001Motion pass. Superintendent. The next order of business. >> Item number two. And this is not so far a field of what Miss Babcock just said. Um the item is ever public school and student spotlight. I mentioned to the members of this uh committee relatively informal uh after last meeting that going forward I'd like each month for one of our schools uh to come forward and provide a snapshot of the things that they're proud of of their accomplishments in the school and what they're doing to give not only you members of the school committee but our audience to see what what kind of great work happens in our schools. And tonight um we do have the Cavarian school here. This is the first in a series of presentations in which we will shine some spotlight on
002our most valuable asset, our students. Members of the Cavarian School Student Council are with us this evening to deliver a presentation entitled Knights Lead the Way: Empowering Student Voice. They will discuss, among other things, the SHIELD program, which stands for safety, honesty, independence, empathy, leadership, and dedication. And remember this one, Miss Babcock, PBIS, which stands for positive behavior interventions and supports. They are joined by a group of ever high school freshmen who were heavily involved in this work as students at the Cavarian. With that, Madam Chair, I would ask that you invite uh Principal Norman and associate assistant principal Spencer to come forward so that they can introduce our students and they can talk a little bit about the great things that are happening between the Cavarian and Everett High School. um make a motion
003to invite uh Mr. Nommen um m um principal principal nomin principal Spencer and his their lovely students to come. >> Motion has been made by Miss Babcock, seconded by Miss Cristiano to invite Principal Nommen and assistant principal um Spencer along with their students before us this evening. Roll call. >> Miss Babcock, >> yes. >> Miss Baros, >> yes. >> Miss Cornelio, >> yes. >> Miss Cristiano, >> yes. >> Mr. Denafhrio, >> yes. Miss Garren, >> yes. >> Madame Chair, >> yes. >> So moved 70. Motion passed. Welcome. >> I can speak loudly. I think it might be able to pick me up. Um, good evening. Mr. Spencer and I would like to thank Superintendent Hot and School Committee for inviting us up here today with our students to share a little bit uh about our
004students in our school. Uh, we believe that our students uh student council and some of our former uh Cavarian students but forever Cavarian Knights. Their presentation today gives a good glimpse into what goes into shaping a Cavarian Knight. Um I also while I am uh introducing everyone like to thank and recognize that some of our parents of our student council members are here in the audience uh showing support and it's good to see them come up and uh take part of this along with some of our faculty uh Mr. Piaza, Miss MrI and Miss Moran. Uh so we'd like to thank them for coming up and showing support for students uh current and uh past students. I'd like to introduce our student council members that are here with us today. We have on my far
005right right next to Mr. Spencer is Emma Dorsy our president. We have Evelyn Joseph our secretary and Bicio Silva our treasurer. Our There we go. Our eighth grade representative Kimberly Cruz Martinez and our vice president. Let me see if this works. And we got the pictures up there. Sadia Foron uh are unfortunately not here but they put a lot of work into this presentation so we wanted to make sure they were recognized as well. >> Thank you Mr. Nom and Mr. Spencer. Today is grounded our presentation today is grounded in our Cavarian school values and how they shape our school. For the Cavarian school we use the acronym shield. Shield stands for safety, honesty, independence, empathy, leadership, and dedication. PBIS stands for positive behavioral interventions and supports. This is how we are recognizing and reinforcing
006all of the positive behaviors that we see with our students every day. It's all about building a warm sense of belonging so that every Cavarian Knight feels at home and truly connected. throughout throughout the school year. So these values remind us that every night carries a shield which protects our community and show our strength. These posters are located in every area of the school to explain how to demonstrate the values in places like the cafeteria hallways and bathrooms. The signs appear in English, Spanish, Portuguese and curo. So all students regardless to their current language abilities understand expectations. One way we enforce our Korean values is through the awarding of shield coupons. Student year earn shield coupons for demonstrating these positive values which leads to monthly raffles initiatives. Every month a student will be selected to
