001all right all right we're back in Open session for our meeting just finished our executive session before we get into the superintendent search presentation just two pieces of news so this is our last scheduled meeting before December 23rd which is when the former superintendent Carell retires so there you go and also congratulations to the football team for winning fa Super Bowl this year right so good stuff [Music] [Applause] absolutely can't that so uh let's bring up superintendent search presentation Lori do you want to introduce us yes we have um two two different people here we have um Miss Tracy Novak novic is going to um present first from the masc and then we have Mr David is it deusi is that how I say it yes and Mrs oh my goodness Miss Judy paluchi um
002they're they're here from NE de and both um both sets of people are going to explain to us how they would run a superintendent search um so and because this time we're going to do a full search um and we'll see what they have to say and we apologize um Tracy mil for the spelling your name on [Music] theck so good evening be with you um thank you for uh for inviting to be here my name is try noic um I man to speak to number of you and um I'm the field director for Massachusetts for the Massachusetts Association of school committees um and that actually brings me to my first point regarding the superintendance search I mean obviously any um decision that you need to make really is a question of why would you
003choose one organization over another organization and the thing that I think is actually most important in terms of you making the decision and the determination as to what you want to do um is that masc is already your organization um we are why we you are why we exist um masc is a member organized member driven organization um we were originally informed um by members who felt that there was a need for a Statewide organization of school committees um to provide them with professional development to keep them appraised of um legal and policy changes that were happening in Federal in National level and our services th have just simply evolved in terms of what school committees actually need from us um and regardless of what choices you make um as again a number of you
004already know um MC will remain your organization um you have a field director I am your field director for central Massachusetts four of us across the state um a significant part of our job is actually responding to members questions emails phone calls um on a daily basis there's a significant part of my time that's actually simply devoted to that um and the professional development that we provide to school CL across the state um the emails that provide information policy updates and so forth will continue to come um and so that support I think is something that's actually very important um we of course are all um at the association because we are the association of school committees our focus is on the school committee um and the needs of the school committee um all of
005the field directors are either current or past school committee members um as some of you may be aware I'm a former member of the W school committee my colleagues um either are currently serving have recently been on school committees um and that is the perspective that we bring to the superintendent search which I think actually matters quite a bit um we also uh bring the perspective of someone who um is not sort of um coming to your District without um without any background being your District right I live in Wester I'm from central Massachusetts I actually grew up in Sterling um well this is I think the first time I've been in this building it's not the first time that I've been in your school district by any re um and I think that that
006actually matters quite a lot because part of what we see superintendent searches as doing um is really first of all being an opportunity for a school for a school district to really strengthen itself it's a chance for you to look at what you're doing well to look at what you could be building on um and to see the search as a process through which you actually expand upon that um one of the things that I think of superintendent searches is doing is actually being an opportunity for us to also strengthen our relationship with you um and so um when I say that we are um we sta a search School Committees of course are the ones who direct the search that's usually me um and that means that I'm the one who's actually doing the
007conducting the survey um I try to make sure that I get into every faculty meeting um and actually in front of your staff with your central Administration um conduct the public information centers myself um I think that matters quite a bit in terms of my then being able to bring back good information to you work directly with the screening committee um it will be me unless there is some sort of unavoidable conflict in which case it will be one of my colleagues who also is a field director um and similarly there for the interviews um working with you in terms of making sure your questions are good doing a solid job of making sure that you have um a good ability to um to get insight into the candidates that um making sure that you
008have an opportunity to visit their District they have an opportunity to visit your District um and then of course regardless again of what you choose in terms of uh your search process um MC doesn't go away so we are always available for um completing a search for us doesn't actually end until you've assigned contract but of course we then also encourage you to do things like have a retreat with your new superintendent make sure that you are on the same page in terms of setting goals for the superintendent and goals for yourselves um making sure that you've considered and come together around operating protocol that are on the same page in terms of things like the open meeting law um this new superintendents are a really good chance for strong professional development of the governance
009team um and we again that's part of what you get from us already because you're members of the association we think of that being as a really important U part of the process I've kind of walked you through this already um but this is really more or less what a search looks like for us um we do make sure that we sign a contract what you're looking for is entirely included um for the cost of the contract um the only thing that would be an exception is if for some reason you decided to advertise in the Boston Globe and frankly we tell you not to do that because it's kind of a waste of money um so we um make sure that we we are on um available for for Staffing to make sure that
010you have everything that you need and every step along the way um and one of the things that I emphasize certainly to the school committee um but then also to the search committee when I'm working with them um but then also I share my contact information with the larger District um because the one thing that I want to make sure is that they always know what the next step is and they actually always know what's going on um and I shared that the thing that I would share with teachers is my own experience as a former teacher um I was an educator I remember getting an email from my um central office saying that the superintendent was retiring and that was in the fall and then the next thing that I remember hearing about it
011was the that we were all being invited to this lemonade party in the high school School Courtyard and to meet the new superintendent and and I will swear that I was someone who read all my emails but I don't think I heard anything in between um and I don't think that's a fair position to put anybody who's in a school district in and so that's something that I always try to make sure doesn't happen to the staff or anyone else in the school districts where I'm doing a um and so really um at the end of the day we at the our relationship with you is something that we highly value um it's something that we think is crucial for us um as an association but also us as field directors to have healthy working
012relationships with our school committees um in our districts and so um obviously the search is actually really all about that we're really about making sure that you find the right person for where your district is at this time um there is no perfect candidate and perfect District what there is is people who actually put each other's P I'm happy to take any questions go ahead ifone Trac could I you put it back to that um the slide that had the different phases absolutely than that yes certainly and by the way I'm certainly happy to share this with you Tracy while they're looking at that can I ask ask you which searches are currently MBC is doing right now or which ones that you're involved with as well so the one search that I'm involved with
013right now is Winchendon um which is announced its finalist and is in the sort of that L latter stage of the the process at this point um I know that brain tree is announcing finals tonight because one of my colleagues is was just updating me from there um I know that mashby and um something else on the cap because my boss has been most of his time driving to the um we are and then we have we have um we've had a couple of we're just sort of starting we think of superintendent start just start of two seasons there's the people who kind of Do The Fall season and then there's the people who do the spring season um we're just starting to get the the notifications from the people who are doing the spr
014thank you so far I don't have anything following that idea what is the typical timeline look like um so I mean let let me start by saying that we can be flexible um I will say that um I generally if you if you are kicking off a search now so first of all I wouldn't do anything prior to vacation for when it's work if you decide toight um mostly because it's a lovely and exciting thing but I don't think anyone's paying that much attention to it at this time of year um but i' like to to Jump Right In um with um gathering information so if we were doing that say in January um I would anticipate that you would be bringing it um all together assuming that we don't have a very snowy second
015half of the winter um by probably April um I want as much as possible for my spring searches to come in um well before the end of school so that there's time for a transition um there's time for the person who's coming in to really have their feet under them in terms of what the next reason what the next year's budget's going to look like like um you know ideally if there's still Our Town meetings or what have you going on at that stage in the game that's wonderful um but I want them to actually be a presence who's known in the district rather than sort of like an email as people are going out the door does anybody have any other questions so Tracy as I was going over some of your materials and
016and even looking at this right now it sounds like masc does a lot of the work a lot of like the behind the scenes work and the committee basically reaps the benefits of that whereas we don't have to V the references and um like I noticed even things along the lines of um like you you tell the successful candidates or those that aren't you're the one that breaks the news we we made the unhappy phone calls yes can you do the reference checks and things like that um and one of the things actually that I will say is also um a benefit of having the association do it is because we are in nearly every District across the state like Justified every school committee in Massachusetts as a member um we do have working relationships
017with almost all districts and so when I get an A list of applicants which by the way are confidential but they're confidential within the office the first thing that I do is I share it with the other field directors and with our executive director and say okay what do we know um because I want to know whatever the stories are I want to know whatever the reputations are um if there is a story to know I want to know what the story is um so I I want to make sure that I'm walking into your search committee um who have then reviewed all of the applications with all of the information that's at the association disposal which tends to be fairly wide but yes we we are always happy I mean if you know if
018school committee members want to make reference calls once we get there that's entirely fine um but certainly all of the sort of compiling you know compiling applications making sure they're accessible working with the search committee and making sure they have their questions answered um and and just generally being available you know putting together the interview questions making sure you have access to good draft interview questions if you want them all of those are things that are part of the job yes say a little bit more about um phase one there focus group surveys and what other community stakeholders would be involved and how would they be involv um so I mean the first thing I will say is that it is entirely up to you there are particular on on that you want to make
019sure are involved but that's that's entirely up to you um I do always make sure so we we now as a matter of course we'll post a public survey um and I will become almost annoying to your to your Administration in terms of asking them to please share the that as much as possible um one thing in particular that I really encourage I mean everyone thinks to put it in the parent newsletter and they usually think it to Black class that's faculty um I really encourage sharing it with students as well if you think students don't have opinions about Administration right um but I also know that not everybody's going to fill out a survey um and so something that I have found so I've been doing this job for 10 years um something that
020I have found is um really really important in terms of getting the read of the people who work in the district um is to be at your scheduled faculty meetings and ask for 10 15 minutes um because if I just show up in a school and say I'm in the library teachers don't have time for that like they've got they need to go to the bathroom right they need to make copies they need to get their lunch they don't have time to talk to me um if it's part of what they already are scheduled to do they're more than happy to share um and that also gives me an opportunity to give them a sense of the starch um I try I also try to do the same thing with Central Administration um and ideally
021if I can get the secretaries the custodial staff School nutrition I have been with all of those people in the past um I you know again people who have real insight um I like to be able to meet with students Council if possible and then one of the things I ask you all is for your best read on how to do the public input sessions so you may have a community where nobody's GNA come out to a meeting and you have to do it online I know in Regional sometimes people feel it's really important to make sure that you hit every town happy to do that um whatever it is that needs to be done there I also in the past um have met with Town administrators um which first of all is not a
022bad kind of political move to be a little bold about statement um but they also have Insight in terms of what are the you know what is this what is the district doing well from their perspective and what do they need to work on in terms of that perspective and of course we know those relationships matter um so those tend to be I can't think if there's anything else those tend to be the main things that I do and then of course I share my contact information widely and say if you think of other things you know send me an email get in touch and all of that then comes back to you um um the the things that I share first of all you know we say that we um we come back to
023the leadership profile which essentially is here is what your District needs at this point which would then go into the application or the brochure once you approve it um but the other thing that I report back is essentially I mean I was on a school committee anything that I heard that I think you should know I make sure I bring back to you um and that's really what I mean in terms of it being an opportunity for you to kind of do an internal assessment without you know without being a strategic plan or all that kind of thing if I'm going to go ask people what the district is doing well and not doing well and what they need to work on you should know that right that's information you can use I have one
024question just based on that um I you mentioned something about you know going up withit into the communities and speaking to the parents um I received a lot of emails from parents who very much want to be involved in the interview process and there's just no way to they all can be right for everybody to be there so what what I'm curious about is hearing how you speak to how we can let voices be heard you talk about going do you do like a presentation or um so and let me also add that again it's one of those where if you have very active PTO and think I should go to the PTO or should go to the site councils I'm happy to do that too um so when I speak to those groups it's
025sort of two hals the first thing I do is you know as I said I don't want to ever leave anyone in the position of wondering what's happening next so I say so here's what you so here's who I am um I am not choosing your superintendent your school is here's what my job is but here's what the timeline is to your point right here's when you can expect things to happen um one of the things I think that uh school committee would understand but sometimes the general public does not is that there's a period during which things kind of go quiet right so like there's this big thing I'm everywhere I come talk to you you approve the application and then it kind of feels like nothing happens well that's because we're collecting the
026applications then the next thing that happens is an executive session there's screenings so I mean those meetings will be posted but there's not going to make any headlines it isn't until the search committee comes back to you with the finalist that anyone hears anything again um so I try to make sure that people are clear in terms of that of that you know it isn't that anybody forgot it's not that nothing's happening this is the way that it works and then the three questions that I ask when I do with a an input session in person um I ask what are the strengths of the district what do you what do this District do well what do you brag about what do you want to make sure they continue to do um what does the
027district need to work on what do hope that they stop what do what are they weak on what do they need to actually continue to continue to do work on and then what is the district most need in leadership U because most of us who aren't directly involved in either superintendency itself or school commity work couldn't necessarily tell you what a superintendent does but most people can tell you what the district needs in terms of leadership and those are really my three questions um and I do it whenever I'm doing it in a group in in a larger group um I do it on sticky notes because that way it isn't only the loudest voices in the rooms that get heard we make sure that everybody gets a chance to put their things up um
