School Board Workshop/Meeting - January 20, 2022

001what is there oh with exactly good evening and welcome to the workshop um the scarborough school board workshop today is january 20th 2022. may i have the attendance please sure mrs gift is here miss casalonas here mr kelleher here miss leong here mrs lindstrom here mr peeny huff [Music] that's her mrs turner here miss giftus will be joining us late this evening and miss bertullia yeah fantastic um can everybody please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge of allegiance to the lord from the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty all right agenda item 4.0 is our workshop and 4.1 um we're going to welcome melissa huey to speak with us about the legal ramifications of board executive sessions she's going

002to give us some lessons for our newer board members um educational lessons and navigating contentious times thank you so much for joining us i should go here yes sure and in terms of the moving ahead on my presentation do you do that or do i do that or how does that work okay if i would have thought about it i would have brought my little one it's all right i'm i'm easy in that way so good evening everybody here and away um i'm melissa huey i'm a lawyer at drum and woodson and um as i said um before we started this i sort of apologize for um changing the topic a little bit of the talk we're talking about tonight but um i think that school boards are really navigating contentious times now and i

003thought it would be helpful to sort of broaden what we're talking about um i know that you are a really high functioning board um and that's that's good but i think going back to the basics of what it is to be a school board and some of we'll be talking about some of the laws and some of the policies that um that sort of govern what what you do um so turning oh that's you did that beautifully so first um yeah first let's talk a little bit about the um powers and duties of maine school committees and school boards and when i do that i usually like to go back to the language of a supreme court decision back in 1924 it's a case called shaw versus small and in that case the supreme court

004said a school committee acts as a public board it in no sense represents the town its members are chosen by voters of the town but after election they are public officers deriving their authority from the law and responsible to the state for the good faith and rectitude of their acts so what that really means is that although you're elected by the people that elect you once you get elected you take off that candidate cape and you suddenly become really i'm responsible for students rather than your constituents as we usually refer to them now the lawyers here and we know there are some of them would be quick to say that that language in shaw versus small is only dicta and what dicta means is that it's not the holdings so it's not the law of

005the state it's just language that the supreme court used in coming to the holding that it did in that case which was a um an an expulsion case so it's not the law it's not guiding um on any court um but there are some hints that it really means what it says so the first thing is that um a few years ago the legislature tried to or there was a bill introduced in the legislature that tried to change what that um what the law court said in shaw versus small saying be it enacted by the people of the state of maine to read accountability of the public a school board is accountable to the residents who live within the boundaries of the school board's district which are the school board's constituents so exactly the opposite

006of what shaw versus small said and that didn't pass and so what that means is at least then the legislature believed what the supreme court was saying shaw versus small rather than what the people who introduced ld 63 wanted wanted it to be so that's one thing but the more important thing i think is that it really makes sense i mean if you think about what a school board is you're responsible for a school and you can't think of little constituents of students there are a lot of students they're from different places they have different needs and you're responsible for all of them so those are really your constituents that's for sure um true but i want to stress here that that does not mean that you don't care what the public thinks because if

007you don't have the support of the public you don't get your budget passed you don't get people to um donate things you don't get that kind of community support that makes the scarborough school department what it is so of course one constituent you do have is the community another constituent see that you have of course is your employees if your employees don't um think that this is the best place to work they're going to go somewhere else and what you want to do of course is attract and hold all the best people you can so that's another constituency so as a school board what you're doing is really trying to speak to your community your employees but above all of course students how do you do that you do that by getting people to have

008faith in you to trust you and to know that you're going to do the right thing so that's really what we're going to be talking about tonight so where do we find the sources of the obligation of the school board first and main statute and that's mostly in title 20a and the freedom of access act which we'll talk about in a minute and then in school board policies so what's the difference between a statute and a policy and doesn't matter and i guess i would say that there's a little bit of a difference in that a statute is the law of the state but school board policies are your law and so in my view at least following your policies and knowing what they mean is really important in terms of making the public trust

009you and know that you know what you're doing you expect your students to follow policies if they don't they're going to be they could be expelled they could be suspended they could be disciplined you expect your employees to follow your policies if they don't they can be disciplined they can be terminated and so as a board it's important also for you to know your policies and follow them and that's why some of the things i want to talk about tonight are some of your policies so moving on to is there a difference and then we'll go to the next one so and i'm going kind of quickly because i i um broadened the topic but i promise you that i'm not going to take any longer so i'm going to talk real fast but please

010ask questions if you have them so a school board has different roles um first it's like essentially a legislative body and a policy maker the the state law says that the school board is a responsible for adopting policies and there are a whole bunch of them in there that your policy committee knows well and you probably all do too you have to have a non-discrimination and hiring policy i put in safeguard against communicable diseases because i thought that was kind of apropos i don't know bomb threat response bullying staff bullying all kinds of different policies that you're responsible for putting into place for your school committee you have to adopt a budget you have to adopt a course of study and alignment with learning results and you have to adopt a student code of conduct

011emergency management plan concussion management plans all kinds of things so that's what you do as a legislative body and a policy maker number two is school board as a judicial body and that's because as school board members you are really the jury the judge and jury in things like student expulsions and teacher and principal non-renewals and dismissals and i want to stop there for just a minute because i think that's a really important role that you have hopefully it doesn't come up very often but occasionally it does and the importance there is that because you are a judicial body it's important that when you're going into a hearing like that that you go into it without prejudice without having prejudged what's going on and so and for that reason you will find occasionally when there

012is a big issue a big student issue or a big employment issue that everybody in town is talking about it they want to know from you what's going on you want to know from the superintendent what's going on and the superintendent isn't giving you as much information as you'd like to have and there it's really important to realize that the reason the superintendent isn't doing that is not because he wants to hide stuff from you but because he has to keep you separated so that when and if you are going to sit as a judicial body that you can do that fairly if you don't if he's sort of giving you some information then that could make it so that you can't serve that judicial role and if the school board can't serve the judicial

013role there's really no one to do it so it's really important that you understand that when there is a big issue that sometimes you're not going to get as much information in the front end as you'd like to make sense perfect last thing school board is employer you select and hire the superintendent that is your one employee you approve teacher and principal nominations if somebody is nominated the the superintendent brings the nomination to you you approve it and then the third step in a teacher and principal hiring is that then the person is given a contract so it's a three-step process you're in the middle um not at the beginning and not at the end and lastly you eliminate teacher and principal positions in the event that you have to so that's really what a

014school board does yes so um regarding the approval of teacher and principal nominations i always have a difficult time when i see that on the agenda because we're not involved in the hiring process and we don't have x in and i'm not suggesting that i want that either or have you know but um or that that's our role but we really don't know anything about those individuals and their capacity and their appropriateness and and so it always feels uncomfortable to me that that we have a role in that process because it just really seems like a formality as opposed to us actually making an informed decision and i'm wondering if there are any times where you've seen where a school board plays more of a meaningful role so there are times when the school board

