001All right, everyone. It is 6:33. So, noting the hour and a presence of a quorum, I call the Actton Boxboro Regional School Committee to order. Members of the public who wish to watch the meeting online may use Actant TV's YouTube channel found at the top of the agenda. This meeting is being recorded and will be posted on Actton TV's website at acttontv.org. So, welcome everyone. Um it's been another busy week and we have a big agenda. So let's get down to this. We get to start out with our student representatives. So we have Tashar um Tasharmina and we have Dig Shamatra here to come and give us an update. Welcome. >> Hi everyone, I'm Dsha. Nice to see you all again. Um, and >> hi everyone, my name is Tashar. Nice to see you all
002again. >> Yeah. So, we'll start off with our mic. So we'll start off with our update. Um kind of just starting off with the winter things in general. Winter sports have started. So that's boys swim, Nordic ski, and winter track and others as well. Um moving on to kind of just like a little agenda. We have here tomorrow we have um our next event in our student spotlight series panel. Um we're collaborating with um dear Asian youth or day. And so um it's it's a event that we set up last year where we're having we're collaborating with affinity groups at school for studentled panels. So trying to shine that spotlight on student voices hearing about their experiences in our community. Um some of the questions include like what makes you proud of your identity? What
003do you wish people knew about your culture, identity or community? And so that's kind of what we have going on. We're going to set up other events um later throughout the year with other clubs as well. Um next up is also um student council is organizing a um grant cycle for extracurriculars and clubs. And so we have one cycle every se semester and so um we a lot 5,000 per year and so that's 2,500 per semester. We kind of give those out to clubs. Clubs get to apply um kind of have like kind of like how any grant cycle would um go. they get to um have like an item list of like things that they need um organizing costs um and etc. And it's a way that student council gives back to the school
004and sustains um our own extracurriculars. Um kind of more class specific now um just a general um uh kind of heads up about um seniors and the college process as well. November 1st deadlines have passed and so we're kind of upcoming on the regular decisions and so that's kind of like a high stress um period for us but um we're going to get through it. It's going to be fine. Um National Honor Society also just um organized the Veterans Day breakfast as well and so it was nice to see all our veterans there interacting with our students and that was a really fun experience. So yeah. >> Uh thank you so much Dsha. Uh so now so first I'm going to talk about the HOSA December cards for care drive. So uh our club of
005HOSA which is a club for all the uh students and peers who are trying to pursue u doctoring and medical field. They are going to have a December cards care drive. So students are going to go are going to make some cards for our patients and we'll go to local hospitals and we'll deliver them to show some love from AB. Uh next we got I'm going to talk about that is the quarter one ended uh two weeks ago I believe. And so our comment on the open grade book this was the very first time we have the open grade book. Last time we were struggling with it, but this time I believe uh I asked all of my friends and stuff. Uh they love it because the reason is that uh we can see our
006grades every single day. So it does not stress them out that what are they getting and what do they have uh and where they could excel in if they're lacking somewhere. And next thing I would like to talk about is the US Army National Guard visit. So this Wednesday they came to our school during all lunches. There were a lot of students who went there, talked to them a lot and uh uh we're discussing about the whole process and everything for the National Guard. Next thing I would like to talk about is the Procenium Circus winter edition performing Chicago which is a winter kids happening at ABRHS. It's happening in the auditorium. It's a very fun thing you uh for students they could come and experience it. And the last thing I would like to
007talk about is that our club of science fair of ABRHS they hosted a science family night on 21st of November which was on uh I believe Friday. Uh it's the day when the cabaret also happened and uh a lot of parents came and a lot of students from our ABR chess club and our science fair club they also came to show their skills and to show their uh projects they are making. So last year we had the robotics team but this year we had a walking dog uh it was an uh which was created by the robotics team which was a pretty great thing uh uh AB had and we had a lot of pictures and a lot of friends of mine also went there so that's a pretty good thing we had and yeah
008that's it I have right now. Thank you so much for your time. >> Those are great updates. Does anybody have any questions or comments? Glenn, >> a few a few months ago, Tori and me went to I think it was an honor student symposium or something like that. Best thing in the world. There was my the one I remembered was like someone did a presentation about student athletes mental health and so science fair sounds amazing. Um, more of that please. It's awesome. >> Thank you, Adam. Yeah, I I uh wanted to comment on the open grade book um because I could tell you as a parent I think it's really helpful, but I'm I'm really happy to hear that um for students it helps to reduce some stress because I know that's something that we've
009got a lot of challenges that we want to work on. So, every little thing that we can do to help reduce your stress is is a good thing. So, I'm glad that the open grade book is helping with that. >> Vicram, >> I just want to say that we're all extremely proud of you guys. >> Thank you. And I'll add my appreciation for the uh Veterans Day breakfast as a veteran. It is really fun not only to get to go interact with other veterans, but also to get to share stories with students and hear the great questions they ask us. So, um, thanks so much for hosting that. >> All right, thank you for being here with us tonight. This is always a great way to start our medians off. >> All right, so we
010are now going to move on to public participation. This is part one of public participation. Per school committee policy BEDH members of the public are invited to speak up for up to three minutes on items other than AB forward. We will do AB forwards public participation later in the meeting. Speakers must be recognized by the chair before speaking. The committee typically does not respond to comments during public participation and we ask that we let people speak without reaction. So no no applause, no booing. We just want people to be able to say what they want to say without feeling like they're being judged while they're saying it. All right, so with that, do we have any public participation on topics other than AB Ford? Come on up. Hi everyone, Alyssa Nickel. I'm a member of
011the Act and Select Board, but I'm not speaking for the board tonight. Last month and again yesterday, I attended listening sessions of the chapter 70 local contribution study committee created by the legislature with members from DESIE and Division of Local Services. The committee is gathering input from stakeholders around the state and there is still time to submit written testimony. I encourage everyone listening and anyone at this table who has yet to do so to write to the to the committee at c70 public comment at ma.gov. The committee is interested in hearing suggestions for changes to the chapter 7 local contribution formula. The current formula weighs enrollment, changes in student demographics, inflation, property values, and income levels to determine a foundation foundational budget, the minimum a community is expected to spend on education in its public
012schools. The trouble with this formula is that it doesn't accurately reflect community's capacity to pay. The inflation cap is below the actual inflation we've recently experienced. Property value increases have greatly outpaced incomes. Especially so for folks on limited incomes, including seniors, our fastest growing population. The real cost of education is much more than these foundational budgets. The state has consistently underestimated the costs of transportation, special education, and out of district tuition and hasn't accounted for the doubledigit increases in health insurance premiums that have occurred year after year and are expected to continue for a few more years at least. Depending on the year a district's enrollment peaked, schools that currently have lower enrollment receive more state aid than others. Towns with similar median property values but much higher median incomes are compressed into the same
013category. Even though they have differing abilities to shoulder the increase in costs yeartoyear, the cost of living is often high in towns and cities with high property values, meaning that folks dollars don't go as far to cover the local costs of transportation, pensions, child care, utilities, and infrastructure. There is no accounting for differences in the commercial tax base of various communities. It was sobering and infuriating to hear testimony from parents, elected officials, principals, superintendent, and teachers from rural communities, suburbs, and cities all over the Commonwealth. Parents in Salem who are shocked, like parents here, at the breakneck speed a decision was made to close an elementary school. The superintendent in Newton, I consider an affluent community, bemoning their inability to make any enhancements to the general education program due to skyrocketing out of district special