028and then I take all of that information back along with the information We Gather from the survey and put it together in our report for you just yeah so I see the search committee mentioned in phase three y are they also involved in phase one kind of informally or more formally no so what would happened is that um you would be putting in you would be deciding um really during this period of time um what it is that you wanted for a search committee sort of um how many people who you wanted to make sure it was represented what the balance was that's a school committee decision um and then also the second part of that is then if you have these designated seats how do those get allocated how do you decide which Elementary
029School parent gets it which teacher gets it um so that is when that happens while the files are coming in um one of the things that masc does is we always make sure that we train our search committees before they meet and before they have applications um while you're familiar with the open meeting law and confidentiality and the state code of ethics it's not something that necessarily your search committee is going to be so I meet with them for a training prior to them doing anything else so that they have all of that information um they sign a statement of confidentiality they're familiar with the conflict of interest law those who need to make a file a declaration do that at that point um and then we put them through open meeting law training particularly
030because most of their meetings are going to be an executive session and they need to have an understanding of how that works um and then they've already done that by the time the um applications then all compiled and they get shared with the the search committee confident confidentially vert the the electronic um needs final questions one thank you thanks thank you very much all right we'll take a few minutes for the groups to uh switch up the rooms [Music] thanks Tracy go ahead if you're ready good evening thank you for having us here um we're going to probably share some information that's very similar to uh to masc my name is H Dr Judy Puchi I'm a former superintendent and I'm now a staff associate with uh NE and um here is David my name
031is Dr David deusi I the executive director of Nez this is my second year as the executive director here at n de and I have put 34 years 33 in Massachusetts as an educator super in from special ed teacher to superintendent in two districts one year as an inter in New Hampshire and now I am fortunate enough to be here working for next so Judy will be a lead consultant on this so I'll here do some of the talking we've given you a a folder it's just a very simple outline we're going to walk through it what a search through our company would be like the proposal you received was for a guided search and I think the only difference between comprehensive search versus the guidance search is focus GRS but we'll talk about that
032when we get there so I'll let you start we're just going to kind of tag to you this so if you have any questions stop right in the middle you'll hear it very similar than not so there you go so first I I hope you notice that throughout the whole outline you'll see a lot of communication I think that's the key to a good search the search is your search we are assisting you with that search so we start with a a meeting for planning and organization setting a timeline expectations for when things will happen um and we support the development of that timeline but of course um how you want the search to receive is up to you um there's also um National and Regional publication of the vacancy and one thing Nest has
033that many organizations don't have is the reach generally we reach not only the New England states but even Beyond so we uh set a publication of the vacancy both regionally Statewide regionally and nationally and so so um and so many people who are looking for a superintendency will periodically go to our website but also receive Outreach from us so there's a lot of so a little bit about nezda we with the New England School Development Council so nec's been in business for I think we're in a 78 years so we have a wide reach we run from Connecticut to main we're also members of the national school Development Council I sit on that board so that gives us reach be even right into uh the New York Pennsylvania and Connecticut area so when we're posting
034for your application your your future candidates we send out to all of those um agencies so we we will send them to New York we will send them to Connecticut we'll send them out as well as our Affiliates and our Constant Contact members which right now number close to 6,000 contact from like I said Connecticut all the way up to May so when we put a posting out for you it it goes up and we've had candidates as far as Singapore part of an application I completed a search in New Hampshire last year kide New London it's regional and they ended up hiring somebody from Missouri so we when y your posting will get out we'll give it the coverage it needs in all reality you'll probably have more candidates from Massachusetts however with having
035the wider reach you'll get to see candidates and interview some candidates that are maybe are further away and you'll know at the end that you really have the best candidate possible so uh as far as advertising goes um we um do the advertising for you so there's School spring is a very common place um for people to go for um who are searching for a superintendency but there's also top school jobs of the Ed week publication aasa online announcement National Alliance of black school Educators Association of Latino administrators and then um a professional diversity Network so we have a lot of means to get the news out there certainly um through a search with n de no one in the region will not know that you are for superintend one other piece we will work
036with the school committee on is developing the application letter and we feel that's an important part for the liaison of this search with us because you get a a chance to highlight your community your school district you're basically going to put the letter together so that if I deci if I see a posting for um the job I'm going to be able as a superintendent who's interested look at that letter learn learn so much about where you are as a district and then the idea is you're selling me to say hey this is a great place to come here and work and that's something we would work with the school board anything we do with you is through the board the committee approved by the committee so we don't make any decisions with regards to
037outreach what what the voice of the committee is the voice of the committee we will help you put it together we will help package it you approve it you put it up okay so and in addition to the um advertising that we'll do uh we have a constant contact Network and so this um information goes out to just a wide variety of of people across the state um as as uh David said a little while ago um The Proposal you'll have you have in front of you is for a guided search uh we can expand that to also include focus groups that is totally up to you um but um I have had experience with focus groups you get a lot of very good information from those focus groups uh we would sit down with
038you at the very beginning to decide who should we be reaching out to what type of information do we want to gather from people and what the timeline for that would be in the electronic survey we use we start you you'll have access to that that through this proposal we're seeing a an uptick in responses to the online surveys it's a we much like other you know agencies we start off with two basic questions what would you like to see in your next superintendent what skills what traits and then we usually ask the next question would be what would be in the first six months what would be some of the challenges and tasks but then the online survey also has places where you can put in their open-ended questions responses and the way we
039break it down it's an anonymous survey but we can graph how many teachers respond how many parents respond how many administrators respond so that and we pull all that together give that to the committee to review a you ODS to have but also if you had made the decision to all right we could use that survey maybe one or two focus group you can pull together a candidate profile out of that I helped a small smaller District in New Hampshire they did the survey I sat with the leas on we looked at it and they built their own profile off that survey we just B I had the lia on we worked it out she sent me the bullets we went back and forth and and she basically helped build their own candidate profile and
040then during the time when applications are being received um we are the folks who um potential applicants will call if they have any questions uh we hold on to those applications but at the same time we're in constant communication with you so if you have questions about um you know how many applications have come in so far what does it look like have we had a lot of response it's the communication is is ongoing and um so you'll have our telephone numbers we'll be probably speaking to at least a contact person on the school committee um single during the process and again we put a lot of emphasis and it's the the most difficult part of research comes down to the screening committee so we would help you navigate those Waters would help you decide
041who how many you'd like on that school committee uh screening committee we will meet with the screening committee prior we will meet post afterwards so how that works for us really is um work with ala on we send the information we have all of this in gous number of templates so if you need the letter that to recruit people for the screening committee we have different examples we give that to you you could make it yours you put your name you send it out so the screening committee we recommend anywhere between 9 and 12 is manageable I did a search um last year with 22 that was a bit of a that was cumbersome but again so we we help you with that we will train up that screening committee we'll come in in person
042train them walk them to the confidentiality laws rules we leave it up to the district uh some searches that I've been involved in they will bring a clerk from the town side with one sheet of paper review confidentiality rules have everybody sign off some districts have their own policies which we'll review at that meeting with them sign off the confidentiality piece is big but that first meeting what we would do is Comm in because you get a different group of stakeholders we recommend you look for positions not people so you definitely want someone representing the teachers we always Advocate maybe a union president a vice president you want an administrative voice you may want a PTO parent voice you may want the special ed per parent group so you look at positions because you're right
043you're going to get inundated everybody will want to be on it the goal is get a collective stakeholder voice you have different opinions at that table we collect all the applications what we will do would come in that first day Train everybody the liais on Judy we be working together but when we leave that first day we do this a little different each member of that screening committee has access to our link and password to see all the apps you may say why would you give us all the applicants nezda and its history we wouldn't scream to you unless you asked us to because I'm not sure what you may think is really paper this is a person this paperwork looks great versus you may say I like this one and I may say after
04433 years of whatever I don't think any of them fail so that would not be our job our job is to give it to all your screening committee members individually they go through them we have a tool where they can rank them so after you look at Dave on paper you have the ability to click on a survey that comes in touch nobody else one definitely want to see Dave again two someone want to see Dave again three not interested in seeing dat so that work is done by the screening committee individually they do that work then we come back for the second meeting which is scheduled and what we would have for you is the ranking of how everybody on that screening committee individually saw each candidate now this is the real work is
045the deliberation so you see the top five and then it's like how many people do you want to bring back to screen and we work through that I have seen that work where somebody that might be in the middle of the pack gets moved to the top of the pack because Del Liberation in the room I've seen people at the top drop a little but that's the work of the screening committee we're there to facilitate that it's your search your candidate pool we want you to make the best choices screening committee at the end of that will then say we want to see these eight people to interview we do the the happy calls we do the not so happy calls and we' deal with all of that we'd work with the committee to set
046up a schedule and then screening committee goes to work screening committee will decide who they want to move forward once again we would have all the reference checks on our end meaning make sure their uh paperwork's in order reference checks go either way I agree sometimes School committees want to be part of that sometimes they don't we have a process to help make that easier for school boards to do the reference checks but again that's up to you uh it's your search I think it's a valuable piece to break up if you have five finalists share amongst the school committee give each one because we'll send them out we'll collect the data based on give the references for parents staff you work with administr so they'll send us 15 of those and I think it's
047valuable for the school committee at that point to each split some of the work up because then we each get a field for the Campa so when it does come time after the interviews and you're trying to decide who's the next superintendent you could turn around say well I checked the references the parents had a lot of good things to say you could say I checked the administrators they had so so many and the staff and then that's the deliberation so again we can go either way with that we could screen them check them but I think it's valuable to give some of that work back to the committee because you're going to be making those decisions and ultimately of course it's your decision on who is the candidate that best meets this District's needs
048um whether a candidate profile is done solely by the committee or with uh through focus groups that candidate profile that description of a perfect person for the job the superintendent here drives the work throughout the process so even if you have a screening committee part of the training is making sure that they are not looking just out of their lens but out of the lens of here's what the school committee decided is the ideal candidate here's the profile of an ideal candidate so when you're developing questions you ask questions to get at is the person that's sitting in front of us meet that profile um and then if you get down to finalists then you get into the details about um okay here's our profile how best do each of these finalists meet that those
049criteria and what can we further ask references in order to really find out if if that's the right candidate for us so that candidate profile does Drive the process it's a profile that you all agreed to it's not our profile it's not a profile developed by the screening committee um but it it's something that's really important to make sure that you have candidate that meet your needs and we'll help the screening committee we have Banks of questions like I said NEC has been doing this a long time so we have questions we break them up by category so we'll work with the screening committee we'll give them all this information again the screening process from our Viewpoint is we always tell the screen you have to figure an hour with each candidate you have so
050many questions your job is you saw them on paper now bring them in person that's where you throw the questions that's you get a feel how does this person interact how we but I also remind uh School committees being some of that's interviewed for jobs as a superintendent there's a piece of where you're also being interviewed by that candidate they want to they want to see how you interact with each other they want to see the bigger picture how how do I feel when I'm sitting in front so we'll go over that also with the screening committee because I think that's an important piece as a kid they saw your application letter we really think this is where I want to be the way they interact with that screening committee is very important now once
051the finalist is chosen we come back in person we work with the actual school committee we have some advice on how to do that with work a schedule how do you want the interviews do you want days in District you you tell us we set that up we reach out to the candidates we we fill in the schedule for you and um you go from there we tend to not be in the interview process meaning we wouldn't be there for the interviews you would like Nez there we would be there uh the rationale for that is there are moments where the candidate if I'm in the back of the room and Judy is and they think we're we're the ones conducting the search I don't want them interviewing to me or Judy we we' rather
052them inter we're on call you'll have our cell numbers should have bumped in the road come you call we're ready we help you but again then the proposal will be there if you want us that's that's fine but we tend to leave we'll training we leave that work up to the screening committee and then the um actual work of the board if you wanted us for those final interviews we be there we'll set it all up then you do your job you last not we have the warranty which we hope we don't have to use but I see smiles there's a warranty and proposal if for whatever reason let's say you go through this whole process and you're like nope don't like any of them other than just the cost of US reposting and everything
053you you get a consultant back and we'll walk you right through the process again should for whatever reason the appointment not last through the first contract year then once again we would come back as part of the warranty you get the leas on you you get the consult we do the work for so we're hoping that does happen um in that folder I believe we're starting to do some work around Executive coaching and it ranges from entry plan support which we've done before to strategic planning strategic audits uh we're trying our best to build that relationship we build a relationship when we commit with the school committee and the school boards and I think if we could still manage to work with the relationship afterwards it would be better for everybody superintendent are becoming more
054and more difficult to find good ones if you have when you wanted to work you have a draft timeline to take a look at our search is your where the guided search is minus the focus groups they run a little bit FAS but the average search is about 120 days a guided search depending if you do want focus groups added if not how many you want that's up to you but um yeah they come in closer to that 90 90day because you're not losing weeks for the focus groups and writing it all up but that's the basic timeline you can see the benchmarks that we try to hit and our goal would be to help you build the search you need and facilitate it's a big task it's one of the most important jobs of
