001i'd like to call the meeting of the narragansett regional school district school committee to order and we'll begin with the pledge of allegiance i think mrs matson you have our flag for us i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty justice for all right well good evening everyone um our meeting is being live streamed via the zoom webinar features so the public does have the ability to watch our proceedings this evening um we'll also put this out on our nrst youtube channel afterwards for viewing so the first thing we'll start off with is the approval of meeting minutes for april 14th i would entertain a motion to approve the minutes so moved i have a motion
002from mrs triffalo do i have a second second and i have a second from was that deb yep okay any questions or comments on the minutes seeing none we'll do a roll call vote uh mr marks i'll come back to you mrs matson yes mrs truffalo yes mrs robichaud yes mrs cosil yes uh mr marks i don't know if you're back yet i'm here yeah i may swap computers um was this the meeting minutes margaret yes yep yes i approve and mrs hughes says yes so those were approved unanimously um i did want to just stop because i forgot to introduce everyone on the call let me do that first um so for the school committee this evening we have mr marks mrs matson mrs trippalo mrs robershot mrs cosil and mrs hughes mr mason
003is not on yet i anticipate he will join us shortly mrs chartier will not be able to make this evening's meeting we have our superintendent dr casvam our assistant superintendent kate calise we have our business manager emery geister our admin executive admin assistant susan varney we have principal young from the high school i know that we will have some members of the ndea and potentially some students joining us so i will note that when they do join in but in the meantime we'll continue over continue on with our agenda we do have a lot of housekeeping things to take with the this time of year um next on the agenda was bills and payroll we're passing over this we will do it at the 519 meeting when all of the information will be presented so
004that we're passing over and the annual business tonight begins with the treasurer appointment and the contract so i would entertain a motion to approve victoria chartier as district treasurer for fiscal year 22 successful contract negotiations which will be carried out by the superintendent once we have a motion i'm going to ask dr kazman to just speak um and uh and confirm that he agrees because i should have done that first so i apologize so actually i'll have you do that first and then we'll go ahead with the motion so yeah so i certainly confirm and agree um with the appointment um this charity will be a great addition so absolutely great okay so with that being said i would entertain a motion to appoint uh to approve victoria charter as the district treasurer for fiscal
005year 22 subject to a successful contract negotiation which we carried out by the superintendent do i have a motion so moved i think that was mrs cosil and do i have a second second and i have a second i think that was ran snuck in first any questions or comments on the uh renewal of our treasure appointment seeing none we'll do roll call um mr marks i don't know if you you're not on video are you there and can hear me i am and yes i can hear you thank you uh mrs matson yes mrs truffalo yes mrs robichaud yes mrs cosil yes mrs uh and myself mrs hughes says yes so that was unanimous so that has been approved our next appointment is the assistant treasurer we have someone who works in central office
006that also has the role of assistant treasurer so we need to take care of the housekeeping tube dually appointer as the assistant treasurer for fiscal year 22. um and i'll throw it back to dr casavant again just to confirm that uh kailyn carpenter is the choice for the assistant treasurer once again um she is madam chair incorporated um so i would entertain a motion to appoint kailyn carpenter as the assistant treasurer for fiscal year 22. i have a motion by i think that was mrs roberson do i have a second and i have a second by mrs matson any questions or comments on this motion seeing none we'll do roll call again mr marks um is not on video but he is here on audio so mr marks uh have you vote yes uh mrs
007matson yes this is triplo yes this is robichaunt yes um this is causal looks like she may have dropped off nope let's see mrs kosia looks like she dropped off the call so we'll make note of that for the minutes i'm sure she'll join us back so she will not be part of this vote um since we'd still have enough to maintain the vote and mrs hughes votes yes so that was unanimous and if we could just make a note for the minutes that mrs cosil was not on the call she had dropped off and hopefully she'll join us again we still have a quorum and we can still vote so that was approved unanimously the next uh piece of housekeeping is our records access officer appointment this is the lucky person who gets to
008deal with any requests for information drawn on the districts and um we have in the past appointed miss varney as our lucky person to be our records access officer appointment so dr caspian i'm just going to go back to you and if you want to just confirm that she is still the best choice he is the best choice for this job i highly recommend and support the decision so with that being said i would uh entertain a motion to appoint susan varney as the records access officer for fy22 as per mgl 66 uh section 6a so anyone i would entertain a motion moved i have a motion by mrs matson do i have a second second and i have a second by mrs robichaud any questions or comments on that appointment seeing none we'll do
009roll call mr marks again he has no video but he is connected via audio how do you vote yes mrs matson yes mrs trippalo yes this is robichon yes mrs cosil again she's dropped off the call so she won't be part of this vote and mrs hughes says yes so we do who still have a quorum and can uh it was a unanimous vote so that appointment uh has been confirmed next up we have the fy 22 caps district representative this is uh can be held by either a school committee person or the superintendent um i believe for the past couple years dr casavant has served in the capacity as our representatives on the caps board i will ask first if there's anyone on the school committee who so desires to take the position of
010the caps district representative and i don't see anybody raising their hand so i'm going to then move forward to make him uh where i would entertain a motion to appoint dr christopher caspian as the fy 22 capps district representative i would entertain that motion so moved and that was by mrs triffelo do i have a second second and i have a second friend i think it was mrs matson um any questions or comments on them seeing none we'll do a roll call uh again mr marks is not on video but he is on audio i'm working on it ah yes that's a yes okay mrs matson yes mrs truffalo yes mrs robichaud yes and mrs hughes says yes so that was unanimous so dr kazumit you are once again our cap's district representative um thank
011you excuse me uh the same thing with the fy 22 keystone educational collaborative district representative this is the new collaborative that we joined um i believe it'll be effective july 1st they require that either the superintendent or a school committee member be the representative do i have any school committee members who are interested in being the representative i don't see anybody raising their hands so um i will may entertain a motion then and mrs cosil has rejoined us so that's good sorry about that real problem um so i would entertain a motion that we appoint dr christopher cassidy as the fy 22 keystone educational collaborative district representative do i have a motion that was by mr marks do i have a second second second and i have a second by mrs cosil and i apologize
012my phone's ringing um sorry um okay any questions or comments on this appointment seeing none we will do roll call mr marks who again doesn't isn't on video but is on audio oh there he is yes okay this is matson yeah this is triphala yes mrs robichaud yes mrs cosil yes and mrs hughes says yes so that is unanimous so dr casvette we thank you in advance for your willingness to serve in these two collaboratives it's a very important role uh being a member of the board because you do help in the decision-making process for the boards to support our kids um if at any point in time there is a school committee member who would want to be involved um they can just mention it and we'll see how we would go back about
013either getting them involved switching the roles or whatever but thank you dr casavant okay the next housekeeping detail is uh the authorization to borrow in anticipation of funds for fiscal year 22. um we would authorize the district treasurer acting under the provisions of nash general law 71 section 16g as amended by chapter 13 section 4 of the acts of 1972 and with the approval of the chairman of the district committee to borrow money from time to time in anticipation of revenue for the fiscal year beginning july 1st 2021 and to issue a note or notes therefore payable within one year and to renew any note or notes as may be given for a period of less than one year in accordance with mgl chapter 44 section 17. so the motion we would need to to
014approve is i would entertain a motion to authorize an arrogance at regional school district treasurer acting under the provisions of mass general laws chapter 71 section 16g as amended by chapter 13 section 4 of the acts of 1972 and with the approval of the chairman of the district committee to borrow money from time to time in anticipation of revenue for the fiscal year beginning july 1st 2021 and to issue a note or notes thereof payable within one year and to renew any notes or notes as may be given for a period of less than one year in accordance with mass general law chapter 44 section 17. so i would entertain that motion so moved i have a motion from mrs truffalo do i have a second second second second by mr marks any questions or
