School Committee meeting 9/13/22

001all the speed days of the maryland wilson rainbow school district order this meeting is being recorded your image and organized navy broadcast we're going to begin with the pledge of allegiance [Music] indivisible with liberty and justice for all has anyone received any communications that they would like to share is there a motion to approve the content agenda as presented so again sorry is there any discussion um all in favor aye aye and i as well opposed motion to approve the consent agenda as presented passes i'm going to do a little moving around just a little bit with these principals who have had a busy couple of weeks and i think we're going to start with their reports these properties [Music] ladies would like to go first sure so for our report uh we talked about

002the fact that on the 26th professional development session um um and engineering teacher we have volunteered a couple years uh keith schmidt is a new role actually that we put in this year so she needed part um school district school concert and we have gina who took over four years and we just hired a preschool teacher trisha sims we had a paraprofessional michelle sander from upcoming elementary we also have either youth professional in our preschool jennifer baxter and it was very nice to have the pto and [Music] um met with all the grades actually throughout the day and we also linked our um student camera presentation to the report you can see that and one of the things that we're focusing on this year [Music] uh for chromebooks we're now one on one for all

003students involved which is great because and there's also a voluntary insurance policy that goes along with that and for athletics we are focused on another successful season we had some teams do really well last year so they're field hockey and soccer teams are looking to defend their titles from last year and also um soccer teams who did very well um uh um for upcoming events we have school pictures in our senior class photo on eight and we have the pba next week on the 21st and our um open house have any um i just have one really quick one um i know we talked about this before but um is okay [Music] okay right so these have been added then the cell phone used for high school students quality exactly that's just the procedure but

004that's not the name of the outline of the consequences for um [Music] is the policy you have in place typical for what otherwise believe me when it comes to students using cell phones i ask because i just i don't have high school students right but i have friends and family and i hear so many stories about the extent to which bullying occurs and other things happening with myself and obviously we can't control it outside of the school day but uh students can have their cell phones yeah i would say yes just based on my presentations just because those slides were amazing to know that they're working on kindness and how you're going about it and then even just the information in the slides was really helpful i read a few parts aloud to a student

005of mine that attends here for you know strengthen that um but it really was helpful yeah i think oh good good yeah i must have missed that but i appreciate it was very very well done and it was just like i said i can't say it on both kindness parties just think we all really need it right now to see that positivity and to see it be an expectation that's really just comfortable thank you thank you i wasn't able to access your acne presentation in years equity to help staff members realize that this is something we're taking seriously obviously this school year and school years coming forward and teaching um staff that you know they're working on working on development just to be mindful of the classroom because oftentimes you don't know internally what a

006student might be going through whether it has something to do with their social economic background their family background if they have a mental health being going on so just kind of be mindful of that you know in and out of the classroom and making sure that we're really developing for our students because once you have that rapport and commitment to getting to know them we can really stop meeting them while they're at connections with education so throughout that presentation i will leave you through three videos one with just um someone's perspective on absolute flows of discipline relationships that was done by edward eddie green and it just got the conversation going up as educators we're learning each day too from our students and kind of enhancing the idea of what's our power purpose and responsibility

007and the more of a reminder of our students they can also teach us too what is our power purpose and responsibility to take us some days we know as educators we might feel like we're not reaching our students but you never know they're just being mindful of how to approach that we have students that feel very comfortable here identifying their their preferred pronouns go into different communities and make sure we are upholding the respect and also to be mindful of curriculum [Music] you know a lot of times we go to museums the portraits are all of you know but there's also thanks very much i i have to mention my new best friend who is not here this evening to be the best elementary school but i'm the best elementary school i'm sure we brought

008223 children into the building on the first day of school and we managed to send them all home and nobody cried so that's always a win at the elementary level i think that there she was once um but that's okay is that kindergarten kids choose just a couple of updates for you as we start the year we did school pictures we um i always like to take the year you know kids they come wow a lot of them come dressed up and then more the boys come dressed up from the waist up and handsome shirts and nice ties and their shorts but it's a lot of fun this year just to give you a sample of what it's like to be an elementary school student because the day is a we don't little different much

009time in the morning we always take a picture every year it's a nice shot keep trying to find a nice place to hang them up um but the teachers all got together but i only had [Music] you know week of school to their classes we didn't go past them because of course the teachers were all right there there was nobody lost them in the classroom but i was just amazed at how like this is how we did things and i think that's a you know part of this whole school-wide behavior these are our expectations everything um because kids so picture day was a lot of fun we have open house coming up on thursday your wall and michael um instead of 90 minutes we're actually doing three sessions for parents which is great for the

010few parents who get more than one or two children um steph did with presentations i do in the olden days when mrs costello was in principle [Music] three sessions three thirty minute sessions i just sent the email out to clarify for parents at six o'clock so you haven't just got yeah obviously oh yeah yeah we thought two 45 minute sessions and then teachers went are you crazy we could not talk the 223 pre-k through grade 5 how does that compare to last year uh slightly up okay not huge uh that's that we are seeing a kind of continued slow growth yeah so there's a set of houses now being built literally right next to school um as i look at this you get two classrooms for each grade k through five what's your staffing beyond

011the teacher in those classrooms how many of those classes have an aide that's in the room assistant teacher several have aids but they're typically tied to one or two or three special education students the days of like just classroom aids why um partly funding it's uh it's expensive it's a professional doesn't make a ton of money but by the time you toss in the benefits and all the other stuff um it gets very expensive um sometimes it's not worth it do you have anything kindergarten correct is that we do we do not at this point because of the staffing talks that we're having and uh paraprofessional they have what are their lines for kindergarten games and vocal kindergarten classrooms are there staffing lines for kindergarten there's one kindergarten this year that is the one exception

012to the it's not always helpful kindergarten and all you have to do is walk into a kindergarten class um it's it is hurting rapids yeah what do you think before i see here and i see in the bes numbers too is the kindergarten enrollment you've got 41 students so 20 and a half students in each class you know you know as that number potentially continues to increase at what point does it require us to add a third increased by about 10 students from kindergarten here you went from 70 to 20 if you had a similar increase in new kids coming into first grade this year you've got 23 24 in classroom in first grade it's that's a lot of kids especially when you're trying to do small group work and that's where paraprofessionals are really

013helpful because you've got a teacher who's doing direct instruction but you want to take four or five kids off to the side and you want to work with them or whatever wow although thank goodness you know back to routines think about themselves yeah okay but yeah it's going to be the shield there's no space yeah berliners were too so you can't even add oh no you do have two glasses per grade perfect right last year you only had one in fifth grade so we had one fifth grade the lesson hit just one was three years ago that does not work for a whole bunch of mostly social reasons [Music] john is there a threshold number that you keep on your radar that is a tipping point downstairs uh primary grades 18 is probably your sweet

014spot upstairs 22 more far away no you're not a couple here as the grades go higher the numbers get lower is that anything to do with it you track or do you know how many withdrew completely from the school you've got to go in during those couple years you just haven't come back or is there a situation okay um we don't lose kids they we lose kids and they leave us much more reflection of you've got 41 kindergarteners 42nd graders but then you only have 26 4th graders still two teachers for all of them giving class sizes of 20 which is over your 18 but then only 13 for the fourth graders so how do you kind of handle those issues where because i mean that's a huge difference the teacher has one more time

015attention to 13 kids versus 20. absolutely so so there's two parts to that the first part is that you can't take like in this case a fourth grade teacher and then you'll teach first grade right part of it's just structural because k12 is on downstairs right in three four five is all upstairs the other part because we've experienced it before and i know carol went through a couple of classes the uh when you go down to one t-shirt you lose all of that kind of momentum you get so right now in berlin we have basically the same six teachers and we've had them for a few years they are rock solid in what they teach if you have to let someone go because that's really what would happen if we decided to combine that fourth

016grade into one group which we did which would have been our decision five years ago um those kids then suffered yeah i don't think it was more elevated getting a third class for those which is impossible right now this is something that over the next few years we're going to want to take a look you know that just goes great i noticed that carol young is in there for a little while my first year teaching she was a first grade teacher and she was the gold standard so you know she's just amazing and you would never know that she's been teaching forever she's just you know full of energy what's been cool you know we also shaved carol the first grade she got first grade before um but she's loving fourth grade and uh loving