015might have questions about somebody that the the superintendent is going to give you some basic information about each person that um that he or she is nominating and if you have questions about that you may go into executive session and get more information um generally uh what you do is you have faith in the person you've hired to appropriately vet these people and bring um the best candidates forward that that that person can find but if there are questions then um you have the right to ask those it's just you don't get involved prior to the nomination does that make sense so it's a check and balance um but but it doesn't really come with much substance behind it so i just wonder if it's occasionally it does um and it that that's that's not

016usually the case because usually you know that the process that you have in place for vetting candidates makes sense and you know that you have a hiring committee you know that people are doing things right you trust them in the the judgment of your administration and ultimately in your superintendent to bring forward the best candidates um but occasionally there are times when when there are questions um and then it's appropriate to ask those once the nomination is made so in your opinion it's it's um we're doing our own due diligence by just hearing the presentation and approving it and and that's all that's expected of us is limited to that generally yes thank you so let's go to um policy bba which is the board of education powers and duties so basically it's saying that

017that you're going to do what the law says you'll be responsible for the management of the schools adopt and direct the general course of student and provide programs in kindergarten through grade 12. and the interpretation of the powers and duties of the board is understood that the board will act as a governing body in determining in the term determination of general policies for control operation maintenance and expansion of the public schools and then the board delegates administrative matters to the superintendent so that's what the law essentially provides but that's also what you've provided you said we're going to look at this from 35 000 feet and we're going to make sure that you're doing things right but we're going to let you administration and you superintendent deal with the nuts and bolts everyday administration of

018the schools so then let's turn to policy bbaa board of education member authority and this is really important and really hard i think for school board members to follow because you live in a community so what the policy says is members of the board of education have authority only when acting as a board the board will not be bound in any way by actions or statements on the part of board members except when those are made pursuant to specific instructions from the board of education so the reason i say that's hard is because what that means is you are board members and you're acting in your capacity of board members mostly when you're at board meetings that's when you're a school board member but that is not when the general community thinks you're a school

019board member they think you're a school board member every single waking moment of your life and everything you say they are thinking you're speaking for the board and that's why it's really important for board members to remember they can only act as a school board member when they're in a board meeting and not when they're out there talking to people um in the public and yes did were you are you just waving at me thank you giving me a thumbs up for something like that um so um and i think that that that people struggle with that because you're gonna be um confronted by members of the public that want to know what's the board thinking about this what are you thinking about this why are you thinking about this why are you doing this

020and they're going to want to get into that kind of discussion and back and forth with you and it's really important that when you're having those um discussions outside of board meetings that a you're being really clear that when i'm speaking i'm not i'm speaking as a a person rather than a board member if i'm not at a board meeting and number two i think it's really the best practice to mostly when you're having those um communications to listen and then bring that discussion from what you've heard back to the meeting when you can all talk about it as a group make sense is it easy no i don't think so so superintendent is responsible for the ongoing administration of the sau and for ensuring operations of the schools conforms to the policies and rules

021adopted by the school board and to state laws and rules so again that just goes back to what i said before which is the superintendent is responsible for all those day-to-day things that that run a school and that's what the law says and that's also what your policy says so it's really important so then let's talk just a little bit about the role of the board chair this is in your policy bdb um so carrying out the responsibilities the chair will sign instruments blah blah blah consult with the superintendent and planning of board meeting agendas and i'd like to stop for a second and just talk about that because um and i don't think this is probably an issue with you all but i know that in some boards in my experience um they get

022a little bit um suspicious of the fact that the board share is spending a lot more time with the superintendent than um than the superintendent is spending with other board members that doesn't mean he doesn't love you all he does [Laughter] it just means that because you have this policy that says the board chair is going to do certain things that there's going to be more of a day-to-day communication between superintendent and board chair than superintendent and other board members so the board shares responsible for meeting agendas conferring with the superintendent on crucial matters which occur between board meetings and we all know that things that are crucial usually come up between board meetings right and then the board chairs are responsible for appointing subcommittees and serving as an ex official on all member of

023all such committees which means that the board chair has no life but that's okay assigning board members to committees calling special meetings and being the public spokesperson of the board at all times except as um delegated to others here i want to stop again because there are going to be times when there is a big issue maybe it's a a big policy issue maybe it's a litigation maybe it's who knows what but that people are going to be calling you about they're not just going to call the superintendent they're not just going to call the board chair they're going to call all of the board members and want to get their comments their take on these issues your board policy says that the board chair is the public spokesperson so it's really important when you

024get those press um questions or you get questions from people that you're channeling them to the board chair unless the board chair has said okay on this man on this issue mr kelleher is going to be our spokesperson or on this issue mrs giftos is going to be our spokesperson but you're going to decide on one person who's going to be the spokesperson that's really important because what you need to be communicating to your constituents your community your employees your students your everybody is a single message so that people aren't confused make sense okay yes no you're trying to no i want i'm done talking now thank you i i was just wondering about the um the board chair as a ex-officio member of all committees do you um do you ever have a concern

025that that may present somewhat of a conflict um in the in the chairs other responsibilities in in dealing with the public or um or or with constituents as it as the chair may sit on committees so i'm not sure what you're asking i'd certainly it means the board chair doesn't have much time to do much um but i think that i'm not sure because i wasn't there when this policy was adopted but i think the idea is that because the board share is the spokesperson that he or she ought to be generally aware of of what different committees are so it's really sort of an information thing more than anything else does that answer your question okay so let's talk then briefly about conflicts of interest and i think i i want to talk about

026that for a couple of reasons one because it's in the law and it's something that everybody should know about but two um as the sort of the theme of what we're talking about here is engendering public confidence and avoiding conflicts of interest is really important in terms of engendering public confidence people need to know that you are there for the school district and the students and it's there's no personal conflict of interest that's getting in the way so the law says you um you can't be employed by the school district you can't engage in certain volunteer activities and i'll stop there and say and it's it's also in your policy um you can't volunteer in a way that you are sort of overseeing people so you couldn't be the head football coach or something like

027that because then it looks like there's a conflict between your board role and your role as a supervisor so you can't do that but that does not mean and i think this is really important to stress that you can't volunteer of course you can volunteer and of course you should volunteer because you care about the schools so it's just those certain types of volunteer activities that are prohibited by the law you can't contract with the school department except under circumstance certain circumstances and you can't participate in matters that you have a personal interest in so as i said before this is really all about um promoting public confidence so you have board policy bcb says board members have a legal and ethical responsibility to avoid not only conflict of interest but the appearance of conflicts

028of interest as well and that's an important thing because you can look at and parse through what the law says but what you need to understand is that the community the employees and everybody is looking at what you're doing and they're not parsing through the law what they're doing is thinking is this person's personal interest taking control over what they should be doing as a board member so understanding what is a technical conflict of interest is important but understanding what is an appearance of conflict of interest is also important so how do you board members how wait you got to go back i think that should be shall but who knows attempt to avoid the appearance so spell check doesn't always work right [Laughter] avoid the appearance of conflict of interest by disclosure and or

