001okay it is Thursday August 8th we are in the Greenfield High School library convening the Greenfield Public School school committee handbook subcommittee meeting it is 6:10 p.m. there's currently no public present to make comment or to additionally record so let's call the meeting to order at 6:10 and we will begin our working session uh with our parliamentary procedure suspended as we have in the past and pursuant to Massachusetts open meeting law we are making an audio recording of this meeting for the public in attendance is Elizabeth Den Kate Martini present and Stacy seon present all right let's begin we do not have minutes for this meeting but we will for our next meeting and it's just finishing them up great and we should maybe look at the calendar as I have learned in the beginning
002to look at the calendar to see when we are available to have a next meeting so if we could all whip that out and see um I am fairly free starting September 23rd on there's any time after that time that works for any of you I can be very flexible yeah I mean that week it looks like any of the evenings okay what do you think Kate I will be available in person the most on Monday Friday and the weekend uh except that Friday the 27th I do have an evening thing so I hate to do something on Friday night just because that you know that cuts into the weekend weekend is begin nobody wants to meet on Friday so what about Monday the 23rd works forek okay so Monday September 23rd we seem to
003like in person for this format yeah yeah I think most productive okay do you like this time six o'clock I can't really do 5:30 just because I'm I'm sometimes off the bus at 4:45 and then I have to go home and do mom's stuff and then turn around I have to always have to do a Turn and Burn for six o' meeting so six is 6 okay okay I will contact UM Karen and see where we could meet because depending on the custodian schedule we can meet at the GMS library or here okay wonderful so so I didn't print out our doc because we all have access to the Google Doc but we did talk at the last meeting that we were going to have what we have worked on a rough draft to present
004next week at the meeting so I'll be sending it in as materials after I format it so have have you guys looked at it recently or not since I worked on my portion ined to okay so I left the um the we have our chapter and headings which I think we're going to have to fill in a little bit more today um and let's see Kate you did this great introduction glad you like it did you have a chance to read it yet Stacy okay I I I didn't know how to tag this so I just put like we completed check it out insert some optimism on this but this is really lovely and thank you so much what a nice introductory letter to new school committee members um hopefully Yeah I broke it into
005two I took the part about um the uh committee organization and I put it lower in the section for that so I separated them I don't know if you saw that um so Kate did her part with that so we now have an introduction scrolling through check all our parts and Stacy you said you had a report on the statement of inclusion as a foundational document yes so I have not completed it but what I have been able to do in is do a review of our current materials that are whatever's on the website as well as what's in our policy manual um related to diversity Equity Andor inclusion and I was a little disheartened to find that we if you search inclusion or search Equity nothing pops up on our website um and if
006you search diversity it's us honoring some our graduating seniors for them going off and promoting that in the world um so I was hoping we might have some materials that I could draw on um that would so that we could have resonant language and make sure it's like consistent our messaging across but since we have no current messaging really um that left me uh with the wonderful opportunity to go and look at what other school districts have have done so I've been doing a review of um how other school districts have either written about it or how they've embedded it within their other administrative Pages Etc um to get a better sense of the kinds of things they talk about how specific they get to their school and what they do um and all of
007that good stuff so I will be working to compile what I like the most from each of those um in terms of explicitness um you know how wide ranging it it touches not just like I'm looking for something more than we respect our students identities I'm looking for some more actionable language um that we might are bringing into Greenfield Public Schools to really make our commitment one that is we're doing things we it's not a general sort of statement um that's whatever I don't know if you have you probably don't have time to do this but if you have a chance you might want to read the minutes from the last policy and program subcommittee meeting because we had an issue come up where um the public was asking us what our policy was on
008tribal wear for um graduating seniors and so we had a discussion about that and we were talking talking about looking at it through the lens of Dei as Glenn had asked us to do all of our work that way and that led into a we don't have a foundational yes statement and I said that's interesting because Stacy's working on one for it yes and Karen then sent me any language that she could find so I can forward that to you it's Bare Bones yes um but so Glenn has in his mind that you're literally going to make an a whole thing up and is looking forward to reading it great so like the so I just give you the confidence that the ball is really in your court on this one and I think it's