014education tuition. We are already burdened with the tension between funding municipal and school services. Heaven help us if we create tension between general education and special education services. David Martin, another actton select board member, shared that the amount of aid our district receives from the state is among the lowest in the nation. Please add your voice to this important conversation by emailing C70 public comment at ma.gov and CC our local legislative delegation Eldridge Catalo and SA as well as House Speaker Mariano and Senate President Spila who control what comes to the floor. Thank you. mask. >> Thank you, Alyssa. >> And I'll also add this is a followup on the discussion that we had with our legislative representatives at our last meeting um where we talked about that. Yeah. Go ahead, Liz. >> Um also
015just for the members here, uh Alyssa, it did also CC on her email. So all of that information is in there as well in our email. >> Thank you. So yes, please. And to anybody in the audience who is feeling frustration as well, feel free to add your voices to this. Do we have any other public participation other than AB forward? All right, Peter. Superintendent's update, please. >> All right. Thank you, Tori. So, um, first I just want to recognize the high school and thank um, Principal Joanie Dean. They have started a new recognition program focused on the vision of a graduate. Um and so they just recently gave out kind of the first round of the year of awards in each of the different categories of the vision of a graduate. Um so we
016had you know several students for adaptability, for collaboration, communication, intellectual intellectual curiosity and integrity. Um we're actually working with principal dean to invite some of the students to the next school committee meeting as part of the recognition process. So very excited about that. um you know AB forward we have plenty of time in a few minutes for that. Um and you know I will just share you know we I I want to thank um Christy Nean um Heather Stout, Jess Rose who's one of our parents um as well as Caitlyn Nean um and Tori for recently coming on the podcast series that we did. Uh, one of our goals through the podcast series was try and present kind of human perspectives across the district on a variety of things. Um, and knowing the the gravity
017of the work that we're doing around AB forward, we did a podcast series, one conversation with the principal, another conversation with our school committee chair about, you know, just having to make decisions in this environment. And then we actually did a third one on this idea of community wellness and how to support educators and students. um as a three-part conversation between our you know psychologist and director of mental health um Heather Stout as well as a parent and a classroom teacher. So want to thank all of those people in utri for being vulnerable enough to do that. Um and we will we sent it out but we'll also start highlighting some specific episodes for people um both on social media and um in different communications. So thank you to everyone for doing that. Um, and
018then I just as a quick thing, I had a wonderful lunch with um some fifth and sixth graders over at Douglas Elementary School the other day. Uh, one of my goals this year was to go and have some lunch uh with some all fifth and sixth graders at all of our schools. So, I was at Conan early in the year, Douglas, uh, the other day and I'm making my way through the schools as we go through the year. So, it was an awesome time and they had lots to say and you know, it was funny because I said, "What what would you like to share with me?" The first thing that they talked about was how much they enjoyed um the new English language arts curriculum. And I was not expecting that from our students.
019Um and they went like around the table. They were talking about how much they really actually enjoyed what was going on with the new ELA curriculum. So um obviously the teachers are doing a great job with it. Um because that's a heavy lift. And so thank you to all of our staff because clearly it made an impression on that group of kids. All right, that's pretty cool. Any uh questions or comments from Peter? >> I just have to say I think the podcast was your good excuse to be the one asking the questions and turn the tables on me. So, thank you for that. But no, that was a that was a good experience. >> Yeah, Tori asked for the questions up front and I said, "Oh, no, that's not how this works. This is
020my qu my my chance to get to put other people on the spot." So, um thank you Tori. >> It's all good. All right. So um we are going to shift to talking about district improvement plan goal number one strategy number two and as we invite um our Miriam principal Christina Gavin and our RJ Grey Junior High principal Jim Marott and uh Gabby are you coming up as well or you you're going to support from >> I'm not coming up but I'm happy to frame okay kind of this this presentation just as a reminder what it's always an honor to feature the work of our school leaders who are working tirelessly day in and day out to lead incredibly transforming ative efforts in their schools and each of their stories is different but aimed at
021the same goals. So I'm really pleased that um both Christina and Jim are here to speak about the work at Miriam Elementary. One main goal um which was to improve um and strengthen high quality tier one instruction for all students including our multi strategy they were going to leverage to do this work. And both Jim and Christina identified strategy number two to enhance job embedded professional learning with specific emphasis on these efforts. So, this is part of a series. You've already heard a little bit about three um two other strategies and you'll hear another um later in the spring, maybe early spring. It looks like we're in good shape for the presentation at this point almost soon. >> I just wanted an excuse to use the word riffing because I think it's a really cool
022term. Um and so Okay, cool. Thank you. [Music] Thank you school committee for having us tonight. My colleague Jim Marott and I will be sharing on strategy two. Strategy two is centered around job embedded professional learning in service of our goal which is strengthening quality tier one the classroom teaching and learning. Thought it might be helpful to add some context here about what we mean when we say job embedded professional learning and how it might be different than other kinds of professional learning. Job embedded PL is professional learning that's intended to be contextual and intended to be relevant to a teacher's role, a teacher's work. And it's designed around the workflow of what we're already doing dayto-day. And that could be professional learning designed on real questions about specific students, groups of students, upcoming lessons,
023units of study, um real-time questions that teachers have about the curriculum or the the student learning. And so the goal of job embedded professional learning is to think about how it's going to be the most relevant and meaningful for our teachers. and and within that teachers are often having a voice in the direction of the professional learning as it's intended and meant to be relevant to their work in the here and now. At Miriam, we recognize and acknowledge that tier one is foundational and we have asked the question, what are the barriers that are getting in the way of student learning? What are the barriers and how might we remove them? How might how might we reduce them in order to increase access to student learning and increase student availability to learning? And we recognize
024that we we ask this question because we can anticipate that there will be barriers for our students. And those might be language barriers. Those could be barriers because some of our students are learning differently than their peers. There could be environmental barriers. There's a whole v variable amount of barriers that could exist for our students. And so our areas of study for this year for our profess professional learning at Miriam have centered on those teaching practices that are evidence-based, researchbased, they're brain aligned, those high lever practices, those tried and trueue practices that we know are going to remove barriers and create those conditions for students to do their best learning. So we have focused across the school year on the following social emotional skills teaching them explicitly. We have a lens of trauma-informed practices around
025all of our work and this year we have a specific focus on co-regulation strategies. We have created a library. We've cured a digital resource for our teachers K to six with culturally responsive teaching materials. And our coaching cycles this year have focused on that essential question of how can we remove barriers to tier one instruction. And as we're defining success, we are monitoring and measuring along the way what is going to be different when our goals are achieved. And first and foremost, we're hoping to see more consistent application of these practices. And within that we are building in that feedback loop with our teachers because we do want to know and we want to hear from them are these practices meaningful and are they manageable for the work that you do. And next we're looking
026at student growth. We expect to see growth in social emotional and behavioral outcomes for students and those include the social emotional competencies and we can look at that through our DESA which we do three times a year. And another way that we are tracking progress is through our behavioral incidents. And I can share for Miriam already at this time of the school year, we are seeing that student growth is evident and we are seeing our behavioral incidents come down overall for the majority of our students. And that is a celebration. We know that as the incidents go down, that means skills are coming up and that there's increased access to learning. We're also defining success through collaboration. The essence of job embedded professional learning is this idea of collective efficacy and we are collaborating together
