school-sponsored functions this is an area of educational policy judgment in law which is fraught with uncertainties and changing standards what constitutes appropriate physical contact in one set of circumstances may be totally inappropriate in another at the outset the decision of whether or not to touch a student must be made by the employee involved once it occurs its appropriateness will depend on a variety of factors not the least of which will be the student's reaction and the responses of other adults the duxbury school committee believes that its employees individually and collectively possess the wisdom and expertise necessary to conduct themselves in a manner which is educationally sound and acceptable both within the professional community and the community at large general principles number one all physical
010contact between employees and students should have a valid educational purpose and objective meeting the students needs not the staff members needs number two the use of physical contact or force in order to impose the staff member's will on a student is prohibited except in an emergency situation such as when a person is endangered threatened or at risk number three employees who observe physical contact between students and employees which they deem to be inappropriate are expected to report the observation to the building principal and or the superintendent as soon as possible if the contact is perceived to be immediately harmful by the observer prompt intervention to prevent further harm is expected number four questions of appropriateness of physical contact are to be determined by the context of the con sorry by the contact context of the
011contact on a case-by-case basis issues such as intent context location circumstances age and sex are all conv considerations that may be relevant number five touching students under their clothing in the genital areas or on the buttocks except in an emergency situation is illegal number six whether or not an emergency situation exists depends upon an objective rather than a subjective standard number seven instances of inappropriate physical contact initiated encouraged practiced and or tolerated by employees in even a single instance may result in disciplinary action that may include dismissal so i thought it was important to let the community know that we are aware that this is a heightened concern we do have policies and we believe that we will continue to examine and add or edit our policies as necessary thank you and now it is
012time as we do at every um every meeting at first meeting after the annual election is to reorganize the board so members i would like to take nominations for a new chair of the school committee i'd like to nominate shannon mosa would you like me to explain why or is that for later no um you can do it now okay shannon served on the school committee for five years now and i feel she's made a valuable contribution um to our deliberations um she very often brings into focus the concerns and the needs of students and families so that we are reminded that um that that's where our attention uh needs to be she has three children ages um two to ten i believe she grew up in duxbury she's a graduate of or an alumna
013of duxbury public schools in fact i think she has her reunion fairly soon and prior to serving on school committee she was um a member of the special education parent advisory group for about five years uh during which time i believe she spent uh just over a year as chairman of that group so she has experience running um and uh given where we are in this particular moment um i feel that her background uh and her familiarity with the town brings some experience uh to our board and and perhaps the leaders get leadership skills that will benefit our students thank you julia do we have any other chair nominations yes i'd like to nominate matt gambino i am new to the board obviously but from my experience this year i feel that matt went out
014of his way to touch base with the parents who were concerned specifically the students first group which i was heavily involved with and i felt like he really made an effort to see where we were coming from and try to provide us a little bit of guidance and insight which we appreciated very much i feel that it's important this year and going forward that we have someone who's who has listened to parents and or some of us and who continues to want to you know bring us all together and provide a little bit of balance to the board i think matt um welcomed me very well to this board has provided me with some guidance which i've appreciated and i think he would be a good option for school committee chair this year thank you
015kristen okay so the first nominee is shannon um can i have um a poll if you would like shannon um julia i just want to make sure it gets seconded i apologize oh you're right you're right i'm sorry can i actually we don't need to i read robert's rules you don't need to have a second when you realign that's okay i tried to do my homework so kelly yeah this one i mean this is new to me too and i know you and i talked about this so we're gonna do a roll twice or are we gonna do a poll once where every member says the name of the person they want we can do it either way i like i do like that way matt we talked about it's always been um a roll
016call but i like i like the pull so just so everyone sort of understands i talked to um this is like a really nice guy at the masc and he knows everything and i swear he just sits in his chair and answers questions all day and yeah that um his recommendation was to do the following put if there's more than one nominee put the vote let's say both nominees names on the record can have discussion if you want then we go through a poll vote so the poll vote is just done once and each member says the name of the nominee that they would like to elect then we would you know kelly you would then say does anyone want to change their vote and if not then we someone would make a motion to
017appoint the uh the person who gets the most votes so i would recommend we do it that way because it seems pretty straightforward and then then people don't have to say nay which you know like i would feel better so that's what i mean that's how i recommend to do it all righty so the two nominees are um julia adams and matt gambino actually no it's shannon shannon sorry the artist formerly known as julia adams this is my um last meeting we can see why because i'm totally fried okay so we have got and i wrote down shannon and i said julia because julia made the nomination shannon moza and matt gambino do anybody have any other discussion on either candidate [Music] okay i just kind of want to make a comment that um i
018think needs to be said and and i'm going to let this go and i'm going to ride off into the sunset because i am not going to be chair i have two more years and i will not be chair um i feel that every single school committee member on the school committee this past year has listened to every parent um so i just kind of want to put that out there maybe the answers weren't what people wanted to hear but we did listen so okay um julia say who you would like uh shannon mercer okay matt uh i'm gonna say matt gambino that's a good choice um shannon have time to mute yourself too always shannon moser okay christian matt gambino and kelly um this is not easy for me um i'm gonna go shannon
019because of her experience um and what we're facing right now so three votes for shannon and two for matt means shannon mosa is our new school committee chair congratulations congratulations shannon congratulations and we need a vice chair um and i would like to nominate julia adams it julia has been invaluable to the school committee this is her last term julia if you don't know served in government in england for school government for 10 years and if i ever have a question i can call julia and she is on it and as we saw tonight she's already corrected me a couple times on uh we need to make sure we vote in suzanne is our secretary and yeah so i would like to nominate julia for vice chair do we have any other nominations i nominate
020matt gambino for vice chair okay any discussion okay roll call julia julia muted sorry okay matt uh julia adams uh shannon adams kristen matt gambino and kelly julia adams so julia is vice chair congratulations julia thank you very much all right and with that au voir all you are shannon thank you kelly um so i think we move along with the agenda now um so we're going to the approval of the minutes from march 4th 2021. um does anybody have any questions about the minute or can i have a motion for approval oh you know what we just need to mention that uh that we want to um we want suzanne to be our secretary i think what you need good point julia see this is why so do we do the same thing we
021nominate should i uh can i nominate um suzanne to br to continue to be our recording secretary second so we should do a similar we can just do a roll call vote since this is single okay um julia suzanne kelly suzanne matt i suzanne and kristen suzanne shannon suzanne thank you sazam good job suzanne okay so now do we move on to the minutes okay so any discussion or can i have a motion to approve don't move second okay roll call vote uh julia sorry i shouldn't do that because i wasn't at the meeting sorry i watched the video second okay okay could you do you want me not to skip you for voting as well julia since you weren't there okay so yeah please kelly yes hi yeah matt hi all right shannon i
022okay so the next agenda item the reports for the school committee um dr antonucci you're up first so um madam chair um i have a statement a prepared statement that i'd like to read tonight uh and and if you'll indulge me it's it's fairly lengthy um it's probably 12 or 13 minutes um but i think it's of critical importance given where we are um if you would mind i'll i'll make that statement now please um and please bear with me i am going to read it um because the the the content's important so it would be an understatement to say uh that the past two weeks have been challenging for the duxbury community the two issues that we have been dealing with first the use of anti-semitic language by our football team and the second
023the allegations made against one of our teachers has rocked the very foundation of our district culture we know that members of our school community and members of the greater community are hurt and upset what is most upsetting is the negative paul suddenly cast over our school district which does not reflect the incredible work that our educators do in our schools every day and ignores the fact that our students represent the community with distinction in and out of the classroom i want to make a few comments on each of these issues first as it relates to the football team as has been widely communicated the district has retained the services of an independent investigator to look further into this matter like both of these issues that we are discussing tonight it is critically important to get
024the facts correct that investigation began last week and it is ongoing what i do want to be clear about is that the decision to sever ties with mr mamron as head coach of the football team is final and will not be revisited when that decision was made it was made with ample information that led me to the conclusion that a change in leadership was needed for the duxbury football program to address the argument made by some members of our community that the language used was not anti-semitic i defer to the anti-defamation league the attorney general's office of civil rights and most importantly members of the jewish community in town and all throughout the country who would disagree with that assessment we need to move forward from this conversation in addition i want to talk about
025members of our community who have really risen to the occasion in the past two weeks and that is our student athletes who are members of the football team since the events of march 12th the football team has shown initiative and has demonstrated significant growth in their understanding of the impact of words and actions on and off the field last wednesday the players attended a presentation by a third generation holocaust survivor whose grandfather and uncles survived auschwitz as young adults during world war ii the presentation was powerful and our student athletes walked away with a greater understanding of how the holocaust was not just a historical event but a lived experience for many in our community on their own the football captains and several other players accepted an invitation by senator barry feingold to meet and