009going to be great but if you review the minutes you might glean some info about that feeling you know have to listen to the whole thing but you know thank you for alerting me to that okay and I'm going to make a note to send with my pen that's not working well at all why don't I have I was told these pens are amazing and they're just not amazing do you want I have I have some stuff I would love a better pen if anyone can share a pen an I voted pen oh I love that and it's a I voted in Greenfield pen I also have highlighters and markers in case you want to color code your notes because these kinds this wres in blue this is one of those nice jelly this is
010great I feel I feel like a proper citizen with the I voted pen so I'm going to send that info to you well that's awesome thank you for all that work yeah no it's it's been really fun actually to go through and see how other districts are approaching their statements and I feel like you know you can get a real sense of a school district's commitment to the work by how they talk about it and about whether or not they can point to specific we'll know we're meeting our goals if kind of language correct um which I which I deeply appreciated so next we have the GPS District mission statement which we wrote down to possibly aign with the district mission statement um I just have the basic language from the website this is what
011we have that's that's it so I don't think that that entire second paragraph that's more like a what is this place statement because I I spent some time okay pouring over the district website and was actually not able to find the mission statement so you don't think this is the mission because this is all that I found that looked like a mission statement it was just like the you know the main thing on the main page I found document from 2015 I think that might still be the mission statement but I don't actually you know so I think we have to ask so we really need to find out if we have a mission statement I'm sure we do where is I mean so in our in policy a there's statements akin to a mission
012statement I think we might even call it mission statement but like from the school committee's perspective and I don't know if that functions effectively as the same thing so we need to have a conversation about this then with Karen and with Glenn but like one of our goals maybe should be having a functioning mission statement for the district and definitely prominently placing it on the district website yeah it should not be hard to find that where is mission statements so let's ask it this meeting coming up that's another piece of debt to okay that's okay he that's great at least we know okay okay so I'm just going through the list um okay the member code of conduct that's the only thing I didn't have time to get into what I'm that's a big piece
013that's a big piece of work yeah but what I'm really going to do is like take it off of our policy yes we have sort of a we have a policy um and I'm going to in insert it um this leads me to another question that I have for you all but maybe that question will come in a little bit so that's the only part that I didn't have time to get into and then the public calendar outline I have not made any progress on that okay it's okay um have you you have at least a portion of it right with the budget related yes we may nail down quite a bit of it tonight yeah that would be helpful and the school committee goals also something we're going to try to nail down tonight
014yes yeah I know that we that we crossed out the academic dashboard but there I was speaking to Karen about it and I was saying you know it does sound kind of frightening to be like oh we need an academic dashboard I know what is that but I was telling her that it could just be a link to like dear's presentation at the PowerPoint where she was showing how we have changed over the years and how you know what scores are going up and how you know um absenteeism is being dealt with I said just like that could be the academic dashboard so the people can refer to the data just a way to refer to data that's changing and she sent the parent up date a little bit ago I don't know if you
015guys have had a chance to read it yet but at the very bottom of it she says 2023 24 endof year report and then links the three-year findings presentation to the school committee so that is an academic dashboard that we could have in the handbook that it's at least a data presentation and I'm really glad that they went out to their parents and I hope that they so I'm wondering if you guys are into not scratching it out and um putting maybe the three-year findings in place slash data showing growth in that place I think it Bears a larger conversation with the whole commit about what types of data members are looking for okay and that will be related to one of the questions on the self evaluation that we are supposed to be discussing
016in terms of polls later this evening okay because as a district as a Committee Member I would find this helpful in a handbook to go and have this data so that when I'm talking to constituents and others I have data that I can back up what I'm saying with and I know what sort of data I'm interested in but I don't know what everybody else is interested in I like having a section that points to it I don't think that the dashbo should live inside the handbook if that makesense there could be a link to it one yeah we have one this is what it contains and how you might engage with it and where you actually find it so having it on the website and then having a link to it in the handbook