055a school committee is to do this work because you have a lot of rting on anybody have any questions I do yeah so I noticed um your develop letter and AD ends before Community needs assessed so are you posst for the job before the community needs assessment yes that's where I think the once this let you'll make a decision on which which group that would represent the search view once we know if it's us we would ask the next meeting we'd come right back we' have another in person the idea is we need a liaison so one once the school board committee decides the liaison is going to be Albert he's going to be the liaison if Alber gets tag then Albert and I go right you go right to work so what we would
056do is we' send some examples you can go online on our website you'll see what an application letter looks like we'd go right to work on that the faster it's approved repost yeah if that doesn't have the whole detail of a candidate profile that's like the basics you want some with with a certification you want want we would ask you do you expect experience with certain um roles and so on so that's the basics the candidate profiles gets into a bit more specifics and so we don't need that before we no that application letter as I said gives you the opportunity to tell somebody what's special about working and living and being here what is it that means this environment a special place to work so that's where as a school committee you'd want to
057pump in some of your you know what whatever is like new programs new projects also is if we would help you do that you craft a little bit about budgets like we've had you know stable budget for the last our budgets are approved we've had a stable school committee those are the things superintendent want to see they want to know that they're coming into a district that has a level of stability but there's progress also and we help you craft that and if it's not that way that's okay don't worry about it works out having been in several districts in my life yeah so just a point of clarification I I like myself have doing this 30 plus years right multiple searches that I participated in on all levels so you keep referring to Liaison
058right it's important to school Community to know that it might not be you two that we're going to be working it's going to be her leison is from y so we'll be working with you'll be working with you AB make sure no that's we're here J your I'll sh some work I like to be on the ground with people like to her up as well so that we'll never have a conflict there's always G to be somebody who can respond to you but I'll be the primary person but there'll be someone from the school committee he'll be and then we need one well L could double is disos person also because if we get a call at nesda you know what's going on with the Sur we would refer that to Y everything comes back
059to the committee so we need somebody who can answer those questions for us but no we Judy's on the point I'm in here um and and again we you may see other Nez we're we have a team so even in my office Christina I think you've talked with Christina she's we we work as a group but I may I'm trying to train people too so you may find this three of us here at this screening committee meeting just because I'm trying to train people in the process any other questions the the broad Outreach is great that you go outside of the area I'm just curious how often you find an outside of the area per candidate would be willing to come to such a small District I think you know I I'll I'll tell you
060a little bit from experi my own experience I do think the majority do come from the general area in the particular State I have spent most of my career in Rhode Island um when I was ready for a superintendency I don't know if you know this but there's only 38 districts in Rhode Island so you either have to wait for someone to pet you know uh to move on it's it's difficult I ended up going to Maine so so I was in Maine um I had to come back for family so I drew a circle around Providence ended up in Massachusetts so yes you get candidates from um from nearby States in general far fewer candidates will come from outside New England but there will be some and there have been some that have come
061to New England that have been really pretty successful bring a different perspective um working in different states you really learn to um to not take things for granted because people just generally do things differently um but there's some advantages to having people who understand the Massachusetts way as well that'll be up to you but being able to compare candidates from a wider wider stretch I think is very advantageous there there have been moments and we get we people contact us so superintendent will call us so that's another piece of the Outreach um I and I know of at least two superintendents out of state trying to get back into State we had one from New Hampshire t h last year search for us so there's this kind of crossborder people trying to either get back
062in that had left people that had you know looking to just start something brand new Massachusetts still was a very attractive state for Education too all right thanks for coming in pleasure have my contact that contact thank you for your app just I guess I think the search subcommittee Lori that's you and Megan and Jeff maybe take all this in get a meeting in the next little bit of time and then our our next meeting make a decision on what we're GNA do and get started all right okay we're gonna as if we're starting over right let's start with our our public comments so is anybody here public comment yeah all right uh anyone who's here public comment if you don't mind head up to the front of the room name and address and what
063you like to talk to how many just anyone else all right uh we're going to try to stick to our comment policy which is three minutes but you're the only one so go ahead right up there be great thank you jasonette Berlin um my son Kaden is a fifth grader at EMS uh he spends almost two hours a day on a bus uh I'm here to extend mine and my wife's support for the work alls has done starting making the bus routes more Equitable in terms of how much time kids spend on the bus we are in favor of the proposal to reverse the afternoon routes to SW as outline it should be noted that running the routes currently takes longer than they need to the routes can be redesigned to help take much less
064time than they do that's not hypothetical this has been proven when chip Durant was the substitute driver filling in on the route my son spent much less time on the bus that he does today I understand r r design is out of scope of the current discussion but it is worth noting that we may not be in this situation to begin with if the RS took less time overall personally I'm willing to accept that I chose to live on the edge of count furthest from the school and my long my son would have the longest commute as result but the excessive time the rep takes is what brings me here today as a Band-Aid to cor route design I support the proposal to flip us three and with an additional request to please consider Route
065efficiency and optimization during the upcoming contract process I want to thank Bob Holmes for the amount of time and energy he has put into analyzing the bus routes proposing the solution seeking input from Neighbors and Town's people working with the district and nrt and now presenting to the school committee in offering my feedback to Bob I looked at an additional dimension of the data are more kids positively impacted then negatively impacted no by how much Bob's analysis will show that The Proposal results in equity that all students will have the same overall daily commute time but I was curious how many kids will gain time versus how many kids will lose time in this proposal my question is rooted in the Assumption most people who deal with commute is going to get shorter will likely
066support flipping the Reps people whose daily commute is going to get longer will likely objective flipping those by doing the math on what the current commute is versus the proposed commute and see how much time is gained by shorter commutes versus how much is lost by longer commutes with the assumption that shorter is good and longer is bad in mind we can look at the data if more kids save more time and fewer kids lose less time the rush should flip if more kids kids lose time and fewer kids save time the route should not flip bus three is skewed heavily in favor of flipping the route based on this criteria 41 students benefit from the change versus 21 are negatively impacted by the change there is more time saved than there is time lost
06717 students will lose 21 minutes a day but that enables 27 students to save 30 to 63 minutes a day more students save more time than relatively fewer students losing less time pending large review and redesign of routing in the future please enable to propose Solutions starting after the holidays this school year so kids aren't spending almost two hours a day the last thank you final call anyone else all right uh any Communications I know other than uh we did receive many Communications regarding the bus situation um both in favor of and against switching so does anybody else have any other Communications we received emails reced uh yeah comment on we also yeah we a lot of comments as well that come up with question there were separ EMA would sure yeah I thought that
068went every I didn't get anything yeah I just got the synopsis that has a bunch of comments from the emails but not the I think Jason's email yeah I said it just you yeah so that might be a sorry Miss but a lot of those emails were and we just try that we're getting a few here and there so we talk to Mike and and John will talk a little bit later about it so that's why we just send the survey up to everybody so we can Capt everybody instead of just one e here be a good Capt everybody's comments anybody else have any if I could I I just I heard you guys say they just put comments from the email those comments are just from the survey right clarify that because it is
069confusing all right no others all right the uh the consent agenda um before we get a motion on that um I only see the me the minutes in there I don't see the warrant in there is there a warrant for appr there there were warrants signed this month be warrants yeah they are not in the file we'll make sure they're in the next apologies all right so should we just go the minutes and it's fine I don't want anyone to vote on anything they have not seen they have a motion to approve the consent agenda November 124 meeting minutes please second Megan okay any discussion on those I don't know if it matters but it says that Julie Lee was present instead of me unlisted further down but this the top section yeah I see
070that there yeah all right um have motion to amend the motion to include Elizabeth M's name and jul minutes J second any discussion on that sorry all those in favor of the amendment I Against All right so the amended motion passes we are now the original motion to approve minutes and discussion minutes all right and all in favor on this motion hi yes all right the motion passes the November meeting minutes okay uh next up is the chair's report I really don't have anything specific to say other than the other agenda items on the agenda so we'll just continue on to superintendent's report please thank you so apologize I got sort of a l for tonight um so good evening before go anywh I just want to sort of reiterate what Mike said to congratulate
071our high school football team um who are Super Bowl champions um I know that making the decision on behalf of even the school team myself to have that half day last Friday was met certainly with mixed feelings but seeing my students win and having that many people in the stands certainly moving them on was a memory that none of our students will forget not only for the students that were playing but also for students to have a chance to be that close on Jen stadium and that close to the field and some of our students actually even being on the field um so we want to congratulate our our high school football team in the cheerleaders that did some great work as well too uh there'll be a parade for them on on this coming
072Saturday at 10 o'clock I'm starting at the West Wilston Town Hall um so please be able to make it join us we also have something special play for our football team that we're working on right now for Friday long as well too that we're trying to keep that sort of a secret until till Friday takes place as well too but congrat rations um Mike you have said something lately that really holds true for this moment that we we need to celebrate our successes right and this is one of our successes we should absolutely be proud of our our kids the way they handle themselves in the field and it's just really remoc to see them doing that so congratulations to those guys um I'm gonna this time ask our student rep I know Matt D's
073here with us they know you have a little bit you like to share with us Matt if you could yeah um I don't have too much to share this time um the first thing I got was some student coun events are recently held so we had our Thanksgiving food drive which we hold every year uh it went really well so we donate a whole bunch of canned goods to um the Boon and Berlin pantries as well as we put together a couple of Thanksgiving dinners for uh dinners for Tonto families um and then our upcoming stuco thing we're doing something a little bit weird around this year we always have our winter Spirit Week this year we're doing it combined middle and high school so I'm looking forward to it it's going to be a
074lot of fun I think um we've never done it before so might be a little bit crazy but um and sportswise obviously as mentioned our Lions football team won the for the third year in a row won the state championship um and also the girls varsity soccer team for the second year in in a row made it to the uh State final four competition so that was really awesome um and other than that there's not really much else to mention that I have so I think that it's about yeah we need to make sure that uh the soccer team doesn't sh we celebrate I think we acknowled at the last abely fin agreed agreed absolutely um thank you thanks M so the next item on the agenda is proposing for the bus route changes for
075the town of gr town of gr um this time I'd like to introduce for those who don't know W Holmes who will give us a brief presentation on the proposal that proposal plus changes um after B presents I'm going to have John Campbell um will provide us some data based on a survey that was sent out to parents at brillin um so and I thinkk John he actually spare ahead of that for me so I I appreciate that and after that I'll I'll ask be asking SCH Comm to just give me a little bit of direction on how to receive um as a super school um and I look forward to that feedback from them making this final decision on this so I'll turn it over to ball homs at this time please so good
076evening folks uh school committee superintend gam thanks for inviting me and sharing some of your time if I haven't had the opportunity to meet you my name is Bob Holmes I'm a parent in Berlin I have three daughters in grades three four and five at bur Memorial School um what I'm about to show you is uh four years worth of lobbying uh with past School administrators to make an improvement to the bus routing in Berlin I'll try to keep it concise for you uh so to start I want everyone to know that as a family that utilizes the bus uh we recognize it's job one is to get our kids safely to and from school it does that uh very effectively over here and we're very appreciative of that um what I want to also
077highlight is that buses also create the first and last um experience of school for kids and uh while we are grateful for the system we have There's an opportunity to make it even better for our kids and it's free so as mentioned uh as Jason mentioned and perhaps youve as you've heard from others that have written in uh today the way buses run in Berlin uh the afternoon routes are run backwards they're run in Reverse as compared to the morning routes what that means is the student that's picked up first in the morning spends the entire route on the bus before they get to school and then that same students dropped off last so they have they make their way all the way back before they're dropped off um this might mean and it does
078mean in some cases uh over an hour to school and an hour home um as par of kids affected by this that are in this situation I can tell you that they are absolutely drained by the time they get off the bus it's a tough experience I work 35 miles from my house and I don't spend that much time in the car going to and front work I think it's it's unreasonable to expect an elementary school kid to do that especially in a small town where all children live within three miles of the school fortunately there's a really simple solution and that is to Simply run routes in the same order in the afternoon as you do in the morning uh there's a few benefits first of all it's it's one route for bus drivers
079to to memorize and just repeat it morning and afternoon um the child has picked up first they might have a long commute to school but they'll benefit with a short commute on the way home because they'll be the first dropped off and it creates you'll you'll see that it creates perfect equity for every student every child has exactly the same amount of time on the bus from each bus rout use I'll give you an example for bus three so what I'm showing here is the current routing for bus three and the total amount of time a student spends on the bus is plotted in the Y AIS and these are the various stops that that bus makes across the x- axis you can see the disparity from someone that lives on lyen Street versus someone
080that's on Highland or or one of the other addresses there is not a correlation between distance from the school it's not like uh we live in a a town where there's an extreme other side of the track section where someone would expect an hour ride to school as I said everyone been three miles BMS on this list yeah there's a pretty substantial disparity by simply switching that uh flipping the PM route back so it runs in the same order as the morning route you get this it is is mathematically perfect equity for every student everybody's got an hour on bus it might be 5 minutes in the morning and 55 minutes on the way home it might be 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes on the way home it might be 55 minutes
081in the morning five minutes on the way home but everybody spends the same amount of time today this is what it looks like side to side it said 60 minutes per day perfectly level loaded for every student there's one route for the driver to memorize and by my math the driver's getting home doing it this way and this is excluding you know some of the optimizations that that Mr pette mentioned that are out of scope through this conversation but recommend it for meview summer same thing applies to bus two You' got the same disparity um bus two is a bit shorter than bus 3 so it'll be a 45 minute toll duration per day per child that buys the bus level load every day and similarly you get a similar effect on bus one bus
