Milton School Committee - October 20th, 2021

001hey everyone and welcome to the Milton school committee meeting of October 20th 2021 I hope that you're all well this evening and have been enjoying this incredible October weather that we've been having um our first agenda item is to call the meeting to order and to review the agenda and to make any changes additions or subtractions to the agenda does anyone have anything they'd like to add change I'm going to add under policy subcommittee report report on the policy subcommittee meeting of what was it Monday or Tuesday this past Monday yeah okay that would have been the 18th sure thank you all right anyone else right then I'd like to have a motion to approve the agenda anyone so moved okay all right second second okay this is a roll call vote um number white

002yes Dr Carroll yes remember Roscoe yes Dr Craighead yes member Rosemary yes and no member of the heart yes all right welcome all right with no further Ado oh there's director pack Martin hi welcome um or no further Ado I'll turn it over superintendent jet for the superintendent's report thank you uh chair Everhart uh we have a slight uh switch and I apologize I didn't catch it in time under the report we're going to move to Item B um it's the harassment policy and responding system Reporting System uh here to present this evening will be Somali prac Martin uh if Somali is out there I don't see on my screen but I believe she's on there so Somali I will turn it over to you for those who don't know Somali prac Martin is the

003senior director of equity education in the Milton Public Schools Somali thank you um so I'm going to share my screen I made a really nice presentation for everyone and it's not letting me share my screen um superintendent Dexter can you see if you can give her that permission usually if you allow multiple participants to share so do you know where I would do that if I go on the dots next to her name yeah it's not letting me I have a um I have like a hand icon but it's not it's letting me muter which I'm not going to do oh wait hold on I think he just might have fixed that for me okay hold on allow to record now so would I say it loud to multi-pin is that what I'm doing it

004is um allow multiple um multiple participants to present share screen I mean I apologize um I do not see that okay so you so someone else might have to share their screen and then director prec Martens can um use do the presentation okay um so I will send the presentation over to you Amy if that is got it I'll share it okay thank you just a second I had an updated one okay I hope this is the last the updated one can you see my screen yes in Somali you just tell me when to click next sure um so um oh go back there you go so the district currently has a bullying um incident reporting um protocol and process and um it's very robust it's under uh the the actual um website that there

005is there now under the bullying policy uh prevention and intervention plan there um are components that identify sexual misconduct racism hate harassment discrimination gender threats retaliation and cyber bullying although those are Incorporated so with that being said can you um go to the next slide for me here are ways that you can report it uh there are hard copies the hard copies are located in the equity office the front office the nurse's office and guidance or you can go online at that particular website um or you can go to your home school website which will have the links and right here I create a really nice barcode for students if those things are going to get posted in the school areas they could just snap it with their pictures with their phones and then report

006away so those are the options that we currently have right now in reporting the incident can you go to the next slide thank you here's some information on when you should report as I'm going through the policy the policy itself States very clearly on like when you should report and how you should report what I think is missing was just some sort of visual component of this for those who may not read the 36-page policy on bullying and trying to make the information much more easier and digestible so I just kind of put this together and you know when should you report when you feel unsafe witness to an incident experiencing harmful behaviors experiencing harmful words I'm sure need help with processing and need support with the experience so this is how the um this

007is how the flowchart goes once the report is is uh put in place so incidents involving family and students the reports can go to the teacher and Coach if that's who they report it to um to the department heads to the principal that and the equity office and central office if you're a staff the reports can go to the department heads the principal Equity office of central office if you're a principal the report goes to the equity office and the central office and if you're a superintendent the report goes to the school committee and or Title IX which I did not add on to there but I will Title IX officer of the district so Molly can I just add one uh piece to that presentation under where it says department heads it should say

008slash athletic director as well and to be clear if if the reporting system is against the superintendent that's when it goes to the school committee um obviously if you're a teacher in I harass a teacher or something like that the teacher's not going to come to me they would go to the school committee I just wanted to make that distinction this is what the process looks like um the incident report is done safety Protocols are enacted so I want to explain what safety Protocols are if I'm a victim and I'm reporting an incident the the um accountable party the adult the school district the whatever needs to make sure that I am safe from the person who's harassing me or bullying me or making me feel harmed those protocols have to be put in place

009then Outreach to the appropriate parties are involved could be parents coaches or whatever or whoever it is that's involved in the process investigation by a certified Personnel respecting the rights of all parties this part is important because you know when you are investigating certain types of harassments and certain types of bully bullying um there needs to be some level of certification in being able to investigate it in a fair and Equitable manner as you're you know going through the process then the outcome and next steps are decided um and then the action as well as a safety the action you know could include a safety plan should always include a safety plan plan but here I put the district aims to approach behaviors through a restorative lens our goal is to help Learners better navigate

010their behaviors cultivate respecting relationships and restore the harm that has been conflicted so they can become productive for themselves and their communities so past the um the safety plan needs to be a restorative plan how do we restore um to some level the safety of the individuals involved in in this the incident and how do we learn from that and build their capacity to navigate such incidents because our role as Educators I think is not to do things for people but to support them in learning how to navigate these situations on their own if and when the time comes Thanks James so here are some considerations as I'm um you know uh looking through the policy these are just some questions that that I I wonder um so the bullying The Bullying prevention intervention plan

011already has a component around identism so identism is doesn't exist as a word yet but it's a word that I am trying that that I use a lot but it's about um being uh hated or discriminated or you know acts of bullying against someone based on their identity so whether that's race whether that's uh you know a person who is um differently abled um Etc how can we use the current bullying prevention and intervention plan to support our Equity work around identityism and current District needs were those impacted by this policy at the table and equipped to engage in this work does the current plan address the current needs of the district has this data been tracked by the district to inform District needs does our form allow us to track such data if not

012how can we redesign the current plan and implementation and ensure all Learners staff families students and Community Partners have access and utilize the policy cool I lost my presentation is it still there I see you James yes the presentation is still there the presentation's still there so why do I see you hold on imagine your screens you maybe treat can everybody else see the presentation yep yep okay oh there it is I'm sorry oh so can you move to the next space thank you so here's our current form that the district uses it's a replica of the Desi sample form if you take a look at this form it's pretty generalized who did it when did it happen um who was involved and here are the things that that happens during the investigation and here

013is the conclusion of the investigation you go to the next forum for me James now this is a form that's used by Cambridge and if you notice it captures the same information except there's a location in which the type of harassment is being recorded um harassment of bullying and on the basis of sex so our current form does not allow us to collect that type of data to identify whether these allegations are on the basis of whatever we're trying to to gauge but Cambridge does so we're going to move to the next phase the next um slide so here's the new Google form um I believe superintendent um Spalding worked with a group of people on this process and um this is where she uh got to the process prior to exiting our district so

014uh Milton Public Schools bias incidents sexual misconduct reporting form is complete and has been shared for feedback with stakeholder stakeholders feedback has been Incorporated students voice has been elevated through formal and informal forums listening to their experiences with bias and their thoughts about action steps um it has components to capture identity demographics so if you want to click on that for me James we can just um I want to just show the um form really quick so here's the form and if you click through the form there is a section go ahead James keep going there you go there's a section there that now includes that foreign so can you go to the next steps for me thank you James I just want to be clear that that form um is not in use yet

015um it still needs to be vetted legally um prior to us moving forward as a district and in terms making sure that um that uh that we are setting a plan up so we're setting people up for success in using this so here are the next steps here are the short-term goals review the reporting system to ensure it aligns with state laws and regulations re-establish re-establish expectations of practices with the current Reporting System initiate a district protocol to capture Monitor and analyze such data so yes we're collecting this data but what happens with it and we're working with the data team to to figure that part out the other part that we need to figure out is the hierarchy uh component of confidentiality of who can access What forms when and who can see this

016data when so that's the other piece build a District's capacity to fairly and consistently investigate bullying incidents around identity bias and harassment then you have the long-term goals we engage the team with an inclusive and diversified lens to continue this work review the policy processing tools from an equity lens with a focus on the current needs of the district reconstruct the bullying prevention and implementation plan in alignment to state laws and the current needs of the district obtain student families and staff and Community Partners input on the new plan submit plan for approval by June 2022 and build out an implementation plan with an identified K-12 curriculum for staff families and students So the plan can be implemented with Fidelity by all constituents of the districts at all levels I think the next thing is

017questions thank you director Frank Martin's um member white do you want to start us off I see I'll try to see your hands I'm here in my sure um I was reading the globe this morning about an issue that happened in Wells league with a student and I'm just wondering these these forms and this policy do we need to think about [Music] um how we how we inform families and how we inform uh members of the community when these things happen and given there are privacy issues and confidentiality as Jews and do we have part of this policy related to how we you know how we involve or inform other members of the community and what are people's rights to know you know what's happened and how the district is dealing with it if you

018guys still seeing my screen I can't get out of it yeah you just need to stop sharing yeah I know I don't even have my bar oh here it is sorry about that this is why I don't like doing this when it's not my all right I couldn't share I didn't have the rights the first priority needs to be the student safety and the confidentiality of the student and making sure that the student does not get retaliated on whether they are the person who is in reporting the incident or the person who actually inflicted the harm because their children and we should do our job to protect them um so their identity is confidential it's confidential confidential um the other piece we need to consider is when the parents do call and try to figure

019out what is going on there are certain pieces of information that we can share which is the actions in which we're taking with their child however we are not um uh we will be violating legal confidentiality um laws if we indicate what we're doing with the other child to that parent because again that's that's that's privileged information um James I don't know if you want to answer more on this but I feel like the other piece as I'm really reading the bullying and um intervention and prevention plan is that there are components of it that needs to be reworked um from an equity lens um there's aspects of it that you know um maybe is not implemented in the way that we want it to be implemented and what does that look like in terms

020of implementation with Fidelity um and there's the piece of really fully identifying the sexual misconduct and the uh what um you know racist or bias incidents really look like there are they are defined in the bullying um policy but I don't think it's elevated enough for people to to understand in addition to that we have a policy okay some people know how to use it okay some people have access to it okay but if I'm asking my students to to use a form to tell me when they experience a microaggression but I did not do the work with them to understand what a microaggression is or what a racist comment is or what hate language is then the form is useless to these to these groups of students and that is not access for all

021so that's the other piece that that needs to be considered with the legal component is like are we legally putting these out these things out where everyone in our community has access to it real authentic access if I could just have one piece the reason why it's like that is student discipline individual cases a a student that's part of a student's record that is confidential to that student in the family also a Personnel when you stop involved in uh you know uh adults it becomes a Personnel matter uh so we might be able to give the incidents we may not be able to give the full infractions or the consequences I think Somali made reference to that and to be clear this is something that's in process in being worked on being looked at um

022in the discovery and looking at this we had uh at the high school there's a program called administrators plus that records some of these at the elementary level it was the email me forms or things like that so now we're in the process of trying to streamline um to make sure that there's a consistent method throughout the district with all administrators with all uh support staff that they know what this is and this is the stuff that we will be working as we continue to move forward [Music] you done with your question yes remember Ross Denny sorry you're on mute Lizzy I mean Beverly yeah thank you um thank you for taking the time to share the current policy with us um and sharing the fact that we know that it's inconsistently being implemented and

023that's just the reality of systems my concern is in the meantime what happens one of my concerns is in the meantime what is going to happen for students um as has been brought to some the attention of some people we've had several incident incidents very early in the school year um of of race-based harassment and I think with the exception of one child who decided to take take action into his own hands um the other two were not resolved with much satisfaction and what concerns me is we never seem to have a short-term plan that can make people feel comfortable that when some child is being harassed that they'll be okay um I know I've shared with some of you that the general understanding amongst the students are if I report an incident of racial

024harassment actually any type of bullying or harassment either it gets worse because either the person who came after you finds out or if you if you stand up for yourself you could be engaging in a physical fight so for kids of color there is no um recourse you could probably apply that to just about any type of bullying but it worries me that this is where we are um so I do have a direct question for Dr I mean director black Martin's in terms of when you looked at Best Practices around these reporting systems you found the form from Cambridge which is very helpful to see in comparison are there three best practices around this work that you think Milton should absolutely Implement as we develop our new plan so I will tell you that

025this was handed over to me two weeks ago because this was the work of Dr Spalding and when I first came I did not have access to what was going on with this group I do and it was handed to me two weeks ago and within the two weeks I did the research to fully understand what where the district is at so if you're asking me oh there three uh existing uh practices that exist somewhere else that that could work for the district absolutely absolutely but the challenge in this is that we are a system that have our own culture our own identity our own issues our own situations we cannot take something that currently exists in another district and think that it's going to work here without the plan planning planning the plan and

026the plan of implementation and localizing these particular strategies because we have to localize it we there are different factors that occur in this District compared to what is happening in other organizations or other districts that may impact the level of implementation and the speed of implementation of these particular strategies yes there are there are plenty of strategies one of those strategies is restorative practices that's that's a that's a huge piece and I know the district has talked about multiple times implementing restorative practices and we have leadership who has taken that training the start we have to start somewhere um but restorative practices is not something we have five people in an organization can do when it works restorative practices needs 100 of people in the district to implement for it to work because it is