015comments on that motion seeing none we will do roll call vote mr marks mr marks yeah i'm sorry what was it the roll call vote for that motion yes yes yes mrs matson yes i'm sorry i'm freezing no problem mrs truffalo yes mrs robichaud yes mrs cosil yes and mrs hughes says yes so we have voted unanimously to authorize in uh to borrow in anticipations of the funds for fy22 and that's something the treasurer does for us next on the agenda we're just carrying this for any budget transfer requests in fy 21 we have none at this point so we will probably get to that in june but we didn't want to lose it as a placeholder so we'll skip over that um next is the physicians contract addendum um i would this is the
016addendum that we have with cornerstone family medicine um and dr kazman i'm just going to give you to find out your opinion on renewing this with them um we i have um and we did place a call and um i have if if they responded today i don't know so um i i have we've we've not been notified that they don't and usually they would obviously they keep in pretty close contact with us so um i guess my advice would would be to uh put this forward as they have not you know let us know otherwise sure and we're happy with the services that they've been using oh absolutely yes oh my god they've been fantastic yes absolutely okay we'll do that and if something does come up um where they where you can't settle
017the the addendum with them then we will look elsewhere and take action at that point so i would entertain a motion to sign the physician's contract addendum with cornerstone family medicine as presented i have a motion by mrs robichaud do i have a second and i have a second by mr marks any questions or comments on that addendum seeing none we'll do roll call mr marks yes mrs matson yeah mrs truffalo yes mrs robichaud yes mrs cosil yes and mrs hughes says yes so that was unanimous and so dr kazavan you know just let us know that we confirm it and then we can get that signed and put to bed so thank you next up we're going uh we have a review and appointment of our legal counsel for fy22 i'm going to turn
018it over to dr kazad since he is in most close contact with our current uh legal firm miracle connell for his thoughts and opinions on moving forward with appointing them again for the upcoming fiscal year um thank you madam chair i strongly um strongly uh support uh to review uh to renew pardon me miracle connell they've been as you know fantastic um very responsive and uh have done an excellent job for the district so my recommendation thank you so i would uh entertain a motion to continue using miracle connell law firm for fy 22. do i have a motion so moved i have a motion by mrs truffalo do i have a second second and i have a second by mrs matson any questions or comments um on the appointment of miracle o'connell again i
019just want to echo what dr kasman said um you know the limited interactions i've had uh have been uh they've been spot on so i'm fully supportive of us as a committee doing this um if there's nothing else we will do a roll call mr marks yes mrs matson yes mrs truffalo yes this is robichon yes mrs cosil yes and mrs hughes says yes so that was unanimous next up we have the review and appointment of the auditing firm for fy22 we currently use roselli clark an associate cpa again i'll turn this over to dr casavant to let us know his experience with them this year and to recommend or not whether we reappoint them thank you madam chair i think that i speak for ann marie generally we do most of the interaction with
020them and they've been fantastic again very responsive um and uh again they've uh they've been fantastic partners great okay um i would then entertain a motion to continue using roselli clark at associate cpa as the district's auditing firm for fy22 do i have a motion motion by mrs matson do i have a second second and i have a second by mr marks uh any questions or comments seeing none we will do a roll call vote mr marks yes mrs manson yes mrs truffalo yes mrs robichaud yes mrs cosil yes and mrs hughes says yes so that was unanimous that we will continue using roselli clark associates as our district's auditing firm for the next fiscal year the next topic we have is we need to appoint a new school committee member to approve payroll and
021accounts payable warrants the law was changed i believe it was a year 18 months ago that regional the regional committee may designate any one of its members for the purpose of signing payroll warrants and accounts payable warrants to allow for the release of checks provided however that the member shall make available to the board at its next meeting of record of such actions this provision shall not limit the responsibility of each member of the board in the event of the non-compliance with this section so right now mrs cosil has graciously been coming in and signing warrants as they're prepared since mrs cosil is not running again for her seat we do need to have another school committee member that's qualified to sign the warrants and i say qualified because anyone who has an employee um
022you know his immediate family shouldn't be signing them so we're limited as to who can do this um do i have anybody who would be willing to um raise their hand and at least for the next couple of months volunteered to do this while we get our new committee members on board and then maybe one of them might take it over okay i don't see anyone um so we're going to have to do this at our next meeting then um so mrs cosil you're essentially on the board until may 17th so we would ask if you could just whatever needs to be signed between now and then and at our next meeting someone has to step up to do this or we have to create a three-person warrant subcommittee again um which usually it's a
023little more difficult for us to get those people together to sign so please give some thought to your ability to do that and maybe volunteer at our next meeting or if you are interested just reach out to me uh in the interim and we can figure out how to get that on the agenda with your name so that we can make that happen so thank you okay next up we have appearances we don't have any appearances scheduled for tonight um we'll have our regular meeting on the 19th so if we do have any appearances we could possibly put them in there um we've moved curriculum and instruction up because uh we have some good reports that uh we want uh ms police to present to the committee which is our mid-year assessment update and then
024after that we're also going to go on to the program of studies which is why principal young is here as well uh with miss calise to talk us through the changes that we're going to have so i'll turn it over to um i'll start with dr kazman if you want to do any lead in um who can then toss it over but we'll start with the mid-year assessment uh thank you madam chair um obviously even in a very difficult year it's important to assess um how our kids are doing and it looked a little bit different this year i'm sure kate will go into that a little bit but um we we think that we have a pretty solid base of data and something to extrapolate on as we move forward so truly this is
025um really in the wheelhouse of miss kalis and i certainly turn it over to her to the point kate you're still muted i'm going to share my screen and i believe this document is in your packet oh stop there we go you got that all right good so um this is this year's star data as you are familiar with we've been doing star now i think this is our second year um i'm going to start with just a couple things to keep in mind first of all in normal times we would expect 80 or more of students to achieve grade level results with regular instruction that's in our tiered system of support that's the expectation you know universally in um schools that with basic instruction in the classroom 80 or more of students would achieve
026grade level results and then in normal times that you know five to twenty percent of students who did not achieve grade level results would receive some additional intervention that's what we do with our reading specialist and so forth that's mostly what we spend our title title one funds on is having an intervention program this year students in k-4 did receive intervention but it was done remotely because of all the constraints of kovid those five to twenty percent of students who were not achieving grade level results um did have small group instruction to boost their skills but that was done remotely and we all know that that's not ideal but you know we were operating under constraints at various times with hybrid and kids in on you know some kids in monday tuesday and so forth
027and lastly after april 5th when we had to bring elementary students back a full five days as you know we repurposed some teachers and among them were the k to four intervention teachers and they were repurposed as classroom teachers so that's just a little bit of context for the star data that you're going to see i think we're in a really good place to be honest because there's a lot of talk about one of the reasons the state is so keen on continuing mcas is because we need to see where our kids are and they want to use it as a kind of benchmarking so that we know how to help students but we have this robust system of assessment that we use so that we know where our kids are and what we need
028to do to help them so my slides are not advancing there we go so just a reminder that in our slides you're going to see b-o-y and that means beginning of year this is like typical abbreviations that we use with intervention m-o-y means middle of year and you're not going to see it today but you will see it later in the year eoy means end of year so if you see something that says b-o-y to m-o-y it means changes from beginning to middle of year so this first slide is reading from beginning of year to middle of year of the percentage of students who are at or above benchmark in reading i have this 80 line here so that you can kind of have a visual expectation of where we want our students to be