026learn about the holocaust from his perspective as a former football player and member of the jewish community who was impacted by these recent events additionally the captains have met with rabbi howard cohen and are exploring scheduling a meeting between the rabbi and the entire team our players are demonstrating a genuine understanding of the gravity of what has occurred and are committed to doing the work they need to do as a team senator feingold in his presentation to our students on march 27th shared that there is a term in judaism known as teshuva which means return or repentance as an educational institution we feel that we can use this experience for our players to learn and grow and we believe that allowing our students to return to the football field is a crucial step in this
027learning journey at this time the football games against marshfield for this week remain on the schedule i sincerely hope we can move forward and move forward stronger than before in the coming weeks and months we are going to need to identify who we are and what we believe in as a school district and community people in education are at the heart of everything that we do in public schools mistakes will happen and when possible we have the opportunity to turn mistakes into important learning moments sometimes situations will arise that are uncomfortable at first but eventually allow us to make important adjustments resulting in growth as an organization we recognize that right now we have the opportunity to make substantive and long-lasting change around issues of diversity equity inclusion and religious and racial sensitivity in our
028schools and community we welcome the feedback of parents and community as we transition through this process and i want to comment on the allegations made against mr blake in the recent civil court filing first i hope it goes without saying that we are deeply disturbed by these allegations the idea that a member of our staff would have hurt a student is an educator's worst nightmare i would also add that i am a parent too and i know parker's death is heartbreaking for the foley family at the same time i need to reiterate that the district took all appropriate steps to investigate this matter and obtain relevant facts and then took proper legal action in this case the lawsuits inference that i or my administration had knowledge of the abuse and did not take action is
029patently untrue but some context is important first you may recall that in our statements last week that we did in fact receive an anonymous letter and phone call in 2018 which made allegations of abuse against mr blake that letter also went to the duxbury police department and the plymouth county district attorney's office other than excuse me other than the gender of the alleged victim it had no other identifying information not an age of the victim not a year that it may have occurred no specific details whatsoever of the alleged abuse despite the fact that it was anonymous we took it very seriously and took the unusual and aggressive step of placing mr blake on leave to investigate i should add here that in this case in any time we are dealing with sensitive personnel matters
030decisions like this are made in consultation with the district's legal counsel unfortunately that investigation by the duxbury police department and the plymouth county district attorney's office as well as our own internal investigation failed to yield any actionable evidence we had two other instances of misconduct by mr blake that i think are important to mention first in 2017 we received a letter about mr blake's treatment of players as a hockey coach it was more of a complaint about his coaching style we reviewed that matter internally and found it not to be a credible complaint in 2019 we received a complaint from a student who made the claim that mr blake had made the student feel uncomfortable in gym class and that he was creepy again we took it extremely seriously as we would any time a
031student makes such a complaint and launched an internal investigation as well as reported to the duxbury police department the internal investigation yielded no actionable evidence of misconduct and the dexterity police department found no evidence of criminal misconduct however since we had received the 2018 anonymous letter we decided to hire an independent investigator to look further into the claims in the end the independent investigator was not able to substantiate the claim and we were unable to take personnel action last week i made this statement to the media that we have been on high alert for a few years and i want to provide some context for that comment once we receive the anonymous letter and phone call in 2018 we were understandably on high alert based on the seriousness of the allegations that being said we
032are unable to take legal or personnel action since multiple investigations conducted by the duxbury public schools the duxbury police department and the plymouth county district attorney's office failed to yield any actionable evidence the safety of our students is paramount but one is not able to simply fire someone with statutory and contractual job protections based on unsubstantiated allegations in november 2020 an attorney representing the foley family contacted the plymouth county district attorney and alleged that their son who had recently passed away had been sexually abused by mr blake when he was in middle school in 2006. they also identified themselves as the anonymous letter writer and caller from 2018. we immediately placed mr blake on administrative leave and again collaborated with all relevant agencies including the duxbury police department the plymouth county district attorney's office the
033department of children and families and the department of elementary and secondary education at the conclusion of the this most recent investigation the district attorney did not proceed with criminal charges against mr blake once we learned of the da's decision the duxbury public schools chose to hire its own independent investigator at the end of an exhaustive independent investigation our investigator like the police and district attorney was not able to find direct evidence of sexual abuse but did conclude that mr blake violated district policy with those findings in hand we immediately began termination proceedings with mr blake i can also report that mr blake's employment with the district terminated on april 1st 2021 the duxbury police department has received over a dozen anonymous tips in relation to this case and has followed up on every one of
034them we have been informed that none of the tips are actionable from a legal standpoint if there is anyone who believes they have relevant information to share we ask that you please contact detective mike bowles directly at who 781-934-5656 they have relevant information to share we ask that you please contact detective mike bowles directly at 781-934-5656 1121. i have heard from some community members about an anonymous facebook post alleging that district staff were under a gag order at best that is a mischaracterization of the actual message conveyed to teachers the building principles encourage teachers to acknowledge the very public and painful challenges we are experiencing in our school community when and if it made sense in the classroom however teachers were not given permission to engage in conversation or conjecture with students about individuals colleagues
035or athletic teams while there is still an active investigation doing so would be a violation of privacy laws finally anytime there are crises like this in communities there is always a call for more information to be released i want to be clear about this the information and statements that the duxbury public schools has released about both issues are the information and statements that we can release i have a professional an ethical obligation to adhere to laws that protect the privacy rights of students and staff and i will do nothing short of that thank you john um we will continue to follow the agenda the next item is the assistant superintendents report dr klingerman thank you just shifting gears a bit i just wanted to share a slight adjustment to the school calendar when we were
036able to make the adjustments necessary to achieve the time on learning minutes at the secondary level over the past few weeks we did have to adjust one date so i wanted to bring to your attention that wednesday april 28th will be a regular early release day at the duxbury middle school in duxbury high school only there's no adjustment to any early anything at the elementary level and so what that means on that one wednesday um students will be dismissed at 11 25 rather than the 110 dismissal time that we have at the with our current model and so ms mcguire and mr donovan will be sharing a reminder of this in their newsletters so that that's it for me thank you uh next on the agenda is a report from the director of business and
037finance um so tonight i wanted to bring to your attention the invoice warrants that have been processed since our last school committee meeting and with the adoption of our amended signature policy we have processed three warrants warrant 36 which was processed on march 5th that warrant amount was 204 and 187.43 cents uh warrant number 38 which was processed on march 19th in the amount of 511 676 dollars and six cents in warrant number 40 which was processed on april 2nd and that was in the amount of 226 644 dollars in one cent i also wanted to bring to your attention tonight that we're currently in the process of onboarding a new resource to the district called let's talk let's talk is a communication tool that will be available to us here 24 hours a day
038from any computer tablet or phone and so this tool provides community members staff students and others the ability to engage with the district from a centralized area on a number of different topics and those topics can really um be defined by us here at the district so in the near future um we're still in the initial process of rolling out this project but there will be an icon right on the district's landing page right on the the main page um on the website that says let's talk we value your opinion and so you can see that here on the screen there's a small icon right on the right hand side um and so when the user clicks on that they have the ability to pick a specific topic and as i had said earlier we
039are able to identify what we want our trending topics to be listed as so if there's any general questions certainly in the past year um having a topic area for any coven 19 or back to school concerns and questions um would certainly be relevant the user can then go in and just identify whether they're a student an employee a parent or a guardian or a community member and they also have the ability to say if they're going to be asking a question potentially providing a comment or making a suggestion raising a concern or offering a compliment to the district um the rest of the form is very similar to an email where they have the ability to enter in a subject area and then they can type up their message and then you can see
040here at the bottom the user has the ability to either put in contact information which includes their name an email or a phone number or else they also have the ability to submit an anonymous request and you can see there's a small box at the bottom that says hide your contact information from the district and so for the end user or for the uh for our community members it very much um mimics the process of sending an email but for us here internally in the district because of all of the um different answers that those users are going to provide at the beginning of entering in their request it really gives us the ability as we are going through and monitoring the different communication that we receive to provide some good analytics on some of
041the questions comments and concerns that we're receiving so it should this tool really should be able to help us prioritize different questions that we get some of the topics that we may receive in inquiries more frequently we can be able to provide um some more information on a real-time basis so um as i had said earlier we're just in the initial stages of rolling out this this uh resource for the district but we're looking forward to being able to provide it to our community members within the next couple of weeks thank you mr flake sounds like a very interesting tool look forward to seeing the analytics on that um i can are there any questions about the tool we um yeah i have a question it it does look like a great opportunity for us