082one is a 55 minute route and so students will spend 55 minutes so proportioned uh differently morning and afternoon on on where their pickup time is on the RO there aren't that many opportunities where a little tweak can make a sweeping broad Improvement to a community this is one of those opportunities and your vote can enable it tonight um I do want to share before we get to that point a little context about how we got here so I want you to understand families in Bur and have been living with for four years in three months it'll be four year anniversary this was first raised uh at least on my radar in March of 2021 a different family in Berlin brought this up they found their child was exhausted getting off the bus after an
083hour commute and they brought it up to the then director of box and finance Robert conry um within a week of that inquiry I'll direct you to what's in the red box Mr conry replied the following what you propose is generally how we like the routes to be structured so overall drive time is similar for all students he he passed the request to nrt our bus company and within seven days the lead dispatcher of nrt said the following Bob I think this is something we can accommodate in the past the route was run like this for a student with medical reasons that student no longer Rides the Bus both Bob uh both Mr conry and nrt committed to making that change and within weeks in April he was married and the Rost were changed in
0842021 everybody celebrated um in August of 22 at the beginning of the next school year the routes were published and we quickly noticed that they reverted back um I had reached out to Mr con's replacement he had retired and uh Miss kisy took his place I reached out to to miss kisy and over the course of several months uh several weeks excuse me and informing her and getting her the back story um she agreed and committed to making the change on October 17th or reply to me good morning the bus company will be rerouting this run in the afternoon they'll do their best to have it done by October 17th it'll be different than what you had as I was missing some stops that were added after the school started great we're going to fix
085it you might remember in 2022 postco there was a complete crisis and shortage of bus drivers so before this was enacted well help BR close for lack of better terminology and we didn't have bus drivers in many cases we didn't have buses at all we were combining routes and so really the the year was spent triaging a bus driver crisis um so regrettably this was but understandably this was uh deprioritized to just try to get some buses going we accepted that in 2022 we were still uh optimistic in August of 23 when the routes were published that it would be there it wasn't again the old the old pattern so I reached out to um again miss kiski former superintendent Costello dragging the backstory with me and informing them on on what happened and what
086we were hoping to do immediately after they were published uh we had a few weeks of back and forth with uh former superintendent Costello and she expressed her frustration that she couldn't get through to nrt on this uh in her words in 23 the battle revers the bus route has become insurmountable at this point and I both tried to understand and to demand the reasoning from nrt they maintain it will take longer uh that all buses operate in this manner yada yada yada um at this point she even uh considering bringing in legal counsel to uh Strongarm nrt into getting this done where we landed was bottom box now fully aware of your concerns I can Advocate earlier in the year for changes such as yours to be honored um I made a reminder on
087my phone that day remind Carol Of July 1 to follow up with nrt um and when that reminder came up I sent her the email and within a couple of the days you got back to me this is in uh July 10th summer before this school year thank you for your email Bob I haven't forgotten you as soon as we begin bus route discussions with nrt I will push to have this Chang I'll reach out to them this week just as a reminder that we had discussed making the change for this year so they could take it into consideration as they plan great me being annoyingly persistent I reminded her again several weeks later actually shortly after I saw the retirement notice hope you great yada yada yada did you have an opportunity to connect
088with nrt for this year and I never heard a respon August of 24 the routes are published again and of course they're in the same same old pattern uh so at that point I reached out immediately to the superintendent uh to the school commit probably within hours maybe minutes of the bre being published right there was a flurry of emails and uh this process has taken us where we are today the information this information was presented last week at the BMS parent teacher organization link at school and here of course today bottom line uh we've got a number of families that are really looking have this change done um it's it does create as you can see perfect Equity the math is beautiful perfect equity for every student it's free and it's simpler most importantly
089it does create a better experience for our kids every day um want to just uh highlight again uh that the Administration has been aware of this issue for nearly four years there has never been push back there has never been an argument to not do it I don't think there's a reason to not do it but for one reason or another we've been living with it for four years so i' asked that while I understand changing routes mid year is not ideal please as we consider voting do not ask these families to wait a little bit longer and get again so if you have any questions that happy be taken but that's all I have to plan to present question on your like first or second slide um it had on the way home it
090was a second slide um 13 to home for the first kid off the bus the second no next one 13 minutes long yeah yeah with the asteris I was curious what yeah so the bus actually uh I used the published bus routes to calculate all of this and um the route starts the clock starts while the bus is sitting at the DMS parking lot and it sits there for 12 minutes loading kids and then it goes and drops the first child off so the child you know if they're the first one on the bus immediately they might sit on the bus for 13 minutes but it's actually driving for 60 seconds uh or if they're last on you know if they if they jump on last it might be just 6 seconds but that's that's
091why that's little all three buses are there they only dismiss one bus at a time so the bus will be sitting there for while right any questions well thanks thank you I I remember last year your conversation we spoke a lot about it I mean I'm also a family that's on the we do have another side of the tracks in town I mean schools on that side of the track we're on this side TR uh and I'm one of those families too and I specifically remember talking to you and speaking to Carol and NC I remember their commitment and promise to you do this it's another one of those things that was dropped this summer but UMO yeah gets dropped every year every every year those with last year specifically was tough was Nancy's first
092year doing it full I I remember specifically sitting in a conversation with you those two and the commitment that they made to you and your emails show exactly what happened there so I'm with you I'm with you John you're gonna have a say about the the comments from the parents I'm with you but I am concerned about the comments we received those in favor are a general yeah I'm in favor let's do it the ones that are against they're a lot more detailed about how significantly this will impact families so I just I don't know what's going to happen I just want you to understand that it might be perfect equity in time I mean I love Equity it's all it's all equity in time everybody's equal but it's not for the families that are
093voting these comments there are some that are you know they're they're going to be hurting if it's media but that said here we go like I would just add that I I understand that please consider that the families on the short end of this stick have been hurting for four years we've been enduring this right it's not convenient to have this I know you I know you feel that way I just don't think every family feels that so my kids are now at tondo this is more than four years old this has been going on like my kids left the building before this ever got fixed the roots get published like a day every year it gets a little bit closer at the first day of school and then not only it just that they
094promise to reverse the route and they don't but they all the corrections that were made the year before where you have kids being picked up on the wrong side of the street you have kids walking down South Street it all revers and then everyone calls and they say you got to give it a week it's the first week of school you have to be patient he doesn't have a chance to rectify it before school starts so I'm sorry that it's December and we're doing this but no one's ever given a chance over the summer to fix it that's our fault the school district's fault so like I said like I'm one of the families that is impact this will impact our schedule it will make it hard for us but I'm also sport H but
095I didn't mean to steal John th you stolen fund stolen just real quickly I you know we wanted to make sure that everybody had a chance they have their voice heard you can see in the graph about two-thirds of the family favorite I don't have the data to support it but I would guess that it's onethird of the people who would benefit and one third of the people who wouldn't see a lot of change so fine we can make a change that last one through the people that that we're talking about who've made their child care arrangements for the year their work arrangements for the year um I thought that the observation about the people opposed being you know having a more concrete set of reasons um is is is very accurate um and it's
096hard if I can go a little further with your permission by all thankk it is what happens every year last year I checked while um we were talking earlier we got the bus routs August 27 for August 29 start and it's not the first time this is not so much school district created as it is our inability to motivate our employee andrt because you said something at link the other night I think it's the same list that just keep copying it I thought oh my goodness he's probably right yeah we get all this talk from them about oh we're working on it we're putting a lot of time into it this year and it is it's the same bus rooms and I think that's where whatever you decide with this and you know Mike you
097know I would love to see the kids had that I think we have to weigh parent concerns in that as well but we have to be it has to be July 1 we are on these people we can't accept bu what later than what August 1st August 7th maybe because it's just it's just bad business because when it comes on the 27th there is literally then they start oh we need a week and then they start to tweak a couple things you know every year I have to call Sergeant goulder this bus Stop's not safe these kids have to cross the street there is no sidewalk here it's a huge time cyle and for what because it's e for them just to copy the bus over um but yeah it was nice we had 70
098parents respond to this that's probably about a third of the households in the school the other thing that I thought was interesting and someone brought it up um several people mentioned Tahanto having the same problem so this is bigger than just little Berlin and I think you know yeah but it's not a problem at thees nobody has complained or I mean I have not heard and I they were reversed at bees for at least one of the years we've been here and back I think the issue and we talked about this last year the issue is I think burland needs another bus we actually threw that in the budget full $60,000 I think so I think to have kids on a bus in kindergarten for an hour is a lot I don't think it's right
099but um it was just something and again that would be 100% going back to the town right if you need another Berlin bus whether it be for Dondo or BMS it's Berlin cost and you know it was a very tight squeeze last year so we were not able to accommodate that the difference in Boyston is I don't think any kid is on the bus for longer than 30 minutes permission to talk yes so um at Boyston it's it's not more than an hour um it's 45 minutes to an hour we get that all call when they're clear every day the issues with Wilson again we got that bus route two days before school started the other issues were unsay stops that again that takes our time at the beginning of the year and that wait
100to give us a week give us two weeks and there was a family waiting for I think a month this year about an unsafe stop that was super gum finally took care of for this family they were very grateful that that is an issue the time needs to be bumped up from this company yeah sorry so so not that I need to defend anybody Theus is really us as a district right so Aaron and I can attest for working in the Regional School District for many years there's a window that we have during the sum we're supposed to submit our bus rooms and and that's what happened this year we're supposed to submit our bus rooms submitting changes get feedback from families look at the stud who a graduate and don't longer need bus look
101at our preschool kids who are coming on board with their addresses and submit that all to the bus company it doesn't for the emails that I've seen that we submitted that at time we had and for us not to submit it to them that's good the issue was so when I my first day in August I was like where are the bus RS where are the bus rots and we did a lot of pushing to get them for the day we didn't I think it was shortly after I started that we got them in there but there's always a window that you're giving during the summer to put all that information in that we missed this past in fullest you need to know that the second part about that is is we're in the process
102starting to negotiate a new contract with our house company and that would be one of the things that will be of utmost important to us about making sure that we have these Buss in time so that if there is an error or there is an unsafe bu that we can make those changes before school starts but not after but in all Regional School Districts you do have a window of opportunity to to submit those Buss if I can clarify um we are not renegotiating with our Busan we're putting it out to bid that's right thank you right good so do we have to vote on this so I'm not asking you to vote on this I'm asking you to give me some guidance personally I think this is this makes sense the one thing asking
103from school committee does it make sense now in in January to do this right so that's why we brought the survey up the families and get some input for them this will absolutely something that we put in place for next year for sure in the fall it will be in the summer I should say we be putting this in place as well as looking at the other roots and getting input from secretaries in principles about are these the roots that we need for next year and submitting them to nrt or whoever the bus company is thanks Aon for that clarification but I just need some direction from school committee is this something that you need me to do now or is this something that you want me to wait on um until the fall I
104I do have to say that seeing the emails of of the exchange back and forth I think there were some promises made that this wouldn't be in place um so I I just give you all that information hope that you guys can give me some Direction with to and we're doing that right now because winter break is coming that's they need some time to notify that's right PS need time to rearrange if this does happen that's right col would doing it in October and it's taking place that week so when I met first with Mike fron from nrt he would it would detain it during the the fall they spring that might was he needed to do this at the Christmas break so we could train the bus drivers whether whatever that looks like to
105make sure they re and I that's less than a month away I mean most people have their January work schedule so I I don't support kids being on the bus more than an hour but just from a working parent perspective like you you know every second counts for you getting home to that last time so I respectfully I would like to suggest maybe after February break just to allow parents more than a month to adjust their work schedules to get home a different time sorry um so first of all I have to compliment Bob on that presentation because I don't know how you could look at that and and not be horrified not only by the amount the amount of um inequity that that is that is there but also how long it's taken you
106to get here and you've been told yes so many times along the way and you still had to persist um I empathize if this was you know if this was December 20th or something I feel like it's December 10th um I feel like there's enough time and and I believe me I'm very much on the fence about it because I get both sides but I just feel like it's really terrible to have these kids on the bus that long twice a day I just that doesn't sit right with me and we talk a lot about diversity Equity inclusion and that is not Equity so thank you for taking the time to do that because it really made it clear anybody else yeah he said you well I was on Ball Hill I am on Ball
107Hill Road to and my kids were in that same situation it was awful and I just ended up driving them most of the time because of that you know that's not ideal for many reasons so just and I do think it's really unfair you know to have been going on for this long so I like I you know I would be like yeah like let's change it now but I really do worry about the families that have to change their schedule so I think that just had a really great idea to wait until February but like to do it this year and don't delay you know until next year I uh one thing that must cut me out correct me if I'm wrong the reason we're doing it now is the break we would start
108January AR one way and go until February and then make a switch that not be the same issue as if we were to deci side in October yeah they really uh uh they want the break the change to take place during the Christmas break right and and I'm not again for training they they can hide bring the bus driv is in they can practice the roots with no kids on it so they don't want to be able to do that and Christmas break is a long longer than usual so they'll be able to do that as well too and um and so that's the direction and this at this point and I think said that in the presentation there's zero cost with them saying to us in January this at this break this is what
109you Happ they did not give me a a suggestion of February January um I was gonna ask Mr Campbell and this might be more of a Mrs rappa question how often do kids end up back at the school because they didn't and what are the what grades do they have to be in to get off the bus by themselves you have to be they can't be in elementary school I think okay think it's 13 and how often do they boomering that very okay yeah so answer they have not be an elementary to be let off the I think I and this is that's a JY question 12 or 13 but sometimes like for fifth graders if the parent has talked to the bus driver they'll well then there's that whole piece sometimes parents and bus