029and you can see that in in many cases we're approaching that level but we're not where we want to be but we would expect that given coveted considerations and so forth the blue bar is beginning of year the purple bar is middle of year i'm going to show you a couple of slides before we draw any conclusions from this what you see here is that there are a lot of places where students did much better at middle of here first grade for example is really to be commended in some cases they were level or slightly below at middle of year this is uh also reading but when i i'm going to go back if i can when i looked at this i thought hmm if we expect it to be 80 of students who are
030reading at benchmark how many kids were nearly at benchmark because um you know there's a difference between kids who are just almost there but they don't make it into that statistic and kids who are really far behind so because we wondered about that i looked at that idea and i added in students who are at above or nearly at benchmark and this data looks much better right um if we account for those kids who are almost there the the data looks um pretty good with most of our students um at or approaching that 80 benchmark this is reading again so the observations that i would um make about the reading data and i included the at above or nearly slide on the left here so you can see that as i scroll these points in
031first of all the content gets harder at mid-year right so we're not taking and this is something that you know is discussed in education we're not taking this when we had for example ddms for teachers right we're not taking the same test at beginning of year middle of year we're taking the appropriate content at the beginning of the year and then the appropriate con at middle of the year so that gets harder so that's one piece another observation is that nine out of 13 grades had the same or more students reading at above or nearly at benchmark so you know a nice majority of grades were did show improvement grade two as you can see from this chart needs some focused attention and we have um paid attention to that they did show improvement but
032of the bars they're um the furthest away from that that we want to see 27 more students are reading at our benchmark in grade one i put a little like applause here because that really is quite a jump for um grade one from beginning of year to middle of here and that's awesome because we want to see those younger readers doing well and 12 of 13 grades have about 60 or more students reading out above or nearly at grade level so most of our students are above the 60 mark but not above the 80 mark that we want to see them at so that's the reading data i'm going to talk about math data in a minute but i want to give you an opportunity to ask questions if you have them but i lost
033my there we are my brady bunch and i can't see um the oh the whole panel so if someone does have a comment just um uh you can certainly just unmute yourself and go ahead and ask it we'll pause a minute in case someone does have a question i don't i don't see anybody with any questions at the moment so if you want to move on to the math okay great i i really think this is this is a good um snapshot i think given everything that we our teachers have faced this year and the um disruption in instruction i mean we all know that remote instruction is um you know our teachers are doing a great job but it doesn't replace in person instruction and so i think the data is pretty good but
034it does um help us see where we need to go so in math i'm going to show you the same kind of um pattern here so this is beginning of year to middle of the year which are strictly at or above and you can see that the math data looked a little bit better than the reading data did because more of the grade levels are closer to this 80 percent um line that we're shooting for but to be um consistent i did another slide with this above where nearly kids who are close to benchmark at doing math at grade level and you can see almost every grade is where we want them to be so really good picture in math so the observations about math you know again the content gets harder at mid-year that's
035the same as it's true for um reading 10 out of 13 in 10 out of 13 grades the percentage of students who whose math was at or above benchmark at middle of year increased so that's great you want to see grade levels increase from beginning to middle to end twenty percent seven percent of students um for 27 percent of students their math is at or above bench i'm sorry 27 more students were at benchmark in grade one in math at mid-year that as compared to beginning of year so you notice that that's also the grade i called out in reading so first grade is doing some something right and having some really good results which is terrific and they should be commended for that um all grades have 60 or more students reading out above
036renewal so um you know not not at the 80 percent but getting there and pretty close so pretty good there and many grades in the case of math are approaching that 80 mark you can see there's you know they're just really um reaching for that bar there so i just wanted to mention some of the things we're doing to address what we're seeing in the data first of all our reading interventionist who is an additional classroom teacher now since april 5th was placed in grade 2 because we saw that the reading difficulties um were in grade 2 and we you know that's not pointing at um any one cause for that it doesn't mean the teachers aren't doing a good job they're doing a great job it could be that they have a particularly difficult
037group of kids there could be lots of reasons for that but putting our reading interventionist at that grade level gave them you know that extra expertise to help out in that area we have planned an extended school year summer program specifically for reading because we know how important that is we invited i don't know off the top of my head but i want to say close to 100 students to participate in that program through title 1 and many more students are participating through the special ed department and so far in title one which are our non-special ed students um we have about 40 partis that have said yes they're going to participate it's going to definitely be focused on reading intervention and then the extended school year program for students with disabilities through the special
038ed is going to be focused more generally on other areas as well we're planning literacy instruction professional development for elementary grades next year that's something i talked with mrs um so on our professional development days next year we're really going to look at our into reading program which is new to us but you know in this year of turmoil we're going to take another look at it next year and really look at what are the components of the literacy block and where can we help students in that classroom instruction as you know we extended the math textbook series down from high school to grade five so if you reference back to that slide with math you see that in middle school the results were a little bit lower but we're going to have that consistent
039really good quality math series from grades 5 through high school and we're going to be looking at deepening our data practices for next year that's going to be really critical to use the great data that we have to really be targeting any areas of um that need remediation so we can catch students up that's pretty much the data if you have any questions please let me know does anyone on the committee have any any questions and i don't know kate if you want to take your presentation down so we can be here and then we can see awesome thank you um are there any questions for kate at this point on the data i don't see any i i just wanted to um ask a couple of questions because i think it was implied but
040obviously next year we'll start the year off with the beginning of year assessments on all the students again and then make adjustments as needed to address any deficiencies um and i know you said that we extended an invitation out to about 100 students to participate we've already heard back from 40 that they're going to correct do we have a deadline for when the responses need to be back and what could we do to incent the families to try and um you know really get their kids there because this is so important these are the grade levels that um especially with reading these these younger kids if they don't have that basic foundation we all know the issues that that travel with them um i'm just curious what you have to have you know in mind
041for your plans to try and expand uh to try and capture as many of those students as possible yeah so um good question so um the title one survey uh deadline for families is may 14th at some point we do need to cut it off and we will do that um the end of next week because there may be additional families that we could reach out to maybe who weren't in that most needy group if people aren't going to take the advantage of it i've really worked closely with mr holloway in the student services department we're coordinating our programs together so when i said that i invited about 100 students those were students who typically receive services through title 1 because they have a reading deficit but he has an additional whole group of people
042that he has invited and extended actually beyond what he would normally invite to an extended school year program for special ed to all students with an iep and so we really have reached you know kind of thrown a wide net for students who might need um support i think as far as incentives you know we've done everything we can we planned the timing of it it's three days a week not five because families need a balance of vacation and you know it's primarily mornings when you get the best you know time with your kids and so forth so um i'm really excited about the program i think it's going to be very helpful as far as the data um goes i was discussing this with dr casper today that we're going to use the end-of-year