029abstention and that's i think the important thing here and the the way to help you get through conflicts of interest or potential conflicts of interest when they come here is to bring them up to the board and talk about it i'm wondering about this so i was dealing um a while ago with a um a board issue where um they were deciding an unemployment policy and one of the board members was a teacher in a different district that was also dealing with the same employment policy and he was on the side of the employees there advocating for something so he wondered is this a conflict of interest um i think i can decide it based on um my position as a board member but are people gonna understand that so what he did was bring

030it to the board and say here's my concerns what do you guys think they had a discussion and they decided how to do that but by talking about it by disclosing it by working through that that tells the public i i know that there's a potential here i've thought about it and ultimately his decision and the decision of the whole board was that he could be impartial that he didn't have a conflict of interest and he could participate in deciding on this particular issue i think that but just the discussion and bringing it up is what helped the public have confidence in that decision because they can see people struggling with things they can see that it's the um the first thing on their minds um and that really helps questions no man i'm so

031clear tonight okay so now what what direct drug you in here the freedom of access act so i and i just want to um stop here and i say this freedom of access act is your friend and i do feel um i have this real strong love for the freedom of access act i see when i work with school boards around the state i see them struggle against it they some people struggle against it because they really like to get into private and talk about things honestly and openly with each other so they don't like this public meeting stuff and some people are really really into transparency and they want everything to happen in public and they don't like the executive sessions so what i'm here to tell you is that this freedom of access

032act really is a great thing because it it it um balances those co-equal goals of ensuring transparency which is really important um with the also the goal of protecting privacy where where it's necessary so this gives you the tools to be able to do that the idea here and if you think about it it makes total sense is that we ought to know what our governmental officials are doing how they're doing it we ought to be able to see them work through the issues because if we can do that we can understand the decisions they make and then we can have confidence even if we disagree in their decisions we can have confidence that they've gotten there in a way that makes sense so that's great on the one hand and that's that's why even

033though it's sometimes easier to talk about things in private it makes sense to let people understand and see how you work on the other hand there are certain things that have to be done in private because otherwise you um you end up violating people's rights so and i forgot thank you assistant superintendent the purpose of the freedom of access act the legislature finds and declares that the public public police exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business it is the intent of the legislature that their actions be taken open openly i think it probably is and that the records of their actions be open to public inspection and their deliberations be conducted openly it is further the intent of the legislature that clandestine meetings conferences or meetings held on private property without proper

034notice and ample authority for attendance by the public not be used to defeat the purposes of this subject sub-chapter so that's why we have the law and as i said before i think it really makes a lot of sense so let's just talk walk through what is a public meeting and what are the requirements the um statute says a one mrs 405 all public proceedings must be open and comply with the following requirements you have to have public notice so that the public knows that there's a meeting and they can participate if they want to it has to be open to the public and there has to be a record kept so that people who could show up or couldn't now um log in on zoom can read the minutes and find out what's going

035on so question number one what is a public proceeding and the law tells us that a public proceeding is a transaction of any functions affecting any or all citizens of the state by any board of any school district so if you're in a meeting and you're transacting the business of the school board then that's a public proceeding now i said before that you only act as a board when you're acting in a board meeting and what that means essentially is that you have to have a quorum of the board in order to be able to take any action so a public proceeding always has to involve a quorum of the board if you have two people meeting that's not a public proceeding but if you have i don't know how many you are because you're

036not here and i probably couldn't figure out the quorum thing math thing anyway but if you have a majority that's a um that's the first um requirement of a public proceeding and the second thing is that you're transacting business which would be talking about anything that has to do with do with the school school so do you want to get together for a valentine's day party all of you a complete majority of you and you're not going to talk about the school that's okay if you start talking about school board business and your there's a quorum of you and it isn't hasn't been noticed appropriately then that's a potential violation of the freedom of access act so what does that mean that means you can have valentine's day parties but remember again we're talking here

037about the public perception and if they see all of you hanging around eating chocolates that's probably fine but if you're sort of talking privately to each other people are going to think you're transacting business so you really need to be careful about having any time that there's a a quorum of the board um together um talking about things because if there is it's probably a meeting and it probably has to follow those um requirements of the of the freedom of access act that there be public notice that the public be able to um participate and that a record be kept okay so what's next um so you have now we'll talk a little bit about executive sessions um that's in the law it's also in your policy bec except as provided by law all meetings

038of the board of education will be open to the public that's required that's by you and by the law the board may hold executive sessions upon recorded vote of three-fifths of the members present and voting any motion to go into executive session must indicate the nature of the executive session and include a citation of one or more of the statutory authorities so that's an important i want to stop here for a second again because that's an important thing there are often times where you may have a couple of different topics that you're going to be talking about in executive session that's fine but as your policy provides and as the law provides you need to state the um the statutory authority for going into executive session before you do it so if you have two

039things and there are two different things that's two different executive sessions you can't get in there and have a free floor and the purpose of that of course if you think about it is to make sure that people are really careful about what they're talking about in executive session and when they're talking about it okay so what can you talk about in executive session and let me be more precise because really it's not what can you talk about but what must you talk about in executive session you want me to go back and talk about the quorum [Laughter] about public proceedings and keeping them having them um available to the community and i wonder how you feel about i i certainly understand that some committees cannot be recorded and we can't invite the public to

040that but how do you feel about other committees um us recording those to make them available versus not having that that live link available so if you have a committee and it is does not include a quorum of the board so it's not a public proceeding then the freedom of access act would not require that you make them available to the public does that mean you can't absolutely not and there may be times when you want the public to be to participate in a committee a committee meeting or to see what's going on so that you can have some dialogue within the community either after or in between committee meetings that's absolutely fine and it doesn't have to be every time who wants to go to the facility oh i don't want to dis the

041poor facilities committee i take that back or as we say in court strike that um but there are committees that are really important to the community and sharing what you're what's going on i think is a really good idea at certain times does that answer your question yes thank you okay so we were talking about um and i was saying what um what is permissible for going into executive session and i want to revise that language a little bit because in many cases it's not what is permissible it's really what is required because as i said before the point of the of the freedom of access act is to balance those rights of privacy rights and and other things um with the public's right to know so employment-related matters and i'll talk about those in

042a little bit more in a minute suspension or expulsion of a student has to be an executive session and if you think about that that makes sense because that student has privacy rights acquisition of real property and fixtures and if you think about that it makes sense because you can't really negotiate the purchase of a piece of property if the person you're negotiating with knows what how far you're going to go so if you're talking about negotiating a purchase of a piece of property you go into executive session you decide how you're going to do it you come out and um and you go on ahead with the the acquisition attempt at least collective bargaining is another thing that goes on in executive session and that's basically the same reason you can't bargain if the