007receive a Current T-shirt and other additional prizes will be awarded. Students have received prizes like a Curan GBL Bluetooth speaker, custom covering getaway bottles and more gill that helps to show Cain pride. As newly elected students, representatives, we know that our leadership matters. We want to make a difference and we would like to share how we have started to do this. Similar to the student representative at the school committee, we are also attending the monthly career in school parent council meetings. As at these meetings, our school leaders have given us space to discuss our opinions and ideas with parents and teachers. This is something that has never been done before at our school council meetings and parents were also excited to join us. Uh we were we were taken seriously and given the chance to
008come up with a plan on how to solve these problems. This opportunity to be part of the school leadership is helping us model an important shield value for our nights. After attending these meetings, we made it our mission to focus on safety and step up as leaders. We created Google form and we surveyed our peers about various safety concerns involving recess footwear in the bathrooms. More than 200 students responded offering their thoughts and about these topics. We already had our hypothesis about these questions and the results showed us that most of the students felt the same way. To communicate with students about initiatives, the career student council and staff have hosted several learning lunches to discuss the PBIS system Chromebook care. Most recently, safety submit to talk about our survey results and plans that we
009developed to solve one specific issue recess safety. While we were nervous to uh nervous presenting to such a large group, we knew it was important to show that we are listening to them and we are bringing change. So what we did was we put some concerns and thoughts of our peers into actions during the safe safety summit learning lunch. We presented our survey results and new plans we created to make sure that all students have the chance to participate in recess safely and doing what they enjoy to we have specific designed areas where different sports and hanging out will take place allowing all students to do what they enjoy while remaining safe. We also reminded students about dress code issues that have been leading to injuries, including students wearing slides instead of more safe footwear.
010Based on our initial learning launches, the student council will continue to listen to the concerns about our classmates and provide additional learning launches and talk about what matters the most for our class peers. We have one scheduled for January to discuss the importance of I already middle of the year benchmark testing. We will reveal prices for students who make their typical growth stretch growth or if they remain on grade level. We will now like to ask if you form a coarian students but forever nice for a brief presentation on how they have pre previously shown and continue to demonstrate the coarian values that are a part of who they are. Welcome everyone. >> Hi, good evening everyone. Thank you for having us here today. Before we start, we wanted to give a special thank you
011to Superintendent Hart, the school committee, and of course the Cavarian School Student Council for including us in this presentation. My name is Malef, a current Ever High School student and forever Cavarian Knight. And I'd like to introduce my fellow former Cavarian students and forever Cavarian Knights who will help present how the Cavarian values of leadership, empathy, and dedication continue to shape what we do every day. Next to me, we have Faith. Over there, we have Zoe, Sombra, and Lissa. In this slide, we're talking about the the Civics's Action Project. The Civics Action Project is something all of us worked on last year. It's a project focused on highlighting real issues in the city of Everett through research. It allows people to uncover previously unnoticed problems and broaden their understanding of the city while having a
012dedication to making this community a better place for everyone. Moving on to Fate. The issue our two groups identified as needing action in our community was foods insecurity. As ever residents in our own families had to go out in neighboring cities in order to get food and fresh produce. We knew we needed a change, something local, something diverse. Over four long months, me and the rest of my friends here have worked very hard on the seis action project for in our eighth grade year. We surveyed students, community members, community leaders, and we even created a petition and got a decent amount of signatures. During our research, we visited local markets in Everett to take a look at the quality of the produce they were selling. We went to several different corner stores and saw produce
013of horrible quality. Not only was the food quality bad, it was also extremely overpriced. In addition to this, we found that the selection was extremely limited. If ever citizens wanted to get fresh produce in the city, they would have to pay way more than usual just for terrible quality. As both Cavarian Knights and Ever Citizens, we thought it was important to draw attention to this issue so that it can potentially get solved. While doing our project, we made a survey for the people in Ever to take. One question we asked on the survey was how much do you think food insecurity affects our community? In result, most people said five being the most important. We used this survey data to see how other people in our society felt about our issue and if they agree