043data because to inform the kinds of skill work that we do in the summer because that's going to be so close to the beginning of the program and then we're going to for that group of kids who are in the summer program will do another assessment with star to see what the growth was and of course we will do a beginning of the year next year but we're not going to wait for the beginning of year results to start helping kids we'll use the end-of-year results from this year to begin groups for intervention immediately you know in september october as we're getting that um some that data from from that beginning of year so having star really helps us because we're able to really form those groups quickly starting in the fall that's great that's
044a wonderful approach um and and i know that myself and everyone here has been concerned about you know we're going to do mcas because we've been told we have to um but the delivery of the information back um isn't maybe as time sensitive as we need so having our own tools um which maybe we can also drill down to a little more customized level um certainly gives us a leg up for these kids i think this is for especially this year all right the data systems we have in place are going to be better give us better better information than mcas is so my last question i have and this will also tie into our fy 22 budget is you know you spoke about we've needed to move some teachers around take our interventionists put
045them in classrooms i just want i'm going to ask the leading question because i already know the answer as far as fy22 what are the plans looking like at this point from a budget perspective um will we maintain this same configuration or will it be changing back so we have the interventions playing the roles that they're supposed to yeah so that's a great question and i'm sure dr castman or ann marie might want to weigh in but we absolutely intend to have our interventionists back in intervention roles starting in the fall as you know we added another teacher earlier this year we had one teacher and some others in the program before but now we have two teachers which is terrific because they're really you know they have the expertise needed um we're gonna add
046some temporary roles through some grants um so the people we have on board are definitely gonna be back in their intervention role anyone else have any questions or comments i know i kind of hogged the mic on that one all right i i don't see any questions or comments at this point we look forward to the end of your data once you have that all um put together that we can do another presentation sure look at it and uh and see what may may or may not have worked because this was certainly a challenging year um to try and i'm sure um any interventions trying to deliver intervention strategies remotely it had to be very challenging very challenging some of the data looks like we were really successful in some areas so i'm sure that
047we've learned a lot um we look forward to hearing back what the end-of-year data says especially that our kids are back in school so thank you all right um so i think you want me to move on to the program of studies and i'm really going to turn this over to mr young who has really done the work on this with his team at the high school as you know starting at the beginning of his acceptance of the rule as principal of the high school he really has looked at the program studies and made the school committee aware of some changes that had to be made earlier in the year and taken a critical eye to make sure that it represents really what we're doing at the high school i think the most you can
048correct me mr young if i'm wrong here but i think the most valuable document that the school committee could open while he talks is the one called changes and rationale so you have three documents attached here one is a clean copy of the program studies so if for you know it happens that you agree with what's being presented to you and you vote in the affirmative that would be kind of ready to go to post of course we can make any changes that are suggested the other one says school committee copy of program of studies with track changes so if you want to look at the entire document with every single thing they changed you could see that there but the most clean um simplified version would be this changes and rationale document that i
049think mr young is going to speak from sure thank you ms scalise yeah i i think uh miss police captured it perfectly um the the changes in rationale document really captures the substantive changes that we made so the only thing you might notice if you were reading the clean copy at the end is we've had our counselors and we'll even do a final edit for format and things like that we've had them take a last look to make sure um you know non-substantive things but if a course number needed to be changed if um you know the wording was a little bit unclear you know but but the substantive things would be on the changes um document and you could see the overall track changes so that would be where to look i'll give everyone
050a second to pull that up and i can speak a little bit broadly about um the spirit of of the work that we did i just um there were a lot of of changes a lot of it was just wording and whatnot and there was a lot of data like that and i know the committee we've had we've had an opportunity for a few days to take a look at it um so if you want to just focus on what the real substantive changes are right um and this otherwise we could probably be here all night you have done you've done so much work um yeah and uh there is a lot of really great changes uh that you're making so if you wanna you know focus on those that would be i think great
051for the unless that anyone on the committee wants them to go line by line um seeing a lot of shaking kids okay good for all of us no thank you miss hughes i i appreciate that and and um you know we appreciate the support of the committee previously when we came to you um and um you know about needed changes and really the overall spirit of of the work is we are trying in essence to make our program of studies more flexible for students with the absorption of eighth grade and obviously we're a neas accredited school we have a lot of opportunities to without necessarily tracking students have opportunities for eighth grade students to push into french to push into art one and to get invested in areas that they could be really passionate about
052so that would lead to electives later um so what you'll see in some of our electives is you will see electives that have been changed to really try to capture student interest um you will see um some of the things that you approved before are also in red in the rationale just because we wanted to update the program descriptions to really capture the true curricular practice in the classroom uh you will see a major addition is students will take a global studies course if they don't take a course like an ap euro that's to stay in step with recent changes to history and social studies curricula we really want students to not only be historians for united states history but we want to have them have exposure to world history we're also offering a couple
053key courses like ap psychology for example that you had approved before we updated the description and that will go live next year because we want students to challenge up into some of those courses the flexibility in some of the courses that are added here is also intended we are beginning to explore very very tentatively um opportunities for early college access um in some of these things and so we felt if we made our program of studies more flexible that would mean more opportunities from for more students um so we're excited about that uh we uh let me just um touch on the the other major additions we do offer some special education specific courses for students in a sub-separate environment so we wanted to make sure that those courses were appropriately listed in our program
054of studies and we are trying to really capture the essence of our project lead the way program that is a major major asset to students um not only does it count as upper level coursework um uh but it also you know we had as a district as you know that 100 um access award so project lead the way um is is really something that um we are expanding and so you'll see the new course um you'll see two new courses principles of biomedical science which on the rationale document is page uh 30 and then you'll also see computer science essentials and these are two courses to get students that are clearly really interested in these courses um engaged and give them kind of a pathway to really get contact um with the program i'll mention
055one other thing about business and then i'll pause for questions one of the departments that has undergone the most significant um change is our business uh and technology department and really we wanted to make the courses that we offer a lot more relevant to students and relevant to 21st century and to really be responsive to feedback we've heard from students and parents so we've run tentatively with your approval earlier this year uh we had an introduction to personal finance course for the eighth graders that's been a hit and so now we are expanding that to financial literacy we really want and this is feedback that we had gotten from this committee as well we really want students graduating nrhs with some understanding of what they need to do moving forward we've changed around our career