027a um it is a practice about community and building community and without your community buying into it you're going to have pockets of kids who feel safe and other pockets of hits who don't so um if you would like that to be on the next report of here are the three practices or the major practices that we're going to implement as a district um I'll be happy to report that but I don't want to sit here and Report something that I haven't fully engaged in researching and I want to make sure even when I do find something I need to um understand it and also plan it within the context of Milton so what do you think is the biggest flaw in our current practice the practice in itself the implementation the building the human

028capacity to do this work because you can tell someone they're racist and you can tell someone that they're doing all of these particular things in a wrong way but until they're brought in and understand what aspect of their behavior is racist or what aspect of their behavior is harmful then they're not going to change that behavior and if we want to sit here and think that we can just give the teachers tools and our answers are going to be solved we have we need time for the teachers to learn the tools implement the tools coach them on how to use the tools correctly because I can give someone a hammer if they never used a hammer they're not going to know if they're using it correctly or not so those are the things that we

029needed to to talk about and if we're talking about shifting a whole discipline model that the district has practiced for all of these years the union is also something that we need to consider well thank you for your responses um the only point I'd like to leave you with is while we take the time to to do all of this there are kids who are suffering and and I agree I don't want good to be the enemy of great in this but I thank you for answering my questions I and I agree and I'm going to follow up with that as there is a process the process is being taken the process is not great it may not even be good right now but there is a process kids are reporting it we currently have

030four allegations that's happening in the district so we know about what's going on um the the again if the people who are investigating these things are not prepared to investigate racist incidents or harmful incidents they can do more harm than good so there are kids suffering and they're going to be more kids suffering and we don't start somewhere by making sure that the people are handling the cases are equipped to handle the cases if I could if I could just interject because I wouldn't want to mislead anybody right now uh watching this there is a system in place there's an online Anonymous bullying thing uh reporting system on the front of the web page has been there for years I also want to let the general public is watching this every school in the Milton

031Public Schools does an anti-bullying anti-harassment presentation at the beginning part of the year if you want to know when your school had or will be planning a presentation I would encourage people to communicate that with their uh communicate with their principal as far as reporting we are and when I say we MPS is only as good as the information is shared with us we know that we're in a different era where a lot of stuff goes back and forth online on individual social media Tick Tock Snapchat whatever the case may be if we don't know about it in part of our presentation is talking about bystanders when to speak up when to share that information have a conversation with parents if parents don't report that to us or students don't report to that that to

032us it is very difficult that's why what are the biggest things that we're talking about is building positive relationships where students feel comfortable and Trust the adults that are in the building in any of these incidents could be reported to a nurse Administrative Assistant custodian teacher administrator principal whatever the case may be we want to make sure that every single student has at least one adult in the building that they feel that they could go to and Trust so for those who have any questions about that reporting system is on the front of the website I would encourage you you could do it anonymously if you do it anonymously and don't want your child's name or your name should be as detailed with the uh be as detailed as possible if things that happen in

033the building not in the classrooms the cameras in the building that we could go to and then start our own investigation into following up so I want to share that with the review in public because I want folks to know we are working on the consistency of this but as you can imagine you deal with things differently at an elementary level than you would at a middle school and high school level so I just shared that sorry about that I I built Dr Carol performs the link in the form is also on slide two the link to the webpage and the forms plus the the the phone thing is on slide two thank you um and thank you um senior director Park Martins for bringing us this update um I guess um I'll start with

034my second question because it sort of follows off of the um the sort of exchange just there um and I think it is just coming back to the student experience in trying to figure out what to do where to go and I hear what you're saying um senior director prac Martin's about the um you know need to continue building capacity in those you know across the district in for everybody who would be in a position to receive a report to make sure that they are able to um kind of handle that uh as you were describing um in the meantime though kind of building off what uh member Ross Denny was saying I'm noting on you know the slide where you have the flow of all the various people who could be uh receiver the

035report would there be a way in the meantime to um kind of help um you know funnel for about lack of a better word like funnel reports to people who have been trained um you know maybe a student could submit a report to their trusted adult if that person has not necessarily been trained is there a way to kind of get that in the hands of someone who has I'm I'm only like thinking out loud on this in that Spirit of what Beverly was sharing and the urgency like it's a balance recognizing the need to take time for a comprehensive process and also needing to um kind of continue implementing something now um that does even more directly than our current you know Desi form that you shared uh address the concerns so that was

036one thing and I'll just ask my second question now um it was about the piece and with what you shared around the transition from Dr Spalding to yourself and leading on this work um I'm curious to know more about the stakeholders who have been involved in the process thus far because um it does say um I'm trying to find where the the slide um indicates that on the new Google form slide that feedback has been Incorporated um has the form is complete has been shared for feedback which has been Incorporated do you know whose feedback that was that was incorporated because then I also see later in the next steps slide uh the intent to include further feedback from stakeholders and so I'm just kind of trying to understand where we are in in that

037process and the last thing I'll say and then you know I'll stop is just um wondering about June if if we are going to uh if your plan is to bring a full um kind of plan proposal um in June then what would be the the ways we could stay in touch about this going forward at intervals to make sure that you know we don't wait until June to pose questions that we could have been perhaps sharing between now and then so out there thank you absolutely so those are three great questions you may have to remind me because I'm going to start a question number uh one which is um yes uh I will say that prior to me putting my hands on this the reports did not go to the equity Department because

038we never had an equity Department it's not in the policy so what I'm doing is requesting that the report goes into the equity department so I can do and support the schools in that way in addition to that the other piece that we need to consider is the again confidentiality thank you um Dr crackhead for um oh no I'm sorry Elizabeth white for asking that question about confidentiality I think a lot of that process will have to be answered with a lawyer in terms of who can have access to what when um and because a lot of times when there's a safety plan put in place the principals will go and ask the adjustment counselor to step in to support it um or they will call James or they will call Janet or uh in

039the past superintendent uh assistant superintendent Spaulding um to to help them guide them with with how they handle the situation and now if the situation is not handled in a way where the students are not feeling safe I I wonder if what the follow-up looks like after the plan is put in place and whether that process and system is being followed or or implemented consistently right like do you check with the students what is the restorative plan and what does that look like so that's the the that's the answer to that so right now yes we can funnel this stuff to those who are trained but right now the only people who are restoratively trained are the assistant principal and the principal we have a plan to phase out the training to build capacity on

040who gets certified to be restorative the other training that James and I have been talking about is the training on investigating and being certified to investigate bias and sexual conduct incidents that's two separate those those are two different skills right because we as much as we protect the the victim we also have to be um cognizant of the rights of the person who's been accused and what does that look like because something like that going on a child's record can be very damaging for the future whether especially when it was just alleged and not actual facts so um that's the other piece that we're putting into play is identifying um this at first the School principles to take this training and be certified on investigating these things the other piece I think that you also

041asked about is um the um the follow-up on where these reports go again because it's a legal document we would have to check with the lawyers to to to figure out how the flow can work and and I'm just going to elevate the challenge of my position right now because within the system the position recognizes assistant superintendent and superintendent as the person of authority to be able to have access to 100 of the student files the student cases stack cases Etc the system does not recognize that of my position in this current state so if that is something that you want the department of equity to support and help that may be something that needs to be thought about in terms of how this position is is phrased or tailored or whatever because they we

042will run into issues with confidentiality around staff if that's not clear and cut out and um you can you remind me what question number two was uh it was just about the stakeholders who has been in the conversation so far okay so the report that I reported on that slide was the report that Karen Spalding shared with us again this process was handed to me two weeks ago I have no idea who was on the team how it was that it that was just told that that was done with the form and and and there was a team working on it and that Dr Spalding said that the reason why I said that there's another vetting process is that we need the time to iterate this policy to make sure that it is addressing the

043current needs this intervention plan that it is addressing the current needs of the district especially around collecting data and identifying the needs at each school and what the supports look like um so once those things are put into play we need to vet it with parents with with the staff with students with the school committee and yes we can definitely keep in touch because it is in fact a policy piece so if the policy subcommittee wants to work hand in hand with this and this process with me I'm I'm more than happy to do that and then third was sorry just the idea of um sort of updates at intervals and the ability to continue this between now you know over the course of this year recognizing the urgency from students and Families Elaine you're

044on mute unmute unmute I put my hand down but I forgot to add me um there were two processes I needed to go through I won't belabor uh the point too much that my colleagues have made before me but I do believe that there could be some small shifts even I've done some work around restorative justice in my own work and I believe that there are ways in which um we can make things better for the students um in the next eight months before we get a new plan in place I hear about so-called microaggressions I don't like the term because it makes it seem like it's little uh and it's not to the people who are who are suffering with them I hear about microaggressions on a regular basis uh happening not usually in

045terms of race but more around gender expression and sexual orientation um I think it's happening quite a lot it seems to be part of the daily um experience of a number of students in our schools and I'm concerned about it um uh like uh member Ross Denny um you know I am concerned about the fact that when students report this the um the person who committed the bullying act um knows who it is who reported regardless of whether it's Anonymous you know as superintendent um Jed pointed out the form is anonymous and it can be submitted anonymously but the one who you know receives the retaliation on the other end is the person who already was bullied in the first place so um that's I we definitely have work to do um I just wanted

046to um and this really isn't all of this isn't really directed at you director prac Martin's because um I know you just got this two weeks ago um but it's just frustrating um Could you um for the viewing audience for the listening audience give us an example of restorative justice if you could take the example that I just gave like a microaggression around sexual orientation and calling someone a slur so what would happen in a a sort of typical or uh restorative practice situation so um once the incident is reported we can only act once the incident is reported or we witness it or see it um the student that is being harmed is the first person that we attend to if we're talking about restorative practices we speak with the student we identify the

047need of whether we need to um you know contact parents contact whoever to share that information to say hey this is what occurred with the student we are processing with the student and we need to determine what it is that we need to give the student for their safety for them to feel safe and if we need to remove the student from the the situation if it's a harassment or bullying to a point where it has to be some level of removal whether that's the person being accused versus the victim that takes that's a whole other conversation once that student is worked with and talked about that student is part of the conversation on how the situation can be restored for them my biggest question to a student who has been victimized is hey how

048can we make it better for you how can we make the situation safer what are you comfortable doing right now can you have a conversation with the person to confront if you're talking about restorative practices part of taking that power back is confronting the person who harmed you and the work with this victim or quote unquote victim is to get to that place where they can navigate those types of conversations themselves now there's work also with the person who did who was accused of the incident you have to investigate you have to talk all of those who are involved and then the person who actually conducted the harm the restorative work has to go with this person too so they can understand the impact of their behaviors sometimes that comes with them and their parents

049together sometimes it's a conversation a conferencing we call it a restorative conferencing when it's that person the parents um the counselors the teachers the administrators as well as the victim and their parents and their supporting system and we all conference together to determine what we need to do next for this person to learn from this mistake and then this other person to feel safe so that's the restorative conferencing component so that's a restorative plan in addition to that we need to do work with the community because they just witnessed this and there is trauma that occurred based on just witnessing something like this and there's work around that as well it so I another piece is I don't want us to think that this is always just student on student sometimes it's staff and students

050sometimes it's staff and staff the idea of this restorative process is to make sure that all all Learners staff teachers and students are working together as a community and the work has to start with that that person is does that make sense like we're looking at everyone from a learner's stance and and knowing that hey you're part of our community what can we do to support you in learning that this is harmful for this person and everyone else around you that's that would that's the approach of restorative does that answer your question I know this has been a lengthy uh conversation if I could just interject one one one time because I think that uh we're really getting into the weeds and then fairness to this whole process I want to be clear last year

051Karen Spalding Dr Spalding assistant superintendent was taken on his sleep she had mentioned it at one of the school committee meetings and mentioned it with Somali prac Martin president Somali Park Martin was not part of her full team or the folks that she was working with at that time in regards to uh Somali getting this this was a discussion that came up about a month ago not two weeks ago a month ago about having this Reporting System unfortunately within that time the person who was working on it Dr spauldin was the uh owner of that material at that time and Dr spauldin left the district on Friday September 10th unfortunately we were without an assistant superintendent of curriculum and Personnel for about a week and a half to two weeks when Janice Sheehan took the

052role and we were prioritizing how we could get up to speed opening up the school looking at data doing some of the other work so I want to be clear to the general public that there's so many competing priorities doesn't mean that we're not going to get to them we have it but if I challenge anyone to look in your student handbook that went home to you if there's a reporting of harassment you could go to your student handbook it gives you that chain of Commando who you can report to it also tells you to chain a command if there's a school issue uh incident that you can report to um you have the online uh Reporting System there's the guidance counseling system and as I said if you go to the high school the

053high school did their uh orientations on the first couple of days of school freshmen and sophomores Juniors and seniors if you if you I challenge anyone to talk to folks this is all about how can we enhance a system that is already in place and I think that is important for the folks to know I don't want people to think that we were we were uh aimlessly uh negotiating or dealing with student issues in the Milton public schools that is not the case as a former principal both of middle school and high school there is a hierarchy now we just have to make sure it is consistent for a consistent form that makes it easier for reporting finally a lot of this information is recorded to some degree because it's uploaded in our Sims data