017math which really it's surprising because we have made in first grade too and i just assume that's where she would want to go but i just wanted to try to go back to fourth grade so it sounds like you have open positions right now yeah part of it it's um they're open because they're connected to maternity needs and i can't find people to take those jobs actually and um janelle inspector is not here i spoke with her on the phone earlier today just on that and they interviewed the two people that they're feeling what they're going to do so that's going to help what's what's preventing us from you hear it everywhere i was talking uh missy tucker one of my third grade teachers her husband works for target you go to restaurants and they're

018having a problem you go to the grocery store and the shelves on stock it's a problem everywhere we put out ads for different positions and we get like it's not like somebody posted for paras we got nine applications of the nine we could only interview five the other four were so inappropriate i'm sure there are many kind of brick layers but that's not the skill set we're looking for of the five that we could interview three terms did they say one thing under the jump it as a pair of professionals right [Music] also in the past [Music] something to me looking into the benchmark and salary side for the paris and our district compared to others i would i would think that there would be opportunity to steal professional blackmail in germany and other districts

019if we're offering a better opportunity for them right is that what you find true sometimes it is frequently the very last thing people ask you yeah okay um mr zane has been really good about paying what it takes um so i felt more so than at other times in my time here i had felt like i can use you know the budget to kind of entice people a lot we can't do it a few times um to get people to come it's especially true when it's only for a certain period of time but like we never found a preschool teacher you know and uh you know kind of pieced down that together we only found i don't have more you can increase it i think that's you know certainly any other questions thank you very

020much i suppose if you would like to go here with your families rest after a long day please leaving we appreciate you thank you so much and he's ready to present so these uh these aren't a surprise to you i've talked to talk to you about a couple times the student learning goal thank you student learning goal um two pieces one was hiring new administrators so those are going to require a full search which take about you know two to two and a half months to get committees together um so be the high school principal the assistant principal maybe an additional assistant principal depending on how the um restructuring goes that's why that is a question mark next to assistant principal the principal at bes you know obviously we got turning out to be a

021great principal when he has intro but that'll require a full search and then a curriculum director i got a question mark next to that also depending on the superintendents which goes and then the second part of the restructuring of the middle school high school credit office that's something we've been wanting to do for a while so was that put together a list of districts in massachusetts that have a middle and high school in the same building and will start investigating you know what they do the advantages disadvantages there's a cost to it that is most likely going to require at least one more administrative position um but certainly you know teachers i've talked to in this building have said to me this is what we've been asking for because i've school were very different places

022in high schools and require you know a certain amount of attention it's direct intention so so we'll be doing that and i'll i'll present that uh certainly the the first pass in the budget because there is a budget impact and so i want you to see that before for a district improvement goal that's going to be the enrollment piece to include things like growth rate real estate trends new buildings in town new about i don't bui we're there yet but you know we keep getting these little surprises now the numbers you see now for a moment that's opening day numbers those are the october one numbers those are the official numbers that we have before so you know no one should panic or say oh great we have been numbers this year until there's always

023a movement in the first few weeks and so we always use the october one number and then the april one numbers again to see additions in one grade so and usually at the lower so and most of time it takes place over the summer but you can get some movement so we'll look at we expected around uh 55 and 60 okay which we didn't get so we'll we'll see that doesn't mean obviously there's a lot of buildings going on and that needs to be you know just because you see a bullet doesn't mean you open the eyes to us i know when i came i told the story many times say go for it and no one's going down i just drove up steal all the business building doing that so i don't know how

024that worked sure enough we've seen an increase so i think we should do you know more extensive enrollment projection for this year going forward as a transition as i transition away from this position and then [Music] the third part the professional practice school is the mentoring again we have new director finance and operations uh new facilities manager uh brand brand new uh directed people personnel it is only six months into the job and that has proven to be a handful of special education i was still hiring still hiring personnel in that department especially nurses it's been it's been very very difficult we're getting there we're getting there so we assigned a outside mentor for the high school principal and john is going to be acting as the mentor for the best performance for this year

025next year that person whoever that is will require an outside mental nutrition manager not the job official he's our inside guidance john will also by the way be working with bes and some of the literacy pieces that have been successful and still the principle of bms at the same time so it doesn't give away some vessels yeah high school assistant festival doing a great job doing a great job those are going to be quiet um full searches those aren't the kind of jobs that the town just said now just pick what you want to require a full search and uh and they're appoint jobs that's that's where the mother needs to grow and they're in direct contact with the kids day to day so we got to make sure you get the right the right

026people were muslims so um so so that's it jeff asked questions i'll go number two one of the one projections um how are you going to do that if that's something you'll do yourself is there any external you know support and something to help with some of that or do that no we've got a good product [Music] but they they send this raw data and they have people there you can call so you give them a call and ask them to help with the interpretation of the data but i can't you know kind of get it myself but um the principles take a look at it also so again they'll go out ten years although ten years it's tough to get an accurate picture we should be able to go up five maybe five years

027you know accurately um and again like you know like when i got there and said you know was decreasing well if you look at the raw idea that there was a little downward but certainly nothing that would have should have caused us to say we need to reduce our budgets which is what we ended up doing so you know you can't make that mistake but we can't make that mistake this year we just heard john talked about his enrollments and that's the town that has the least amount of development right now do you have a sense jeff is one that draw data from uh i usually do the presentation you know up here sometimes uh you know kind of mid to late november i usually do the presentation it takes about a month to go

028to the towns and you know i check the records the pockets too because sometimes the growth rates aren't correct i talk to them find out where they collected their data from because sometimes that's what they'll have a conversation with some but i've already had a conversation a different conversation with the same person don't talk to the talent but i talked to him also sure so um so the answer question did vary some you know mid mid to late november uh and then they usually have a presentation includes a section of public schools and one of the things that says here is that and i wondered where they got this number it says that in [Music] 224 seems like a rejection that's pretty good you mentioned the national center for education statistics yeah so what was

029it again first the section here said [Music] facility is fully boys according to the national center for education statistics enrollment bes that inconsistent climate in the 21 engine 21 school year enrollment was projected for 224. actual woman was 278 [Music] is so they are skipping their september meeting and we will focus on that they are going to they are going to have a meeting in october so i can ask too because i don't know but you know what i mean i guess i think about it but we've in in uh boylston the last five years they're consistently obviously outperforming projections but that's that's also because the um you know it's a rolling average so it's like a rolling three-year average days so there was a little what in 2014 so they they you know that

030may have come from that piece but the actual numbers have consistently been outperforming the projections not as much you know and girl and they're really closer again they've had less they've had less movement in town um so why i would think if i was doing this myself using raw data i would start with the town census because you have to list everyone in your household and the ages so and then i would probably take averages of who moved into town using the census data you know like when people moved in and like taking after already in 2022 we had you know 10 people moving to town so is there any way we can figure out how they do this i mean that's a huge discrepancy and like again i'll ask the master steering yeah so

031they do use the census data i don't know about that i know they use the local ones but that's not going to be one of 10 years uh i know i think it's every year for boylston i get it you know we get it right yeah i was told by bro i always actually was supposed to talk to you john she has this at the same time but with all the new multi-handle building directors actually don't necessarily fill out that data but they still have that oh my god a lot more apartments available and um so just that one and a half or three years is some flexibility yeah and then you know it's it's a it's a projection when you you know the town says well you know you got 200 units you're only

032going to get seven people something like that you gotta again look at that i think all right probably not gonna be set is it gonna be 70 maybe 17. so you know some of it is some of it is just that it's just a projection you know it's safe to assume when i when that enrollment isn't going down you know the populations in these towns are not going out and growing in their drafts here too they have a projection just an overall town population they have 20 20 at 48.49 in boylston in 20 40 40 20 years from now they send them to go from 48 15 to 50 26 150 i don't believe that that's anywhere close to the number of people i i think the actual projection of 10 years for enrollment was

033that you know for the for the district so that that would just be strange so yeah i'm going to ask when i go to that meeting how they're getting that information but i don't know i think when we know the source it'll make sense i also remember the nasdaq report that you gave in february of 2020 one of the few meetings that was in person um river bridge is that's what's called correctiveness it was being built and the projection for berlin over the next five years was zero new students yeah and both cliff and i being in the real estate world were like yeah the original was only 29. it was 29 and then i got the update and it said zero mistake so i actually called the guy and it was based on conversation