056preparation course um and our business uh course to to really be a little bit more of an applications course and the career preparation is actually now geared toward the younger students so that the younger students can begin to explore pathways and then get into the electives and the things that they want and then potentially explore whether it's dual enrollment through mount wachusett community college or taking nap or joining project lead the way we're trying to get them thinking about these things younger at younger ages so uh our business department our courses um have changed a little bit um but the requirements are still are still all the same so i would say that those are the the the sort of the the major changes if i were to distill them down um anyone on the
057committee um oh i see kate do you want to add to that first and then i'll do questions thank you i just want to clarify one thing the um one of the courses that colby mentions the principles of biomedical science is pending a grant that we wrote and haven't um received notification of yet so we're we're hopeful that we will um but that might be reliant on funding great yeah thank you miss police and i'm just going to point out too that our program of studies even though we have all the classes listed we may not offer all of those in any one year if the interest isn't there or if the resources are limited um so it's best you know in this case let's get it on there um so if the funding comes
058through we're ready to roll with it um anyone on the committee have any questions at this point for colby yes mrs cosil a few years ago athol savings offered to help out with a financial literacy piece to our curriculum so i just want to say that maybe they would still be offering something to help you out when you start doing that program you might want to reach out to them thank you very much and they're still in touch with us regarding scholarships so i you know that that relationship is still is still a good one so thank you miss kojo i appreciate that we will do that okay thank you nice job thank you anyone else have any specific questions for mr young i don't see anybody i think at this point the question i
059have for the committee is have you had enough time with the information um to really do a deep dive into because there are a lot of changes um and i want to make sure that the committee has enough time to digest all of the information so that we can ask informed questions um so we can either motion to approve it today we could um if we pushed it off it would be at our next meeting on the 19th which we could do um but i'm gonna put that out to the committee does anybody see a reason why we wouldn't want to look to approve this this evening do they feel do you feel like you need more time to review mrs matson i didn't have enough time to review it i didn't realize it was
060uh online and i i did start reading it um through um but if if everyone else has read it i'll take everyone else's word for it i appreciate that mrs matson um is everybody would everybody else be okay we can take a motion and if someone's not comfortable approving it you can either um well there's only five of us left on so we would need all five affirmatives in order to pass this today but we certainly could make a motion and see how it flushes out and as i said we do have the opportunity to approve it um in two weeks when we meet again i just want to make sure everybody feels that they've been informed enough um mrs cosil i think we should wait if laurie needs time to look at it she's
061really good about doing some editing and stuff so i suggest we wait right that's that's fine with me um i think mr young you should be okay with moving forward under the you know uh you know i know you're trying to get course selections and whatnot um but we will push off the actual vote then until our meeting on the 19th so laura you'll have a little extra time um if we have questions um we can route them should we route them to both you kate and colby together um this way anyone can just you know either of you can respond to any questions we may have so does that sound good okay could i just mention one thing kind of at close thank you uh so just because there are three documents um we
062you know we've done our best to make sure every document everything is reflected um so if you're looking for sort of the ultimate copy to look at as it's easiest to track the changes through either the rationale document or the um you know where the track changes document but that clean copy document besides some formatting and things like that that's that's sort of the document that we're looking to move ahead with just just so that no one feels like we're changing it between i just want to be clear about that great thank you for that clarification sure thank you so thank you for your presentation i think you you hit you know from what i reviewed you hit the highlights of the changes um and i always like to think of this program of studies
063as a document that as needs come up we can certainly um look at and review at any point um like we did this past year when we needed to make some changes to fit some of the things that you um you and your team had wanted to do so um you know we'll keep that in mind too moving forward so um we will go ahead and uh move this to a vote for the meeting on the 19th and uh and we'll go any questions can be sent to uh miss police and principal young and uh and we'll vote on it as i said on the 19th so thank you thank you all okay next up is public input i believe we do have a document for public input i don't know if mrs varney if
064you wanted to read that or dr kazman how you wanted to handle this particular document some good information miss barney is that part of my i'm looking through my packet obviously at this point yep it's in there which okay hold on a single page oh is this the is this the uh proposal yeah okay um thank you i i will certainly read it but it's gonna need some it's gonna need some um some foundational uh work here information because reading this out of context would be i'm not sure how it would be um received so um ultimately what um the quick story is that i met with the finance department uh last week and and really tried to um you know i really tried to strain out some of what you know some of the
065letters that we have received in terms of the music department and and quite frankly you know i and as i've said before uh my concern um was some of the things that were being written for example like the music program was cut the music program was not cut it was reduced certainly by as one of the documents said 33 which would have been one um one person from the middle and high school music program leaving only one music teacher and one at the high school and one at the middle school so ultimately what it would have boiled down to is that the positioning question um was was really about .6 um 0.5.6 music and the rest was um the rest of the time was utilized in terms of academic um you know to because we've
066had a lot of intervention needs academic intervention needs and that was and that was certainly part of uh what we were looking to do ultimately so what i asked them to do was put her is to explain and to talk this out and and talk about the music program itself and but from the lens quite frankly of how this could support um support the district or primarily the high school in middle school um in um in in terms of closing the gap because that's this is a bigger convert the bigger piece is the sr3 and what we need to do um with those monies um as directed so long story short um no it's it's not gonna be short i apologize but in any event what what they've asked for is to keep that third
067music teacher uh between the middle and high school and what that position would do was to continue to grow bolster the dance specifically the high school band and chorus programs but doing so through the middle school which is their feeder program which we all which we all understand and and can appreciate so going into what we know we need to do is we need to add academic unified arts at the middle school level in order so what my presentation was going to be later on coming up for either fy 22 budget or um kovid is that using esser funds we need to create these opportunities to within the unified arts cycle is to work with children whom our students who have deficit especially in the area of language so one of the identified areas was
068reading reading language so we were going to one of the areas that we're going to post and add a reading unified arts person okay to service kids who are below grade level as ms kalis had pointed out earlier the other would be um science technology engineering and math stem um using our project lead the way um program because what we know is that there was we've we had some difficulties with students accessing a lot of that information during the times that we were remote all said what that allows us to do is to break down the number of kids that we have in these smaller groups as needed or as defined by maybe need so in other words you can't have a reading class of 20 uh or a class that's going to work on
069some you know some areas in reading with 25 it's just not it's just not feasible and it's just not how you do intervention we need to keep those we need to keep those numbers small so that means that those the other 60 70 80 kids of that grade have to go other places and so that in turn turned into looking into the music program as as presented by the fine arts department and as you see below here is that and i will read it the document outlines a proposed idea for keeping the split full-time 0.6 music teacher and 0.4 academic support teacher at the high school in doing that in short it allows the uh allows the two music teachers to stay at the uh at the middle school um before you or you see