014with us. Doing the survey gave us an opportunity to hear other people's opinions on our subject of food insecurity. Our project demonstrate empathy because it's unfair. Residents must leave the city for fresh, healthy, and quality food. We showed leadership by taking action on a problem and that's that is affecting our city. We demonstrated dedication by staying committed to long-term action project project and continuing this work as every high school students. The ever food policy council is currently drafting a resolution for the city council's consideration to address food insecurity and declare food insecurity as a human right. they will be um citing our action projects as a evidence for this resolution. Thank you. And we would like to invite the Cavarian school student council back up to finish this presentation on the cavarian values. Thank you
015to the forever Cavarian Knights for showing empathy and leadership to our current student council as well as our Cavarian students. To wrap up this presentation, I would like to finish with the Cavarian value that we all hold dear to our hearts, empathy. Because empathy begins with kindness, the Cavarian School is proud to be recognized as a certified kindness school by the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, one of only four schools in Massachusetts to hold this distinction. Throughout the whole year, we hosted several kindness events that helped us earn this honor. In fact, we celebrated World Kindness Day last Thursday. All staff and students received their Cavarian be kind bracelet marking our fourth year of this tradition. We need the support and partnership of community organizations to help us live out these values every day and
016we really want to emphasize the kindness of the Ever Kowanas. We appreciate having their partnership with our PTO and are forever grateful. We hope you wear your bracelet that has been included in your package as a daily reminder to be kind. Because kindness is a core part of what it means to be an empathetic night. We start our day with the studentled morning announcements that concludes with our empathy pledge. This pledge was created by our previous student council and it serves as a daily reminder that we choose empathy in our community. So to close out our presentation, we would like to respectfully ask you to join us in our daily tradition sharing our night strength through our Cavarian Empathy Pledge. We have made a slight adjustment to represent all ever students today. The pledge is
017on the screen and in your packets if you care to join in with us. >> We ready? >> Please stand. >> Very good. You often this follows the empathy pledge follows right after the pledge of allegiance. So we're all usually standing. Uh so we want to make sure we do this the right way. >> I pledge to show empathy with my classmates, friends, and family to put myself in other shoes to understand the feelings of others and show it with my words and actions. to listen with my ears, my heart, and my mind. To find peaceful solutions to conflict and create healthy relationships. To value everyone's humanity and establish a respectful community. In the effort of public schools, we empathy. >> Thank you very much. Does anybody have any questions? Thank you so much for
018the presentation and the report questions. Miss Garin. >> Okay. Uh thank you, Madam Chair. Um wow. I I can't tell you all how absolutely impressed I am by this presentation and the incredible work that you all do. Um yet you're all going to be you're going to be the leaders of tomorrow basically. And it starts here. You know, you start with your schools. you look to the wider community and I mean I loved um the the presentation on the food insecurity in the city. Uh that's real world issues that affect everyone living in Everett. Um so I'm I mean this is wonderful. I I can't I can't praise you guys enough and uh you know I look forward to seeing what you do next. >> Thank you so much. Thank you Miss Karen. Any other
019questions, comments? Miss Cornelio, >> do you work at all with the council or anyone else in the city or is it just in the schools? Do you like get any give any input cuz maybe councils or even us we could help? >> Um it's just the PTO. >> Just the PTO but in future reference I'm just saying there's um numbers numbers help you can create a bigger uh program. But I am so impressed by you. I feel like you could be our next politicians. >> I welcome you to run. >> Thank you, Miss Cornelio, Miss Babcock. >> I just wanted to talk about the the food insecurity. Um, you know, we talk a lot about this at uh I work in the college of nursing and that's one of the big um social determinants of