017so that we can go back and forth okay link to it from the website okay the um list of important Personnel I got most of the way through it because then I ended up talking to Karen who sent me an org chart nice so I have an actual I just was like please send me like I need a ladder I need your ladder whatever that is for thebook and she sent me the or chart and gave me information contact information for the legal council but she wasn't sure about the compliance off officer that we don't know that we need to know so I filled out as much as I could at the time and then I got way late but I have the orc chart and I can slot that in and then Kate did
018the committee organization thank you all the embedded links to the policy and it's so nice like oh it's all probably going to get need to be changed when our policy and book does get posted by masc because so far as I can tell it is not yet um and I'm not sure how accurate those links are to the policy uh documents on our own website because as I understand it what the policy manual that's posted on our own website is not even accurate so I just did the best that I could with that and some of our policies are individually linked like I'm looking this policy and it will go there and then some of them are not it's just the entire section so some of those links just take you to section whatever and
019then you have to find the policy that you're looking for which is UN helpful but hopefully that will be solved by it being taken up by the datab even if we just put link to policy here in parentheses and then fill it in later it would be fine and then you did the list of subcommittees and a general description of their function did you use the the the sheet that we were given at the last meeting about that to do that I did primarily use what was given by the chair for that okay so you didn't find the reenvisioning there was no description for that sub committee it existence is still up in the aired well yes however that's one of the pieces of I think things that had previously been missing on the committee
020is having a description of what our subcommittees do so I mean that should have been there right that information should have existed before whether we were you know at this point of discussing what to do with that subcommittee or not so uh I couldn't find any description of it anywhere I went through previous uh meeting agendas and minutes and things looking for references to it like previous organizational meetings and and there was nothing that I could find so okay I might go back to all of the prior reenvisioning the prior subcommittee meetings themselves I went into those yeah and I couldn't find a description of this committee we also need one for Union negotiations yes so I noted in there in what I sent to you the things that don't currently have a description okay
021and then and I didn't write one because I felt like that's not my place to do I think the chair should do that yeah I'm going fast because they're all going to start showing up in 15 minutes and I'm not going to let them in okay I did the important links I did the school Partnerships I filled in the acronyms uh you did the how to be a school Committee Member thank you lovely lovely gorgeous writing um I love this part about communication so nice um okay and then we hit the end and this is where I have a question for you guys because if we submit a rough draft to everybody next week I would love the rough draft to not have any of our text in it I'd love it to just have
022the bullet points of what we're going to fill in and I'm wondering how you feel about that because I don't want people to get too like stressed about reading it all I'd much rather have a list of like these are the points that we've decided we're going to hit and this is how it's going to look when I hear the words rough draft I imagine the full text of what I'm going to be seeing what do you think I think they're expecting to I think it's probably a good idea to have feedback sooner than later from Members um because I don't know about you but I don't have scads of spare time to devote to things like this so um if going to need to if I need to say go in there and amend
023this how to be a school Committee Member section which I am anticipating having to do because that is a particularly creative section that we just have to make um it's not like it comes off of a template or something um then I would just like more time to be able to okay that makes sense I hear what you're saying like I don't you know I do worry a little bit about hearing a ton of nitpicking from other members when we're not really ready yeah I just I worry that they're going to focus on the holes on What's Missing instead of what we've done and that that is possible that is kind of human nature to do so um and right now as we're drafting I think it's actually incredibly important to get the what's missing
024yeah okay so that we can fully flush stuff out but I think that we can be very in our ask when we when we say hey when you're reviewing this this don't just tear it apart this is literally a first draft so you don't have to worry about it being perfect but like what sections should be there that aren't or if there's anything that you're finding like egregiously unacceptable but if it's just perfect the job here is not to be the New York Times editor yeah yeah great no I I love I love those words that's perfect so then we should write down all of the things that we have left to fill in and make a list because whether we have it filled in or not or whether we assign bits to each other