043other side knows where you're going to go and then consultation with council the reason for that is that if you disclose what you're talking about with your lawyer there is no more privilege so the only way you can retain the attorney-client privilege is to receive that advice in executive session those are the um the primary there are other reasons in the um in the freedom of access act that public boards can go into executive session those are really the ones that mostly schools will find themselves going into executive session so i want to talk a little bit more about [Music] employment issues because this is something that is sometimes misunderstood by school boards and other boards i think probably too um so the statute says you can go into to executive session to talk about

044the employment appointment assignment duties promotion demotion compensation evaluation disciplining resignation or dismissal if a public discussion might damage reputation or invade privacy so in other words every time you're talking about an employment matter that does not give you the right to go into executive session it's only if the public discussion might damage reputation or invade privacy where school boards often run afoul of that provision is for example you you need to do some layoffs so you want to go into executive session and talk about the layoffs because you don't want to bum out a lot of people but if you're talking generally about let's you know eliminate this type of position and that type of position that's not going to damage the reputation or invade the privacy of any specific person so that's not an

045appropriate reason to go into executive session executive session is rea you can go in to talk about a personnel matter if you're talking about a specific person because that specific person has privacy rights and their their reputation could be damaged so if you go into executive session to discuss a personnel manner the statute says a person charged your investigation or investigated has the right to be present and also has the right to request that the meeting be in public if he or she chooses you'll see on the slide that i've bolded the words charged or investigated because in my experience boards tend to forget that language and they think that any time you're in executive session to talk about a specific person that person has the right to be there that is not true you

046only the person only has the right to be there if they've been charged or they're being investigated for some sort of wrongdoing so there are times when you can go into executive session to talk about a personnel matter without that person being there if you're talking about somebody who's been charged in other words there's been a complaint brought that person has the right to be in the executive session to listen to what you're talking about not to participate but to listen to what you're talking about and the person who brought the complaint also has the right to be there again not to participate but to listen so any time that you're thinking about a personnel matter question number one is is this something that might damage the reputation or invade privacy if the answer to

047that is yes then you have the obligation to go into executive session second question is are we talking about a situation where somebody's been charged or is being investigated if so then you've got to make sure that you've got the right people that are allowed to be there make sense questions thank you um so the first question i have is um that means that if you're discussing something like demotion the person doesn't have the right to be there unless they're charged investors right right okay um and then my second question is are there any remedies available for a violation of the of i don't know if it's the executive session law first freedom of information so the remedies are not entirely clear on there if you go into executive session and make a decision based

048on that and it's an illegal decision on an illegal session then the decision might be void um you could uh get a court to order that um you disclose what happened um things like that it's not it's it's not a um it's not a big monetary um uh remedy but it's more um injunctive type remedies um that said there are probably more there's probably more freedom of access litigation going on in this state than any other kind of litigation against schools mostly around records and we'll talk about those in a minute but that's where a lot of people tend to bring um to bring cases which is why it's really important to understand the freedom of access act and does anybody have standing to bring a case or is it just the person who's aggrieved

049like the employee for example so um it is anybody because if you think about it it's i mean and usually what these cases are brought by um by the press uh because they have the the um the means to bring those so it's not just the person who's who's been charged or investigated or is being discussed okay so quickly on to um records oh i think i have also impermissible actions relating to an executive session so you can't take any action such as voting an executive session you can kind of get a feel for where people are going to go but if you're going to take a vote um to expel a student to purchase property to do x or y that's going to have to be by motion and taken in public you cannot

050do and and just to follow up on on your question if you did take a vote that vote would be void um straying from the topic that you cited to enter executive session and this in my experience is super hard to stay with um you're in a room you're talking you get talking about say you're talking about this employee well that reminds me of that employee or that reminds me of the fact that you really ought to you know change the school of colors to purple and black or whatever and you start that the conversation goes from one thing to another if you stray from the topic that you decided to enter that's a violation of the freedom of access act and that is where i think every single person who is on the board

051has a real role to police that because nobody wants to violate the freedom of access act but it's just natural so you're going to be sitting there talking and then suddenly you're going to find that that the topic has jumped because that's what we do as people and and it's perfectly appropriate and in fact i think it's really your obligation as a board member if you notice that jump say wait a minute we got to get back on topic here um so that's that's an important one and then obviously disclosing the contents of the discussion in executive session is absolutely prohibited we talked about the reason for going into executive session and that is often to protect the privacy of a specific person if you're talking about that outside of executive session to your neighbor

052to your spouse to anybody um then you are essentially violating their privacy rights and violating that that provision of the law that says that employee records are confidential if you are talking about what your lawyer said you are reaching the um attorney-client privilege and really putting the school at school district at jeopardy of losing that privilege uh man that's the same thing with talking about anything that you're on negotiating whether it's collective bargaining or purchase of property or anything if you if you once you um you you disclose that it really defeats the purpose of the executive session that's a hard thing to do because executive sessions usually get a spotlight on them and people want to know what's going on but you just absolutely positively have to say i can't say anything about it

053so that before we um go to the next slide that leads me to the question that i often get um about notes so you take notes um maybe of school board meetings if you do those are public records if you are in an executive session and you take notes those have the um [Music] possibility of being public records and subject to a um a records request which we'll talk about in a minute too so notes are really um a difficult thing in executive session a lot of boards say no one can take notes at all in executive session and that's certainly the safest way to go on the other hand a lot of people need to write stuff down in order to think or to remember you've got everybody talking and you want to remember

054that you want to say x or y so i think taking notes in executive session is okay as long as you're really careful to collect anything that is passed out anything that's written down anything at all and at the end of the executive session you're careful to collect them and destroy them so that you're again maintaining the privacy of the executive session that the freedom of access act really requires okay so records public records are really almost anything information in virtually any form in the possession or control of the school department including board members that has been received or prepared for use in connection with the transaction of public or governmental business or contains information related to the transaction of public or governmental business so what does that mean that means that your notes your

055minutes all of those things that you would think of are public records that means that the emails that you send to each other are public records that means that the texts that you send to each other are public records and what the freedom of access act says is that if anybody asks makes a request for public records they have to be turned over so what does that mean that means being really careful about where you transact your your public business using your scarborough dot whatever it is email address and not your gmail address so that when you get a records request we know where to look for those those records trying not to talk about any school business on text because otherwise when you get a records request somebody's going to have to look for

056through your text which is not what you want um so being really careful about that and what we're seeing more and more on all throughout the state is lots and lots and lots of records requests so being careful about those so that you can comply with those and comply with them in a timely manner is really really important for school boards make sense yes okay okay so finally making your school board operate effectively and as i said before i think of scarborough as one of the highest functioning school boards there is so there's probably not a lot i can say to you but let me try so it all starts with what it means to be a school board you're the governing body of the school department you're part of a team you have a

057duty of loyalty as we said before to the students to the employees and to fellow board members so keeping that in mind and really living that and and um accepting that is what makes a school board operate effectively and if a school board is operating effectively that's what really builds public confidence and i think makes even these really contentious times where people are going to disagree it makes it so that you can get through those so you have luckily a road map to success on this and that is your board policy bca this is a thing hi welcome luckily you won't have to be here for long so the the the code of ethics is i mean i i really think you ought to like take this out of your policy book print it laminate