110drivers move their own is a small town they generally but so if those parent is not there they will send the kid back to the school so that would obviously be we don't want yes I've experienced that hold them but I think if it's at a house they leave them at the house it's like if it's a stop and there's no parents there so like I know if it's that a if if it's a kindergartener and there's nobody there they're not they're not you po people must I don't know what you guys so respectfully there there is a cost to the parents who now will have to leave work potentially early that they arrange their jobs to get home at a certain time um and in terms of the length of the break versus February
111break both um if you celebrate Christmas and New Year's are both during the weeks so there that Still Remains five working days for them to do that schedule because I doubt they're going to have their drivers come in on christmasday so respectively you know they have the same amount of time to train their drivers in February break versus winter break um and again likely most people have their schedule at least a month in advance um some two or three months in advance so you know we are a more diverse economic District and our calendar has not recognized that fully recently and so I think this would be an appropriate time to recognize that time needs to be allowed for people to adjust yeah Bob um this conversation specifically that you're having you've made several presentations
112to the B parents so it's not t it's not the first time B and parents know this is coming right how many times have you presented the parents the group like official groups formally last week at the parent teacher organization was the first time I stood up and gave this pitch to any parent one and inally conversations happen in all four years I hear what Jess is saying and I'm with you I'm one of these parents who will be impa my kids the first off the bus last off it does impact our situation but I also you know this statement came up during Co for the first time schools are not dayare right it's not our child care our responsibility is to educate get home safely uh and make sure it's fair so even though
113this personally impacts me and our family and our schedule we're going to have to figure something out it's also I look at the bus and they're empty because kids are there's a lot of activities after schools staying after school is All Sports basketball after school right now just about the entire school is playing his enrichment activities after prr the bus in the afternoon my kids getting home much earlier than the state at time so I would support this for January and that's what we need to do tonight is tell Al you support or not Al's going to make this decision it's within his jurisdiction so yeah I agree yeah I I think if you could ask them if you could have a little bit of a grace period if one of you guys could talk
114to nrt and maybe you get like even a little bit more time so people can arrange your schedule I am in that camp of I feel for people that have that situation where they they're you relying on the bus times for their work um but at the same point in time you know I talked on the phone with Bob in September and this was supposed to be done in September so the fact that we're talking about this now I'm I was shocked I thought it was already done and I mean back in April of 2021 Bob Conor just made the decision in a week and it was just like all right this is happening um so I feel like this has been the reason that it's the way it is is because of mistakes on
115the The District's part it was decided in April of 2021 as clearly shown that the routes should be reversed we talked about adding a bus last year I think again that is the actual solution to this problem because I don't think kids should be on the bus for an hour um but that's just not in the cards right now so I I think the right thing to do is to to make this change and maybe see if there's you know to jce point where what like 10 15 days out from there's MLK day yeah so right exactly you at least get a little bit more time to make the change that's not that's just going to give people that extra time to figure out what they need to do so I think what I'm hearing
116correct me if I'm wrong we support the change it's just a question of the date so yes at least Me Maybe we say we support the change and now works out the date with ourt that works best so what I think I'm hearing is that absolutely so I will call nrt tomorrow and see if it's doable for a February break and if they say to me there's going to be a cost for it or we can't do it during that time and again this isn't them giving me this information then we'll we'll do the January date is that everyone okay with that alternatively they could train during winter break as planned and then enacted on MLK day I'm going to talk to them so it sounds like we're not waiting till the fall we're going
117to try to get the earliest date um that works for our families and and works for the nrt as well too yeah I'm curious I know sometimes um for after school program you can only enroll with certain times I don't know if that's true i' BMS but I don't know if that if any particular W you know waiting period could be waved for any fames that might need to use after nobody okay so you can say oh now I need this and just one last thing ver John did really great work in this he even know he's been was very helpful with this getting the survey up to parents having scheduled a meeting with w and I the par CR I appreciate that F guys decisions made that this work we have too like notifying
118parents get the information out so this will be one of the to priorties Tom all to find out I'll send an email up to you guys at schoy after I talk to nrt and then we'll proceed that meet with John and go from there I would just like to make a request if we do go with that February date the first time those kids are on the bus is February 24th which is more than two months from now I don't think February is a is a realistic time if we're going to compromise then sometime in January to give people a heads up would be okay I mean I'm good with J I'm good with right after vacation but if you feel there's more of a time I just don't think that's fair I don't really
119understand we training the bus drivers to re every well I like Jessica's idea of training them and giving a little bit of a plum so everybody then everybody get a little bit what they this is them so I got to talk yeah MLK would be idealized I agree okay so we have that I feel and just to Echo I really appreciate that they did J that you took hours and hours hours and John you as well that up the survey it was really nice to actually see what parents you know were saying and feeling and see data I'm sorry sh thank youate sorry do I continue so I want to give a little update about vocational schools because I know that was a conversation we had at the previous school training meeting um I had
120a chance to speak with the superintendent schools Ernie H uh he is a superintendent aspect so just a little background because I needed to make sure I understood this um as well and most of you probably understand it more than I do um but 1968 10 school districts were asked to participate in the formation of as um they were all invited to come in um K and lot of them B to be in London as well too three school districts when it came time to really initiate that and go forward with this preschool district B and one of them was Wilson at the time um so in the past um would talked to the superintendent the the average number of students that apply was anywhere about 179 right so about 179 so there was room
121there um and so we'd have kids that there'd be opportunities for students that were outside of district and W is considered to be outside of District they could apply and G able to pull from the the ly of those students that there most recently what with their their approximate they're receiving anywhere from 450 to 500 applications now yield um um they accept 300 so that's from just in District so that 150 that I put on weight list are still kids from in districts and you know be one of them um bolon students can apply But after those slots are filled are not used then the opportunity for Bon kids can the one thing I did learn in these last couple meetings I've had and conversations I had with them that students that could apply from
122bston is in their temporary right um and there's more open opportunities for that I'm going to talk to Lis I chance to and the guidance counil but there is opportunities when you're re temporary the the The Limited opportunities though so you might not be able to choose exactly what you want if there's openings here because a student freshman year says you know what this is not for me I'm going back to my neighborhood school then there ask openings so what we've suggested and I I spoken to Mike our chair about this that we're going to get together with myself the superintendent Mike and this woman called L Ry her name is l she's from Berlin she's a representative on aspid Valley um and so we're going together just see what what are some other opportunities
123just now that we found out that 10th graders have more of an opportunity than our ninth grades do because there'll be some old things there so we need to do that one of the other things that is available to us that I want to make sure we're taking um opportunities is is our students have the right to go visit right so we making sure that our students can go there whether it be W students so go visit take a look at that and that's open for our so we need to look at that again I need to have conversations with um the principal of the high school as well too so our next step is a schedule meeting like I said L Ryan who the representative from berin superintendent Mo myself and M we we'll
124be able to give you back more information to that okay I want to make sure I gave you an update about what was taking place with in terms of um vocational schools um so the next thing I'd like to talk to you about is what's called our academic RAR our academic excellence and and what that looks like um I I've heard loud play that we need to do better and that we can do better um and I believe I mentioned even in my first conversation with you about this book could theg great by Jim Collins right um the enemy of great is is being good and we are a good District but we we can do that and I think we all agree whether it be my admin team the community school commy we can
125do that but my question to to school and and as a whole that we're starting to have these conversations what do you think what is what is doing better need what does that look like to each and every one of us and I I reference it as being called academic Excellence right what is academic Excellence um and I think that's a real important question I think we talk about wanting to do better but what does it mean to everyone sitting in this room because when I look at the table of organization I I look at our parents and our students I look at school committee and then I look at myself and the admin team right and and the flow chart that goes down but I'm curious to the people that are sitting in this
126room what really does academic Excellence look like what do you mean by that is it is it better incast because some people believe in that and now they say it's only one test do not base everything on the mcast is it is it higher Advance placement SCH huge piece of that is an improve attendance we've heard that a piece as well too is an high enrollment numbers something we talked about is it college and university acceptances huge pce do we have kids going to I schools is it rigor for our students is it professional learning for our teachers or is a student protention the list could go on and on but I I really need us to decide as a group what we think you know academic Excellence is what are we looking for as
127a school because are saying to me we want that but what do we think that is what are you expecting from us in terms of that and and I'll tell you a little bit what we as a Ministry is do but and I'm not putting any on schooping on the spot but just something to think about like why do you believe academic Excellence is because we've done this activity in my previous district and only had a little different L on it and it's really hard for us as administrators and the people that are helping me this District inst structurally to be looking at this direction when you really want us to look in this direction but I want us to think about what do you believe academic Excellence should look like in scho and and
128I'll just pause for a second to see if anyone in school commit would like I'm not put anyone in the spot I am just a little bit what Al's talking about this is sort of the theme that we've been talking about the last few meetings what we're talking about going into the superintendent search we're going to have subcriptions of what we want that next person to be so um earlier this year we talked about uh we expected to have another vote on the hand for Tanto tonight that's going to happen next month it's not happening tonight we not ready but uh that's a piece of we're going to have that come up not prepared tonight but this idea this this theme I guess you know we heard this at the Town meetings last year with
129the budget focus on the the special needs and there is a lot of focus there and then the other half of the parents stood up at Town meetings and said well what about the other side and we don't talk about that as much because I don't know um so this is sort of a theme that I think is g to be coming this year and as we look for the super anybody want add I have so I think that one of the things that I've observed is that I think that um you know we spend a lot of time um to your point and resources on special needs and helping kids that have needs and I think that's great but are we spending time and resources on kids that need to be challenged kids that
130you know if you just let them go they'll just do status quo they'll be good they'll be okay but if they're pushed they'll be great and I think that we could do a better job of that districtwide on identifying those kids that might be lazy or might be you know just kind of like hiding because what kid is gonna say give me more work I'd rather do work than go outside and play or play video games but I think you know and I don't NE I'm not saying like the teachers need to do that I think maybe we need more resources we need you know more coaches more people that can come in and identify those kids and push them further because to me you know being great and I I'm a runner and I
131I love fitness and exercise and and pushing myself is even when I'm uncomfortable or tired is how I get better and I think we need maybe shift our focus on that in the schools and a lot a lot of this to make this point you guys in China but a lot of this does come from that exit survey 8th and nth grade we looked at we saw the summary over the summer we got the more details on that but a lot of this does come from comments from that so I went to a talk on just this and so there's a I forget the the full name but it's ma um and they provide education on how to do just this so apparently Massachusetts is one of the few states that doesn't have um an
132IEP for those that are excelling gied yeah A Gifted IEP and so interestingly Jessie just hired someone to spearhead this within our state which is really great um but MC might be something to look into for that type of you know instead of giv make extra work you have them do two or four problems and then do this more you know enrichment part of of the lesson just couple of things so special education right there students with IEP right by law we have to make sure we provided that but we also got to look at special education sometimes it's two spectum right so the kids that are special because they have that high performance that are accelerating this through so we need to take a look at that and I don't necessarily know that we
133doing this much push in that as well too again lot of lot of good ideas out there but it's a lot of blinking lights that we really need to get focusing and and and and that's something that the work that we're going to to do as well too because it it needs to be done it really does it was I'm dating myself wave but but used to be in Wier we had was called the peak program right p a k providing a rich for academic kids right so this was a high performing kids that were providing the academics in the curriculum for so there is are things that are out we can go visit and see and not necessarily in the state of Massachusetts but we we live very close to the water of Rhode
134Island where they have these prrs as well and that's really what we get that so I just wanted to comment um you know I was uh I was at to grades three through five I was the I don't know they do inclusion anymore but I was the inclusion classroom so I had kids with IPS in my class and a lot of them were extremely right they just had processing problems or things like that but when I taught in Berlin my first year we had Mrs Russo and she was an enrichment teacher and she came in once a week and let me tell you every kid in that classroom lived for that day they loved the way that she challenged their mind she got them to think in different ways I think enrichment is a really
135huge piece and I think we got rid of that because we more time on learning but I think it really just gets these kids to think differently and I was always really impressed with with my special students because that's they soar and they they a lot of their um you know their their classmates would see them in that way so it's helpful for both kids for both Spectrum ends of spectrum and the kids in the middle too this group has heard me not saying over and over again apologize udl right Universal Design for for all students can learn right and we're not just single out for students who are special ucation but there are ways to teach that everyone's kind of learn to well on and see so it's not just SK L but there's
136different ways of suing right so that's a that's a huge piece and that's some of differentia stretch we talk about that's being very very specific so that's the work we really need to do and and I'm going to just again push back and this is the work Sing I have side we need a strategic plan right so that we all know what we're looking at doing so even when we sitting in the budget me last night someone's throwing out oh how about this how about that we should be even Ching financially never mind our instruction on let off focuses for the next five years so we're not saying we're not supporting that this year we're putting it on the back burner this is what we need to be focusing on an academic sign and not
137Financial sign we really need to have and if there's anything that I'm going to leave here as as mainstream superintendent is something some of a strategic plan in place so the best gift that a a superintendent can have as I gave to the superintendent when I retired is a strategic plan place here it is now I can really do the work that's been laid out there every but I don't want to so there's pockets of Excellence going on right when I'm talking to Cindy and I'm talking to John and I'm talking to Lisa there are academic things that are taking place that are excellent but they're there're in silence over so we have to make sure because everyone that's coming from B and Bon eventually goes to the Happ and eventually walks across that stage