034yeah injection going out to 2030 and 2032 was about a hundred and ten hundred twenty more additional so that would just be you know that's not that's not thirty yet [Music] the accuracy goes way down does anyone have any questions or comments for jeff regarding his goals the only thing i would add is just i go one deadline right yeah we don't get that until that'll be within the next couple months that will be before your first pass on the budget yeah that's what i'm saying the first class is december mid-december um i'll have it before that because it needs to be put in the budget if you're gonna if you're gonna vote on uh reconfiguring the senate uh from office then that position has to be put into yeah something in there don't miss

035it i mean i have something to say don't miss it no no i i do have i i do know that some of these things are very time sensitive so i'll make sure you you have what you can wait ahead of having to make a decision [Music] and most of them i would think it needs to be done by this talent during here the enrollment stuff yeah the role and stuff that was the you know the hiring should stop should have somebody hired mid to late april you know that's when you get people off the first route and we have a long time so there's no excuse [Music] um [Music] well we had a principal retire so it would be a good time to sort of restructure the entire piece i mean really we could

036have we could have just put another we could set another assistant principal but if the decision was made it would have been the two principles and i think it was difficult for a principal who has a year a year and a half to go to decide okay you know it'd be very difficult that we could figure an entire role for the principal at that time if we didn't have coping you know we maybe would have backed it up another year so yeah i mean that's that's had an effect on a lot of a lot of what what we're doing you know push things it's a good time we have a lot of movement we have a lot of people in interim it's a good time but they're committing to look at it and have the

037least destructive impact on schools and while we're doing a lot of moving things around let's decide what we're going to do yeah maybe not i wasn't totally surprised i was starting let's say i'm more surprised that i'm leaving at the end of the day thank you um we are gonna move on so we're now on item six we jumped around a little bit um the chairs reported i'm going to discuss our goals this is our update the policy subcommittee is going to finalize the goals related to the areas deserving of attention which would be budget support uh budget and support hiring of a superintendent and we're also going to review the school committee structure um and this is something that we're going to try to do within the next month or so um it was

038also suggested that we review the mass massachusetts school committee law possibly generate our own bylaws or operating guidelines for the school committee since we don't have any that would define our purview which we really kind of need via a guiding document this will be a topic that the policy committee will look at and probably a little bit more in the winter when things are a little bit slower and really dig into it and then just lastly as a reminder at our last school committee meeting because we weren't taped responded but you know that we created subcommittees new subcommittees for the 2022-23 year so we have the personnel and superintendent evaluation as well as negotiation and that is um mrs julie lee myself and this name grill the student success and technology subcommittee that would be

039mr totman mr holmes and mr wilbur policy and school committee effectiveness of effectiveness that's mr totten mr holmes and myself and then the budget facilities and safety subcommittee that's mr wilbur mrs lee and mrs corelli i think the first one [Music] that's is we you're correct we changed that um so mr chapman is on the um good catch that's my fault that's okay no and i should have caught it because i remember we did change that but it it looked good to me um and then just as a side note everybody except for the talk group on because there's no nothing to them to work on right now um met in groups last week it got started right away so we're digging right in so our superintendent of school search mr wilbur took the time

040to comb through the community feedback and he's going to summarize it for us he did a fantastic job they were wonderful comments very insightful thank you to anyone who filled that out for us it was truly helpful and you had a lot of great ideas so mr wilbur and carol about this as i handed her a copy and said you've been asking me all these questions 400 questions and i've talked to a couple of people i think it's incredibly um nice to see that the community responded in this way to this request and we created them as open-ended questions to respond to um we got 112 responses a strong number of them from um in particular and a number of teachers and staff who also participated um many of those anonymously you know people do

041chair who they were and you know um were willing to do that the three questions we asked were what do you think of the top three district priorities for the next supreme court you address what qualities or experiences are important to seek in the next superintendent and what questions would members of the community most like a candidate to answer so the document from you here summarizes number one number four which i thought were more relevant to tonight's interview number two which is what are we looking for in that superintendent what college we're looking for probably is more relevant to financial discussion of whether to appoint somebody tonight we're not as you go through this the second page summarizes some of the results across the first question that first question was about top priorities now put

042parentheses about how many times a certain topic was mentioned by somebody so you'll see that the two most common areas that people mentioned were recruiting retaining and developing exceptional people for the district and academics and student success those were far above far away the most common areas that people wanted to have us think about when it comes to the next superintendent a third one close third was around communication culture and community engagement so there's some examples there i mean you all have full access to all these results but i quoted some kind of representative examples of what people did have to say in those areas and then four and five also with over 20 um mode responses there you've got a budget answer to resources as well as health and wellness and then you'll see

043at the bottom some other areas that came up uh safety equity and inclusion bulletin harassment and technology so we've got a sense as to what people are most concerned with or interested in seeing as we move forward and then the other six pages are all the questions people suggest five pages people suggested we ask and so those questions are bucketed into some different areas school climbing culture aligned with what we saw as areas of focus communication and community engagement student outcomes a lot of questions about leadership style management style and goals and plans for the district budget facilities safety health and wellness equity diversity and inclusion inclusivity and also questions about the canada's past experience and there's some like other questions we certainly haven't a round of questions tonight um so i think that will

044help us a little bit but at the same time we're in no way you know just ask these questions so i hope it's helpful for everyone tonight i think we really owe a dead gratitude community people really did put thought into this you know i would say all the feedback we've collected via surveys from parents in the community over the last my last year in the school committee i found this to be really helpful and i think the open-ended picture of it was probably part of why they had to actually type words that made sense so here we go today i want to start by asking your own questions [Music] oh yeah you know that i'm a passionate educator and i've been in this district this is my 15th year i care very deeply i

045want the school committee to know that and also the families at home and the teachers about the children in this district into making this the best possible educational experience for those children for their families and for the community and for the staff so i feel like i've worked very hard on those pieces i think i could watch children go from kindergarten to girl to memorial school and watch them before graduation day so i have that kind of background and i feel part of this community more so than the town i live in this is the community and the town i've been with i've spent a lot of years building relationships with staff members in all three buildings with the parents of the children i know many of you and many of the community members that

046i've worked with on various committees um certainly the police department and fire departments farming community folks businesses probably anybody who's in this [Music] but i i take very seriously this position and take very seriously who i am as an educator three more children to our family um and i have ten grandchildren so if these children work in my school in my district i would want them to have a very nice education hospital because i'm watching my children trying to find places to live with their families that are affordable in green school systems i feel because i know that you know that's like if we're trying to pick a place where they can raise their children to have good education and a number of them are educators themselves so i understand that piece of parents and

047what they care about staff relationships definitely have built those through the years i feel that the staff will talk to me about many questions that they have we work together on committees and we want to work together to support their growth as educators and so i know all of them custodians cafeteria workers they're part of my daily life in the buildings and i spend time with them and so i think i know them and they know me probably even tonight as i'm here in a very different way a personal and a professional way to try to make those emotions i want to talk to you about experience and expertise in the field so in addition to this role an assistant superintendent backing up always a teacher first i have been a teacher for a number

048of years in various grade levels i taught first sixth grade fourth grade so i spent time doing that work i was a curriculum specialist i moved into assistant principal position and another district then i came over here as a principal in the memorial school and i'm the curriculum director and now assistant superintendent i i serve on a number of massachusetts association of school superintendent committees i've been involved in a number of seminars and leadership [Music] mentoring with people coming into a position similar to mine so back in my second year along with that work i'm also part of a think tank across the state for gs 21 this is a group of superintendents and assistant supreme to discuss our place as educators and educational institutions forward so that we're thinking not only of what's going

049on in will move massachusetts their world and also looking at what's happening in other countries and how they may be doing things better several years ago i choose to travel between them in germany to look at their educational systems of other educators and we learned a great big deal about how educators successfully trained and how how they educate children that we can learn from so that's part of some of the other work i do and i also i'm a teacher of the teachers i work with for educational services i work with new teachers coming in about curriculum and assessment and i also teach aspiring teacher principal administrative leaders in the workforce [Music] culture in the school so that's my that's my background as far as education um more than anything i feel that i of

050these know towns i came here i used to tell the story i came here because i survived the bicycle around berlin and i thought something's wrong here there's something i love about this small town i grew up in a small home and i understand the importance of relationships in a small town how that's going to happen first without anything else can take place i've seen that over and over again with staff and building those relationships and i feel like children working relationships with them and building relationships with their families as well so i'm here tonight giving it my best to say about me i have a question first of all thanks for uh taking the time to be here with us and opening yourself up to questions and letting us get to know you a