042to um you know be able to uh participate in more targeted communication one of the things that i was curious about is like when i hit select topic um and this may be somewhere else but and you might have mentioned this so using this tool can i target specific groups to email too so in other words would this be the replacement for emailing just the smoke the school committee so yes so we're in just in the initial stages of the configuration but we do want to expand upon the topic so certainly we um are expecting that will include each one of the schools so if the a parent um or a staff member wanted to reach out to the individual school members they certainly could i think i'm not sure if there would be an
043opportunity for us to include potentially a link for the school committee members as well it would be it's kind of a separate system that you would have to kind of go in and monitor the communication so it doesn't go directly to your email um so that's definitely something to keep in mind um but the great thing about the tool is we really have the ability here as um system administrators to to configure it in any way that we see fit so yeah let me let me add two actually uh the two questions there matt but the elegance of this system and i think the value of this system on our end is that we can kind of for lack of a better term triage or prioritize what comes in our goal really is to make
044sure that people get their questions answered in the most efficient and effective way possible and so from a chain of command standpoint if we get a question up here uh that's best suited for the special ed department we can we can retrieve that message and then direct it for example in this case example to special education again the goal is to make sure that the person gets the best answer the most accurate answer and kind of the most in the most efficient way so that for us is is is one of the the biggest benefits and we're trying to we want to turn around to be better we want the accuracy to be better does that make sense yeah i i have a follow-up that's that's great and because i was actually planning on asking
045this after the the chair update but i think shannon if it's okay i i just want to bring up a related issue with this now because i do think it's related to this tool so the question i was going to ask or i guess the suggestion that i have is uh right now um when someone from the public emails the school committee email address i think i have a couple of concerns and suggestions with it so one of the concerns that i would recommend we look at from a policy standpoint is to come up with with a policy in a process for deciding how and when and under what sort of timing to respond to a question or a comment that comes into school committee because right now it's kind of like the wild west
046someone will send something sometimes the chair will answer it sometimes other people answer it and we really don't have any policy or guidelines around sort of expected turnaround and i think sort of the unfortunate end result is sometimes people will email stuff with a question and no one gets back to him um so my suggestions are to come up with some guidelines around that and then uh tangentially to that in the interest of transparency which right now is i think rightfully top of mind for everybody um i've noticed and spoken with chairs from other districts around here and most of them actually use email addresses that are in line with the the school email domain um now you know if things come up and people have foia requests and we have to sort of i
047don't know the law but if we have to be sort of compliant with that i would suggest that we use those school domain email addresses because it just properly segregates that stuff from our personal stuff i know some of us use like ducks at gmail and stuff like that but um so that would be a suggestion i think that would go along with that and then finally um i think that there's some opacity around who gets these emails so right now if i'm correct when someone sends an email to the school committee if they don't know any better and usually they don't know any better they think that we're only getting that email but we don't so john also gets that email and there may be others on it so i believe it would be
048a best practice to limit the recipients of that group email to just school committee members or at the very least make it obvious who is uh who is getting those email addresses so i would just like to make a suggestion that we take a look at that and uh create a policy so that we have some repeatability around how we would do it matt thank you i think that's um those are some good suggestions and it'll go along some of the comments that i have so i think we're dovetailing well okay so we'll move on to the next agenda item which is the um chair report um so um i am um tend to shy away from from longer statements and i tend to be kind of more of a worker bee um but given
049all that's recently happened i um i would like to say a few words and it is a little bit longer and there's some ideas in here as well kind of similar to mats on some path forward so so um but first um before addressing the two recent situations i i first would like to similar to kelly i would like to thank the faculty staff and administration for all the hard work that has gone into the past year and congratulate everyone on returning students to school i don't want to don't want to lose sight of that i also like to thank kelly and matt for their leadership over the past year and um i also just want to say that i very much appreciate doctor international's statement tonight and i hope it clarifies many questions um
050[Music] we find ourselves in a very painful and haunting situation our school community has been worn out by the extreme circumstances brought by cove over the past year and now we have these two traumatic crises one right after another my heart goes out to everyone impacted by both the anti-semitic play calls as well as the dms related accusations including especially the foley family i want to thank everyone who's sharing their pain their experiences their thoughts concerns and opinions in various forums these conversations and the sharing of experiences background and perspectives essential for duxbury as a community to come together and find a path forward and to develop trust amongst different groups i fully support the board of select people's recent reaffirmation of the proclamation committing duxbury to inclusion and equity i would also like to
051acknowledge and i think you already heard matt touch on this the community feedback requesting more transparency and action by the school committee i think we all hear you we are open to dialogue and we will work to share as much information as we can um social media is tricky for a legislative body like the school committee so i encourage people to you know again to what matt just said this is where we're dovetailing you know directly contact an individual school committee member email or group email address now you're going to have this new let's talk tool reach out to your school council representatives the principal use the pre-existing anonymous tip line and then with regards to the two specific situations reach out to the investigator currently engaged by the district as well as the police
052contact that dr internuci provided tonight we want and we need to hear everybody's voice um on a little bit of a personal note just so you know as new chair so people kind of understand where i'm coming from in this role um i am a member of the dhs class of 1991 and we're celebrating our 30th reunion this year a long time some of the emotions and experiences recently shared by current and previous students have touched me personally and to be honest awoken feelings from my time as a dhs student this surprised me and i've been struggling with that unexpected consequence over the last two weeks um i ran for school committee because i was raised by parents who are fierce believers in public education and i carry that same conviction i also came to
053my seat as a strong advocate for inclusion and diversity having lived in another culture and because my oldest daughter is blessed with an extra chromosome her difference is a thing of beauty but it creates many challenges when living in a community that doesn't celebrate differences so uh i'm promising tonight to reinvigorate my efforts to champion kindness and the celebration of differences within our school system and also within our broader town community to those ends i have a few ideas um on how we as a school committee can help to move the needle forward and and find a path for us to to get through this due to the open meeting law these ideas have not been vetted by the committee as a whole so please take these ideas just for the brainstorming ideas you know
054that they are and that there's a lot of work ahead of us um i think one the issue to move forward i think and i think that john you know did a good job on touching some of these items tonight in his his statement but i believe that we all need to better understand the context within which we're engaging the facts but also the legal construct i would like to propose a workshop for the school committee and the community together so we can all better understand the laws and regulations within which a public school system in massachusetts operates you know protections for student staff the educational reform act of 1993 open meeting law the role of executive session etc by having this better understanding i'm hopeful that we can be more creative as we work
055through these difficult circumstances we need to as a committee work through this idea i'd like to put this on our next agenda for discussion um and come to agreement on what it's going to look like but you know my idea was something like half education by external counsel and half active dialogue moderated by the masc during which we could agree to school committee operating protocols so map that goes to email things like that that could be part of this dialogue so that we're all starting on the same same page um so please stay tuned i think this is one that i think we're all eager to probably um dig into a bit i hope uh we do need to reach alignment on it so it's just an idea um and i think i already touched
056on this but we will likely embark we will embark on a review of relevant policies and in addition to a traditional review to confirm consistency with current laws and regulations and ideas to see if we can incorporate items like reporting education and training within these policies um there you know and this is where we are here in the community uh one community member reached out and shared a certain type of sensitivity sensitivity training that they've undergone and um this type of practical example um in the broader community sharing that is helpful it helps us to stay in tune with broader public sentiment and experiences we of course want to during the policy review address the need to provide our teachers and students with the support guidance and tools that they need to have difficult conversations
057with and provide support as appropriate to students families and community members i think we're actually doing a good job here but we just need to confirm that and have those conversations i'd like to investigate and discuss the possibility of a director of diversity inclusion i have previously advocated for an inclusion coordinator within special education but a community member reached out with this elevated idea and based on the last several weeks of community discussion history as well as the recent reaffirmation by the board of select people there's clearly a broader need but this raises questions how do we fund a position like this is a town position is a school physician is it both so clearly there are a lot of ideas here and um i'm sure my fellow committee members have similar ideas that we