054it goes to the state that's how we were identified for our disproportionality uh in regards to school removals and discipline and so I I did want to share that to folks because I I think where we're starting out in trying to make these improvements I don't want anyone to be misled to think that there's no reporting system whatsoever say one more thing and then we're going to wrap up this conversation because um Susan Miceli is um is waiting in the wings for her presentation as well yeah so I just want to thank superintendent jet for making that clarification for the public we there are many things that the district is actively working on and many competing priorities and last year when Dr Spalding recommended this new Reporting System I think it was under the after

055reflecting on what was shared in the summer by families of color and actually as Dr Craig had pointed out applies based on gender applies based on sexual orientation there's many other ways in which the system we have isn't working for everyone and when the request was made for the idea of coming up with how do we make this better the idea was Milton isn't the first district in the United States to have issues of race and harassment issues of harassment based on a bunch of isms the concern is in 30 days I was hoping that we could find some information about how could we do it better is Dr Craig had said in her current role she has had somebody's responsibilities so it's a matter of when there's an opportunity to learn from other people

056it's not to say that you're going to follow everything that they said but you can learn something and I am appreciative that the district is taking seriously the updating of this policy to reflect our current times and also to make more students feel safe I think the parents who are um whose children have been victims in the last month and probably over the last school year um probably don't feel completely supported but it's not for a lack of action by Milton's staff it's from how does it turn out for that child does that child still feel safe at school do they still feel welcome at the school um there's been a lot of work behind the scenes that parents have had to engage in to protect their children well the people who are the perpetrators

057are living their lives without any restorative justice practices so I'd be happy to be part of the discussion as we go forward and I would like to thank you all for putting all the thought and time into getting this to where it is and for all the opinions that have been shared tonight thank you memorizini and thank you director prac Martin's for doing such a thorough presentation for only having taken on this um information two weeks ago um for just too little clarification on things so people understand can someone or superintendent jet or assistant superintendent chin explain Title IX and who is the Title IX person in the district yes yes go ahead James no no go ahead James I'm not going to I'm no quiet okay one of you it doesn't matter the Title

058IX opposite is Janet she and as an assistant superintendent of curriculum and personnel and also uh the Title IX officer I would allow and this is for instances of harassment uh sexism or any type of those harassments that elevate to the level uh where a person is feeling discomfort racism she's the person that you well first if it's against a teacher or an administrator um it goes to uh Janet Janet Shin if someone were they alleged it happened to Janet Sheen as a Title IX officer obviously you don't you don't go to the person in charge it'll come to me and uh that would that's where that iraqiated the Title IX officer thank you just wanted to clarify for the community that this is a policy you know that mandated by the Commonwealth to have

059policies in place to prevent bullying and harassment in all forms um I know that this is a very heavy topic for for the community it's very painful to hear what member Ross and he said to hear what Dr kirkhead said to know that children are experiencing these things and to know that we are doing our best and working harder to make it better I think the last thing I'd like to say is in all the conversations that we've been having around um the ways that we're looking at the district this year in terms of equity and terms and social emotional development in terms of curriculum we're trying to build capacity in students as well so that when you start at the Pre-K level and you work your way through you are building capacity in the

060students to recognize the things that are kind to say are not kind to say that are harmful and how you can deal with those things as you move through your educational experience here in Milton so when we talk about that that's a really important he's to think about moving forward that we are building capacity in our students to not to not commit access that are harmful to others and to recognize when they happen that you can restore things and that you can move forward in ways that are beneficial for both of you painful for victims and sometimes for the perpetrators as well for as director prac Martin said there's often trauma and incidents involved in them so this is a very complicated very human very spiderwebby messy life situation and I really appreciate the effort

061you're all making and I know that we can do continue to do better for everyone involved so thank you so much um for all of that and for your honesty right and for your willingness to work hard it's hard to have these conversations but they're so necessary to make things better and to make people feel safe absolutely that is number one children who don't feel safe do not learn you learn that in early childhood for sure right and for sure so I really applaud all of your efforts every last single one of you and the parents and I know we will get there um and I know the school committee will be happy to play whatever role we can um to make things better for everyone so thank you director Craig Martin's so much and

062thank you chair upper heart in just one final piece on that and I will move on if folks forget who the uh Title IX officer is you could access that on your child's School website under their handbook any email that you get from me and probably most folks in the administration there's a disclaimer at the end at the bottom of your uh of the email that tells you who to Title IX officer is and how to uh go about that and I would encourage people don't wait for an incident navigate uh the front page of the website so you know and take a look at the reporting system so you familiarize yourself with it so you know where to go in the event that you have it and as a last resort always call the

063principal guidance counselor adjustment counselor nurse teacher you can let anyone know and they're obligated by law under 51a I mean under a mandatory reporter excuse me to report that information to uh the administration so I just wanted to share that with folks and we will continue to work on it um at this time if there's no more questions I would like to uh called Susan Maselli I believe who has joined us on this call uh Susan Maselli she's going to do her presentation uh excuse me uh Sally I I can't see on my screen here James okay she's gonna talk a little bit about the disproportionality plan for the Milton Public Schools so you could take it over Susan thank you good evening everyone thank you superintendent Jet Are You projecting or am I projecting

064oh gosh um um um welcome um uh can you see share screen on your bottom Susan like on your screen can you see that you can share a screen or no I can perfect thank you okay perfect yeah good evening everyone thank you for this opportunity to connect with folks I wanted to give you an update I know I spoke in March about the work last March with the work we were doing regarding the disproportionality I wanted to give you an update a little bit of data a little bit more background a little bit more on action steps and respond any questions that might come up the first thing I just wanted to point out to families and and school committees that many districts are being faced with disproportionality work this year by the Department

065of Education and the role of this work is to help make sure we're doing the best we can for our students who need special education so the context of this is a bunch of Educators working very hard on behalf of students who are faced with making difficult decisions in team meetings and our goal is to support them in that works they can make the best decisions for students on behalf of them and that this process sometimes can be challenging and when we integrate this work into some of the challenges Milton as a community is experiencing we know that we need a systemic holistic student-centered approach so my presentation is really focusing some of the things that I've been talking about with people and I'm hoping that's helpful to provide some context so historically the district

066was identified by the department of Ed in 2017 and 2018 of being at risk for two disproportionalities in special education the first one focused on a disproportional number of students who identify as black or African-American being labeled as having a communication disability the second one looked at the same subgroup and a disproportional number of school removals due to discipline so we really started back in in a while ago with this work um I'm going to give you a little bit of the data and then I'll talk to you about what we did back then and what we're doing now so here gives you a context for some of the data the the valuable information in this chart to focus your attention on is the risk ratio you can see in the determination of a communication

067disability over four years that our risk ratio which was the likelihood that a student would be identified in the communication category versus the not likelihood so you can see the subgroups this is the data the department of Ed provides US based on what we report on student demographics and in 2017-18 the risk ratio was 3.43 3.75 4.5 was a year that that we really crossed that threshold and that's when the risk for disproportionality became a calculated disproportionality but I also want to draw your attention to the fact that for last year we were able to drop that number that is in part due to the work we've started in the last two years so we are not there yet but we are aware and we're working towards changing this trajectory for our students each subgroup

068is identified here the First Column for each year represents the total number of students in that subgroup then you see the number of students who had a special education program in that subgroup and then you see the percentage the department of Ed is advising us to look carefully at the risk ratio not at the percentage because that information may not be as helpful as the ratio number in the category of discipline we are still in the at-risk ratio we have not thankfully reach the category of being disproportional but the department of Ed is asking us to look at this data carefully in 1617 5.9 was the risk ratio for a student who identifies as black or African-American being removed under School discipline in 2017-18 we see that number decreased significantly we see an increase in

0691819 and I'm waiting for last year's data to be finalized they're a year behind in this work when it comes to discipline so I'll be able to get you those numbers as soon as they're posted through the department of Ed so action steps to date so again these disproportionalities were first brought to our attention in 1718 in um the fall of 19 into the into the winter of 20 the the town sent a team to a disproportionality summit at the department of Ed that team at that time was then principal jet myself principal Elaine McNeil Jeremiah and we went to a summit with the Department of Education to talk about where we were at and we began to develop our initial action plan the steps that we took in that initial action plan focused on

070looking at District PBIS which you know was a strong initiative the district was partnering with the May Center on back in in that time we began to look at the root cause analysis for how this disproportionality may have come about and we started to look at what district resources we currently had in place and what we needed to add to address this concern in 1920 and in 2021 I was able to secure a couple of Grants they were referred to as the 258 grants and those were competitive grants where I was looking specifically at two basic areas the first thing was to begin the training for restorative justice for our middle and high school leadership was where we started then we began to provide mentors to help re-engage students who were reluctant to attend school

071those were students that may have been in one of our disproportionality groups or could be at risk to be identified in one of our groups so we had teacher mentors who are working with families outside of school to help kids re-engage and then we started training with our school psychologists who are the staff who are part of the evaluation team to look at identifying bias in our assessment practice and how we could eliminate reduce that bias so that when students were being evaluated for special ed consideration we were taking into account that we didn't want to be finding them eligible with our biases intact we wanted to be able to remove that barrier and make sure that we were finding them eligible with good practice so a very tangible example of that is recognizing that

072our assessment tools need to be culturally diverse and sensitive and making sure that we're using those tools for evaluating all children during 2021 I engaged stakeholders across the district in a pretty comprehensive root cause analysis I looked at 15 years of Special Education data across the District of the students that are part of these groups we looked at four years of discipline I looked across schools I looked across subgroups I looked across clusters of students from every conceivable angle I spoke with stakeholders in every building I shared the data we talked about the data we looked at specific students and we began to develop a robust action plan that was supporting us this year and Beyond I would like to also share the department of Ed has been partnering with with me on this work

073they have shared in giving us feedback on our action plan they really wanted to make sure that we were identifying a mechanism for systemic and systematic programmatic and philosophical changes in our work and make sure that we were setting the district up for long term success regarding addressing these areas so I wanted to give you a little bit of information about how we're funding this work I've um secured this year for federal entitlement grants two of them were grants we typically use and two were additional ARP grants ARP stands for American Rescue plan and these grants are setting aside 15 of their total funds to help sponsor the work we're trying to do to address the disproportionalities in our action plans long term we will need to have a conversation about how we're going to

074support this work long term these are grants so they have a limited um time frame to them we can anticipate we we have them approved this year and we can anticipate that we will probably have these resources next year but beyond that we're going to need to have a conversation about how we want to support this work going forward I wanted to give you a little bit of an overview on this year's action plan um initially the review of District practices and procedures regarding eligibility and discipline with a lens of equity and inclusion and using the restorative justice mindset so again our evaluation teams are looking at anti-bias assessment tools and practices to make best decisions at Team meetings we have trained about half of the administrators where our goal is to train everyone to

075tier three of restorative justice practice and you know that will give them training in several skill sets that I can talk about later um the second thing we're doing is looking for how we track referrals um of students that are accessing our student support team so at every building if a teacher is feeling concerned about a student's growth they have an opportunity to network with colleagues and talk about new and creative ways to support kids that process is robust it's developing it's been it's been added to over the last couple of years and we want teachers talking about kids who are struggling because we want to make sure that teachers have the skills they need to teach kids and we want to make sure that we're teaching the way kids learn so the SST process

076happens at all of our buildings um last year when I presented to you I talked about the role of the inclusion specialist and how they were facilitating that process this is the place where we start talking about kids and success it's also the place where we want to focus on data a lot of the work that I've done this year is really focused on looking at the data that's driving what's happening for kids we want to continue that work as well we need to also look at the instructional support for kids and the gaps in some of their learning the root cost analysis shows us that some of our kids in this disproportionality have not had Early Childhood experiences as robust as other students so this grant is allowing us to really look at providing

077some interventions in the classroom for kids one of the benefits of this money is it's not just for students in special education it's also for students in regular education and it's designed to identify kids at risk early and provide interventions with the expectation that if they don't need to be referred for an evaluation that that doesn't have to happen if they do need to be referred they're absolutely going to be able to go through that process but with a more Equitable lens we've also been able to use this grant money to secure two additional adjustment counselors for our therapeutic programs in our middle and high school these counselors will partner with the existing staff in the buildings to continue to provide support to our kids what we do know is that some of the students

078who are in our first disproportionality for communication are at risk for our second disproportionality for removal of under School discipline we want to provide therapeutic supports to them again using that restorative justice lens to make sure that we're really addressing their needs in a timely and preventative manner we're going to continue to collect data on all of this work the department of Ed requires rigorous data collection down to the minute of how these resources are helping kids and they want us to use that data and reflect on our practice to support systems management and change to perform to support professional development for teachers and to support accountability that what we're doing is is really helping kids so um a little bit about the professional development that we've been doing as you know last year all

079teachers completed Dr warm's cultural competency training so we have that Foundation to start this work for this year the grant money that I've spoken about is focusing on preschool and kindergarten teacher in-class coaching on some of these key Concepts so I'll go through some of the concepts we're going to be addressing during training the first piece is referral and eligibility when do I refer a child how do I how do I sort of parse out between a learning style and an impairment and a disability how do I how do I look at those pieces the second piece is udl RTI and mtss so those are the terms that describe teaching new ways and different ways for kids and making sure that we're responding to their learning style in the classroom udl means Universal Design for