058it and anytime there is a difficult issue pull it out and read it it's it really does give you that road map to being able to get through even the most difficult times difficult emotional times difficult personal times difficult political times it's got three themes do what's right for students work well together and honor the appropriate possible process and be professional so i pulled out a few of them you probably all have it laminated already but just in case you don't before you laminate it here are the things i like a board member 1.2 at all times think of children first and base decisions on how they will affect children their education and training i will consider the educational needs of children and how they will be affected in all my deliberations and decisions that's

059number one if you can do that you're there 1.5 seek to provide a public education for all children in the community that has commensurate with their needs and abilities and that goes back to shaw versus small we're talking about everybody here i will work to ensure that a high quality public education is provided for the children in our district in accordance with the district's mission and vision so just stop there for one second and say wow we did this right you know that is a great policy that really says it all and if you can do that you're it you know everything works out so that's number one do what's right for kids number two work well together and be kind i think that's important attempt not to make disparaging remarks about other board members

060or their opinions sometimes it's hard but it's really important for being able to get along with each other for being productive and for making the public know that you can work together make decisions openly and after the facts bearing on a question have been presented and discussed so that again is really important you are what your what's in your board package packets is important because those are the things that you're you're really basing your decisions on talking amongst each other in your board meetings having a real full discussion is important um and letting the public see that you're thinking about these things you're struggling with this um and you're coming to a decision together welcome and encourage cooperation and participation by parents students teachers administrators and other personnel in developing policies that affect each stakeholder's

061welfare so bringing that that opening that tent to people that again is what helps you it's hard sometimes to hear what people say that you don't agree with but letting them say it and letting them know that they're part that they're part of that process is really what gives you their support in the end and that's your policy you decided on that awesome okay and then honor the process remember at all times that as an individual you have no legal authority outside the meetings of the board and that you will conduct your relationship with school staff citizenry and the media on the basis of that fact so we talked about that before but again that's something that's really important to remember as a school board member staff is going to come to you and want

062to you know have you do something about something um they're going to want to you know tell you they tell you what their problems are so as your neighbor and so is the person who's in the grocery store and things like that so remembering that you have no legal authority outside the board members board meetings and listening to them i'm not saying shut them out i'm saying listen soak it up but don't speak for the board because that's your policy says you can't do it and it makes sense and it's really in compliance with the law 1.5 recognize that your responsibility is not to operate the schools but to see that they are well operated a huge difference a really important difference you are the 35 000 feet people the people who are deciding what

063the school colors are or the what the color of the rug is or how far these chairs are apart um or you know what teacher is doing what um those are your administrators those are the people you hire to do that you're making the broad decisions refer all complaints to the proper authorities for resolution through established procedures that's another thing that's really important we've touched on a little bit tonight but making sure that you are um respecting the sort of progression that that that you've developed um that your policies you have policies on who um how you're going to handle complaints you need to follow those you can't let people jump around um a policy because if you do then they start feeling like some people are treated differently than other people your policies are

064designed to make sure that everybody is treated the same way and that everybody knows if i have a complaint here's the process i follow and if everybody knows i have if i have a complaint here's the process they follow and if that's the process they have to follow then that leads to um their expectations are all about fairness so i think that's important and finally confined board action to policy making planning and appraisal if you can do all of those things and you can stay awake all these nights for all these light board meetings it's a piece of cake so questions do you have any questions for melissa come on mrs giftos you can come up with something [Laughter] well i just want to say thank you so very much this every time you i

065hear you i feel like i've picked up a new piece of information from my tool bone so i really appreciate you coming in well i just want to say thank you guys all so much this is so hard to be a school board member anyway i i have to stay out stay up until seven o'clock tonight one night and i'm feeling sorry for myself i don't know how you guys can do it but it's really hard now because there's a lot of emotion there's a lot of unanswerable questions but the fact that you're doing it and that you care it's going to work so congratulations and thank you all right so agenda item um 5.0 on the for the workshop is adjournment so we'll do that is everybody okay to just carry on go ahead

066and um call the business meeting to order um good evening welcome to the business meeting of the scarborough school board of education the date is thursday january 20th 2022. may i have the attendance please sure mrs gift is here miss casalonas here mr kelleher here miss leong here mrs lindstrom here mr peeny huff here mrs turner here miss giftus here and miss bertullia here thank you can i have everyone please join me for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] all right um agenda item 4.0 is adjustments to the agenda are there any adjustments this evening no adjustments for this evening agenda item 5.0 is public comments on agenda

067items is there anybody wishing to make public comments this evening um as a reminder regarding public comments please address your comments to me as the chair please state your full legal name and address for the record and limit yourself to three minutes all right good evening my name is chris i've spoken at several of these before i watched the stream from two weeks ago and there are some encouraging parts i want to thank you for that i'm glad that the superintendent's report mentioned trying to establish metrics to end universal masking i'd like to see the district take the lead instead of waiting on the rest of the county to make a decision on that point vaccination rates and case counts are not the right indicators especially with a highly transmissible yet mild variant that can

068still be contracted and spread by vaccinated individuals hospitalizations are more relevant statistic and thankfully those continue to be steady or decline in our county here are some quotes that i'd like to share with you as i think they're applicable to our situation some are from prominent figures finally saying what i've been telling you for months now if a child goes into the hospital they automatically get tested for covet and they get counted as a coveted hospitalized individual when in fact they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that so it's over counting the number of children who are quote hospitalized with cobit as opposed to because of cobot that was said by tony fauci cloth masks are nothing more than facial decorations that was said by leanna when the overwhelming

069number of deaths over 70 percent occurred in people who had at least four co-morbidities that was said by rochelle wilinski it is more much more relevant to focus on the hospitalizations as opposed to the total number of cases tony fauci a brown university study said quote mass worn in public settings and in school or daycare settings may impact a range of early developing skills such as attachment facial processing and socio-emotional processing several of my colleagues recently recovered from covid the two quotes that stuck with me the most are it's pretty much just a bad head cold and i don't even know i had it but for the test i took did anyone notice what's happening in england as of today no more mass mates no more mass mandates or coveted restrictions i leave you with

070this number 99.998 does anyone know what that number is that's the survivability rate for coven infected among 5 to 17 year olds according to cdc data note that figure doesn't account for comorbidities so again i ask what purpose do the mass serves and who are they protecting thank you for your time thank you is there anybody else wishing to make public comments seeing none online or here i will go ahead and close public comment um agenda item 6.0 is new business uh 6.1 is our school board goals and we've been working on these uh well for i guess about a month or so now um so we're familiar um i have them all up here on the slide jack i would like to move off of uh one we have one for the most part