058can work through i just i just want to show that we're we're going to be working through this um so the community knows that we're listening and we're hearing i think we're going to be going through our list of school committee liaisons we could add a diversity inclusion position there as well um i feel like this is a very long list but um i would like to look at social emotional health it's been high on our radar for last few years but you know re-examining our current budget and the impact it has on being able to staff appropriate student support positions uh i had a communication piece for the school committee but matt already addressed that so i'll let that one go so anyways by working by working together with students faculty staff administration families
059community i i strongly believe that we can make positive change together um and i also anticipate that we will be working with the community bringing you in in different capacities perhaps advisory committees for example under policy bdf um and we we need to we need to work in quick fashion to rebuild confidence in the community in the schools so um i guess i'll just end with each of us is here to listen and to take action within our remit so please reach out um we're here to listen and and we will be rolling up our sleeves over the next few weeks so um julia as as vice chair would you like to share any thoughts um yes if you don't mind thank you for that and for all those comments um and ideas i i
060first wanted to mark the occasion of the return to school of almost all of our students and just give my appreciation again as shannon did to all this staff the administrators and teachers and everybody else who's made that possible um and and also i'd like to express my appreciation to the students and their families um this isn't the school year that uh any of us wished to have or it hasn't been the school year that any of us wish to have or wish to have for our students and um it's demanded a great deal of kind of flexibility and adaptability and uh effort from our families and you know at this particular time it's been a long year and so i'm i'm happy that the sun is shining more and i have i'm happy that
061the the students are back in school more and i'm hoping that those things will relieve the pressure that has been building on families through this school year um i'd also like to say that i i share the distress that community members have felt students parents everybody to see the schools kind of overshadowed by these news events or the events that prompted the news and so with regard to the football program news our our district's strategic plan um was written with input from across the community and it really um you know makes a commitment to the social emotional development of our students but also to um the values of inclusion and respect uh and respect across difference um and so i i um kind of pledge that i want to work towards the goals in that
062strategic plan and to support our students and our families and staff as we work towards meeting those aspirations that were were laid out a couple of years ago in relation to this announcement of the civil suit i understand the shock and concern that's been arising amongst students and parents and members of the community and i think shannon's ideas for a kind of further support for for student mental health and for opportunities for discussion are are really important in kind of helping everybody understand and how to move forward from that um i'd like to second shannon's suggestion that we review all our policies i think that that's not all our policies but the policies that are relevant i think that we need to um we need to confirm that the guidelines that we have in place
063as a school committee really provide the kind of support the best possible support to teachers and administrators um as they work to achieve the goals um you know the goals for our district that we we have in the strategic plan um also as part of the the policy review i and and matt i thought you kind of almost approached this um that we perhaps need to think about formulating a social media policy for the school committee in addition to other communication related issues that we you were you were discussing um and the reason uh is that i think it perhaps is confusing um for members of the community and that each of the fi each of the five uh school committee members perhaps has a different approach to social media and um and using social
064media to present their views either as a private citizen or as a school committee member and i think perhaps we need to have a kind of convergence or a consensus view of how we as school committee members communicate so that people know what to what to expect and we can be kind of have some clarity about what we can say and how we can say it and when we say it and why we say it um when we when we use uh social media and uh so i think that that might be a good point for discussion um there on uh just on a related note i would say that uh i i'd rather have a telephone conversation or a face-to-face conversation or a virtual conversation with a constituent or concerned parent or whoever rather
065than engage in written correspondence i appreciate the value of written correspondence whether it's email or text or social media but i really find it easier to confirm my understanding of someone else's concern if i can talk to them in a conversation and so for people who for those of you who feel that you have a kind of complex perspective to convey i'd really encourage you to to use a telephone or or some kind of conversation perhaps more than has been the pattern uh throughout this year all our telephone numbers are on the school school committee tab of the public schools website and so i'd really encourage you to to do that um and lastly i just um i guess close with the statement that uh speaking of social media it's on my facebook page for
066my campaign facebook page from 2016. and it's what i said then and what i believe now i that and believe now is that children are best served and student and schools are most effective when parents and teachers and administrators and town government work together in a constructive and mutually supportive way and i hope that that's where we're heading at this particular moment challenging moment for our schools that you know the coronavirus and these two events recent events mean that there's a lot of work for us to do together to help our students and i hope that we can we can do that this year thank you julia um i do if i do want to um i don't we don't have any other room in the agenda so i do want to you know if
067anybody else you know given the circumstances if anybody else wants to share any thoughts or opinions from the committee make sure there's room for that and if not i'll just move on with the agenda okay so the next is a discussion item duxbury's blueprint for learning dr klingman yes thank you i'm going to share my screen okay so tonight i'm going to be um just talking about our next steps in learning as we begin to plan for all of our students back being back together in person which is such a wonderful sight to see this week and then also moving forward into the summer and as we begin to plan for the 2021-2022 school year so i'm going to do a presentation for you this evening to outline some of our plans um and first
068steps as we kind of delve into how are we going to address some of the the concerns that many families are having right now with did my child experience learning loss or knowing that your child experienced some learning loss and what we're going to do in response to that so let me advance my so if we start off with our current status and all of this is nothing nothing new you all know this the pandemic required schools to make immediate and sweeping changes to the way they had always functioned the way we went to school the way our kids had always gone to school was immediately turned on its head educators students and parents came together and developed a whole new approach to learning from remote learning back last spring to hybrid learning which we've
069we've been in for much of this school year to the modified in person learning that we're back in as of this week so i think it's important to focus not just on the negative so i just i'm not going to focus too much on all the positives but i can honestly say that we grew with patients our students grew in their independence whether they wanted to or not we had very young students suddenly being thrust into doing a lot of learning on their own and taking a lot of initiative we saw growth with our students executive functioning skills and i know that students have a range of those skills growing up and going through the years of school technology skills across platforms we never thought we'd be able to see our youngest students at chandler
070school doing some of the work on seesaw with the ipads that they were doing it's really wonderful we've had to have a lot of grit and i know we've had a lot of creativity not just with our teachers needing to get creative but i think um parents for sure and although it may not have always seemed like it we were so empathetic to the plight of parents this year and i think they had to get really creative with trying to balance their households their jobs trying to get the students to school on very odd schedules and being there for a pickup and drop off so i think that it was incredible the flexibility that our our parents were able to figure out how to make this work i think we are aware of also where
071we were challenged so we know our students had limited social interaction as did many adults we know it was challenging to get help in real time when students needed it and if that happened to be in a day that they were at home and it wasn't a live opportunity and their parents were in a meeting or juggling many students at home trying to navigate their remote plan for the day the kids didn't always have help immediately when they needed the way they would in the classroom we know that the students have missed out on some hands-on learning opportunities not just at the youngest levels but all the way up until our up into our science and lab classes at the high school and ap level we know students have missed out on some direct instructional
072opportunities that they would have had if they were in school and we know we've all seen a huge increase in screen time and i think that was a concern even before the pandemic i think this town our parents are very conscientious and not wanting to have the students especially our youngest ones on screens any longer than they need to be and i think we all were a little bit worried with the amount of screen time our students were getting this past year and so despite the best efforts of all involved there's no denying that the learning has been interrupted for our students across grade levels over the past year um and right now things are looking good so current trends indicate that we can start planning for a more traditional school year in 2021 and
07320 into 2022 um albeit with some lingering restrictions we may still be looking at masks and social distancing but hopefully we are able to um figure out ways to be better able to serve lunches and have snack in the school once we um are all back in person and so in this blueprint document so i hope you all had a chance to look through the blueprint document that i shared in the school committee folder we'll be able to make that document um it's right now it's still in draft form but we certainly will be sharing it with all families and posting that on our school websites for families to be able to view the whole document but in this document we outline research based and data driven a plan to help our students get back
074on track with their learning and their course progressions and we know that our planning will need to be somewhat fluid based on assessment data and what our students show us that they need when we're back together again we want to make sure that students have map demonstrate mastery of grade level standards and objectives so let me get to the next slide so the research so we based our plan on research um using a scientific research based approach we're planning our strategy for addressing the needs of our students both academically as well as social and emotionally as we transition back to in-person learning and we must use a data-driven approach using proven strategies and not just make instructional decisions based on our instincts alone research suggests that our most at-risk students should be prioritized for intervention