080Learning RTI is response to intervention is what we're doing working are we having data that shows growth and mtss this multi-tiered system of support are we teaching to all levels of all levels of students in our classroom based on all learning styles another training that we're talking about and this is where director pack Martin is directly supporting my work on this side of the grant is at looking at history of educational achievement gaps and helping teachers appreciate the historical considerations for some of the students affected by this group excuse me we're also going to be doing some training for this group on learning style and thinking about a strength-based model you've heard superintendent superintendent jet talk about strength-based teaching this is really an opportunity to embrace that work within professional development for teachers early literacy

081and Ela we really are going to help teachers Identify some of these instructional gaps that they haven't had the time to address given the rigors of the curriculum and really go back to what comes before early literacy and early phenology skills that kids acquire in early childhood centers Early Childhood experiences and finally teaching teachers more skills to add to their toolkit regarding how they use progress monitoring and data collection to drive planning for kids oh wait sorry missed one so next steps so right now we're in the process of hiring we just started preliminary interviews for our posting for restorative justice coach and next week we'll be doing preliminary interviews for early literacy coaches our adjustment counselor positions are posted and we started the interviews for those we're going to continue the full implementation of

082our robust action plan which includes this professional development we need these people in place to provide some of that professional development so that will all be coming in tandem I want to share with the committee and with the community that the department of Ed has invited Milton to attend a national conference on disproportionality the conference will be held in November I anticipate there'll be questions about parental and family involvement in this process and this is a wonderful time for any family member who would like to be part of this conference to reach out to me I'm also obviously going to be including staff and administration from the district but I would welcome anyone who'd like to join us to participate in that this was an invitation event so I'm excited to be able to look

083at this work on a national level and network with other people who are facing similar concerns and try and you know benefit from each other's experience we're going to continue our ongoing data analysis and really looking at student need I my style is to lead by example in my daily work so for me the impact of this is working with teachers and administrators on a regular basis in their buildings and and that is what we're going to do to really address this work is kid by kid talking about students impacting change and then using the data to drive how we support growth for all Educators and students that is what I wanted to share with you tonight I don't know if I'm sure you have questions for me oh I'm sorry Beverly remember rust any

084sorry So based on my zoom there's like a row of hands that are up first I just want to thank you sue for taking the time to look at the data um into into do the research and if you get some professional development it means so much because it lends so much more credibility to any proposal that you make um so thank you and thank you that the development you're doing with the teachers is job embedded it's not a pull out I'm sure there's some PD that they're having but the fact that they can get it on the fly in the classroom when they're struggling is such a thoughtful way to approach this work so my one question is you had mentioned that we're waiting for some data from the state in order to see

085whether or not we've made progress it's kind of like the MCAS reveal that you wait for is there a way to create a system internally where we can track this so that you don't have to wait for Desi because if something's wrong and it's that lag time that given how proactive and action oriented you are I'm sure you'd have done something long before Desi could come out and say something to us yeah so that's a great Point thank you um I'm waiting for them to give us that risk ratio final number for last year's data one of the variables that's impacting me calculating that right now is the the model of covet and instruction and what what that looked like for students so it's not it's not data that's as clean because what students were

086doing in terms of attendance was all over the place some of the students that you know didn't attended remotely or attended in person or had changing schedules I just want to be really thoughtful about the context of that information so while we do know for the communication this proportionality we do have all of those numbers I know the school removals that happened last year and there were not a lot of them however because of the model I'm waiting to see how the department of Ed provides context to that data schools were not open we were open so for example my students my own personal children were in school every day last year but some Milton students weren't in school every day and some were so I am trying to get some information about them about

087how they calculate the percentage of that data when student attendance was varied and I just don't want to give misinformation or without a context of this takes into account that your school school was half hybrid half remote or you know half in person half remote or this takes into context that you were that this student was fully remote I just am sensitive to that Beverly which is why I had not put my own data in on that column yet that would be coming but I I want context because I think that's important it was a weird year thank you so much Dr Carroll thank you um thank you so much Miss Ellie I'm I'm really want to say I'm impressed by the clarity and um just how detailed and thorough your presentation is and I

088I look forward to keep continuing to dig through it and I just want to name something that I I think you're presenting to us which is that we should be able to expect um our data to start to look differently based on these action steps that you have put in place so I know I thank you for detailing the changes that have happened over the past two years really um you know we know um well you know those of us who pay attention to education research like understand that we need to allow for changes to take hold to be able to see the outcomes shift and anyway I'm looking forward to um what I hope and expect will be some different uh improvements in our data based on the steps that you've outlined I just

089wanted to observe one other piece I know you mentioned um specifically around the history of educational achievement gaps in Milton public schools that senior director prac Martens is able to support in that area of training but I just wanted to say that I I felt like especially because we just had the opportunity to hear from her right before you around a different topic but I saw a lot of what felt like a lot of opportunities to kind of crosswalk this work uh specifically around restorative justice and you were talking about um all the administrators that you know are being trained in these practices under the grants that you have secured and I know that we were just hearing when we were learning about the um incidence of bias and bullying reporting the need to kind

090of take time to ensure that that training was happening so I just wanted to make sure that you know these dots are being connected um and that we can basically gain efficiencies from the trainings that are happening around these disproportionalities and that those can benefit us in all these different areas that are related so um just thanks again and I guess I don't have a specific question unless you wanted to respond to that but um looking forward to seeing this work go forward I'd love to give you a little bit more information because it provides a great context so the restorative justice PD the first tier that most secondary administrators have taken now um is about the whole concept of circle training and restorative justice as a as a skill the second one begins to

091address conflict and harm some of our administrators have taken that and some have still need to do that one the third one is really about um restorative justice and discipline so many of them are starting to take that now they started the first year so in response to director pack Martin's Vision we share the collaboration of getting everyone you know to that proficiency point the other areas of of um of training that they look at after you get through those first three tiers is the racial Equity comes in at the fourth level um classroom pedagogy comes in at the fifth level looking at trauma-informed care in the classroom is is six and and as you go through those steps you develop that skill set in that administrator so to her point to my point it's

092a trajectory of learning for people we were able to start some of that work for some administrators some went further than others we have a few new ones who haven't had a chance to start it they can do that this year so I think as she and I continue to collaborate on um the work of her department and the work of my department and the crosswalk this becomes more naturalized but um we need to get people an opportunity to do those first basic trainings before they get into the more subtle nuances of of some of the work that she was speaking about I hope that helps clarify yes thank you so much and just one quick follow-up which you might not be able to answer and I think this is something we'll continue talking about

093but it's also the the wondering about um the plan for Rolling that training out to teachers as well I mean obviously the administrators are the first priority but um kind of what's the vision as you were saying or timeline for that so I did share with principals um with this new grant money the the total total resources will afford US an opportunity to begin to trade folks in their building that they identify as those initial contacts that should have this so for example the adjustment counselors um so I do believe that we'll be starting additional support for key positions key stakeholders as this year unrolls uh unfolds number White uh thank you for your presentation Susan can you um speak about how many positions the grant has funded uh for this year and hopefully for

094next and what we're looking at as we as the grants go away and the town needs to um pick up the expenses what that price tag is going to look like and how many positions it's involved sure so presently the four grants are covering six additional positions to support this work there's the early literacy and learning Coach position um that actually is a full-time position and then we have a very small part-time position from one of the Early Childhood side of that Grant we have the restorative justice coach which is district-wide so that makes three um we have two adjustment counselors which make four and five and the sixth one is actually um I should have said five I shouldn't have said six um sorry it's five so those are the five that we're starting

095with and what will be the price tag of those five positions Grant is over my finance ad I just yeah get an idea so their their unit a position so it would be the unit a um line item that you typically use you know and then obviously some staff select benefits and and some do not um so we're looking at you know five I would say it's five ftes to do the total of the work now what that looks like as we start this work we might talk about the evolution of those positions um and that could impact that but we're we're going to start with this place and and go forward thank you remember Rosemary yes thank you I just want to Echo my colleagues in thanking you for your wonderful presentation and and

096moving this work forward um I'm particularly excited and interested in in the work that you're doing at the Early Childhood level with the preschool preschool programs and kindergarten program and I'm wondering what the role of the early literacy coach will be in in this if you can talk about that a little bit that's a great question um so here's the thing we want our teachers to feel supported and nurtured while they grow their skills so for me that means that I provide the support to you in your in your safe place where you teach as opposed to pulling you out and bringing you to a situation where you do something and then you have to come back and generalize so we're going to do a little bit of we're going to do three different things

097the first piece is providing early literacy pre-reading support early phonological development early vocabulary and language to our preschool and kindergartners who may not have had a as a robust Early Childhood experience as other students that will help them be more ready to learn what the classroom teachers are offering in terms of literacy and math instruction so the literacy coach will have that role the second piece will be providing support to the teacher in the classroom about ways to make their instruction more available to students that might learn in new and different ways and help them identify materials that are going to be more culturally sensitive more culturally aware and the third piece is participating in engaging Families how do we help families feel comfortable talking about how we can help them that piece we need

098to continue to talk about so we're going to be looking at this person to be a network for families in the community for example an early childhood group for students that don't attend Milton public schools yet where they can learn about some of these early phenology like a drop-in kind of activity where you come on Tuesdays and you meet for an hour and you learn a rhyming skill and you get to play with peers and you get to start to see the school and connect with grown-ups that kind of community outreach will be a piece of this work as well this person will in tandem support the professional development that the rest of us are going to be providing which is out of the classroom we've identified those key Concepts I talked to you about

099earlier the grant is of providing us with substitute money so that teachers will be able to leave their classrooms participate in PD and then bring the skills back to the classroom wonderful um just a follow-up to that if I if I may I'm just um I just wonder whether you think that our preschool and kindergarten classrooms are developmentally appropriate because I our hope is that our classrooms are ready for the students that come and that we're ready to meet them where they are and and you know there's a there's a dance there but and obviously kids are going to come in with different backgrounds and different experiences but are we prepared to meet kids where they are when they come in I think it's a great question I think our teachers just like our kids

100are on a Continuum of learning and some exemplify exactly what we're looking for and some are growing their skills just like all teachers and all administrators and I respect the fact that these teachers are trying to work across sometimes very diverse group of Learners and what we want to do is support them in their own growth so do I think we're developmentally appropriate yeah I think they're doing a really nice job there's the yabbit and you guys who know me know how I feel about yavitz we are create we are a district of rigorous and very high standards and I feel the sensitivity that our teachers have to help students reach those standards so I want to be thoughtful and balanced all of the expectations we have of them as we say let's look at

101our early childhood and preschool Readiness not preschool pre-school studies before School Readiness and really allow them to celebrate what they do well but also give them sort of the permission to remember that some of our students are less School ready or may want different experiences to be more school ready I'm not even just talking about the students who might be part of this proportionality I'm talking about all of our students this month is every subgroup this crosses our students with disabilities our students who are have you know English is in their first language we really want to let teachers develop that skill set because here so I think it's it's an all-encompassing approach Ada is is my feeling about it wonderful wonderful thank you yeah well this thank you um director Miss Holly for your

102wonderful presentation just a few thoughts I'm thinking that as Finance you know we all know that the um the key the key the key play here is the teacher in the long-term success of students and that the number one except for parents who are the primary lifelong teachers of their children it's the teacher not that anyone else doesn't matter but it's the teacher and I think thinking about how to roll out the training district-wide and funding that in the district's District where I worked it was it was a conscious effort to put in Subs in place to have days throughout the year to make a plan for that long like over the course of a year or two that that requires a financial commitment in terms of funding for the subs having the teacher out

103of the room which I know isn't ideal but if you want to build that capacity again then you need to plan for that and in a way that you and you can fund it so in that way coming to the school committee in addition to the other costs but saying what would that cost to fund those types of initiatives to roll it out in a more comprehensive way for as many teachers as we can across different grade levels and across different schools something to think about and then the last thing I just was thinking as you talked about Early Childhood that you know I had the opportunity to meet the commission of Early Education and Care this week and chat a little bit about um the um the relationship between Desi and eec and just

104thinking about you know if there's Universal Pre-K if money comes down from the government it will funnel through them what will that look like what will curriculum look like and how as a as a public school can we build capacity in local Early Childhood centers to support their growth and learning as teachers too I know that that's not our you know fiscal responsibility but thinking about the ethic you know just the responsibility as as a learning community what are the ways that we can reach out you know perhaps through the coordinated family community engagement Grant and Susan Dolan through opportunities like that to think about building capacity in other programs um across the town of Milton so I thank you for all your work it's always amazing to hear from you thank you all I

105appreciate the opportunity okay let's go back to you I'm superintendent yet okay and I'll be quick the last thing I wanted to share if I could share my screen for a quick second um I know this is something that people wanted to uh get an update on and very quickly it's an update on some of our numbers let me move this out of the way uh basically it's the MPS uh excuse me uh a lot of conversation over the last few weeks is about the test and stay program um uh in the vaccination rates of our students right now 826 students are vaccinated at Milton High School which is about 75 percent of the population 467 68 students vaccinated at PS Middle School which is about 50 percent of the population there's 928 total students