051little better and as well as the community who's watching um a number of folks from from the community that responded to surveys and others have asked questions about your vision for the school district and so i thought i'd summarize those questions with with uh with my own [Music] if in fact you find yourself in a position of superintendent um could you share with us how you would prioritize items to start doing within the district stop doing within the district as well as continue so i thought about that question you know what i'm thinking of um i would i would probably start with stuck paying attention to the negativity i think we have to move beyond that i think we have to address the of that negativity to try to understand why why that exists but

052i also think if we spend the time focusing on that we are going to move forward we have to be able to take steps forward we have to find our people to help us to join with us to visit you take the last time to say let's let's get started with this work the second part of that question is uh first up and continue okay so i i want to get out usually my work is behind the scenes and it has been that way but i want to start getting out more and be very visible in community by being able to attend various functions events sports programs things that are going on happening with our students pto meetings that i have been at in the past certainly in cpac but really getting a sense more

053so in those areas as well as outside in the community because those folks are important to us i think it's important to tap into some of the corporations we have in these towns and introduce oneself there we can we can potentially get funding from you as individuals or these materials if we get out there and we introduce ourselves to these people um i'm starting to do that work already um and i think that we're also just introducing ourselves to the seniors that area the council on aging and other folks who may not have a chance to get to know me and what our school district is if they don't know us we don't understand who we are and what we're about what our priorities are when and i think as we've been talking about these

054past several weeks and years we you need to have um continue doing i i want to continue building relationships i want to continue building relationships with our staff we want to continue with our fire department you know a wonderful crisis uh partnership that i had initiated several years ago by inviting the police and fire departments within two towns and with us we have not had that experience before we have leaps and bounds with the work we're doing right now in fact we're meeting on thursday to continue to kind of tighten the information around emergency and that has taken time to do because we have to go to trust among ourselves and know that we're going to count on one another when there are crisis and other times [Music] so i want to continue building those

055relationships exploring opportunities like that internship program at the high school exploring possibilities and i think just getting to know how to do better and to approach all of this to a different lens as the leader now thank you very much any question i have several but i'm going to do one of these questions okay i'm very excited um the parent community is that communication just drops off despite the newsletter just feels like the school doesn't want that parent support the economy elementary schools and you know um so my question would be how would you what sort of ideas would you have to create that relationship with the community so the parent community feels that the school wants to hear what they have to say or wants who wants to involve i think there's two parts

056to that i think first has to do with leadership and who we selected the leaders in those buildings because the principles drive the culture in each of the buildings it drives the culture of our whole district it's my responsibility another job and he knows it because we have these deep conversations at times and difficult conversations the superintendent drives the principles from what the expectations are in each of those numbers we feel that that's a priority they need to know that we need to show evidence that that is that is going to be the priority in that school but i think he's also choosing those good leaders too when we have opportunities to look for individuals who will promote that and who will start to build that trust and and ask of those teachers specific things

057like reaching out whether it's newsletters and we've done a lot of work in our negotiations around parent conferences we've been trying to break through and allow new avenues to do that so i think it's around that leadership piece the second piece and i think that part of that is on a district level as well as the communication piece that we're speaking of not just at the middle high school level but all of the levels there was a quote one time that struck me and as a presentation that said if we don't tell our story someone else is going to talk to us and that has always resonated with me because i think that's really true what a lot of what we do on social media is the negativity because we're not out there promoting ourselves

058this district is doing such wonderful things we have staff that are doing we just saw at least the sequoia came a couple weeks ago right at the moment worksheets in biology how often do you hear about that years ago mr hefner was a growing principal and things were very different in that world i used to bring in the groups of students and do a little presentation every single time i had a growing school community meeting we may want to do something at least like that for a number of my meetings because do you want to see the children the students are what they're doing i think [Music] we have social media to our advantage through twitter through facebook the two just starting now that we can promote we have newsletters we have a lot of

059we can be doing i think showing up at the table to these different events and honoring the work the teachers are doing these students when they have opportunities like exhibitions in the high school i've gone to i used to not get invited to the exhibitions i think that people think i survive why i wasn't invited i started going there's no peaceful exhibitions and if you have not had a chance to go these are the seniors john within they take my breath away these students read a variety of books they select the material they're going to read and they take interpretations on their specific themes and they present that to the audience they act it out they discuss it they take questions from the audience isn't this like college-level material going on there and it blows

060me away every single time but i look around the audience it wouldn't be wonderful until about the father and some of our seniors from the senior center to come parents to come in and see what's going on so i think we have to work on promoting ourselves as well otherwise we're radio silence and then allow the negativity in the toxicity district um carol you've already answered all the questions that i have written down um i never thought i would ask this question but do we have any diversity yeah i would say we do okay and and it's so subtle that we our first reaction and we went through this in an administrative team we don't have a problem with equity because we think of connect equity right away to um racial equity we absolutely have

061a population here of students who are elves or english language leaders there is another country but it's not so visible and what ends up happening with those students there's a term for i want to say whitism they blend into their culture and they actually use their own culture because they try to become a patient you know they try to to to fit in with it you don't see it it's very subtle so we're trying to raise awareness of that piece of the equity position we also have to look at the social economic social social economic level of our students and the opportunities that we have here to support those students the equity initiative started several years ago based on the fact that students can afford field trips there were some that those that could and

062those that couldn't and students who had came from families of money were able to build a very beautiful and exotic places to travel in their educational experiences they were even able to find other types of field trips that were in within the country because they had them funding to do it the equity plan was designed originally to be thinking about how we're going to fund those opportunities for those children as well because that's that's indifferent to allow that opportunities and courses there are students and we may get into special education a little later but i would say we don't know our children and if a student who has an iep wants to take an ap course or a course of rigor even if it's an honors course and they want to work at it oh

063god did that give you an opportunity to do that you owe it to us to step up and give them a chance to at least take those courses even if you don't go through the test at the end of the week [Music] near and dear to my heart how that percentage has grown tremendously in the past couple of years here because i think we had this conversation during our masking conversation so yeah i think i agree with you but setting all that aside what is the one thing we can focus on right now as a district as a committee what would you tell us as a committee the one thing you would want to do to make this district improve stand out jump ahead leaps and bounds go where it is now compared to i

064think the other day we're talking about surrounding towns that some people may consider more desirable districts one thing that we're not doing now so we're in a period right now of transition but jeff spoke about that the principal spoke about that in the report changes in administration changing inner leadership and staffing but i also think the bigger picture this is period of transformation we're at a crossroads right now when we can go forward but we have to do that together we're dealing with quality of opinion and anybody who denies that has got blinders on we hear it across the nation we carry it across the commonwealth and we feel that in our district so the truth so that this period of time is an opportunity for us to remove again one of the things i've

065been talking about with the administrators and i would want to move forward with all of us is is an initiative called the portrait of a graduate many high level districts are including units in this program the program enables us to come together collectively as a community not only just all of us we would be involved certainly all school committee members parents community members to sit down and say it's an initiative a creation of a whole part of distributors because i think we do pockets of greatness but i think we need to have a pathway that says this is what we want our children to be running out of to haunt them this is what the skills the competencies we want them to be able to have and that we all have consensus around that because

066julian may have a great idea and mike mike and john lyden but it's great but we're fragmented with that we need to bring us together again and have those kind of discussions and it's and it's a systemic approach to doing this work i've been looking at a consulting group that does this work in a very great way who's going to be meeting with the administrative team just to give give them an idea of what this is about to explore some of the options to talk about where we think we are right now to look forward you got to know where you now student behavior social emotional learning i know you yourself took on a lunch duty at boyle's elementary the last couple weeks covering for the fact that we're into staff there um on that

067topic especially at the elementary school level we have students who either missed out on from preschool experience altogether or had preschool kindergarten first but experiences that were not what they were typically in the past what can we be doing and what would you want to see the district do to help young students who are struggling behaviorally with social emotional types of things here starting now i think that i was glad that john had spoke about [Music] and expectations whether it's in the elementary schools when teachers are on the same page with the principal there the children know what the expectations are when they have expectations they're still safe they feel such a structure as a good thing because it does make them know i'm going to be okay and i know i know you need