075and progress monitoring i do have a quote here children from more affluent communities are more likely to come from families with financial resources stable employment and a flexible work from home and child care arrangements that allow them to weather the storm of covid more easily than families who are renting their housing working in low-paying fields that are hardest hit by the economic impacts and experiencing higher rates of food insecurity family instability and other shocks from this disruption and we do have a number of families in our community that have had been hard hit by this um pandemic so it's definitely a reality here in duxbury as well as in other in other towns so we're going to be prioritizing our highest at-risk students for the highest level of intervention and progress monitoring will be providing
076work suited for um research to suggest that providing work suited for earlier grades or retaining students will not catch students up and would likely compound the problem so it's not recommended that we start the year doing third grade work in a fourth grade classroom or retaining high numbers of students um the research is telling us that students need to be exposed to the rigorous curriculum at each grade level in class that they would have been exposed to students must be presented with rigorous grade level learning objectives however we need to shift to have an increased focus and emphasis on diagnostic and pre-assessments to identify learning gaps and we'll need to review our curriculum maps and identify priority instructional content with coherence maps i'll show you what i mean by coherence maps towards the end of
077the presentation and we know that social and emotional learning support will play a crucial role in our planning for the for the upcoming school year so some enduring understandings just we've mentioned a couple of times this evening we follow our strategic plan our pillars and our district mission statement states that our core purpose is to provide each student with the opportunity to achieve personal and academic excellence we know that while some students have managed a remote and hybrid learning environment with ease other students may have had a much more challenging transition back to in-person learning or we'll have that transition back in the fall our first pillar on our strategic plan is that duxbury public schools is committed to providing a safe and secure academic and social environment for students and to fostering a school
078community that promotes respect dignity and a healthy life balance so with that throughout the pandemic we have worked to ensure that our students and families have had their basic needs met by providing technology devices wi-fi access food and nutritional support and counseling support to families that have required that we've also worked with the interfaith council the rotary club to be able to assist families with rent and utility support who have reached out to us during the pandemic and we also provided over six thousand dollars in gift cards for families over the holiday season for which they were really really grateful planning for the transition um principals will reach out to families as this year winds down and over the summer to request information about any individual student or family concerns that may require specific transition
079planning so this will also be important for our classroom teachers to be reaching out to the students prior to the school year possible to kind of get that sense of community built as early as possible because the kids are coming off of a very unique school year and we want to make sure we're building that community right from the get-go also um iep liaisons or counselors will assist with individual student transitions and needs and we know that students some students and families may have additional considerations that are not just the typical situation so we do ask for our families to begin the process of reaching out to the schools if there's anything unique that um we should know so the blueprint itself this is just a visual i'll go through the aspects of this visual
080throughout the presentation so it's a three-pronged plan and i'll go through each part and the three prongs are number one what do we need to put in place for immediate intervention opportunities for our highest needs students number two is training for teachers in diagnosing unfinished learning this is a new world we're entering and number three what can we provide for continued intervention opportunities for all students including social emotional support so we're not just talking about our students who are most at risk but what if it's a high school student who's in high level classes and has some gaps through no fault of their teachers or their own hard work during the pandemic how can we make sure that any of those gaps are filled in no matter where you fall in the learning spectrum so
081those are just the three frogs that i'll go through so number one immediate intervention opportunities for at-risk students so this is more of a short-term plan um and what we have and again this is a draft and a work in progress so we'll certainly be adding to this over the next week few weeks and months so right now we're planning a summer title one program for our mo most at-risk students in grades k-5 eligibility for this program will be determined based on standardized and benchmark assessment results district assessments and classroom and intervention teacher input right now we're planning for the program to be in person from july 19th through august 5th and we hope to be able to provide parent notification letters that their child may qualify for this as soon as possible so that
082families are able to um make a decision about whether their child can attend based on vacation or other summer camps their children may be scheduled to attend we will be doing um spring assessments soon so we hope to be able to provide this information to families after april vacation we want all of our students to access summer learning um so we plan to have elementary summer learning activity calendars with a kickoff event so that we can get the kids excited about it and explain to parents what this will look like and what resources available for use over the summer months so we'll be having that event in may um we hope that we were able to make the calendar so that the students are motivated to do it we know it's challenging for parents to
083get kids to complete a summer packet or summer learning over the summer months when there's much more exciting things they could be doing so we hope to make it quick hits manageable we want the parents to know really clearly what would make the biggest difference for the students to be able to keep in practice with and we want the kids to be able to hand it in to their teacher in september so that they actually have some accountability to say your teacher's collecting this and we're going to have some prizes and incentives for students that do the um the reading and the other math fluency work and whatever else we can provide at an age-appropriate level i just want to mention we don't want to leave out the conversation about special education students and so
084the extended school year will run as it usually does and that's separate um eligibility is determined through team meeting process so hopefully um families start having those conversations soon at upcoming spring team meetings and i always also want to point out last summer we were not able to offer the summer programming that we usually do through before or after dark so they will again be providing students in the community with a range of enrichment courses and so i think that sandy conan is working on that right now so we hope to be able to have those special summer classes available for our students the secondary level we have something called the student support team process so that student support team meets in every school but at the middle school and high school will be identifying
085our most at-risk students who are eligible for summer intervention for small group support or tutoring in english or math what that would look like at the secondary level we don't think having the kids come in for a couple of hours four days a week is as appealing to our secondary students many of whom are busy doing a lot of activities and some have jobs but we're hoping to be able to do a condensed course in ela or in math depending on what grade level the student's in that's either small group or individual tutoring for our most at-risk students who had the most difficulty accessing learning throughout the remote learning last spring into the hybrid learning this year eligibility will be determined using again whatever standardize and benchmark assessment data and classroom performance that we have
086and again this is separate from any students who may qualify for credit recovery or extended school year so those will continue to run as they always have but this might be for students who we know have some learning gaps that are pretty pronounced right now that may not be candidates for credit recovery but we know there's some important gaps in their learning that we need to address before school starts so we're going to be posting those positions for teachers to be able to apply for this week and so we hope to be able to start staffing that with teachers to be able to get the dates and that plan together for teachers and diagnosing unfinished learning so this is new um and i saw that there are many teachers in our audience tonight so they're
087probably like what is this all about um so this is a new term that we're gonna be talking about and it's a new focus for us so we know that our teachers are already skilled at pre-assessing what students already know prior to beginning a new unit or skill and also they're also very familiar with differentiating instruction but now we're going to have to have a new found goal of really focusing on that diagnosing unfinished learning and providing individualized small group instruction at every level this is something that we see very frequently in the elementary classroom and i think in the secondary classroom we haven't had a circumstance where students may have may have such a different um set of skills coming in that we're going to start seeing this year whether no matter what level
088the classes are so um when we talk about pre-assessment what we mean is we want to determine a student's knowledge and understanding of skills prior to beginning that unit of study and these are assessments for learning that include diagnostic or pre-assessment and that would help the teacher be able to guide instruction for each learner and again we're going to be sensitive to the fact that um this students are going to be maybe slightly embarrassed if they're coming into a high level math class and maybe they have some skill gaps from this year so we're going to be sensitive to the learner needs but we want to make sure we see where the students are with each unit before we just dive into instruction and then differentiate instruction just to define it this is not new
089this has been differentiated instruction i think has been around since a book was written back in 1999 but this is an instructional approach driven by data from students assessment results and from the outcomes of screening tools pre-assessments can gather inform information about each student's strengths comforts and areas of weakness and then we want to provide small group targeted instruction quick hits to be able to get the kids the prerequisite skills that they need to be able to continue with the rigorous content so we're not talking about prolonged six weeks of making up work that they um would have needed to access for the next step but we're talking about how can we quickly get the kids with the prerequisite skills that they need especially at the secondary level so that our courses can progress at
090a reasonable pace so we're hoping to be able to provide teaching staff with specialized training at their appropriate level so that they can effectively pre-assess and provide differentiated instruction we're going to look at whether we need additional resources for some of these things to take place and we'll be having conversations about um what we can creatively uh how we can creatively manage that with our current um instructional support staff as well as the intervention block and then we want our pre-k through 12 teachers to participate in training on this diagnosing unfinished learning as well as job embedded pd in real time coaching during the 2021-22 school year so we don't want to just do a big two-hour training on on one of our back to school days and then say good luck we want this