020health and we're lucky to have Senator Salmenico who supports food within our school system. So our kids, when you guys come to school, there are meals. You have breakfast and you have lunch every day. And I remember that one of the things that I had learned from Mr. Brady when my daughter was at the Lafayette is that when school is not in session is a very stressful time for families because what happens is is that there are not school meals. So with uh your efforts of looking at food insecurity over there, um maybe there's some legislation that needs to move forward to see what we can do in those time periods when school is not in session. Summer, obviously we offer summer meals, but there are gaps and that food insecurity, especially under the circumstances
021now are making the situation worse. And the fact that you have empathy and observation and like tangible numbers really does mean something like this is an important proposal. One that maybe needs to be bigger. You know, some some other other uh countries uh offer things where food at the end of the day is not thrown out. It is packaged up and it is sent home. And maybe that's something that uh who knows maybe we we can make something really big. Something starts with empathy in the schools. it grows into analyzing our communities and then we make a a a you know institutional systematic change. I I think it's I'm blown away by the statistics. So if you guys are ever interested in future researches of public health, I highly recommend the major for you because
022that was very impressive. >> Thank you, Miss Beck. Miss Baros, I don't have a question. I just want to give a comment. I just you guys are inspiring and it's amazing how much dedication even going into the high school and I feel like it's something for other schools and other students to look up to you guys. You guys are doing a great job. Thank you so much. Thank you Miss Baros. Anyone else any further questions, comments from the >> Joe Dafrio? Go right ahead. >> As a um as a Cavarian Knight graduate, I'm very proud of these students. Um, you know, I just I just wanted to say how proud I was because um when was it Mr. Spencer? I think 2009 maybe I graduated, but he was there and he helped me alongside and
023he he did such a good job. And uh you know, Mr. Donghue and and Mr. Penna, they helped me out to be a a champion in basketball as well. But you know, the these these kids deserve it all really. I mean, they they're really doing a good job. And to see Mr. Spencer and uh Mr. Nommen up there doing the right thing. I don't know what you're feeding them down at the Cabarian, but keep feeding them that food cuz they're doing such a good job. Whatever's in that water, you know, so professional. That's awesome. >> Very good. Very good. >> Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dafrio. Miss Cristiano. >> Yeah. I just you know wanted to echo the comments of my colleagues that uh was kind of blown away by what you know how you
024presented it and the issue that you selected and because it is it's the hot button item number one issue uh facing this country actually today and uh for you young people to think about it and you know come up with ideas and solutions is uh it just makes me feel good about where we're going especally especially in this school system with our kids. They, you know, every two weeks I come up here and I'm constantly amazed at all the wonderful things that are going on in this school system. You know, they say education is the great equalizer, and we sure as heck make education equal in these public schools, and that's a testament to this uh superintendent. I mean, he's he's he's been on board now for two years now, and uh I get a
025little emotional about it because he really has transformed this school system and and brought you all together to work together. We've started to see the kids scores uh inch up. There's a lot more work to do, but we're on the right track and it's just it's just really nice to see. So, thank you kids. You were awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you, Miss Cristiano. Uh Emma, I just wanted to add on to what they all said because you guys did such a great job, including the high school students. They don't always want to hear from Mr. Spencer, Mr. Nommen. So the words coming from you guys is really important and I see the great work that goes on every day at Ever High School and I love hearing it from the elementary schools and
026the K through8 buildings. So thank you guys. Thank you. >> Thank you Miss Perry. If I may from the chairs just echo Miss Garin and Miss uh Cristiano's sentiments that um you're doing great work and I hope you realize that this is great work. What is setting you up for the future is right now and what you just presented was amazing. It might not feel like that, but it's great. Our future is brighter because you will take the lead someday and you're going to do a better job than we're doing. >> Thank you very much. >> There are no further questions or comments. Could we excuse >> make a motion to excuse our guest with comment commentating? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Norman. Mr. Spencer. >> Motion has been made by Miss Barrow, seconded
027by Miss Cornelio to excuse our guests. Roll call. >> Miss Babcock, >> yes. >> Miss Barros, >> yes. >> Miss Cornelio, >> yes. Miss Cristiano, >> yes. >> Mr. Denafhrio, >> yes. >> Miss Garren, >> yes. >> Madame Chair, >> yes. >> So move 70. >> So moved 70. Motion passed. Thank you so much everybody. Have a great evening.