068to do people and you don't have it to become scales and that's what those children miss who started who didn't get preschool we had them in some of the acceleration academy and we had 40 something preschool students coming into that acceleration academy that year just to do the social emotional [Music] setting the expectations reinforcing those expectations is one [Music] actual curriculum for the elementary schools and fun that the teacher is implementing each are there in each of their classrooms there is a set of rules of expectations for the classroom they meet in morning meetings class meetings where they discuss issues and topics and how they handle that with i think we're also putting resource resources in place right now beyond the justin council and fullest in elementary school that's been huge our school psychologists and

069we do a lot of work with our children in the middle high school we're adding school adjustment counselors we structured the counseling department so that we have somebody now dedicated specifically [Music] that kindness peace kindness for everybody and i think that's going to take us a long way to get an honest and future back i also think there's a piece of this that says to me as a parent we love the expectations of our children and if you don't think that they're watching or behaving and listening to a lot of words had to tell you as a mom who's had that i'm still reminded now 30 years later of things i said when they were eight years old remember what you said [Music] and let them know we care about them at the high school

070students who are coming in and transitioning from mental health [Music] so that when they feel ready as they feel ready to go back into different classes they'll help they'll transition back so that they are not safe okay um so i feel like one of the things that many people asked but also many people have been talking about is uh staff right teachers you know um support staff so what what do you think are the two one or two most important things to number one hire great staff and number two retain those staff i was listening to john talk about the teachers in berlin and how some of them have been there for years doing the same job and they're not going anywhere and then we look at bes and we've had a ton of turnover

071um so what do you think are the one or two most important things that you as the superintendent need to do to get good people that will stay i think providing them with adventures we have a mentorship program here i think that the people that we selectable mentors are committed to to growing free educators we spend a lot of time [Music] and then they understand what our culture is and what our expectations are i think that mentoring those features is really important um i also think that we've perhaps taken these undervalued [Music] and unfortunately to evaluate and to watch for folks who should not for whatever reason should not be teaching and they do a good job with that but i think that we have to promote excellence in those teachers who have been here

072for a while and build their opportunities to become leaders whether they're leaders in their departments or leaders in sports or coming forward in art and music and being able to really flourish i get a lot of correspondence with them because they're looking for other data and information for their courses and i think it's it's our job my job to make sure that they can get what they need [Music] so actually you just brought up a great point because i know my son's first grade teacher was going for her master's and we didn't know the whole year but over the summer she was doing like a research project and she reached out to the parents and i was just like wow you're doing all that and trying to get a master's i think maybe it would

073be you know just a thought i don't know informative for the school committee maybe we could you know have an update or you know not like a spotlight you know not to like try to make people feel bad it's like like you said focusing on the positive you know maybe like once every couple months or once a year look at these teachers that are doing you know this one's going for the doctor this one's going for the master's kind of making the school committee aware you know so at least we know the names and i don't think and i actually worked with them but they completed their um oh my gosh what they call them now that it's qualified they have to complete certain levels of competency in order to go better administrative license now

074and i would work with them around that so i'm very proud of them that they got these positions i would never hold them back i always want to encourage them to go some folks were just looking for other opportunities somebody was a bigger district or a more challenging district or is moving away you know is getting married or doesn't want to teach anyone but this happens to be the perfect storm of things to happen so if you don't think left me with all my questions go on um but i did want to comment you know during negotiations we had the opportunity to see how you've interacted with the teachers um and you know when you walk into a building or a house you walk in you can feel a feeling there you can feel happiness

075you can feel heaviness um how are you going to how do you see yourself working with the teachers to try to build up you know hope they took they beat them down they're exhausted you know the morale is you know across not just our district everywhere it's low um i know that you have a wonderful relationship with a very deceptive relationship where they listen to you and listen to them i'm just curious if you have any visions for what you might do to help build them up um and strengthen them like even the cultures and the schools just to bring more happiness and joy yeah we had um jerry cobin in particular because i was working for the association i was taking a lot of information about what the teachers were asking for and so

076we tried to provide them with opportunities for some social emotional support for madness teachers they know that the principles were very working very hard to give them embrace and time to improve and empower from from challenges of teaching online and then working in these highway models so giving them some flex time that they might never pack um certainly within them and professional development because we brought in mass partnerships and that is an organization that deals with workshops for teachers on anything from trauma both their own trauma wellness opportunities for them to be able to learn from and also to recognize that for those students in the classroom but honestly i think the the strongest way to do that is the personal one-to-one relationships that i've built with those teachers i do a lot with a

077professional piece but i also want to follow up with them in a personal way i know what's going on in their lives they talk to me about some of the things that are happening and i think reaching them in that way is the best communication getting back to them too on things that they want to do or things that they're asking before it's respectful and it shows that i don't just say i'm going to do something and make sure i do it but i think we [Music] and we do talk about how will you how's this going how's that going what are you doing what are those teachers thank you i appreciate it they're the backbones of the school um and it's just i think one of the one of yours you have so many

078strong there's so many strong points and strengths it's about you but you just have that nice relationship with them and i think right now where we are in the world it's really important that whoever comes in and takes over is able to work with that and create these relationships and what i like about the idea of your coming in that you is a nice workflow with them there's mutual respect and understanding and just hearing all of the things that you were doing to support that within the rest of the leadership team is just wonderful and you'll see two things about the earlier i look at that as a mess so it's the team and i don't take the credit for that a part of that work that we're doing when we do that together so

079and i think i think you have other ideas that the teachers are not they don't always love me now you know i recognize that it's not like where we're just a big love fest here and everybody says yeah they get mad at me you know i make them do things right now go through this all the time but in the end i do think you come to an understanding of why these things are important to you and just like working with families just like working with the kids the teachers have to understand why we're asking them to learn what they need to learn to be able to teach why are we learning about foundations why are we doing these videos programming programs and teaching them about these skills why are we asking people about new

080math concepts and skills we have joey thornhill spoke about that last year we're changing the way we teach mathematics teachers [Music] and making those okay um extracurricular activities and drama and all my kids play sports and i am pro sports very impressive i think you do a really great job for supporting the athletes here but i'm not so sure that we mail it on [Music] people are very invested families are very invested in schools but we're not addressing students who are in the arts or interested in the arts and or any other topics because we don't have we don't have that extra school extracurricular activities after school we run clubs during the day they happen a lot of times during lunch times in part to afford those students who are sports sports players to be

081able to go to those meetings and then start their school's practice right after school i'd love to work with with our athletic developers coaches and principals to make some adjustments in those times so that students who want to stay after club activities or art or the music program or get into a jazz program whatever they want to do some kind of club organization moderate when after school they can do that because they can't they don't have to pick and choose they can't do that at school because i'm in school i don't want to get rid of the sports program but i want to expand that because of all of them not all kids play sports and i don't want to take that away from the sports program i'd like to build some other sports i'd

082love to have lacrosse here at the school and there's sports that i'd like to bring in but i think we have to open up after school activities i've been talking with teachers over asking numbers for new procedures can you please have an after-school help help center and the students can go for additional support if you don't have any after-school buses how is that equitable if you can't go home your mother your father can't pick you up after school so you don't stay after school this goes back to i think your question about the social emotional easier you don't have to feel part of the morning sometimes he was reading up a book gentleman's book because he gave it to me it was the second day of the books right where they talked about everybody wants

083to feel part of the tribal community the disconnect the depression the anxiety starts when we don't feel it before long that was part of the having more corporate right we all became disconnected from each other have students here who need a connection with somebody or somebody other friends who have a like mind right to be able to get into love and compassion about music or art for teachers who have that and they want that opportunity to teach and do that work after school or expand that opportunity i think that that would be that's one of the very complete questions so why don't we do some of this stuff now is it money is it that i know you just mentioned the buses so obviously is it or it's like sports so it's all because of

084sports or is it just because we don't have staff i think it's a culture that's been created all the time i think it's been trying to trying to find ways to have clubs but looking for coaches who will be willing to be here and i think that it's it's just that the collection we now have should be having the two two days of that after school last tuesdays and thursdays i haven't had a chance to find out who sounds like that started yet but then the buses the buses show up and the kids aren't there because there's nothing going on but otherwise they show up yeah what about lessons for kids who are in sports after school buses where kids were in sports and i'm staying late [Music] yeah it was a late month after

