001foreign all right hello everyone good evening it's nice to see everyone tonight welcome to the Milton school committee of September 8th 2021. um our first item is to um a call to me into order and approve the agenda will everyone take a look at the agenda and let me know if there's anything I need to delete or to add to the agenda yes um remember Rosemary yeah um I think I don't have the agenda in front of me but I think you have school building yeah we didn't take it off yeah I I was gonna I'll just cross it off because we're gonna have something at the next meeting right and then on the October definitely October 6th and maybe the next meeting right and I'm I'm looking at my notes from last time and
002I so there are two things that I should have put on we'll put them on for next time I didn't send them to Charlene but so aside from the deletion of school building committee is uh the rest of the agenda looks good okay so I'm just gonna make a motion to approve the agenda can I have a second second all right let's see a show of hands for everyone who approves the agenda all right that's a unanimous vote all right here we go superintendent jet we are so excited to hear about how the first few days of school went and how things are going and and other updates you're going to provide for us tonight so uh the first item on the agenda under the superintendents report is the transportation which I know there's a
003number of folks out there that have some uh genuine concerns about the transportation um we have been working in and I give all the credit to Amy Dexter and Laurie Dunn in the central office and then the support uh that they're getting from other folks but uh as indicated on the 25th we had approximately 1400 folks request ridership we are now down to about 91 it is still waiting on on the waiting list however we have accommodated all of the students that we are required to do but there's some unique circumstances where we might have an elementary student uh get the bus in the older sibling whether it be at the middle school or the high school not get the bus we understand those challenges and especially for the folks that are furthest away uh
004in the middle school and high school um however we did have a a is a subcommittee meeting a finance committee last week uh with Amy Dexter Laurie Dunn uh Dr Spalding folks in central office put their Collective heads together to try to find ways in which we could uh come up with some additional funding sources um we are exploring and having a conversation about an additional bus particularly for the middle and high school uh only to accommodate as many of the students on the waiting list as possible we but even with that we know that we still may not be able to accommodate everybody and I would repeat that we still get enough but we may not still we still may not be able to accommodate everybody because we we anticipate we'll be able to
005service anywhere up to 76 students on this uh bus doing two runs and the reason being if it was elementary we could probably fit 73 to a bus three students per seat whereas the middle school and high school because they're bigger in stature uh we can't put three folks in the seat at that level so um but some of the funding sources we're looking to uh do this I want people to know there's no money uh treated we were able to collect money from we're looking at different sources now that we have a number of Chromebooks and our devices up we're able to utilize or eliminate some of our um uh language Labs because students are going to have uh computers in their board the link the service the language Lab at the Pierce Middle
006School and the high school is 7 500 a year each building so we could take that out of the mix that Nets us about fifteen thousand dollars um we have a revolving fund from our rentals uh so we look to use a little bit of that money from funding and we hope to net about 13 000 from that we have a revolving account uh for Milton high school that was granted many many years ago uh to support text materials and supplies it's uh pretty robust where we haven't utilized a lot of that last year because a lot of things were done remote we think that we would be able to Net 10 000 from that um here's the challenge and I just want to forewarn people we've had a late bus at the middle school
007they did a late bus run for middle school students uh that bus has not been uh heavily utilized over the last four to five years and last year it was completely off the table because we didn't offer too many uh extracurricular activities at the Pierce but that is extracurricular we're trying to find ways in which we could support students getting to and from school which is mandatory uh we think that we would net 13 000 from that um the bus typically would cost about 75 000 or so a year 207 uh uh I think the cost per day is 421 but because we're we're still waiting to see and secure that we don't anticipate this will happen until at least September 20th that that eliminates some of the days off 11 days off of the
008bus fee so that brings the bus down to about 71 180 dollars we anticipate where the students at the middle school and high school level um they maybe families may be at least 90 percent of those families we're anticipating might have to pay uh the user fee which is 275 dollars uh a day I mean for the year excuse me 275 dollars for the year for 169 days when you average that out that's less than two dollars a day for that Transportation but we still understand that there may be need for some of our families and all I ask folks if if you're fortunate enough to get a call with that Lottery and that is a challenge we just ask that you speak up and then we work with folks on that so we anticipate
009that we're going to be able to do this however I do want to caution folks there is a turnover if you saw the media I think Boston Public Schools is dealing with that right now um where they may not have a a a lot of bus drivers but I want to put it in perspective Boston public schools has about 25 000 students to take transportation they have 700 bus drivers that averages out to about 37 students per driver the Milton public schools has 1400 students that request that with 10 drivers that's 140 students per driver so to put that in perspective the transportation challenge that we have in the town of Milton I want people to think about that that is an alarming number and we're still able to accommodate almost uh 99.1 or 0.3
010percent of the uh population is requesting ridership uh but I will say we are definitely accommodate in 100 of the students that are required uh by by law to we're accommodating them for transportation so that is our goal for the update we ask for parents for their patients particularly around um the first couple of uh days in terms of delays we're still working with the bus company about that there were a few changes in uh drivers uh and we had new drivers that had to get acclimated to bus routes if you remember last Thursday morning we were coming off the hills of that Wednesday night Thursday morning storm that created a lot of uh challenges for a lot of people flooding in a couple of trees down a couple with the road work and then
011we're also getting accustomed to people going back to work full-time this is a first year in last two years that everybody's going to work and we know some people in the town or some people that utilize Milton as a a pathway to get into downtown Boston probably were uh very fortunate with the last year with not that much traffic on the road and a lot of business closed and there were people working from home but now businesses are open and transportation is going and then finally I ask anybody especially our elementary students students need to come to the bus get on the bus with their past if the students don't have it if you get a first grade or a second grader they may not be as articulated or know all of the details about
012their stop especially where they're just starting out our bus drivers utilize looking at those passes to make sure students are getting off at the right stops or getting on the butt right route and so I just want to make sure for those who are viewing and we'll do this communication again making sure that the kids have their bus pass every day as they uh enter the buses and so that's somewhat of the update and we do I want I hope people understand those who had concerns or quite frankly or complaints we are listening to every single one of them and we're doing our best but we are really struggling right now to make that and we're very fortunate that we're able to find this little bit of uh money and it's a patchwork as you
013can see but a lot of that is going to come from the user fees for those who are going to ride the bus if they choose to do so anyone have any questions about the transportation before we move on from Transportation update you know I just want to thank everyone for their um creativity and problem solving um so hopefully um superintendent Jet by September 20th we might have a more definitive uh idea of if that bus is actually going to happen okay and actually I've talked to a few families over the last week or so and um you know I just wanted them to have this update and know that we are working on it and I'm really hopeful about this other bus I think it will solve a lot of problems and also if
014you're if you got a bus pass for your older students and you know you're not going to use it and can you let the district know um so that perhaps someone else can have that seat as well and if if I could add to that that's very important because we know every single school year particularly with uh high school students as they get their permit or they get their driver's license sometimes they may secure they may be fortunate enough to have a vehicle and then they drive a younger sibling they may go to the middle school if that has happened we're asking it you let us know we will give you a prorated reimbursement but that what that would also do is free up another slot I also want to remind folks that we're talking
015about it we still since uh the 25th we registered about maybe 20 more students in the Milton Public Schools so that enrollment has gone up from four thousand four hundred and uh six to about 4 426 and we still have uh students that are still uh moving into the district um obviously if they move into the elementary level depending on where they reside will be required to provide transportation so that fluctuates uh throughout the year and and we have moved move-ins it's kind of an ongoing basis and sometimes we have folks that move out for whatever reason so uh I just want to remind folks if they're able to carpool uh we greatly appreciate that because it helps alleviate the stress especially if you have the means and the ability to do so we are
016actually your cooperation on that so we could get students in the building that need to get here and don't have that opportunity yeah I'm Betty member way do you know how long it will be before we know about that additional bus I would say uh we should know within the next couple of days but even if we do know it may not start until the 20th because then we have to secure the driver we have to make sure the driver knows the roots and things like that and remember this is going to be a unique bus because this is going to pick up Pierce Middle School and High School only hit it through one run and then go out and try to do another run uh we're only able to fit about 40 something students
017on a a bus at any given time particularly for the middle and high school so it'll take a little bit of time to get acclimated and keep in mind next week we do have a a day off because of Yom Kippur um and so we we asked for uh folks patience on that as well and that was the same thing with the delayed a little bit of the delay we were doing this Thursday then Friday was off Monday was off uh and we were back on it as of uh yesterday a question just comment um assistant superintendent Dexter is not here because she is attending the select board meeting that's running at exactly the same time as this meeting but I just want to recognize how much time she has put into this whole Transportation
018situation uh everything from the roots that the buses are taking um to to helping to find these little places where we can cut some money to make way for a new bus so I just wanted to thank her and Laurie Dunn for all the work that they've done on this excellent yeah thank you Dr picketta one of the community members that I spoke to asked me how often the bus routes are looked at and I I do believe the bus routes are reviewed every year I know Dr pavlichuk would ride them yearly and now I know that superintendent assistant superintendent Dexter is writing them as well I would like to share that uh um a Community member emailed one of the select board members and said that um they they um they had paid for
019a bus and they didn't get a bus and that you know they were indicating that there was no recourse for that but everyone knows that if you pay for the bus and you want your money back you can ask for it back it takes time for the town to generate an actual check but if you don't wish us to hold the spot or you want to talk about getting that money back because you need it for whatever reasons please reach out to the district and they will speak to you about that we recognize that everyone paid for the bus when they registered and not everyone 91 people are on the waiting list but if you have any concerns about that you can certainly reach out to the district and we'd be more than happy to
020speak to you about a refund or what recourse we have around that piece I just wanted to share that because the select board reached out to us about that and I just wanted it to be crystal clear what you could do to get your money back if you needed it or if you wanted it back in in a chair of a heart you you you you bring up a very good point and this that policy is applicable to Athletics so clubs and activities sometimes students sign up to trial for a team you might pay the fee to be on the field student may not make the team or the student might decide not to do it we do give reimbursements back but it does take a process there's one thing and I know I'm going
021off script and I do want to say this because I think it's very important for the general public to know a lot of people are concerned about the finances of the Milton public schools and say we should get back to teaching and learning which I agree 100 but I do want to let you know even with this bus we identify as sources we're going to be a thousand dollars short I think that's short money however we probably pay our attorneys to help us with these public records we requested to keep coming in and what people don't understand is that's eating up central office time that's because as we're required by a lot of responding 10 days so when we're doing that we're taking away from dealing with issues of Transportation taking away of being in
022the buildings to make sure that the teachers have what they want we're also added on the cost not just the salaries of the folks that are working on these I.T Amy Dexter Dr Spalding James jet Laurie Dunn Charlene roach or anyone else who may be tied to that in addition to the attorneys so for some folks I know that they're saying that they just want information if that is the case just ask us for the information we'll do it there's nothing that we're hiding everything that's been shared um but I do think it's important to say that because it is bogging down the office on some of these things and I get that people are unhappy about various things with this Mass test and stay Transportation um but I think that we have to continue
