001okay good morning and welcome to the Greenfield school committee um our first executive committee subcommittee meeting um look like it's just the two of us are we recording on Zoom Elizabeth are you recording for your own purposes no I am not okay neither am I um we'll do a roll call um Elizabeth are you here I'm here and I'm here and Kate is running late so we'll see if and when she joins us um let's see there doesn't seem to be anyone from the public here so no public comment so let me pull up our agenda had it Oh I thought I had it open see it now there it is okay [Music] all right um so we're GNA suspend our normal Rules of Order um and have a working session so let's have a
002vote to suspend our normal Rules of Order I'll make make that motion Elizabeth will you second I will second any discussion all right let's vote I I'm a yes hi and you're a yes so um that motion passes so now we're in kind of a working session um thank you I'm taking notes and sort of minutes at the same time okay great and um we should have some staff support from um Administration to work from the recording to do the minutes as well but whatever you could do is back would be great I I do and and um Annie has been really helpful it's been it's really taken quite a burden off and she's done great notes so I'm really thankful oh excellent that's wonderful to hear yeah she I spoke to her briefly today
003she sounds great I see a phone number has joined us is that you Kate you're muted so far yes this is Kate Martin hello he there hi Kate hi I I may um hang up should at the um doctor that I'm waiting for walk into the room but uh I will rejoin you if so after great and I think I forgot to say we probably convene the meeting right at 11:30 and Kate is joining us now at 11:33 um terrific and we just suspended our normal Rules of Order so we can have our working session Kate um great the first item is the school committee goals and I'm very grateful to Elizabeth for drafting those for us um let's see but one approach I thought would be well I think it would be good for
004us to kind of look through them I feel like some of items on there maybe operational things that I might be able to just um just make happen as chair and other items would be goals that really require the full committee's attention so I thought it might be useful to look through your list Elizabeth from that lens just to see which ones we want to have be kind of official school committee goals that the Comm committee um deliberates about and decides upon as a group and which ones are things that I can just do or someone else can do in an administrative capacity so um so Kate you don't have eyeballs on us right no I don't okay so then I think we should just talk through them one at a time um so these
005were our brainstormed draft ideas that we did in hyanis and then a little bit with memb ston Wonder too so some of them are you know we we it was really just a flow of ideas yeah great I'm glad we we're starting with a wonderful brainstorm that's great thank you so much for doing that pre-work it really helps not to be starting from nothing um so you had a student outcomes goal can you talk about what that is Elizabeth the student outcome schol I think that one of the things that we were learning was that um we needed to have really uh we needed to have a a set goal on where we would want to be with the student outcomes in a certain amount of time like by this time next year we want
006to see these outcomes be met or these goals be met for student achievement and then talk to the superintendent about it and all agree that these were benchmarks that we would want to meet and then be able to uh sort of look at it as we go and see are we progressing towards it and I think that something like that occurs within the framework of the Strategic plan but I'm trying to remember exactly what we thought about that Kate might remember more than I did but one of the things we're just being really clear on benchmarks I think you might have a little more faith in my memory than I do but um I think the um the consensus I have from prior uh committee meetings is that uh the committee would like to focus
007more um in a more prioritized way on student outcomes and in a more organized way uh and put student achievement more um at the center of what we are doing so I would like to see a uh a committee goal related to that nice I wonder if one place to start would be just to have I mean I don't think we need to go to the committee and say do you want to have a goal about student achievement that seems like a fairly obvious thing that we should be doing as a committee I wonder if a place to start would be asking the superintendent um to make a presentation to us where are we currently with regards to student outcomes and achievements what goals do we currently have and what role can or will the
008school committee play how does that sound to you each it sounds really good and I think that I was surprised that she sort of made one during the budget hearing and I was so thankful that she did include that sort of where we are at slide yeah um because I feel like that kind of encapsulates what a little bit of that goal um but it would be great to to have it be regular and prioritized like Kate said maybe you know once a quarter we could receive a really in-depth information packet for that I I'm just throwing that out there as a way to slice year I was going to say that yes um it would be great to have have a presentation brought forward on that um but to as far as I recall
