Milton School Committee - July 21st, 2021

001the attendees and panelists good evening everyone and welcome to the Milton school committee on July 21st 2021 we are conducting this meeting pursuant to the executive order dated March 12 2020 suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law and allowing us to meet virtually I want to welcome everyone to the meeting tonight I hope that you're all doing well this evening we have a full full agenda tonight and so that first order of business is to approve the agenda for the July 21st 2021 meeting please look over the agenda for a few minutes and let me know if you have any changes or additions that you'd like to make anyone no okay so may I have a motion to approve the agenda of July 21st 2012. so moved okay this is a roll call vote

002Dr Lane crackhead yes Dr Elizabeth Carroll yes member Beverly Ross Denny yes member white yes and member heart yes wonderful we are going to start this meeting with a citizen speak before we begin the meeting with citizens week I want to take just a minute to review our policy policy let me review right here b-e-d-h public comment at school committee meetings I want to review for everyone the ground the ground rules for Citizens week citizen speak will be 15 minutes and that's it you may raise your hand in the zoom if you'd like to speak at citizen speak you will be promoted to speak you will state your name your address and you have up to three minutes to share your comments your or your suggestions I would like to point out that access would

003speak react with Grace and kindness towards each other and the community any remarks that are considered abusive or unkind or directed at any member of the community or the administration will be considered out of order and your privilege to speak as soon as we speak may be revoked I welcome your thoughts your suggestions your constructive criticism I like a challenge Network in a community but I like are respectful so with that being said um if there's anyone Precision speaks Sean from Milan National TV will promote you remember to raise your hands get your name your address and then please address the committee you have up to three minutes for your comments yeah if I could just make a suggestion if we could put themselves on mute and so they speak that way it avoids the

004feedback thank you so much superintendent chat I forgot to put that in my notes okay do we have our first speaker we do a regime ah welcome here good evening everyone thank you so much um I think Margaret this is my first meeting with you as the chair so it's just lovely to see your Pleasant face and setting me to have you here um so my name is Dr regime Michelle I live at 70 Sumner Street um I am the parent of four children in the Milton public schools and a professor at Northeastern University where I teach classes about the intersection of race gender and justice tonight I come to you on behalf of the Milton anti-racist Coalition Mark which is a coalition of over 500 active members across town made up of parents community

005members Educators administrators and students about a year ago the milted anti-racist Coalition came together to stand in solidarity around a new shared vision and plan of action for transforming Milton Public Schools into an Exemplar educational system that is more excellent more Equitable more just and more inclusive for every child every single day tonight we watch as the school committee in the district leadership fulfills its stated commitment to conduct a robust external equity-centered district-wide review of MPS policies and practices so we're speaking tonight to commend the Milton school committee for prioritizing investing in and supporting a rigorous external systematic review of the district with an equity lens and to also commend superintendent jet for and his leadership team for carrying out this review with resolve and purpose this is certainly new territory for Milton and our

006efforts should be lauded by all um and we should also remember that every single child in our town regardless of race gender class ability ethnicity religion or any other marker of identity or sexuality will benefit from this the importance of this step for our journey together as a community cannot be understated we the mark platform called for an equity-centered review so that we could have a robust Baseline understanding of where we actually are it's essential for us to have this information so that we can lay out a road map for how we can work together to ensure that every child receives truly excellent Equitable and anti-racist education that they need in order to become leaders in our 21st century Global Society we also speak in a spirit of solidarity and unity because after tonight when

007the results of the quality review are released the real work will actually begin that means that we want to make clear that we as an as a coalition and an organization are here to support the district ongoing commitment to pursuing Excellence with Equity at its core we also urge everyone in our community to see that we each have a role to play and to get involved in being part of this process we are stronger together in recent weeks Mark has put out a call to action urging Milton community members committed to realizing this Vision to stand together in solidarity as we collectively engage in the next phases of this work you can see for example on the mark Facebook page there's more information about how to reach out to us um there will also there

008will certainly without question we know be challenging times ahead as our community confronts these truths um these difficult truths and these complex problems but we really really really believe that we can and will make progress by working together to interpret and understand the results from diverse and exclu inclusive perspectives inclusive I'll say it again and by actively seeking out and working to identify our own role in the shared work of dismantling institutional racism and discrimination and every form of marginalization in our practices and policies and the interpersonal racism that Finds Its way into our day-to-day routines and experiences and so I just want to close with a reminder to the community that we should unify and this should bind us together because this work will benefit everyone every child and every Community member in our

009town because racism and discrimination whether it's sexism or homophobia or islamophobia or anti-religious sentiments every form of discrimination harms everyone in our community and it places an undue burden on our bipoc immigrant lgbtq plus minoritized and differently abled Children and Families we all have a role to play and our schools and our community will be stronger and more excellent as we continue to come together in this work in the spirit of Justice Unity solidarity and Excellence thank you so much for giving me the time to speak thank you Dr Charles next next speaker Susan Koch Weiser welcome welcome Miss wiser thank you um so my name is Susan kochbaser I live at 115 Warren Ave um I'm the mom of two boys in the middle school and in the high school and I'm also on

010the faculty at Tufts University School of Medicine where I'm the associate director of our master's in public health program I'm actually here today because uh Deborah milbauer wanted to speak she's another public health professional in our community um and I am going to read a statement that she wrote but that I fully endorse and I can also add that other public health professionals including Lindsay Rosenfeld and Beth Molnar who also are are members of the Milton Community endorse it as well um so as a mom I support the survey that was part of the equity audit 100 the opposition towards the survey is that comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose and scope of its objectives I applaud all of the equity work of the school staff teachers and school committee it benefits all of

011us children and adults alike even those opposed to the survey I'm so grateful to be raising my kids in a school district that cares about equity and inclusion if your child felt alone or isolated you would want your child supported regardless of the reason asking a child what they might be experiencing is nurturing and compassionate thing to do not asking what they are experiencing whether you think they should be experiencing it or not is harmful to a child's mental health asking will not put ideas in their head for some youth those ideas are already there whether they have the words for them or not you might not want your child to be or feel a certain way but it is not up to you regardless of the child's age in fact the earlier you support

012a child the better their long-term Mental Health as a public health professional I understand the critical role that survey data serves we cannot run schools without insights from real data engaging in an external third party to conduct and analyze surveys is exactly what to do when collecting sensitive information having a survey done by people the students and parents know can impede data collection and be harmful to the quality of the data it is best practice for an outside organization to do the research not my personal opinion I myself have conducted surveys in my own work and I would never conduct them with people I knew the money we have spent for this audit and for the survey in particular was well spent and it's a brilliant return on investment the concept of investing a little

013money in the short term for a big payoff in the long term the investment in understanding Our Youth and their needs today can head off bad outcomes in the expenses that come with them especially as it relates to academic achievement research shows that children do worse in schools if they feel misunderstood or isolated the discomfort we feel with discussing the topics in the survey shows how much how much work lays ahead for us to support and educate everyone in our community not just our students um so in conclusion uh we support the survey as mothers and as public health professionals we deeply appreciate how hard you have all worked the hours and hours of time above and beyond spent to make the schools a safe and Equitable place you have lots of supporters and I

014am proud to send my kids to the Milton Public Schools keep up the amazing work thank you for letting me speak thank you for coming we have about five minutes left for Citizens week so probably two more speakers next speaker please Mark A Johnson welcome Mr Johnson hello everyone can you can you hear me okay oh terrific thank you um I'll I'll be short I I wanna I wanna I think really follow the comments of the past to um speakers and and firstly like um uh Dr Jean Charles just say thank you uh thank you uh to to the district uh as led by by superintendent jet for uh for not resisting but really persisting through a tough time and and what I know was a lot of um uh uh uh you know push

015back or or resistance to um to this idea um so so so thank you for for taking up this this work um uh this survey kind of uh conducted by a third party you know as the as the last uh speaker said which is a which is a real best practice and and like the last speaker and incidentally I'm Mark Johnson at 204 Church Street in Milton my son is a student at Tucker sorry about that but but let me I guess close by saying yeah it feels good to live someplace where the district cares about equity and inclusion and we don't know what the outcome of this survey will be but I take heart and have faith uh in a in a leadership and a system that wants to discover what it can do

016to be better for all our kids and so thank you uh have a great evening um and thank you for uh for letting me speak thank you Mr [Music] John next speaker would be Joy germays you're welcome hello hello is anybody there well George jarmese looks like she jumped out so the other person would be his broco yeah yep welcome hello hello hello welcome yeah this is Rob Brook how you doing folks good to see all your smiles on your face tonight come on folks smile for the audience it's really hard for you to do that I know it's a killer hey so anyways uh three minutes of Citizen speak should never we should have a lot more of this uh chat and unfortunately for three minutes uh it's sort of ridiculous to try to

017go through your budget of over 50 something million dollars for the town of Milton for an equity study that no one can explain put a definition on and all you people seriously you're all in on it this is hilarious and I gotta tell you we're gonna start and we're gonna have a nice conversation and we're going to each invite each and every one of you and you can hide behind Zoom when you're going to take this school policy and up in the town of Milton based on what what was the reason we based this on I know you can't answer it and I'm looking at all you people keep your eyes on me ma'am thank you I appreciate it don't be rude to me again I know I've seen her before in town meeting one

018of the lady with the striped shirt on so anyway Mark you will keep your comments to the channel I know courteous or you'll be asked to sleep okay okay you have an yes I'll do that for me okay that's great listen this is good this is good and we're going to wrap up because this is a waste of time three minutes to talk about something to turn the town upside down this is a bunch of noise this is nonsense and I wish listen can't wait to get at it with you folks you can't hide behind Zoom all the time taxpayers want to talk to you and you have to explain this to them and we'll see you and also to different Avenues whether it's court on TV or whatever and please bring Miss Jared back

019into the scene please will you we need to talk about that Mr Burke we are not speaking about people directly as I said he's a teacher not to wreck your comments towards a teacher or any employer I know what's the rule about that that is the policy of the district it's a wrong you have a few more minutes 31 seconds to finish your comments please and we are going to move I'm going to take my 31 seconds and not say a word for a protest this is nonsense you should be ashamed of yourself all you people it's funny people are on to you guys on to all of you you can hide you can lie you can steal but it's got to stop and we'll make sure that happens and if you don't like it

020as they say tough nudies okay we're coming after you and you have a wonderful day I know you can't smile because all you people have a bad toxic belief system and we're going to help you get rid of it and I'll say a prayer if your conversion with Mother Teresa and I'll bring some holy water for all you marxists have a wonderful day Smile everybody come on you can do it do it Goodbye Mr Burton thank you so much thank you very much for nothing bye bye bye bye bye now bye now that was great thank you very much welcome everyone thank you so much for attending tonight thank you to the citizens who spoke at citizen speak and were able to adhere to our policy and share their comments with the committee I really

021appreciate that all right so now we are on to the superintendence report I am very excited to um introduce superintendent jet who is going to introduce Cambridge education and discuss the beginning discussions of the equity audit so superintendent yet without further Ado you are welcome so thank you uh chair Everhart in uh thank you for those all of the speakers for their opinions in uh their supports and their comments this evening uh what are the things that I wanted to say as a superintendent in the public uh schools I stand 100 behind the equity audit it is our job my job as a superintendent to be the superintendent for every single one of the four hundred and four thousand four hundred and plus students that will walk through the threshold of the doors um the