106currently at Pierce as of this morning 245 students at the PS Middle School are not age eligible put a vaccine so even if every child who is age eligible at Pierce received the vaccine we would still have difficulty reaching that 80 percent Mark that the commissioner is talking about in terms of uh the first however I do want to say this last week when I checked that that number was 2 268. so between a week and a half or so ago and now 23 students uh had a birthday where they turned 12. um obviously there's a lot of press right now that was on the news I have communicated with uh uh manette Community Health Center we have a parent in the community Marion dakak that works with them uh there was a conversation about

107that there may be a public announcement possibly on November 1st however if you watch the news this evening even if they make the decision to make the vaccine eligible for those who are five ages 5 to 11 there is a uh two-pronged process that folks go through one it goes to CDC then it goes the FDA or FDA CDC I apologize if I'm getting them mixed up um but those are the two agencies that it has to go through in order for it to get approved and then when that is approved I would encourage parents to start having that conversation with their pediatricians now about what is it that they're learning what's coming down the medical pipe for them to make the most appropriate decision for their fam their child and their family um so

108I just wanted to share that piece with folks as of uh today and since uh September 1st we've had a total of 59 uh positive cases in the Milton Public Schools nine of them were staff and 50 of them were students total number of excuse me I apologize total number of close contacts in the Milton Public Schools there's 208 and the reason why I put this other piece on here the state reporting started on Monday September 13th oh I believe excuse me yeah it was Monday September 13th now we had cases prior to that but we couldn't record those cases prior to that in the first week of reporting it went from Monday November 13th to Wednesday five o'clock uh no uh excuse me September 13 to Wednesday September 15th there were some people that

109had some questions about thought we were playing with the numbers nope that's just the way that the state reports it and it goes every week from uh Wednesday night five o'clock after the reporting closed so the following Wednesday five o'clock so then they do the state reports their information out by communities on Thursday um as far as this test and state program is concerned uh testing State uh symptomatic testing program started on Tuesday October 12th so far the student participation we had 13 students at Glover nine at Pierce excuse me at Tucker 18 at PS uh three at calicot in out of those three two was symptomatic one was a close contact for a total of 43 all together we had three students that have been identified as positive through the test and stay program

110one false positive was negated by a PCR test the reason why I share this with you and and I'm gonna stop sharing this for a second because that's very brief I just wanted to give you a visual it illustrates that within the Milton public schools and the school environment there is a controlled environment that not too many of our close contacts uh Contracting the virus unfortunately we had a small few small few but it goes to show what we are doing in terms of our mitigating strategies within Milton public schools are working a lot of our contacts or positives are coming from outside and that's why I share with parents as the weather starts to get cooler uh activities start to move indoors we're asking parents to please be mindful of that particularly those parents

111of students who are at the elementary level uh and then with this test and say as you can see now by doing the testing all of those students who engage in that and receive the negative tests were able to go back to class immediately that test takes about 15-20 minutes depending on the results and I will say it is a little challenging to try to do some of the testing for the younger cherubs at the elementary level it is a little awkward it's a little challenging and that was one of the things that we tried to say to people that we needed that support otherwise because you have to be dealing like it you have to be sensitive and you have to take it in mind uh where the students are coming from and where

112they are developmentally so that's it in a nutshell but one exciting piece of news that I didn't report it needs still needs to be signed um the Milton Public School school committee on August 25th Wednesday made a mandate to have uh require all Milton Public Schools faculty and staff be uh vaccinated now just like with any other business or entity there are exceptions medical exceptions and possibly religious exceptions I want to report to you very uh enthusiastically tentatively uh there was an agreement made Milton Public Schools will be moving forward with all with the Mandate one of the first districts one of the first districts in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts where faculty and staff and school committee came to an agreement on that I commend the faculty and staff I also commend the courage of

113the school committee to be at the Forefront of that um and one of the things that I say to the general public in the Milton public schools that is a testament to the teacher's commitment to try to make sure that we stay open until Susan maselli's Point providing a rigorous and welcoming encouraging and inclusive environment in the Milton Public Schools so we're happy about that we know we may run into a few exemptions but there are processes and protocols that are in place to support those who may have a medical exemption or some sort of exemption so that's my quick update I know that the other piece under my report was quite lengthy so I would leave it up to you guys for questions or we can move on to the next item yes Dr

114Carol did you have a question yes sorry um thanks superintendent jet um just a quick question regarding the vaccination for children under 12. um would uh you know can we start maybe you have already um but planning for putting the pieces in place to set up vaccine clinics at our four elementary schools when that becomes available so that we can kind of move as quickly as possible to begin on providing those for families and students that are ready to take it yes I'm sorry maybe you've missed I I was saying last night I was on the phone with minute Community Health Center quite frankly I thought the announcement was in uh School Committee Member Ada Rosemary was on that email I thought that the vaccine was going to be available November 1st that might be

115the announcement and I say might be but I think uh member uh Rosemary to tell you I was communicating with uh Minette Community Health Center trying to set something up for November 2nd which was the professional development day so we are committed to that but I also think that you're going to find it it's going to be widespread because the reports now are saying they're going to make it available with pediatricians they're also going to try to make it available within schools now the reality is they're working on all types of components smaller needles stickers all types of things because when you're injecting younger kids it's a different element than you're injecting a high school student so yes we are already thinking about that but if if they make that announcement November 1st it might

116take two to three weeks before that becomes available because of that process of FDA then CDC approval anyone else have any questions about the covet update or District updates shouldn't say covet update um superintendent chat I just want to thank you and um all the leadership team the the nursing staff everyone um for the efforts the teachers custodial staff every single person superintendents Dexter and um Sheehan and Laurie Dunn and Charlie Rose just everything that you're doing to keep School moving forward to keep it safe health health and safety issues um to push forward initiatives to help people get vaccinated to give them information and and we're in back in school and children are safe and and we're maintaining mitigation strategies and we're moving forward and I knock wood that that continues um as we

117move into the fall um later fall early winter season of colds and flus and stuff like that thank you for that and I just again ask or reiterate that families should be speaking to this uh pediatrician in trying to find ways to get vaccinated as we talk about every two weeks the district updates and all of the priorities we have over 2500 Elementary students and still have middle school and high school students that need to be vaccinated for the Milton public schools to take on a Public Health crisis to even though we're putting some of these things in place I think that the alliance shared at work needs to be spread out and it shouldn't be the sole responsibility of the Milton Public Schools so that is why I'm asking folks because to check with

118their pediatrician because I do believe a lot of that is or at least the reports that we're getting a lot of those vaccination things are going to be sent to pediatricians which may spread it out and afford US the opportunity to do that we do have very limited time even if we were to open it up on two Saturdays uh we were able to get in three to four hours with Minette Community Health Center with high school students we were able to get adults we were able to get about 200 to 300 in a um in about a three to four hour span remember once the vaccinated vaccine is injected there's a there's anywhere from a 15 to 20 minute period where they need to be monitored under EMTs and so the our partnership I

119do want to publicly think felon ambulatory services in manette Community Health Center for all of their support with us but again spreading that out will be a huge help yeah and I would be remiss if I didn't thank the students um for participating um and really keeping each other safe and for the parents and the community who have really been a partner this year in moving School forward so um thank you to everyone in the community for um that and thank you superintendent jet director prac Martens and director macelli for the um for the updates which were um you know we're somewhere heavy and full of a lot of thought-provoking information but um good work happening in the district for students um the next part of our meeting is a Citizens Peak I will remind

120everyone this is an opportunity for our citizens to um speak to the um to address the committee everyone has about about three minutes to speak the whole length of Citizen speak is 15 minutes um when you if you would like to participate in system speak you can raise your hand and you will be moved up to speak I ask that you state your name and your address and I that you do not directly mention anyone in the comments but speak to issues that are of a concern to you and to keep your comments friendly I would like to note that I know that the chat and the question and answer were left open this evening so I'm sorry that I did not shut them I apologize to the committee I don't want the community to

121think that we're ignoring you but school committee meetings are opportunities for the committee to address and speak to each other since we do not have that opportunity outside of the meeting so I will try to see if I can ask someone to note or capture anything that might have come through the question and answer or chat that we might be able to address at a later time but I don't want the committee to think that we're not cognizant of your thoughts it's just this is not the opportunity for us to address them at this moment okay so I think superintendent Dexter is going to help with this part if you'd like to participate in citizen speak you can raise your hand and we will move you up to address the committee um okay we have

122and I apologize in advance if I don't pronounce this name right um yawa Debo yes thank you you may now yeah speaking you pronounce it very well that's correct so um I want to address the issue of disproportionality and as I mentioned my name is Ricky the oldest child is in elementary school Aftercare in the military Milton public school so when I listened to the report of on the equity or data a couple of weeks ago um the root cause analysis that Suzanne muscly shared today and uh ends action plan that was put in place I'm still struck by a couple of facts and uh I just want to remind everybody that we're talking about first the over representation of black and brown kids to special ed revolve second so over representation of black and

123brown kids in discipline action third the under representation of black and brown kids in the French program for example and false is the under representation of black and brown students in advance program so tonight we highlighted the data and Russia an action plan and while I'm very encouraged by the step that we took forward um what I would like us to focus on is a people so I'm talking about like the school Community it's a student the teachers and the parents as well so what I'm concerned about is the impact of um of all of that on the mind and bodies of the black and brown kids at the internationality of of it all what I'm concerned about as well is the message that we send to non-black and brown kids who we should not

124be full about that witness the Discrimination the Caesar arm the field Industries but know of their beliefs that we the community won't do anything about it so I want us to break the cycle set up new Norm whether it's through restorative justice or other process and training and and let our kids know that regardless of their races that if we see something we say something and we as a community do our best to fix it so again I'm very encouraged by um the report that Susan Wesley shared this action uh plans that was put in place and uh like our presentation but again like one of the things that I want to leave us is is we own a community um has Susan musli said to lead by example and and going forward I would

125like to continue to see that whether um it's through this uh venue like this community or elsewhere in town thank you very much thank you very much if there's anybody that would like to speak at citizen speak please raise your hand um superintendent Dexter I I always forget this part I should have reminded people that we don't address we don't respond but that we will take their comments and respond at a later time um to any questions or concerns or thoughts I apologize for always forgetting that piece okay um Regina C um you may now speak good evening thank you my name is Regina Campbell Malone and I live on churro Lane I'd like to add on to yawa degbui's comment on disproportionality she eloquently highlighted not only the disproportionality in regards to discipline special

126ed and the composition of students in the French immersion program I'd also like to add that the there is albeit um not recognized by Desi a disproportionality in regards to what children are at each of our four elementary schools and I think that plays a role down the line when all those students who have been de facto segregated joined together at Pierce and each school has not been able to prepare all the students for meeting up with students that they haven't really interacted with as elementary students so I just wanted to add that that one note uh that that is not really a part of the Desi data but I think could go a long way towards thank you would go a long way towards um moving things forward in terms of equity and inclusion

127and the proper treatment of one another thank you thank you very much [Music] if there's anyone else that would like to speak at citizen speak please raise your hand now would anyone else like to speak at citizen speak please raise your hand okay chair Everhart I don't see any other additional hands raised thank you very much just um superintendent Dexter and thank you to our community members who shared their thoughts this evening very helpful all right we are on to the chairs report I think yes we are here we go all right so we have a few things on our report um so I'm just going to review quickly for the public where you have our goals the superintendent's goals an appointment of masc delegate the resolutions and the discussion on the subcommittees so we

128will try to get through these things efficiently and um but comprehensively at the same time and respectfully of our fellow committee members I want to thank everyone who emailed me with thoughts and comments about just me you emailed just me thoughts and comments about the goals I had some conversations with people myself about them so I really appreciate all the efforts that you made so um we'll start with our goals would you like me to put the Google Doc on the screen would you like that you can say yes or no maybe so yes okay I'm gonna do that you're on mu sorry my screen is giving me a hard time pulling up the goals there we go foreign there we go all right can you all hear me am I moving still all right

129so would you are there any goals in particular that any of you would like to address before we put a motion on the table to vote on the goals raise your hand if so or shout out because I can't see you all at the same time um I I've had conversations with several people offline about The Unfinished learning goal yes and I'd like to thank superintendent Jeff for um establishing goals that are related to instruction there are two goals that were on the last version of the school committee's goals which we thought might be better positioned under the superintendent's polls and it has to relate to the um the formative assessments that the districts purchased last year for the elementary and K-8 to really help us understand how students what what students were learning without

130having to wait for the summative assessments of the MCAS and we would like to add those to your goals not in any punitive function but because we thought that it made less sense under the school's committee goals and more sense under yours and it had more to do with making sure that we actually purchase those resources along with the professional development necessary to implement them with Fidelity so that would be the only request I would have like I'm uncomfortable approving our goals if we know that that these two points aren't captured somewhere thank you member we'll say do you want do you want me to find the the version of the goals that had those on them just to pull them up I think it'd be helpful because I wouldn't assume that superintendent had those

131on top of Marty because I know this is a new conversation for him I will find them just give me I would like to get his thoughts on it um it's not as I said there's no number attached to it it's we just need better information and it was something that was brought up by a member of the leadership team sure okay I'm coming back foreign so these are the goals that member Ross Denny is addressing C and D we took them out of our goals because they really are in school committee goals they're not goals that we can we can effectively address in our role as a legislative body but they are they are directly related to the presentations that we just received and to the information that we just um had conversations about