027and learning from the expertise of one another. And finally, and most importantly from my perspective, we are expecting to see even stronger indicators with our school culture and climate. Our school culture and climate at Miriam is a pride point. It is something that we care about deeply. And at the same time, we recognize it's an ongoing endeavor and an ongoing effort. And we do look at data for our school culture and climate. We look at the culture and climate survey which is there for our older students. And at the school level, we've also developed surveys and ways to collect student voice that reach students all the way from kindergarten up to sixth grade. And this is the data where students are telling us their experiences. They're telling us their stories and we can see in
028the data that students do recognize the teacher moves. They recognize what we are doing as educators to create those safe and inclusive environments. And there really is nothing more rewarding than seeing students tell us that they're happy to be at school and that school is where they want to be. So, thank you. And with that, I will turn it over to Jim. >> Thanks, Christina. Thanks everyone for having us here tonight. Um the junior high we're working on very the same idea as what Miriam is doing and yet we've approached it differently as all schools will. Um last spring when Gabby Abrams and I were talking about okay you know next year really tier one really what do the what's every teacher doing well every day for every kid. Um I kind of struggled with
029like what's our starting point? Where do we go? How do we how do we begin this work? And so we happened together upon um a desi document that's really a classroom observation tool. It's a two-page tool that's really designed for administrators to use, but as we looked at it, we really thought like, oh, this actually really describes pretty well what we would hope to see. And so the the brief picture up there talks about like the learning space. It talks about how students, teachers welcome students and kind of include them. It talks about routines and structures for learning. So from day one, August 20, whatever that day was with our staff, we focused on, hey folks, like what are the what are the routines you're going to use in your classroom to make sure that
030it leads to learning. Um, and so we spent August and September really working on that. And teachers who have taught in our school for 25 years came back like, this is really important and really good. We're glad we're doing this now. Um, and so the the the response of it has been wellreceived. Um, to the point actually that yesterday we did a school survey with our students. We do it December and May. Um, and I asked students, describe one classroom routine that one of your teachers uses that leads to productive learning for you. Um, and and I gave them no word bank. Like this is them drawing on what they see and you know through the help of AI, I was able to distill that down to a bunch of the big takeaways and I
031sent that out to the staff today. Say kids are picking up on what we're doing and we know that more learning will happen when routines feel solid. Um, so so we're very proud of that. That's been great work so far. Um similarly other work that we've been doing is beginning to work with um Dr. Radna Mudambi. She you know has a language services program out there but she's a former director of ML services. She's a former principal and assistant principal. So she really understands what teaching and learning is u particularly for students who are ML learners. So she's coming in October. She's coming back in January and March working with our staff during our early release and staff meeting times. Um, and her first session was on ory and she really focused on how do
032you use your like opening minutes of of class. In this picture, she has us doing the activity where we're really engaging with magnets and we're talking to each other like she wants our students to be doing with each other, too. So, it was a really powerful moment. Another powerful moment in the presentation. She's um she speaks a dialect of Tamil and she did a good five or six minutes in her language. There's one of our teachers who understand a lot of what she said, but all the rest of us were really just trying to follow along and she was trying to drive home the point of this is what a lot of our kids are experiencing on a daily basis as you're speaking English, explaining to them whatever concept. So the takeaways are, you know,
033visuals are huge, slow yourselves down, you know, repeat yourselves, etc. So it was really an immersive experience that went well for a lot of our educators. They really responded well to that. And third, and finally, you know what we we always take a big attempt in July and August like, yeah, we're going to do this to start the year. And one of those things is like we want to make sure teachers are getting into other teachers classrooms on a regular basis to see what great strategies they are using. And as the year begins like, okay, that's the thing that's going to that's going to be a semester 2 initiative because we just really want to make sure teachers are are finding the time and we're able to guide that for them. But the point here
034is when we are gathering in staff meetings and we're going through this idea of routines, the idea of welcoming students, the ideas of you know maximizing learning time, the teachers are their experts, right? Aside from Dr. Madami who's bringing a certain skill set, the teachers who have one or two years experience in our school and the ones who have 20 and 25 are really connecting with each other and just by the the questions that I try to prompt them with, that's the learning that's happening. So we're very much relying on teachers helping each other to kind of work through um what's what's the solid base going back to that tier one what do we expect for all students in all classrooms every day um the tool DESI has published has helped us to kind of
035guide the beginning of that work and the point I didn't make when I started about that is like it's it is what how we see as pretty progressive we're doing the easy things right now you know these are the pieces that most teachers can easily kind of pick up and they're doing in their sleep um it gets deeper and it gets harder and so that's where we'll spend the rest of this year and into next year kind of really making sure we're doing the best for our kids. So that's all I have and um Christine and I are certainly open for questions if you have them. >> Ben, >> not so much question but comment here. Uh I really like how you've been focusing on basic social and emotional needs as reflected within uh the
036goal number one. tackling those fundamental needs really allows progress through as I saw Maslo's uh um hierarchy of uh of needs. So it it really is great to see that you folks are doing that and it's having an impact on the students. So thank you. >> Thank you so much >> uh just anecdotally uh to sort of underscore the quality of the tier one that we are delivering especially to our elementary students. my student who's on an IEP today when he came home, you know, I was asking him how his pull out went today and he said, "Actually, today I was not excited about it and I said, "Oh, how come?" And he said, "Because we were finally doing this experiment in science with the weights and I had to leave to go to this
037thing." So, the kids are really enjoying the instruction that our um educators are delivering and so wanted to let you guys know that as well. It's seen everywhere. Lea Yeah, I appreciate you both for coming. And Christina, just out of curiosity, was wondering if you could share more about how you engage, especially like the younger side um around getting their feedback around their own experiences of school. >> Thank you for that question. Yeah, we as a staff um had a working group. we um came together and we invited parents into the working group as well and we asked that same question about our younger students and thinking about typical ways that we collect data from students. Usually when they're readers or writers, we have some sort of some sort of a survey or some sort
038of a form where we can get their thoughts either anonymously or in writing in some way. For our younger students, that's not the case. So, we did come up with a format where we did student interviews and I'm really proud to say that Miriam's staff said, "Okay, I will do this." And they did it at a time of year that was especially busy. We wanted to make sure we had that data in the spring to inform our fall. And we did not miss one student. We had a format where student where students were interviewed by their own teachers either in small groups or individually. and we all use a consistent set of questions to ask our students about inclusion and belonging. >> Thanks. That's really helpful, >> Glenn. So, thanks for this and um I'm
039really glad to hear about uh the social emotional learning programs being implemented because I think Peter mentioned a few meetings ago that like student mental health student mental health outcomes are actually getting better in district which I think is bucking the trend nationwide. So, and for some of the people I've talked with in town who may be like, SEAL, what's that? That wasn't around when I was a kid. I don't get it. Like, could you help spell out for community members just how this these things cultivate the conditions where learning is the most effective where like cuz it's really hard to teach a kid the complexities of reading when they're just like not well. So, can you just help spell that out a little bit about how the how this program is like it's not
040just wishy-washy stuff like it it really does help like meet academic achievement. [Music] >> Sure. Um, thanks for the question. There's a saying that goes all learning is social and all learning is emotional. And it it does come from brain science because when you look at the brain and which areas are lighting up um during academic tasks or academic work, it it's all lighting up. And um so it's not as if there's one area of the brain that's just for emotion. Emotion in is woven into everything that we do. And we're social beings. And so I think there has been a school of thought that's um mistakenly compartmentalized social emotional learning as separate from academic learning. But what we what we know now and what we find is that when students um are feeling safe