023to work together as a community we have to support each other and we need to really focus on how do we move forward even when we're in disagreement that we're not adding an additional burden to the town to the school district or to the folks that are working in the schools or our families so I just wanted to say that and and uh stop my comments there no thank you super superintendent Jets always helpful to remind people they can ask and we're happy to answer them um the questions they have it's their town and community so all right on to the next update you lost Lizzy okay uh very quickly there's there's no secret we talked about uh over the course of the last couple of months that you know the town of Milton Public
024Schools were tagged from 50 2015 2019 with disproportionalities students in special ed particularly students of color and special ed along with discipline issues so over the course of the last uh months I would say back on uh Wednesday April 14th Thursday April 15th are all of our middle school and high school principals and vice principals went through an introduction to the restorative justice practices and circle training for educators that was one session then they engaged in another session on May 19th and May 20th that was more along the lines of 9 00 a.m to 3 o'clock P.M uh Amy Dexter uh Dr spotted myself had the luxury of covering for some of the principals doing lunch duties during the time uh last year when that was happening but they were getting involved in the training
025of restorative mindset and restorative classroom management we had training set up at the beginning of the school year but as you can imagine having our principals and vice principals on the first two days of schools engaging in uh School opening engaging in that type of a long day puts us at a disservice so that that training has been bumped off to uh uh bumped out to I believe it was November but basically it's in theory it's moving from conventional uh responses where you're focusing on punishment to restorative uh responses where you're focusing on accountability healing in identifying individuals all stakeholders needs not just someone who um violated a rule or got themselves into conflict within other students but really trying to uh get to know the rash the reasoning behind the behavior the root cause
026of the behavior and supporting students and and getting that buy-in so that is a training that's happening with our Administration but we also know that that's a training that we got to have trickle down or trickle over to our instructional staff so before students are sent out of the room what can we do within the classroom to make sure that we're combating some of the behavior that would typically or historically have students sent out of their class to a principal's office to the guidance counselor's office for whatever reason so the goal is really uh getting to understand student behavior um checking ourselves in terms of what do we bring to the table when we're dealing with students on various issues and how we could better support them so that was training it was happening uh
027last spring administrators will be picking it up again this fall unfortunately it hasn't trickled down to the uh Elementary uh level yet but we find it a vast majority of our uh disciplined issues happen at the uh Middle School and High School levels sorry does anyone have anything I'm sorry I'm back it's okay I was like I said we lost Lizzy but you came back oh technology I just love technology um does anyone have any questions for superintendent jet about um restorative justice training one of the things um that superintendent that comes to mind as I'm listening to you speak is that there's um there's a lot of chatter in the community about these kinds of words that we use around the types of training that we do and the things that teachers and students
028are engaging in that the community doesn't really have a lot of knowledge or background knowledge about these things and I remember that when I was a parent in Milton Public Schools a lifetime ago um that when we rolled out new things there were often parent engagement um evenings where you could talk about those things like what was Everyday Math what was this program what was that and parents could come and listen I'm thinking and we can talk about this perhaps around our school committee goals later on that it might be a really interesting opportunity to talk to parents about restorative justice because restorative justice is for everyone it's not just for disciplinary issues and it's not just for addressing disproportionality but it really supports the development of those life skills and how to solve problems
029in ways that are peaceful and restorative and not hurtful long-term to relationship so just something that I was thinking about as you were talking that there might be opportunities to engage the larger community so that people feel more part of the conversation um and and and and know what's happening um higher levels and down through the programs I think that's a good statement and and just so you know I will have some of these listening sessions where try to get some dirt during the morning because I do know that there's a thirst for knowledge or information from the community and I think uh we've always said or at least I've always said in any forums as opposed to going to Facebook to get the information we ask you to give us a call but also
030remember give us some time because if you send an email during the school day and someone's responding to your email during the school day that means that they're not out in the classrooms they're not out in the buildings or teaching your children doing what they're supposed to do so we ask for that uh we ask for people's patience on that and give us at least a 24-hour time period I will say and I've had a couple of conversations with some people if people are asking the same questions over and over again and we're giving you the same information that makes it more difficult to continue to engage in that conversation um and then we try to find a different way or a different person to try to communicate but what you just said is very
031important this is this transcends the school walls the school buildings and basically it has students it's really having students reflect on what were you thinking when you whatever the infraction may have been how do you think that impacts others how do you feel now and then really talking about the reintegration or re-entry or the aftermath what do you think that you could do and really to your point having the student uh really do a lot of that heavy lifting in terms of processing and getting having them think about how their behavior not only impacted other people but how are you feeling about it now and not and really moving from the punishment uh piece to more of an understanding um so you're absolutely right and that is something that we could do in combination with
032multiple different things in terms of talking to the community foreign thank you thank you superintendent Jeff for um talking briefly about restorative justice and and I agree with chair eberhardt's um suggestion that that we use possibly one of our community forums to talk about that or some other aspect um or Avenue to talk about what this is what restores restorative justice is all about this is new to me also and I'm sure from to many people and I also think that it might be something that families can think about how you know what you can do to support that perspective from home um and and there may be resources that we can offer to families that might want to um support that perspective on on dealing with challenging behaviors and and restorative justice foreign if
033we do that because there's only a select few to really have gone through the training thus far for us at the Milton Public Schools when you talk about the principles and vice principals uh you're really talking about a small number of people and so what we could do is we could do that Rodeo Show as part of that and incorporate that with uh informational sessions about individual School communities and you can have the principals actually discuss some of the experience in the training and and what it's doing for them and how it is how it's having them be a little more reflective on their interactions in in their behaviors their demeanors on how they approach students and how that could be a trigger and so it's not just about the child it's also about the
034adults in them and what we're doing um in how we could either escalate or de-escalate a situation as well great thanks Mr Richard you want to keep going with your update yes if if you don't mind is well very quickly on there we had the lockers at Pierce and I know that this came up I want to tell you I had a conversation with Dr fish Dr fish's initial conversation was that they had a routine in place last year for folks are not using it he anticipated on opening up the lockers uh as the weather uh started to change but he wanted to get in a nice routine it's something that people were familiar with he has cinch pivoted he is making a change lockers will be open at the PS Middle School that should
035not be an issue um but they were zip tied there's no uh denying that and I think that there's a difference between that this as a former High School principal I always had locks on every locker and I'll tell you because it became a Safety and Security issue but upon request students could ask for Locker we assigned in the locker and then we give them the actual combination to that lock and they can take it off and use it but prior to when I first became a principal of the high school you you had kids that had three or four lockers they had one that we assigned them to and then they had another one it was not registered to anybody on the bottom floor near the field house and then they might have a
036second one on there and as you can imagine with high school students although we think that we have great students they bring something to school that they shouldn't have they're not going to keep it in their side locker they're going to keep it in the lock and it's not registered and so I think that there's a there was a misunderstanding and I I want to say to the general public nobody's denied a locker at any time but we do lock them so people are not stuffing stuff in them and or or using them inappropriately so Bill fish Dr fish his staff is going to work out a routine where they're alternating uh lock of time schedules um I saw an email that he's communicated to a couple of uh families and so he's already ready
037to make that pivot so I'm happy to report that in a smooth sailing lockers and Cubbies K-12 Pre-K to 12 uh in the Milton Public School um and I don't make light of that because when you when you think about it middle school students are going to school with a backpack their Chromebook notebooks binders we're asking them to bring a change of clothes from physical education not everybody's going to access the school lunch so they might bring their own lunch then you talk about rainy days with jackets and already overcrowded school it becomes a safety issue with all of these backpacks in each of the classrooms as well so I don't make light of that it was something that was thought of so thank you to those folks who uh reached out and thank you
038to Dr uh fish for reevaluating a situation and making the change so thank you guys on that um I wanted to bring up something uh that wasn't necessarily on the agenda because on the 25th of August when we talked about uh the Milton Public Schools applying for the State Testing program um at the time we knew that we would granted uh the test and stay program but the Milton public schools has not had our training since then on August 31st uh director of nurses for the Milton Public Schools Kim Coughlin myself met with a representative from cic Health uh they are going to give us and I'm I'm going to put emphasis on this a registered nurse to help us with the test and stay program they pay for the benefits in the salary of
039this person to be full-time in the Milton Public Schools that person will start on or about Monday September 20th some people have had because we've already had a couple of positive cases in the Milton Public Schools we just have one today some people said I thought you already were in the test and stay unfortunately cic helped Odessa by next now testing kits we don't have them yet to do all of the testing so what we're going to be doing moving forward and I want to make this clear and I I try to communicate this in my uh blog and I try to communicate it separately in the past because last year not too many of our students were vaccinated now we have students that have vaccinated then we're going to have the test and stay
040program in there what's going to happen is communication is going to go through to emails it's not going to be too it's not going to violate your students rights it might say that you've been identified as a close contact this is the protocol depending on if you're vaccinated or not um is going to say that because we don't have the capacity to do what we did all of last year the general public may not know this because you may not have been the person getting a call every weekend but our nursing staff administrators worked almost every week in from October all the way through March we're monitoring close contacts calling families uh setting up live streaming and all of those different things so the communication would be going home today I am saying on this
041meeting we're going to ask for parental consent because that's another piece of this we need consent in order to test your children now if you give consent that's fine we could test your child if they're asymptomatic they get to stay if you don't give consent we gotta assume that you go home for the quarantining time um and we're just gonna have to uh do it that way so it is a process you're going to get the communication is going to come home everyone in the district is going to get it it's going to be a link to a consent form that you upload is going to give you the directions rate on it it's very simple to do you just simply click on consent now you're going to select Milton from the drop down box
042as a school district you're going to choose a school one of the six Milton Public Schools if your child has been identified as that or you get the consent and then you can do choose sign consent form four minor now obviously if students are 19 to 20 which is not that many but we do have somewhere 19 to 20 they might have uh they might have that they might have emancipated themselves and they can sign off for themselves depending on what that is but that's a small few and we'll deal with that so all of that information should be going home either tonight or tomorrow uh I know we were talking about it early to have it scheduled to go home tonight but if not it will go home tomorrow in that communication it would
043would explain our testing program and some people have asked why didn't you do the pool testing when you get when you qualify for the State Testing we did these symptomatic testing in uh testing State and the reason why we did that we weren't sure we were going to get the staff in to do the pool testing you're going to need it middle school and high school could do the swabs probably by themselves with a little bit of support elementary students are going to need some of that support to do it and put it in a proper kit and then you're going to need somebody to go around to the various classrooms to collected on the days in which we do it I want to remind folks prior to this registered nurse coming on board there
044was only one school in the Milton public schools that were in compliance for I had nurse the student ratio and that was the Tucker in all at the elementary level it's one nurse per 500 students we've been short for many years in that at the secondary level the middle school and high school is one nurse per 750 students where well over a thousand students at the high school well over 900 and something students at the middle school so that's why it wasn't done so easily however the caveat here is if we stopped to see an uptick and we want to go into that and do more testing cic Health said that they could help us with a CNA and again they would pay for it and they will pay for the benefits and that person