138of graduates with a r bis and Regional School District of fall but we're all doing some really great things but we're all sort of growing but we're all rowing in different directions we're all working really really hard but I think could work maybe a little bit differ and that's the work that we need as an admin team to say okay this is our plan this is where we're going and we understand this what school Community wants and this is what the community wants so we're not just trying to like go like the blinking light oh that sounds good let's go over there so if I could just ask for a couple minutes I don't need to put you on the squat principles but if you could share and this is something we're going to do
139every single meeting and it goes back to to Mike saying like we should be celebrating our successes so what are some of the things that we're doing in our school this this time period from September from when we first came on board from when I first came on board what are we doing now to show that we're being successful in the work that we doing so if I can ask you Lisa to stop yeah sure absolutely so um at tant we're dedicated um to reviewing and always looking at our programming to make sure that we ref finding our program programming to ensure that we're meeting student needs um so we're excited this year we were very excited um to have reintroduced our accelerated math um in grade seven with um the new full with the
140full-time math teacher that we have um I know that it's hugely successful and the students um are now going to be able to move further in the math curriculum in high school without H needing to double up uh in at the high school level and then this also will allow us next year to be adding or to reintroduce Algebra 1 at grade8 so that that's very exciting at the middle school level working with the Department chairs to develop course descriptions um that I've had I've been involved with discussions about what our course offerings and what scheduling is going to look like for next year and we have some really innovative ideas and Innovative um ideas about scheduling and I have gotten proposals which I'll present next um for the January meeting for a variety of
141different courses that we would like to um bring forward and have approved and this will be um able to provide AP courses to sophomores and so introducing AP research and AP seminar um AP pre-calc list and also looking at providing or offering a um coding class python at the high school level because we have three levels of coding U science computer discover science computer science discoveries at sixth seventh and eth grade um and we have computer science principles and AP Computer Science principles but that's it so what's one step further we can take and that would be a coding program of P program um and um to we are um I'm working with my mentor um this year to explore two areas um in our high school and that's looking at potential Pathways and what
142does that look like in terms of in it with our current structure are there ways that we can develop Pathways in our school um and also developing our life skills program to reflect the highest standards in that area and visiting programs and Janelle and I are working um on that as well um I do want to highlight that when the US News and World Report came out um Tahanto was identified as number 30 um as a 30 as 33 um out of all Massachusetts high schools um and number four in the Worcester area schools so that um you know it's um and that is reflective of the AP offerings and scores and the level um the types and range of courses that we offer so just pain saying offering algebra and an earlyer age for
143our kids is an unbelievable opportunity for our kids our students can then be able to follow that that chain and be able to interc there take Calculus BC which is the hottest AP Quest off in the entire world right the student that gets a three four and five in that can absolutely basically write their ticket in the college University the hardest a course but if we don't out for Al earlier which we're going to stop doing next year they can't fit that IND this so that's a huge pie also offering AP opportunities at an earlier age for next year is the things that maintain kids right so when kids are applying to college and universities 's resume looks really great out there right and now we have ways of really making our cover letters look
144even better right electronically right because there's ways of doing that now but the advanced placement is the advanced placement stands across the entire world right from Australia everywhere so offering that is an incentive to keep our kids here and making sure that they're going to be successful when they apply University so good work on that I I I will be briefer because I didn't know we were fragging about our US News and we report scores I would have worn my one 111 t-shirt beginning of the year at for the memorial we all decided to take on I think I shared this once a schoolwide goal around Independence because the challenge for students today their hands are held so much and so often that they you know you let go their hand they don't know where
145they're coming um and one of the places we see that is in mathematics which was the focus of PD for us this year so all of the teacher all most of the teachers some had already had your plans but teachers who were able to adopted this school of enhancing Independence in both learning and personal Behavior what that looks like in learning and this is especially to because it is in case you had not heard the Europe of map and PD is getting kids to take ownership of the problems that they're being presented with you everybody knows if you've had kids go through Upper Elementary School word problems are just dep to that they want you know they can do 17 minus 5 they can do 14 time 7 but you give them a story bill
146has five marbles and shenny has three more how many do they have all together they can get lost because they don't take the time to think for themselves what's the question here so that's what we're working on in terms of academic Excellence you know we're blessed in Berlin we have this amazing parent group they do enrichment programs all the time so I feel comfortable in the types of enrichment things that kids can access they're very affordable we've made arrangements through link to fund kids who can't afford it um and there are I would say by the end of the year every kid's taking at least one um so I'm comfortable with our enrichment piece I'm comfortable with the attitude that people are taking holding kids more accountable for their own work um and it's a
147lifestyle because we we talk we talk about this every year Tanto ready if they're not Tahanto ready they're going to get left behind mid schools hard and they have to learn to work hard to be successful so they can do Algebra for example and do those things that we offer here P so impressive that me last am the enrichment that they're offering those students talk about developing the right brain of a child not just the left brain academic is was incredible I will point out that it took an entire group of people to do what a Rosso used to do but they are doing it very led by you as well that s first thank you for giving this opportunity you know we know um and looking at some of our data that we have
148some work to do with oilon and one of the things you heard me say at the beginning of the year was we were going for gold that is that grok mindset that I will say the staff at bees has dove into and they are there they are buying into this and they are jumping in and they are working on some things and some of the things that I want to highlight and that I'm very proud of um is you know the Data Drive and we said that before and I want to talk to you about what that looks like at EES this year so we're analyzing assessments and benchmarks and State Testing to identify the things that we're doing well but more importantly the gaps and adjusting our teaching methods to that so during grade
149level meetings during staff meetings we are spending more time looking at the areas that we were weak them so some of those areas that they identified um were operations in algebraic thinking fractions and decimals geometry example right angles quadrilateral symmetry word problems an Ela parts of speech proper nouns and you think about that permanent and we go deeper that's more third fourth and F of those areas why you do deeper looking at K through two how are we going to support that what are we doing in grammar in K through2 do we have resources to support that answer is no what can we do to support that what can we bring together for those grades to support because I don't think mcast is grade three mcast or grade four mcast I call it kfre K
150to four K to five they know that so they want to work together to support how can we support those younger skills in math because it is the year math but also in ela what are we doing to support them they're looking at math in those areas as well fractions what can we do in kindergarten for fractions to support as they get into those older grads um so it's diving into the data looking at it what are we doing what do we need how do we support that some examples of that um we do have a Wind Block this year and this is where we're putting in that enrichment piece and it's it's interesting that enrichment came up I still have it written on my whiteboard when I started last year when I met with
151some of the families and the parents that is an area they said that we did not do well in this District what are we doing for enrichment the Wind Block allows for that piece so the Wind Block is what I need now and what we do is we split up we have three times in our schedule for most grades it depends on the age kindergarten is not going to meet for 30 minutes or 45 minutes they might need for 20 three times a week and they're working on the skills that our data is showing us we need to work on fifth grade is working three times a week and we are going across the grade level so we have three fifth grade teachers there's a high level and trinie we have a middle level and
152we have a lower level that's working on those skills right now they are working on where do I have it they are working on fractions and decimals which we discovered was an area of weakness for us that is an area that that during our Savas it comes in later they're working on it now based on what they've assessed in the dat that they're doing they're still going to teach it later on but they're diving into now to give them that that skill set until they get there um they've already adjusted their their groups I was amazed at this they're looking at their data they've adjusted it and kids have moved across those groups so they're getting those pieces fourth grade's doing the same we have two fourth grade teachers they're going across the the classrooms
153to do that and they're working on those skills their skill set is different measurement data how are they focusing on that they're changing kind of scope and sequence a little bit and I'll be honest we don't have that scope and sequence of something we'd like to work on going forward but measurement and data was a weakness they moved it up concern with that is what are we moving back and how do we fit that in so they're moving geometry back we got to be careful there how are we fitting that into other places third grade noticed um and they're working on area and perimeter aavas math resource separated area and perimeter as a former third grade teacher area perimeter like this why are they separated they ask can we move them and teach them together
154absolutely let's do this and let's teach it together we're looking at the data they're saying can we teach this together and they're teaching so they're bringing all those things in they're looking at our resources they're using this in our Wind Block and they're giving what the kids need so we're getting some of that enrichment in and we're doing it I'm very proud of them for this because they're very open to it they are going for the gold and our younger grades are really looking at how we can support those older rats and they're doing the Wind Block as well one of the things that we are trying to get the Specialists involved in is doing kind of that cross-curriculum things how can we support them in fractions how can see your map how can we
155do symmetry our could do symmetrical um snowflakes and how can we do that and I know that we've talked about that doing further down in TV how can we get that map into those areas and you know we're working on attendance and I I I have to brag a little about this this is a team effort with everybody involved um in order to teach them they got to be there and we've made some progress already so last year this time I sent out 48 letters according to our policy if you have over five days this year 21 that's huge so I'm proud of our team and we're gonna keep going there we're gonna get there thank you for letting me share so here are three prime examples of Excellence right all really cck stuff but
156we still don't have that overwatching what what is our go right great stuff going on in Tonto great stuff going on in burland great stuff going on won but it's all just like this right so we need to have a Common Thread of what we're all doing because they're all our kids they all eventually go up to work the way to tant what it look like and what our expectations are so that's the work we have to do we we own that we we all agree there's no one in this room is saying no we don't need that we know that so that's the work that s and I are doing um we're basically interviewing who to come in and help us do this work as this region Mon and that will be the umbrella
157that all these other pillars will fall into need including the bud and we'll keep getting updates on every month every month every month you're gonna have AGA I would imagine some grade parents starting look what they're going be doing next year so they know this is going on maybe that influences them a little bit the last thing and then I'll be quiet I promise so the last thing you going to see is we're we're changing our website and and we to see our new website that's coming out we're we're initiating it first at tont and then I work our way to B Boston we'll be finalizing that tomorrow at our our ad mid meeting where we're getting professional winning on how to do evaluations better for the teachers um but we're really ready to launch
158right before Christmas the new website for Tanto and like I said we'll mer for both us the website is the way that we're engaging our families right not only for our parents that are here but parents that are moving into the community and saying hey let me just check out the school district and having that be active and interactive and current you're going to see a whole difference so I'm hoping that January's meting we're going to be able to show you what it looks like um and and get your feedback on that but that's a huge piece because even myself when I was first you know asked about PR bu I went right on the website right and what does it show and what doesn't show and that's the work we're working on now making
159it interactive and making it so it's tied to our social media as well too so you'll not seeing that as well too that's another big piece thank you any uh quick final questions yes so there was a threeyear plan that is in the drive um and I think not all of those goals were addressed in that three year so that might be is a district Improvement plan yes yes so if you so I just Googled threee plan and it po up um and then there was also um portrait of a graduate that was done with a huge group of parents staff um and students and former students too so that I would I would say that on strategic plan is here and then you look at the school Improvement plans as a pillar District Improvement
160PL I'm really not familiar with a for to graduate now think it's like that's up here somewhere yeah but I really do believe and then there's Equity audits as well to there all those pieces that fit as pillars of need there but we really need to like what are we doing as a district in what direction do we want to move it and that should be with the scr holds on to as well too to say this is what you said we're going to do and and hold our sort of our fire for GR kind of speaks to that direction okay I I honestly I haven't had a chance to really read it yet and look at it and that will probably be one of the the things iing on this anybody else think next
161up is Aon all right so um how you everyone um so I'll just dive into it you have a memo um in the uh shared file regarding the 2025 budget um desie is breathing down our NE a little bit to have a uh a voted uh 2025 budget so in crunching the numbers um we do believe that our revenues can support uh the budget figure of 24 m793 688 uh broken into to um the assessments to Berlin and Boyston uh that were voted at Town meetings um so we would uh humbly request that the school committee vote that we will then share that information with desie um and move forward disc so Des is asking us for well they not asking us but they're asking us to vote on this yes to to basically affirm
162what we believe the budget to be right the GRE period of D is over for us yeah they're they're not as forgiven as they were maybe a month ago y okay so this is on the agenda right here as a vote needed so you're saying we I'm saying we should we should probably vote it um as an affirmation vote all right so uh I'll just read your recommendation there as a motion may I have a motion please that the bur Bo Regional school committee vote to affirm the fiscal 2025 School District budget totaling 24 m793 688 developing an assessment of 8,442 9467 the town of Berlin 13, 89986 to the town of w some Megan second L would anyone like to discuss this just to confirm these numbers are was verbally agreed upon but not
163presented at the Berlin meeting by accident um and they had passed a higher number but this is a number that we agreed upon in the meeting before that town meeting and then thus bur's assessment Bo's assessment is lower which is allow a law without a new vote correct both both towns have committed to these assessments they are both paying these assessments um as as we speak um so you know we're we're confident that towns um you know support this we've talked to I believe both April and Kristen they're prepared to support these assessments any else uh all in favor I anyone against this budget all right I'm favorable that motion passes thank you very much Aaron I know great counting work is Greatful we'll start working on that and uh and and make things right
164in this year's budget with that said uh you do have a copy of a presentation we shared with the town of Boyston uh last night uh that seemed to go pretty well um we will have a similar presentation for Berlin uh we're making sure I've got the pronunciation right um uh much so uh we will present that tomorrow night uh in town and uh one once both of those I will are done I will combine them I don't want didn't want to present information to Boon uh that Berlin wouldn't have so Berlin of the equation will be presented tomorrow and then we'll have a combined presentation for both towns there okay and then I am just going to share a few things going on in the department um we've made a lot of progress and