022equity for me is non-negotiable um and I hope and I look forward uh to having these forums with families to give them the update about the work that we're about to Embark upon um so I do wanted to state that without further Ado I would like to uh introduce to you uh Mr Chris Finn he's going to be one of the lead presenters this evening and I'm going to ask him to do a quick uh introduction to the members that he have of his team with him uh and then we will start that presentation and then I will have a few follow-up comments at the end of the presentation as well so thank you Mr Finn excellent thank you Mr Jet and good evening to the board good evening everyone I am going to share

023my screen and within the presentation I will formally introduce some of my team members who are on this evening thank you Miss Everhart for facilitating this evening and I'm going to begin by sharing so first can everyone see my screen okay yes and excellent and I'm going to begin this part of the slideshow okay so once again good evening my name is Chris Finn representing Cambridge education this evening and sharing some of the main findings of the quality review that we engaged in with an equity lens again I want to share that my title is senior education specialist from Cambridge education and I'm joined by some of my teammates who helped work on this process and this Equity audit with with me which is Mindy Paolo Keith lazama and Jeff tegnell they are also present

024here uh they are the chief empowerment officers and Consultants from l p Educational Services they were great Partners in this work in helping to disaggregate the data and work together in coming up with our findings and our impact which was based on our interviews the data we collected and the rubric that we used for this process I am going to be the formal presenter for the Lion's Share of the presentation and then as it pertains to questions uh they're going to support me or support us with answering some questions so I'm going to ask that you all be mindful of maybe making note of your questions as we move through the the presentation so there will be a formal space towards the end for you to ask okay okay hooray so let me first share

025the objectives for tonight I'm going to share a little bit of the background of you know the process we're going to outline the purpose and the process of the quality review with an equity lens we're going to discuss the factors that support equity and excellence in the district we're going to discuss the factors that limit access and opportunities for some in the district we're going to share some recommendations of high leverage areas for improvement we're going to share some next steps and then we're going to answer any questions let me also just alert everyone I may say this multiple times tonight but you you guys will be receiving the formal very detailed report soon so this is an opportunity to share some of the high leverage areas it's like a snapshot from the report but

026we attempted to give some of the most uh powerful factors if you will in this session and towards the end of this month you should be receiving the formal full report which is really lengthy including is a great deal of data and charts and narrative around what we're going to be sharing some of this evening so a little bit about Cambridge and L P Cambridge education is a leading provider of Education Services uh since 2002 we've LED projects in 38 States more than 570 districts and more than 6 500 schools LMP Educational Services helps to build the capacity and the confidence of Educators to teach lead and sustain Equitable and culturally responsive classrooms and institutions we at both Cambridge and LNP are all K-12 Educators and or administrators we have a great extensive review experience

027and we focus on learning Improvement learning and improved outcomes for students we partner with our clients to engage all stakeholders in the process so you'll note that the the focus groups were varied across the district including parents and students and uh Community stakeholders teachers School leaders and the district level employees as well we have a proven process for creating managing and evaluating Improvement efforts and where experienced providers for professional learning towards Equity so outside of these reviews we also engage in professional learning to support the growth of districts around equity so the school review experience for Cambridge in particular we've done School quality reviews in 20 States over a hundred districts and over 3 000 schools this is specific to the school quality reviews and this is a little bit of how the process works

028so we start by planning and project management so we worked very closely with the district leadership I mean Dr Spaulding is here and James Jetta here they were with us literally every step of this way uh agreeing on the instruments and the tools that we would use and you know supporting us with agreeing on how the project would roll out and be managed throughout then the district did some self-evaluation and they discussed some of the areas where they felt they had strengths and challenges we went through a great deal of document collection a really special shout out to miss Vivo who has been dynamic in this process and supporting us with data and looking at policies we then engaged in a great deal of stakeholder surveys focus groups and interviews some of the community stakeholders

029mentioned that early on but the goal was to collect the stakeholder perception data speak to individuals literally about their experiences in the district and use that to support some of the findings in the project we then visited classrooms remotely we observed School classrooms we observed instruction we observed uh teacher meetings and we had meetings with District excuse me with school leaders as well and their leadership team and then we worked together to analyze root causes we came up with the report as based on the information that was collected and you will be receiving that formal report as I mentioned probably towards the end of this month so this is just a glimpse of the process now I think it's important to note the difference here between equality and equity and I don't I don't mean

030to suggest that people are not already aware of this but I just want to make it extremely clear in this uh this evening is that equality means offering everyone the same thing and it makes assumptions that everyone has the same opportunities and experience it speaks the same way learns the same way and has had access to the same resources Equity though gives each student what they need to be successful in school and Beyond and it is culturally responsive to diverse backgrounds especially those who have been socially or socio-economically linguistically and culturally marginalized so when speaking about Equity it's just important to note that difference between giving everyone the exact same thing and giving each individual what they need to be successful to uh succeed why do we even care about Equity okay so because of

031the No Child Left Behind law that was in 2002 prior to that most education agencies across the country just collected the aggregate data so they looked at students on a whole right just these are our students these are how our students are doing but after No Child Left Behind states were now required to report on the academic achievement and educational attainment across subgroups so what that did was it it you know the the government defined these subgroups as economically disadvantaged students students from major racial or ethnic groups students with medical or learning disabilities and students with limited English proficiency often referred to as our L students so it requires schools to now look at the subgroups within their population to not just give the kind of overall broad glimpse of how a specific school or

032District were doing but to dig a little deeper and hone in on how subgroups are performing within this bigger aggregate data why do we collect data on subgroups schools and districts are required to collect data on student subgroups for the purpose of exploit exposing underlying Trends and issues such as achievement gaps opportunity gaps learning gaps and other inequities in the public education system District leaders and teachers have a more deep have more detailed information about the performance and learning needs of specific groups of students which allows them to design more appropriate or effective educational experiences and academic support it allows us to dig deeper and and really support students in an individualized basis to help them get what they need to be successful in school this is just a glimpse of how you know disaggregated

033data on the left shows you know that the district doing well at you know by 67 percent if you will the chart on the right or the graph on the right actually speaks to those students who use a free a fee waiver to be part of this programming and you see the number is a little smaller or 27 smaller if you will not a little number but what that's sharing is that although from you know maybe the helicopter view a specific District looks like it's performing well but when we're on the ground and looking at each individual student you can see that there are some gaps and students who are performing or underperforming in specific areas so some things that we know about Equity is test scores alone don't tell the full story about a

034school right load test scores can indicate more about a student's lack of opportunity than about how effective a school is often it is possible to lose struggling students within the averages so schools with high ratings of on standardized tests they may have student groups that are underperforming but the numbers are small enough so that it doesn't affect the overall performance so you know again the district may be performing well from that helicopter view but when you dig a Little Deeper you find that some students might be being lost in the cracks if you will schools that are successfully closing gaps are doing a good job for all students strategies that have been shown to help disadvantaged students succeed are good for all students these include targeted instruction that meets each student where they are and

035and intervenes when they struggle improving engagement and emphasis on Advanced coursework and college preparation and creating a culture of high expectations these are all things that can support all students as well and Equity extends beyond the school building parents and Community advocacy organizations can be key players in improving the overall School climate and the outcomes for all students and we were we did have the opportunity to meet with several School groups and Community organizations during the focus group so their voices voices were part of this data collection as well what are we looking for when we engage in the school quality review with the equity lens so if you notice there are four uh larger green circles around the outside and those are our four domains the first is Student Learning and Development outcomes where

036we're looking at actual academic data we're looking at how students are performing in schools then we look at curriculum instruction and assessment is the curriculum culturally responsive is it designed to support the students that is teaching how is instruction delivered and how are students assessed across the district we also look closely at leadership management and accountability uh we we've had very deep conversations with District leaders District level employees and we've talked about their level of leadership management and accountability and also family and Community engagement which is really a powerful piece to this we spoke to many families many parents of we added focus groups because we had the interest from parents who wanted to join and share their their ideas and their thoughts about the district and I'll note that uh you know for the

037room here the parents in the district were really forthcoming when they shared and really engaged in the process I mean I I you know we received some feedback they were thankful to have a voice thankful to share and thankful to be included in this process the quality review with an equity lens process is designed to enable the leadership and staff at all levels in the district to get a clear understanding of the quality of Education that's being provided in relation to clearly articulated Equity standards that Define a quality school it's a really big statement there but in essence it gives the district an opportunity as many of the uh Community stakeholders shared to have an outside lens looking at the district and share with them some feedback as to how they can improve it also

038helps to guide a process of self-reflection and directed practice develop a shared understanding within the school community of the areas that promote equity and the priorities for improving student learning and identifies needs with reference to a clear rubric that was used as a structured process it enables the district to look for common patterns and professional practice across schools so they can better support student Improvement or better support student outcomes for all so the process that's designed to do these things and here's a little background about the actual process so from January through May we engaged in this very deep data collection piece where we engaged in 22 interviews with districts and school leaders we had 15 focus groups that you know included sometimes up to 10 12 15 people in the focus group 100 plus

039data sheets and documents were examined to look at curriculum and assessments and attendance and discipline and all the things that go into running schools we actually performed or engaged in six Virtual School visits we visited every school in the district um it I think it's appropriate at this moment really to shout out your school leaders too it was not easy for some of them to do this virtually and they too were really thoughtful in the process I mean as much as putting a laptop on a cart and walking around the whole building with it while they've communicated with us on another laptop they really taught us in a lot of ways how to do these virtual visits smoothly oftentimes there would be a room with three laptop set up so that we could both look

040at the teacher instructing we could see some students and observe learning and then they were communicating with us as well and then 3 000 plus surveys were sent out we had a 12 uh percent response from parents a 25 response from staff and and students in grades 6 to 12 which gave us a 45 response rate so just so everyone is really clear this was a really deep dive into the school into the data into the actual learning environments that your students are are working in every day and the district leaders and teachers and staff and school principals were really supportive during this process this piece I always want to point out uh because I want people to recognize you know I'm a former School principal myself and I too went through the school quality

041review and I'm gonna just be frank for a moment and share that you know at the time I had some teachers who maybe were not in love with Chris Finn right either the way that I was trying to push them or raise the level of expectation in my school and my apprehension early on as a principal this is about 15 years ago was that you know a an upset or disgruntled teacher would those see the quality review person and air all of their Grievances and it would sway the report right but when I learned about how to facilitate a quality review and then I was trained to become a lead reviewer in quality reviews and then I did them all across the country I learned this teach with peace which is crucial and I always

042drive this home for principals so I want to drive it home for you all today is in order to find impact we have to triangulate this data and the data is collected it in this way so that on one side of the triangle is the actual quantitative data that's the real State score that's the attendance rate that's the discipline rate right those are the raw numbers that exist on the paper to the right upper right are the actual stakeholders view those are people who are sharing with us their experience in the district they're giving us their experience as parents as school leaders as teachers even the students views are brought into this piece and then there's actually the direct observation is when we had the opportunity to visit schools ourselves virtually and see these things

043happen on the ground so we can only come to to Define our impact after we've examined the whole triangle if you will so there isn't one side of this triangle that outweighs the other um so to all of my people out there trying to grasp the the themes of this you know no one voice will outshine anything else in the district or it's no one part of this triangle will outshine the other if you will so I I always want to present that to let you know that um this you know it's four people line up and say the district is the greatest of all time it will not immediately make that happen it we have to find that through the data and through the direct observation as well and uh we're going to present