045will be in the Milton public schools from the time that we see that uh influx and then we'll keep that person on staff until the end of the Academic Year um so I just wanted to give that quick update but it will be coming in a letter form going to All Families in the Milton public schools and with anything covert related that letter would then be on our website under the covid-19 uh policies fair enough and I don't know if people have any questions about that does anyone have any have any questions about the the um this test and stay the symptomatic testing member Rosemary yes thank you um well it's exciting to hear that cic has come through with the additional nurse to help us with this test and stay program um a couple
046of questions um one is have we identified spaces where symptomatic students would be would go if we've given up our medical waiting rooms um have we figured out a plan for that and then my second question is in terms of the uh possibility of going the route of pool testing um is one I don't know what CNA stands for but is is one person enough um so it wouldn't be one person it would be an addition a certified nurse's assistant clinical nurse assistant so it's so there's various levels of what they could do what they would be doing is supporting our nurses that are already on staff and so you have those individuals supporting them on on staff symptomatic folks more than likely you're going to be okay we got to call a parent in
047you have to come up and you have to dismiss your child especially if they're symptomatic so each building it may vary from where that location is but you're absolutely right we no longer have the medical waiting room because we couldn't take that space I want to remind folks we already did some Renovations over the summer to accommodate all of our students coming back plus some because our enrollment has gone up so we don't have those medical spaces so it's going to be depending on the time of day what space is probably available in depending on how many students we're talking about you you know what I mean so and then the other thing that we're going to be asking folks to do is really let us know uh whose children are vaccinated and more than
048likely you're going to have to do that with the staff as well because knowing who's vaccinated changes the course of our response you know what I mean so that's going to be very very important as well thank you so the message to parents is when you get the consent form please sign the consent form so that we can successfully implement the test and stay program and the symptomatic testing program to keep school open and to keep students safe so that's really important the consent is really important without the consent the district cannot test your child and it's not an after the fact thing I would imagine that you would need to have that on file before you could do any testing so it's really really important that you fill that out if you have any
049questions or concerns about that you can reach out to the district I'm sure that there's coffin would be happy to answer any of your questions about hippo or privacy or anything but I do think it's really important that the consent form be filled and signed out so we can successfully implement this program um and to add to that we did have a vaccination clinic on Saturday August 28th from 9 to 12 here at uh Milton High School 25 guile road now we know that that was the weekend before the students came back to school so many families were probably still on vacation in that three hours we only had 28 students 28 folks that were vaccinated in total so I'm going to remind people the next follow-up is on September 18th Saturday September 18th 25
050Guy Road in the field house in the back of the high school you just come in it's very quick they have anywhere from 15 to 20 staff Fallon ambulances on hand for anybody that may experience any side effects we're very fortunate that hasn't happened in any of the clinics we've done if you missed your first shot on the 28th the uh the 28th of August the 18th you can either get your second shot if you got it on that day or you could get your first shot so again anyone ages 12 and above and it's open to anyone in the Milton Community I will repeat that anyone who's age eligible who's willing to get the vaccination the more folks that we do and just so you know in terms of initiating the testing State we
051want to get to a minimum of 60 percent of parent consent if we only have 10 of the parents to give consent it kind of defeats defeats the purpose of the test and stay so again I want folks we're saying a minimum of 60. ideally I would love to have a hundred percent of the folks to give consent for us to do the test and stay but um and so we're going to remain optimistic and we think we have it so I just wanted to give that update on on anything covert related thank you superintendent Jeff one other question um there was a family who emailed about the ventilation in the buildings and um whether or not all rooms and things were um certified or checked out ventilation wise I I have I haven't reached
052out to Bill Richie yet I can reach out for him for a more um you know an update about how they um tested ventilation at the buildings I know you explained it to us multiple times but they were asking about I ruined by room and I'm not so familiar with that I know in other districts they do but I don't I'm not familiar so we have done some testing and it varies depending on you don't you could test the class when nobody's in it it changes the Dynamics you test for the CO2 level it changes with the Dynamics when the class is full it also changes if the class doesn't have Windows to the outside it changes if the windows are open so in the Milton Public Schools just so folks know we leave the
053Utah rooftop units open we have the Merv filters that are in every day those are checked on an ongoing basis we ask teachers to keep their classroom windows open for ventilation keep it in mind that those who may have allergies and we also ask that you keep the doors open and if the doors that helps create multiple different air exchanges sometimes as the weather's too hot you might have someone with a fan if you have a fan it needs to be a window fan facing the outside so you're taking the air from inside outside so all of those mitigating strategies that we've had in place last year we're going to keep in place this year to make sure in addition to the cleaning to make sure that uh students stay as safe as possible but
054I will say um and I I also want to give credit I share this at the uh a quick meeting earlier about a week and a half ago we had a a resident in the town it was working on a program a movie and reached out to the Milton public schools and said that we have items that are really up for grab we were about a little late a week late but we still went over we went over with three four different trucks full we were able to get air purifiers big industrial air purifiers to put in some of our bigger spaces in addition to what we already had uh ppes um all-time stanchions quote signs whatever it was that they had left we were able to do it and they donated to the schools
055where everybody else went in there was selling it they were doing the movie and they purchased all of these things from small refrigerators the printers they were able to donate that to the Milton public schools and uh was trying to get a calculation of the value and and follow up to say a special shout outs because they reached out to the Milton Public Schools we didn't go to them and so kudos to them and it was a short Journey right down on uh the turnpike in Canton um that we were able to go and grab the items and and come back and we went over with about three or four trucks full so wow all of those are in place great um so last two things you have under here are the uh I don't
056know if there's a teaching and learning update and then the equity audit update um for release of the audit so the equity audit update I just want to let the and this is the long-awaited and I think if you go back to July 21st we were talking about Cambridge education I had to go through a couple of iterations we hope to get that final iteration either tomorrow or early next week which we had it was just a few minor Corrections we wanted to do we wanted to also to have our leadership team have an opportunity to see it in advance and we also wanted our faculty and staff to be able to see it in advance and invent their parents and Guardians have questions our next school committee is the 22nd we hope to have
057that out into the hands of the community and on our website by August September 23rd uh the day after our next school committee meeting um and so we're asking we know a lot of people waited wanted to hear the results of that we're going to give you the whole report it'll be on our website um but that will go out on uh Thursday August 23rd to the community September 23rd September 23rd excuse me okay no no that's okay I can't believe I'm trying to rewind the time no please no don't go back um thank you superintendent yes so because we've received many um inquiries through email and I told people that we would have a date by today so that date then will be September 23rd the report will be posted on the website I'm
058sure that if for people who have questions about access to that information you can reach out to us and we will be able to some I don't know how lengthy the report is we will find some way to um to get it to you if you don't have access to find it on the internet and we look forward I look forward to getting the report and then having discussions we're going to talk a little bit about that um in our um our school committee update our goals update so all right thank you superintendent jet for that just one more thing yes go ahead it's not on the agenda and I preface this by saying no action required but I just wanted to give an update uh the community as well aware I sent Tomah a
059letter Dr Spalding will be moving on as of Friday September 10th um I I did want to give a brief update about the process uh for those who are viewing uh because of the the short notice and the fact that we already started the school year uh we're looking to do an interim with without a doubt the interim with no intentions on holding that position moving forward and we anticipate advertising in January which is around a time very early in January to make sure that we have someone to put in place July 1st 2022. I want to make that very very clear it also is part of the process I've been tasked with reaching out to the mass Association of school committees and also the mass Association of uh School superintendents to seek potentially a
060retired assistant superintendent who's done the work hopefully if not looking within to see if someone who's familiar with curriculum evaluation and human resources to put in that process I hope by the 22nd we could have on the agenda to come to you as a school committee with a recommendation for you either to approve or have discussion about so there's no action taken I just want to reiterate um the fact that Dr spauldin and kudos to Dr Spalding we're moving on in her career uh uh but she will be moving on from the Milton public schools and as you can imagine with the start of the school year we want to try to get someone in place not to lead that void for too long yes member Ross Denny thank you so much for sharing that
061very important update and I want to thank Karen for her many years of service to the families of Milton Public Schools um you will be missed and I thank you for all that you've done as we um begin to plan for what this transition will look like I think it might be helpful for us to do a review of the position to ensure that we get um we create a position that will allow us to get the best candidates and and something that um reflects the reality of our times we're in a position now we have an economy where people are leaving right I'm sure many of you've been reading the Articles or you're in organizations where people are transitioning and I want to ensure that we set up this next person to be successful
062with a realistic job description that reflects the amount of work that we really think they're going to end up doing given our current circumstances I think Karen had a very Broad scope of responsibility um and only a very small army to help her so I just want to make sure that we as a group have the opportunity to be very thoughtful about what this next job description looks like thank you remember Russell um would anyone else like to say um anything right now um yes member Rosanna I would also like to wish Dr Spaulding well and her new position and thank you for all you've done for an old public schools and your time with us you've you've been through many levels of our school district as uh principal at elementary and middle school level
063and now as assistant superintendent for curriculum and human resources and I am indebted to you for your help with the strategic planning work that I've been involved with for the last few years your voice has always been very important to that conversation and direction of the project and um appreciate your your guidance and your input as as we've moved that that work forward and thank you and you will indeed be missed yes if you want to if you want to say something just go go ahead and say something please okay so I'll jump in Karen um I'm gonna miss you um I know the district will miss you um I wish you all the best in your endeavors um I can't imagine that we will have in place anyone who knows Desi uh and the
064ins and outs of Desi better than you do you're the go-to so um I hope it's okay if I keep you on secret speed dial uh for that and um you know your your cheerfulness in the face of a lot of uh crises that will all have been through together um I really admire it and I really thank you for it so real truly best of luck um in all that you do and I hope you keep in touch I also want to Echo our thanks to Karen for all of her hard work and her dedication I remember first time I actually met you and had a conversation with you was I was a parent of a peer student and I was wandering the halls and I think it was open house and I was
065lost I couldn't find where I was going and I think you looked at my face and said can I help you and you actually walked me to the room I had to find and I thought I like this woman she's got the Personal Touch so anyway I wish you really good luck in Brockton all the best and I guess I would be remiss I had the luxury of uh several years back interviewing Dr Spalding for a first thing in the Milton Public Schools as the vice principal of the Pierce and she quickly Rose to the Rose to the ranks and became the principal but even today as was sitting down in the office and kind of uh looking at everything she's doing and how to make that transition learning some of her roles is the
066evaluation Guru and even today September 8th learning some of the things that I was shocked that she was still doing so uh I think to remember Ross Denny uh Karen having her hands her knowledge and expertise in multiple different buckets is it's gonna it's going to be a challenge and uh but I I will say being as organized as she is and very attention to detail I believe that she has set us up with at least have a framework on how we could do the work that we were talking about in terms of how to divvy it up to make sure but I would extend that to a lot of people within this district for those who don't know very similar not to take any credit away from Dr Spalding but to remember the member