091to be um here's here's our focus here's how you can do it for background information and then we want people to have availability of coaching and ongoing conversations about how this is going what's working well what we need what might we may need to adjust for our planning so that teachers can be successful to keep going with the content so right now i'm working with a few um educational consulting groups to be able to give us a proposal for the work that i'm proposing and um this isn't something that is readily out there right now that people are knocking down our door to do so i'm trying to shape this professional development with some consulting groups that um would be able to develop a proposal for us based on what we're looking for so moving
092on if i can get my mouse continued so the next stage would be continued intervention opportunities for all students so we know that there's going to be intervention needed for more than just our highest at-risk students we're going to have a number of students that also need intervention on a regular basis it's really important that we use diagnostics from high quality adopted materials all the research is really suggesting that we should be using high quality assessments and curriculum that has been curated and not a lot of district developed curriculum and assessments as we enter this next school year we're going to be using the achieve the core coherence maps so i'm going to show you what those look like so that we've been using them this year to identify priority learning standards and that doesn't
093mean that we're not covering all of the curriculum standards and frameworks this year it just means that we're looking at what are the co what are the skills that you need to have in order to teach us skills so we i'll just pull up fourth grade right now and if we looked at operations and algebraic thinking it's going to tell us um what operations we would need what standards are we need to make sure the students have mastery of before we begin a new skill or concept so these coherence maps are available in english language arts as well as math and it allows us to really focus our instruction and the prerequisite skills that students need in order to be able to advance to higher level concepts so we use those a lot with our
094curriculum planning and those will be available on the link through the the document the larger document we are in really good shape and we were fortunate before the pandemic that we had a number of really high quality um screening and diagnostic assessments especially at the elementary level and now that mcas is a little up in the air where we don't have mcas data from 2020 and we're not quite sure when we're going to have mcas data from this year but we have we have some high quality screening and diagnostic assessments that we're going to rely on this is just a few so at chandler we use dra which is the diagnostic reading assessment we use aims web in grades one and two we use iready math at alden school we use star reading and math
095and we use aims web plus for oral reading fluency we're going to continue with our title one intervention support which will has been in place and will continue we'll be progress monitoring our students we'll be making sure that as we plan for our summer curriculum work that we are going to have intervention lessons available across content areas so that students that are in need of a little bit of backing up before moving forward that we have resources readily available for the teachers and it will be important that we have a spiraling review of concepts and so when you hear teachers talking about spiraling cons that's that means that if you're covering a skill in october that you don't just move on and expect mastery of it that we're we're coming back to that concept for
096review throughout the year so that those concepts are reviewed and refreshed so that when you're heading into the next school year it wasn't just maybe a year since you last saw how to do those division skills or whatever it is as you advance um through the curriculum so that will be very important the secondary level we're really lucky this year we didn't get to utilize it to the extent that we would have liked to but we have an academic support block built into the secondary schedule which will be crucial for next year so this block can be used for extra support in any class it doesn't matter if it's a basic level class or if it's an ap course any student that needs extra help has that block available and we need to make sure
097students are very clear with how to align yourself with your teacher to be able to get scheduled in for some extra support we can have um that extra support can be a one-time just wasn't uh maybe a student didn't quite understand how to do a new skill or concept or it could be more long-term if we're noticing that the students have some basic skills that they need to catch up on and there's procedures for extra support that are a little bit different at the middle school and high school which um mrs mcguire and mr donovan can speak to um at a later time so specific intervention across content areas are listed out in our blueprint for learning documents so each of the curriculum supervisors added um what their department will be doing to address that
098address and diagnose unfinished learning and right now at the secondary level we're piloting a new assessment it's a deci approved assessment called linkit and if you wanna just um you can visit it on this website here but this is um a product that has standardized assessment that we can give students at the secondary level that would be another data point besides mcas and we can do this in english and math and they also have question banks available for us to develop our own tests in science and social studies so those wouldn't be standardized but they do have standards aligned assessment questions that are much like you'd see on an mcas test available for us this product also has data warehousing so we can put a lot of our assessment data and information for um students
099that we keep track of in order to make instructional decisions and so it was a free pilot this spring and so we are participating in it and we have some teachers that are piloting these assessments and they'll be able to give us some feedback about whether they were user-friendly and that we were able to obtain some good data but secondary data points are a little bit more challenging to get so we're always looking for ways to get more data on our students uh performance and let's see i think i'm stuck here take my last slide and i think it's really important for us to just share with the school committee and the community that next year social emotional learning support is going to be a huge focus some understandings that we have coming in that
100we know our students are coming back now and in september with a variety of needs we're going to be ready to support our students the reality is our cohort c students in september may not have been in our schools for 18 months and that's pretty significant we know that it's already a hard transition for students to come back after the summer um we're going to probably see some separation anxiety it's going to be hard for our families and it's probably going to be hard for our some of our adults our parents as well um some of our students may have lost loved ones during the pandemic that's the sad reality of the situation we're in um i keep reading that um the social opportunities and the missed events are real traumas to people and i
101think sometimes they get minimized on social media or on tv that like if students are missing a prom or if they're missing social events those are real losses to students and families and so i think that those we're coming off a year of a lot of disappointments um it's been kind of a sad year in a lot of ways we might um see an increase research is suggesting that the end of social distinct distancing might bring some anxiety to folks who have really gotten used to just being in their own little house or pod and now they're expected to suddenly be jumping right back into some larger social gatherings and that's that brings on a lot of anxiety for some people the reality is our students schedules and routines have been significantly disruptive if you
102talk to some of the families and what um amazing feats they had to pull off to make this year work for their family and their work schedules and everything else it's really incredible um what our families have gone through to be able to make this um hybrid learning work and then we we are well aware that many of our families are experiencing financial difficulties or housing or food insecurity um i think that this community it's extremely generous in its um providing support for others when they know it's needed but i also think there's like there's a little bit of a stigma and it's very hard for some families to admit that this pandemic may have had a difficult economic impact on them through lost work depending on what field people are in if people are
103used to being in a field that where um we had to make some big adjustments in the restaurant and entertainment industry it's been a really tricky year so i think it's important for our families to know that we have student support teams in process that we meet regularly with to discuss for strategies and supports for any families in need those sst meetings can help with not only support and academics but also with mental health support social skills support we're seeing we may be seeing some students that have had very limited social interaction with other students over the past year and they may need some really targeted support to assist them with kind of navigating those social situations and friendships and um playground and just all those pieces that they'll suddenly be thrust back into we
104know our school adjustment counselors have resources available for families if you um especially look i looked at the elementary websites today i know our elementary counselors have a ton of resources available and i know that the secondary counselors school psychologists also do we we do continue to work with gosnell in our school so if families need that counseling support we would just ask to reach you to reach out i think we still provide that service at alden and at dms and we do a significant amount of transition planning for students just in general and i think the thought is to bring as many of those programs back in person as we can this summer and so those are all important pieces to the transition back and so that's the overview of our document that i
105shared in your folder and i didn't know if you might have had a chance to um kind of skim through it and if anything came up for questions or if you had any um thoughts or suggestions and um i just want to mention kristin um had mentioned to me just a really great idea about reaching out to def um to see if they may be able to assist with some summer programming and enrichment for students this summer so certainly def is a wonderful partner with our schools and so we will definitely reach out to them as a resource and i think we will be able to manage a lot of this with our fy 21 budget so i think we're in good shape to be able to provide some of the short-term intervention planning that
106i shared as well as i'm looking at some of the larger plans as we go into the next school year yeah that was going to be my big question was whether these all sound wonderful um and whether the funding is is there to support all all this because it's really seemed so crucial for our students julia we don't have the final numbers yet i don't think um katie do we but the the next wave of stimulus funding is going to bring a big infusion of resources into school districts all around the country um it'll be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars so not that it's unlimited but we feel pretty confident that we can we can make this happen there may be a need for um interventionists like teaching assistants that would come in