041in their classrooms, they're feeling engaged, happy, they have um um a readiness, they have um work readiness. Um that means that there's um that they're ready to do their best learning. And so we do we are looking at okay so what are those conditions where students are available to do their best learning and part of that is involved with our self-regulation and our attention and our focus and the relationships that we have with our peers. And so it is a a newer school of thought that we are weaving into our instruction that recognizes that you can't really pull apart social emotional learning from the other things that we're doing. It's all interconnected. And just briefly from the slightly older students, um we very much prioritize relationships with adults is an important aspect of how students
042will feel about learning and what they were able to learn. So in our survey we just did like I said 86% of students say that they have a trusted adult here at school. And as a December marker, that's actually a really strong number for me. And a separate open-ended question we asked them was, "Describe one way that one of your teachers creates a welcoming and supportive environment for students in your class." class. It connects back to that Desi tool that again AI helped me to to figure out what's the most prevalent. The the category literally is called greeting students. So students are saying when my teacher says hello to me when I walk in the room that makes a huge difference. So you know combining the the the elementary model kind of really embedding that
043we're doing the same thing and it just looks and feels different to older kids. But um yeah, if you're going into a class with a grumpy teacher who you don't know well or you don't have a connection with, your math learning is going to feel different than with someone you feel a connection with. So that's how we focus on that. Thank you for that. I'm I'm glad you're cultivating the trust. And the the la very last thing is that when we were touring the elementary schools a a bit ago, I just remember on the signs on one of the walls was all feelings are okay here. And I just I per sometimes I wish we had that right here too. But so just thank you for this. I I think this is these are great
044outcomes. >> Adam. >> Yeah. I just want to highlight that buried in one of your very very small pictures on the slideshow that I had to zoom in on. Um, you have a a culture and and uh climate survey and Christina the the results are 72% of the students in Miriam feel like they belong quite a bit or completely belong in the school and I just want to recognize that. I think that's an amazing amazing feat um to have that level of belonging in your school. So thank you for that. Congratulations. >> Thank you for reading the fine print. So, I'll just add that I also appreciated as we toured schools the amount of self-directed learning going on. We because we got to see a bunch of flex blocks. So, you have a lot of
045groups of students with a a a list in the classroom of the things they should be working on. And there's a collection that will be working directly with their teacher, but there are also smaller groups that are working together, maybe working solo in parallel. and watching a bunch of very young students walk up to the board, go down the list, oh, we've done that, we've done that, okay, this thing is next, let's go get this, and I think it might have been a second grade classroom, and I watched that happen, I was like, this is magical. Um, so that was awesome. And I also want to share that having read an awful lot of um research lately on K through8 schools, which um we have K through six schools. We can't do a K through8.
046That that math doesn't math. in case anyone was curious. Um, I also really appreciated that in the commentary about junior highs out there and people are like, "Oh, there are all these transitions, things go backwards." Our junior high bucks that trend. So, I don't know what's in the water at R.J. Gray, but please keep doing whatever you're doing. Thank you both for being here. We really appreciate you. All right, that brings us to the competency determination policy. Liz or Andrew who gets this one? >> It's actually Leel or Andrew, but uh >> I keep doing that. I have to write myself notes. >> Uh just a reminder, at our last school committee meeting, uh we presented the uh first read of the composite determination policy. Uh that was in response to the continued and evolving
047uh guidance from DESIE uh with some expectation that we uh adopt the language that we presented ahead of you. Um and we welcomed any feedback. We did not get any. Uh I think my sense of the committee from last time is that there wasn't any substantial concerns or questions. um with also the recognition as Gabby pointed out that at some point down the road we'll probably get additional guidance and suggestions and and requirements. But at least for now uh we would kindly request that you consider taking a a a vote uh to approve the policy as presented last meeting. Thank you. >> Anything anybody wants to discuss about the policy? I would like to move to approve the competency determination policy as presented. >> Second. >> All right. So moved by Liz and seconded by
048Lisa. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? All right. Great. That passes. We can check that block off until Desessie changes it again. All right. So with that, um, we'd like to invite Joe and Yash to come and join us in their habitual seats. Um, I understand that they're getting really good at making the commute to get here at uh 6:30. So, we appreciate um how how you have so consistently been a member of helping us work through this and this is really great. And before we get started, actually um could we go to the slide with the uh vision of a graduate please? [Laughter] at the beginning. >> Yes. >> There we go. Oh, that's not the one that I wanted. >> Yeah. Do we have the complete one? >> All
049right. So, while I put Peter on the spot to pull that up. Um, so doing this for a reason. Um, Um, and one of the conversations we had Tuesday night at our 4-hour meeting was that it's important for the school committee to be the ones who own this decision. So, we asked the steering committee to give us a range of options. Um, some of the options that have moved forward, I'm going to clearly acknowledge feel very unpalatable to some of our community. If you've been reading your email, you know, right? So, we talked a couple two weeks ago at our last meeting about the grief that comes with knowing that your building is no longer going to be your home. And so, we acknowledge that for the Conan community. I want to acknowledge that with
050the options that moved forward, the Miriam community is feeling not just a sense of loss, but I think it would probably also be safe safe to say sense of rage right now. And there's a lot of tension in our community. Um, so can we go up to Yeah, communication is one I wanted to hit. Listening actively to build understanding. This is something we expect our graduates to do. Collaboration. I can seek diverse perspectives to broaden and deepen my understanding. Demonstrate empathy by respecting the feelings and experiences of others. All feelings are welcome here. I can work with others to contribute to collective goals. We are showing our kids what this looks like. And it's hard. I'm just going to acknowledge that upfront. So, here we are. We're going to have a conversation about um everything
051that came out of the steering committee and it's going to be handed off to the school committee and we can talk about the things that we've heard kind of our initial impressions here. Um at the end of end of that we will have 15 minutes where we will allocate some time for public comment. We typically don't respond to that. Um but we do want to hear what you have to say and I see we have a lot of people in the audience. Um and yeah, I just want to acknowledge this is tough. We the school committee have to make the best possible decision we can for the entire district because we are the ones that are responsible to our community to make sure that we are meeting the needs of every student. So with that,
052I'll turn it over to uh Joe and Yosh. >> Wonderful. Thank you so much, Tori. Uh so nice to be back here with you all uh once again. Um and looking forward to being able to share the findings or share the the outcomes from our last searing committee meeting. Um in terms of our objectives for really the next 15 20 minutes or so four-fold want to share just a quick project overview overall process just to reorient regground ourselves in the the full arc of this work because our last meeting was not the full the full thing. A lot of uh work went into understanding the challenges the district is facing thinking about what what the strategic plan for the district should really be um and then how that strategic plan should inform options for reorganization.
053So that's really the flow of our of our time tonight. Um so for the first first portion uh don't need to walk through these but again these were the the goals of of our effort when we first partnered with you all all the way back in May or June. Um really starting with developing that actionable strategy to really think about how you're going to na navigate some of these really challenging trade-offs. Build support among stakeholders by listening to all corners of stakeholders and community members from all across the district. drive results through specific priorities and then really use the the strategic plan language to help outline some of these thoughtful resultsoriented options for reorganization. And we did that really over the course of many many months starting in May uh ending all the way today.