071done we still are we left seven on the side until we finish number three so one through six we had agreed upon um one through six action items we had agreed on but seven i just wanna hold off on for one second but i just wanted to remind you um where we were with these um next slide please our second goal that we had agreed to um here um so again just as a reminder we can come back or if there's anything else we need to to work on there and then where we left off was our third goal and so this was um this what you see on the slide deck is where we had left it in our workshop two weeks ago um we said that the goal where we left it was

072to continue to strengthen student success achievement and well-being through ongoing development in all subject areas district-wide student support opportunities social emotional learning and through district-wide dei dei work and then underneath we said we would establish a baseline in order to determine benchmarks for achievement in math and reading um we would report or the superintendent i think is what we said would report quarterly progress and then we would set those superintendent goals to implement this goal in the district so i want to open the floor for discussion about the goal so we were i guess we were talking about needing to um sort of re-identify or re-establish where the kids are given what could be potential learning loss and and um [Music] and so what that would look like for the baseline um [Music] and i

073wonder if we should identify it in that goal or or leave it to um administration to do that yeah and there was also the question too about the the metrics the testing is different as well right so we have two kind of side-by-side pots i guess for lack of a better image but you've got the learning loss and then you've got the we have a different test that we used than from what we used previously to define that metric and the only thing i don't like about this goal is that it because we're using math and reading and and we discuss the rationale why because it's what you know evidence-based i i i wonder if people just looking at that goal will not understand why and and you know it's for us and for our

074purposes but but um i don't know if we should flesh that out so that it i don't i would hate for a teacher or a student for example to look at this goal and think oh does that mean that my subjects are relevant and that that language is concerning from to me for that reason so would you propose changing the action item to just be established a baseline in order to determine benchmarks for achievement stop or would you say in all subjects or what what would be your solution can we maybe generalize it i'm sorry no please uh maybe generalize it and just say it in all aspects of academics i just remember i thought that what what jeff and diane had said would were those were the subjects where we could have we really

075could get the data to support it well certainly if you're looking across multiple grade spans and you know three through eight or all and then junior year i mean all you know all of the state testing you're able to then also benchmark off of other districts when you're focused on on english language arts and math i mean we have you know more localized assessments in the other subject areas so there's certainly ways to benchmark how we're doing you know across all academic areas um it's just it's a little it would be more of a an internal benchmark to really measure valve incredibly against this that makes sense so there's multiple ways to look at that and um you know part of part of that goal too which is which would be one of one of

076my um proposed goals that would help um what part of my proposed goal is to come up with um basically you know like more sp kind of kind of flesh out those goals in terms of here's how we're gonna measure it and then benchmark progress towards it um and that's those are things that were you know we're as we're already working on as as a leadership team the leadership team in our building so i think i think keeping it general in that way is the overarching kind of 30 000 foot perspective goal um makes sense in other words so we would maybe change it to this like that i can change it um so that we can all see oh it won't update okay so it'll update on individual people's computers but but not for

077everybody gotcha so we would maybe um reword it as uh establish a baseline in order to determine benchmarks for achievement in all in all subject matter is that um i said in all aspects of academics how do we feel about that can you read it again sure establish a baseline in order to determine benchmarks for achievement in all aspects of academics tonight and i don't know are they um can they hear us and are they yeah i can see them okay thank you she's here though yeah she's here yeah yeah they're just quiet yeah i would just you know i would again just acknowledge that there are certain subject areas where it's a lot cleaner and easier to benchmark how you're doing academically and measure measuring that as opposed to other subject areas where it's

078frankly a little more subjective well i was thinking about assessment results for you guys i was thinking about that about the social emotional part i mean that's that's one of those things that you know you provide the opportunities but how how do we know we're successful right like i said that you know there are some areas that lend itself better to you know those kind of things than others and and so um that being said you know part of that part of the part of this too is also benchmarking our progress and and supporting sel uh social emotional learning k-12 also our dei work as well as um you know our individualized supports for kids so i mean there's there's ways to benchmark progress on those goals you know by sharing you know action plans

079that are already underway here's how we're you know aligning our work across different schools and and actions that are being taken by our staff and faculty to ultimately support the needs of kids in those areas does it make sense to have a second item for socio social emotional needs because that would be the more you know separate from academics to be separate out to action items i think that that's in this gonna be in the superintendent goal and i know the district's doing a ton of work on that um so i'm personally fine with it just being part of the heading because i know that that's something that's being focused on but i don't know how others feel now that you mentioned i think i think it should be its own line only because that's

080way harder to measure um and it's more informational if we like surveyed families and you know found out how they felt in school versus how we can actually measure this with the data that we have so what are you proposing jennifer i think i think that the better way to maybe figure out social emotional learning would be finding out from you know staff and from families also to really gauge gauge how they're navigating through this right because there's a lot of there are a lot of things going on right now and it's just in general it's just really hard to to measure because this kind of thing manifests at different times for every family so and there are a lot of factors and in terms of social emotional learning so there's you know overall demographics

081um finances all that kind of stuff so we kind of need to get all that information to know how we can actually support social and professional learning and i just don't know if we have the you know measurable data like in math and reading that we have access to to really measure the social emotional learning of scarborough in particular if that makes sense so it's almost like establishing a baseline for academic achievement and then establishing a baseline for social emotional well-being yeah i think i think it needs to be its own category i mean i'm not sure that i want to parse out each one of those um individual portions of goal of goal three um i think that from my perspective we discussed number one specifically because it was measurable my my expectation would

082be number two and number three would would handle that we would look to um jeff to provide us with his quarterly progress report and we would ask him to set his goals and we would get the report back on it i don't know that we need to separate it out additionally are there any other thoughts from other other board members oh yeah go ahead in the end yeah um i'm going to agree with alicia on this one completely i would be really uncomfortable in trying to measure something that you can't qualify um even on the academic side if we can't benchmark growth or change in all core subjects then you use the baseline and what you can measure and you state report quarterly progress on all academics and you could throw in the social emotional

083learning in that um but breaking it out it gets too granular and i think it would be unless we know what our target growth is that we had started measuring it from day one that we had something to start with from a couple years ago there's no way to say that we've actually improved as we go through this year thank you leon are there any other thoughts about it can you just read the line out again yes so it would be um establish a baseline in order to determine benchmarks for achievement in all aspects of academics does that still feel too broad it feels too broad to me but i can accept it if everyone else is comfortable with it so would you prefer to be back to the math and reading because we can

084we can measure when you use a word like baseline that implies measurements yeah i think i take back what i said and change that to math and reading back to math and reading okay maybe it's just in our messaging that we make sure that people hear in our messaging that it's you know that we're not discounting the significance and importance of all of these other areas but it's these are two subjects where we're able to really gather the data right and this is when we do like till the end point where we can compare apples to apples with other districts right when we're like thinking of it in that way um these are the two where we have that ability as well right okay so i'll read it one last time make sure we're all