044some high leverage factors that support and limit District Effectiveness and remember you're going to get a more granular and detailed report by the end of July I said I'll probably say that 10 more times I think that's probably the third time I've said it okay so here we go I'm gonna First share some of the factors that support District effectively the first is here is that Milton Public Schools is a high performing District the with graduation rates and test sort test scores that exceed the state average teachers have high expectations and provide rigorous instructions nearly 90 percent of students attend two or four-year colleges after graduating from high school so you'll note that the dotted line speaks to the aggregate data that's all students right and then the colored lines to speak to the subgroups

045if you will to Asian students black students Hispanic students white and multi-racial students so high performing districts even before we engaged in this review so kudos to school leaders for getting the scores to exceed the state average another factor that supports is that the district has high quality experienced teachers and administrators in every school nearly 90 percent of teachers report that their school is a nurturing place to work uh this is literally from teachers response survey and as you can see 87 percent of teachers either strongly agreed or agreed that their school is a nurturing environment in which to work uh the the survey data as one of our community stakeholders shared is really an important piece to this because when they do it individually people really have the opportunity to be frank and honest

046and you'll often get some really honest responses so it's great to see that teachers feel connected uh and their their environments in their school their field are nurturing another factor that supports District equity and excellence district and school strategic plans have goals associated with Equity diversity and inclusion the district has undertaken many recent initiatives to build equity in the schools such as introducing a more culturally responsive curriculum and resources implementing programs to support social and emotional learning for students and training on restorative practices so as we engaged in interviews stakeholder reviews and actually a review of The District strategic plan it was clear that they were already moving in the the realm of pushing towards more Equity diversity and inclusion this is a chart that speaks to the calculus project which you guys have partnered

047with in the district which helps support students moving from middle school to high school with engaging in higher level math classes so that they can reach the level of calculus by high school and graduate having taken really high level AP and math classes so in engaging in the district plan and looking at this music plan it was clear that they were already starting to move in this direction this wasn't a brand new initiative and frankly I would share that even this Equity review is another move in that direction okay another factor is most parents and students feel respected by adults at the school and District levels parents and caregivers are fully engaged highly involved and supportive of the schools and their children's learning families feel welcome and teachers and administrators support two-way communication to keep

048parents informed on their children's progress and to understand their concerns so you know this is information from a family survey response where 88 percent of the families that responded agreed that the principal at my children's school is responsive to my concern almost 80 percent agreed that the principal and my children's School create opportunities for parents to be equal Partners in achieving school goals and again just to unpack this one in speaking to parents it was really powerful in hearing their you know very granular level stories about working with school principals and how this principal came to speak to me when I was in the parking lot and after school this principal was so thoughtful to come and share XYZ so you're getting the broad stroke here but in the focus groups we were you know

049blessed I guess with hearing some of these real life stories about how parents felt connected to the school leaders and they felt heard and they felt that there were opportunities being provided for them to partner with the school so we wanted to share some of those High leverage factors oh excuse me here's another one in that the district has built Partnerships with many Community organizations to support the academic and social and emotional needs of students and their families here is a list of several of the Partnerships that have been made by the district and to you know again many of these people were included in the focus groups uh there were actual focus groups for some literally some of the district Partnerships here so their voices were also included in this process okay now we're

050going to move into sharing some factors that limit District Effectiveness and we're going to share some recommendations along the way okay so here we go the first of which is some disproportionality the numbers of African-American black and latinx Or Hispanic students identifies for special education is disproportional to their population numbers so what you'll note here is there's an expected number of students that are deemed to like tentatively be tested or recommended for special education and then there's the actual number right so if you know the Asian students the suggested number is higher than the actual number and the same is for white students for multi-racial students it's almost neck and neck but for black students making up 13.1 percent of what's expected and then for them to be recognized at a 21.8 percent is disproportional

051as it is with the Hispanic students in the district as well so there's disproportionality in students being identified for special education another area of disproportionality speaks to students with disabilities and students who are economically disadvantaged received in-school suspension at almost four times and five times the rate of white students African-American or black students receive out-of-school suspensions over four times the rate of white students of students with disabilities African-American black students have over three times the rate of disciplinary removal than white students and I know you're just getting a glimpse of these slides but if you look at the bottom number there are 3096 white students and 21 of them receive some type of school discipline if you look at the black students there are 633 students and 26 of them receive disciplinary action so that

052number is a great disproportionality you know they make up much less of the population but literally have more disciplinary actions against them than white students and you can note that across the board here specifically with black male students and specifically with black male students in special ed or students with disabilities another area of disproportionality there are fewer students of color in AP classes and fewer economically disadvantaged students than the French immersion program so if we look to that left chart we see grade one participation in French immersion program by income level 94 of the students in that French immersion program are not from low-income families if you will not economically disadvantaged at only six percent come from that population if you look over here at the AP classes you'll note that although black students are

053making up 18 of the population they only make up 11 of the AP classes and you see that's disproportionate uh here amongst the other numbers and frankly for white students they make up only 65 of the population but make up 73 of the AP classes so these are three areas of disproportionality that were discovered throughout this process so one of our recommendations in a very Frank way is work to disrupt this level of disproportionality and some of the things we can do to help make this happen we want to engage stakeholders to understand the root causes of disproportionality why are these things happening in the district how can we avoid them we want to be strategic and intentional about professional development and that means when we're looking at restorative practices for discipline when we're looking

054at classroom management practices we want to be strategic so that we're being mindful that we don't disproportionately uh send students of color out of class or suspend them based on maybe potentially some of the same actions that other students are having in the classroom we want to be we want to disaggregate the data in each school to help really fine-tune this and look at this in a deep deep way and then we want to Center deep in and embed Universal Divine Design for Learning which is about planning backwards you know looking at our end goal maybe making a blueprint for how we want to increase or decrease the suspensions for black males and special ed by X percent and then we work backwards from there to determine how to do that in the district and

055we also want to create the requisite guard rails and gatekeeping mechanisms which means we want to ensure that the policies and practices in each School are are Equitable and it doesn't allow our own maybe implicit biases or lack of training or lack of understanding about how to support a subgroup keep us from you know over suspending students of color or having the high expectations for all students so that we all have the opportunity to reach and attend the AP classes in the school so these are just some recommendations as I mentioned this is an area we went into really deeply in the report and you're going to be able to read uh suggestions and opportunities for for more uh strategies to engage in this in the formal report thank you another area that limits District

056Equity is the curriculum and instruction the curriculum is being updated and attention has been paid to increasing the cultural relevance in some subject areas it is evident however that not all students are taking opportunities to engage in the highest level classes in the high school and French immersion program is disproportionately white in most schools as well so what we talk about here are we're asked teachers actually across the district do you feel the district has prepared you to utilize culturally responsive practices and only 26 or 26.4 percent of teachers in the district who responded to the survey said yes uh there are 36 percent that said no and they're 37.6 that said somewhat so frankly in the last slide I shared that we need to hyper focus on professional development so that students excuse me

057so that the instructors across the district can be prepared to be culturally responsive with their instruction and here is evidence that the Lion's Share of the teacher population feels they have not yet been appropriately prepared to address students and be culturally responsive so that's an area that needs to be focused on moving forward here is some recommendations develop a comprehensive professional development plan for the district it's a long-term geared toward improving the learning of all students and skills of teacher teachers it has to be data driven research based with systematic sessions follow-up monitoring and evaluation to ensure improved skills for teachers and better outcomes for students some teachers really did speak about having intended uh PDS around implicit bias or being more culturally thoughtful but it it didn't drive it home enough to greatly impact

058their instruction across the district in addition to formal professional development we want to develop structures for job embedded professional learning that incorporates curriculum leaders building leaders and teacher leaders as capacity Builders so they can help drive this work within their own school this includes supervising and supporting principles and instructional leaders who can advance the mission in the district another one is to develop a plan to make French immersion programs more inclusive Provide support to French immersion teachers to enable accessible classrooms that you that utilize a variety of instructional formats to better address the learning needs of students with a variety of backgrounds learning modalities and abilities and allow the setting up of special educator and student support teams for French immersion teachers this is an area where we did observe many French immersion classrooms and

059in in a few situations they were 100 white students in the room and frankly the French immersion program in our discussions with people around the district we found it really is like a beacon for the district like people have talked about literally moving to the district for the French immersion program so it's a powerful facet to the district but the goal is to make it more Equitable moving forward for Equitable access to this as well uh continue the program review of social studies curriculum under the leadership of the social studies coordinator and the MHS social studies chair under which grade level social studies curriculum would be written based on the 2018 history social science framework standards and continue to revise the curriculum with an equity lens we want to continue to look at all of

060the curriculum with an equity lens diversity equity and inclusion committee should meet to design a plan and protocols for assessing curriculum and instruction with an equity lens and frankly just to touch back on the French immersion piece for one minute you know parents have shared with us in many focus groups that it's open in the first grade and that there's a you know there's an opportunity for us to join so it might immediately look like well parents didn't choose to join when they had the opportunity but what I'm sharing though is that you know you try to imagine the black student walking down the hallway and looking at the French immersion class and seeing all white students they may innately feel like I don't belong in that class right like that class is not for

061me because I don't see anyone or anything in that room that looks like me so one thing kind of lends itself to another and the students may lose interest or not feel that they have a place in the classroom based on the fact that there's so little diversity of it in some classrooms okay another factor that sometimes limits the equity of the district is the accountability and monitoring are lacking in some areas and the monitoring of learning and teaching as well as the regular evaluation and feedback are inconsistent and this speaks to the evaluation of principles across the district it speaks to the evaluation of teachers in specific schools um the district leadership has to be very mindful about accountability and monitoring what's going on in each school and really closely evaluating School leaders and

062the instructors within the school buildings to support the equity framework and the increased rigorous instruction for all students some recommendations here use student data to inform decisions at all levels the district should develop and implement the district-wide protocol for using data into in teacher team meetings to better support the individualized instruction plan for students we know that data should inform instruction and what we found is that the levels of data analysis and then the use of that data to drive future instruction is varied at levels there are some teachers in schools that do it well there are others that are still in the early stages of that so we need a district level support and protocol to ensure that that's happening at a high level in all schools devise a protocol for identifying monitoring and

063evaluating initiatives sometimes having too many priorities lead to a lack of clarity on what needs to be accomplished and when so rather than try to do 500 things in a mediocre fashion let's try to do four things like really well and intentionally and keep that going for a long time you know it's important not to switch initiatives every year also to ensure accountability to support both growth and impact of school leadership it's critical that the superintendent collaborates with principals each year to identify priority indicators and elements around which to focus the principal evaluation that process can grow with the voice of the principles in it you know being that you have the six fools everyone's voice can be part of that process well so another recommendation is to involve School leaders in the budgeting process

064reform the budgeting process with the town so that is based on an objective student characteristics and data such as economic status the ell students English language Learners students with disabilities grade enrolled low academic performance for high academic performance gifted status among others support a budgeting process that has clear and easily understood policies for where how and why dollars flow this piece is interesting if I could unpack for a second it was powerful to hear School leaders share that they most of them shared that when they ask for things they traditionally get what they asked for but then when you dig a little deeper and asked if they were part of the budgeting process that they were fully aware of their budget many of them shared that they were not there were some discrepancies there so

065this is about a Reformation of the budgeting process across the district they weren't saying they didn't have what they need I just want to drive that home they weren't saying we don't have what we need but the idea around them having a better voice and understanding of the process is what was shared with us by many school leaders the district strategic action plan should have Equity goals and metrics throughout Equity should not be independent from other goals but part of each goal that is important because we can't look at Equity as this separate entity that like we're going to do math language arts social studies science and Equity right Equity is not something separate but it's something that should be baked in to everything that we do and although it currently exists within the Strategic