067Ross Denny's point you have the assistant superintendent of business doing Transportation if you have administrative assistant for the curriculum the assistant superintendent curriculum doing transportation it is a system that we really need to say and we always talk about a revenue challenge in the town of Milton but we really need to look at it because we want the best for the students that means you got to provide the best opportunities for them without overburning any one individual or any two individuals and so I I do think that uh Dr Spalding uh she knows that uh she's a huge contributor to the Milton public schools has been and uh even Beyond her 10-year here in Milton Public Schools I'm sure she's going to keep contact with some of her uh the colleagues here and and given
068some meaningful advice and support even though she's going to be in her new role so I I do want to thank Dr Spalding publicly and I wish her nothing but the best yeah yeah I agree Dr superintendent check my favorite responding will always be the one where she was I believe it's the violin or it might be the viola that you play um of you playing with the students at the Pierce when you were a principal there and that's the image that I would carry um with with me from your work here and you've been through some difficult times this last year and a half and you manage them all with a lot of Grace and kindness towards people who were not always So Graceful and kind towards you and I appreciate that it meant
069tremendously and immensely and I know you're going to be very successful in your new role in Brockton and closer to home and to your family and and lots of new doors and opportunities opening to you so I don't know if there's anything you want to say if it's a little bit too much but you're welcome please to say something if you'd like thank you um thank you all for those really kind words thank you to the Milton Community um for the opportunities um and uh thank you mostly for your continued commitment to doing right by children um which is why we are all in this work um and so the all of the kind words and compliments and and all that you um just said is um all rooted in and hopefully this was clear
070through my work um in a commitment to Children and Families um I it has been an honor to do this work here um I don't have to tell this group that there are amazing folks doing the work every single day every minute of the day um and um anyways I'm excited about this new chapter um it's it's focused on ensuring excellence in in teaching and leading again in the name of children um and so yes I'm just a phone call away um and um I expect updates uh I will be looking um and watching to see how the next few months unfold in this incredible journey and incredible work and just again want to say thank you um for all of the support and um and work over the years I have learned so much
071from all of you um from former superintendent Mary Gormley current superintendent James Jett um as well as all of the all of the folks around along the way so thank you um and again I will definitely be watching um and and just a phone call away thank you Dr small thank you all right thank you superintendent Judd for that update really good information useful information and um if if parents are community members have any questions they can reach out to us all right and the next item on our agenda is citizen speak I will remind everyone that citizen speak is allotted for 15 minutes if you wish to speak on citizen speak you can raise your hand and someone will promote you to be able to speak we ask that you state your name and
072your address and that you limit your comments to three minutes um and that you um are mindful of our privacy policies and that you're not referring to any particular people in name and we look forward to hearing your thoughts if you have any tonight please raise your hand and you will be promoted to um speak I'm hoping someone from Milton Access TV is going to do that because Margaret Everhart does not know how [Music] um maybe not Milton actually access to I was just going to say there are no um hands raised among attendees at this time okay we'll just give it another minute or so all right well thank you very much everyone we're going to move on to the chairs report which contains our goals okay so we're going to try something fun
073and new tonight and we'll have a PowerPoint of our goals I recognize that I confused everyone with my PowerPoint I love PowerPoints in case you although no I make them all the time for for work and um I'm not very good at them but I make them um anyway so I put the goals that we talked about at our Retreat on a PowerPoint member Rosemary um sent some edits in a document which I try to add some of them and I shared that document with all of you today um I don't want to be the only person speaking tonight um so please um member Rossini member Carol member Rosner number white Dr Pickett please like join in um when we're talking about our goals so I'm going to share my screen if I can find
074the goals hold on one second so remember I won't really be able to see you all anymore because you'll all be like in the um in the in my corner here so uh oh hold on a second I gotta go all the way back all right here we go so this is a presentation of our goals these are our draft goals these are not finalized the process for a milk for a school committee to set goals is the school committee has a retreat usually or one or two days where they meet to discuss the um goals they might have for the district for the year um um they draft some goals and then they present them at open meetings to discuss and then they get voted on and then those are the goals that the
075district will work on um for the year so I'm just going to give a little background information that we had our Retreat over two nights which is the third and the 4th of August um we we had it at the Milton Access TV studios they were open to the public and we had one member of the public a ten on one evening most of our school committee members were there um unfortunately Dr Ellen Craighead was not able to attend but she was with us in spirit and the administration was also present at these meetings um we looked at our 2020 2021 school committee goals and what goals were we able to achieve and you can see the goals um here um I will this this PowerPoint will be available to share with the community um
076just so you know but remember just a draft okay um but you can see that we were pretty successful in meeting some of the goals that we had in terms of conducting the audit funding the director of educational Equity position piloting a social emotional screener um creating and maintaining our online learning programs and remote learning for students running in-person programming from September 16th last year all the way till the end of June and then increasing that as the year went on and then we really began to develop and execute a plan for utilizing existing spaces to address the issues that we have and to retrofit and repair common academic spaces to facilitate learning for this year and Beyond and these are some of the goals that are still in progress looking at our new math
077and social studies curriculum fully incorporating the role of the director of educational Equity what that role looks like and what what and how that will play out in the district we're continuing to work on our anti-racism action plan about around inclusion and diversity and really thinking about professional development for a staff to build capacity around social emotional learning around trauma-informed skills cultural competency and racial equity um superintendent Jett um shared his vision with us at The Retreat and these are some of the top priorities that you shared with us our teaching and learning is our priority and one of the things that we talked a lot about at the retreat is that this is a reset for us as a district this is an opportunity for us this year after all that we went through
078last year with hybrid and remote and pivoting closing and opening is to reset and focus our energy on teaching and learning and aligning teacher practices with the district priorities and we talk about Equity to better Define what Equity means for the entire Community there are there are there are people in our community that don't feel part of this conversation but everyone is a part of this conversation so having a better understanding of what we mean when we say equity and then what that means and the roles and responsibilities of everyone in the district and that includes the community to engage in social emotional learning I know that there are some people that think that social emotional learning is not learning but social emotional learning are life skills that students and adults need to be successful
079in the world and then the biggest thing that we've been thinking a lot about this year both superintendent jet and the school committee is student and family engagement we know that the community has a lot of strong opinions about many of the topics that we've been discussing and that we need to find different ways to engage the community in these conversations as we said many times before school communities are not that venue they are business meetings they are not opportunities to engage with the public there are opportunities to discuss things as a group so we need to think about that as we move forward how do we prioritize the goals for the 2021-2022 school year we review data District data presentations and the student opportunity plan that Dr Spaulding presented a few meetings back we
080review the initial findings of the equity audit because we don't have the the final findings of the audit and then we really considered some of the issues that were raised by the community at school committee meetings and also through email and then so our goal is focus on three things teaching and learning family and Community engagement and social and emotional learning okay so teaching and learning goals so okay so there's a lot of words here and a lot of things to digest so I'm going to stop talking and ask someone else if they would like to speak now because I'm talking a lot you will see here that I put some of the things in red that member Rosemary sent in her um document today but um one of the things that we're thinking about
081as we start out this year is unfinished learning and I think that there's another term that Desi uses is it accelerated learning like there's another word that Desi uses when they think about um making um Bridging the Gap between the pre-pandemic time and the pandemic time that we're living in and and I think it's accelerated learning but in this goal we called it unfinished learning and so we could certainly think about whether or not we wanted to change that topic does anyone want to jump in here and um we don't have to read the goals they're here for people to to read for themselves but discuss these goals and have a conversation around them right now and remember I can't see you so if someone else can see people in the committee they could just
082call out like say something anyone besides me this is Beverly and I want to give some folks some context at least for the teaching goals and I think it's important to realize that there's there's two components of it it's one knowing that Massachusetts has established what children should know and be able to demonstrate but there's also a need to be able to assess that okay so the first two goals are around ensuring that we have those Assessments in place so that teachers at the high school level have the ability to know what have their students learned based on what they've taught so if there's a need for course correction they can at least name what that is and teachers also need to be trained on what those tools are so that's why the first two
083goals address those fundamentals and the last two goals have specifically to do with how are we measuring whether or not we were successful so we realized that you know there are in many districts um students might enter for decades students will enter agreed and they may not know grade level work but there are very specific instructional strategies that people use to get to quote unquote catch-up students it was a committee we talked about giving our teachers and our administrators two years to learn what those strategies are and have the opportunity to engage students in that way so by the end of two years students should be at grade level and have mastered those content areas that they missed because of the pandemic as well as what they were expected to learn during that school year
084and also equally important is we know that there are proficiency gaps and that has been very clear in our data and be able to stretch our thinking around how do we bring an equity lens to how instructions delivered so if there are students who need more or need a little need more to to get to proficiency that we've identified what those strategies are and if they require teachers that we provide them with the professional development and if we need to rely on outside resources we've named what they've are what they are and we've asked for the resources to secure them but I think it's really important that people realize that any type of achievement Gap or any um disproportionality when it comes to academic outcomes it's an equity issue so it's very important that we
085name what do we need to give students so that they will be successful and it's whether it has very little to do with your race or your economics it has to do with making sure that our students leave Milton Public Schools proficient in the content they're expected to learn yeah yes I can see you Betty remember wait a little bit I don't want to call it pushback but just it's sort of a question that I'm thinking about today as I was rereading these goals again so because we didn't do MCAS two years ago and because we did MCAS this last year um I don't know where we are so when I I kind of wondered I looked at the dates for when these goals are looking to be measured and um where our proficiencies uh
086should be June of 2023 but there's almost a part of me that says so we're looking for two years to catch everybody up or to get people improved in some of these um Ela and math curriculums and but I'm sort of wondering well where are we now I mean so how am I looking at two years from now because if let's say having worked with elementary school kids who came in from a different district and were evaluated when they came in and had some assessments done and were found to be let's say two years behind grade level but then during the six-month period in the great in the school that they were in now they caught up significantly but they were still below grade level but in the six-month period they gained a year of
087of Mastery in reading or math so I'm always wondering how can we measure this goal when we really don't know I want to know like what's where's the data about where the kids are now so I'm happy to to answer that and I I feel like I would love to have Karen also join in last year the district purchased a series of formative assessments especially at the K-8 level I think they're working on the high school level that's why we have those first two goals and they were able to demonstrate that there was truly unfinished learning in very specific topic areas and the universal summer school was meant to address some of them but we know that not every child who left the district not performing at grade level had the opportunity to participate in
088the summer program or may not have caught up but the assessments that the district has purchased is the gauge by which we're going to determine what they have and have not learned because the MCAS is a summative assessment once this once that school year is over and they've taken that test in May or June or whatever it is teachers aren't getting that data until the next school year to do something so that's not the measure by which I would say all of the um Direction in terms of what instructionally needs to happen should come from but it's the formative assessments they're administered over the course of the school year that should be that litmus test and Karen shared some of that data in the spring and with that I'm going to stop talking and let