132in our superintendent's report actually you know what I just realized that nope they're there I take that back she's right I did C and D so we have on our list purchasing the assessments correct development so I take that back there were two calls around grade level no no that really these this this is the other draft this is the time so they're not on our draft anymore that's right but there is the assumption that there's no way going into this fall when any reasonable person think that the district had an action plan for unfinished learning but I think given a two-year time Horizon and the leadership team that you have a inherited and B some may have been hired I think it's reasonable to say that in two years with the tools that we

133should be able to get there did you get a chance to read those super I'll put them back up I apologize I can't see superintendent chat so I didn't even know that I had a Sam Ray sorry well he might be saying he did okay you want to leave him up and I could address it so whatever you guys want me to put in my goals as long as and I and I would I would emphasize without uh without being punitive so by June 2000 you said seeing CND right by June 2023 MPS K-8 will demonstrate grade level uh Proficiency in ela in math uh for their current grade level I have no problem with that I think that is a very optimistic and very lofty goal um I go back to what uh Sue

134Miceli said students come to our buildings with varieties of different learning experience there's some things they're playing in Social economics and supervision prior learning experience I think there's a lot of factors that go into that and also uh I think about just this year we have a more than 205 students that moved in the district some students of color some with disabilities some ell I just want to make sure when we're saying every student uh reaches that proficiency grade level we have those exceptions that are built into that because those are some of the factors that play into that so I have no problems if that's what I have my reservation about that but if that's what you guys want me I have no problem working to that because that is our goal but I

135also know that there's extenuating circumstances and this is not the deficit uh deficit uh based uh model I'm going with the strength base but I just wanted to be some understanding that there there are various different uh elements that we can't control and we all know them no and that's that's very fair and I purposely wrote it in terms of the realities of Education I've never worked with a district that said 100 of the students were proficient every year there's always kids learn at different rates and to your point they're the non-academic factors that impact a student's capacity to learn with that said I did put the caveat that it's pre-pandemic so if this was two years ago and you know in grade four sixty percent of students were proficient in ela then that would

136be the marker if anything I would love the leadership team to recommend which school year that we use as a benchmark it wouldn't be 2012 but it might be 2018 or 2017 but just being realistic and if there's ever a point where there's some extenuating circumstance I would say just bring it to our attention um when I I have my personal goals that were blown out of the water for coven and but I told my supervisor so she knew long before the deadline for my goal that there was an extenuating circumstance and as long as there's open lines of communication I would hope that my I know that myself but I would also hope that my colleagues on the school committee would give you that same level of um what's the word Grace if we

137can't meet it for next for for some circumstance that you've articulated to the school committee does that sound reasonable that that sounds reasonable and the reason why I bring it up I think about this year's third graders they're about to take the MCAS for the first time they didn't have a full second grade uh experience and they ended their first grade experience out of school and if folks remembered three weeks of that first that end of the year there was from Destiny guidance no new learning try to do reinforcement so I wouldn't call it learning loss um you know losses associated with something totally be damaged I'm calling it unfinished Lane so to your point if that's the goal that you guys want to put on mine I would be happy to accept that with

138that caveat um so not a problem okay great thank you superintendent Chad I think um you know I think we all um felt that representing this part of the the um District's data and understanding the need to keep it at the folk keep it at the center of our work um was so important but there wasn't any real way for us as a school committee um to to make that part of our um make it part of our um our goals because it wasn't something that we could um that we could address to ourselves so hard if you could go to this if you want I just want to make sure I'm clear okay on that because there was a d by 2003 somewhere yeah okay that's the one okay yeah all right it's very

139similar yeah okay thank you all right so this so this this here stands at the the final draft that uh that was compiled from um all the different um um emails and thoughts that people shared with me so I hope you had a chance to look it over and we kept we looked we kept the assessments because those are things that we can look at um one way that we know that we can get at unfinished learning and measuring student growth is to think about our new curriculum and instruction advisory committee and I think after tonight's presentation and all the conversations that were had around the need um for ideas around curriculum around supports and structures that we need to have find some way for the school committee to support these conversations soon to be

140differently informed than we currently are the personalized learning goal we we also felt was very important because this is the this is the way that the district is hoping to move to personalized learning for students and we have these conversations with Mr Fish and his team when they came and talked about the changes they made to the math curriculum and the way they're supporting students learning in different ways um we kept discipline at the center of our goals because as we just had from our presentations and from our student our citizen um speak commenters this is a really important thing for us to be addressing along with the issues that the district faces in special education um we kept the curriculum adoption goals in here I recognize that this is going to cost money and

141how we identify and how we pay for it um will be a conversation that we will continue to have but we need the we need a social studies curriculum 2018 was when the new standards were adopted it's um and we need to look at our math curriculum so I recognize that the budget process will be complicated and will involve many conversations but it's necessary for us to keep this at the center of our work as well our family and Community engagement goal is ongoing even though we haven't even passed our goals yet and I thank all of you for participating in this process I think it's going to be a very successful part of our work this year and then the last part in the document was on social emotional learning I took out the

142specifics related to the screener that the district piloted last year and simply put in the fact that we need to identify the cost of implementing a screener budget for that implementation and then to look at what um what was identified as a need and to address them at some point in the next year so comments questions thoughts remember I can't always see you so you can just talk if you like no Market yes is that you yeah yeah okay number Rosemary I'm sorry thanks sorry it was so hard to see and share your screen at the same time um couple things I wanted to just go back to the the conversation about um unfinished learning yes um goal for for James yeah um I guess I guess my feeling is that if if James wants

143to consider um adding a an unfinished learning goal to his set of goals for him to consider the the draft goals that we had um and um to decide what he thinks is a an appropriate goal for this year remember this is an annual goal for this year we're still figuring out um what exactly the unfinished learning is and as we're assessing kids and in real time and and figuring out our plans for that um so um that that's my comment on on that and and in James's goals and superintendent Jets goals he does have a couple of areas where he addresses the proficiency Gap and the numbers of students meeting and exceeding expectations um on MCAS raising by by three percent so his his addressing those to some extent now and I think it's

144it's really The Unfinished learning um piece that that we might want to just weave in there um the the second thing I just wanted to talk about was the personalized learning goal which was um I I reached out to um AJ Melanson who is um along with Kat deroche co-chairing a group that is working on personalized learning for in relation to the Strategic plan and and they they advised me to bring forward this as as a goal for this year about adopting a common data platform for all grade levels and we have a data platform of Otis from the district that we've had for a few years years now but the implementation of that has been somewhat sporadic and their their belief is that if we can move that forward either Otis or some other

145data platform and again that will be up to James and and and his team to determine um you know if that if we're going to stay with that and what that will be but but that that would be a really good goal that really having the data about our students is is the very important First Step that staff need to be able to begin to personalize learning for students thank you member Rosemary superintendent chat yes uh to be clear I am very fine with the conditions of adding the two school committee goes to my goals because those are not for this year those are for 2023. so I I just want I just want to be clear I am fine with that with the caveats that we I guess what was making me nervous is

146I never want to put you know they talk about spot codes you wanted something to be attainable I think that's something to strive for but I also want to I also know that there's uh sometimes there's different variables that play into that that may not let you so remember Ross Denny clearly articulated as long as we're giving you updates along the way that is perfectly fine I am completely fine with that the second piece is about the personalized learning just so you know uh AJ Melanson katnirosh myself we met with Dr Paul Revel former Secretary of State uh today this morning also works at Harvard uh talking about this personalized learning and what's important to put in place and one of these says is the structure for capacity and really for in relationships for our

147faculty and staff to really take the time to get to those students so building structures that's why you have the connection time slash Flex time at the middle school The Advisory here at the elementary school I'm not saying easy it's different because the elementary teacher might have just those 24 or 22 students whereas a middle school high school uh teacher could have anywhere from 100 to 135 or 40 students in the number of periods that they teach so a lot of this work I I just want to again ensure you as a committee and ensure the public that we are moving forward and looking at these things and what personalized learning is not a curriculum uh it was emphasized today it is a norm it is a culture it's the environment so and and we'll

148talk about that as we start to move forward through the process but thank you I'm all set with those goals I have no problem um Dr Carroll thanks thank you superintendent Jeff for taking on those unfinished learning goals um and the only other quick thing I'm sorry I didn't catch it before um there's a typo in the section that I drafted under Community engagement um and I just want to correct that before there is a vote on these it's actually so Milton youth advocates for change that's very important to get that name of that group okay Milton youth advocates for where are they on the encourage youth participation yes um so Milton MHS Student Government Milton youth advocates for change um so you know we have begun to um engage with the both of those

149groups and looking forward to hopefully some really fruitful work together this year um but can we please just correct that yeah yes I can correct that absolutely sorry I'm sorry for that no no I didn't I didn't know there was point that out anyone else have anything to share no all right I'm going to make a motion to accept the 2021-2022 school committee goals I need a second second all right this will be a roll call vote um member Rosemary yes okay awesome Dr Carroll yes um member white yes remember Ross Denny yes Dr Craighead stay abstain and member Eberhart yes so that so you can help me with that it was five zero one is that right nope yeah five zero one okay I want to thank you all this was a very um

150thoughtful process and it was um it wasn't easy because we sort of did things a little bit backwards um this year um but I I was so just thankful to all of you for your for your commitment to this work you know are to um our two presentations tonight and our citizens speak um tonight and I'm sure others have left comments and thoughts really speaks to the urgency of this work because we're talking about people and young children who are healthy so and need our support and and so I'm really looking forward to seeing the changes um that will come along all right so that's the first thing done um then we have superintendent Jets goals do you want me to pull them up as well on the on the magic screen as I refer

151to it which I'm not very good at so I I spend a lot of time in you just put yourself on mute my husband wishes he had that magic uh button foreign there we go okay now you can see them all yes thumbs up okay um so superintendent Jeff gave us a summary of what has been happening over the course of the last couple of weeks on we've only been in school I believe it's the 32nd day of school today superintendent Chet and I were talking about that today 32 days that's it but 32 full days these were the focus this year um and then he had several different um goals he had professional goals around communication with families um continued continued communication faculty and staff and then a district goal um and again this

152one had to do with the disproportionality and discipline for students and restorative justice this one had to do with the disproportionality with referring to communication disorders and Sims data and how we will address that and these were the things that um sumacelli spoke of when she gave her presentation this evening these are the interventions that the district is working on implementing and superintendo if you want to say anything pop in I'm just sharing because it's under my report here um here are superintendent addressed some of the achievement achievement proficiency gaps under a student achievement that we'd like to address over the course of the next two to three years right so you're looking not for next year necessarily but 23 24 because it's going to take some time to make up um some direct goals

153addressing equity and particularly around by anti-bias training and different leadership initiatives that he's taking [Music] um sorry hold on guys that's Timothy's ring what do you think of it [Laughter] sounds like Timothy all right um and then we talked about social emotional learning which you know we talked about tonight a lot about the fact that these initiatives build capacity in students so these kinds of initiatives around social emotional learning curriculum and things like that are ways to build capacity for students to address um social interaction social awareness peer relationships and problem solving so these were his goals as he presented them to us um two weeks ago or last week would anyone like to have any questions and we're going to add the two unfinished learning goals to this these goals um does anyone have

154any questions comments thoughts for um superintendent yet yes member Ross Denny I want to thank superintendent Jett for incorporating some of the feedback that came from the school committee and adopting two goals on the Fly tonight thank you very much um my only parting thought would be I encourage you to plot out the staff capacity necessary to do the goals um I have seen over my career um sometimes a small group of people getting the bulk of the responsibility for executing these tasks or in this case leading these tasks so I just ask that you be thoughtful about making sure that the work is distributed across your team so no one person or small group of people they're the brunt of executing this plan and if there's any way that the school committee can help

155in terms of supplementing resources whether it's our personal time or getting volunteers or just trying to identify resources to make sure that you have what you need to implement this plan please let us know because we want you to be successful this is really good work and I appreciate you writing um essentially smart goals so thank you so I appreciate your comments and that was something that came up uh in our strategic plan meeting yesterday when you look across the board with the number of different committees you got some of the same people that are on some of these same committees and even though one committee might meet one night there's multiple people meet in the over the course of those for example data data is part of teaching and learning data is part of

156social emotional learning data is part of the special ed initiatives that we talked about data part of the unfinished learning and so you have someone like avivo in all of those categories same thing with special ed same thing with the math coordinators and curriculum so I'm glad you made that statement and that is something that I really I'm really going to ask and I appreciate the offer and I will be planning and talking about that and coming forward with a potential proposal because it is and I think the term that was used yesterday morning was the mental energy to continue to do the work it was supposed to be doing during the school day with the students which this is all part of that I want to make it very clear but to your point

157how do we spread that that burden or that challenge or that work across multiple people um and so we're committed to the uh task I we have some outstanding leaders in there uh one thing I will uh also add on this there was a recommendation about a social emotional goal in terms of uh setting a timeline for the for this year in identify identifying specific interventions there uh obviously I don't have that goal written but I could definitely uh put something in place but I will with your permission add something to that effect because we do have uh on November 2nd uh Jenny bellable who got a grant from bid Milton in conjunction with Karen Kahlo uh the principal at the high school identifying four four faculty and staff members from each school which is