066plan it needs to be fully fleshed out into every element within the plan school and District systems and practices should be transparent implemented consistently and with Fidelity and involved input from stakeholders okay we talk about culture School culture varies between schools as does the level of diversity of staff and students so if you look at this chart each color actually represents a different school year and it speaks to the level of diversity in the teaching staff of each school or the staff period of each school so it's very clear that Tucker has the most diverse staff uh Kylie Cunningham Glover Pierce Milton has a less than that as far as diversity is concerned in their teaching population uh School leaders were very aware of this and you know I know there isn't like a magic

067place you can go to just hire you know teachers of color so it is on people's radar but it's something that we noted because as you see by this chart the the glaring in the school that has the most diversity in its teaching staff and across the district we could enhance the equitable uh race if you will of teachers across building a recommendation for this is the most important assets needed to build an equitable School District or commitment and count and accountability currently not everyone in the community is committed to this cause and plans do not identify those who are accountable and responsible for implementation many stakeholders see the action as optional someone else's job or something to be postponed until after the pandemic in order to gain commitment include stakeholders in generating Solutions and

068hold all levels of Staff accountable for achieving Equity goals this piece is really important because in engaging with um School leaders and I'll be frank even District leaders when asked about equity and the equity goals many times we receive the spot the response oh yes that's Somali like Somali is the equity person right not like the district is working towards Equity or we as a community are working towards Equity or we all as a community are moving towards Equity I can't tell you how many responses I got from adults who were literally like yes Somali does Equity right as as if this is not a a unified goal it's something that's that this one person or this one person for this you know p is going to handle you know and and that we won't

069have movement if we believe that it's all up to one person in the district to do that and where students maybe who are unaware may feel like that or parents who are not as immediately aligned but to hear that from District level employees is it shares that the mission is not yet you know fully accepted and committed to by everyone across the district and we also want to build a common understanding and definition of what Equity is and what it looks like in Milton Public Schools we want to empower stakeholders with the data they need to discover where inequities are happening in their own schools and classrooms and conduct root cause analyzes to determine why these disproportionalities continue to occur in the district and to really build in the groups like Mark and CBM to

070to make this unified move towards equity and and sort of squeeze the juice out of every Community stakeholder to help move in that direction I also wanted to just note here those were the high leverage uh factors that support and the factors that limit but I also many people have mentioned this already but I also want to just note where we are in this process because in some uh cases I think people believe that after this Equity audit like okay we've arrived or we're done and in essence the equity audit is actually the beginning right this is the needs assessment when we conduct this quality review uh we're the outside agency that came in and worked with the district to engage in this review but moving forward these are some steps that you can take

071to continue this work is really do a deep root cause analysis across the district to examine some of those disproportionalities make sure that the objectives in the Strategic plan are coherent and that their goals with levers moving forward and it's a it's it's time based and we're all committed to it we could build stakeholder engagement determine the people that really need to be at the table and part of the solutions then develop the theory of actions share the metric that you want to look for across this work is the evidence of impact you're going to action plan with formal action steps with deadlines and benchmarks along the way to determine how successful you're being and then look at the resource alignment how can we bring the right people and and resources into the project and

072into the process to support this increase in growth of equity across the district okay so I am now going to formally open it up for questioning or questions and myself and Dr Jeff tegnell and Dr lizama and Mindy we can all respond to questions I wonder uh Miss Everhart if you want to maybe facilitate this and help us so it's just a smooth process and I'm gonna stop sharing so we can uh go back to the full stream thank you so yes Chris um thank you thank you so much for that presentation um before I start superintendent did you want to jump in with anything first before I we open it up to the committee members uh no I do not I just want to thank uh Chris uh Finn and his team for their

073uh thorough uh examination of the Milton public schools and the feedback that they have obviously we have a lot of work to do unpacking this information and as you alluded to looking at the root causes for some of the inequities and one of the things that I want to share with the viewing audience is to please remember our job as Educators and educational leaders to prepare students for duties of citizenship and make sure that we're preparing every student with the skills and the content knowledge that they need to be successful uh with any close-up post uh secondary opportunities that they wish to explore so that is our goal that's our focus and we're going to be we're going to have a steadfast commitment to making sure that we get this work done and what it

074does it it allows us to focus on every single student in the Milton public schools and I would extend that to the faculty and staff as well in order for them to perform in in display their A-game they too need to be feel supported and I just call on the community uh I call on the community to show their support for our Educators in because this is the work that we do this is the work that we sign up for and this is what we're committed to doing so thank you and your team for the work that you've done and I look forward to uh partnering with all stakeholders in the community to make sure that we uh enhance the educational experience of the Milton public school for all of our students thank you thank

075you superintendent jet okay so school committee members if you want to raise your hand in the zoom if you would like to ask the um the group a question on Betty yep um going back to our earlier um slide I was wondering if you could elaborate on the focus groups and the makeup of the focus groups that you conducted and also I was wondering if you could comment about the percentage of parents and faculty that participated in the survey and how that was vis-a-vis um how viable it is like with a 12 parent is was that a a low amount was that a typical amount because I didn't really know about that got you so first let me share that the focus groups were varied they included teachers and families and Community stakeholders we genuinely

076wanted to hear from parents across the district at every school level um we we spoke to parents who had students who were English language Learners parents who had students with disabilities parents in the French immersion program not in the French immersion program it was really Broad and uh varied across the district I'll share that we also towards the end we got requests for people who wanted to have another Voice who felt like they had not had an opportunity to share so we added more teacher focus groups and we had more focus groups for Community stakeholders as well so we added them throughout the process to hopefully get as many voices as possible in the process the survey was voluntary right so we got people who wanted to share and who who felt compelled to share

077their information I would share that the students we got the biggest response from the students um I was able to speak to some students too who who took it and shared that you know some kids genuinely were not interested they just I mean and based on like I wanted to go to lunch I didn't want to like I wanted to go to a sports class or something else and just didn't want to but I think it was powerful that we got such a great response from the students um what I have found in this process doing these quality reviews across the country uh and I'm gonna be really Frank here for a minute is the kids really give it up right the kids the kids don't really have a filter you know in my experience

078sometimes you'll find District level people teachers School leaders who might be guarded and might be very wary of what to say and how should I say this but the students are oftentimes so honest and Frank that they sometimes give us the most raw and real information about what's happening in the school so I I believe the parent was 12 I'm trying to quickly look at this right here it was right which is not a great number for parents it's not a high return rate but what I will say is some parents even shared with me that because they were part of a focus group they did not feel then compelled to also do the survey so there are a few parents who were in both right who were part of focus groups and others who

079shared I didn't do the survey because I knew I was going to join this focus group and I can share my opinion in the focus group so we have a mixed that and I also note that many of the community stakeholder groups I would say most of the community stakeholder groups were also parents right so they weren't just solely I don't know that we spoke to many people who shared they did not have a child somewhere in the Milton Public Schools District so if you you add that part in we spoke to a great deal of parents as well okay thank you Beverly um first I want to thank you all for being so comprehensive in your review and very clear in your recommendations it makes it much easier to consume this information and think

080forward about our strategic planning that's coming up um I have two categories of questions um one has to do with the disproportionate rates of discipline and special education referrals and the fact that almost every subgroup is is having there's something negative that's happening to them relative to the incident rates among students that are white and I'm wondering if if you can share how these students articulated how they feel and experience School um I'm equally concerned about the adults in our community that experience mental health crises associated with the survey portion of the review because ultimately we have to decide as a town how do we support the adults who are experiencing mental health crises but at the same time as a school committee and as faculty and administration of a school district we have a

081disproportionate amount of responsibility to our children and if you can talk through number one some of the insights you may have had about children and how they're experiencing this especially those kids affected by discipline and special education referrals and um I do want the town to reflect on how do we service our kids because we cannot leave them behind the expense of the adults that need more support but the support isn't something that the schools can give at this time so I'll share first in engaging with students I have to say many students responded that they really felt safe and supported in their schools right they may be at a level where they don't recognize the disproportionality to the level that we do they may not be aware that you know more black students are

082being suspended you know they see it from their lens and they for the most part see connect see their connection to their teachers in their school but in some students responses you know and I know Renee who my partner who's on here she she did a great deal with the survey she might be able to share even more data around this but I would say from the students lens oftentimes they're not aware of these disproportionalities what I'll say about the adults though is really powerful what you shared is because you know what I'm always trying to share in these sessions is that none of these things are isolated right they're all connected like this web if you will across the district so you you noted in the area where teachers felt that they may that

083for the Lion's Share of teachers felt that they weren't properly trained to be culturally responsive to all of their teachers to their students it happens in a similar way with students with disabilities right if you're a teacher who hasn't received a great deal of training around students with disabilities how to support them how to tailor and structure to them how to recognize their triggers or what have you a student's misbehavior or off-cast behavior May immediately be perceived as just rude and disruptive so we're going to send this child out but when you dig deeper you'll learn that this behavior is literally part of this student's disability so it's you know a student who's this IEP says he Taps on the table to help himself calm down a teacher who's not aware of that will kick

084a student out of class for tapping on the table even though it's been recognized that this is part of the disability so the teacher training and the teachers level of understanding us is how to support the different subgroups is crucial in this process and the evidence was there and that the Lion's Share of teacher said they did not feel fully prepared so we do want to be mindful that we want to send teachers into classrooms with all of the preparation they need to be aware of these things so as to better support the students that they're serving in the classroom that was very insightful thank you very much and my second question has to do with the point you made about a review of our social studies curriculum and you know whether you or James

085or care would like to answer this I would like to know is Milton Public Schools teaching critical race Theory and then secondly to talk about what were the changes that were made in the history curriculum and how do we currently address issues of race or um sexuality in in terms of what is being taught in our schools I'm going to ask Mindy Mindy would you mind sharing a little bit about the social studies curriculum Mindy from l p sure and I'm actually going to pass it to Dr tegnell because he did the review of the social studies curriculum so I think he'll have most of the information for social studies I'm muted good uh so you asked about social studies curriculum and uh um what what I found is that um uh the social studies

086program is undergoing a transformation right now um we uh so especially at the high school that uh uh new courses are being created that would be very engaging to the diverse students such as the African diaspora chorus and the fourth fourth estate course on government and and the media we also saw that uh a new social studies coordinator has been appointed who is going to uh you know be very instrumental in taking the the program in hand um my my perception was that in K-5 uh the there there was a incomplete Fidelity to State the state Frameworks and I believe that there's going to be a review of the social studies curriculum and an attempt to make them reflect more of the standards that the state has uh has required a a a social studies

087features to address as to um Middle School um we you know again uh there's a a a lack of uh District curriculum but I I saw that uh teaching tolerance and other sources of curriculum are being adopted again my expectation would be that the social studies coordinator K-8 and the social studies chair high school will be very instrumental in taking a good look at this program and and doing the requisite work with teachers in order to develop more district-wide materials the as to critical race Theory we really know I think it's a Canard that the critical race theory is somehow influencing uh uh you know instruction and K-12 classrooms I don't think teachers are very aware of what critical race theory is um I I do believe that we're attempting to create curriculum that provides

088engagement for diverse groups of of students so that they can see themselves in the curriculum and uh and their their peers will will see uh again their their uh ethnic and racial groups uh part and and the the American Saga and um uh so I think that's that's the intent of making the curriculum more diverse and more equitable if I could if I could just add to that as a superintendent of Milton public schools and Dr tegno uh thank you very much for your comments without a doubt I want to make it known very clearly on this meeting we are not teaching critical race theory in the middle of Milton Public Schools what we are asking teachers to do to be culturally responsive or culturally responsive curriculum so that way you could identify the student's