165I feel pretty good about it so uh just just a a bullet list of items to to fire away and just make you aware of um so we have uh posted all fiscal 24 payroll I think we shared with you that there were summer pays that had not been posted yet and had to be teased out a bit um and those were the teacher summer pays so we have booked those teacher summer pays um and those are in our accounting system uh all fy2 24 accounts payable uh is complete so there may be something out there we don't know about but but everything we know about uh is paid so we're doing our best there and I think we're good with those with those two items done uh we are now in the the formal
166process of of closing fiscal 24 there's going to be some reconciling of May and June um and that's going to be a little work to do um I've done some reconciling we're going to be uh working with Cynthia Harrington in our office to uh to kind of fully close that out there will be some receivables to book things that came in that didn't get booked but for the most part uh with that said that means we can begin work on the end of year report so I'll lot the um desie breathing down our throats are our next um we've received um emails from desie for our end of year report um I've worked with uh J Sullivan of desie and we will uh be submitting that report by January 3rd so I'll be working on
167that um over the next few weeks and probably over the holidays uh once we fully close uh fiscal 24 we will begin the end calculation that's something you can't do until you have all of your accounts are settled and done the end of your report we can begin a little bit in advance um pre-closing um we have installed configured and trained on the receivables module in our fiscal software I think I shared with you that that um up until now it seems the district has been booking all of their receivables through journal entries which is one way of doing it it's not the most efficient or effective way of doing it um I've been booking some things using journal entries um but now that we have the receivable software um it'll make that a lot
168more efficient um all of our fiscal 25 bills are current with the sole exception of Amazon which usually takes a little more reconciling and I think if Amazon wakes the next couple days they'll be okay um so we have paid fully Amazon through September and we're moving into October to make sure that they're paid full um all fiscal 25 payroll to date will be posted by next week I'm working with our payroll coordinator to make sure that all of our payroll files so we have paid everyone I think as as we know um but we do need to book those into our system so we have a methodology to do that we will make sure that is all in our system um all fy2 Grant accounts and budgets have been entered so I think when
169I arrived we had some situations where a number of our grant accounts um the actual account numbers and then the budgets were never entered in the system uh that L some people to having to book things in I guess the best word for it is hidey holes so um things were booked in account numbers that weren't necessarily the correct account numbers so in that process in addition uh today I completed a number of adjusting entries to correct some of those ex those um expenditures that were made in improper accounts um and uh those should all be accurate we'll be double checking with folks I make sure I'm not 100% but I think we're we're we're there um I think you should given all of that you should expect to see uh a fiscal 25 general
170fund budget report at the January 14th meeting I think that was a conversation I had with uh the chair Mike um and I felt like that was doable so uh we are committing to getting you guys um an actual Financial portion or we stand which I think is fair uh a couple things that are pending uh we have a number of Grant draws and closing reports that need to be done that's sort of next on my list um and and then we will work on properly booking our fiscal 25 Revenue so those are things we can operate on without doing immediately the money is in the bank so when we receive money it goes into the bank but we need it recorded properly on our financial system and that's something that had wasn't happening additionally
171Grant draws bring in some of that Revenue we aren't hugely Grant uh dependent but we really should be doing those Grant draws on a regular basis uh typically quarterly or monthly um so that is about it um I feel pretty good about where we are um I really want to say that um Patty our payroll coordinator and Arnold our new accounts payroll coordinator um I've been doing a fantastic job and uh I I couldn't be doing any of this without them so thank you you really have a a really good financial office right now I'm still very fortunate hey po was that work and just one last thing Nicole do you have exactly captured the the vote and the numbers and all that because we're going be defin with popular education so all of that
172you have that written I read Theo sh thanks Aaron I mean I have my own PTSD with thousands of accounting transaction lines back in the day so I understand exactly what you're looking at and I don't have you at all but thank you for coming in it is what it is we're we're we're actually having a good time with it I as funny as it sounds I mean know every time something new comes up we you know we have a good laugh you know I I Laugh to Keep from Crying there's nothing there's there's nothing we can do our hair on fire and running around screaming doesn't help anything I'd rather just roll up my sle it's a good we're gonna get there y all right thanks does anybody have any questions all right uh
173next technology update I think we're gonna skip yeah we're gonna hold till we could forward the new website that be nice all right so next a little bit of business for us uh subcommittee appointments uh I did hear from you um so we have policy negotiations budget safety facilities and Student Success um policy negotiations are currently in the middle of right now obviously negotiations starting up um budget safety facilities that used to be Megan and Julie Julie's clearly no longer here we had an election for that and so Beth you mentioned you'd be okay on that committee is that something you're interested in um I don't think I mentioned that but Julie might have mentioned thaty you know I'm not gonna ask you to do anything oh no I it personally I'm interested in policy
174I understand if it's not a good time to do that I can defer that to later if it's the better fit for Budget that's fine I just wanted to say as far as negotiations goes um I did the chartering the course uh class past weekend and there was someone there that was new to their committee they were on a seven person committee they had a three person negotiating team and he was the alternate I didn't know if that was something that we would ever be interested in that maybe if someone that was interested in joining the negotiation to keep things moving was ever a conflict or a conflict that like timing a personality or maybe someone's better suited to jump in or jump out is that something that yeah an alternate actually is we had
175that makes us a quorum if four of us are we did not have an alternate when Lai and I did it and it actually was a problem because I got Co and then it threw everything off so you can have an you can have three think if there's three of us we do have an alternate right you can have three in but you can't have four yeah because four is a form you can have two right now there's two on negotiation right so third on the would be okay right that was my point okay yeah not I know Jess you also interested in negotiations um I Jess just Mor sorry no I've been going to suggest Jess so if we're gonna do an alternate I think that's a good idea J okay uh sorry that
176no that was my suggestion that's why I brought okay um the budget committee subcommittee I think it would be good to have someone yeah um Leisa unless you're on technology and Student Success you do that or what uh do you think I would love to be on the budget subcommittee and I'm not even sure about the Student Success in technology subcommittee anyway like it's kind of unclear what the purpose is and we really barely ever met I don't know I kind of thought that we should rethink that one that's fair yeah Jess you're the chair that we yeah I mean it's kind of a morous right so like Student Success in technology kind of kind of sometimes talks about policies but we're not the policy subcommittee right and and so you know we both went
177to the conference and so that was actually great so we could talk about that and then kind of shrink everything down um we never really were able I think with all the budget J in this we were never able to have a meeting to hatch out a mission statement for that particular committee so um can I ask that we keep that committee because I think we're gonna this some work that that I'm working on with technology I'm looking to have a fiveyear technology plan um and instead of it all being presented through school committee all the time I'd like to be working through this the sub Committee of that we don't have a fiveyear or even a threeyear plan that was one of the things that came up when we're in the meeting night like
178what's your plan for computers like how how you rolling those over how many times you buying new computers what's the lifespan what's Insurance like how we so all of that is a lot that needs to be done and my goal is to get that done right after the holiday startop working on that and I don't want to do it with all School Comm I'd like to keep that technology Committee in place to vet it for them yeah that's fine so but if Lisa wants to come on if she want she's Berlin she could come on budget and then you can let Beth do the um Student Success in technology everybody Jess so then Jess will be on two Jess you're on two I understand what you're saying we're both yeah Miss and again I just
179don't want to V the purpose of the policy meeting is right so I can V it through them smaller grp and then they can bring it to the whole school and there's a lot of work we're going to do in the next couple months as you'll see shortly that needs to get that I mean at the too like we've addressed like cell phone policies and that's kind of you know obviously it's a policy but there's a lot of research and stuff to be I guess presented to the policy sub committee so how about how about that so we'll do that restarted with uh with a bit more Direction a bit more activity if there is something that comes up the crosses with policy um one policy and one success Comm you know together something like
180that and I think the Optics of it look really good that we're having this because both towns have asked us me about like what do we do on computers what are we do they're on your Capital every year what do you so for us to dissolve that I I don't think is a good thing for us to do we restart that more attention more activity there Lisa on budget with Megan for burlin um all right she had two other things she had an idea and then I think so obviously this year we'll have subcommittee of um superintendent search as well which would be lri me and Jess Jess that's a lot for you are you I wouldn't want to chair theology right Ian all right we'll have to add a superintendent eal which is a
181whole of I apologize when I said about for mik I was thinking about the three of us being on the negotiations and I don't know why I keep putting I'm I'm sorry um on superintendent I keep putting back together with negotiations so that's why I thought we already had right no no but in my head I was thinking there were three of us already on it we added another one be a quum so that's all right so technology and success with Jess um budget Megan with Lisa and policy negotiation will all right but Jess will go and Jess will be the alternate for negotiations yes and Lisa have an idea yes I was thinking we should have a Communications subcommittee where we have where we can share more information social media you know important things
182that are coming up you know things we're considering highlight successes you know just kind of build a lot more Goodwill and excitement in the community that work with technology and your new webs I think once you see what the website's looking like it's like I'm amazed on on the work that goes be behind the scenes and developing a website that's so interactive that if we could just wait for the next month to show you what that looked like I think that might tie really nicely that all of you could as school Comm members be providing information to that and uploading it so um and there's gonna be a district website as well too so I I think if we could just give be a month I think we'll be able to show you what it's
183what it's going to look like and that will help out the communication tremendously all right let's um can we put Communications on the next agenda Communications all right thank you so M sorry who's on negotiation the final committee for negotiations me and L with Jess as the alterate so Jess also for negotiations something you guys can decide but it came up last night um they wanted to know usually we have a municipal rep and they take turns okay so Boon did it three years ago F's turn they wanted to make sure that they were not going to get pulled into that when that was April it was April so it would be priston they decide they both come to the um ground rules right yes and then they mutually they have to decide and then
184they kind of set forth like so just let know and now we will be uh we've got a A list of dates to respond to the Y uh okay so you get in tou withr course absolutely all right Absolut y thank you I'm switching to my phone um we don't have to vote you just yeah just all right next item on the list is bbr is the attorney consideration so uh some has come up um looking at different ways to move forward New Direction uh financially save money we've uh had the idea of possibly reaching up to a new attorney or taking signing on a new attorney for the district currently is mar uh so that has come up that's an item uh business items if we want to do that both so I know
185we received a proposal uh has any a chance to look at that you have anything to say about that our sign yeah financially good deal financially I also appreciated that it was a small firm um just thinking back to the other educational attorney that we used who was wonderful but he had a lot of a lot and it's knowing they're small is also helpful okay if I could also say this is a fir that um I I work with M BR I work with wam Aon and I work with there as well too and did all of our negotiations and currently also doing multiple negotiations which is very helpful to us as we SC the negotiations process as well uh so that'll come up on our business items to vote to accept that if you
186like uh sub committee updates next anybody uh so Jess do you have an updat yeah um so when Meg became chair she handed over or offered to for me to be on the Boon master plan implementation yeah um thank you yes and so there is a very lengthy document you can review at your leisure um but I kind of summed up about 10 or 12 items that I thought were relevant that so our job is to say what in that master plan can we check off can we own can we do um and so um I emailed about a month back but I'll forward it again to admin team as well um to see what things that perhaps have already done or even there's um a possible project that high school students could do to
187create a QR code and a tour of the Town um so I can forward that to admin team to see if they have any thoughts on the matter so I can give an update from our comme um and then um so last year we both had gone to the conference and so we had an opportunity to have a meeting um we haven't had a meeting since the November conference um but there were some really great talks about budgets and you know coming two years ago you know next happening and so it was it's really nice to get grounded in some of the topics and you know knowing what a call center is and that we should be receiving quarterly report projections for the budget and um new job descriptions are changed or added we should
188be approving them um also um not in my tenure here um operating protocols um or something I learned about um that we should be discussing within the committee creating together and periodically revising and then also signing us members and also the superintendent um and our self eval based on those operating protocols um and then also being posted on the website so that is something I wasn't aware of um and so I thought that was of interest to us do you have any question uh so we have not had a meeting but I believe we are finally going to do it next week now that we have our committee um so we'll try to touch base before uh break and with Lisa and Aaron and Al if you want superintendent search y so we just had
189those uh two companies present to us I'm going to set up a meeting where we can discuss and present do you want at the next meeting you said for us to our we need to get started this okay so we can do that um I think at our next meeting we should decide are we g go one of those two we do it on our own what are we G do we'll take uh input from your sub wonderful great can I just sub means we you have those meetings do you want okay good your office okay we'll be munching on your snacks you are an excellent more yes policy subte update uh might as well just get into business items because that's all we have there for policies so if we can take our business
190items first uh if we can do the policies first so read first reads um student absence and excuses and attendance JH and j e uh they're marked in there one is a removal and the other is you just update some language that had been updated last year a couple small changes in there you take a look at and this will give us one comprehensive attendance policy tended being a big deal in elementary school this year right come to school so you actually learn no vacations during uh school days right okay um so that's first read and then the student dress code is in there for first read uh the administration made some changes to that as well so we got that get we'll vote on those in January the service animals and school update this
191is on there for vote because it's a very small change but important one Al do you want to say anything about that sure so we myself um um and Mike and sorry had a chance to have a a meeting um we got a policy and we met with the the chief of police as well as the country dog that they have bringing in um to the the community um so one of the things that you know John and I have spoken about right so where does that fit in there whether you're having a pets along pets in school or whether having service animal um in in school so it didn't fit in either spot then we eventually all agreed that it does sort of fit in that service in in school um and just so
192you know a comfort dog is different than a service animal right so um a comfort dog wouldn't be if if there were something that took place if there was a tragedy that took place or there was a situation that took place um this this dog would come in and um work with our students work with our staff work with our faculty and we had an opportunity lry my Mike and myself had an opportunity to meet um the do it's it's incredible right it just really is a comforting anal um and this is something that's happened throughout the not only the entire state but also happening um country bre in light of everything going on um but in as to what's happening in we want to keep policies and that was not anywhere in the policy
