001okay you're all set missed answer okay um good evening in the absence of chair hall tonight i'll be chairing the meeting um as the vice chair um our first order of business will be to call the meeting to order so i'm calling to order the meeting of the pelham school committee on thursday july 1st at 6 03 p.m we'll do a roll call attendance so when i say your name please respond with mr menino menino i miss barlow marlo i and miss dancer present oh i'm sorry i said the wrong thing but we got it all okay um the first sort of business minutes we don't have any so we're going to move on to public comment we do have a public comment document tonight so um we'll bring it up and scroll through it
002i'd also just like to remind everybody that this is also available on the arps website if you go to school committee and then to pelham agendas you'll find a link right next to the link for the agenda file okay for future reference this typeface is good i can read this dr morris am i am i supposed to scroll sorry i should scroll the document i've been scrolling slowly am i going too slowly well that's fine i wasn't just sure if i was supposed to do it thank you nope this one hmm okay thank you um all right we will continue on now to the superintendent's update yep and i have it's very brief i don't have much of an update because we met recently and uh school year ended um but i just want to
003share my appreciation again i know we talked about the last meeting for just nardisi uh for stepping in uh up in a row as well as mickey darling to be co-leaders of the school meeting with mickey tomorrow uh we'll work on getting a mentor for them to support them because we know that it's a big transition and a complicated set of circumstances of uh covets not gone from us right uh our world and we want to make sure they're supported as as best as they can be the other piece of good news is that we did receive a grant by we being the pelham school district to support a one week more intensive um academic experience we're still working on details because we just found that out last week but for students particularly students who
004are struggling at the early grades with reading given the year that we just completed so we are looking to compar partner with our amherst colleagues for just efficiency stake in terms of bus and and site location um because any time you have a site that you need a nurse and you know it would be pretty inefficient for for that to happen just for pelham but that was welcome news and um we're loosely targeting i believe the first week in august for that sort of one week intensive uh experience so that all that all those funds come from the department of education through a competitive grant process we applied to that's really all i have for tonight okay following that is the chairs update the chair's not here the vice chair doesn't have any announcements so
005i wonder if any of the school committee members have announcements that they'd like to make tonight no wow okay moving right along we're going to new and continuing business the first item on the agenda is a discussion and vote on the superintendent evaluation um i i think i don't yes so i i would like to just say be before i go into the memo that goes with this that for people watching um the superintendent evaluation is based on a rubric created by the department of elementary and secondary education excuse me secondary education and it has four standards that cover the whole breadth of of a superintendent's responsibilities and the school committee and the superintendent work together to create the goals each year within that rubric and it is required to have at least one element
006from each standard in the goal so that there is a broad set of goals for the district and for the superintendent so with that said i i think i'm going to read the memo so if we could just bring that up on the screen and people will be able to read it but i'm going to go ahead and read it anyway so dr morris attached please find the summary of your evaluation for the 2021 school year similar to last academic year 2021 was unprecedented in terms of the work of overseeing a school district during a global pandemic but september through the first part of april were fully remote for teachers and students as a body the school committee works together to identify and communicate to the superintendent the measures chosen from the desi rubric by
007which they will evaluate his or her work this year unlike last we did have some sense of what was coming and were able to incorporate the response to and learning from world events into your performance goals this final report summarizes the individual school committee members evaluations of your performance over the 2021 school year and reflects the official position of the pelham school committee all five members of the pelham school committee completed the entire evaluation form the evaluation was informed by direct observation and participation of the superintendent in meetings and events documents shared throughout the year as well as a portfolio of artifacts submitted by the superintendent and a survey of the superintendent's direct reports in central office and the schools your overall performance was rated as proficient at 3.6 out of a score of five
008an average of 2.5 or greater is proficient as defined by the massachusetts department of elementary and secondary education proficient performance is understood to be so fully satisfactory for the superintendent and all other administrators as well as teachers this is in the rigorous expected level of performance it is a demanding but attainable level of performance um i'm gonna open it up we i think we could um stop sharing now um i just wanted to read that i i felt it was it was meaningful me to read it rather than just have people read that on the screen um and i'm going to open it up for comments from everyone but before i do um chair hall sent me her comments since she couldn't be here she did have comments that she would like to have read