158about 24 people that are going to be doing some of this work spreading the wealth with teachers who are in the trenches or faculty and staff in the trenches in identifying root causes and some of the challenges that our students may be facing but also some research-based uh interventions to support them with that and then my final statement um folks talked about the intellispark uh in the student the SEL survey I know last year we had some challenges around survey I would take this opportunity to say this publicly and it will be a letter going home soon the survey that we're sending home is really to assess where all of our students are this is not something that's meant to cause stress it doesn't have anything about sex sexuality or anything like that it's really

159a survey to talk about students social emotional and Behavioral Health we have seen a spite in the need it's not just in Milton you could watch any newscast you see behaviors of percolating all over the Commonwealth we need to do our due diligence someone said early early and I think it may have been selling if you're not healthy and you're not well it's very difficult for you to to achieve in Chief at a high level so where we're charged with that task of supporting our students in a multiple multiple different ways so I would ask people even though it would come with our policy it would come with an opt-out um please living begging and asking for families to allow students to participate because the more people we have the more uh information we get

160which will lead to better resources targeted resources to support our students so I just wanted to share that sorry about that too about it no no I think it's really important and I think we might want to use the word screener as opposed to survey even though it they're technically they're not really actually the same thing thank you very much I mean I do the same thing at work so that's why I did the same thing the other day at work when I was talking about a screener instead of a survey but um I do think that um and some just some background information for parents about that would be helpful um so they understand what it is and um in some of those in some of the social emotional learning screening tools they're actually

161parents parent surveys or parent things you can do um you can give parents as well to sort of be a part of that conversation for their for their child so um any I I always think educating the community and the parents and particular about the tools that we use and and and and how we use them and how important they are it really just sort of alleviates some of the um the worry that's all so okay great I'm going to stop sharing my screen from it so I can see you all again sorry did anyone have any other questions or thoughts about um the goals for superintendent yet anyone no okay so I'll have a motion on the table to accept superintendent Jets um 2021-2022 goals with the addition of the two unfinished learning goals

162that we discussed this evening and the SEO goal that he just mentioned and the SEO go I apologize thank you I'll move those skulls I second them okay all right then this will be a roll call vote someday we won't do roll call votes we'll all be in person again um Dr Link a kid yes remember we're Ada Rosemary yes um Dr Carol yes member Ross Denny yes remember white yes and member Everhart yes wonderful thank you so much all of you and especially you superintendent Chad for um working collaboratively with us on this very important issue thank you thank you all right onward to the masc delegate vote so um remember rollestoni did you figure out if you could go to the masc um conference you know what's funny I don't think we actually

163finalized the dates so I didn't look I think we stopped the conversation so I just stopped thinking about it um someone remind me the dates I think it's the sixth and seventh am I right remember Dr cricket um I believe it's the maybe the fourth fifth and sixth okay so remember Rosemary is looking at it during the week partially during the week right Wednesday Thursday Friday okay yeah Thursday and Friday the days that I can go and those are the fourth and fifth so I think it starts on Wednesday and continues to Saturday so it may be um uh member Rosemary does it indicate um on that schedule that you have the day that they actually vote on the resolutions no I'm not looking at their schedule and looking at mine oh I apologize Dr

164Craighead sorry that's always on Friday the 5th oh it's always on the Friday of the conference and this year it's the fifth Dr Craig it is our reigning expert on the MSC conference because she would go every year um and thank you for doing that so remember Rosemary are you planning to go if it's the masc I believe is November 3rd through the 6th okay um yeah yeah I I'm I'm going on the fourth and the fifth okay so we we need to appoint someone as a delegate to vote at the at the um meeting would you be willing to do that member Rosemary sure oh okay so I have a motion on the table then to a point member of members Ramirez as the Delegate for the Mase um vote I guess or conference

165okay so Dr Craig had enthusiastically seconds that we'll have to do okay meeting all right this will be a roll call vote okay yes Dr Carol yes okay remember rostini yes um number white yes Dr Craighead yes remember Rosemary yes and remember Everhart yes okay great so six zero thank you so much um Ada for taking that on really appreciate it um the next thing is to vote on the actual resolutions and I know that a member Rosemary had a idea on let's see if she would like to share it with you and see what yes yes um um after going through the resolutions uh I forget how many of them there were like I'm gonna I'm gonna get them hold on nine or so um and um what I was thinking um that we

166might be able to do is um in the interest of time um consider doing uh consent resolution um so that um consent agenda I guess sort of like we do at town meeting uh where if um uh we can all vote on the resolutions as a block if we're all in agreement um that we could just um do it that way and if we're not in agreement on everything then we can discuss those that we um are not um in agreement about so okay Dr Craig because I can see you and now I can't I think that's a great idea um I also think that the wording of the motion to support the resolutions or whatever we decide needs to have um needs to have some caveat in there that accounts for the fact that

167almost all of these resolutions will be slightly um reworked after discussions and so forth so the last time when I voted on these I was voting on versions that weren't the exact versions that the school committee had supported mm-hmm okay um okay well I can very quickly all right so does anyone else have a comment before we um move forward I just think if it doesn't substantially change the resolution I think it's fine to give um Ada as our voting member of the flexibility of going forward and just voting as we ask her to okay um Dr Carol and remember rust any since this is your first time on this lovely Venture here in in masc resolutions do you have any questions about the resolutions or the thought of doing a consent agenda and pulling

168any out for further discussion did anyone have one and one of these resolutions that they wanted to pull out for further discussion or you're okay with making a consent agenda for all nine resolutions remember Rosemary um yeah I would recommend including all nine resolutions in in the consent agenda okay so I may need some help from Dr faghead the ward Smith here on the motion so um we are making a motion to approve or to vote in the affirmative for the nine resolutions um of the um Massachusetts Association of school committee's board of directors um to be voted on at the Massachusetts Association school committee uh meeting on Friday November 5th I'll second oh I forgot the important piece with the caveat that there may be some slight change to the wording as currently written

169does that work Dr Craighead I think so sometimes the changes aren't slight but there may be some changes as long as this Spirit of the resolution can I just can I just ask also Elaine as you've got um experience with this it's my understanding that this is a delegate assembly yes yes this is taking a vote right okay right yes only delegates are allowed into this meeting and you'll just be representing Milton and there'll be one from each um each district there right okay so then the motion on the table is for um our appointed or our voted delegate member Rose Peter was Marin to vote in the affirmative for Resolutions one through nine at the Massachusetts Association of school committee's annual meeting on November 5th with the caveat that there may be some slight

170change in wording all right now do I have a second I think member white said yes okay all right so this will be a roll call vote Dr Carol yes member Rosemary yes Dr Craighead yes number white yes remember rust any yes and member Eberhart yes I think I got everyone so that's 6-0 on the resolutions um the resolutions are available um on their they were sent out as part of the pack tonight they're available I'll make sure they're in the blog and or available on the website for anyone in the community that wants to um look at them and um consider what they're saying they're actually pretty good resolutions um in terms of like electric vehicles and additional recess and supporting Health um and uh and Clinical Services at schools and I fully funding

171certain things at the idea act alternatives to MCAS some really good resolutions that were thought about at that by the masc all right wonderful all right the last thing on our under the chairs report is to vote um for our new the formation of our new school committee advisory committee which is the curriculum and let me just find it sorry um committee I just have to find it sorry I guess I'm going to share my screen again so I did rewording of the committee um member Ross Denny had been kind enough to put together a description of the committee and I went through some towns that have curriculum instruction advisory committees towns like Brookline towns like Belmont times like Chelsea towns like Framingham or cities and towns that have these committees that work with their

172Administration on curriculum and instruction and many towns call them teaching and learning and so I thought that this wording which is borrowed from the Framingham school committee captures pretty well the goal and the hope of the committee which is to really drive the work of the school committee in our decisions around funding and policy um and to help the district in that way around the ideas of curriculum and instruction um so the idea would be that the committee would work with the assistant superintendent of curriculum and other Milton Public School administrators such as Susan Miceli director prac Martens and other and curriculum coordinators um to focus on student outcomes um particularly on accountability and achievement and some of the things that committees look at when they are addressed these issues are of course availability and

173placements standardized testing attendance conduct and discipline graduation and post-secondary success I one of the reasons I really wanted to move this advisory committee forward is because we spent a great deal of time in the last few school committee means talking about things that are related to teaching and learning like the opportunity to dual enroll at the college and opportunities to have personalized learning and then opportunities around um you know the curriculums that we needed about anti-bias and all that stuff so I think this is an opportunity for the school committee to have more conversations with the administration and bring ideas to the full school committee as opposed to all of us has come having big conversations and not really getting anywhere at a school committee meeting so I welcome comments ideas suggestions on this description

174um of this new advisory committee nobody anybody okay if there are no comments I'm going to make a motion to approve the creation of this new curriculum and instruction advisor committee I'll second okay superintendent Jen has a comment sorry is this something that's being reported within this advisory committee or is this something that's being reported publicly at a school committee meeting no so they'll be so they'll just be conversations at you know um the advisory committee around things that you might want to put in data reports or find out about and then they would bring recommendations to the full school committee much like you do in policy much like you do in finance um much like you do in that it's really a way to really help help the school committee be more informed about

175the decisions they need to make around policy and finance issues moving forward right and to do the things that we say we want to do which is to advance achievement for all children right um so anyway thank you superintendent chat so did I have a second on that I'm sorry yes Mr Carol okay so does anyone have any questions before I ask for a vote nobody has any questions yes member Rosemary I'm here I can't hear you um yeah it it's not so much a question I I support the creation of this committee but what what I'll tell you what it made me think of is that the the um types of data that we're talking about here are things that um we would hope would appear on uh uh like a data dashboard for

176the district so that we all have access to that information and I think that's the thing I was thinking about is like well gee I'd really like to know all that too but I think we all would and and that you know if if and I know that that Vivo has been um uh trying to put that together for some time and this may be helpful in in helping to move that initiative forward I agree I agree um and that's that's the goal the goal is to do that and to and to streamline processes for everyone um for more for more for better outcomes for students so all right so this will be a roll call vote sorry um remember [Music] um yes okay Dr Carol yes um member Ross Denny yes um member white

177sorry yes and member uh Dr Craig yes a member of art yes six zero okay so I'm sorry I'm getting a little bit Punchy in my in my tiredness here guys um and so I know that um Dr Carol and member Ross Denny expressed interest in being on this committee is is there any other school committee member at this moment that would like to be part of this committee we could have up to three we can't have any more than that you want to think about it and get back to me okay so at this point I'm just going to say that number is um Ross Denny and Dr um Carol will be members and we may adapt and add additional members um at the next or subsequent meeting all right I want to thank

178you all that was a lot of work and I appreciate all of your efforts and Bravo to everyone for their hard work all right now you Dr Craig header up the key the power machine of the school oh my God I'm so tired I know I'm so sorry I promise you and I broke my promise um okay so um I'm gonna make this quick um for the FY 23 budget which is item a on the list um the finance subcommittee has met with um almost all of the uh stakeholders um uh in the schools um to present their um I won't say asks but needs um for their um schools or divisions um we've met with um each School principal um on their needs we've met for that's for operating we've met with facilities and

179technology for the capitol request although that's still somewhat influx we still have yet to um meet with special education and some other divisions but we will be doing that in the next couple of weeks um I will say that in my opinion the needs of the district are profound from what we're seeing from the asks um especially in the areas of um learning loss or I forget how superintendent jet put it pardon me unfinished learning unfinished learning okay on unfinished learning um and social emotional needs we're seeing a lot of needs around that the district um so the process is that we do still need to hear um from those various departments um those entities will prioritize their top needs um and in many cases I know it's going to be incredibly difficult because uh

180everything that we've seen so far is is a true need and um in some cases uh well they're all uh deep needs um then the leadership team with superintendent Jed um will meet decide on priorities for the district they will present that to finance and then finance will present to the school committee as a whole um what the what the proposed budget request will be and then the school committee will vote on that before we hand it over to the warrant committee so um that's where we are um and um next on the agenda is um the arpa the American Rescue plan Act and that's a funding request that we've made well we have funding in the town and the schools have made a request to the town and I'm going to let superintendent Jett

181say a few words about that and then I believe assistant superintendent Dexter is going to show a spreadsheet of uh what our ask is but James if you'd like to say something yes potentially we were trying to look at these uh additional sources of funds to try to see if we could uh take the burden off the town in an immediate future knowing that we're going to need somebody's positions and we put in and ask we may not get everything that we're asking but we're hoping that we get as much as we can from everything from uh uh support for Behavioral Health uh 504 coordinator to math interventionists the reading interventionists I want folks to understand last year uh this academic year was only 170 days and with the hybrid model all the way up

182until uh April 5th for elementary and April 12th for middle and high students will go into school every other day and quite frankly they would do a half a day and then go home to log on and do remote some students driving that some students didn't so somebody asked that we're asking for we're also talking about rooftop units um under the Opera funds that may be a cost uh that we might be able to do Under This Opera funding is coming into the town uh those are if folks realize the schools are about 15 16 17 years old after a while to wear and tear especially the last couple of years uh we're one of our mitigating strategies where we had to leave rooftops units running 24 hours to enhance or increase the air exchanges