009we've only had one um maybe two like that in my time on the committee and I would like to see that be on a more regular basis and also um using data that is uh consistent so that we are comparing Apples to Apples and I will rejoin you in a few minutes okay okay we'll see you so what I mean it it seems like oh if it's just going to be something that's distributed in packets maybe quarterly but if we want kind of a full presentation on student achievement data um maybe that's something that we would want twice a year sure I just I really liked seeing I I really thought that that the presentation in the budget hearing yeah um was really what we needed to be seeing more regularly because if we are
010um if there is a downturn you know that we that we're seeing using the consistent data or if it's an upturn that will affect the kind of oversight that we need to do yeah and that will then potentially shift our priorities if things are going great maybe that means that we have a little bit of extra time and energy to focus on other things that are important and if things are not going great then we need to take a look at why but to not know and then to just know randomly is kind of confusing yeah makes sense and it would help when constituents talk to us and say you know oh things are terrible then we can point to it and say well actually what we have what we have been doing and fostering
011is this and it's increasing in these metrics you know or we can say well let's look at that yeah help us be better cheerleaders for the district right especially since we do seem to be headed in the right direction now yeah all right let we can out to discuss this with Christine at one of our meetings right um great let's talk about the next one how come I'm having challenges um get back there I'm glad we suspended the normal Rules of Order so I can be a little bit challeng trying to find I'm in the wrong that's right I'm in the wrong Google Drive Al together okay let's take your time just GNA write our notes all right um open working sessions and open meeting law training and parliamentary procedures training um it seems like
012we're well we're having a working session right now we have a working session scheduled for um around the superintendent evaluation training thing I guess it's more of a training than a working session but it will be eventually we'll have a working session on that topic um so I think that's kind of a a format that we want to use as needed as we are achieving other goals does that sound right yes I think so I think it I think we've all been having some really good working sessions so far and that the committee in general is open to doing that I think I remember we wrote it down because back in May of 2023 when the mayor was censored we voted on having an open meeting law training and a working session and starting that
013practice and then that never happen so I actually don't know if the committee feels like we need open meeting law training but that's that was what we voted on as a remedy for the censure so it's like a circle back like we said we were gonna do it but we didn't well it's interesting too because chair pretti was the person who had made that complaint and so the resolution to have an open meeting lot training was to address her concern and then she had the power to put it on the agenda and did not so I guess she felt her concerns were addressed other by some other means because I never heard that she was dissatisfied with the committee's response to her complaint but yeah and so I'm not inclined to try to have an
014open meeting law training in reaction to a complaint that was filed by a member who has since resigned from the committee but it may speak to how do we do A needs assessment of the current school committee and our professional development needs I think we agreed that we would like training around superintendent evaluation but um are there other things so maybe maybe the goal is to develop a professional development plan for the committee I haven't heard anyone say that they feel uncomfortable with open meeting law no I don't yeah and the few times that we've like bumped up against it we've just sort of looked it up or talked about it and it's been fine so nobody has said that they feel confused but then maybe I don't think anyone feels uncomfortable about saying that
015they're confused if they are yeah but I don't know maybe maybe a like a professional development survey on like what topics people feel like they need more training on but there are trainings under masc for open meeting law like you could go and take it yeah completely so I'm not not worried about the open meeting law training I hav't not heard that as a concern from people other than people who are no longer on the committee because I think there was an open meeting law mistake but there anyway um yeah parliamentary procedure training that's something I feel like I need or want I'm not sure that the whole committee needs or wants that I would do if you wanted to take some sort of course online or something I would take it also maybe that's
016that we could have the district pay for if it's a cost thing yeah I don't see why we couldn't take a course online we could I was looking for one and they all looked pretty bad like just it we need to have like we need to our own like parlamentary procedure for hipsters like something that would be more fun and engaging than some of these trainings but if we can find a good one I would love to take it I took the class at at the at the conference in Hy the Parliamentary procedure one and I put the notes up and it kind of seemed like if you're really going to do it you need a parliamentarian you don't have a city parliamentarian on staff right yeah C thought kind of plays that role for
017the city count so a lot of committees were talking about how they do suspend Robert's Rules of Order a lot except for in the voting portion I see so but it doesn't work for other committees because they're really large there are some committees that are like 20 plus people and some committees that are our size are even smaller and it doesn't end up being a problem if you if everyone is you know a able to raise their hands and you know be really mature about the discuss it seems like we've done okay um I feel a little bit like someone could come onto the committee who's very very familiar with Robert's Rules of Order and really use those rules to advance their own interests and the committee would not be very well prepared to handle