025or not we're going to have to I'm going to have to print this all out format it and print it all out and at least have people have something for people to look at so we have the new member materials which will totally come from the website um uh the reimbursement section which will come from the website and our brains our knowledge of how it goes as well there is but it doesn't have all of the information doesn't really like tell you how to do it yeah I I think that was one thing I didn't finish a sentence and how to be a member section um because our policy doesn't spell out the operational stuff of how it actually works um like you need to sign up for a conference you need to send a
026copy of your badge or your program to the superintendent assistant and your to attended like I don't you know and if you want to get reimbursed or something like this is the procedure that you can that stuff isn't like necessarily there be reimbursed for things but not how to be reimbursed for things yeah and that has seems like it changed a little bit recently just in my last experience and professional development doesn't all exist in our policy area it exists in the town Charter and the policy and our brains cool so I'm just thinking of the places we have to get these things that are not all in one place uh how to contact the superintendent and why can can I make a suggestion about the PD can that just be considered embedded in the
027how to be a member section because that's I spent a whole bunch of time spelling out stuff related to PD okay so I don't think it needs to be its own and how to be a member okay all right um okay uh what does the school committee do what is our function scope I kind of think that you got that in the how to be a member the question is about the scope I think that's in the introduction okay uh budget policy already in intro okay and the administration ladder who are they what they do and what are their contract lengths uh okay and the org chart I got that from Christine I mean from Karen oh my God I'm so sorry to the listeners um how to respond to constituent complaints some of that
028is in our policy yes and I think that and brains correct me if I'm wrong I can't because I don't have intern but I do my best do you want a hot spot I think I put language about that in the communications section of how to be a member what part the respond to with members of the public yes yeah with members of the public I think it's covered in that okay okay these are just questions I'm asking is it in the intro communication K covered required courses uh that should be should be new member also okay and how to be uh member okay so really the the how to be a member the required courses and the uh professional development all need to be put in your section yeah they're in there they're already
029okay so you can just okay okay okay I'm just taking notes it looks like pure hell here okay so brainstorm with me what other things do we need to put in here what other things should we cover um I mean that should be the stuff that we that I still need to finish yeah but I'm talking additional because I think part of the report is when we give the rough draft like look through it and see if there's sections missing sections you can think about that will come to you but we should try to have as many as possible oh how to be I just thought of something for how to be a member uh did you add how to do like that you have to do a yearly campaign Finance form report no okay
030that's important Finance report yearly to the clerk and code um code of ethic is it what is it called conflict of interest training interest training that that's also all I need remember materials just making sure I don't want to to jog my mind and then go looking and then it and not be there cuz a lot of things have holes I'm just trying to like plug holes at this point what do you think um I would be okay with moving that piece about the conflict of interest training into the how to be a member requir training okay might as well yeah okay is a it is no I think that one's every three years I just had to do mine I just had to redo mine and I was like it's been that long already
031what uh maybe I just feel like it's every year whenever I receive that email it is such a long exciting training um I'm so I know that we have in our policy manual things around like interactions with school staff or interactions with students and what to do when people come to us to refer them in the communication section and how to be a member wow double high five for you not saying that section does not need to be improved but can you tell that I that I only speed readit under communication you'll see there's communication with students with staff with members of the public with the superintendent with each other so it's all should be all covered in there and I tried to link policies forther relevant into that because I hate the policy manual