089Dr Spalding talk yes to all of what you just said um the and the the thing about the MCAS of what students have to students have to coordinate a number of skills in a number of chunks of knowledge in order to perform on the MCAS what our both the I ready math as well as the Lexia screener for reading for example which is is K-8 both of those kindergarten through eighth grade um what they do is and the power of them is that they identify more discrete skills and more discrete pieces of knowledge that give teachers guidance so that they can really Target efforts um in a very strategic way and so um I don't have the numbers off the top of my head um but but there is a lot of data that that
090we were able to collect both last spring as well as will be collected I would say probably within the next couple of weeks this fall so so there will definitely be some information um for teachers and for leaders um in terms of where students are from a sort of skills perspective and where we think they should be both in reading and in math through those two um uh platforms so remember what do you do you think that what about what that what might be missing from the c section of this is like um how the how in other words by June 2023 MPS students K to eight will demonstrate grade level Proficiency in I can't sorry you guys are like blocking the other part of me for their current grade level as well as the
091previous grade level evidence pre-pandemic so do you want us to stick in there something about you utilizing the district's assessment tools or their current or the current data Maybe or something like that you know all right I want to basically make sure that we're knowing where the kids are currently so that when we're looking at the games that they made by June 2023 we are looking at you know data that we had and the data that we have in 2023. thank you I mean I I think for that's a really uh excellent point I'm assuming that people around the screen have understood but it might not be so that's a good thing to put in I think the two the A and B um indicate that at the high school level we do not have
092that assessment yet so we need to acquire that in order to make sure that those students are also making up for um and completing the unfinished learning that happened during the pandemic even though high schools have different ways of measuring um growth and achievement at the different um you know AP exams other types of things this is more across the district-wide right um anyone else have any comments about unfinished learning a through D here hi this is Lizzy I just have a um quick comment you know I think it's really um smart to set these two-year goals as far as these targets they're ambitious um I don't think we it needs to be added in here but I think it will obviously Merit further conversation as we go in terms of you know um we're
093not setting specific this time targets for the end for June 2022 which would be like the Midway point to this ultimate Target um but obviously we need to sort of continue to you know track this and stay informed um about it to make sure that you know we're we as a school committee are um kind of learning the status of the progress towards these goals um since we're setting them sort of with that little bit longer time Horizon and I'm just reminded of the earlier conversation that we've had which I know is continuing about um the creation of a teaching and learning advisory committee uh seems a very important sort of piece of infrastructure for us um to support you know the communication and ongoing uh kind of tracking of our progress towards these goals
094given that we haven't set specific measurable targets for the you know end of this coming school year right um that's excellent and I I agree with you that when we also discussed at the um at The Retreat that we would we would be tying um the presentations from the district to superintendent Jets District goals and to school committee goals so that the presentations that happen at meetings inform the goals inform where students are to member White's points remember Austin's point to Dr Spalding's point where are students currently and where are they where do we want them to go and you know I think it's really important to remind parents this is not about like testing students or you know that whole culture of testing that's not what this is about good solid teaching and learning
095is informed by assessment assessment is just ongoing process of how teachers interact with their students and how they gain information about what they learned that's what this is and then that drives the process forward and the the reasons in these teaching and learning goals that we specifically are looking at perhaps racial disparities and special education disparities because if you recall as superintendent Jett said prior we have been um we have been noted for this we have disproportionality in our district we we need to address these things in very specific ways so that we are meeting the expectation that we are decreasing that disproportionality eliminating that disproportionality um to meet the expectations of our families by doing right by children and also um to meet the expectations for this Commonwealth so you you all can think
096more about this remember these are just drafts um as we go through um the teaching and learning goals um I have another comment Margaret as you can go back down to that slide um I was um the one that suggested having the um letter D hold there and what what I um suggested was pulling that language out of what had originally been in the letter c um thinking that um it was putting together two really big goals of ours one is to address the unfinished learning that occurred as a result of the pandemic but number two being the racial disparities that we know about and and I felt that pulling out the um the disparities in the disproportionality um into its own uh separate goal was important so that when thinking about how we're going
097to get this work done there there are different ways to to do all of those things um but I think that it was important to shed light on on that on its own um and the the other thing um that I might point out to um you know we're talking about a grade level Proficiency in ela and math for grades K to eight and and this is and and from our conversation I think we're talking about based on formative assessment results and I think that means that we've really gotta get that clear about how how that is taking place is different than than the um work that we had been doing through the Strategic plan which was focusing on grade level proficiency at grades 3 8 and 10 based on MCAS scores and Ela and
098math but but also it identified in the Strategic plan um 80 percent of our students and this does not identify a percentage I'm assuming the the assumption is that that we're talking about a goal of 100 grade level proficiency and I I think it's a a great stretch goal I you know I just want to be realistic also about um about the goals that we said and and that's a tough number to pick um but but that's that's uh also a question and my last comment is in terms of the letter D around the racial disparities um you know we might want to push up um the timeline for that goal um to be by June 2022 um that it's that it's you know part of the effort um uh heading towards um grade level
099proficiency for all but um you know I'll stop talking but then just threw a lot out there no I mean I think I think I think our goal should be I know that 100 is a stretch right I I get that but I also think that given all that our students have been through that really having that expectation for them and and supporting teachers and helping them to get there what do they need um from us as a committee in terms of Finance in terms of support supplies materials you know training like what are those things are going to need to happen um because I think that's what the community expects too right to have those high standards and to recognize that we might fall short of 100 but if that's the goal then that's
100a good stretch pool to have um as opposed to the by June 2022 for that last one that that would certainly be um that would certainly be a goal to have I don't know I think given given the disproportionality that's existed for a while really striving and putting structures in place to make sure that we deal we deal with that and make it so that does go away might take a little bit longer time I don't know if other people have more strong feelings about that or would like to um chime in about that particular time frame okay we can leave it there for now and like I said these are just um and superintendo Jet if you have anything that you'd like to add I should remind everyone that superintendent jet is going to
101share his goals um with the community at our next meeting and our goals will align with the superintendent schools these are things on superintendent Dexter and Spalding were at the meeting um the two meetings that we had together um okay so the next um teaching and learning goal is on discipline again we pulled the discipline out as a teaching and learning goal because this is something that we have been we have been um called out for to use the term noted tag whatever word you want to use to to be more Mindful and purposeful in the way we Implement discipline policy so I took the goal that we originally had in the red is some of the wording that members Rosemary had sent to me today in the document um so you can look over
102these two goals but they really they really get at the heart of the disproportionality that we see in terms of special education um and students of color and with with discipline this goes back to also superintendent Jets comments about the training around restorative justice and how all of that is going to play into making these policies more Equitable for all students so feel free to jump in whoever would like to talk have a comment a question no I uh um uh when we move on to the special ed special ed goal um we'll see um there was a um a suggestion there um under the special ed goal that we identify a subgroup of teachers um um who will work together as a team to um analyze referral rates to special education and study research
103based best practices into addressing those referrals and developing a solution and a project plan to address those and presented it to the leadership team and I thought that that was a good process and I um when I looked at the discipline goal I thought well I I kind of like to have a team that's looking at this discipline issue in a similar way so you know one is looking at um special ed disproportionalities and special ed referrals but another that's looking at discipline practices and um um to have a team that is not just looking at our policies and and rules but actually examining how discipline has taken place um taking place in um in our discipline practices throughout the district and making recommendations by the end of June so that could be a a
104separate group that could be working on that um by June 2022 so one group that could be looking at policies um and and rules around discipline and another that's looking at [Music] um practices well you know Ada thanks for sharing that because I think it tees up a really good question because I am not sure how much work the district has already done it sounds like from what superintendent jet shared earlier there's a there has been some coalescence around the idea of um pursuing restorative justice is our philosophy and whether or not the um I know at the middle school it was a committee that was doing this work is that what's happening at the district level or would it be helpful to take a step back and bring other people to the table um
105superintendent Jed or Dr Spalding I know uh I know in the beginning of the summer as part of that return to school I think and uh Dr Spaulding correct me if I'm wrong because I was still the principal at the high school but I do believe that you were leading the committee of folks looking at uh discipline issue or discipline challenges in the middle of public schools I don't know if you want to uh speak about that work but we did not have a full committee looking at that all of last year um you know but that is something is look looking to restore foreign all of these um pieces are coming together um in what is um will be uh robust um plan to address the disproportionalities in in discipline and what I mean
106by all of these pieces is the bias incident reporting system with regular conversations regular meetings looking at data doing root cause analysis those pieces the restorative practice um training as well as the restorative practice coach to do um on-site while it's happening professional development and support for for teachers and so so these pieces are really um aligning and need to align um so that they are a robust approach um to really digging in and addressing um the especially the disproportionality in the area of discipline um so member Rosemary and that so that the confusion for me was that I thought that when you put that on your dock that it was you that that would somehow accidentally move down and didn't really realize because I was doing it when I got home today that you
107had set it to be separate from and a part of this so thank you for clarifying that to me yeah yeah so and and you know I think it's really great to hear from uh superintendent Jed and and Dr Spaulding about the work that's been done um to date in this area and you know what I think our goal should be is to build upon what has been done so far and I don't know if if um we should you know kind of try to weave those together a little bit more because there is not mention of of um the work that uh you know you're talking about the the anti-bias um incidents and the and the restorative practice and and I mean those are those are important initiatives that are not addressed here and
108and again I think our goal um as a district should be to have all of the ships pointing in the same direction um and um so we don't want to be going off in One Direction when there's a whole other group of people going in a different direction right so I think that um when superintendent jet shares his goals with us and we can better um craft the this goal and that goal to meet I do think then um that we can think about the pieces that you all just said and maybe reward or add to this goal to to to give it some more teeth I have a question about who's leading this work um Dr Spalding in your absence has this been assigned to a specific staff member actually or superintendent Jen it
109has not been assigned to it it is going to depend on the level of experience of who we put in a place but it would obviously I think Dr Spalding alluded to it it will be by a a committee and a lot of people going in and right now it may be James Jett uh misleading this work I like that as a person because as long as there's a leader right in this work right yeah and so um that member Ross saying to your point like it's really important for us to have this as our rules this year to make all as members around said these things come together so that we keep again the students at the center and the the work that we need to focus on in terms of teaching and learning
110to move the district forward in these really important areas so um okay so let's think about some words if you want to might change or add to this um given some of the information that Dr spoling shared with us tonight um you know remember Rosemary I did yes I'm Dr Carol one second remember Rosemary did say we might need to meet again as like that and again it would be an open meeting um as a as a retreat to to sort of shape some of this after our of our conversation here this evening yes Dr Carroll I'm sorry I apologize no you sort of just answered my question um I think it was it's just a little bit of a process question since this is you know the first time I'm participating in this process