054Um and we we've had some really terrific conversations that have produced some really uh powerful insights for how the district may or may not move forward. Um so to regground ourselves in that strategic plan language um one of the the the greatest things about coming to all of your your uh steering committee meetings learn uh listening and learning to all of your all of your stakeholders is that there's so much wonderful stuff going on in actin box bro you produce really incredible results and so from the standpoint of strategic planning um yes there's determining where you're going to go next but there's also this this idea of affirming and recommitting to the really wonderful things that are happening. Um, we used this strategic planning framework to to guide the development of strategic plan language that
055was really customized to to act in Boxboro. Starting with that mission and vision, we wo in the theory of a or the vision of a graduate. Um, spent a lot of time with a theory of action, really that fundamental belief around what will lead to long-term success in the district. Your your your logic model, if you will, for if we do these things, then we will expect these results. And then that lays out a set of priority areas with measurable goals that then tie into the work that the district will do to bring that strategic plan to life, those initiatives and various action steps. So the final language that was confirmed by the steering committee during our last meeting is right before you. So not much change in terms of a mission and vision statement.
056Uh providing highquality inclusive educational opportunities that inspire a community of learners. And then our vision is to be engaged, well-balanced learners through collaborative, caring relationships. And then really pulling in that vision of a graduate, lifting it up to be a part of the district-wide strategic plan because of its importance. The other language that we confirmed was the district's theory of action. So again, think of this as the logic model for the district. What are the actions that the district should be taking to produce the results that you're really looking for? So if we enhance how we support each of our students to meet their evolving needs leading to improved instruction for all students by starting with reggrounding in that vision of a graduate. So much work, so much stakeholder engagement, community engagement went into the
057development of that document. So use that to drive improvements to our curriculum, materials, instruction. Um, investing in research-based programs that are specifically designed to meet the needs of students in this district, including students with disabilities, English learners, multilingual students, students with social emotional needs, etc. Building a systemwide approach to understanding and supporting the diverse learning needs of all students, PK through 12 and beyond, so that each student can access necessary supports. Um and then providing ongoing support and opportunities for collaboration and professional learning for our educators that are really specific to the needs of again our students here in Actton Boxboro. And then thinking about how we design our schools and programs to be able to do that. So inspiring a community of learners, empowering educators to meet the individual needs of all students. Um
058and then lastly, how do we or if we rethink how we use our resources to create educationally effective and financially sustainable systems. So recognizing the the the challenge of doing both of those things that allow the community to invest in its people and expand offerings to deeply engage students in innovative ways. Then we will be able to achieve all the wonderful or continue to achieve all of the wonderful results for our students first and foremost, our families, community members, our educators more broadly. Improve outcomes for each of our students from all backgrounds and educational needs. maintain a strong sense of belonging, safety, and support for students and staff in all ABRSD schools. Ensure that every student experiences developmentally appropriate, rigorous, engaging, and inclusive instruction that helps them reach their fullest potential. And then nurture a
059thriving community of educators and maintain the finances and operations necessary to deliver excellence for students now and into the future. So again the logic model behind how actin boxboro really does business uh how it operates for uh the benefit of students. So within that theory of action or or sort of coming out of that theory of action were four uh primary uh priority areas. Student academic outcomes and social emotional well-being. You can see off to the side exactly what the the steering committee meant by that language. um responsive support for staff, welcoming and inclusive school communities, and then sustainable district systems and operations. So, think of these as sort of the big uh areas of work or levers that the the district can pull um as it uh shifts its focus to the work ahead.
060Um these are the big buckets that can organize those various initiatives and action steps step steps that bring this strategy to life, which will be incredibly important uh with uh the the upcoming changes for the district. So again, the strategic plan language was really used to drive the development of these options for reorganization. And um several months ago now, we we put in front of of you all and the full community and the steering committee a set of uh nine, which was really 13 um options for reorganization. So you see all of those there. Um, we were then able to really engage in a a robust stakeholder stakeholder engagement pro uh process, a community engagement process with over 2,000 uh uh individual touch points with with various stakeholders. You can see that broken down between
061focus groups, uh, three community forums, and a pretty extensive community survey. Um, this is I've been doing this work for a little while now and this is one of the most robust stakeholder engagement processes I've ever been a part of which I think is really a testament to this community and the dedication of the members of the steering committee, school committee, uh, educators in the community, etc. to really uh, inspire people to to uh, make their voices be heard. Then using that feedback, the steering committee was able to initially whittle down those options to uh a set of five options. And really uh by by doing that, we were able to have a really rigorous discussion um around the pros and cons of these different these different kinds of options. So this was really during
062our our our meeting a couple days ago on December 2nd. Um and in that in that discussion, one of the the the ways that we framed the conversation was, you know, thinking about the different options um do the uh would the the right approach for the district be to preserve a more traditional approach, meaning maintaining a lot of the similar kinds of structures that have have worked really well for the district historically. Um so included in that maintaining lower student enrollment per schools, maybe continued variation in in approaches within different elementary models, uh maintaining that K6 grade level configuration that is is is really valued in this community. Um and has produced really strong results. Um or is this an opportunity to adopt a potentially new approach? Uh try things try things out a little
063bit differently. um because of the interesting uh design of of your school buildings, it presents different kinds of opportunities that other communities just don't really have access to. Um so, is it an opportunity to have higher student enrollment per school? What would that look like? Um is there an opportunity to have expanded offerings for students by really leaning into the the efficiency that your your school configuration provides? Um and then this idea of upper and lower grade bands. Um, so really how you're organizing the schools within uh within a building so to speak. Um, whether that's distinct grade banded options between separate buildings. Um, or even just thinking within one single building rather than having two uh vertical schools, two K6 schools. What if we had a K a lower elementary and an upper elementary?
064That's really the thinking there. So through that discussion ultimately the the steering committee um voted after about uh three and a half four hours um on the set of options that you see in front of you. So ultimately the the voting that we we ended up doing uh folks uh steering committee members were able to vote for three uh individual options um yes or no uh essentially the the yeses the the ones that they they wanted to move forward to you all respecting that your role as the school committee was to make the final decision. Um so that's you can see the the result of that vote and then ultimately um the after after this vote the steering committee voted to uh move the the four options that you see highlighted in green um forward
065to you all um again so that you can then have the final deliberation uh hear more community feedback to understand the pros and cons of these various options and then make your final decision. just for reference, that's the that was the vote of of moving things forward. Um, and then ultimately, these were the the four options that were that are being moved forward to you all. So, just to walk through each of them very quickly, I'm sure you all have have uh learned a lot about these over the last several months. Um, two sort of fall under this quote unquote traditional approach. Um, maintaining uh the K6 schools, smaller schools, etc. Um, option three, version two, which had uh one of the lower uh uh lower response rates from from the steering committee, um, was
066to close Miriam. Option four was to merge two schools, in this case, Miriam and McCarthy Town, into into one one school, um, and think through what that that new school could be. Um, option five, version two, uh, is this idea of partial grade banding. So, this I touched on it before, but the idea here is that rather than organizing your schools vertically like what you see on the left hand side of the screen, it's or uh orienting or organizing your schools horizontally. So, you'd have a lower elementary and an upper elementary in the Boardwalk campus, let's say, and students functionally would stay in the boardwalk campus for their entire K through6 experience. But rather than organizing the school as two vertical K6 school models, you have a lower elementary and an upper elementary school. So
067it's not really a true gradebanded model, which was one of the other options that was presented to the broader community where students would move between three separate buildings over the course of their academic journey. The idea here is that you have a K6 school that's just split into two a lower elementary within that building and then an upper elementary within that building. Um and then option six uh would create three distinct schools um but they would be much larger combined schools uh with one principal theoretically over each of the buildings. So ultimately these were the options that that are put forth uh to you all from the from the steering committee. Um and in terms of where where we go from here, um we can incorporate any additional information into our materials for you all.