018that so I feel like it's a it's a potential vulnerability but [Music] um but it hasn't it doesn't seem that parliamentary procedure has been our real problem for us it seems like we all know enough just to not get into trouble like we can go up like everything seems really smooth up until tabling tabling and friendly amendments we don't do right and like haven't done them right since I've been on okay um but we never go further than that like we don't make amendments to amendments to amendments and then have to dig ourselves out so right as long as we don't climb that mountain but that we have the books we can look in our on our handy dandy cards yeah those those tools have not been useful to me I did buy a copy
019of of Robert's Rules For Dummies but I haven't really made much Headway in that book either does feel like I need someone more interactive um so um I don't know if you'd be willing to to do a little search and see what you can find um that might be useful training for us and then okay I'll put it on the list yeah and then we could um you know bring things back to the committee that seem like like you're saying like the the places where we need to get stronger around Robert's Rules we can start to educate and Implement those things but I wonder I don't know if Stacy's maxed out but I wonder if they might be willing to take on as an individual project um drafting a a a tool to assess the
020um committee's um professional development needs it seems like that would be in their their wheelhouse yeah I bet they'd be really good at that I just don't know how busy they are do you want me to reach out to them or would you like to reach out um if you'd be willing to that'd be great okay so I'm GNA search for parliamentary training and reach out to Stacy for a I'm sorry what were the words that you used again a um uh needs is professional devel velopment needs assessment thank you professional development needs assessment okay okay all right the next thing is forensic audit budget audit ask Jenny Jenny said to me several times that she might want to um do a forensic audit I have not heard anything back from that but when she
021told me I wrote it down in my notes um as a potential goal but I know that we need to learn more about the budget so that we can be better at asking questions so do you think that we could engage Andy pette and see if he'd be willing to do a like that might be a professional training to do do you think he'd be willing I know he said the balls in our court uh yes um so so I mean I just for context I think forensic atic means you're looking for potential crimes or am I not understanding that term correctly well I don't know those are the words that she said those are the words that I wrote down but maybe that's not what she was thinking so we shouldn't assume yeah okay
022um let's see but I think what you're touching on is is essentially another per professional development need of the committee which is around I feel like there's two things there's being able to read and understand our current budgets and then there's also been the interest in having the budget presented in a way that is more user friendly for more people um but um yeah so again I think that would be part of the needs assessment um maybe if Stacy agrees to take that on maybe we would in particular have budget open meeting law um Robert's Rules as part of um that needs assessment find out how much people want each of those things okay okay yeah I mean that comment is probably entirely for Jenny and I have no idea what she feels about that
023so but I know that even if we did something like that how would we be able to read the budget in the first place unless we've taken that training I guess is what I'm saying yeah okay um and then it says Capital funding for textbooks that was something that Kate wanted to explore because um what there are some things that we can get Capital funding for that we haven't and textbooks and curricula is one of those things um so we can when it's time to reup all the textbooks we can definitely ask the city to do that we shouldn't have to take that out of the budget that has already been set it can go it can come from another place yeah and I think that the that would be great so the superintendent gets
024a rep to the capital planning committee I believe and that was member pretti um I did kind of flag that for Christine as now that member Priti has resigned um what does that mean um so I can add um textbooks and check in about her design the capital planning to the agenda to my just a list of topics to discuss with her how often does the capital planning committee meet do you know I think it meets like on an irregular frequency like more often as they're getting ready to do the capital plan plan together but I don't really know the details I think I've asked the superintendent to report on that um for us like maybe I should ask her just to explain that whole thing to us um and maybe the mayor part of
025that then would go into the conversation in the future about having a budget calendar because having a budget calendar that we all understand and that's aligned with the city will help us know when these dates are coming up so that if we do have these kinds of capital requests like textbooks or like let's talk about the elevator at Federal and other things uh we know when to do it because in the past we've said oh what about that one thing but the meeting already happened or you know the decision was already made and we were too late yeah okay yeah and that's on your um your long plan item right it might be I'm sorry it was so long ago that we did it and we did it right before the election and it was