111so we drafted these goals we're discussing them and it you know continuing to refine them now um we will hear the superintendent's goals right we are voting tonight to a no so I know that I knew that Charlene put that on the uh thing about voting but that was never um the goal we never voted ever yeah so we're just discussing them now correct yes I'm sorry our superintendents yes as your superintendent Jets goals right soon yes and then as you're proposing just a moment ago we can have the opportunity to basically take our goals from draft to sort of Final Grade in the coming weeks correct and it feels so awkward um because really the the way that we work as a committee is the only time that we can discuss these things is
112when we're all together either at a retreat that's posted as an open meeting or at a meeting like this um a school community meeting so I know that it seems like a sort of con like a strange process but that's the process but I apologize for not noting that I I just realized as I was looking at the number seven we never vote the first time that we ever talk about goals goals are just an opportunity to talk to share them with the community to get feedback from administrators from Educators from community members if they had any thoughts and then to come together again at another time to look at the goals and really finalize them after you've had a chance to think about them discuss them and look at the superintendent schools so that's
113gonna will be no vote on these goals tonight they're not anywhere near I'm ready to do that so sorry about that yeah yeah and I I just think in terms of timing uh for these next steps that um you know I'm very anxious as I'm sure we all are to hear what um the superintendent's goals will be in in a couple of weeks and hear the the results of the leadership team meeting that that should inform um our goals and and inform the Strategic plan um and so um I don't know that that we'll be ready to finalize these until the meeting after that um right so we'll have to alter the Calendar's expectations and I was also hoping that we might have an opportunity to do another small smaller amount of time Retreat because
114I mean personally I thought we weren't really finished and I also miss Dr craighead's participation and I know everyone's schedules are really busy but I would love it if we could figure out another hour where we could get together here um Dr craighead's thoughts and input and maybe fine-tune our own thinking as we've had some time to look at these absolutely I understand agree with everything remember Rossini I apologize go ahead no no I I'm awful I can't see everybody but um no just adding on to what Betty shared I think given that the people who are in with our students the majority of the day we have not identified a way within the um within the bylaws to engage teachers in this process or representatives from the mea um it doesn't have to be
115the executive board but I I've known I've learned from previous experience having their insights always helps refine these types of goals to reflect the reality of what's in the classroom and I think you'd be remiss if we did not get their feedback in some way shape or form before these are finalized and it's not to say that everything that you know every piece of feedback they might share will be incorporated but they will provide us with some perspective on where potential pitfalls or where are there things that we're missing that are extremely um disruptive to their ability to do their jobs well so I think we do have some responsibility to get their feedback in a way that's still within um the laws of Massachusetts right thank you yeah thank you everyone for your comments
116this is exactly the point of having this um this kind of conversation in in this kind of um form meeting format so we can go through um the rest of them I know we've been at this almost for an hour and a half now so we can go through the rest um have some comments about them knowing that the next stages of our processes is I we will have another meeting to talk about them to think about the things Dr Spaulding said to get some feedback from other members of the community Educators and administrators and then to really firm up um because the school committee goal should reflect um the knowledge that we have as a committee but also the hopes and wants of the Educators and the community members as well for the Academic
117Year um so um teaching and learning personalized learning um thank you um member Rosemary and sent um this summary today it's a very the idea of personalized learning is something we talked about when the peer school um came and presented um some of the changes that they were making around math instruction and and opportunities for students to personalize learning this is a long-term goal of the district we know that it's not fully formed yet and needs a lot of thought and conversation with Educators and with administrators but we really thought it was important to include in our goals because it is a goal of the district it really gets to the heart of achievement for students and um and really personalized learnings that every student can achieve at at their level and and I just
118had um I um went back to the um uh sort of next steps from the Strategic plan it was sort of the draft of recommendations for um our next strategic plan that came out of the strategic planning committee last May and there was a goal about personalized learning and um these were these are just really I see them as placeholders um these are just a couple of many goals that were listed in that plan and and again I would be inclined to consult with superintendent Jet and and his team that that um a focus on this I know um AJ Melanson and Kat de Roche were working on this last spring um and you know for them to help us frame these goals in an appropriate way of what would be the the first steps
119in this goal um and these these might be it um but there may be other recommendations so I I see this is really just kind of placeholders for now thank you I had wrote to be determined so this was a much more this was a much clearer way to explain what to be determined meant because that meant nothing I just put it there a little bit more yeah a little bit more informative yeah um but yes I do think this is a really important long-term goal for the district um because I think it will get out to um what people are concerned about in terms of leveling in terms of opportunity this will will really help people understand that in a different way um and then the last two goals here go back to the
120special education um the um goals that we had in terms of what was noted in the equity audit and also in the data that Vivo has been presenting to us for the last six years about um and this was the goal Aida that you were talking about about forming a team of Educators to analyze and the data and the research practices and to form um in you know instruction around that right and so we can go back and look at this goal in relation to the discipline goal in relation to that and make them a more cohesive unit of goals okay foreign and then of course the last piece so yeah there's a lot of goals here as everyone can see um you know it's an ambitious um um goal setting agenda but this is
121a really important piece looking at our curriculum we've had a lot of conversations around the need for a social studies curriculum the need to to have a new math curriculum um and so this outlines a timeline for which that will occur um so I'm calling on the expertise of Dr Craighead um here because I'm not sure by the June um if the curriculum would be selected and purchased if that I my this was a um I don't remember I don't recall from the budget if that was part of this particular School Year's budget um I don't think so okay but I can't say an absolute hard no right and um as I said superintendent assistant superintendent Dexter who could answer this question better than I could um is it the select board meeting that's okay
122so she'll come back we'll this I just want people to have a time a reference a Time reference here that what we're hoping to have by the end of this June so we'll maybe take the purchase part off by the end of 2023. um for in terms of math and social studies and then of course supporting teachers with professional development and I I do want to share one comment and I think you you raised a very good point when you introduced this section is it was very I tried to look at who had to lead this work for each one of these goals to take place right so to ensure that no one administrator was burdened with you know several additional projects beyond their regular day job and I think in an administrative level we
123we're good um especially since superintendent Jett has taken over the discipline work thank you very much I am I do want to think through um whether it's with the school committee or the school committee the mea what is the impact on teacher professional development um there is a PD calendar there's a limited number of days we also have goals that that they're setting as as professionals and I I'm I would be remiss to say that um we didn't think through if we were inundating any one individual or set of teachers with several initiatives at one time so for example if we're doing an Ela adoption or the math adoption the history adoption in addition to discipline work are those the only two things that are going to be above and beyond their their day-to-day responsibilities
124and I think it's worthwhile going through that exercise at the teacher level to ensure that these are thoughtful that's that's where it has to start um because the the the educators will be the one doing the work along with the administrator so um that's we can start with that question as well we don't you don't ever want to rule out too many initiatives at once and you don't ever have an effective implementation of the of the um of the programming we do know that this is important work and I I would like to say that um whatever happens with the social studies curriculum and how it gets Chosen and and and how that gets discussed within the community I think it's really important for people to understand that social studies will Encompass many aspects of
125History um and many different um peoples in history not just one particular lens but a wide lens and Equity lens that includes all people um and different perspectives as well so that'll be something that I think this piece for social studies because we don't really have a solid curriculum um is is complicated for us right now in the community and what that means at each different level and what are the conversations that are happening around this particular subject area you know last last year when we did our goals we wound up having a budgetary goal that picked out the items that required funding and um we may we may want to add a goal along those lines just to inform our budgeting process as we um this fall get into budgeting for next year but
126I think you know I was the one who put in and purchased for the social studies curriculum but I also think we need to say and purchased for the math curriculum and and so it needs to be a conversation in our finance committee um too about where where are we setting those goals and and those financial goals are are important part of it yeah like we agreed we discussed that a little bit at the retreat and I remember our big discussion about last year it also sort of helped us um help the community understand what it is that the dis what the school committee does we so we we set these goals as a school committee of course we don't Implement them um we support the people who are implementing them and we do that
127by having good policies good um procedures and policies in place and by having a solid um fiscal structure that supports teaching and learning in the district so that's a good point that we might want to think about that again Margaret yes chair Eberhart sorry um just really quickly to follow on the points that you were making a moment ago about um the social studies curriculum yes I think just for the community um and we'll talk more about this as we learn more about that social studies curricula options Etc um but you were mentioning the diverse perspectives like just to underline underscore for the community that is all because obviously it goes about saying in these goals our new curricula will be aligned to our deci standards and history and social studies which is what requires
128us for example to incorporate diverse perspectives as well as to discuss current events in the classroom I mean yeah there's a lot that we will be aligning to and that we are already required to do since 2018 when those new standards came into play um and just for people to know those are not things that we as Milton public schools are deciding to do but that's required by the state thank you Dr Carol you know when you work with Educators you talk a lot about standards and the importance of that and then that's really some required that we are a little bit behind in that area is a district in 2018 the Commonwealth did change their social studies standards and and from pre-k mind you um all the way up um and how that is
129should um studied and implemented in the district so that's a really important conversation that we can continue to Circle back on in terms of the standards I'd like to quickly just go through um the last this part so the other standard that we have the other goal we have is around community and family engagement um and we're really um and I'll have Dr Carroll help um join in here because um she did the Lion's Share a work on this um particular goal we really are trying to be find ways to be more mindful that the community wants to engage in the process and they want all voices to be heard and that goes without saying that we do as well there's a misperception in the community somehow that we are only listening to certain voices
130and that's not the case we are listening to all voices and we want to hear from all voices and I really hope that by putting this as a as one of our primary goals and forming it with listening sessions and opportunities to engage with the community that people will be more called into the conversation and feel more a part of it so um Dr Carol if you just wanted to Briefly summarize some of the things that we discussed around this and we can certainly firm it up as we move through the process sure yeah thanks um so I think what we see at the top of this slide in bold is sort of what we had discussed at The Retreat as the overarching goal for our school committee under Community engagement um and that was
131to create a variety of these different opportunities both to share information as well as to be informed by families and other stakeholders perspectives um and so this slide focuses on sort of the first um sort of way that we want to do that the first kind of opportunity we want to create and then the second final slide under this category details a few of different opportunities but we were um setting this goal for ourselves to add some virtual learning listening sessions um that would be trying to Pilot essentially a new forum for the community to share their feedback and the proposed dates are here you know I don't know at what point we will finalize these dates because obviously the first proposed one is coming up rather soon in just a couple of weeks but
132um this was the idea that we would create this sort of extended citizen speak opportunity um that it might not be the full school committee that would host these that perhaps a sub you know uh a couple of school committee members would sort of attend on behalf of the full school committee we didn't get to that level of specificity necessarily but the important thing to note for this type of opportunity was that um it would be a listening session not a dialogue um and that as you can see noted on the slide is is dictated by open meeting law and the fact that people would be welcome to come and share their thoughts on any topic that they wanted to talk about because that wouldn't have been previously stated on the agenda in the posted