107for a short term um time because i feel like the lost learning is likely going to take two school years for us to get sort of back where we were before we left so it might be that i'm requesting to katie that if we could look at um ways to have some short-term interventionist that would be able to come into the district depending on the um coveted funding that comes in that wouldn't be permanent ftes but really just coming in to support some of the intervention that would need to take place over the next year for sure into two years the other thing that springs to mind is class size which um is you know kind of is a a light motif in our budget negotiations and and what can be done to because class
108size obviously has an impact on learning in any year but when you're trying to make up for for lost learning it would seem that that's extra important and maybe because it's a class size issue rather than it directly kind of covered related i'm wondering if the federal funding is going to be able to help us with that potentially yeah yeah so um i just want to mention i know what the last round of federal funding that we received um which will be available to us um up until 2023 i believe it really is aimed at addressing some of that um learning loss and so they certainly with the initial round of uh coronavis relief funding it was um intended to get the kids back in the building and really support that process but i think
109the these later rounds of funding they're realizing that the supports are um changing so the the guidelines are changing that money so this is shannon i have i have two two comments or questions one is so this sounds like this this whole blueprint is it really will be individually based for each student right that's what it sounds like yep it's our overall plan but we really are going to need to hone in on what each individual student needs in a much different way um so every single student won't have an individual learning plan however we really want our teachers to have the resources support and skills to be able to say okay i've got this group of learners here who seem to have a gap in the skill and they need this prerequisite skill before
110we can move on how can i keep my pacing going so i'm not stalling my whole class but also provide those individual students with support and i think that's where the data comes in we can't go into this year assuming that students have the prerequisite skills that they need to just continue advancing because i think we're going to crash and burn down the road if we do that so yes i hope i hope that with that differentiated approach we are able to get a very individualized student program and um needs identified in each unit that we cover this um next school year that's great and then to follow up on on kristen's enrichment focus um i my understanding is that the these this most recent relief bill uh focused on summer services can be used
111for enrichment more than just it you know it has it has quite a bit of flexibility so i hope that we're kind of looking into that in terms of what our students need and what programs are making and i know you referenced um um the um before and after dark yes what is it called so that's that's great but to the extent we can um support that or fund you know additional programs because i think those programs tend to be um disappear quickly so if we have funding that's flexible and we can support that for the broader community i think we could that would be a great idea so i just have um a few comments danielle i think the support built in for the teachers is amazing that you've mentioned throughout your presentation i'm
112so happy to hear it and i also love i love data so i'm very excited about all the objective measurements that you're going to have for our students and i think it's good for the parents to see also as my oldest as a sophomore so he'll be going into his junior year so when you say you know that learning gap's going to take two years to catch up i guess my first thing that popped into my head is for our juniors and seniors how are we going to ensure that they're ready for college and is there any thought to ensure college readiness yeah i think that um this is where it's it's really hard i have a junior as well um so i i hear you but i think that um we're not going to
113be able to catch students up so that they're exactly where they might have been had we not been in the pandemic but i think that across the country colleges know that students are coming from all sorts of high school experiences right now where we have students that really didn't set foot into the building until this week and so i think our duxbury students are very well um prepared although we're not going to deny that there are learning gaps so i think that we're not as far off as we need to be really worried about it but i think that if um if individual students had a particularly hard time and parents are really worried about that um that they didn't make the gains that they needed for math or whatever it was they need to
114communicate to the schools hopefully they've already been doing that but i think that colleges are aware of the constraints that high schools have been in and that we don't have mcas scores and that students may not have been able to take the sat the way that they would have been in typical years where students may have taken the sat four or five times and where some of our students right now just took it for the first time because they've not been offering the s.a.t so i think that's where the um we have a wonderful lisa dembowski in the guidance department department at the high school do a fantastic job and they're communicating with colleges and so we have we really rely on them to um communicate with colleges colleges are telling them what they're seeing
115they're in our schools um i think we're going to go back to having the colleges in our main street again next year and so i think it's important for us to maintain that open line of communications with colleges to just hear how are you guys managing how are you making college decisions for students when you know people had very different experiences during the pandemic and the students may not be coming in at the same level that they would have been two years ago i think our freshmen across the country going into college next year are going to be at a little bit of a different level going into this post-secondary education that they would have been so it's a great question having this same conversation but in a different way they're looking at it like
116oh my god our kids are coming in with learning losses how are we gonna how are we to adapt as a college also to change our so it's a funny it's a pervasive issue right you know uh pre-k through college graduation and beyond yeah but kristen i think it's important that we have some parent college nights where representatives from college are talking to parents about some of these questions and how they're changing their practices and how they're navigating it so that's something that hopefully we can get um in the spring into the fall thanks danielle anybody else have questions for dr klingerman um it looks like our next item is public comment okay so i'll read the the statement um the duxbury school committee welcomes public comment participation at school committee meetings there will there's
117an opportunity during the meeting for members of the community to address issues of concern about policy budget or administrative matters or simply share ideas about how we can work together to improve the x-ray public schools we value your input and respect divergent reviews we only ask that you limit your remarks to two minutes and refrain from airing grievances about individual members the school committee or the school community john do we want to see if anybody has their hand up yeah we'd ask people to use the um uh hand raised feature i don't i i think it's different on my screen can someone um i'm seeing luba gilpatric has her no i just mean i mean for the people who are listening just to give him guidance on using the the raising oh where it goes
118yeah um all right and um shannon i would add too if there's a question we can't answer it's really not a q a it's a yes a comment but it might be wise um if you can't do something quickly of course you will if not we'll maybe collect them and to the extent that we can push out some information we will you know after the meeting so i think that's a great idea john thank you yeah and uh okay first um is uh luba uh gilpatric and uh luba can you hear us um yes can you guys hear me yeah um so um um i'm a parent of a first grader at chandler and uh i'm jewish so um i just have um a um a uh a comment um so um dr antonucci i
119was really happy to hear that the um that the football team has been um making uh strides to grow that's that's that's really wonderful um i i i'm i'm on the board of congregation shirat hayam so i'm aware that they reached out to um rabbi cohen and had a really great conversation with him and that there's gonna be more conversations um the um the one thing that i wanted to note is that um the um the the europe jewish parents that are not high school parents also feel very affected by this as i'm sure are other jews in the community that don't even have any children in my my daughter isn't is in first grade but she'll be in high school eventually and you know the the the the the whole the whole thing kind
120of is has has been has been heartbreaking um i i know that um uh mr donovan sent a um letter to the high school community um ex you know explaining about the um you know the reasoning for the the kids having their last game and um that's that's great it would have been nice if um the rest of us found out from something other than social media um one thing that you know i would like to note is that um it would it would be nice if there was some sort of an acknowledgement to the um to to the jewish community from the football team as that as well something akin to an an apology or at least a a and an acknowledgement that you know that that a wrong has been done there's been
121a lot of private communication with with various people but um a lot of us you know feel wrong and not really heard so that's just kind of my two cents i'm sorry for being emotional it's been a tough couple of weeks thank you luba i'm sorry i'm you thank you very much [Music] sorry i'm just going through this um um pad clelland thank you dr antonucci i'm encouraged by what i've heard from the school committee members tonight with regard to the two recent issues affecting our schools and community i want you to know that your words seem heartfelt and truly believable and i also want to thank you for your clear articulation of your goals and willingness to make changes where they're needed i also want to thank matt gambino for his efforts to give
122stakeholders a voice to share concerns about the two recent incidents in our in a public forum it's unfortunate that these first two attempt or this first attempt was unsuccessful i don't envy the challenge that lies ahead for the school committee members and i want to thank you in advance for your commitment to working toward creating a community that will be more inclusive and have policies and procedures that go beyond the minimum standard to investigate allegations of sexual harassment toward children and child abuse and so we have a request of the school committee care hi this is kara tad's wife given that the school committee and administrators have not given a town hall platform for the stakeholders of duxbury to share our experiences and goals for change and knowing that you all will be going into
123executive session this evening i would like to request that you all consider the following i would like to ask that the school committee organizes a town hall meeting for the parents and students of duxbury to voice their dissatisfaction or satisfaction with the school's handling of reports of child sexual harassment and child abuse it is my family's belief that the school did not take reasonable measures to seek the truth regarding our own child's experience which occurred in 2020 or to initially follow the school's sexual harassment policy and procedure i am now pleading with all of you to take an honest look at where the school's policies and procedures have failed and how the school administration may have failed shannon i commend you for your suggestions to conduct a workshop and take a very proactive and honest