009so although strong evaluations speak for themselves i think it's important to highlight the unique challenges dr morris has faced in running a school district during a pandemic he managed to address the immediate public health concerns presented by kovitt while maintaining a focus on the budget teaching and learning and the other fundamental elements of a successful school district all through a social justice lens i have trust in and i'm grateful for dr morris's leadership so now would other committee members like to make their comments mr menino well this is the time of year that i look forward to uh making a few comments i'm delighted with mike morris's performance i've observed his behavior he's an honorable man he's a fantastic superintendent um what i like most about the way he runs the show is his collaborative
010decision-making style before he makes a decision he seeks input from every possible uh stakeholder that could be through conversations talks focus groups surveys whatever i mean collaboration leads to better decisions my only hope is that he'll remain um superintendent for the next 55 years um so i'm it this is nice to be able to say nice things about a good man very good thank you mr menino miss barlow yes thank you um i'd also just like to echo my my thanks and gratitude for mike morris i feel like his leadership style was exemplary during his most challenging time uh it was he really demonstrated a compassionate form of pragmatic leadership if you will um always thinking about the various constituents thinking about the metrics listening um and just exhibiting a lot of grace under pressure
011which is really challenging to do um and i really appreciated working with him and and watching him you know work with with the various constituents and and really making sure that he was sharing the credit um i really appreciated that he shares credit with thinking about all of the members of his team that helped us make it through an extraordinarily challenging year so i agree i really think that we're so fortunate to have dr morris as a leader in our school system so thank you so much thank you miss barlow and i guess i'll follow that up with i echo all of those sentiments this past year everything was upended everything we know about school about being in school and teaching school it was just turned upside down and you went through this year with
012such grace and you were so calm um provided leadership uh as expressed by in your your 360 review by the other administrators and people in the district and your collaboration with everyone i i think when people work together the end result is better than everybody and i think we saw that happen this year and i want to thank you for all that you've done and look forward to another year so i believe um it's too bad that miss kenny didn't make it but um we'll go on without her um i believe that we now have to vote on accepting that the evaluations so would somebody like to make a motion brenda my motion to accept the evaluation as written and a second second okay uh the motion has been made and accepted so we will
013do a roll call vote um mr menino menino i miss barlow eye and stance or i as well and dr morris is it appropriate at this point for comments from you sure i'll keep it brief because you and i have a meeting that starts in a couple minutes a different meeting but uh you know i'm really humbled by the by the evaluations and particularly the comments um tonight and and i think the thing i'd say is that it it only works because i feel like it's a team the school committee myself um you know it's not that means we always agree right because that's not necessarily the sign of a team in fact i think most teams the disagreement's healthy right and we dig into issues whether it's budget uh whether it's you know curricular
014which we've had over the last couple of years but you know i just appreciate that this committee keeps students at the forefront uh of its decision making and collaboration not just with me but with the team you know with the principal like this year with lee with doug slaughter who obviously you get to see a lot of in the winter and early spring uh and you know like tim sheen and you know other folks who are involved in pelham school because that's really how it all works and when there are hard moments and we've had plenty this year we're able to work through them because we're talking about it you know and you know slightly awkwardly for you all because it's public meetings and i know that's what you quote unquote signed up for but
015it you know this year the public part of it was perhaps a little more public than ever before in terms of how many people are watching but yeah i appreciate um you know your kind words but but i think as much or more just i appreciate the collaboration throughout the year and the good questions that get asked when we present that make us think deeper on the on the staff level and look forward to hopefully having a somewhat smoother year next year um and uh uh you know as i said before you know covet's not done we're not over with it but i think you know a year in or year plus in we know a lot more right and we've been able to do a lot of work in the building and we feel
016i feel really good about where we are and and steps we can take to continue to provide the high quality education that um pelham families have rightfully requested and demanded of us and we want to continue to build on the work that's happened and get better in the future so i appreciate all of your support um and i look forward to continuing to work with you in the future okay thank you um so moving right along warrants are the next item which we have none and i believe we have no gifts to accept so the next order of business would be a motion to adjourn that move to adjourn second bat uh roll call vote mr menino menino i miss barlow i and stancer i um the meeting is adjourned see you in august thank
017you