133meeting uh you know the school committee members would not be able to discuss those topics but it would be an opportunity for us to take in information that we could then follow up on following the meeting um and so that was sort of the spirit and um desire on our part to create this new opportunity that would happen at intervals so the idea is that it happens roughly once a month through this fall semester if you like um first half of the school year looking for ways to do that in evening and morning times to try to create make it as inclusive as possible given people's different challenging schedules so that was that was the idea here and then the next slide just details a number of these other opportunities that we had brainstormed as
134a school committee to try and provide engagement our own learning and be able to communicate so this is where you see noted posting forums um on specific topics so the previous slide was just sort of extended citizen speak opportunity for any topic to come and be shared about these would be specifically on in this case the equity audit report findings creating those opportunities um for members of the community to come and learn like get a little overview of the findings and then have the opportunity to ask questions and share their own feedback um I know that we had also earlier spoken about potentially restorative justice is another topic that we might want to add one of these types of topic specific Forums on um we'll also we had this idea of kind of working through
135ptos to um have you know perhaps two School committees invited to attend specific meeting of each of the ptos just to be able to hear more school Community level concerns that was another idea and then then you see here just the idea of trying to use some Google forms as a way to seek input and feedback from people who may not be able to attend or have interest in speaking publicly at one of these open meetings different way to share their feedback exploring possibilities in the future to try to incorporate some of that into our our website platform but just a start with Google forms as a tool um a specific goal that I'm committed to about encouraging youth participation and now that we're kind of back to school getting settled into the new year
136I'll I'm going to begin some Outreach on that front to just learn um you know what might be the best ways that we as a school committee can engage with different groups communities of young people in our town so that's something that we'll definitely move forward on I hope and then the last pieces were just this idea of conducting research um into like into a an ombuds person role um that is something that we've heard from the community about um it seems like something worth at least looking into I know we have budget constraints but um something we could conduct research and report back and then also this idea of a PR or communication strategy for the district that that be something that we kind of explore as well thank you Dr Carol does anyone
137have any that you know I think this goal is so important I know superintendent chat talked a lot with us too about the retreat about the importance of family engagement and it's one of the Desi focused indicators this year Jesse's really focusing on on that piece um and engaging families in the in in learning and teaching and learning and being part of the community so um I look forward to this goal I think it's a real opportunity to educate people about school committee and the processes and policies and procedures that we follow about the budget and to continue to engage people um to make them feel like their voices are being heard in the community all voices are being heard anyone else can I add um something um related to the previous slide um about
138the um listening sessions and and public forums um on a parallel uh track but but related because um two of us are involved in the school building committee um the school building committee will be holding um some public forums for Neighbors um abutting the um the potential site that we're looking at um for a new school and we're working on planning those and we'll have more information about those uh forthcoming but they should be sometime in the third or fourth week of September and there will be two or three of those and it'll be an opportunity to hear from from folks about their their thoughts and and concerns and um we really hope to work together with our with our neighbors and and developing a project that will be good for all the school children
139as well as the whole community yeah thank you member Rosemary and remember I think white thank you for all your work on that I know I look forward to the day that um we all stand together in in the new building celebrating for children on teachers and families um our last goal is around social emotional learning we won't spend a lot of time in the school um it just has um oh sorry Skip One um I know that there's you know social emotional learning is a term sometimes that um I don't know um people have different feelings about I have strong feelings about social emotional learning because really social emotional learning is life skills um there are actually standards associated with social emotional learning and in terms of self-management self-awareness social awareness responsible decision making
140executive function all of those things go into social and emotional learning so it's not just a touchy feely topic that some people think it is but it's really developing those life skills that allow you to be successful in the world if you study engineering at Boston University they have this thing called being a societal engineer and as a societal engineer you're expected to not only be an engineer and solve problems in a scientific or mathematical way but also to solve problems in a societal way to be able to work with fundraisers to be able to work with communities to be able to work with your colleagues so it really touches upon all of these social emotional skills that start when at home actually with parents as the primary teacher and then continue from pre-k all
141the way to 12th grade so um these are just some of the thoughts that we have around social emotional learning we we did have a social emotional screening that we piloted in the 2021 school year and we'll find more out more about the data that we um have from that um screener I think it was mostly for um upper grades um we really want to think about what are the evidence-based programs that we use in the district evidence-based meaning that they're research based and they are proven to work around social emotional learning and then we want to secure and identify resources for screeners and to really look at how social emotional learning restorative justice practices can help us to reduce disparities in the district so these are just some of the longer term goals around
142social emotional learning I know that some people don't think of this as a as an academic skill um like English and math and science and social studies but I always tell the parents of young children if your children can't find their things at the end of the day and know how to get to and from school and find their stuff they're not going to be successful long term and those things things are part of executive function and social emotional learning which are life skills so I look forward to more conversations around this in the district as well um Margaret I'd love to add one point about connecting the outcomes from the intellispark I think it's a salespark screener there were some outcomes around how students are feeling and if there could be um when we
143start doing the research on evidence-based practices yep if they could be targeted around those findings because there's a there's a whole host of competencies related to social emotional health for which I am not an expert but if we can you know somehow tailor what we're looking at to reflect what we know our students have areas of need I think we will see a significant gain in changing um the way students feel and experience life in school because we we were focused on um where we know there have been some gaps yeah I tried to find um I wasn't successful in fine I looked through some of our the dashboard and I looked through like the opportunity plan I tried to find some of that data um and I I wasn't successful in finding it otherwise
144I would have sort of um but I thank you for reminding me I made a note to reach out to you actually to see um where so that we could make those connections um um and and so that as we think about the practices how they connect to outcomes for students and how those outcomes connect to academic achievement long term for students so I actually saw one of those presentations before I was elected to school committee so it was a presentation that Dr Spalding and then there was one with Dr Spaulding and vivu presented so those the data does exist I just oh I know I just I struggled to find it yeah I know it's there so I just couldn't find it but I will we'll find it all right and then the last
145slide is just on Next Step so um we're not going to vote at the September 22nd meeting um we are going to hear from superintendent jet um at the next meeting about his goals and then we are going to set up another meeting I'm going to stop sharing now um for us to get together and um have another Retreat meeting so we can hear from Dr Craig and all of us together we're going to do that via Zoom I think it's easier for for for I think um to access for especially when Dr Craig edited and and everyone else is traveling to and from work I think we can do it that way it'll be an open meeting so people could attend and um and um and then we will Pro I know we wanted
146to have these goals in place so that they would be in place for the beginning of the school year but I think if we think more about that first October meeting I think that's a more realistic um goal I think yes Dr Carroll so just um with that delay which sounds like it makes sense um I guess my question is how will that impact our ability to move forward with scheduling Community engagement opportunities would it be exactly no I think it's totally fine I I'm comfortable in this I can only speak for myself but I think going ahead with those and scheduling them is really important okay even if it's not a defined goal it's it is a goal that we have and I think the sooner we get that moving and the sooner we
147have conversations with the community the more engaged people will feel I don't know if anyone has any different feelings about that but that's what I think great thanks does everyone feel okay with that thinking about moving ahead with the forums at least yes I agree okay okay is that okay Dr Carol does that feel comfortable to you okay I want to thank everyone for sitting through that presentation I know it was long these are really important goals for the district um and um for the students so appreciate that very much I'll I'll have Charlene send an email to find a date where we can meet all right so Dr craigett you are up with all the most important thing Finance um okay I'll keep the finance report short uh because the vendor warrant vote is
148very long tonight um really what we've been what we did um yesterday we focused on a number of things one was the um cares act money and Esser funds where we are versus um versus where we were you know sort of catching up every every week that we meet um and the additional hundred and seventeen thousand um from the town will be allocated uh to us um and that is I believe that might be happening tonight um and that's where assistant superintendent Dexter is he's here pardon me it's here she's here you're coming to two meetings in one night um okay so um uh what else we talked about we talked a lot about um the formation of the FY 23 budget and we had a special visitor uh to our finance meeting yesterday um
149the former assistant superintendent of Finance uh Dr Glenn pavlichek and so he um you know just sort of refreshed our memory um answered questions from people who are new to the school committee walked us through what he does and what he did on his end um assistant uh superintendent Dexter um joined us in December of last year so wasn't there for this part of the um annual budget season um so we did a lot of q a with him um we're very grateful to him for for volunteering to come and talk to us um we also uh talked about um visits that we're going to have in upcoming Finance meetings um we've sent a very we've set a very tentative schedule for that um and it looks like um the first visitors will be our
150friends um from facilitate facilities uh Bill Ritchie and from technology at MPS um Bob Patterson and that they are going to what they're going to present to us is not part of the operating budget request for FY 23 but part of the capital budget request for FY 23 I sit on the capitol Improvement planning committee um and so um I'm the school representative on that committee and so we need to discuss what we're going to take to that committee as well so they will go first which gives the other um the other uh presenters it's not really a presentation like uh chair Eberhard just did with her beautiful PowerPoint it's more of uh just talking to us about what their needs are ranking their needs Etc and we're going to have two schools at each
151of the various meetings that we're going to have plus we're going to have a meeting with um Community Schools and special education at the same time so that will get us to the end of October we know that the full full school committee will need to vote on the budget sometime around Thanksgiving maybe the meeting before Thanksgiving that we have because we need to present this uh or be ready to present it to the warrant committee uh around the first week of December so that's where we are with Finance we'll be meeting regularly every week starting the 21st and I don't know when we'll stop meeting regularly we might take a break for the holidays okay um so does anybody have any questions about that before I do the vendor warrant stuff Ada I have
152a quick question um in terms of the capital budget um do you have that on the schedule because we have a facilities advisory committee to be our first one of the years scheduled for the 22nd um and typically Bill Ritchie has come to that committee first and so I just didn't know if you had already slotted them for a time frame it's not set in stone it's something we talked about yesterday and we were talking about who should go first to give them enough time actually um but we could delay it by another week um if you'd rather haven't had the facilities first yeah yeah that'd be great because I just think we'd have a chance to bat it around and Facilities before it comes to uh finance that would be great medical really on
153me because if we had set the schedule a week earlier then everybody would have had more time to get um to come ready uh with their asks um but it's going to be a tight budget but but people should let us know what they need so at the very least we can inform uh the ward committee the select board town meeting of what our needs are um going forward and to um to make our case um superintendent Jeff did you have a something you want to say okay yes I don't want to say that they're prepared for it but this was the discussion that we had with the uh administrative team back on Friday July 23rd shared with them in preparation uh for this to really think about it at a time where we didn't