089uniqueness and the appreciation of those who are around them we also want to make sure there's a wide variety of instructional practices that people could kind of see themselves reflected in the curriculum in certain ways and we we provide different choices kind of like what we've been talking about personalizing uh learning and different things like that as long as the students are able to illustrate that they understand the content and the skills that is what we most uh focusing on and I think sometimes like Equity is being misinterpreted as race only and critical and culturally responsive curriculum and culturally responsive teaching is being associated with um uh critical race theory in the equity audit is being associated with a transgender survey and I think there's a lot of narratives that are out there and I'm

090just asking for the public and I want you to understand you got to think about it the vast majority of our uh uh teachers and staff are Caucasian and it doesn't matter and I've often said it doesn't matter if it's a black one or the white one as long as it's the right one and if we could just simply just allow people to reflect upon that and and we're not saying all white people are racist I did have a very lengthy conversation with a couple of people uh today about that to clarify that because I understand that the things that are being reported in the paper or or they're referring to uh social media we are focusing on uh uh culturally responsive curriculum in teaching which means that we're paying attention to the learning styles

091in in in a variety of instructional practices expanded our repertoire to meet the needs of every student so if if I hope that clarifies that um as best we can and if not we're definitely continue the conversation because we know the entire Community is not on this meeting and we have in these conversations throughout the uh August and throughout the Academic Year and I hope people will come to those meetings with an open mind with a willingness to learn and not come jaded with an already preconceived notion about what it is that we're doing well thank you both for that explanation and I I am very concerned that the level of misinformation about what's being taught as well as that the quality review as Crystal articulately described was very comprehensive it included surveys and focus

092groups and interviews and but unfortunately the same misinformation is getting published every week and I'm not sure what editorial responsibility we have as a school committee but I think we need to work in partnership with the communication outlets in town and what people tend to use like Facebook or the editorial page for the Milton times to make sure that we are responsibly communicating what's actually happening so we don't perpetuate misinformation that causes so much distress none of this work should have caused anyone to have a mental health crisis it's very disheartening that we as a community I know that we have a catchment Zone that supports adults in Milton and we need to get people the services they need so that what's happening for students in schools doesn't hurt the adults in our town for

093which James and and the rest of us we don't have responsibility for them but we do we do need to care for them as members of our community and if there's anything that we can do in partnership with these families or the paper to make sure that people get the services they need while the rest of us are working on making sure our students the issues that have been addressed here are are addressed in a way that that reflects our goals I think we'll get so much further but I don't want this work to be a hindrance for the adults in this area and thank you all for all that you've done to make sure that this happens thoughtfully Elaine go ahead Dr Craig sorry um member rostenia was so our um eloquent on this

094uh that I hesitate to follow up but um I completely agree that we somehow um not only need to get the message out there that the equity audit is more than one survey but get it to stick because we've said it at this meeting or you know an episode of this meeting many many times we've said it uh in meetings with the water committee um we've said it at various points but I I do agree that that we need to make a conservative concerted effort to make it clear uh what was at stake what the money was spent on and I'm really especially happy about this presentation because it made so clear and so concrete the work that you did um and that's still much so much needs to be done and what you Incorporated

095um into the audit so I thank you for that um I'm also um like uh Bev um I'm really concerned about the disproportionate disproportionality of punishments um to low-income students and students of color and placements in sped and I think this is an absolutely critical crisis area that we need to work on immediately um I am wondering though um given that most of the people who've spoken uh tonight whether it's citizen speak or the colleagues who have spoken before me have talked about every marginalized individual Equity across the board that it's not just race and what I'm seeing in the presentation tonight is except for one area where you did talk about low-income students this is a presentation on Race um and racial um disproportionality in in various ways um and as I said it

096raised important concerns I also heard you um uh on the fact that this is simply a snapshot and that this was uh really covering the big areas but a lot of attention has been paid um as you might know to questions around uh sexuality that were on the survey um I know a lot of parents um who would be interested in your findings on how for instance transgender students feel that they are safe and secure um in proportion to the cohort um whether or not um LGBT students as a cohort feel bullied or marginalized or um Etc so I'm wondering if you could speak uh to that a little bit as well Yes actually some of the survey information that's shared in the more detailed report disaggregates it down to the layer of students who

097identify as X in their sexual preference or what have you they they're also it's also important to note to your point that it is not solely about race right and yes those things were highlighted in this this particular presentation but there were discussions with District leaders about do they feel that people second-guess them because they're a woman right there is some gender you know discussions made like all of these questions were brought out in the focus groups and what have you but these are the ones that just Rose to the top where we're giving you this brief snapshot so you will see a little bit more about that information in the the formal report and to your point that's another one where where James jet was talking about how people have boiled things down to

098just the fifty thousand dollar survey or what have you unfortunately when we engage in Equity work people tend to boil it down to just rates but it really is not there are questions in the focus groups questions on the surveys questions for students and and school leaders that's that ran the gamut about economically disadvantaged about where you literally are in the town and how the town is set up and there are areas that are lying for this I mean all of those things came up and many of those things are mentioned in the report so you will get a a greater look at that or a deeper look at that when you get the formal report some of those things are spoken to thank you Misty Dr Carol thank you um um I'll I'll just

099echo my colleagues to thank you Mr Finn and your colleagues for sharing this really comprehensive overview with us of this report I'm I'm very eager um of course to dig into the full report when we when we are able to see that um One initial question I have a couple of questions and then um a comment but an initial question is just can you please confirm um and maybe Mr Jett this is partly for you as well um this report when it is completed and shared back to the district will be available publicly to all members of the Milton Community is that correct and how will that be shared so that everybody has the opportunity to read the report obviously we invested in that we will send that report out in a link fashion obviously

100sending a a significant report multiple Pages might be a little more difficult but it will be a link um that will go out to folks we will be addressing this and talking about the work that we have uh in front of us in many different platforms and many different outlets and afford folks the opportunity to do it because I guess the best the best way to combat misinformation is to give the correct information and so we will have these opportunities to speak to families and we have done this throughout the spring um I have I have had opportunities to speak with people individually and in small groups who asked about it and I've done that so yes our goal is we made an investment with taxpayers dollars to have this Equity audit and we want

101to be able to share this Equity audit with the folks at hand I also want to emphasize what Chris Finn said because I think it's very important he highlighted a a a couple of findings he had stating um or at least it was said to us and stating that the Normal public schools have the the all of the ingredients to be what you would call a Equitable and very successful District we just need to bring these things together and we just need to bolster up some of the areas that we have weaknesses anyone that goes through an equity audit whether it's a school a business is going to be findings for improvements and if anybody don't think that we need to improve in certain areas then we should not be in this business we should

102always be evaluating ourselves assessing ourselves and and moving forward and making those necessary improvements and so I I anticipate that this will be going out to everybody not anticipate I expected great thank you very much for um for confirming that and I'm sure we will all work together to figure out what are those appropriate venues or avenues for the community to ask questions and receive responses um to share their feedback um I know this will be a process sort of unfolding over the coming weeks and months as we embark on you know the work we clearly have to do to respond to to this information um one other question I guess is similar to um to Dr craighead's question regarding lgbtq plus students and whether there were any initial findings that emerge that are possible

103to share tonight around their experiences I'm I'm wondering similarly about special needs students and whether there were any sort of headlines beyond what is shared in the slide deck um that you are able to let us know about this this evening I'm sure there would be more information in the in the full report yes I can speak a little bit to uh split this experience of students with disabilities in the district and speaking to their parents and and it really was varied you know we we spoke to some parents who felt like uh we haven't received the resources we need we're frustrated we feel like we need support from the school from the district then I'll tell you we spoke to probably an equal amount of parents who said we received everything that we needed

104we received the support from the district we received an out of placement uh you know out of District placement for our child that you know in triangulating that data there was nothing that Rose to the level that was you know horribly detrimental about students with disabilities uh it kind of evened out in the aggregate as far as how parents felt about how their students were treated in their school and the resources that they received we do speak a little bit more about uh students with disabilities in the report so you'll get that deeper information but I don't have any other specific how headlines around the lgbtqia students for this evening if I if I could just add one more piece too and I understand that the work is being done but people need to understand

105that we're just getting this presentation this evening we don't have the final report and quite frankly as a superintendent I I think it's incumbent upon me to make sure that our administrators our district leaders and we have that report and able to unpack and understand it so when it is public we are able to adequately and appropriately respond to any questions that people may have so I want to make it clear although we anticipate sharing this with the community we want to make sure that we fully have understanding I don't have the final report and everything and neither do our principles this this is hot off the press with this presentation and we want to make sure that we move there so for parents yes Cambridge education a share that report with us and when

106it's available we will make sure essential folks um in a timely manner down the road and it will be posted on our webpage and people have the link to that and people have the opportunity to review and then we anticipate not necessarily in the summer obviously for folks that may not know some folks or principals have various different uh vacation times during the summer months and our staff is on vacation and we want to make sure but we will definitely have those forums for you in the upcoming uh Academic Year but they re the report will be sent out later okay thank um thank you very much I'm sorry my daughter Julius um did you have some other questions Lindsay that you write well I really just wanted to um I guess make uh couple

107of observations as we you know receive this information tonight and prepare to move on from here as as a school committee as Milton Public Schools um and just as a community so um I I'm interested in the action planning the final slide that you shared um and I guess one thing I'm thinking about is um I completely see the sequencing the very important need to kind of work through um you know a series of steps to do that root cause analysis to kind of do the strategic planning that we are preparing to do um and and let this work build on itself and not kind of get ahead of ourselves so I really see that and I thank you for helping um kind of lay this out for us Dr John Charles referred to this

108report before we saw it as a road map and I I that resonates I feel like I'm very excited to take this information which clearly has come to us through a very rigorous process and thank you for laying that out tonight and to use this as a roadmap at the same time I'm also mindful that we kind of have to um do both we have to follow a thoughtful process that iterates and sort of Builds on a strong Foundation of this work to make necessary changes to address these problems that have now been much more fully revealed to us while at the same time we can't wait for example um to begin aligning our resources so um you know as we all know we are at a very unique moment where we have an infusion

109of resources coming to us from the federal government for example some of that um is you know able to be used to address some of these issues that we see in this report um we need to have urgency around doing this alignment um and we can't wait for you know each kind of action step to be completed before fully moving on to the next one if that makes sense so I'm just wrapping my mind around the fact that you know clearly we have all of this work to do um and I know we can do it and I'm really excited I think of this not just as a road map but it is a call to action to all of us as a town and as a district um and I'm I'm very eager to

110roll up my sleeves and do what I can to participate in you know aligning our policies um kind of doing the strategic planning that this uh sets us up to do um to think about you know what we're doing with our budget to make sure we have the resources we want in order to achieve these outcomes that we need so um that's that's just that I'll stop there on that um but the last thing I wanted to sort of highlight is um the findings that have emerged here around the teachers articulating the need for support as well as the Point um around our need to push ourselves around accountability and evaluation at different levels of our system and just recognizing that those things go hand in hand support and accountability need to work together to

111kind of help us do the rest that we can for our students which clearly we we do have to do so much better um and so I I'm really um grateful to all of you for the time you spent um it went so far beyond the survey um and that is clear and what you shared um although the survey is also very important and I'm especially eager to see the student responses which I anticipate will be in that final report um and yeah I I will stop there I could keep going but we will keep going we're going to keep talking about this thank you so I I just want to say to if I can call you all by your first names because my tired tongue at this time of night will mess up