068Um as you uh move into the next portion of this work, you start to deliberate on the final strategic plan language. Um gather additional feedback from the community and and vote on whatever makes the most sense for for this community. Um and then just to to touch on the next steps with the the strategic plan because again don't want to lose sight of the strategic plan uh in the midst of these conversations about u school reconfiguration and reorganization. But really the next steps there include identifying those really specific measurable goal um thresholds for each of those priority areas, milestones and targets etc. really it it leans into a lot of the the the work that has been shared previously tonight about what's all the wonderful things going on in schools. Um but really what metrics
069you're using to track that um and then determining appropriate initiatives and action steps related to each of those priority areas that will functionally bring that strategic plan to life. So that's all we have for you tonight. Let me open things up to questions or uh Tori can hand things back to you. >> Yeah. So um I wanted to provide a little context about the conversation around these uh around these options because there was a lot of discussion. We were there for four hours. Um some themes emerged. So there was a discussion about um how much disruption there is to any particular group and for how long. So for example, do we ask a single school to disperse across the district? What does it look like to integrate students and teachers in in that sort of
070a scenario? And if we did that, might we find ourselves in a position several years down the road with additional budget cuts where we would look at having to do that again? because that would be one of the current structures where we have maybe only two to three um classes per grade in a school. And so that gets really tricky for those who haven't followed the conversation. If you have to reduce staff and you're reducing a classroom teacher and you've got 60 students and three sections of 20, that doesn't divide into two sections of 30. We that's not going to work. Um so that would mean that you would be forcing students to have to move again and that could happen in a really disruptive way. Right? So that was one of the things that
071emerged was is this something that is tremendous change that everybody does once or is this something that is maybe narrow and focused and then leaves a lot of uncertainty. Another thing that came out was um in that discussion is the question of equity. you know, what does it mean to tell one school that they aren't worthy of being a school anymore? And what does that feel like when you are merging into another school and how are you welcomed in? Um, when I was referring to the vision of a graduate and thinking about we h how we have this conversation earlier, I will say that it felt like a lot of us came in with prepared statements and as the conversation evolved, we didn't necessarily think about the things that we had already written down and
072what they might sound like to people in the room. Um, and I will acknowledge that there is a lot of tension out there. Um there was tension the very next day in our school communities among our parents. Um and we had an educator call that out on the panel and she said it feels like our schools are competing against each other and it doesn't feel good. So that is that is something that's out there that we have to take into into context. Um there is of course the financial question. So we've had um feedback from commu community members asking about we don't really understand where the savings is. we don't understand the difference between the operational budget of this year and the long-term plan. Um, and what that really boils down to is that the
073model that we pick is going to dictate the level of flexibility that we have. So, what I mentioned earlier, if we have a number of very small schools, and we know that really the only lever we're left at this point in time is is primarily looking at staff positions. If you have a bunch of very small schools that are organized vertically, um, you get to the point where you're trying to preserve this wonderful school that you have and the traditions that you've had and the the excellence that you've had and you don't have anything left because you've cut it all away. Um whereas a school that's organized horizontally might have more space to be able to contract. And I'm going to also also offer expand because let's hope that this doesn't keep going forever. You
074know, we talk about how there are waves. It's a sine wave. We're on a downturn right now. It's got to turn sometime. Let's have let's have some let's have some belief here. Might not be next year, but darn it, we want to be able to build out as well. If you are trying to add a section into a school, you can't just add like 20 students. Those don't just materialize. So again, it's easier to do when you have a lot of sections and you can add somebody or subtract somebody and your school and your class sizes don't move much. It's a lot harder with many smaller schools. What else am I forgetting? >> Uh, one thing that I would highlight is that when you saw the vote tally, you saw that both Tori and I
075abstained from the final vote. Um, and that was on purpose because we knew that as school committee members, it would come to this group and we would we wanted to sort of save our our thinking and deliberation for our time together as a school committee. So, it wasn't because we weren't in favor of any of those options. And in fact, it it might have been me that suggested that the steering committee move forward four instead of three options. Um, but it was because we wanted to spend the time here to deliberate with all of you and I am eagerly looking forward to that time. So with that, let's chat. Andrew, >> thank you. Thank you for the work you've done. Um, I have two things. I'll probably ask another question later, but I just wanted
076to set up our conversation with with two comments. The first has to do with words are important. Words are have power to them. And within your document, you place the framework as traditional versus new or innovative. And those words don't balance. Traditional has either can have a negative connotation. So I'd like to challenge you to not use those as you set this up because it does set up an an implicit bias inside of this. Separate from that, over the course of this, we've had some external research done, the handover group. And I think that the handover group has done a really nice job of talking about some of the non-fiscal impacts of the outcomes of this. And just to reset our conversation before we go into it, if you could, I'm not sure how familiar
077you are with it, give a little recap over some of the things that came out of that so we have a better way of balancing the options with what we've learned comes through the kids as they're going through our system. Just to clarify, you're looking for a recap of the non-fiscal impacts of the like the four options that >> So, one of the things that we learned in the through Hannover's research about the use of various models of school from K through 6, K through 8 versus various bandings was the impacts these have on the outcomes of learning and on the social uh the social lives, the world, the cultures of the kids. Totally. And I'd love for you to be able to bring a bit of that insight into this conversation before we get
078too far into this. So that we're not just looking at the financial responsibilities. We're not just thinking about seats. We're thinking about the people that sit in the chairs and we have a way of being able to look at the cultures of these schools. And it's really just to set the table for what we're talking about. Thank you. >> Andrew, can I actually jump in on that one because >> Yeah. Um what I what I can what I'd like to share is actually maybe what I heard from steering committee members of how they interpreted that. Um because I didn't necessarily come with the the whole research brief in front of me. Um I think one of the things that I heard most strongly from steering committee members was the idea of student transitions being disruptive
079um and having potentially negative impact on student learning. And that was really powerful in terms of I think many members thinking around that grade banded model that we had where there was a prek um followed by a you know one to three followed by a four to six. So um I think that the group felt like that was too many transitions in students lives and so that led along with a lot of community feedback to thinking of not moving forward with that that option 5v1. 5v2 was called a gradebanded model but as we talked it through it actually doesn't really involve physical transitions for kids. They're actually once they're in a building they stay there from K through six. 5 V2 and six are actually much more similar options. The difference being that in option
080six um it was one very large community and option 5V2 took a large community and actually broke it down into smaller increments. So trying to take advantage of some of that smaller school feel um within a larger structure that that could be more efficient. So that I think was maybe some of how the research impacted what what I think I heard from commi committee members >> Lakshmi >> I had a couple of conversations with community members and I now I understand where where it comes from. Looks like the conversation um got on the wrong path by think them thinking about not the goals that you laid out but it's always about intertwining with the financial issues we have been having right so everybody is going and thinking not everybody maybe I should qualify it right
081but a lot of them thinking that this is all to improve uh the financial issues we have every year year after year I see the four goals here and would it help if all the options the steering committee picked. Could you wait a give a weight of each of on each of these for each of the options? That way we can see what it means for these options kind of steers the conversation from finances and it's looks like a vision is vision of the graduate is driving everything right. We are looking at a new way of improving outcomes with this reorganization. So I think we need to give a proper weight to these goals. If we pick this option A, these are the these are the weights we accomplish and I think that would help
082a lot. >> Yeah, a terrific terrific question. Actually the the first activity we did with the steering committee when we got together to deliberate on these options was exactly that. Um, we had a whole rating exercise where folks on the steering committee uh rated every single one of the options that were in front of us based on a variety of different metrics connected it was more connected back to the the theory of action. Um, but that is infused throughout all of the strategic plan language. Um, and so it was really that information that guided the the decision-m by steering committee members. And then we also had the the community that was in in attendance do a gallery walk to to to look at all that feedback and then we uh typed it all up and
083and shared it in one of the packets that followed that meeting. Um but I think your your point is well taken as we're looking at this rather than thinking about just the the financial ramifications of each option. They should be connected back to >> um how they how they fit with the strategy that we work so hard on. We really would like the summary right for us to actually kind of move the conversation forward here. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. Laxmi just to add on to that the one of the things that I I think I have heard and seen through this process is there's all of these require a high level of personal judgment by any individual to determine what they think is stronger or weaker than another. And while I I actually would love
084to be able to produce something like that, I think that any community member would be able to look at it and say it was highly subjective based on whatever bias the person creating it had to one model or another. I'm not sure we would ever be able to develop that in a way that felt completely objective. So that's that's the only challenge. It doesn't mean we can't try to produce some kind of a summary of it, but I would just qualify it by saying, you know, everything we do now that summarizes something is done by a human being and there's going to be people who disagree with the results of that. >> Agree. But we should take take a at least make an adapt. >> Yeah. I just want to respond to that too, Laxshmi.