183and things like that and there's so much pressure on them Bill Ritchie had mentioned to our group that we had to do some of those uh once in a blue moon now we're doing them more frequently uh in terms of filters in repairing generators so and then we're also asking for potential uh supports to help with the expansion of uh classroom spaces and we have that list that uh uh that has been submitted to a town and I want to be clear nothing has been reproved at this point but we're looking to uh ask for these uh necessary uh requests foreign [Music] can I ask a question about the um about the uh about that about the list um before I pull it up did you did you all vote in finance about like prioritizing

184the list do you understand what I'm saying Elaine sorry if if it's the list that you have the priority I'm going to share it right now hold on okay I think there it is there we go if this list here yes and if you look over to the column second from I see it now I didn't see that yesterday it was prioritized yep um and obviously that would shift but these are some of the positions and I'm sorry this feels like an eye exam for me even though it's the I cannot really see it I don't know if you guys but yes I don't know how to make it any bigger no that's perfect that's perfectly fine new options from the top there you go that's a little bit better thank you so when you

185look over under the priority under the top second from the right yes that will prioritize the list and what are the things that we wanted to do is we wanted to get it out in advance to let the town side know some of the things that we will be asking for so as you can see we're prioritizing the Pre-K to 12 Behavioral Health uh number two we have the elementary Reading specialist is that's a no-brainer we want to try to as best we can make sure every student is reading that grade level by grade three um um so that's very important um number three is the elementary math interventionist and I know there's some questions before about math coach versus math interventionists to clarify that the math Coach Works directly with faculty and staff the

186Educators with small amount of interaction with students under these circumstances Dismount interventionists will work directly with this students I think that's important to point out the nurse we it has been stated over and over again you could go all the way back to our presentations with the Warren committee uh last December 2020 we talked about the need for the nurses that was already asked that very last column would tell you um it was asked for the FY 22 budget um but it it was uh it was a request but it was not funded um so thank you I'm actually pointing with my cursor and I was wondering why I wasn't there I forgot you were sharing it I guess I'm with Dr Craighead I'm I'm exhausted right now but me too and then you can

187see where it was a new ass so I apologize under this format for the uh viewing public this is something that is definitely in a memo form uh that is going that has been submitted but again nothing has been vetted or nothing has been decided on on on either on a Town side I just want to uh put that disclaimer out there thank you I think it's a very informative chart it has a lot of really good information in it in it and it shows where we've asked before and it was unfunded and at the bottom it um indicates the ones that were we had last year that remained unfunded so I thank you all for your hard work I mean it's really very thoughtful work um and and really summarizes the needs that we

188have right now yeah thank you yeah and I need to thank Amy Jackson then then event so um then to warrants Dr craigett or um no we need to to also it says here vote um so we we've already submitted that to um the select board as a an indicator of what you know we're looking for but certainly I think we should take a vote as a school committee to um to um agree to forward that uh to the select board um as it is uh assistant superintendent Dexter has her hand up yes go ahead so I just want to clarify that we sent it um to Canada administrator Michael Donahue and finance director Karen praval um asriat was directed by the select board um last week at the Joint finance committee meeting um and

189then they were going to go through it first to see what was um of these requests if they were eligible or not under arpa um so then the next step would be but I think this vote could be to submit the request to both of the you know to the Town Administrator and the select board just to make sure it's covered okay that's great thank you so I'd like to make a motion to submit the arpa request as presented to the strong Town Administrator and to the Milton select board second [Music] any discussion um Dr Craig and I would just like to point out that um um whatever funds get available or anything the amount becomes comes to school committee but the finance subcommittee or and the superintendents May reconsider what actually gets funded um

190based on what the need is at that moment the priorities are there but I would like to point out that those responsibilities remain with you and then the full school committee this is just the ask with a prioritized list but in the end the the the decision is made by the district yeah as long as it's eligible so correct right is that because you know yeah and um all right so um I'll do a roll call is that what I have to do yeah okay so um member white yes I was getting ready to call everybody doctor everybody's doctor for a night uh member Rosemary yes um member Ross Denny yes Dr Carroll yes chair Eberhard yes and Meg yes all right thank you um and finally we have uh the approval of the vendor

191wire so I'm going to do them together there's two um I'd like to make a motion to approve vendor War at number 16 payable on October 14th 2021 in the amount of 253 166.31 and vendor warrant number 17 payable on October 21st 2021 in the amount of 299 362 dollars and 44 cents a second okay um member white yes uh member Rosemary yes member Ross Jenny yes Dr Carroll yes chair everhard yes and I'm a yes too thank you thank you all very much thank you all right Dr Carol you were up policy thank you I'll try to keep this as brief it shouldn't be very long um you did add chair Everhart to just provide a update on the last policy subcommittee meeting which took place this past Monday on the 18th of October

192um we uh we discussed we reviewed three um important policies at that meeting um the the first was our district survey policy um we actually passed um voted that out of subcommittee um I wrote some revisions to that policy uh but we weren't in time to get it on the agenda for tonight's meeting given the 48-hour turnaround for uh post-sule meetings so for that reason um we aren't discussing it here tonight but we will be looking at that together at our next full school committee meeting in two weeks I'll just sort of share at this point in time that given the timeliness of that policy and our need to communicate to the community about it um I'll just put out there that I hope we could could be prepared depending on the discussion to expedite

193a vote on a first reading of that policy revision next time so we can discuss that when we're here next we also Revisited The Residency policy which we had looked at together and revised in August by adding some a couple of exceptions to our residency policy and at that point in time we had said we would revisit the possibility of additional exception exemptions and we discussed that as a subcommittee in just the update is we decided not to pursue further revisions to The Residency policy at this point in time so we could always revisit it again in the future but for now we are going to stick with the exemptions that we voted on to approve in August finally we did begin discussing our professional hiring policy as a subcommittee and we'll be continuing those

194discussions at the subcommittee level but I hope to bring that some ideas for revisions to that policy for forward to this small school committee um you know my hope would be um soon within maybe next month or whenever we're ready as a subcommittee to do that um so those those are the updates um and thank you for the opportunity to share those um I know it's challenging when we have a Monday subcommittee meeting right before the Wednesday full school committee meeting um so uh the item for us to consider here tonight under policy um to discuss and vote on is the second reading of the anti-racism resolution which we discussed last time um oh but superintendent Jed I see your hand race so I'll let you speak before we move on to that all right

195just a quick thing maybe for the next one maybe we get an update or set the next one or the one after the school committee maybe the mass policy that we uh stated to the community maybe if you said that already I apologize I'm a little no thank you for thank you for raising that so that is sort of a forward-looking update actually from our subcommittee um we do have our next subcommittee meeting and will be November 1st um and that um will be our opportunity to consider uh the mask policy we had in August when we first passed the current policy we you know said that we would be revisiting that bi-monthly and that brings us to November 1st so we'll be looking at that I also understand that Bessie he plans to give

196new guidance next week on you know their recommendations and we'll stay on top of the data you share superintendent jet which is obviously also important around our vaccination rates at schools so yeah that will be a conversation that we can also kind of report back on at the next school committee meeting as well on November 3rd so thanks superintendent Jeff for helping me remember to mention that um so um any other questions or I don't think we're discussing any of those items that was really just an update and that brings us I think to the anti-racism resolution and I remember that um last time we seemed sort of on the same page about the revisions that had been proposed and voted at a subcommittee uh does I'll put a motion I guess to approve the

197anti-racism resolution as revised um I don't know if people feel we want to put that up on the screen again look at it or if anyone has any comments at this time um I second the motion thank you okay so then we can do uh unless does anyone want to discuss okay so uh we'll do a roll call both for this uh member Russ Denny remember Rosemary yes remember um sorry white yes Dr Craighead yes uh chair Eberhart yes and um yes thank you very much thank you for all the hard work um policy is also the engine of the school committee Financial all right remember Rosemary and you're up for us to cheesy planning advisory committee report if you have one or if you're like done I'll give you I'll give you what I

198got and as quickly as I can uh the strategic planning uh advisory committee met yesterday morning um for the first time in in five months we meet quarterly uh so this is a time of year that we usually have our first meeting but um a lot has changed and and it it um uh we started out with a presentation by my co-chair Steve paxia talking about um why it's a time for us to rethink our strategic plan and um you know the disruption from the pandemic of course the um increased urgency for equity and Equitable learning environments for all students and families and and with having the results of our Equity audit in hand now um that those all of those elements in them with a new superintendent and central office leadership team uh in

199the past year has has brought us to a point to really re-look at our strategic plan um and um the um um Steve took us through and I will share this um he did a PowerPoint presentation that I'll share with you all but he talked about the different kinds of planning that school districts do or any organizations do um being um important for us to keep in mind that there's strategic planning which is um goals that are meant to be transformative and require focused well-articulated action plans to be accomplished there's operational plans which are a set of activities that are more on a one to three year time frame to enable the achievement of the Strategic goals and then annual plans which are sets of goals established to address those short-term issues at an annual

200basis and I think as we've seen going through the process of forming our school committee goals this year and the superintendent's goals this year it was challenging because we didn't have the Strategic plan set before we started embarking on this process so so in in some ways it was a backwards experience this year and I think where we've come out is great in terms of our annual goals and superintendent Jets annual goals but the strategic planning committee discussed all of these and then also talked about the the former strategic plan that was as we all know is long it was quite detailed that in a lot of ways it was like a merging of an operational plan and a strategic plan because it had so many of the specifics in there that did make it

201so long so so that the our the goal moving forward is to maintain just a focus on the goals and object related objectives but the the operational plans will have more of the details that will be followed going forward and also the talk about the the task forces that we've had in place for each of the goals that have have been in place for a number of years under the former strategic plan but but there was as superintendent jet mentioned before people who were on strategic planning who were talking about the work that was kind of being done in silos and that there were individuals who were on each of those task forces and needing to run around to all these different meetings that was maybe not the most efficient way of getting the work

202done so um the the we discussed um what um some possibilities would be for our our strategic goals moving forward but didn't finalize those in any way but what we did was we created a subgroup that will work together between now and our January meeting to develop a draft of what those um say three hopefully three possibly four strategic goals for the district will be and um that group will seek input and and develop a a draft that will then be brought back to the strategic planning committee and then I'll bring it to the school committee to review and and move forward so that's basically it's a work in progress questions please thank you it's it's you and Steve paxia and Dr Kevin Donahue before you and and former member um Roy Walker for all

203the work you've done to bring us to this point and we look forward to seeing what happens with superintendent Jet and and the future yeah okay we'll appreciate it a lot thank you all right um we don't have minutes I apologize for not being aware that they were not attached so um the minutes from our October 10th meeting were not that none of us could seem to find them so we are not going to improve minutes I looked again and again but I couldn't find them I don't really have any old business I don't think anyone else does our next meeting agenda item our next meeting will be on November 3rd um we will have um the Cunningham School site Council coming to that meeting um I have policy and finance um updates on that

204meeting I don't know is there and are there any other subcommittees or advisory committees that will be reporting out member white um we have health and wellness next week so I can report out for that but I there's no other member on the school committee on health and wellness this year so we're looking for another person to join anybody would like to all right will you send me the information about when the meeting is it's um Friday the 29th okay superintendent yet yes I apologize I didn't do this on the district update but no in our efforts to try to bring folks together I should say first of all thank you to all of the parents and Guardians who are helping out with the homecoming we have well over 300 uh students at the high

205school juniors and seniors who will be participating in an outside event in the homecoming in the courtyard so it is outside but it's definitely protected and also the senior class who was not able to do a lot of fundraising last year doing activities they have a car wash that will be taking place this Saturday outside of the cut the front of the Cunningham calling bustling so hopefully folks will stop by and support them so sorry I didn't do that on the update though thank you for updating us that's wonderful um and if if anything comes up between now um and before we make the agenda we'll be sometime next week please just let me know Dr Carol sorry I had to move um so it will be in the blog tomorrow but oh yes thank

206you yes I wrote it down I totally forgot go ahead yes uh well just to um remind people it was sort of a save the date last week and then um there will be more information tomorrow but uh we are having the community forums next Thursday the 28th um to process the and receive feedback on the findings of the um Quality review survey quality of review report full report by Cambridge education um and people can find more information about that and the superintendent's blog tomorrow including links to attempt at 7 30 a.m and 6 30 p.m hopefully one of those times might work for whomever is interested to Come Share questions or feedback with us thank you so much I had written that down then I forgot and then also I had hoped to have

207the foundation come but we have so much on the agenda but the Monster Dash is Sunday October 31st to raise money um Sam chikelo in memory of sanchillo for Science Education in the Milton Public Schools so if you would like to have fun and go for a run or go for a walk then wear a fun costume it's always a great event held up there by Cunningham field and um you can go online to register if you'd like to enter the race the Monster Dash race and I'm sure there'll be upcoming announcements from them as well about the T-shirt contests and things like that all right I'm going to make a motion to adjourn to Executive session not to return to open session um to um in preparation for negotiations with Union Anonymous Personnel to

208conduct collective bargaining agreements or that's it to improve minutes this is a I need a second second okay I need a roll call vote remember Rosemary yes remember rostany yes member white yes Dr Carroll yes Dr crackhead mob member at heart yes I want to thank everyone for very productive meeting this evening and wish you all a peaceful week and um I'll see you next time thanks to the community as well have a great week