026just a brain like flow so not I apologize if it seems a mess that's fine no it's it I I really appreciate your mess messy notes here it's really giving us a good place to start so um but I I think we're gonna when we can make a note to talk about that when we talk about the year-long agenda um all right then we're on to item three which is committee goals With Many Items a through U on it um so it says ad hoc committee for handbook to be created in six months we have a draft that's coming to us already thanks to your leadership thank you yep we already did that we can move that to the done colum I guess yes yay um make sure we are on all school PTO mailing
027list so that we can attend events is that happening yet I don't think so no and we're hearing about it kind of secondhand and I know that like we're trying to make an effort to go to events like you did the band thing and Stacy went to the uh the play so but I'm often hearing about things late or secondhand like I'm not getting emails and I'd love to be able to attend the the fundraisers and you know we can go out to one of the sports games like we should be representing and in attendance at least one of us yeah be nice yeah that'd be ideal yeah maybe we could rotate it so nobody feels like they're stuck going to the mall or you know maybe one has more interest in one than the
028other yeah all right I could talk to Christine about that that's develop onboarding for new members um that might be done because on the new website all of that material that used to be sort of scattered is all in one place yeah I think it's been there for a while the boarding new members part but maybe you didn't get it when you came up and I didn't do anything to on board their new members to be honest this year like even tell them where that stuff was on the weite well when we first started and I looked on the website there's like a SE there was a section underneath that said like new member materials and so it gave you like where to go to get the training but it seems like it's been beefed
029up like maybe somebody's collected all of the bits and pieces and put it in one place it looks different now but that could just be me but yeah I'm glad that it looks better now um I think I would I mean we could discuss with the school committee whether we want to make that a priority um goal but I would I'd like to put it on back burner frankly not that it's not important but just that there's a lot of other things where I'm going to make a little someday maybe lesson put it on that that's a great idea and I think we put that also in our uh handbook draft oh did you I was gonna ask about that okay there's something in there it's in one of our content headers so maybe that
030is handled there's a lot of lwh hanging fruit on that list Kate has rejoined us at noon welcome back Kate yes hello hi there I am back um in just a sec I'll give you a little um review of what you missed um okay adding to a someday maybe list um on boarding for new members program okay I'm just keeping myself muted whenever I'm not speaking because I am in Boston and it's loud okay just so you know there's no noise on our end but it's fine if you oh that's [Music] really what you miss let's see um I'm going to discuss the student outcomes goal with Christine um about getting reports and all that um Elizabeth's going to check with um Stacy and see if she might be willing to do a professional development
031needs assessment um of the school committee like designed one for us um okay this the second section is all about um professional development stuff um and so basically Elizabeth and I were both saying that we each personally would like more training in Robert's Rules of Order um we acknowledged that as a committee we had voted to have open meeting law training but it was in response to a complaint against a member and both the complainer and the complaintant aren't on the school committee anymore and the training never happened um but maybe people will identify that as a need that they have um we we were talking about the need need to have Andy kind of give more of a training for folks in reading the budget and also for the committee to have a discussion
032about um what we would like in a budget to make it more user friendly and have having Andy work with us on that and then um Capital funding for textbooks um Elizabeth said that you had brought this up um and we basically I think that the superintendent gets a design to be put on to the capital planning committee um so it's on my list to check in again with Christine about that because Amy I believe Amy was the person that she had designated um and so now that Amy's not on the committee is she designating someone else and is that a place where that conversation can happen about the textbooks right anything else you want to add about the textbook issue Kate no okay um and yep so the uh handbook ad hoc committee has
033already submitted their draft for the uh the May for the April meeting um I'm going to talk to Christine about see if we can get school committee members included on all the school and PTO mailing lists um I just added develop on boarding for new members to a someday maybe list and um the next one says make a separate budget calendar and plot it into the main agenda um or yeah the main year-long agenda I guess basically um Kate I'm wondering if I don't know what your bandwidth is to have extra subcommittee meetings these days but at some point if you and the budget committee might want to work on looking at a yearlong calendar for the budget for the school committee had full participation in that I'm yes I'm planning on doing that I