085good before i move on um so it would be establish a baseline in order to determine benchmarks for achievement in math and reading does that feel good all right and then our second goal um was to report quarterly progress at the um uh you know how we're doing um we i know we discussed that being at the board meeting i don't know if we need to write it in the goal unless somebody feels like we should that it would be reported at the quarterly at a board meeting i just think it should say superintendent who's reporting you know that the superintendent will be reporting all right so it would say the superintendent will report quarterly progress any other thoughts on that to the point of the other academics is that where we should state that

086we will get updates beyond the measurable benchmarks so like uh the superintendent would report quarterly progress on all academic how did we word it on uh all aspects of academics in addition to the benchmark scores then it covers off your the concern about why only two are labeled and it gives a little more context around what's being reported so the superintendent will report quarterly progress on all aspects of academics including those with benchmarks is that is that it yep that was it how do we feel about that okay just read it one more time sure thanks the superintendent will report quarterly progress on all aspects of academics including those with benchmarks yeah i think that that encompasses what we're trying to target there yeah i think that gives us the opportunity to hear about what's

087happening on the with social emotional development and you know we can hear more more about um that progress in addition to the math in the reading does this feel good for everybody yes all right our third goal is our third item uh action item is to set superintendent goals to implement this goal in the district i don't really love the wording of that i'm not going to lie should it just be set superintendent goals hard stop do we even need to put it in there i mean it's expected that there's going to be superintendent goals i think so because one one of the things liam that i'm thinking is how do we refine this and so i think that that that's one of the ways that we can and and so if somebody came back

088and looked at this just this the goals that's one of the ways that we could look at refining it would be amending the superintendent goals and that's my sort of my next question is i think we need a number four for refinement but i'd like to keep that in there just so that you know that you're cross-referencing the superintendent goals when you look at this one fair point i hadn't looked at it that way alicia so what about like just set superintendent goals accordingly what are you thinking though i'm just thinking just like i get what we're trying to say just i'm just trying to love how it's yeah the wording yeah you could say develop superintendent goals to align i like that better yes with yeah develop superintendent goals to align with district goals

089or board of education is kind of understood our board of education goals yeah so do we like um align with district goals or align with um board of a school board board of education goals of education goals board of education goals it's 5 30 if you're in arizona or not any other does that feel good or sound good or any other thoughts you need to read it again would you mind reading it again sure um develop superintendent goals to align with board of education goals superintendent goals to align with the goals of the what about infertiles of or to achieve student success is part of that understood just by um the role of the superintendent is to implement the goals that the board sets so i guess i wonder if you might be struggling with

090this verbiage because it's somewhat redundant because that is the role of the superintendent right what if we just said develop superintendent goals period just left it there if we did that here why would we not have that on the previous two goals yeah that's why it's yeah but i guess i think that the uh there is some role for us as a board in in at least in one and and i have to look at you again to really think about it but in three it's primarily you know completely done within the schools right and so that's why i i i see it as his implementation of it hmm how about set superintendent goals to ensure focus and growth in this area set superintendent goals set again please to ensure focus and growth in this

091area all right how do we feel about that can you read that whole thing out yes set superintendent goals to ensure focus and growth in this area any feedback on that suggestion i think that sounds good shannon and alicia thanks john how do we feel about that just write it down to see it yeah so set superintendent goals to ensure focus and growth in this area yeah i like it better okay so do we feel does everybody feel good about that one okay we got online all right so since we have this goal um written the way it it is including our district-wide dei work um can you go back to one please wait but are you moving off of oh i'm sorry you had an audition you said well i just i'm wondering i'd

092like to have a conversation about the refinement or or like what's the metric for completion i guess is this an ongoing goal for ever and maybe it is but but what's the what's the role of the board for for review for refinement and and and completion and what is completion i mean you're like life lifelong learners and continued success and but i mean that's one of the things with goal setting right is we need to know that we're we're thinking about that and so i mean i don't do that type of thing for a living so if anybody it and so i'm not really trained in that but but if anybody here is and has a particular um strength that i you know i just seems to me that it we might just want to

093think about that like what this is this is only the beginning of the goal discussion this is setting the overall okay here here's going to be the goals in these areas and then you know the strategic planning starts from there and so you start to benchmark and then some goals you know i mean i think you check in like i always think of my you know my own goals with the superintendent goals that address the drafts that i've already written and shared with the board is a year-to-year thing right and so you're framing it that doesn't mean that you're going to be completing that work in a year right i mean i mean like the diversity equity thank you equity and inclusion work does not you don't complete all of that in a given year

094and and we're we're going to be always measuring academic progress for our students year in and year out right but you're monitoring and strategically outlining your action steps and the steps that you're going to be taking across different parts and and outlining essentially the strategic plan that are linked to those goals so so maybe then something like based on the superintendent's quarterly reports that the board should be monitored like you know it's kind of it's it's inferred but the board should be monitoring the progress and um that's what right and that's how what i'm envisioning the quarter quarterly reports would be right would be like here here is um you know here's all the work that's related to the these goal areas um that's going on in the district and here's our plans to achieve

095it here here's here are some practical doable goals with timed benchmarks you know like a smart goal is written right and then you back back it down from there so so so maybe um monitoring on on a quarterly basis and determining next steps would be sufficient like a fourth action item and then i you know you've you've already got a process here i think of revisiting overall board of education goals on a yearly basis right so that those are those are kind of your okay we can check you know these these off the list this is how far we got here and then you revisit for you know next round i'm sorry i'm gonna need you to read it or say it one more time i think i said something like monitor um progress on

096a quarterly basis and determine next steps so the board will monitor progress i'll read it out just a second okay so we'd have the board will monitor progress on a quarterly basis and determine next steps how do we feel about that any feedback for any discussion i think i'm good with that we all feeling okay with that are we good on the zoom attendees we feel good about that too all right jillian has a thumbs up all right so are there um before i talk about the dei side is there anything else we want to add or any any other discussion about the four okay so my my question why why i wanted to bypass goal one right now is it part of our goal one last year thank you um action item number seven

097was to create the dei sub committee and launch the work within the district to promote diversity equity and inclusion at all levels so we did that um last year so this is this is this action item of as it reads is done but the work is not as to jeff's point it's ongoing but we've wrapped that up into our third goal so my question is um do we remove this in its entirety or do we reword it i think we need to reword it um because the we we haven't achieved the goals of the charge first of all and second of all we did create the de ei subcommittee but it had additional recommendations for further work and we're just getting to the point where we need to restart that work and so i think

098we need to reword it to reflect that okay and um i'm going back to the notes we had on here kristen had a proposed change hers was evaluate the work and structure of the dei committee redefine the role of the committee and how it will interact with the ongoing dei efforts of the administration well i think that we need to make sure that we say that it's consistent i think we need to say that we need to make sure that it's consistent with the charge okay so are you proposing we delete the sentence and it right as it stands now and say that we the action item is to ensure that the dei subcommittee work is consistent with the charge of the committee i think that you could say continue dei subcommittee con to promote