085think that what you're asking for, what we would all love is a very quantitative way to make this decision. And I think that the steering committee and and I struggle with that too, that a lot of what we want to do is qualitative. And I think that, you know, I think that's the exercise of of our group over the next two meetings is to to air it out and say, which one do you think is going to provide the best outcomes? because I don't think there's a a quantitative way and I like Peter said, I don't know if there's going to be data and I think it would be better for us to talk about that around the table because I think we're all going to have different opinions and different thoughts and I'd much
086rather air those and then have us sort of weigh that as a group. >> I'd like to counter that um qualitative versus quantitative. Um if folks think it is it's being qualitative, right? The emotions come into play. If you have a quantitative, I think that reinforces a certain model and the emotions start to take back seat. I think that helps. >> I I guess what I would add is I don't think there's any quantitative way to get to what you're looking for. Um, I think it's only going to be qualitative because in order for someone to say this is going to work better in this regard and this is going to work better in this regard. That takes someone's judgment to do that which by definition is not qualitative and there are there's just no
087clear metrics to say one is better than the other. It's actually much more a values-based thing and I know that I may feel very strongly that I think there's a path forward through this. Someone else is likely going to disagree with whatever path I take and we're probably going to end up with very different assessments of what that looks like. So I I think if you're open to something that you know is someone's judgment around it, we can produce that. But if we're looking for something that can you can say unequivocably this is neutral data, there's no debating this. It just doesn't it won't exist because it can't be created. That's the that's the only thing. And so I'm I I think we can do it. I just want to go into it saying this
088is someone's judgment saying we think this is better than the other. >> Okay, >> Glenn. >> Yeah. And I I just want to piggyback off of these points cuz I I think what has so I I think the way that the community feedback was incorporated, structured, taken into our decision-m process, I think that was set up in an exceptional way. I can't think of like a better way where how that could be structured where these things can come in in a way that can be absorbed and distilled. I I do think one particular pain point among many community members is just the it's it's I'm I'm trying to imagine what it must be like to like having kids in the school district and then just hearing being able to hold the tension of all that
089uncertainty and how much just how much of the sheer volume of how much of it is is just like like what do you mean you can't tell me which of these four options will have cost savings in this particular way. Isn't there a spreadsheet we can just look at? Isn't like and I I just want to acknowledge that as we're communicating throughout this process and people are coming from a both a place of sincere care and also I I think it's fair to say fear and anger and some hurt feelings too. It's just I I both want to draw attention to and challenge us as a committee to being able to like there are some things about this that we just have to be real about it that we don't have clear concrete quantitative answers
090for throughout all this. And so I think with the the procedures we have in place uncertainty is a given. So just how we navigate that with grace and consideration I think is what we're tasked to being do with here. So I trust this team. I trust our judgment. I trust this town. Um and I hope we can hold these these nuanced tensions in a place where we realize we're all coming from a good place here. So those are my thoughts. >> Liz, thank you. Um just to veer away a little bit and put on my operations hat. Um, I have a question either for Joe or Peter. Uh, when we're looking at the two new approaches, um, what are the operational differences between 5v2 and six and what opportunities could those afford? Like for example,
091is 5v2 I'm looking at five principles and six is three principles, etc. >> Yeah, that's a great question. I'll start. I'm sure Peter has something to add beyond that. Um the the most important operational efficiency for those two models that would be the same is thinking about having all of your sections of first graders or second graders together in one building, right? Because then you can flex sort of to Tori's point, the number of sections that you need to serve the number of first graders you have in your school. Um the other uh benefit is the opportunity for specialists. So, uh, related service providers, interventionists, special educators to be able to access students with similar needs at the same time. Um, because schedules would be relatively similar. Um, and it's just it's much easier to
092do that within one one common school. Um, where things start to get a little more complex is uh how a school district leadership team decides to staff those buildings. um where I can build a model for Actton Boxboro, but that's not going to fully capture um what Superintendent Light would choose to do and what like the needs of the building might might suggest. So, um for the the administrative operational differences um there are there are versions where you could have for 5v2 uh an up an upper elementary principle, a lower elementary principal. Originally, that's what we intended when we when we created that option. Um there there are ways to to do that slightly differently though. Um similarly with the option six, you could have the way we originally intended it was one uh one
093principal for each of those buildings with a larger team of assistant principles. Um there are other schools out there that have co-principles when you reach a a level of student enrollment that size. So they have they operate as one school with with similar traditions, etc. and there ways to make smaller communities within those schools, but they operate as one school with with co-principles. Um, but there's a lot more nuance there that I think the the lead district leadership team would uh explore. Yeah, I think Joe did a good job of summarizing, you know, what's consistent, which is those models from a resource allocation standpoint are more flexible, I think, long term and extend the reach of specialist roles um to be able to serve more students in a more efficient way. And so I think
094that is consistent between both five and six. I think the biggest operational difference between the two is an administrative structure and you know I think we've had extensive conversations about this as a leadership team. You know it was it was forwarded to you. I think we also during the meeting expressed deep concern that option six in terms of the values of our community and the expectation of facetime from principles with families and staff to have one principal with 950 families. Um, you know, having been a high school principal, I know that my interaction with families changed drastically when I got up near a thousand students. Um, because I could no longer be the person going to the IEP meetings and, you know, the the kind of student meetings if there was a behavioral issue in
095the school or, you know, a family had a concern about a student at home, that was not me they were interacting with. That was always someone that that work got delegated to. Um I think that would be a significant departure from our community over existing practice. Um and so I think that you know our feeling was even though it I mean my own personal belief is even though it got forwarded I think that would be a really challenging cultural change to have in our community around facetime with principles. I think from a staffing standpoint, we you you would have a need a similar number of administrators in the building that you just we could not do what we need to for students and faculty with one principal and two assistant principles for 950 students. It's
096just not enough people. Um and so in version six, what you would have is one principal and three assistant principles in a building. Um, and in version option five, I'm going to stop saying V2 because now it's option five. Um, that's on the table, it would be, you know, a principal of kind of the upper part of the school, an assistant principal for the upper part of the school, and then a principal for the lower part of the school, and an assistant principal for the lower part of the school. So, you know, and and I in terms of like cost savings, it actually is relatively minimal between the two options. Um because in that model, we actually currently don't have enough assistant principles in the district. So, we would actually need to add an assistant
097principal at the district level, but you'd be reducing three principles in option six. But in option five, you would reduce one principal and one assistant principal from what we currently have. Um, so it's there there's slightly more savings um by maybe couple $10,000 $15,000 in the end. It's not a significant savings. Um, but it's just a philosophical difference in how we the schools are structured, I think, more than anything. Adam, I >> I'll add a little bit more on that um because we we discussed this extensively and I think one of the things that that sort of really um you know I I was struggling between those as well. One of the things that was really interesting was um in fact we had them sitting next to each other. Allison Warren was principal of Gates