034am trying to keep the budget subcommittee meetings in line with P um kind of precedent on when those meetings take place um during this season so my intention is to have one in late April and um that would be part of that agenda wonderful great um have a summer retreat wow just us just us or others we could do it with other um districts if we make you know good relations with other school committees we could combine forces and money and have a retreat together or masc could offer a retreat as part of our membership dues nice maybe we bring a speaker out maybe we um I don't know I I don't know what we need nice um perhaps that could be um aligns to the summer Institute with masc right like well that's what
035I was kind of wondering is could the summer Institute be the retreat is that what you mean Kate uh yeah I was thinking we could try to do something in conjunction with that the retreat itself has um workshops only part of the days those two days so we could feasibly plan to do our own activities as an add-on or even do something Loc Al after the Institute and have whoever agrees to attend bring back their knowledge from said workshop and do you think this would be like a school committee meeting kind of thing or is it more like in line with for example the advocacy training that we just had that's less like an official school committee meeting and more just a mask oriented training I guess well as I recall when we were discussing
036this in the past and it was a while ago now the idea was to um have the committee work on our own uh evaluation and action taking on that oh okay so it would be first have a school committee self- evaluation and then have a workshop based on the needs identified in the um evaluation yes and to um have the ability to have an extended working session aimed at improving school can be Dynamics and functioning okay y well I feel overwhelmed thinking about it it sounds like a great idea but um we can certainly include that as a goal to put forward to the school committee and see if folks want to uh take it on treat all righty um let's see where are we complete subcommittee goals lists we have that item um as
037a separate item um to go through um discuss increased meeting possibility for more bite-sized experience I think we're already doing that though like we're naturally doing it yeah like our main meetings are shorter but we're having lots more other smaller meetings yeah it was just an option because all of the Committees around the state just do it differently they do whatever works for them we can do whatever works for us and that was just one example the other example was having having a really big meeting like a long one and not voting on anything and then coming back like a week later and just to have a voting meeting so that everyone has time to digest like there the they gave us different ideas of how it could go I love it that's great yeah
038I agree that um that meetings are I mean we don't have that much um in terms of uh instances to point to but at least the last um you know most recent meetings have been pretty efficient which is great and I think there is a good amount of Delegation um going on in terms of subcommittees so that's helpful um to Elizabeth's point there was um there have been issues in the past where I think members were um Ed to digest an issue and vote on it immediately and also um those instances didn't leave much room for um public input or feedback um because of that timing and uh I have observed other committees um agendas in which an issue is brought up for discussion but then voted on at a subsequent meeting so that people
039have the ability to think about and um consider all relevant information before they're expected to take an important position like that so um I don't know as that um means there's I don't think that means there need be more meetings but I do think that it would be helpful to have that um layout kind of expected for important issues not housekeeping type things but yeah got it so for for example um the handbook item will be on the agenda for April maybe we could just have a meeting have a the goal is a shared understanding of of what the handbook is and says and does and some preliminary feedback from people on it and then maybe we vote on it in the um the May meeting yeah yes yeah I do feel like the consent
040agenda has been a really useful tool in getting through a lot of business more quickly and we'll see it seems like that is the primary Innovation that's allowed meetings to progress more quickly although I think the other issue was that a lot of work was getting done um on a pretty tight time frame ending in December and then we kind of didn't our our major projects at that time would seem like were kind of had just been dealt with um so hiring a superintendent and um approving the uh transition plan the um redistricting plan but yeah there is like a there there was a lot of talk about shifting our mindset about the year and that we're on the school calendar so our year should end in June and like June should be the time
041that we finish our business and then July we sort of take a a meeting to really reflect um December is not you know is only the end of the election year the the you know the year year where the numbers roll over not when the when the work stops do you know what I mean yeah although I think we're on a fiscal year July through June calendar anyway but yeah okay um searchable policy manual um yeah I hope the superintendent is still able to make progress I know she wanted to try to get it done in time for for um transitioning to Karen um at this point that process has been through will have been through of is it four superintendent Jordana Judy um Christine and then Karen so and most committees get it done