085school bus so we do not have one we don't [Music] have this to be just student government you know you and we're never going to be able to offer the wide variety of courses or opportunities that street very high school offers for example and i mentioned that because one of the items that i organized is the program bus justice in toronto and i commented during the student success meeting about the fact that we offered two foreign languages here at tahoe spanish and french i went on to choose various programming studies it's a page full of foreign mandarin and latin all kinds of options how do we as a high school provide perhaps different opportunities and what do we provide to students that makes up for the fact that they're not going to have that variety

086of options that they might have at a bigger high school what do they get here how can we enhance that so that people don't graduate feeling like they missed out on the opportunities [Music] what she said about the expert performance it does tie into that for example i think two of our teachers are moving forward under the auspices of the grocery code organization they're offering additional coding opportunities for students who are interested boys and girls and they're going to be starting that program after school this year so i'm excited about that we have opportunities for students to take courses online to pay for that right now use our program for vhs and we use that to be able to allow students i i see us expanding into opportunities to take courses in college we talked

087about that and i share them with last year we have local colleges they're offering times for our students to go into the coursework there as well um [Music] i think that we can do some some co-teaching models and we're combining where teachers have expertise and don't get to particularly teach that course one of the areas that i would love to see from here now is environmental science they have the teachers being prepared is budget and as we look at some of the challenges we have across the district i understand our biggest challenge right now in this district we can't no matter how much money we have we're probably not going to offer through different levels of mandatory chinese however as we think about advocating in our role as the school community legislative perfumes how do

088you see yourself as the potential superintendent playing a role in that process and helping us advocate for the budget we need to do the things we don't want to see happen i think that's that's a multi-faceted question i think first of all [Music] information from staff as far as curriculum material personality to have in places so i think it's imperative for that for the superintendent to be able to to look through and prioritize and make recommendations right now but i also think we have to work in partnership to get out there early and talk to the community about the needs that we have i think a lot of times again it goes back to the why they don't know until november december january can go out there and speak to these friends and various is

089[Music] and talking to them so that they're aware of when we need what we need it's going to be critical we can't we can't put everything into the plot and warning you and say okay this is all the things we need but we can prioritize and put it into a sensible plan so that we can ensure that we're going to get those internet over a period of time this is a skeleton model it does take into consideration think for me that answer in that topic is probably the biggest strength i see in your candidacy for the world in that you understand where we are today and what you could do to rapidly improve outcomes in the district in having someone who's knowledgeable in our district able to be side by side the six of us

090none of them i think they're scared to do the same thing you just said go out there [Music] um what would you what is your vision for the restructuring there what would that look like jeff and i have talked so much about this restructuring i do absolutely support the idea of bringing them through the administrator um whether we do this as a model with that one principle and two assistant principles one of the middle schools one of the high school the ideal or we have one principal middle school high school we talked about that model as well but i think i will go with the if we can ensure and set the definition of those job descriptions so that the two assistant principals handle specific duties handle discipline sample schedule and handle they'll be doing

091evaluations as well handling kind of the day-to-day operations amounts of time on topics and things that he or she should not be having does he not have a [Music] and that person should be the one guiding some of these initiatives that we're going to put in place thinking about thinking what do we need to have carol how can we get in let's see what's going on in these classrooms and doing things [Music] our size and see how we look at that you know what we do you know originally when the school was built i was part as a number one principal of the middle of developing the middle school model that i spent a lot of time with some of the teachers who are still here now creating what the division of what that model

092would look like and then we didn't have funds to bring in even a second you know one of the challenges we have now is across this crossover still so they're between scheduling conditions so again cleaner at the end those are the teachers is that something you would also need for [Music] i think it's very hard for your teachers to do truly [Music] when it comes time to do that i think you've worked with how many superintendents have you been here six years [Music] as you think about the different administrators you've worked with in the years you've reported into um are there any specific things you would take away from their styles and do similarly or anything that you would try to do differently they hope you might have seen something as other leaders do and

093i specifically think about you know a very friendly and personable and nice person but there are times when the superintendent is going to need to put their foot down for the first time table in certain situations so you know how do you evolve yourself as a leader over that period of time so not just japanese yeah you know [Music] i have taken a watching break superintendents and and and value what i've learned from them the positives and the neighbors of these individuals for all human you know all universes our strengths and our weaknesses um styles that are definitely different from in my style and i'm very different i'm very different from jeff and that's one of the things that made us work together i think well because we see things from different specific perspectives and

094we're not afraid to go after things that we believe in with each other and he you know they both laugh because they've heard i'm always nice when they know they see a look in my face and they're like children parents teachers everyone and everyone we have to be respectful to one another we have to do what we say i think we have to be good listeners i think we have to be able to hear what people are saying and make informed decisions sometimes you have to make a quick decision she's just made a million important decisions yeah or you know you can't wait around sometimes to decide what you're going to do and that's fun that's scary um because you're on your own with those um i got everyone's experience um and then sometimes you

095can take your time sometimes you can get a lot of feedback and collectively get their ideas [Music] yeah seriously at the end of the day i wish you worked all day yeah that was great so thank you that was really took care of me to the next steps in [Music] and we're going to have a meeting on september 27th which is two weeks from today it is a tuesday and at that meeting we will vote to appoint carol to take over a superintendent on the retirement of mr zaney and then we will go into executive session to discuss um contract and in between um you know we're we're looking to the community to give us their feedback and to let us know how they feel and if they're questions that they feel we should have

096answered um we absolutely welcome those um there's been a suggestion if you want to put something out there to the community certainly where people [Music] so i i just want to offer that to you i'm looking forward to setting a path that's that's exciting um [Music] always say that you want the job to be honest thank you [Applause] let's do some sex media reports i'm left to appoint the following members uh as chairs to their subcommittees and as such they will be providing an update on the submit the subcommittee that they represent so um mr wilbur i'm going to appoint you to be the chair of the budget facilities and safety subcommittee okay would you like to give your report this time sure and thrill you're on deck so the budget finances um safety budget

097facilities and safety supplements being met on we call this um discussed a number of items um we overviewed and looked at the district funding sources to get uh myself megan and julia their understanding of really when it comes to financial workforce kind that i think was really valuable for for all of us to dig into and understand the district's budget and how it comes to be and where everything fits um we also looked at a preliminary list of other districts i think we want to understand really a benchmark for non-leading personnel salaries so specifically we'll be hiring superintendents and assistant superintendents substitute teachers and out central office staff to understand where we are compared to neighboring districts um that initial information and going on to get more for us from the next meeting we're going

098to have um we initially looked at the timeline for the qualcomm budget process and talked about the timing of that along with the [Music] to be what some of our officers went there helped fund that liability and also looked at the contracting district's assistant legal counsel and reviewed uh service offerings from other law firms to continue with our existing council potentially consider others so we met for over two hours that was great and i do want to also ask maybe to speak to some facilities concerns we have with pbs in particular and then let her speak to that um so i'm going to start by saying this morning when um i told my kids it was picture day and it was raining and my kindergarten daughter said to me well where are we gonna do

099pictures and i said well we're gonna you're probably gonna do them in the gym and she goes well she goes well the rules of the gym are you can't touch the buckets of water and if a ball goes in a bucket of water you have to tell the teacher and i said what are you talking about and i went to the school and i saw that the roof is leaking in the gym and in the library um so mike right like like okay yep he took me around and he said that actually they've patched it so many times the people have had to have told them so i think that we've talked about this loosely but i think that we need to find the money in dual facilities study on that building like asap um

100you know the roof the building is like it was like 90 degrees in the heat and the way the way the sun hits the building you know with the flat roof the air conditioning in the library is broken it was about 87 degrees in the library it was 86 or 87 the day we were in the building i mean huge impairments in learning when gym classes about avoiding the buckets of water and the library is just about surviving instead of like actually enjoying the books um because it's so hot so you know i don't know if that's something we need to vote on [Music] when we had a budget of something back in june we talked about the facilities yes that's a huge thing to budget for so it would be helpful if we could

101have it done you know i'd say before the end of the calendar year right [Music] i'll talk to nancy about it what i was going to suggest we do tonight would be to take this topic in for the school committee to empower the budget subcommittee to follow awareness going so far as to requesting our case and improving funding board if you need to so i wanted to give it as a motion to authorize the budget and facilities and safety committee to work with the administration that proposes an entire pharmaceutical facilities assessment of pes i think you said it was 25 000 for pns so i'm going to put up to 30 000 to conduct it so we can take it into the subcommittee to further discuss where everyone else would do it here so my