032that okay it's just too legislators that's so nice I always wanted a thing in my hand that I could just be like oh that policy yeah I see with the superintendent with staff it's beautiful feel like if students have to have a student handbook we should deine totally yeah we should sign this in the um member code of conduct session section sorry you just that in my that's my section let me let me go to it you said that um put the note in we have our policy that's related to it and also um I was just thinking the committee does officially use um Robert and there's a section in it on deorum so that could just be there yeah so this is this is where we'd put Robert's Rules yeah deorum um articulated consequences
033is a phrase that I have written down or how to make a complaint all of that stuff is in see they're all here early am how um um all of that stuff is in the policy manual so I I asked thenen so many times like well I'm just going to cut copy paste the policy manual and he's like yeah but fill in the holes fill in the holes and also it's too long that you have to like boil down the policy into a sentence you know and when people want more detail go here's the link go look at the policy we're still in our meeting Susan but it's nice to see you okay don't let anybody else in they're good cuz we're still no we're just still in a meeting and I don't want them
034all coming in and okay yeah all right is aren't there rules about how many school committee members can attend members can attend sub hi we're still in a meeting though can I just sit in the air no sure yeah over there we're still we have TW we have 15 precious minutes yeah you can be members of the public but right because we had that happen one time where one came to a meeting and wanted to like all of a sudden be part of the subcommittee and it's like no if you come you have to be a member of the public so that's something we have to put down okay um attending other people's could add that to the meeting section of the how to be a member okay I didn't want too many things well
035it's also fits in Code of Conduct attending other people's subcommittee meetings don't you think I'd like to keep code of conduct less about like procedures operations and more about like Norms of behavior so I'm going to put it down in the bottom it make sense to go in meetings in the bottom list I put it on the bottom list I'm I'll clean this up later and you guys can all look at it and like please get in there and mess around with it fill in your stuff or whatever or change things put can you just put my name on that one okay because Kate will do I need to be reminded which ones I am adding to my so what am I putting your on the part about um how you can attend other subcomittee
036meetings and okay there was another one or two things that we already said I'm already not remembering which ones were relevant to oh Quorum stuff uh oh I was going to add the use of parliamentary rules we have adopted as a little sentence okay the meetings section so you just put that down put my name next okay um all right so we have like a whole list so let's just assign let's just make sure that we have assignments um reimbursement I I'll do it's fine uh professional development you're putting it in your section yes but put reimb whatever you do about reim I think it makes sense to go into the how to be a member section under um professional development uh which is I think it's the second subsection so there's already a piece
037in there about reimbursement I just didn't finish that so if you want that that's where it is and then you're doing the professional development part yeah it's already it's already in there they just needs to be a sentence added I think about the um conflict of interest training and oh the conflict finance and in that section should I yeah reporting I mean that's kind of like assuming you created a political entity though not everyone does right okay yeah you already feel like campaign finances in miscellaneous thing that's not really related to it is though because you have to do it at the end of the year and and don't have a political entity if you if you never spun up a political entity to help campaign or buy your stuff if you just all paid
038for it out of pocket then you wouldn't necessarily need no you have to if you opened an account right but if you never open an account or if you closed it maybe it should actually just be a sentence in there about you know members if you have campaign entity please be mindful of campaign Finance rules which you can find answers to frequently asked questions and support about from what's the acronym there's umpf ocpf all right so put your name on that you already did how to contact the superintendent so I'm taking that off the list because you already did it y um how do I request an item on the agenda did you already do that it's already in there sorry my phone is making noise when can I expect agenda and materials to be
039available for meetings did you already cover that I did cover that but only in so far as it involves posting and I think it Bears a further question for the chair about whether he intends to do that okay so I put your name on check this out yeah for that okay um we already did what does the school committee do what is our function and scope it's already in the intro uh okay okay so the administration ladder I'll finish that um because I got that word chart and everything and it kind of goes along with the other thing that I was working on do you do you um Stacy do you want to do um how to respond to constituent complaints I don't think that's necessary because it's already in the commun and the communic