042like within a year I don't know I don't know what got hard for us but um I think partly it's maybe our size is the school district and the school committee the school um superintendents you know needing to do this in addition to everything else they're already doing but clickable agendas on the website what does that refer to wait what read it again clickable agendas on the website oh what was that Kate was that some sort of idea of um putting like there's something where where you go to click on any business on the website and it makes you download it onto your device or onto your desktop there's no way to just have it a viewable only oh thing I think it w it was just like I've heard from a lot of constituents
043that it's clogging up everyone's devices clogs up my device like I didn't realize section I got downloaded four times like there should be like a an easy readable like it should immediately go to a digestible way to read this it's a formatting thing I believe what do you think Kate I do not remember sorry that's fine it does sound like it yeah it's that issue where you click on something and it's it's a PDF and on your phone it's just downloading it and there should be a way but I I guess I can check with the superintendent about the I don't know who manages our website or what platform it is and what other options they might have for us and how to present information I know if you look at the wendle mass. Us
044website we have a really wonderful website platform now from Crow City and um I don't think it does do that um so try going to wendl mass. us to see what it [Music] does all right yeah okay I could show you a little bit on my phone it's kind of hard to see but when you click on the meeting it it puts you into this format where you have an agenda and an agenda packet and you can click on either and then you get a preview of what it looks like and then the option to download the agenda um so it's not just kind of automatically oh yeah and I can even on my phone I can zoom in and out it's really a platform issue I think um yeah being able to add it
045to your calendar having like a calendar link and have that yeah that sort of thing yeah but I feel like the schools recently went through a website transition am I right about that and yet we're still not it's not that great we like moved up a decade but we're still very behind in some of the technological advances yeah like I'm surprised it doesn't seem to have like a a meeting mod well let's see okay well okay here's something I'll I'll share my screen this is kind of interesting [Music] um all right so normally if I'm going oh okay I need to look at the executive committee agenda I'm going to go up here to school committee is it an executive subcommittee and then I get this list and then I this and then it downloads
046but there's this other place that I just found whoops I just deleted that whole window we do that share my screen so if you scroll down and down and down and down eventually you come to upcoming events and you can click on Executive subcommittee meeting and you get this and then you can click here to view the agenda now that's probably going to download it for you again oh it just takes you to the executive Community page but my point is that there's this whole meeting module thing that I wasn't even really aware of and you can add look it has Google Calendar you can add Adam so it just feels like where you have tools on the website that we're not using correctly um I can discuss that with the superintendent and see where
047we end up so um me share thank thank you for uncovering that yes all right it's 12:20 and I want to move on I want to talk briefly about the um search I want us to be done by 12:30 so it would be okay if we um table the rest of a working session for another meeting okay and I guess one question I have is um kind of feel like we did some good work today I'd like us to like I can maybe give a report to people on what we did today um and yeah I think that's it I'll do that at at our April meeting so people know the work is progressing and um we could get people to kind of share some of their ideas about some of the the goals that
048we identified for the committee so righty um yeah I think that's good I just want to say one um other thing in terms of goals and um please stop me if you've already talked about this um but it just um seems really important um like if I were going to pick two goals I would pick the one about student achievement and uh the other is that we have so many conversations about enrollment and um a lot of people have a lot of different ideas about what's behind enrollment um but we don't really know uh why people come or go um in the district because there hasn't been a survey we haven't really done any research um into that and I uh noticed that Mohawk has a really good school committee goal about this um in
049terms of surveying people in order to identify why they uh enroll there or elsewhere or move on um and that would be my second choice like I said if I were going to pick two goals for the committee to work on if it were me uh I I don't know what other members would um think about that but that just it would be a top priority um to me so I wanted to mention that do do you feel like it'd be too crazy just to ask if they might be able to come to the meeting next week and talk to us a little bit about what they're doing who mohawk mohawk oh oh uh I don't know uh I I said hello to uh Martha I think think from there who was at the uh
050day on the hill training and I spoke to her very briefly about that uh goal of theirs just to let her know I noticed and I think it's admirable um yeah I have no idea how it's going for them or you know how they're conducting their surveys or um trying to go about achieving that goal but uh yeah it would be great to have input from them yeah I was going to send out an email probably in the next couple days um touching base with mohawk and with Gil monu and Pioneer because they all expressed wanting to maybe join forces on getting today on the hill um to just kind of see where they're at and let them know about the future Zoom meeting which is on April 25th I believe and I can send