102motion is for this to give the subcommittee authorization to move forward with that in expendable 30 000 working in the administration to do that i'll get this started do you need a second for that question now i will say for the assessment it was 25 assessment pms so i'm just putting the inflation on there should [Music] thank you and then if you have something like air conditioning for example that's obviously not in the order because it doesn't exist in the school right so that's something to be able to consider and we also we've started [Music] the idea around it as a town building i don't know how that works um [Music] is that is that a uh assessment that's done periodically i don't know i don't that was a big capital item but it started

103with that piece but that has it has a number of little issues going on there's a mold issue in the building that teachers complain about so there's some ongoing issues yeah i mean i last year my son told me there were mice in this classroom twice they were sitting on a rug and a mouse ran across the moment twice it happened i mean they're first graders so they think it's cool all right my motivation an opportunity is get this assessment done this fall it would allow us to put that into a budget request for this year and i i'd rather do that than wait to get the funding for this assessment and then yeah i took some pictures they have buckets in the library lined with paper towels but the library's killing is destroyed um

104the gym thinks it's coming in from um coming in from the ducks so then you talk about mold while the water is getting into the dust you have no idea so i just i echo and adds that i feel like there is urgency to get this done asap because we don't want to wait a whole other year if there are certain capital improvements that need to get done and i think from what adam and i heard and laurie heard in the town of boylston we have people we have parents that are willing to go to town meeting and fight to get some more money for the school it's shocking to me that we have kids in school trying to learn it depends what else they're doing i mean i i agreed uh [Music] that this

105has [Music] who was so how long did that take yeah is that what steve was telling us about like the hvac stuff in that building the heating thing palace they got the new so how long would that study take the furnace [Music] how long did it take furnace was before i [Music] the berlin facility assessment was completed final report was delivered on may 20th so that was before our time before us like i do not remember that yeah it was like a two month start to finish no that's right i don't know what was it that's what i'm saying was it was it two months was it four months was it i have no idea my point is i don't know what we're talking about i agree today start now get it in for february

106budget great yeah um also i wonder if we could just contact the people that did the berlin one and see if they would do what's sort of so right now we're in the middle of a motion we have started and then no no it's okay but i'm just i just want to remind you that we're in the middle of the motion to give the authorization the school committee gives the subcommittee authorization to seek bids and perhaps spend up to thirty thousand dollars we drop it to 35 because jeff just let us know that the boylston facility is significantly larger than berlin so you're suggesting an amendment [Music] so we'll start looking at how nancy will have some information next time she'll just do the initial work on it and give you some more answers and

107the bid process okay all right september 27th all right okay so um so yep uh all in favor uh hi what's the next one is october 6th well now our next meeting is october 6th but we have school committee meeting september 27th so nazi has information for us to share at nfc all right i'd like to state that the motion for the school committee to give the budget sub-committee authorization to spend up to thousand dollars in seeking bids for disabilities disability study has passed um megan did you want to so i'm going to appoint rowe to be the chair of the personnel negotiations and superintendent evaluation did you want to share because we weren't on camera yes yeah so um the school committee um voted the current contract so it took draft immediately um it

108was a unanimous vote yep exactly so the committee has not met since um because we don't have any upcoming contracts excellent thank you thank you so much [Music] the school committee approves the bbc contract contract we talked earlier today about the pressure this is that school committee too or is that it deals with those we would recommend an increase if we're going [Music] with the superintendent but if we want to if we wanted to change the salaries we would come to because it's a budget item it reflects the budget to say we're recommending that uh all the steps increased by [Music] five percent so as is opening the only contracts employment contracts where we have somewhere as supernatural and uh and you you technically deal with the assistance right for the policy and committee effectiveness

109i'm going to import myself as the chair and i'm going to give a policy update um we're going to start with our public policy which we reviewed and i'm going to ask mr thompson to speak to that yeah we reviewed the policy edcfa and we have to have it tonight for both the first weekend to vote uh the only thing we changed in there is there was a line the second paragraph line read vaccinations the best protection is among the highest rates for young people and is a national leader we discussed this we didn't feel that this belongs to the policy any longer for several reasons one it reads as a statement of fact you hear that it sounds like we're making a statement uh we don't know that it's a statement fact we don't

110have the resources to continually research whether or not massachusetts is a leader whether or not vaccinations are the best or any of this other language that's in here so so we don't have to spend any future time on this we just want to strike that policy leave everything else as this and as that this language came from the dc notification the memo they sent out at that time and it just was left in there but we felt that it was time to just move past this and start getting everything else moving forward so that's up for um sure did you want to talk about um data yes so the sexual harassment policy that we voted on and approved uh several meetings ago there were some questions that came up that's the language in there we

111discussed that we didn't feel it was right to make those changes on our own so we were talking about the legal console they actually went back to us yesterday and so uh we've got their responses up there in the draft you guys look at the policy that you look at we also updated our bullying policy um to match the current policy that the nisc has suggested um mrs lee i know you had some questions regarding the policy which we can discuss when we go into the votes and i'm going to appoint mr chapman to be the chair of the student success and technology committee um [Music] you about how the high school kids can use cell phones in the cafeteria they can use it online yeah i is allowed and it's allowed in transitioning yeah

112i disagree with that as well so are you are they able to look at school policies so it's yeah the policy stuff unlike that are they able to do them because i agree with you like mike and larry i'm not right now there's not any research read so can i ask you is that something you would support abuses [Music] i would leave it up to the principal on the system if if it was their decision to do it i would ask the people who want to help them sure all that aside i'm talking about kids in a learning environment kids in a lunch room where you're supposed you ask the parent community it can't be a denial for this because it's not about actually first of all you're asking the question whose decision is it

113about cell phone use in the cafeterias is the building administrators you're asked me if i would support i would i would if the principal said that as a direct disruption of the school then i wouldn't support it they said well it's no problem you know they're doing that stuff then i would well if it's allowed then they probably haven't seen an issue with or it hasn't been brought up if you're saying there's research then show us the research you said all the research for something is i think he's suggesting that you take the research that you've seen and then trap sentinels like the leadership teams and say here i would like you to look at this when considering yeah sure number one okay number two if you have research department that's making your point then

114and i haven't seen that other schools haven't seen but show it to us you know it's totally possible we haven't seen all the research is specific policy to look at not speaking to whether we can change it it's our perfume you can put a lawyer on that but it looks like imjdb would probably be the policy to look at which specifically mentions mobile devices in it for the policy but this policy can be repeated whether we can change it or not to address the things and julie i absolutely 110 agree with you that if a kid is on their phone on facebook at lunch that literally sickens me in my core instead of learning how to talk and be with friends that's a huge problem in our society and i do not think cell phones

115should be a lot of school even in high school and i get it there are many adults and it's part of our world but if there is any way that we can get there i suppose jeffy you've spoken recently in a couple seconds about the school concept in the role they played with things like the hands-on is this an issue that should be referred to them surely with the administration i don't know if you've ever engaged with that group but you've mentioned a couple times in different settings yeah i mean they they deal with all of those issues and they deal with the handbook so that that's if you have if you have those kind of issues it should go through this conflict that's what they're there for and and again if you if you

116know you get it you're going to decide what your role is going to be you can make general policies but it's not to say well listen my kids say not specifically youtube now my kids say this is going on at school and i want this policy change to reflect that now if you're you know what i mean so but if you have a school council they review the student handbook and so that's that's where that stuff can come in because they can take a little more personal look at it because that's really their job to kind of investigate what's really going on in school but they do it they do it with students and they do it with administrators and so there's a different kind of discussion that happens to say okay this is what

117we hear is going on is this what's going on and then the administrators will say well yeah this is going on and we let it happen because of xyz oh we don't let it happen because of xyz and so that's how those changes get into the student handle so that's the place to have those kind of discussions because there's an administrative disabled do you as a superintendent support i don't support it or not support it because i don't have enough information so that's the discussion you have that a school council has with a group of students and with the administrators and the parents so they can all discuss because then there's kids they'll say we'll say well that's not happening or it is happening whatever the issue maybe not self like something else and that's