070that the um what the schedule is here um they were able to do fifth grade band fifth grade course sixth grade band seventh grade band okay you see that there's general music which was part of our normal curriculum and of course um contractually they get a prep period in a planning time on the high school side of things what you see is um is that in that point six uh when they're wearing their music hat um they'll be able to uh utilize that time for banding course and offer an elective of appreciation music or some type of other elective that needs to happen in high school we students need at least one fine arts um elective and that also helps um that um you know in that regard ultim so this is one piece of
071a very large puzzle of interventions at the mill in high school that will allow us to spread our students out and uncouple the middle school and high school schedule remember we do some sharing okay but because the sf3 grants what that allow us to do is is uncouple is is not be uh you know married to each other and they can start doing some things programmatically in doing so we will the high school will gain blocks of time and this is going to be until i can write this out folks we're going to present this but i'm going to do my very best here okay what this allows us to do is to work with students who have failed at the high school failed classes for the year and allow them in areas of ela
072science math the core subjects to retake those courses because they're credit bearing and again we we had some diff every high school had difficulty with kids um passing all their classes and these are credit bearing so it is the music program as presented here at the millen high school allows the space and the ability to work with students who definitely have identified gaps in learning both at the middle and high school this is a one year pro uh plan quite frankly um and because remember these essa grants are not forever as as we are constantly reminded um but they are being utilized in the in the sense that they're supposed to be which of course is to minimize um the loss and of course credit recovery um at the high school so i'm going to
073stop there because i've said a whole lot and i and i'm confused and i'm the one who you know just said it all but um it's one part i i do approve of this plan the the finance department knows this i spoke with him today but what i said is that never unless unless mr young needs more unified uh more electives to be able to offer more credit bearing courses the the offerings at the high school they've got to stay this way they've got to stay basically 0.4.6 thank you for um addressing the the actual the full memo is out on our agenda for the public to see and i actually appreciate the fact that you've taken this proposal and kind of talked through um what it really means and how we can address uh
074the concerns of the fine arts department as well as the academic apps that we see so um does anybody have any questions at this point on this information from dr casavant i don't see any and i'm sure that once you're able to put everything down because there's a lot of moving parts on this um you will present out to the committee obviously um what the the final plans are especially as we go and we start looking to spend some of those esr funds so absolutely mediterranean just in just quickly on the back page you're going to see this proposal or proposals for stipended amounts i'd like to address that next meeting as the as the ndea contract um you know indicates that it's it's within the purview of myself through the school committee to add
075um stipended positions without using utilizing the year kind of test i'd like to pull this apart just a little bit and and talk about it some more um and for your uh for your approval ultimately in the bigger picture which will obviously need to happen next the next committee meeting because we plan to present the the entirety um of what we're doing in terms of intervention and um the use of sr3 and two and three funds that sounds like a good plan if we um if there's a need for positions that we don't have um and we'll see that immediate payback obviously we have that one year trial period but we know that there is a way around that when we feel that the value um is there so yeah we will put that on
076um positions on the next agenda um and you can kind of present what you're looking at and whatever approvals uh for our consideration that you want to put forward we can address then so thank you and i do want to thank the fine arts department for this proposal um they uh was very well thought out and i think it really put the students first as far as you know what are those needs um and what do our students want and what does the district overall need to so i want to just thank them um for the thoughtful uh process they went through to put this document together so we'll we will continue to review this and hear more from dr kazam so thank you um public comment i'm just i just want to read this
077because um christine bennett just put a comment um out there that uh this had to do with the athol savings bank potentially coming into the school to help and what she commented on which i think is important for everyone to know um she would love to see that worker workers credit union has an actual branch stand at monty tech um and then maybe that's something that we could also start to explore with ethel savings bank we do utilize athol savings bank for save some program at the elementary school but often when those kids hit that last year of elementary they stop saving because there's no outlet for them a representative normally comes to the school and the kids make deposits is a whole bunch of fun process um but we don't have a conduit for
078that to happen so i think it would be great if we maybe could engage them to start offering and ultimately maybe some sort of branch service or something at that at the middle and high school level so thank you ms bennett for your comments all right okay next up um i don't see any other public comments so i'm going to move on to the ndea and miss parker i see you're here so i will turn it over to you hello um not really much to share tonight just everybody's you know everybody's back in full time for the most part um and i do believe that our there are more kids who are remote that are choosing to come back now which is which is a great sign it means that you know some of the
079the fears are lifted a little bit in the families and um more and more people getting vaccinated i know a lot of families are fully vaccinated if they're if their kids are 16 and older and just right now everybody's just moving forward and came off april vacation and getting ready for mcas because that's coming up pretty soon too um but the kids are doing great i know in the elementary school the kids are the kids are really doing great being back in school and again i'm just so amazed at how good they are wearing their masks and you know if they see someone take it off by mistake though they remind each other put them back on um lunches seem to be going well and just seems like the year is going well considering everything
080that we've gone through i think you know people are really putting it together well great thank you and once again you know i send uh the my thanks my personal thanks and i'm sure i can speak for the on the committee's behalf as well to thank everybody in the district top down but especially the ones that are right in front of our students and making that difference for them you hear so many horror stories about the number of beds needed for mental health issues um and it's so related to these kids not being in front of the teachers and being there for them so um it just it it's a it's good to hear that it's going well um i know the people that i've spoken to and i'm sure if i ask the rest
081of the committee that anyone who has kids they're very one happy the kids are back in school full time but the kids themselves are really thrilled i know my son was happy to actually see his friends and not just communicate via his xbox headset um so it was that's definitely good so please uh you know again continue to send along our um our thanks and uh you know and keep up the great work it's been hard it's been um a lot of work and tiring but i think this the end of the year is coming soon so there is some light at the end of the tunnel so thank you lisa anyone else have any questions or comments for ms parker i don't see any i do just want to also mention that in the
082chat jen smith um also said that she loves these financial literacy ideas so there is uh from the community um parents who have kids that um love them as well so i just want to share her comment so okay um next up we'll do a a quick budget update um i'm gonna just gloss right over fy21 because there's from a legislative perspective there's been no no moves or changes on that um i think we'll get a better update from ms geister at next meeting when we get our our business manager reports and we can talk more about that um fy 22 budget the house did pass their budget the senate uh suppose the senate leaders are supposed to present their budget next tuesday on may 11th uh amendments are going to be due and then
083they'll be voted on starting the week of may 24th sorry my animals are fighting um so we'll have some movement in the in the um in the senate um once it comes out of the senate and they address the amendments the next step is a joint conference committee um where the senate and the house come together and then they go towards um the the governor and he does his veto so we're hoping that maybe by july first we'll have a budget unlike last year um but fingers crossed and i don't know if dr casavant um you've got anything to add to that no we're just waiting um obviously the mars group keeps us updated as to some of the issues that would affect regionals but as you said uh madam chair it's just a matter