112your last names but to Chris to Mindy to Jeff to Keith and to Renee I just want to say thank you so much for a very comprehensive initial finding for the for the community and for the committee um this is such important work it's such necessary work I know that it's hard it's really hard um work but it's necessary and it benefits all students as you were saying before Chris as superintendent jet has said so many many times some of the data breaks my heart you know when I think about the students that are attached to that four times higher five times higher six times higher disproportionality in terms of suspensions and disciplines and as they relate to special needs and as they relate to students of color that breaks my heart I work with

113little children and I'm the start of their journey in life as an educator and I want for those discipline disproportionalities to disappear for students as they get older and this is a process so for the community to understand that this is just an initial finding a report of things that stood out the larger report will come to the district it will be a public document it will be a public record it will be shared with everyone and there will be opportunities to discuss and reflect as a community Unity as I've said so many times over the last year and a half school committee meetings are not that Forum right they're legislative body meetings for people to report out on happenings in the district on reports and findings and then to make movement going forward we

114will have forums and opportunities to engage with the community and conversation school committee meetings just aren't set up for that so I just I want the community to be reassured that you will all be part of this process and you all be you will all be involved in the conversation and I just wanted to sum up some things for the community before I turn it back over to superintendent jet so from my point of view just listening to uh to the the general report you know it's clear that there's continue to be some opportunity gaps in our district for students and we've been discussing that over the last few years and this this report and the data is going to clarify that um in a more in a more comprehensive way you know there's some

115questions about our French immersion program that starts in the first grade and really sets them foundation for our district and what does that mean and what does that mean as students age up into the middle school and high school if their interactions with students of different races and ethnicities are limited in our elementary school programs that's a big question for us as this committee to think about as we move forward right there's an accountability question and how do we make everyone invested in accountability across the district and across the town do we need to do better professional development and we need to support our teachers to make them feel 100 that they can teach culturally competent ways to students right we need to think more about the budget if that was a really interesting finding

116for me when we have site counsels and meetings and hearings but clearly we need to do some some more comprehensive thought about how do we involve more people and how do we make people feel more invested in the budget process we need to better Define equity and what does that mean in the Milton public schools and what does that mean to the town of Milton because the schools are one part of a larger community and we all need to sort of think about that right and we need to to create a more comprehensive understanding that we're all responsible for equity so um you know I just really can't thank you enough for this report you've given us so much to think about so much to work with and I am hopeful I am eternal hopeful

117optimistic because I'm an educator of young children and I know that we need to do a better job you can love our country in all its flaws in all of its challenges because it represents the fact that we're all human and that humans are complex creatures and we can do better and I know we will do better in the town and where this is going to be the start for us of a process that will move forward so I just want to thank all of you if you'd like to say anything Chris to wrap it up I want to First commend you on your summation you are like the summation uh Master right now that was really thoughtful how you Drew Drew all of those different lines together I do want to uh just very

118humbly say thank you thank you to James get thank you to Karen I'm going to go ahead and submit that even Beyond being something that's important I'm going to share that as an already high performing District I'm going to share this is something Brave to do right because in a lot of ways you didn't have to dig this deep look this deep we could have just done what we've always done remained if we beat the state academically you know no one kind of we don't have to kind of look under the the couch to see what's what's dirty under there we can just keep it moving and you guys have decided as a district to Embark in this really important and powerful and potentially difficult and challenging work but I salute you all I thank

119you for the opportunity to share this evening I thank my partners in this work and Keith then Mindy and Jeff and and I thank some of the thoughtful comments and questions that were asked by the team here this evening it expresses your investment in this work and how you guys are the team to move forward uh I thank you again uh you will be receiving that report and uh please reach out to us for any other questions or concerns and we thank you for having this platform to share with you all this evening thank you so much Crescent Keith and Mindy and Jeff and Renee have a peaceful evening and we look forward to our continued work with you all right superintendent yet you're still out you're still up um thank you very much and

120I wish I had the opportunity to say this Friday I'm so sorry I apologize I do want to thank them for the efforts and I just wanted to uh respond to Dr Carroll's Point um although they did a good job with the equity audit a great job in digging deep some of the findings that they had we already knew about and we've already started some of the work on it so all of our principles have gone to the restorative justice uh training and they continue to do that the disproportionality that's something we were already well aware of so I do want to caution people that we want to move forward but we want to move forward very strategically in very intentional with the work that we do we have a steering committee that was very

121that was heavily articulated and heavily vetted with parents students there's a training that's taking place over the course of the summer that already began in doing some of that initial groundwork and then when we get the report the full report and we're able to really do some of that root cause analysis with do that so some of some of it and you're absolutely right any federal money that we get we want to be very strategic and I repeat it here as I always said our budget reflects what we value and I hope the town understands that I hope our parents and Guardians understand that um and I want to make sure that the faculty and staff understand the budget is what we value and so we we need to think about that strategically and I

122know there was a lot of talk about the budget over this past year we advocated publicly in many different forms um uh what was some of our needs and unfortunately it didn't go in our favor but we're going to continue to advocate for it and we're going to do and try to use some of this uh Federal money that we're coming in to supplement some of the things that we asked for that hopefully we could uh move forward on but that I want to be very very clear the money we're getting from the government at this point in time is temporary and does come with some restrictions so uh but I do appreciate your comment but I uh and hopefully we move forward um at this time I would like to uh ask Dr Spalding

123our assistant superintendent of curriculum and Personnel to kind of unmute herself she's going to give you a quick update on the bias incident in sexual misconduct uh reporting uh some of the work that we started there so Dr spauldin happy to thank you um so just wanted to give a quick update on the status of the what we're now calling the Milton Public Schools bias incident and sexual misconduct Reporting System um that title might change a little bit it's a little bit different from what it was when we uh began this journey and and this journey uh began I would say probably the end of last summer starting in the fall um I and um administrators from the um actually elementary middle and high school um as well as parents about ended up being closer

124to seven or eight of them um so we had a group we met a couple times in early fall with the intent of really surfacing the experiences that students have in school um Through The Eyes of their parents and Guardians initially um so we started that work in the fall um from that also extended to having some I had some conversations and did some Outreach to other districts to see what they had in place and really our goal I should have prefaced with this our goal was to create a consistent system um to be used by all six schools um for a way in which similar we we kind of have been comparing it a little bit to the to the bullying Reporting System where where it's kind of a you get the word out

125and anyone walking down the hallway you can ask them how do you do you know how to report a bullying incident and they say yes like that's where we want to get to in terms of um microaggressions that students might experience or bias that they might experience or sexual misconduct and so um that was really our goal and so I reached out to some other districts um especially want to give a shout out to the assistant superintendent for equity in the Boston Public Schools Becky Schuster who gave a lot of her time um uh as well as others in other other districts and so what we have um at this point um is we have sort of a final draft of the form it's been looked at by a number of stakeholders and that feedback

126was incorporated um we elevated student voices um uh that and as you know senior director Craig Martin's started um in December I think it was I forget the exact date um but just started in December so she jumped in um into the process she actually has a strong background in restorative justice restorative practice which is particularly useful in in this area um and so she's actually been meeting for all kinds of reasons and and good stuff meeting with students all year long um some of the things that I learned in meeting for example with the um some of the leaders at the the young leaders at the high school was I asked questions you know I sort of said tell me about your experiences with bias or microaggressions and and um so they shared their

127experiences and and um I asked how they learn learned the vocabulary the language to attach to what they were experiencing um and many of them said from social media which made me almost fall as a chair and I said well wait a minute um we need to make sure that we have ways in which we're giving students the language to describe the kinds of things that they might be experiencing um so that we can best address it so um anyways that was some of the things that that we learned about um we have a draft uh what we're calling a flow chart which is really to bring again some consistency in terms of what happens when a report comes in who sees it who views it where does that data get stored how often is

128that data looked at things like that what's the follow-up um and and just to um I should have given this definition at the beginning when I refer to restorative justice or or restorative practice what I mean is really articulating what is the harm that was done and how can we address the harm that was done in terms of both the incident in terms of all parties that might be directly involved as well as anyone who might be um involved in further out um witnessing and and things like that um so principles as we sort of made our way through um the through the year um we pressed pause and said oh wait a minute we're you know we have this goal of getting the system in place and getting it out and we have to

129do and many of you spoke to it um in this in this meeting we have to make sure that we're supporting the folks in terms of professional development who will actually be sort of on the ground running uh receiving reports and and following up on them and and things like that and um so the principals and assistant principals are working towards completing tier one tier two and tier three um training by Suffolk University Center for restorative justice um and tier one is circle training and introduction to restorative practice tier two is addressing conflict and harm when using restorative practice um and tier three is restorative conferencing for discipline um and so they are making their way um through those trainings work this summer um includes crafting and refining Communications for students and staff and families

130information for the website Flyers to be sent out as well as refining materials and sort of educational materials for like opening assemblies with staff and students in the fall professional development and so continued professional development for those receiving the report and responsible for the follow-up will take place as part of the Leadership Retreat again director prak Martens this is definitely one of her many areas of expertise but she'll be facilitating professional development with leaders as well as doing that job embedded professional development as reports come in and as we're making our way through um through the process and then the district data wide team at the district-wide data team sorry we'll initiate conversations about how we're again building this data system so how are we reflecting on these reports over time and what patterns are

131we seeing and what proactive things can we do in terms of in culture in the buildings and then one final piece that you'll hear more about um most likely at another meeting but it links back to the disproportionality um also involved in all of this work uh has has been um the director of pupil personnel and services Susan Maselli um and uh she has submitted a plan to the Department of Elementary and secondary education um to address disproportionalities um and she worked collaboratively um with leaders um in the district and and one of the pieces in that um proposal or proposed plan um is a restorative practice coach um to work um specifically again to support building capacity um uh within not only leadership but teachers in the classroom and and other folks who work

132with students around really understanding um what restorative practice is what restorative justice is and how we can shift our our practices and in and culture um in that direction um so that was the brief update um of where we're at um with the um uh Milton Public Schools bison incident in sexual misconduct reporting system thank you Dr Spaulding Beverly anyone have any questions Beverly go ahead sorry now I really appreciate the comprehensive overview of all the work that you've that you've done to get to a point where you have a theory of change in how you plan on rolling it out um so thank you I would love to hear of the you described at a very high level what these steps are to get from where we are um you know from the training

133making sure there's a Common Language to having these systems in place could you share what you think are the three or four major milestones and what you think the timeline might be for accomplishing them like you don't have to go through the entire project plan in painful detail but just high level overview of what you think are the major milestones and when each one would be done foreign happy to respond although I should be um collaborating with others in my response but I'll from my conversations with others because I I want to make sure it's clear that this is a collaborative effort among a number of folks um but I would say um absolutely the the the completion of the restorative practice training so so some of the um administrators are are just about done

134with tier three some are at tier two um so I imagine I predict that will be done by um the end of the summer I would say um the um materials to be sent out um so another very important Milestone is um sort of this communication effort um communicating to families communicating to staff communicating to staff has been in the loop in terms of some of the feedback and um but on the tool the form itself and sort of the system but but a larger scale sort of um communication piece that and then for students as well um and those those materials we want to start to get those funneling out in early August I would say even I know lots of folks don't read things over the summer but some do um and so