118how that that those things get changed this isn't the format for that stuff it just doesn't one of the things that the student saying it's not success student successfully talked about inaudib hour to really give them for them as to what's going on and i think we talked about that because that needs to be done and we talked about in terms of instead of this committee going to meetings you invite those people here or if you want the principles to be reported but it's better to have that whole representatives of the council do it but that's not the job no i get what you're saying yeah we should have been i wish we could have asked and i don't know maybe you emailed sally because i saw that but i wasn't sure did you email

119her and that's what she said i was going to get back up she's fine right right so this is just a very large issue that's not going away and we have to be able to help our students manage these devices why don't you apparently reach out to her ask it as a request of the council okay so that's different google show is it a different group every year um they're always looking for members i know i just had a parent ask me about something that was going on in the school i can't remember who it was what my suggestion was if you feel that strongly get involved get on the student council which i believe they did so okay that's the place for that stuff so you can as a parent as opposed to this

120say can you is this something you can refer to your you know your counsel to look at okay you come and present then you can ask as a committee as this committee how that can be that's different that's a different process yeah let me know if i can help you with that because i wholeheartedly agree even though i only have little kids but i've seen a lot of done a lot of research seen a lot of studies on how toxic social media is it also comes into a point that we've read several points in the superintendent survey feedback yeah that's where i think it would probably be solved becomes the biggest problem one thing to distract students during the questions another thing right i've heard a lot of people talk about tick tocks and photos

121being taken of other students in the school and posted on social media about other people's consent and okay yep all right good yeah i saw that cell phone thing earlier mr thompson did you want to give your report on student success and technology sure thank you so we did meet uh yesterday we and paul was there too we had a few things on the agenda we didn't get to all of them we spent a lot of time talking about the district improvement plan and carol told us more information about this portrait about a graduate idea which i mean i'm really bored with that i think i think we need to start with that and develop you know i'm sure that's how important to start with that and develop the improvement around it uh that will

122come i guess the time so we spent a lot of time talking about that we did talk about equity uh i've kind of brought up a point where i'd like to see more between the two elementary schools i think i've mentioned that before they're different schools they've operated independently for years they have different groups and different activities and different offerings you know one school district and i don't know how much work has been done to sort of bring those two together so that's one kind of topic that we might explore in the future i don't know what's going to cover that so we spent a lot of time talking about that um we asked paul if you could get us some information on the cell phone giving a cell phone cell phone service in this

123building right he says as well as additional ways to use technology not just for students in class but for getting information on facts um so that's what we talked about we'll meet again we talked a little bit about trying to set a uh don't want to call it a mission or the charge for the community so they actually know not only what we're going to do in the next year we communicate to towns what the purpose is this is a new committee it's not really you know budget self-explanatory but student success can mean a lot of different things so we will meet again probably in october excellent all right we are going to move on to your business uh i have a motion to approve the to hondo high school program of studies anyway sorry

124so the program of studies yeah is this it's this big documentary play when it comes to improving this what i don't know this time of study yeah first of all i thought it was agenda year unless yeah a change to it it's not in the fall though i mean not it's usually done in spring isn't it usually this of course just came out that the transition for me so there is a document in the drawing that just shows just the change everything else remains the same so that's why of course sounds like that this program is starting to do something for us to revisit after that corporate graduate process takes place to see whether that is the outcome we're looking for this committee should look at it because you knew what there's a change in

125that you should look at plus as chrissy said to us of course and then one course i think you'd be interested in um what's the cost that i'm going to ask i was interested in that too so i i would suggest even though even if they will everything new costs as it's a new committee and and if you've got an expand program and do any of that stuff which we should be going in the next few years you should make yourself familiar with that because that's one thing that is it certainly isn't even you should should be looking at that yeah i hate what you're saying there the confusion i had was when i opened the agenda [Music] principal would come in that's why it's done in the fall because that's when they're going to

126decide if there's going to be new bosses and then they can then be scheduled so you know the principal would say to you here's the new here are the new selections for next year for you to take a look at its vote however you're a new committee so you haven't you haven't seen the documents to begin with itself since that's not done until that's not really done until the uh spring there should be time to so look at it but it's on an agenda for a book should we table that until we have more information about this yeah this kind of late winter and then they present them to the school committee and then as changes to the book and then you vote on it and you know before they schedule this schedule so there's

127that stuff that's the timeline so your problem your most likely knife tendency i'm sorry to see it but you're most likely seeing costs that are already running so and you should because you vote on it that that is when you jump the ball you should see it before they run right um so yeah and probably you write a problem as part of the transition that was in a bowl in the spring was it yeah so that's i think he just got a sequence with it so i think what you could do now maybe is have the principles when next time they hear present time the changes or at least familiar with the new courses so you can ask the questions but it shouldn't be it should be something yeah again i think it's probably something

128that just missed in the transition um towards the motion wait and just can i ask a question so when we come to vote we're voting on the two editions or the whole document yeah you voted on the document yeah well my suggestion is it survive you probably should know about the cost and that's something you want to know about because it's your goal so even if it's already running my suggestion would be the table to vote have them come in talk about the costs just so you know they are and then make the ball if you make the vote now you're going to forget about it it's going to be going all right wasn't it of course being run in high school a life skills class last time we toured so mike um discussion all

129in favor all right and i as well host the ocean to table the high school program studies until a later date has passed but i have a motion to approve the fiscal 2023 fiscal year 2023 superintendent gold second sorry discussion [Music] a superintendent [Music] fiscal year 2023 superintendent pose passes could i have a motion to approve the updated mentor coordinator job description second sorry motion to approve the updated mentor coordinator job description passes um j-i-c-f-b the bullying convention is a first read are there any comments on either of these documents i do know that this we had some comments that were she put within the document julie did you want to talk speak to those right now um i do i'll start by saying okay you highlighted something you said it was a very important

130piece of policy and one the community should know also while you will read it out loud um bullying and cyber bullying are prohibited at a location activity function or program that's not school related or through the use of technology or an electronic device that is not only leased or used by the berlin-wilson school district if the act or acts in question create a hostile environment at school for the target infringe on the rights of the target at school and or material and substantially disrupt the education process or the orderly operation of a school yeah the reason i i made a comment on that i think it's important for the community to understand that this is this policy is in place this is outside a no there's an existing policy this is the msc version does

131anyone have any opinions about that or do you feel it's um does that change from the previous policy [Music] so so the consequences for bullying for this policy would apply to a student fully as purpose policies definition from the bedroom at night to another student or you know off off campus or outside of anti-school hours or activities if it trickles into the school right well yeah because if you're being bullied outside of school and you have to face that failure in school i would think there'd be negative consequences could be my guesses but we've actually had a parent come to us with that exact concern last year i i've had this issue yeah so i think um school principal or designee shall promptly investigate the report of bullying using the bullying cyber bullying report forum

132and julie asked can we see this one do we have one probably not right this is a brand new policy so maybe what we can do is find out in our policy meeting about that particular form i can also find out from other districts and it says annual training shall be provided for school employees and volunteers who have significant contact with students in preventing identifying responding to and reporting incidents not only and julia's really good question she said what annual training does the dbrsd staff receive no granted this is a new document so they wouldn't have received it in the past but is there anything that we're currently doing that would have already been excellent does anyone have any other comments about this first reading i'd be interested in potentially having the school committee go

133through that training as well i agree good idea do they also do like a sexual harassment one for teaching okay so that was the first read um our new coping policy is both the first read and vote if the discussion is necessary we can do that with the motion and second on aid they have a motion to approve the updated policy motion to approve the updated public policy passes we have a new section called school creating questions comments and future agenda items and i would like to start off by saying thank you to the subcommittees for the work behind the scenes i don't think that the public has any idea of how much work we do um before we come to the table and i know you guys did some great work this week it's

134really it's actually i feel almost kind of nerdy saying it but i'm excited about what's going on so um so thank you for all that that hard work because you know organizing schedules sitting down talking about the work that comes out of it you're doing a great job i appreciate that and i also want to thank sebastian we can't see behind the camera but he's always here making sure that this is all set up it didn't happen last week but man we try our last couple weeks ago he tried very hard to get us online it was a situation outside of his control so thank you sebastian for all you do for us appreciate it does anyone else have any questions comments or future agendas sometimes this year as well um our upcoming meeting dates

135we are having one obviously on september 27th and that is going to be to vote on the appointment of this is carol costello as the superintendent upon retirement of superintendent chelsea um we also have an october 11th meeting and we'll have an october 25th one if needed but hopefully we'll get all of our work done smooth sailing after that um