084of waiting game to see how it all flushes out especially through the in the joint committee or as it comes out of the senate okay um i'm gonna switch a few things around um this is this is a rough day for many of us having gotten some some copic shots and things and some of us are fading so um i do have i'm gonna move up um miss mr mark still there he is i'm gonna move um mr marks up a subcommittee report out for the diversity equity and inclusion um group um we had asked him a couple of meetings ago to give us an update on specifically the the mascot the logo and whatnot and he had agreed to do the update unfortunately we did not have a lot of time at the last
085meeting so i want to get him on uh the stage because i think you've got some important information to share out with the community because this is very important work so jeff i'm going to turn it over to you at this point all right thank you margaret and i'll just give a brief update on everything that we've been working on this far so okay um so as the committee is aware the diversity equity inclusion subcommittee has been working with two excellent student leaders this year maddie ambrose and nadia seren these students have brought some great ideas and expanded the discussion of the group however next fall these two student leaders will be entering their senior year and the subcommittee agrees that having them involved in discussions has worked out great uh with that said the
086sub company has reached out to mr young in hopes of including several additional underclassmen to participate um in the group beginning next academic year and therefore they could take over for maddie and nadia upon graduation um so um we're hoping i've talked to mr young and we should be able to uh get that going he's getting some dates um so our discussions in the subcommittee have surrounded uh some of the challenges our students are facing identifying the needs uh and areas and concerns of our students as well as the discussions on the topics of what changes would be most effective for the district uh unfortunately due to uh remote learning and the limited interactions that our students have had with each other it's hindered some of the work that um that we've been looking to
087do this year um so but we are we're working on it that go okay um so also a considerable amount of our resources uh have been focused around reimagining our district's mouse card by the way did uh am i sharing screen by any chance okay all right okay uh uh the mascot i had hoped to have some additional logo um uh for tonight's meeting uh however due to final exams coupled with his already hectic work scuttle uh schedule our graphic designer was unable to provide me with the additional concepts so the concept that you do see on screen i just want to let you know it's not final it's not nothing it's just one of the concepts uh that we've been working on it's actually what he presented in his uh final exam or in
088his final project so i just kind of wanted to give the group an idea of what we're looking at okay um um so the committee would like to express their support for changing the district's native american imagery but retaining the name we feel that the warrior nation doesn't necessarily depict any particular group the imagery is the district's main concern we do not want our imagery or our mascot to negatively affect uh or negatively characterize any race of people okay we believe warrior nation linked with a new unbiased image is something the entire district can be proud of uh the warrior name is a symbol of everything our district stands for strength courage respect uh and pride we have talked about how warriors work together as a team supporting and protecting each other conducting themselves with
089honor meeting um any competition or challenge with strong determination we feel these are great values which pay tribute to our school spirit and this is why we are compelled to preserve the warrior name um i feel it's also important to inform the committee that there is currently a bill filed in the state senate it's bill sd 417 and it's uh that schools not use native american imagery words and symbols as athletic logos the bill defines a native american mascot as a name a symbol or an image that depicts or refers to an american indian tribe individual custom or tradition that is used by public schools as a mascot name or a logo a letterhead or anything such as that although this bill is still under review the community the committee fails that removing the district's
090current native american image while retaining the warrior name should satisfy this proposal uh this proposed legislation if it is ever passed um those are really the big things that i have um on there um i actually will ask for a motion at some point but i thought that um maybe we should have some discussion and just reach out and see if there are any questions or anything that um uh the committee may have great thank you jeff i don't know if you want to stop sharing your screen just so we can see everybody i can certainly do that [Music] all right maybe i can't do that [Music] there we go thank you okay um i'll throw it out to the committee i mean thoughts um comments concerns we have this has been an ongoing discussion
091in this committee which is one of the reasons we formed our dei subcommittee to begin with because this was something that we wanted to be able to address the committee has not done any formal motion because the subcommittee did ask for some time to come up with what a pathway that they would like to take so i'll ask if there's any questions or comments from any of the other committee members at this point i don't see any so i know that we've talked in the past about the subcommittee proposing a motion to the full committee um to act on so if you if the subcommittee wants to present that to the full committee tonight we are certainly certainly willing to entertain your motion if you would like to make it okay um i'd like to
092make a motion that the committee eliminates all native american imagery from the district logos but preserves the warrior name okay so that is a again a motion to eliminate the native american imagery but to preserve the warrior name with that motion on the floor do i have someone who would like to well mrs robichaud made the motion um so do i have a second for that motion second and i have a second from mrs cosil is there any other comments questions excuse me from the committee um i don't see anyone i i just have a couple of comments um and and again they're kind of leading um i know that this this sets the the stage for making changes and i know that as a district um it's no no you know no no secret
093that you know financially we're struggling um because of covet and other things um so that any any look to change the logo obviously there will most likely be a cost to that and i'm sure that the subcommittee will continue to work on that plan on how to roll that out so i can speak a little bit to that we have actually talked about that margaret um a lot of in you know for uh a lot of the we'll we'll call them big ticket items what we're what we're talking about doing such as the gym floor i think would be a great example maybe some of the podiums um what we're thinking we would do uh once we get all this is we would roll those out um um over a long term as things um
094as things needed to be replaced like as the gym floor needed to be refinished we would roll that out and then we've actually had discussions on whether we would actually put any logo back into the floor or maybe we should do banners or something like that um as far as uniforms and things like that um same thing at the end of their uh life cycle i mean we would just redo them um other smaller ticket items uh the website things like that we would think that we could do that uh more immediately um however you know as the committee is aware is um in an effort to save some of the costs uh we've been working with the the student uh graphic designer okay um so it's been a little bit slower he's actually been
095great but we are still working with uh with that so i mean once we have the designs and again once we have designs we will be bringing um several concepts back to the committee for it for a vote on those as well um but once we have those ones um then we can start um changing the uh things throughout the district states changing the logos throughout the district does that does that answer your question margaret yes that that addressed that and the other part of the question um is you know how i i love the fact that we have students involved so i'm assuming that we'll continue to engage the students the district community um and the community at large when we we come to decide what we want to change um and i'm sure
096that you'll be working on a plan to how we would do that effectively um so i'm again kind of a leading more of a statement than a question um so but i assume that's part of the plan then it is part of the plan and it just saw the committees that where we have had some uh community members that have came and spoke uh with the committee um so it's actually been a good thing the students as a matter of fact the logo that was up there earlier on the concept that was up there earlier that was actually uh brought to what it was really um um an inspiration of one of the uh one of the students on the committee so uh we're very proud of that so uh we uh we have had
097um discussions um around the surrounding the um community involvement and things like that um so we will we'll work something additional back to the committee module excellent thank you okay anyone else have any other questions comments uh mrs matson yeah i um a couple of things actually so our name uh narragansett has to do with the narragansett indians if i'm not mistaken was there any discussion in um possibly changing the name of the district and also was there any discussion in possibly um changing um going with a different mascot instead of a warrior yes yes yes to both of your questions absolutely um there was there was as a matter of fact there was a lot of discussion uh surrounding um the narragansett um name okay um and i think one of the bigger concern