135to sort of get those prepared and get those out um and then and and really make sure that we're prepared with those materials um you know whether it's the um or inclusive of rather that beginning of the year presentation to students as we welcome them back as well as ongoing opportunities through a number of different structures in the in the school so I would say p for absolutely for leadership in particular um that being done by the end of the summer communication materials definitely by the end of the summer um and then I think that the data system um like who looks at the data how often do they look at the data I would say that that the goal of having that in place would be more sort of the maybe the end of

136or into the beginning of January end of December beginning of January the reason why I say that is because one of the things in conversations with other districts that they said is um you know that that first formal um introduction of a consistent system you know across the district to really expect a high number of reports to come in um and that's not necessarily because incidents are going up and then later go down or anything but but just because you're you're creating a new vehicle in which which is good because it's what we want to do is surface the experiences and make sure we're creating supportive environments um but but that'll give us that that sort of figuring out the data system and how often to look at the data and what we do with

137it when we discover patterns and things like that um we'll have to get our hands on some of the data first I think um to to sort of formulate that so I think those are sort of the the big chunks I would say does that answer your question it does thank you okay and um has there been a specific staff member that's assigned to review it and respond to an incident specifically or the what people are entering in the data system so if I go in and I put something in are you going to look at it will it be Susan macelli yeah so so that is so director senior director prec Martens and I um actually were talking about that very thing last week as a matter of fact um she is doing sort

138of an over kind of look at protocols and and that and so we've had a lot of conversation about it because it's a um it's a system that one could report an incident student to student adult to student and so there that's some sensitive information depending on who you know and you want the the folks who can follow up right and have the sort of position authority to follow up um in a way that will again with the goal of creating a safe welcoming um Community for everyone so we're we're still in the process of of determining that um and that's linked I think also to to looking at the data over time who should be looking at the data at school data at District level data um Trends over time things like that so

139those are some of the finer details that um we're still in conversation about and need to expand um you know it's brainstorm with the two of us um and then we'll expand that to include other folks um in terms of that if I could if I could just interject and I want to clarify because I I understand that this is this sense of urgency in his immediacy and people want specific timelines but I also want to caution people if we're talking about restorative justice it can't just be with central office sort of principles it starts in the trenches with the teachers we need to provide the PD in the professional the professional development for the teachers to employ somebody's strategies within the classroom to keep the students in the classroom is reactionary so in order

140to do that and this is why I say we need to be very cautious at the time our teachers are on vacation right now we can't mandate that 500 or something Educators come into summer so we that is some of the work that we're going to be doing in some of our professional development sessions so I understand that there's this urgency that people want these specific timelines but I do and it doesn't mean that we can't specifically work towards that but I do think that there are intermediate steps that we have to take and make sure that we're all on the same page as administrators and then curriculum in in department heads along with our are instructional staff who are in the trenches with the students on a daily basis so um great question um

141and I do want to caution because I you know we've all talked about this last year it was consistently putting out fires week by weeks with evolving changes from Jesse concerns from the community concerns about the audit concerns about the motto the mass uh you know closing schools pivoting or whatever the case may be now we want to be able to focus on teaching and learning social emotional uh well-being of our students and staff engaging all students and parents and Guardians um in the equity work that we have to do and as I share with many people those are going to be some of our four Focus areas that we'll talk about uh what that looks like and that'll be clearly articulated to our faculty administrators instruction leaders our staff that it'll be Community obviously

142school committee and communicated to the community so they too know what our plans are goals in any specific uh timelines for any of the our uh you know initiatives so the baby was adorable um and thank you for taking the time to answer my questions as well as the amount of work and effort it went into coming up with this system I know it's brand new for the district but it's it's very Progressive to be able to name this and I want to say it was your idea Karen last summer to identify this is an opportunity if we get information we can do we can do better and having a timeline is more about project management not a you need to have this done now but it's nice to know directionally where we're going and

143thank you for taking the time to explain it to us and those of us that are watching the meeting tonight Lizzy go ahead thank you just just a quick clarifying question for sharing all this and all this work um so you mentioned that the building leaders are getting trained this summer and the training will sort of be ongoing um and then Mr jet of course you're referring to teachers playing a key role in kind of implementing this system am I correct in understanding that the system is is really a um kind of a new um infrastructure basically for our teachers and I'm assuming guidance counselors along with key administrators in the buildings to kind of do their work um perhaps you know in a more coordinated fashion that is more proactive and providing that opportunity

144for students to share experiences where they need support so it's not like a whole new system that we are you know purchasing for the district or we are not bringing in this like new um kind of um this is existing staff providing them with a kind of more effective way to to do their jobs and supporting students is that fair to say yes yes oh sorry thank you Lizzy good to point out that would be a question Mr jet sorry thank you Dr Spaulding anyone else have any questions about Dr Spalding's report sorry Mr jet you wanna sorry so one one more thing on the agenda uh we wanted to take this opportunity to talk about uh uh uh a change in a job description uh particularly about I.T director um uh unfortunately that uh

145the change in that job description or classification has not happened uh in the last 11 plus years and as we all could imagine in terms of Technology there's so many advancements and changes that happen over the course of the years and we wanted to bring it to the attention of the school committee but also share it with the general public so they fully understand we have uh an I.T director that is now responsible uh from years ago when we just had a couple of computer labs now the uh the person manages and maintains Chromebook inventory of over 5000 devices that person now manages and maintains over five thousand Google accounts for all staff and students that includes email for all staff students at the middle school and high school um manage and maintain the Google

146services including classrooms Google meet Google Drive um also for those who don't know we made significant enhancements in our security with uh cameras in each of our buildings uh computer swipe cards uh HVAC system from many many years ago and now new uh based on the newer buildings uh new buildings or renovated buildings um so this person is responsible for a lot more over 450 network uh phones and voicemail systems before I'm kind of teasing we had that rotary dial but over over uh 900 iPads uh with the gym uh system on it and provide support for uh Chromebooks for all teachers and students in addition to some of our Labs uh that's also including our information system in our auditoriums uh it is so much more so we wanted to bring that to the

147attention um of the school committee in the general public because in addition to the uh changes in the job description there was also a review and a look at that individual salary to bring it uh close to market value and I emphasize close to market value closer to the average of those who does do similar work in in similar districts um uh and also this individual is his work with us with MCAS tests and now becoming computerized online uh a advanced placement tests at the high school the park um any services with ell all standardized testing and then for those particularly at the elementary middle and high school level there's so many more working with Food Services uh in in our nursing this uh um nursing and special ed departments uh to help them with

148SNAP in the nurse's office the software Nutri kids and Food Services uh uh Concourse Library software so many more things that have now Advanced over the course of the last 10 years and so we wanted to do our due diligence and look at that and revise that job description but also compensate for the market value um so that was one of the uh contracts that uh myself uh Amy Dexter um and work with um and try to make right um has anyone have any questions for superintendent yet Dr Elaine crackhead um I don't have a question I just um want to make clear um to the community that the reason we were able to do this um recently um was that there were some unexpected retirements um that the um uh the savings on those

149retirements were what enabled us to do this it wasn't like we had a pot of money sitting there or hiding funds or anything like that it was just a matter of having those funds um surprisingly truly retirements that were not expected uh not anticipated so thanks thanks uh superintendent Dr Craig if I could just add to that not only just the retirements but at that point we didn't hire the new people so we didn't even know what the staff exchanges would be at the time until we secured those uh positions in to your point we knew of some retirements prior to May 24th prior to town meeting and then we had a few others after that and to be clear to the general public when I say uh looking at a market value we're not

150talking about a full salary we're talking about the incremental increase that that doesn't even come close to a full salary yet let alone half of a quarter of a salary it doesn't come to that but also uh it doesn't have an impact on the town side and insurance because um that's already in place so it's just a incremental increase so I just wanted to make that clear as well thank you anyone else have a question well um superintendent and Jed I just want to thank you so much for a very comprehensive um very detailed superintendent's report this evening um and for reminding us always to be mindful of the process and the time is going to take for us to do the thoughtful necessary work that we need to do and also to remind everyone

151that we're still dealing with a pandemic we are fortunate to be having some good news but also some some worrisome news as well in in the in the in the in the state in the country in the world and I just think that we have to be mindful that we're still all recovering from all of that trauma um and that will be a continued part of our conversation moving forward into this Academic Year so I just want to thank you for that superintendent's report Mr Jett if you'd like to I know it was an honor report but I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge how the school year extended for close to 850 students as of yet as of today who are participating in our many different summer programs from MSC to Universal

152to uh Camp Cunningham to esy uh we even uh are doing some compensatory services for about 10 students with speech and language so the buildings in the Milton public schools are still alive and then I also wanted to acknowledge that uh Although our school year ended on June 18th for some of our athletic teams those in track who really excelled and made it to the state tournament uh our baseball team lost in the semi-finals uh they had a great year we got two D1 prospects with Juniors who are going to be returning to us as pitches and we bill as though we have a good team and then I also wanted to acknowledge the rugby team two-time state champions um because of our success they bumped us up from division two to division one even

153our first year in division one our uh rugby team made it to the state finals lost to BC high in the championship that was played at Milton High School um but hot off the press the Goff rugby report a National Rugby news news source just put out uh the men's college and high school rankings throughout the year Milton High School Wildcats rugby team came in the top 50 in the country this past spring ending up at number 44. but it's better than that 25 of the top 50 of private schools that could recruit from multiple different districts only 25 of them were public uh schools so in essence no in made it in the top 25 in the country for public schools I'm emphasizing in the country so at a later date that's hot off

154the press we will have the rugby team members of the track team and members of uh the baseball team come to a school committee because I do think although we're on some of the vacation they should be recognized for outstanding job and that doesn't exclude the accomplishments of all of our other athletic teams any athletic team that played a sport this year under the Eastern uh circumstances and successfully completed the season of Champions to me so and that goes to our performing and Fine Arts as well so I just wanted to conclude with some positive news and hopefully we can have them come to a a future meeting thank you we would love that and um uh you know I would point out briefly that the rugby the rugby team and the in the formation

155of a rugby team grew out of the community and the citizens of the community who wanted to see that happen for the town of Milton and Engage The District in conversation um a really positive outcome for students and so many opportunities right that that will lead for for the students down the road so yes we look forward to a meeting in the future where they can come and we can and we can congratulate them in person perhaps so um so the next agenda item is the chairs report I I bet you all didn't know that there's actually a policy that talks about the time limit of school committee meetings I can challenge Dr Charles we can find that policy but there is actually a policy that talks about the limit of time for school committee

156meetings and we can find that in policy and talk about it so I know it's mindful that it's 9 13 and we've had a very a very um I used to wear an intense meeting with lots of information to digest so there are three things under the chairs report and I will share them um just in an overall comprehensive way there is the Milton school committee subcommittees that there's a copy of that in the in the information that Charlene sent you if you've looked it over I do believe that that I have finally captured the correct people in the correct places but you are talking to me now so you know yes remember wait um Ada used has been a member of Health and Wellness for the last couple years I don't know if she

157said she doesn't want to do it anymore I haven't asked her but I noticed I was the only school yes you are I know I realized that that's probably a problem um but I will ask member Rosemary all right but for the for the for the for the moment in terms of Finance which is Dr Lane Craighead um Betty Elizabeth white and Beverly Ross Denny are voting members for finance and for policy and and Dr crackhead is the chair and for policy um Dr Elizabeth Carroll is the chair and then Dr Elaine Craighead and Ada rosemarin are the two other voting members of those two committees okay I would like to take a formal vote on those two committees tonight just because they are the two committees that of which we make decisions that go