193of AD so we're asking Ong service anals in school that I'm adding to the very last um paragraph it says the superintendent of schools are their design shall be responsible for the developing procedures to accommodate the students use of an assistant assistance SC in District facilities and on school transportation vehicles and then I'm adding to that this also this is also clue Comfort dos to be available in last and that's what I'm asking I think to to vote on tonight if we could um because it's such a minimal change but there there's is a little bit of a sense ofcy and working that dogs in our community um and even last night on Monday night I'm sorry um had their town meeting right and they were aate the dog in there so they just want
194to make sure we have that in place um whether it's a school event or not a school event being BR that dog three hours 80 something people unking while they wow ja truly is very cute picture fire the police yes okay so could I please have a to approve policy imga service animals school as presented moved second okay anyone like to discuss my only concern is that a lot of people say there have comfort dogs so I don't know if you need the verbage to say approved Comfort dogs so like I know it's like a company that will bring it in or like the fire or the police so I just feel like just saying Comfort dogs Lees it wide open for some say I can bring my my doctor know it says the superintendent
195yeah the paragraph says the superintendent devel procedures okay so that would be cover just for cl and I asked a question like they can't just show up right they can't just show up at schools and say I know the Comfort done would have to pre-arrange through myself or the principles but also if there was a reason to bring the Comfort down again we're not just going to interrupt instruction not just have walking up and down the hallways but this way we have this in place in case all in favor of motion again all right I'm favor as well so that will pass thank you thank you all right last item is the approval of uh so we can discuss it I have a motion to approve the change in BBD RSD attorney to uh go
196with the law offices of Sean PC Jess Lisa all right would anyone like to discuss that you're here just having the ability to call and some pick the phone and give us answers when we need them in the timely manner is crucial for us to do our work do our work all in favor anyone against Mega is against I in favor as well so that Mo pass I will call tomorrow next wrapp up work on that uh all right I sorry um the first read I I just have a claric um so you said one's getting deleted and one's getting edited which J is being deleted J is being deleted J it's the first one it's just redundant J we passed last year it was just an oversight that we didn't have them we didn't
197vote to remove JH J masc suggested we replace JH with j and I think I mistake I think JH was voted on even before I came here I think you guys voted at a previous meeting SP some time in the spring that JH was out of there completely so I I got to go back to September Lisa it was September 10th September 10th I apologize was so um if do you mind if I clear go ahead um so on um Tuesday September 10 there was a revised budget it appears as though the business item identifies approval up to remove policy JH when speaking with Nicole it it looked as though it was t AED so that that's where I think the confusion was yes yes yes yes why was it something happened because we were
198going to that's right that's right so so that will all coincide in January with the hand discussion so J is the one we're keeping yes and so the highlighted edits are the changes to be made to that policy I was curious under section two the B it a Dr dentist appointment card letter note from phys dentist is going to be deleted so I was curious and I know under Section seven there's excusal notes from Dr dentist must be given for days but I'm curious why that is being deleted for exceptions or absences um so yes um so um because we're um we're getting a a lot of um blanket notes so what we want is very specific notes for specific things so there are um three parental excusals um per se in at Tanto it's
199per se per semester so six per year so if you so choose to use it on that um if there's an extended absence for a specific medical condition we have you know waiver procedures in place for extended period of time but it's a doctor's appointment um it should be considered within one of the um parental excusals okay so then I guess for illnesses so I mean one of my children had a fever for five days because the microplasma pneumonia and then right my second kid got it and had fever for four days right so you have to get a doctor's not so that still falls under that like long as I give it within 14 days I just I just was confused why what it was getting deleted I understand like I you know as
200a provider I oh my kid was absent these 10 days here and these 15 days here can you write an excuse now like well you weren't seen so I understand that reasoning but I guess for for illnesses that are more than a day I just I I I don't know maybe I'm not understanding it so so no doctor's notes are now accepted except for extended illnesses so so a doctor's or dentist appointment so it's not illness it's it's a doctor dentist appointment so that is the exception so it's an appointment come the school at 9s at 10:30 appointment at well no so right it's it that is it's like they come in 8:30 just or they they come in they're dismissed at 9: and they're they're out for the rest of the day it's it
201it's trying to curtail that type of those types of situations so it's for for appointments okay so hypothetically if someone has phes that's monthly or well hopefully they would come back to school 110% but I don't know how that covers a person for only you know being left for 45 minutes versus I I don't see how that for full day in the if you have an appointment to make that class period you are present for that class period that's what we're saying right so ex absences not counted so it's like a full day absence so we don't we we don't want full day absence for doctors or dentist appointments amen so that that's really but I guess not seeing how that's delineated I just totally didn't get thaty I don't know be like like it's
202really hard to get an appointment after school hours for a dentist or broken hands but hopefully like they come they don't take most of the day off for that appointment hope most parents but I don't see how that is delineated within this policy there be like language put in that says like the school prioritizes so let me ask so let's do first read right and then when we have comments and coming back we'll have we have sir Rene and Rich because they're working on that with us so the next school meeting we can we can talk about that like I holy support that and and you know even as a provider I'm like okay I'll give you one hour to go back to school so so I wholly support that I just don't I don't
203that way so don't forget that there is under six a waiver of the policy will be heard by the principal or assistant principal so there are exceptions that can be made Lisa can I ask a question how long do the students need to be in school for for it to be considered a full um I it has to be they have to be it has to be half the day so okay it used to be like 11:09 so I don't know how many periods that's equivalent to it used to be like five out of that at least right right five out of seven so perhaps like no more than two periods can be Miss for an appointment or something right so it's got whole District see that's that I think is the the the piece
204we can have specific things in the handbook that delineate more specific for schools but just as um Mr ganam said this is an attendance policy in general for the district spell that out the toono C right yeah you can't because it doesn't I mean in in two sections there's already an elementary school and middle high school so under the one class attendance it splits out elementary school middle school and then under five it does as well so I just maybe asked that that be looked at you know as again a working parent that's un just we also want so that parents just also just don't make appointments at 10:00 right or 11:30 right because that's when you know they we're trying to have parents be a little bit mindful of like trying to get those
205appointments I know every what else is trying to get either after school or before school or during vacations but we also don't want to be just like a complete like pass to say yeah you got 10 I'll go at that time 100% but I challenge that with like my pediatrician doesn't do physicals in the afternoon they only do them in the morning and I if do not the appointments after school it's resered specific but you would bring your child back to schol the appointment I think the AR so yeah I think the argument that LE is making is people were kind of abusing that because I have it offed on I up that but it just the left does not so you can still take your kid out for an appointment you just have to
206bring them back and it's excused well that that time this doesn't say that I don't know yeah that's confusing and this is not just a districtde right two more seconds so the very last thing number eight it says parents are to call or use the dismissal management system at the elementary level in this day and age we canot email the night before so I don't have to wake up you know like you know we do it B but not so I I just you know if the verbage is if email like three different people like the principal the nurse and the whatever you know I just we're trying to channel into to either they using that dismissal management we we all know that sometimes I'm myself included I haven't looked at e one St so
207sometimes it doesn't there so always copy what takes place so we're trying to really use a system of package we use what dismissal so we're gonna we're going to look at that who's on the technology sub by one the first things that we take a look at as well we have the ability we just do I'm just reading this this is I mean I am guilty of this like we've gone away I've forgotten to put it in the thing 8:30 comes and goes I don't answer my phone they're going to call the chief of police not anymore not anymore that's the old one chief police said what the heck oh it's yeah sorry I have several commentaries on the dress code policy all right feel free so I think that private parts is not a
208great I don't think that the verbage is going to seice I think that's going to leave to this open to I don't know a liability of what constitutes that an argument back and forth I what would you suggest I think you have to spell it out and I went to nisha's policy clothing that reveals nipples genit Alan but offs they literally spell it out and then you say I think you need to spell it out but I also want to bring to your attention that if you're going to spell it out that that applies to male students as well and what was pointed out to me by a teacher in another District several years ago is that you have boys cutting the sleeves off their shirt that would be a dress code violation tra shirt
209do do our uniforms all meet the standards are you going to make all the boys wear shirts to the uniform like so let's be really clear this is not just for girls but it's for girls and boys that we know but I I I don't disagree about the CRS I I would ask you know NC in in tracing noic like to give us some other areas you know that other districts that are using it or some input you might want to give us in terms of that because it's an issue and and we're seeing it more and more I totally get it I have a 16y old girl I understand I'm just telling you that I think that you're that you might find yourself in a position where the boys basketball team is practicing and
210their practice dures with the low like that's and we're giving them to them do some of our uniforms against this policy we need to look at those I would hope if we're given them no because they wear their uniforms to school during the day is what she's saying like oh basketb you have to dress up right or Le used to I mean if we're issuing them uniforms that don't meet standards for our policy mind if I ask to CH little I think she's chopping over there give us information chopping sorry I see you smiling trumping sorry I apologize have uh so I mean our recommendation honestly is that the policy as opposed to the procedure the policy um should should not actually get super specific um because it does very quickly devolve into that kind
211of deliberation for scho company um you absolutely need to make sure that it's gender neutral um and to your point yes it is generally standard that you know students out will wear the uniforms on game days and then is the outfit that you told them that they had to wear in violation of the code that you also proposed um so I mean uh I I've seen honestly what we've seen is more districts moving towards and this may or may not be where you're at um good dress codes that much more are you need to be wearing something on top you need to be wearing something on bottom you need to be wearing shoes um and really getting into Heights and inches and lengths and everything else um very quickly can devolve into um things that
212are discriminatory in terms of things like body type as well um and we certainly have seen reflections of that um it most often is female students will complain of it but then you also get into discriminatory kinds of things in terms of race class so so did I just complicate your you did we we had that policy that was very land and neutral but then there's been a lot of things hanging out that so we we've heard she did move right along but U we're we're seeing inappropriate dress for both males and females right and and it's unacceptable and we need to be able to say that's what the policy is and that's what we're we're working with masc for to say there's a policy that says that you can't have things exposed you can't
213have things hanging out whatever you got to have you got to have the appropriate clothing and so we got to decide what that what that looks like for our male and female students I would just I would suggest if everyone wants to look at the I can send it to you you can look it up the AA policy Pages 35 and 36 break it down I think it might more meet what you're looking for and then at the end it does have a line that says with our core values in mind all students should be able to dress comfortably for school and engage in learning without fear of body shaming or being singled out in front of teers reasons for conflict and inconsistent inequitable discipline should be minimized whenever possible teachers should be allowed to
214focus on teaching without additional burden of dress cour enforcement teachers with specific student concerns should forward them to assistant principal I is this a yearbook or is this policy so I don't this is the noova policy that was like the last line of it or is it hand is it policy their handbook I'm sorry they handbook handb so that's more specific so this this was created by the administrative team correct that's correct is there what on here do people have issue with I think is public question saying private parts is that's okay no I agree with that I heard something about ripped clothing I think that ni if you change if you're going to sit there and say that that's and that's what we're looking not looking for just be aware that you might that
215you need to enforce it evenly and that you might be capturing a lot more of a population that connection so you're saying the basketball team basketball not their official they're the um practice jerseys dur practice right practi those the practice jerseys like the the uniforms have like the smaller arm roles but the practice jerseys are long and big they not no I think it's a style of Jersey that it is and I've also heard some from other families that you know girls F po uniforms right the skirts are very you know sh we allow on in school as well too yeah so I mean I understand I'm just might so this uh all your suggestions and take care we will come back we do have a student in room on on anything on the dress
216code yeah um not particularly that I can think of I mean I I kind of genuinely agree with the idea of like kind of I think I think a broader from what I can hear the difference between the policy and the handbook a broader policy and a much more specific hand Handbook of uh laying things out individually this this that and then a more broader policy but mostly I don't have any additional comment this going to law school all right so we'll talk to about that about fews so can I have ask a clarifying question so this is a policy so the um so the student dress code policy that's currently in the policy manual for bbrsd is a um a copy of what masc recommended in August of and um the school committee voted
217in December of 20122 to accept that policy um so this policy that's being presented aligns a little bit more with the handbook um so is a little more strict than with the current policy is so I just want to clarify so I I guess I get confused as to when we're asked for recommendations because this is a school committee policy like where it's just a clarifying question like where do you want us to provide information and how far does that information because I think that's what happen with the handbook because I presented a handbook that I thought was complete but as a committee you had questions and so you have questions so but it's a school committee policy do you know what I mean so I'm just I need to understand what my responsibility is
218when the questions are asked because it's a policy do you understand I do understand exactly what you're saying okay so well I mean this policy didn't work the current one gji IA during right I mean that's what I'm saying so the idea of a policy is if I'll give you an example ler or Rich Rene say inappropriate clothing we need to change it they need to put something on it and the parent we whatever happens reprimand it out the parent comes to me and says what are you doing about this I'm gonna bring my attorney or I'm going to do whatever I need to be able to say as a school committe and as overseeing the school district he has the policy that says myties that's the one thing that drives us right and that's
219one of the major responsibilities the school committee has right hiring me budget and policy right so I'm saying like the one that passed before was is was not working logistically so this so now there's feedback so I guess I think we're supportive of of what you gave us in terms of the new one I think but you were saying the private parts is what you had that was I just but we we got to live with this right so whatever policy you guys create for us we got to live with it dayto day so we're telling you what would make our lives so we can operate in a day-to-day basis but whatever policy you guys decide is is is more protection for us so that's why we that's why we did this as the first
220read it's on a V and so here we are shows up with so we're gonna we're gonna stop the conversation you're gonna provide comments to app they'll figure it out we'll come back all right any new comments on the there was one other policy moving any comments on that all right so then we're going to move into our executive session now and we will not return to open session after this I have motion please to enter executive session massachus General law section discuss strategy with respect to colle barting litigation open may have public body chair so declares so I heard I heard Megan and Lor seconded all right Megan Lorie hia all right we need to like bringing pizza