098and okay so so around the name and there was a discussion surrounding the warrior name uh one of the one of the reasons is we also um our discussions brought us to uh history you know why we've had this name uh the school spirit the existing school spirit um um and we didn't want to take away from all of that so we've tried to come up with a balance between everything um there was i will say there was a lot of discussion um surrounding actually the narragansett and the warrior together you know what i mean which you know it could be could be problematic um but we feel that uh we did we came to the determination that we feel that um the warrior name is you know could be other than uh a native
099american so um so we're we're comfortable that um with the decision that we've made laurie okay thank you anyone else have any other questions or comments because we do have an active motion on the floor okay seeing none then we will do a roll call vote again the motion was to remove the native american imagery um but retain the warrior name um as the uh the yes the i don't know what is that the logo the tagline i don't know what you call that you got mascot yes yeah so but retain the warrior name um we will do a roll call vote uh mr marks yes mrs matson yes uh mrs robichon yes mrs cosil yes and mrs hughes says yes so that was unanimous so we look forward to hearing more from the diversity
100equity inclusion group um and uh getting future updates on where we stand and how we're moving on this and also for that bill you know where it stands in the senate um i think there's a corresponding one in the house as well um so it'll be interesting to see uh where that and if that passes um because i know our own state flag there are issues with um so there is a big push to make that change so thank you for the update mr marks um any closing remarks that you want to leave us with no i'm fine thank you okay all right um i'm just looking at the agenda trying to see if there is anything we can um push off dr casavant we did have a kobit 19 update i know we soak
101into it most everything is there anything in particular that you wanted to discuss at this point that can't be pushed off till the next meeting i would just say that the midland high school did a fantastic job opening just like the elementary did um again credit to all the teachers who just make it and the administrators who just make it look easy i would just say that it's not easy trust me but they do they make it look easy and um but i think at this point i think that's that's good for now and i'll update as as needed great thank you um school committee comments um anybody have any comments they'd like to make before i have one surprise there i just wanted to make a comment and thank um rayon triflow and deb
102cosil and vicky chartier for their service to the committee for the past many years um they the three of them have decided not to run for their seats so we will have a turnover and some of the committee members at our next meeting but i didn't want them to not be recognized for the service and the input and the insight that they have added to the committee and the impact they've made on the district as a whole so i just wanted to say thank you uh you will be missed we hope that you will you know come and and you know mrs cosil if you've got a policy you know that you want to talk and talk sure for sure um we never finished the silly book uh we were close we are so close
103um thank you you're very welcome it was my pleasure i'm very proud of our district yeah i we all are it's it's it speaks um very well to the district how committed everyone is at every level so but thank you um the only other comment that i wanted to make and this is really on on behalf of mrs truffalo a comment that she had passed to me the other day is just a shout out to our nurses yes they are going above and beyond um and i just you know we always thank everybody um and you know i want to single them out though and make sure that they understand that their work has not gone unseen uh between contact tracing um on top of now the kids are back and the you know the
104i remember the numbers when we looked at how many student visits that at the elementary school they used to get and now throw on all of this other stuff they just really you know extend our appreciation and make sure that they they know that they're seen um and appreciated uh during this time madam chair if i may um it honestly can't be stated enough um quite frankly what we've learned is that we're going to it's part of what i want to discuss about moving forward um we're going to have to address some of the the needs in that area in terms of nursing at no point did anyone think that this would be this much um case tracing they just case traced two possibles it was 47 you know case traces right so and that's
105and actually that that's kind of a run-of-the-mill so um honestly they don't want to work harder than them right now um they're going to hang in there and that's what i'm told i'm just just keeping them going but certainly a point a a point of serious discussion you know at our next next school committee meeting as i kind of unfold what we look like next year uh srsr etc excellent thank you look forward to that discussion um i'm gonna push through a couple of these items um so that maybe we can wrap up a little early since we're down to five of us and um and we need the quorum to be able to vote so we had the bullying and intervention and prevention plan and i'll speak for dr casavant so he doesn't have
106to mute again this is it's like a two-year plan this is where one year in there are no updates as of today to the plan um but it has been reviewed so that was just here as a placeholder to make sure that we address that and we are in good shape it will be looked at with the the student handbook as well so we'll deal with any changes at that point we had on on our agenda to do a strategic plan update and discuss our superintendent evaluation if nobody has any um any argument about it i would almost i'd ask that we could push this off um because i just don't see the engagement that we need and this might be since we'll have some new members at our next meeting a really good introduction
107for them with the strategic plan and understanding that so is is that okay with the committee if we push those off i'm seeing a lot of shaking heads so i will say that is yes i'll email out some information on the superintendent evaluation because that works hand-in-hand with the strategic plan update um and we'll we'll get that for the next meeting um mrs barney can we hold off on the surplus vote until next we'll we'll hold that until the next one absolutely great um this is cause we we're going to push a bunch of policies for first reading um can we do that maybe at the the next meeting or you know in the in the fall i don't think there was anything major that needed to be addressed yeah it's just wording and stuff
108so i think that would be fine there's there are 22 of them so that would be take a little time um so we'll pass over that until either the next meeting or the one after the uh subcommittee reports there's really have all been done updates and will deeper dive next time if need be the only other thing that i wanted to bring up before i turn it over to dr kazamit for any other information that he wants to present to the committee um our next meeting is scheduled for may 19th that's wednesday we will have three new members hopefully as part of our committee normally we meet at five i do know that five o'clock is a difficult time for some people so i would ask the committee that we moved this meeting to 5
10930 so hopefully all of our new members will be able to join us and then we can talk about ongoing um what the time frame should be that we can meet so if that works we will do our next meeting wednesday may 19th at 5 30 pm we will more than likely do this remote again we're close to having us in person and being televised or live streamed if you will um still just finalizing that so i'm thinking this one will be remote as well and then hopefully in june we can get back to to us being together and with that i'm going to turn it over to dr casavant for his superintendent report and anything else that he'd like to report out to the committee that uh for tonight um actually madam chair um
110just given the enormity of things um it probably would be best there's nothing pressing there's nothing um that um that would need attention at this moment seeing that it'll be a week or so right that we'll meet again so um with your permission i'd like to push off my report um until next week next time we meet that's great thank you thank you um other than that um we had an executive session on the books in case we needed it i'll look to dr casavant um is there any reason that we need to go into executive session tonight they can't wait we do not at this point in time okay so we um we do not need our executive session so we will pass over that and with that being said um i would entertain
111a motion to adjourn so moved i have a motion by mrs cosil her last motion my last motion and do i have a second sec i think i think mrs madison was in first um so no discussion on this one we will do roll call mr marks yes mrs matson yes this is robichaud yes mrs cosil yes and mrs hughes says yes so i do want to thank everyone um for hanging in there with us and uh and joining us we had some people watching the the live stream i want to thank them for watching us um and again in our next meeting we shall have some new faces on the screen um we'll be in touch i guess after the election and we get notification of who those people will be to uh to
112get set up emails and other any anything else and i'm just saying that because i noticed a couple of names on our people watching um but we'll reach out to you and make sure that you have the information you need and again just thank you uh to mrs triphala mrs chartier and to you mrs cosil again and thank you as your last meeting so you're welcome good evening everybody have a good evening everyone bye everyone [Music]