124approach we are struggling with why any school administration would allow four years to pass with multiple allegations of child sexual harassment without a meaningful result i'd also like to encourage anyone with information regarding mr blake to please come forward i know we are not alone and neither are you we need to stop being concerned about what may happen if we speak up look at where we are we need to be concerned about what may happen if we don't thank you okay leahey um hi dr antonucci um to the clellins i'm i'm sorry um for your pain and um my first comment is to kelly i am truly shocked and saddened that you can continue to sit on these calls and tell the community about kindness inclusivity we we respectfully ask that you don't address individuals
125okay no problem i can certainly do that um so it's extremely concerning to me that we have a school committee that can sit here um and preach to us all about kindness and inclusivity and respect which are things that we should all hear about when we have school committee members who have public twitter accounts that are laced with pure hate and words like douchebag and excuse my i'm sorry i had to mute i had to mute their madam chair um it's fine that's fine this is a respectful forum thank you i'll just say i disabled them um shannon may i also ask um um and we have not uh been doing a good job with this can we please have people identify um who they are in their address we haven't been able to officially
126do sign in as our policy requires um would you i'm sorry to make that proposal now i forgot to mention it just so we know yeah no thank you for reminding me documentation i apologize that's my fault um so we have someone um it's it's labeled as eem2 and we would ask you to identify yourself in your address sure this is audrey um batu i live on cape verde terrace and i really appreciated the comments from luba and i just wanted to seek some clarification from what she said and i'm hoping that the school committee or you dr antonucci could confirm but has there been a statement or apology issued from the football team directly and could you please point us in the direction of where this is posted or where we could find it
127i'm not aware of a statement by the football team here with me one moment sorry uh we have joseph foley john hi uh thank you for uh for allowing me to speak i think that i appreciate the outpouring of support in the community and i understand i've heard that the school is in a difficult position because they serve multiple constituencies the teachers the staff the administration and the students but i think that every parent who has a child who walks through that door believes that the school serves one constituent and that's the child and that the teacher the staff and the administrators are there to protect the health safety and well-being of that child in their pursuit of an education and it's my belief that that hurdle was failed in the in the part of
128the school and i guess if i could ask a question during this public comment um i'm just and again you may or may not be able to address it but if you could touch on when the dhs works was completed and provided to the school as of march 2nd when that report in its entirety was made available to the duxbury police we are not able to comment on anything regarding this case mr foley i accidentally disabled talking so if you have something else to add i just brought you back in no i just i again i say i appreciate you know the support from friends and family and people in the community and i would just ask anyone in any position teacher staff administrator student current past present if they have any information no matter
129how small please reach out to detective boltz at the duxbury police it's a difficult step to take it's a step that when parker was alive he was unable to take parker was a kid who would have done anything for anyone he always had his hand extended to help people in need it was a step he couldn't take for himself i'm asking for people in the community if they know anything please do it for parker thank you next up is italy it's labeled mdg honey this is megan uh greenstein i live at 416 washington street in duxbury is that good enough yes yes great um so i just wanted to circle back about the football team and just kind of ask you know i know we've talked a lot about the anti-semitic comment um and i
130know you have an investigator involved obviously but i wondered about sort of the discussion around the use of the n-word on the field as well and whether or not it would be wise to check in with the investigator about the validity of that complaint before allowing the football team to play on friday and i know you can't answer me now but i think an executive session may be talking about following up on on that to find out it would be it would be unfortunate to find out that that were true and still let the football team play on friday night that's all thank you betsy gillis oh hi there thank you can you hear me folks yes we can well thank you um first a quick thank you to all the school committee members for
131your continued dedication to our our students and our families here in duxbury and a special thank you to kelly bresnahan who handed over the reigns tonight next my comment this evening is about dyslexia screening at the k through two level and that's chandler and alden there's been much mention tonight of learning loss in tonight's presentations and my concern is for the k-2 students who are learning how to read and they only have learning to gain not lose i worry a bit that given our distractions in the district that we might um maybe take our eye off the ball with respect to dyslexia screening at the k2 at the k-2 level and that was new in the last couple years and the shaywitz tool is the tool that's being used to screen for it at those
132lower levels of elementary school um it's soon at some point soon i'm thinking maybe early fall might be fair maybe the district can present to the community some year over year data about numbers of children that have been screened and the results of that screening obviously not at the personal level but at the at the higher level um numbers it'll be energizing i think as a district to see the gains that we've made um it takes up to you know it's been estimated it takes up to four times more money and effort to address a student's literacy needs um after the second grade um and so we have an opportunity here as a district to hit it out of the park when it comes to flagging these kids and doing the the right thing by
133them thank you mrs skeles thank you um last hand up um peter farrell dr internet it's pete farrell can you hear me all right we can great thank you and good evening i just wanted to make a couple quick comments so i've recently moved back to town flipped out of town for you know 20 years or so and by the way my address is 24th street uh and i'm a graduate of duxbury high school class of 1994. you know one thing when we talk about transparency in in and things that we're trying to you know the go forward plan which i commend you on the actions that you've taken so far these public comments are only as good as if they're responded to and that the general public has an understanding of where elected members
134and officials in the school department sit on these particular issues and you know transparency i think is essential here i think it should be publicly known i've submitted a public records request to the school department and received the response from murphy murphy this afternoon where uh the town wants to charge me as a taxpayer ten thousand two hundred and fifty dollars for an estimated twelve thousand pages of public records and claims were generated as a result of the football team issue alone i even requested the records on the sexual assault and alleged rape that took place but that's going to be my next public records request as a practicing lawyer a taxpayer and long time fan of the duxbury dragons one who has donned the green and white one who has worn the traditional duxbury
135d put on my letterman jacket and recently moved back to town it was enraging and embarrassing to explain to my four jewish colleagues at my law firm how my town could be the next second worst story on the news coverage next to the shooting in colorado uh here in 2021 where all of this is on the forefront i think we owe it to the students we owe it to the community and we owe it to anyone who's ever been affiliated or associated with duxbury to have a lot more transparency than an eight-page letter from town council as to why records can't be produced and why the time honor tradition of let's charge the requester an exorbitant amount of money so the documents won't be produced you know the press is ultimately going to get a
136hold of all of your investigatory materials when the investigation is complete ultimately there could be litigation to produce those investigatory reports when the investigation is complete those materials are going to be ultimately produced they are ultimately going to be made public and the people of duxbury will be able to judge for themselves as to whether or not there was transparency through this process i am angry i am mad i'm also making the decision ultimately whether to bring my children into the dexterity school system who have not yet been there i'm rethinking that now um i'm really really appalled by this i really know that we can do better i know that the members of the school committee want to do better but wanting to do better and doing better are two different things so i
137really urge you you know to not sit by and and by the way uh muting somebody in a public meeting is a violation of the open meeting law and also uh they were addressing the issue of hypocrisy and the muting of somebody in an open meeting is a violation of the open meeting law i could also subject the talent to liability exposure to the attorney general's office for the secretary of state so that being said i don't need to be as pointed but this is deeply troubling i'm very aggravated by this and now we have this issue of sexual assault and alleged rape too i guess my comment and perhaps rhetorically my fellow citizens of my beloved duxbury is what's next and i hope you don't have to address that but i haven't been satisfied
138with what i've seen so far thank you for listening i appreciate it okay dr internet here i think we've got any more hands okay so there's one more hand oh there's more okay it's listed as btl president if you could identify yourself hi yes my name is jc whitamore i live on ashdod lane i too am a graduate a graduate of the class of 1994. at some point i'd like to have a better understanding as to what constitutes hate and what doesn't is it political is it sexual is it religious and what policies are in place and what expectations do we have from our leaders thank you that's it thank you okay uh going back to the agenda uh it looks like we do not have any action items tonight shannon i was just curious
139i don't know if we missed it but the reappointment of the liaisons i i think maybe i think maybe we should do that at the next meeting um and um that's something that i think we should have a a meeting in short order as well so kristin i think let's um let's make sure it's on the next agenda and not wait too long before we do that but i think since it's not on the agenda unfortunately i think we maybe need to keep going is that does it sound reasonable it does um shannon kristen had indicated she was interested in joining um the cpap liaison position yeah i'd say you know i would recommend that she can pick that up right away yeah so i know they have a meeting coming up so i think
140it's important that they have a representative so that's why i brought it up okay yeah no i think i think that's fine i think that's absolutely fine i mean if um i'm also trying to i know there's another event happening that maybe many people want to attend at seven o'clock so i also wanted to kind of make sure that we're respectful of that as well so uh but yeah kristin i think you know you know seems like everyone's fine with you proceeding with that so and if if there are any other items like that um yeah anyways i guess that's it that's all we can do for now okay all right so um we're now going to be going into executive session to discuss strategies with respect to litigation which would have a detrimental effect
141on the position of the governing body body if the discussion were an open session the board will not return to open session um and then we need to do this by a roll call vote so julia oh wait i need somebody to make a motion sorry move to go into executive session thank you second okay thank you okay roll call julia aye kelly aye ma bye kristen aye shannon i okay thank you everybody you