099you know whatever at dei at all levels consistent with the charge with the committee charge okay let me read this out loud continue the dei sub committee within the district to promote diversity equity and inclusion at all levels consistent with the committee's charge actually maybe consistent with the charge should be after uh continue the dei subcommittee comma consistent with the charge [Music] okay so continued the dei subcommittee consistent with the committee's charge within the district to promote diversity equity inclusion at all levels i think that that would cover it did you raise your hand julian i'm sorry i don't i saw something on my corner my eye i wasn't no okay no but i would like to just remind everybody to use their microphones because when you're talking without it on we can't hear sorry

100everybody's are on you can't hear us no um there's been times where we can't hear oh i'm i'm sorry i think we all we'll make we'll we'll make sure we are all on did you need me to read it again did you hear what i said i i heard what you said just then okay good thanks just read one more time please sorry um uh continue the dei subcommittee consistent with the committee's charge within the district to promote diversity equity and inclusion at all levels i think you can strike out within the district continue the dei sub committee consistent with the committee's charge to promote diversity equity and inclusion at all levels yes how does that um how does that sound is there any other feedback or discussion all right so i think we have

101is there any other pretty wide pretty big hairy goals there yep yeah they're good do we feel um anything we're missing any other further discussion now we have jeff skulls that were sent out earlier today let me guess those so these goals jeff's goals these are in relation to number three um well our goal our proposed goal three so um do you want to talk about these any before we start yeah um i wrote these within the context of of this year so um 2021 and 2022 so the first one was really related to specifically how we're organizationally navigating through the pandemic and educating our kids and focused on basically from the summer into this year and reopening and continuing to make the shifts that we've needed to make to to really focus on how

102to how to best educate our students through through the pandemic um so that was the the context of the first goal uh the second one is also you know as my first year here in scarborough and then also just kind of where the board is as well thinking about looking at the strategic mission and vision of scarborough and establishing that that shared sense of where we are now and where we would like to go um you know as as a school community as a community uh focused on obviously the development of students k-12 and and part of that is is including and i know scarborough has had a history of this it's um having a community dialogue in the spring and that's that's really looking at kind of the big themes and and mission and

103vision for for the schools and and really getting and assessing that um community-wide participation in that in that feedback and exchange of perspectives and ideas so that and then starting to really use that um process to also engage staff across this across the district and and really starting to build that um strategic plan and vision into the future um and i'll obviously um start with what we already have and and start to build that so that and that that was really the the second goal and then the third goal i tried to align as much as possible with uh and and two and three actually i think are going to end up going hand in hand um is really looking at the at the goals that the board is already in the process of setting

104that we've been discussing here tonight and then and then having that really be um outlining and benchmarking the work that we're doing with respect to you know measuring academic progress for all of our kids ensuring a strong academic foundation looking at social and emotional learning at all levels and aligning all those supports with kids looking at how we're i think more more so than ever after the last year and a half um being able to really strengthen our individualized student supports uh for kids and rti respon response to intervention across all levels um and then and then as has been noted all the way through and multiple goals is really looking at how can we be a more inclusive community and and promote um and strengthen that work so that's really those were the and

105and each as i've explained each of those three areas the work um with diversity equity and inclusion the work on social emotional learning and then also rti structures are um that we we have professional learning teams within our leadership team that are working on those and have been working on those since the fall so that that will be part of as we were talking about a quarterly review of the board's third goal and as well as um my third goal is as as i've tried outlining the draft goals to the board for tonight um that's where my a lot of our efforts and those quarterly reports will be benchmarking progress towards those areas so is there any um discussion does anybody have questions about his goal the goals as outlined here well i'm just confused

106um so my understanding is we were setting board goals tonight yes and then he provided that this document today as sort of information for us for the for the goals that he set for himself for the upcoming year yes and then we are going to have like a workshop to set board goals for the superintendent yes we still have to set ours this is what he's doing and just we wanted to share those with everybody so that we could see where so this this is just an update um sort of on the interim the goals that he set for himself personally for the district yes um as far as setting a another workshop this could certainly be our um i haven't we haven't set our february workshop yet so that's that's something we can do

107um now that we have our goals outlined um we can vote on those at the next meeting so that that's done and then the the second february meeting which would be our next workshop we can where we can do that at that workshop with that these these goals look great thank you so much for getting those to us it was it was helpful and informative and i think it will help us in setting our um goals for you my my concern about the workshop is that we also have the dei work um that we need to do pretty soon and um i don't know if we need two workshops because i think both of those are competing needs for us for workshop that's a good point um i think and i'm going to just say

108my what i'm thinking out loud and then if anybody else has thoughts um i would love to hear them i'm thinking we focus on jeff's first and then the second um it would be pushing it to march but we pushed the dei to march because i think it's important that we have a plan down for jeff we have goals for him to meet sooner rather than later in the start of the school year right because we're already kind of pushing out yeah either that or or like i said to work we could do two workshops on february okay so how do we how are we feeling would we prefer two workshops in february or would we prefer one in february one of march i mean i'm not trying to sign us up for more work

109but i know where i know we're all really really really busy right now but and and it seems like the committee work is overwhelming but we have been getting emails with people asking about it and so i hate to continue to kick kick the can because there's so much that we have to accomplish and and then you know then the school comes comes quick and and yeah ready i agree and i don't want any i don't want that work to feel or seem less important than goal work by any means um i don't mind having two workshops next month personally um but i do think we need to prioritize setting goals for jeff first because he's got you know his goals to for spring of 2020 2022 also so i think we prioritize focus on

110that one first and then the second workshop for for dea is it that is that okay with everybody else's calendar schedule we have two workshops again in february julian did you have your hand raised did i see this yeah i i also favor two workshops because i think that this work you know both things really can't be pushed off thank you and you were saying we were you saying you were okay i'm sorry was that okay with you two yeah all right leanne and kristen are i'm hoping that's that works for you all right well we'll plan on that then so we'll start the first one in february um will be to discuss and finalize jeff's goals um and then the second one in february will be to um uh discuss the dei committee and

111the structure and layout of that committee perfect all right any further discussion before we close off this all right um agenda item 6.2 or the meeting minutes um from the workshop on january 6 2022. do i have a motion to approve the minutes as presented so moved any discussion are you ready to vote mrs giptis yes miss catalonist yes mr kelleher yes miss leong yes mrs lindstrom yes mr peeny half yes mrs turner yes miss skiftus yes and miss bertullia yes all right thank you um agenda item 6.3 is meeting minutes from the business meeting on january 6 2022. do i have a motion to approve the minutes as presented so moved second any discussion mrs skiptis yes miss castellonis yes mr callahar yes miss leong yes mrs lindstrom yes mr peeny half yes mrs

112turner yes miss giftus yes i miss bertulia yes great thank you um agenda item 7.0 is adjournment do i have a motion to adjourn so moved second any discussion mrs giftis yes miss casalonas yes mr kelleher yes miss leong yes mrs lindstrom yes mr peany huff yes this is turner yes miss skiftus yes and miss fertilia yes all right thank you so