040unless you want change it which is fine but it's already I will read through it and see if I've got any additions okay you know what I'm just going to put your name as Stacy will check I will read all the things okay and I do think that particular question probably deserves some broader committee discussion because people have had different opinions about how to respond in the past we do have a related policy but it's still very open to interpretation and there's not really an established practice on that for example I have established office hours and phone number that to make an appointment with me but other people don't necessarily do the same thing so that's something maybe when we discuss it at our our uh this update at next week's um school committee meeting
041that we should ask for yeah discussion about um point of information when when do our materials need to make it to them to be included for next week's materials like tomorrow okay like we like like definitely get it to me by like Saturday and I'm gonna be I'm going to be furiously formatting this document and so everyone concurrently format with me if you I'm just going to be moving sections and making it look nice and is as you're in there do the same if you see something agance or whatever and we'll get a somewhat palatable rough draft and then we'll send it I'll send it to them over the weekend and then we'll get in the thing okay does that sound doable for everyone I think for the ref I'm less worried about how it's
042formatted and more just the language yeah I mean I mean just so that it makes sense so that it's all the same font would be great and like the same size and you know what I mean yeah without weird brain scratches contr a is my friend yeah all the you can go through there and so I don't have weird questions like get or chart make up my mind for me on whether or not to capitalize committee I you will see that I was up two minds about that in there yeah stuff like that there's a lot of things that are like highlighted and bolded and stuff that shouldn't be because I was just going fast so that's what I mean by format it but we can decide how we want it all to look in
043the end this will just be the beginning go on the sections is this good now let's look at the sections because I do have like an unrelated let's look at it so this uh so we have the introduction the statement of inclusion the mission statement school committee member of conduct public calendar outline school committee goals academic dashboard list of important Personnel um the list of important Personnel parents and Community has to come out because that's a future product okay for more things um list of subcommittees in general description of the function important link School Partnerships acronyms how do I FAQ masc new member materials and then the how do I FAQ for parents and community members also has to come out for a future product yeah okay um so I have an unrelated question um
044which has to do with my um the disjunct between my ability to write things for this and my ability to design things on the computer for this um because I do have ideas in terms of the graphic design of the handbook that I just do not have the technical skills to materialize and I want wanted to know do either of you have skills in this area if not do we have the ability to actually like call upon perhaps our students to assist with the design of this thing or something I know we need some political interns it depends on how extensive the types of graphic design work you're looking for I can do most basic things in order and make it look okay um but if you're like like I could even if we really
045if you really wanted to get fancy like we could turn this into a canva product that's true I can I can work in Cana too with you but let's ask Karen if there because they have just launched yeah be so good I would love to work with a student on the design of the handbook yeah yeah let's ask about students and also they have this new um social media that they're doing and the graphics are sort of all the same so they maybe they want to use similar graphics which we could do anding yeah consistent branding like with the parent update it looks slick so maybe ours can have that same look with whomever stream but I love the idea of student so I mean like the yearbook group or whoever like does that sort
046of thing don't they have like a media MH students make this they must teach graphic design handbook slick okay all right so this is not ideal no I told I knew it I knew it I knew it so okay well that's it I think yep we charged through it really fast but I think we got enough to get us to where we need to go I'm proud of the maros with it yeah took a thing that didn't previously exist and now parts of it exist how cool is that and I'm also surprised that how hard this is I I will take budget and finance or any other sub committee any day this is the worst you it's so hard the feeling is not mutual over here really I just find it so hard to create
047nothing create something from nothing now is not the time to be saying such thing to me in the midst of making this budget C giving birth I think I'm just this is difficult for me like this part like you were saying with the writing is easier for you than art well this for me it's the opposite so I am maybe struggling but I'm so thankful that you both have done such work and I think it's cool that we're going to have something finally it's all right it's materializing thank you very much so let us adjourn now at 653 we are adjourned we are now adjourned adjourned we are now adjourned at 6:53 p.m. to rejourn on September 23rd at 6: p.m. reconvene not re Rec reer reconvene and then re that's right all right thank
048you [Music]