051a separate email to Martha and and ask unless somebody else wants to do do that I don't know if she could just come next week but maybe she could come uh if not May then June or something I don't know yeah probably isn't urgent yeah let's see if um if you don't mind putting out some feelers to her and see if she might be willing to come and and just tell us what they've been up to it' be great okay [Music] toaw else on um on our working session on all these things um before we move on to the school committee vacancy oh that's what you wanted to table the working session to discuss I'm sorry I didn't write that down correctly oh no that's okay okay to discuss the okay um yeah so basically
052we have um I think we have three letters of Interest one from Melody Goodwin one from Jesus Lea is that his last name and one from Isaac Mass um I personally would like to have a much more robust pool of um of applicants um I wonder what you all think about whether we should possibly extend the deadline or um um even consider doing the appointment at our May meeting instead of our April meeting our policy doesn't really require us to do it on any particular time frame from what I could see in our in our policy I'm totally fine with having it be in May and extending it I don't know if we'll get many others I have my own feelings about what I hope that we can find in the applicants um and I
053don't know how how you want to have the applicant discussion happen I'm assuming in an executive session no actually it happens in an open session okay yeah in the past um yeah it's awkward I that's how I came on I applied for an appointment to fulfill a vacancy and they did actual interviews of us um I was thinking of skipping the interviews and doing a meet and greet from like six to 6:30 of whatever meeting it is where we decide to do it and then um at the meeting allow people to make uh personal statements but then just do the vote assume that school committee members have time if they want to reach out and have one-on-one conversations with people but I don't feel a need to go through a performative interview process really so
054so we should feel comfortable reaching out to the applicants and talking to them I think so yeah they're not on the committee so you're not um in in it's only discussed with too many school committee members where it becomes an open meaning law issue okay yeah yeah uh I I support that um if someone is interested in uh applying they should take it upon themselves to um talk to the members if they want to and I think May is fine not attached to timeline um I do think in terms of the number of applicants it's the same issue that we have with a lot of other things which is that people don't know and um so I would like to see about um disseminating the information that there is a vacancy um as effectively as
055possible I would imagine there are people who might be interested if only they knew there was one so uh I don't know what you think can be done to share that widely yeah could we do a City press release could we utilize the um City who what's his name Matthew M Kai MCC um maybe yeah um I could talk to um Christine about whether she could reach out and ask for their the mayor's assistance in getting the word out on City channels um we could make a flyer and put it on the um Greenfield family groups there are a lot of there are like three main groups where a lot of parents yeah talk about all the PTO issues and there has been no chatter about the school committee vacancy at all so I'm wondering
056if these parents who are really this the most concerned and involved citizens they don't even know if they knew yeah if we had a press release that was a image we could post [Music] it yeah [Music] um I'm a member of all of those groups not all of them are public but I'd be happy to post it if or you could post it or someone yeah no I don't think I mean it's public information so I don't think we need to um I don't know exactly how to think about it but it seems like if any individual member wants to you know take the information and format it and and share it on social media and other groups um they should do that and I can also talk to the superintendent about how to get
057the word out and in newsletters and you know parent updates and things that go out if it hasn't already and um we can just be trying to broadcast the info yeah I think the newsletters would be helpful the newsletters and the superintendent's update um that goes out by email would be helpful and uh in terms of uh posting it online I don't know if uh when that press release is put out so if we could request that the recorder specifically put a post out um online about that I they make a number of uh social media posts but they don't post everything so uh I don't know if that's an inquiry that could be made with them uh might be helpful you could talk to buzz Eisenberg too Glenn and put out um like just
058let him know and maybe he could make a little um radio blurb on his talk to talk about it yeah we could even pay you know for a for a radio ad if if we needed to um sure there's a school a budget we could have for for that okay so it sounds like we where there's consensus that um doing some more Public Communication and extending the deadline might be worthwhile to see if we can reach more people who may not even know that there's a vacancy yet any objection to that I agree okay objection all right um we'll see because I think we put out a tomorrow as the deadline um but assuming we don't see a big influx of of applications by then then I think that may be the course that we
059take so sounds good all right um I would hear a motion to adjourn so moved there a second second Move Motion by Kate and second by Elizabeth any discussion let's vote Kate yes Elizabeth yes and I'm a yes and we are adjourned at 12:33