154feel pressed with the reopening of school to try to think about it but uh as as a Fallout as a follow-up to yesterday's meeting I did kind of uh reach out to all of the principals Bill Ritchie in uh Bob Patterson to say stop thinking about this and I did give them the tentative dates in from the list that I had yesterday I had the facilities uh in technology uh going first um why don't we have them come on the 21st make their you know tell us what they need they'll go to facilities you guys might add to the list or change it somehow and Bill can Circle back with us um as NASA's about okay so it's on the right Ada okay thanks all right um Dr Craig wait I have one question sorry
155did you just say okay I'm sorry my brain froze for a minute you were talking about the money at Tommy did you talk about something about that or did my brain make that up I just said that that when the when the um the various schools and departments come to us with their asks for the year I was just pointing out that once again budget will be tight and so they I don't know what everybody's going to be able what anyone is going to be able to get this year I'm just trying to put a little um uh injection into the conversation but I did say that it's important for them to come so that we know what the needs are and that we can inform the town no I'm yes I apologize but I
156mean for for that Amy was at the select board meeting oh yes report out on that or we're not reporting out on anything on that right okay um Amy is there a report uh to be given about um I can give you a report if you'd like so um the select board voted this evening to um appropriate an additional 15 an unappropriate to approve an additional fifteen hundred dollars of the balance of the cares act money to be added to the 117 502 for technology for school needs um they also requested another joint finance committee between select board finance and school committee Finance to discuss they have approximately 100 and 178 thousand dollars um an additional revenue for FY 22 that they are going to town meeting fall town meeting with an a budget article
157to increase different budgets so they would like to um task superintendent Jeff myself Town Administrator Dennehy and I'm Finance director Karen praval with perhaps bringing forward a consensus recommendation of how to use that money looking at all Town departments as well as schools that receive Some Cuts during the budget last year they they were talking about Public Safety police officers schools needs as well as library and other departments so um they didn't vote on anything they just tasked us with um trying to come with a consensus recommendation that's been approved by school committee Finance school committee select board Finance select board and warrant committee so they would like to meet next Tuesday I thought we had a finance meeting scheduled so they thought maybe we could meet after that but I think time is of
158the essence to get it into the warmth for print so even though we don't have anything scheduled for next week we might want to have one you know one where we first discuss and vote separately and then maybe 20 minutes a half hour later have a joint meeting so maybe we can talk offline about that tomorrow morning and put something together I stress the need that this meeting has to accompl we need to do everything we can to accommodate Dr Craig's schedule because she has not been able to attend with the times um for the last several so they talked about like 5 30 6 o'clock something like that on possibly Tuesday but they had to pull their members also to see what was convenient but that's pretty much where where it stood that's the
159gist of the conversation um from my participation in that meeting tonight that's all great news um and I think it's it's terrific that we didn't have um a finance meeting scheduled for next Tuesday we'll just make sure we we schedule one and we make it before um 5 30 or so so yeah and it just said probably important to note where the 178 came from that was um 225 000 increase in New Growth um from the assessors Department the estimate went up as and that's netted with a decline in state aid of about 47 000 so that's where the 176 um is coming from that they're looking to appropriate right thank you can I ask a quick question Dr Craig and I'm a little confused so they're asking you to go they're asking you to
160come to consensus of how to spend all the money and divide it between the different departments and then you the finance subcommittee is going to then what recommend how that money gets spent in the district yes add a vote at Finance subcommittee yes or vice versa we could vote that and then if we knew what the needs were we it would probably be an allocation of the amount and then we would go to finance for not of the of the full 176 but how the school's portion would be allocated um or what the priorities were so and the finance meeting on Tuesday will be posted as a full school committee meeting as it always is so that any and all of us can show up to that meeting and discuss right I just I just
161um because [Music] I'm just going to turn this on because I want to make clear that like so Finance is going because then to bring it to the full school committee to have a discussion about how that money is going to be used this year right because usually the way that it works is finance makes a recommendation to the full school committee and that open meeting all meetings are open obviously but like at a meeting that's televised like this we would discuss it and then vote on it as a full school committee I know they'll be cross-coasted so that's fine I just want the community to understand the process because it would be a little bit different than it usually is but it will be an open meeting and it will be a full school
162committee meeting so we do normally do it this way just so that it's I don't know televised and and replayed uh on Milton Access TV but um it's technically the same as if we didn't do that yeah it's just not as accessible so that I just I just it's the whole part about that it's so that people see what's happening I get it and it's a time sensitive issue I totally understand it I just want people to understand but I also think that last week the select board was sort of urging us to make this decision this week because they were meeting tonight and they wanted to vote on it tonight it sounds like Amy did they delayed the vote and they're waiting to get more information and a consensus before they proceed I had
163gotten the feeling from last week's meeting that they wanted that done for tonight but they honestly must have shifted their thinking a little bit Yeah I think that that decision to delay any kind of vote was made before they even um asked me any questions so that wasn't based on whether or not the school um had an approved list [Applause] um it it was I got the sense that they just really want us to collaborate and um that they also needed some time on their side to decide between Town departments so um oh sorry um that's kind of where it landed okay I'm gonna mute now because of the market Dr Carol did you have some yeah sorry if I'm adding to the confusion but I'm also just trying to understand the process so does
164is the expectation that the collaboration with the other departments happens before or after Tuesday when finance and the whole school committee would meet I think the expectation is that that superintendent myself would meet with them as soon as possible knowing that you know we've had yeah discussions of where we think the needs are and um right then kind of present those to the school committee's finance committee next week so you could do it tonight if we had to um which is probably the normal order of business as it would but whereas it's I think they want to vote next at their next meeting so that's why it's time sensitive to get it into the warrant so normally we would work as a team in central work with the town finance and Town Administrator knowing kind
165of what the dollar amount we were expecting the schools was going to be allocated and then figure out um from there what the school committee's priorities are from the list I don't know superintendent is that your read on how it would normally work that would be but I do think it's important to note that we have had several different uh meetings with the town departments to talk about cares act money our Opera money and now we have this uh additional all Essa money and then this additional pocket of money that the town uh has secured so we are prepared um to talk about some of the positions some of the positions we lobbied for last year that didn't make the cut um we talked about reading Specialists we talked about a 504 coordinator we talked
166about different things so we could come together very quickly and work collaboratively with the town side to come up with a recommendation right I just well I guess what I'm trying to make clear to the community and to the committee right is that the collaboration is not the decision the decision exactly the district and the committee right so I'm just trying to make that clear that we have a different um responsibility around our finances than the town does right the town makes decisions with the Town Administrator the select word is not accountable to the decisions the way we are so I'm just trying to make very clear that the collaboration is around the amounts that get divided into different pockets in the community the actual decision on how the money is spent is made up
167from a recommendation from the superintendent to the committee and the committee votes on that that that's that's what I'm trying to clear up so that there's no misunderstanding about how that process unfolds for the community so we are charging the finance subcommittee then on the recommendation of the superintendents to make that recommendation as a full school committee meeting even though all of us might not be there right that's that's what I'm trying to tease out here so that's that's understood by everybody okay and I I just like to add I think you know that we should do what whatever we can to work with the select board on this that that this this additional Revenue that came through is um an important opportunity for us to um access that and the time frame is short
168because of needing to get into the fall town meeting um and I think we have a plan that that I think no I think you have a plan too I just I just want to clarify the process so people understand all right Dr Craighead your many warrants okay um so I'm just gonna say at the outset you will not hear vendor warrant number six nor will you hear vendor warrant number nine those warrants were Consolidated into other warrants right so we didn't use the number six or the number nine just took all of those from that week and put them into the next week all right so um this is going to be uh this is probably the biggest one I've ever done all right so I'd like to make a motion to approve vendor
169warrant number five payable on uh July 29 2021 uh in the amount of 146 690.84 cents vendor warrant number seven payable on August 12 2021 in the amount of 302 909.40 Bender War at number eight payable on August 19 2021 in the amount of 349 508.47 vendor warrant number 10 in the amount of 678 thousand seven hundred and eight dollars and 54 cents payable on September 2nd 2021 and finally vendor warrant number 11 in the amount of 109 787.33 payable on September 9th 2021 do I have a second second okay any discussion all right all in favor okay that looks unanimous thank you very much react to cred I know this is crunch time for finance so anything we can do to support the process we're here and I'm really appreciative of the select board
170for the additional funding I think that's going to be very helpful this year so thank you all for um working on a quick time frame and for making those meetings happen very quickly um over the next week or two all right the next thing was approval of minutes which we don't have um uh Charlene said we would have the next time um so we don't I don't think we have any old business to attend to tonight our next meeting agenda items if I look at our calendar here um we have information about the um budget um on on our calendar for September 22nd it says fiscal end-of-year report superintendent Dexter um so yeah that's a a report we do with Desi So Lisa McDonough is working hard on that she does a great job and
171um it will be reviewed and ready for approval on that date okay great um we're gonna hear um I'll check in with superintendent Jed about hearing about his goals at our next meeting on the 22nd we will um so then the other thing I wanted to check in with members of austinian member Dr Craig is if we wanted to have Martin Luther come back to do a report on after schools did you have a chance to talk to her at Finance yet about um the changes she made to the programming to the funding should we push her out to another meeting or yes you're out to another meeting because um there was a scheduling issue okay we weren't able to talk to her yesterday okay um okay so then we'll push her out to an
172October meeting um and then I think we we did have here on here an update from the Pierce but I'm not sure um I think it says I have to hear Pierce levels um but I might need to discuss that further with um with superintendent Jet and Amber rust any about about an update on that we might need to push that out a little bit um but that's what I have on the agenda for the next time and I think Ada we have something on the agenda as well um School building are we going to do school building committee on the 22nd or out to the sixth when Sean is coming um I would say out to the six that this and I'll let you know if if we do okay I'll have something we
173want to report okay um will we have a policy yet on Dr Carroll yes yes I'll have a report out next time and then um we will also I think we will add to here we will add to our September 22nd meeting um school committee subcommittees and advisory committee so we can begin the process for that new committee okay because we need to vote for that so that's going to go on the um committee for that's going to go on the agenda for next time 22nd and I believe that's it if there's anything else where you you can email or me or Charlene and let us know for the next meeting I just I just thought of one other thing uh in terms of the um the facilities um request for Capital will we because
174the facilities advisory committee is meeting um right before that school committee meeting and I think we agreed that bill Ritchie will be going to finance the day before so we should probably report on that on the 22nd okay so report out on facilities and capital request facilities capital request okay sort of a joint presentation with us and and finance all right great all right I want to thank everyone for a nice meeting I hope that sound like the start of the school year it went very well um I hope everyone that just finished celebrating Rosh Hashanah had a peaceful celebration uh I know this weekend marks 20 years since September 11th and I know that many in the community will be having events and um and we'll be thinking a lot about all the people
175the whole world impacted by that day and I'll certainly be thinking about it and sending everyone peaceful thoughts um for the um 20th anniversary this weekend hard to imagine um all right so I'll make a motion to adjourn the meeting we are going to adjourn to Executive session um to conduct strategies in preparation for negotiations with Union and non-unionment Personnel or to conduct collective bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with Union non-union Personnel in accordance with chapter 38 section 21 A2 we are going to not return to open session but adjourn from executive session may I have a second I can say this is a roll call vote remember white yes member Rosemary yes member rosteni yes um Dr Craighead yes Dr Carroll yes um Dr Spalding wish you all the best thank you for all
176your work and dedication all these years everyone have a peaceful evening and thank you for attending this evening I'll see you all in the executive session thanks goodnight everyone