158before the community and our our most responsibility so if I could have a motion to approve the members of those two subcommittees also I'll move that okay wonderful and then I would like to do a roll call vote to have it for the record for um for um for all time um member white yes remember Ross Denny yes Dr Craighead yes Dr Carol yes and and Margaret Everhart yes okay wonderful and the rest of the Committees we can review them again at our um our retreat but I'm pretty sure that they're all stable and then have a final vote on the rest of them at our next um school committee meeting at the end at the end of August um and then we still have some things to discuss about other committees as well that

159we wanted to talk about at our Retreat so that's the the subcommittees that was that um you also had in your packet um a draft agenda for our school committee Retreat which is scheduled for August 4th I believe 2021. as you can see in my usual fashion packed in six hours worth of conversation okay um not I'm not really sure exactly yet um what that is going to look like if six hours would occur on the fourth or it might occur over two different meetings but there are many things for us to consider at our retreat in terms of our own goals in terms of our school committee calendar in terms of the superintendent's goals and the evaluation process for the superintendent that we would need to determine and also to discuss the Strategic plan

160budget planning and policy those are the main things that are on our agenda for the retreat um I will have Charlene post on this information under school committee information meeting so other other members of the community can look at it but if you all have any thoughts or comments about it right now feel free to share otherwise we can um we can discuss it more so I'll start with uh member Ross Denny and then Dr Craighead go ahead Beverly my question is for superintendent Jett do you think by the time we meet the leadership team would have identified what they think are priorities so that it informs our discussion yes it's actually crooked um yes I I just want to let um everyone know I already informed the chair about this but I was assigned

161um training to become um the Ada coordinator at my school in addition to my other duties and I have training all day on the fourth from nine to five so it would be my preference that we do it in two three hour bursts or something like that it would also be my preference just because if we're doing this after a work day um or attached to part of a work day six hours is a long time but you know I'm willing of course to go with what everybody else wants to do um would any would rest of the committee like to weigh in you can just talk I don't you know like unmute yourself and and share freely at the at the zoom here I think given how much is on the agenda we and

162most people can't take a full day off no yes um Dr Craighead is recommending is probably the most practical way to make it through the agenda okay things that are two to three hour stints wonderful um for this degree for the fourth then what time would work for the for the majority of you I know I know that Dr Craig's schedule is very um unexpectedly busy that day um but that's what happens when you're in charge right um but Dr Carroll the um member lost any remember white I know member Rosemary is not here but I'm fairly sure that she'll Dr Carol I know you teach as well I'm flexible on the fourth um I would and I and I agree I see the benefit of splitting it into two conversations I would just ask

163that we try to figure out how to do those like fairly close to one another so that's I agree I hundred percent it's two nights in a row or two nights of the same week then we could at least kind of keep the conversations together in our minds as I can ask Charlene roach to send you all uh an email just sort of with the dates in the neck in the span of that week and the following like and just and then we can figure it out that way um with Charlene um thereby uh um keeping it simple that way does that sound like a a good solution to you guys okay great all right and and um so like maybe mid-afternoon on the fourth or I don't know um Beverly what your schedule is

164that day you know the evening hours after five is best for me okay so then we can we can do later in the afternoon that's totally fine perfect I will send uh I will send a note to Charlene and I will have her communicate to all of you and then we will set the time for that day and then set a time for a day close in in proximity uh to finish the to work because it's important work and we have a lot of things to to iron out so that's the um agenda for August 4th and then the last thing on the um on this chairs report is the school committee meeting calendar so if you look at the calendar that Charlene um sent to us you can see that she has outlines it's

165a fairly General calendar um the day so we're having the meetings and then what are the typical topics that we have at meetings throughout the year at different times of the year one of the things that I would like to figure out at the retreat is what are some of the other things that we want to add to the calendar we want to address and consider for the community and then the other thing that I'd like to for us to consider at The Retreat is how do we want to have forums or you know conversations with the school committee around these really important issues to really support the community and feeling like that we are a part of they are part of the conversation with the school committee given that that's not what the school

166committee meeting is about so that's one of the things that I would like to add to the calendar when we have the retreat so um I I think I I'm not 100 sure if we have to I think we're just voting right now I think we're supposed to take or vote on the draft calendar just for the dates and the topics that are here we vote on this calendar multiple times throughout the year because we're changing what happens each meeting but for instance at our August 25th meeting we will have back to school updates right now we will update the calendar and we will talk about school handbooks that's the typical thing that we do at our August meeting every year um so that's what this calendar is about so I'm Dr kirkhead um before

167we vote has this calendar been checked against Jewish holidays in the fall Yom Kippur and rosh hashaba I I had spoken to Charlene about that and she had right a list of the holidays and when they were so I'm fairly certain that it is but it's always good to double check and I and I don't mind that we vote on it at the August 25th meeting that's fine with me I I think that I think that Charlene is the most thorough person um and just keeping me on task with the calendar yeah it definitely has been checked in and worked in concert with Rabbi Benjamin as well okay great perfect okay so then I can have a motion on the table to approve the draft School community calendar of the 2021-2022 school year with future

168amendments to follow okay this will be a roll call vote Dr um cricket yes Dr Carol yes member Ross Denny yes number white yes and member Eberhart yes wonderful now Charlene will be will be happy that I that I finally took one took care of that um from all right so we have a few more things left on our agenda we have a finance subcommittee report which includes some vendor warrants I believe um Dr craigett yes it only includes vendor warrants um so I'm going to make an Omnibus motion and then I'm going to make a single motion for a vendor warrant so um there are a lot of them so uh hold on tight uh I'd like to make a motion to approve uh vendor warrant number 49 payable on June 10th in the

169amount of 172.97 vendor warrant number 51 payable on June 24th in the amount of 762 800 762 830.27 vendor warrant number 53 payable on July 8th in the amount of fifty nine thousand seven hundred and sixty seven dollars and 24 cents uh February number 54 uh payable on July 15th in the amount of thirty four thousand four dollars and 84 cents and those were all fy21 correct uh assistant superintendent Dexter yes and uh a new um category for fy22 uh vendor warrant number three uh payable on July 15th in the paltry amount of four thousand dollars although it's not poultry to me um okay so uh do I have a second on that motion second okay seconded by member white um all in I have to do a roll call vote Margaret is that the

170deal okay um chair Everhart yes uh member white yes member rossteady yes uh member Carol yes okay so that's five zero uh for that one thank you very much and um finally I'd like to make a motion to approve vendor warrant number 52 payable on July 1st in the amount of four hundred and eighteen thousand one hundred and fifty nine dollars and sixty eight cents um member Carol yes member Ross Denning yes uh member Eberhard yes and remember what abstain okay so that's oh and me uh yes um so that's four zero one thank you all very much thank you um Dr Craig appreciate that the next item on our agenda is approval of the minutes I believe it's from our July 6th 2021 meeting I believe you all received them from um Charlene and

171um have you had a chance to look them over okay so uh the motion on the table and if there's any corrections we can make them after I make the motion so the motion on the table is to prove the minutes of our July 6 2021 meeting all right are there any comments questions or Corrections for the minutes oh yes um superintendent Dexter assistant superintendent Dexter um did you mean July 16th oh 16th I'm so sorry yes July 16th thank you I don't know why I said July 6th I said my tired self sorry okay so the motion on the table is to approve the minutes of our July 16th meeting 2021. I have a second yes thank you all right okay now are there any questions about or comments or changes no all right

172so we'll do a roll call vote remember white yes okay Dr Craighead yes member Ross Denny yes Dr Carroll yes and number Eberhart yes okay sorry thank you doc thank you okay um we will have minutes to oh yes assistant superintendent Dexter I'm I'm really sorry I'm looking at the summary and it says July but I think wait wait wait let me go back hold on June it's June 16th oh my goodness it's you're right okay okay all right June 16th okay all right you know it is now 9 26. I was in the sun with many four-year-olds today I am very sorry I am really tired so all right so let's let's take serious though because this is serious business so I apologize for for my lack of um understanding let me just grab

173the minutes right in front of me I'm pulling them up on my computer right now all right can I ask a question while you're doing that you absolutely may ask a question okay so I missed the first hour of that meeting because I was a denim um and usually in previous minutes I've noticed that it says you know that I wasn't there and then it says you know Miss White arrived at such and such a time and there's no there's nothing in the minutes that indicate that I missed the first hour right so that so that thank you for reminding of us that because we need to note that in the minutes yeah yes we need to know that in a minute absolutely okay thank you for bringing that up number white okay so um

174all right so I will make a motion to approve the minutes of June 16 2021 with the amendment to add the time that member white joined us for the meeting okay okay and then I'll make sure that that happens all right so is there a second to that yes okay so this is the last time that we're going to vote on the minutes from June 16 2021 remember white yes okay remember Ross Denny yeah Dr Craighead yes Dr Carol and Margaret Eberhart yes all right thank you for your patience guys sorry all right our last item before we adjourn to Executive session is next meeting agenda items is there anything that case so on our next meeting agenda you notice that we are going to discuss with um back to school plans um we are

175going to look at the handbooks which you will receive prior to the meeting um and we will also um probably amend our school committee calendar after our Retreat is there any other topics that anyone would like to add to that meeting at this moment you can always you know let us know later well we will have had a meeting of the policy subcommittee great at that time in the second week of August I believe right um perfect which will be posted but we'll give an update there okay okay and then um Dr Craighead do you um will you want to be giving Will you want to give a finance subcommittee update at that meeting sorry you're on I will at least have vendor warrants to approve so we need to audience Finance for that reason

176okay wonderful and I believe the school building committee will have a a report for that meeting as well building committee so I will forward those things to Charlene to add to our um to our agenda for the next meeting okay well I want to thank you all tonight for your participation in this meeting and for your thoughtful questions and for and for and to Dr Spalding and um superintendent and assistant superintendent Dexter for the work they've been ongoing work they're doing on the many issues that are um that we are working on in the district particularly around equity and inclusion and diversity I know what's a com it's a complicated conversation but as I said before I'm very hopeful for the district we live in a wonderful town and we have wonderful wonderful families and

177terrific students and excellent Educators and support staff and I know that we're going to move forward in a positive direction I have full confidence um in our town so I'm going to make a motion to adjourn to an executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with Union and non-un Personnel or to conduct collective bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with Union and non-union Personnel in accordance with chapter 30A section 21a2 um we will we will adjourn from executive session not to return to open session do I have a second second remember white this is a roll call vote I'm Dr Carroll yes can I just ask one quick question though um I don't know if it will close right after this Shane um I think that some people have submitted questions that we

178aren't able to respond to in the meeting okay um can we make sure we're saving that uh so that we can review it later um that's a great question um I don't know 33 of them I don't know if Shane is still here no I'm still here it's 43 questions are currently up uh to my knowledge I'm not aware of any settings that would allow me to save all questions as they are now um what I could say is I couldn't host uh say Miss Dexter before I leave so that you can have an executive session and perhaps take a mental note or a picture on your phone of the questions and go through them that way yeah or someone can uh yeah so this is what we'll do how about we do this I

179just copied and paste and then we have them oh Mr jet technology thank you thank you thank you sorry no Dr Carol thank you for pointing that out I don't pay I'm I'm focused on like the meeting and I'm not paying attention to um that that part of the meeting okay so um I had a second there's a roll call Vote with Dr Carol yes Dr Craighead yes remember rosteni yes member white yes and member Eberhart yes again thank you everyone for attending tonight in the community for attending and we'll see you all soon be safe