098and we had um Jim Marott from the junior high um and and sort of you know I asked like what's it like to be the principal of a school of around 450 kids? what's it like to be the principal of a school of around 950 kids? And the the most telling difference was Allison could say honestly she knew every kid in her school and Jim could say I know most of them but he didn't know every kid by name. And so I think that there was sort of a there there's a a telling difference there. Um no value statement no value judgment on that. And then we had Joanie in the room as well who you know has a school of 1600 kids who clearly she does not know every kid personally. Um the flip
099side of that is if you've got two administrators and this is sort of my question, you know, who's who's in charge and how do you align things like master schedules? How do you align things like um educator supervision and evaluation? If you move to a model um or move to some of the features that some of our other schools have, for example, looping, if you loop between the grade band, how are you going to manage that? So, you know, there are other questions there that come down to what does that personality of that school become and do we value sort of greater alignment versus, you know, greater sort of personal connection with families and and and students? I don't know which one's right, but that was some of the other things that we sort of
100we we tugged at between those two different options. >> Vicram, >> hi. Yeah, thank thanks very much for doing all this work. Um, and and I'm just we're not I just want to be clear here. We're not actually debating each of the remaining options. We're sort of debating how we wound up with these four options here going forward. Is that sort of before we close the door on it? >> No, not really because the steering committee voted. They're here. >> So, this is this so we're actually discussing the individual ones. Okay. >> Yep. >> All right. Um, so with that, I I just want to say so five and six do seem essentially similar. Uh, option six, you wind up with very large schools, you know, simply. So, I think one thing that hasn't really
101been talked about as much as perhaps it should is how aligned people are with their individual schools, right? So, option six completely blows that out of the water. So, absolutely everybody's affected. Option five, it more or less does that. Uh option five, it does that very very minimally. And option three, we absolutely get rid of a school that's very loved as we've seen from the comments. Also, the other things I'm curious to know that uh the committee it seems here 88% for option five. However, community surveys overwhelmingly chose option four. So, how do you how do you how do you account for that that disparity? >> It's a terrific question. I think it it speaks to the how the discussion with the steering committee unfolded. Um where we spent a lot of time talking about
102the kind of disruption that was happening and whether it was what would be the most equitable or appropriate in terms of which option should um would would make the most sense for the district. So through that, what came through from a lot of steering committee members was the discomfort with option four with fundamentally impacting three school communities, right? So like very like significantly impacting three school communities. Conan building closes. They're going to move anyway and then McCarthy Town and Miriam feel very heavily impacted as well. Um and so because of that, I'm summarizing the the conversation. So maybe Adam, Tori or Peter, other folks who are on the steering committee can can jump in as well. Um there were folks who shifted to option five version two. Um I think it also speaks to the
103the governance structure that we're using where community feedback is one piece of feedback and ultimately is incorporated with other um other perspectives, other analyses, other discussions uh to reach that decision. >> Okay. Because because I'm also curious because isn't it then the case option five so in option four you have really Mary McCarthy and Conan sort of affected right whereas option five not only are those three affected but the other ones are affected as well. >> Oh absolutely. So in fact in rather than just minimizing the disruption you're actually making it well let's disrupt everybody because that's only fair. If Johnny breaks his arm well everybody should break their arm. It seems to me the philosophy there doesn't make a lot of sense to me. >> Vicram, I do also just want to point out
104that in all of these scenarios, Blanchard is the least affected out of this. So, I do also just want to like it just a fact that I do also want to acknowledge as we move forward and I know that you know we have community members that are very very tied to their um school community. One thing that I think is a great opportunity in this is finding sort of best practices from all of those and maybe merging them across the board. Um, you know, we've heard great best practices from Conet from each school and you know, I think that all the communities could potentially benefit from that as well. >> So long-term we do want to go towards this model, right? uh where we actually optimize the resources we have because that frees up frees
105up some money or whatever we want to call go back to finances to hire specialists to move our kids in the right direction that that is the goal we structure ourselves to go if go in that direction but looks like the current population is going to feel the pinch is there a plan to or at least an approach approach to have this in a phased manner so that it's least disruptive to the current enroles and uh move still move forward in direction that we want to go. >> So I think we're working on a way to try and minimize disruption particularly for current fifth graders and see if there's ways of keeping cohorts of fifth graders with their peers that they they know now. Um I think that the idea of a phased approach to
106this um I actually think you know so for example if the Conan building moves into Parker Damon next year there's no phasing that can happen because the the Parker Damon has about a 950 student capacity and there'll be 1,200 students vying for seats or 1300 students vying for seats in a building. So there's no way to phase something like that um other than maybe targeting a very specific grade level. The reason that we have been talking as a leadership team about fifth grade is because we also recognize that was also the grade level that was most impacted by the pandemic um and school closures and so trying to you know minimize disruption particularly for that group and knowing it's their last year within a cohort. Yes. Um, outside of that, I actually don't think it
107would be operationally feasible to to try and come up with a phased approach. The other thing I think about is phasing. It doesn't like there's a total amount of disruption that's going to take place to get from point A to point B. And if you do it once, you have disruption once. If you phase it, you have disruption as an ongoing reality, I think. But I don't think there'd be a way to keep students in their current schools for six years while we go through a phasing process and at some point there's going to be disruption. >> I think the other piece is that as we looked at the math of how many students we're talking about in three buildings, every school is going to be impacted because every school is getting new students and
108new teachers. And so then, you know, that becomes a conversation about what does that mean for school cultures? um especially you know there so there's a a potential way that enrollment might work that's in the packet which we will all get to discuss as well um at the end of that process it goes through some voluntary you know some phases of voluntary transfers at the end of that process we might have to involuntarily be transferring people and so think about what that means to be the person who's moving and also think about what that means to be the receiving community you know that is a challenge Um, so yeah, there it's it's complicated. I'm going to get Andrew and then we'll go to Glenn. >> Thank you. >> I'll get around to >> Peter. One
109of the things you mentioned is something I do want to bring up. You know, we have been doing these transitions now for a few years. The shift obviously we had a thing during COVID when everybody had to go and do other things and then came back and we had multiple groups coming together. The current fourth grade class were kindergarteners around that time. And we're at a point now where we also have two buildings that did go down and two groups of kids that did move into a new building. The Gates and Douglas schools. We've seen, if you've been watching, you've been involved with it, you've seen how the culture over the last few years has taken a while for the kids to get acclimated to this new thing. And not just the children, not just
110the students, the teachers, the staff, the shift, the parents, even down to changing ways they're driving and dropping kids off today. It takes a long time to get through this. So, I think it's it's interesting that we can look back at our own experiences to derive some templates for how to make some changes and also look at the fact that there is a cohort of of students that have already done this and that we may be asking them to do this again. But I really wanted to follow on with something Adam said when he was making a comment about school population size. And in anthropology there's there's a thing called Dunar's number and it's about 150 and it's the the kind of maximum size any one person can have with interpersonal relationships with other people.
111So you end up having groups from religious organizations to military organizations to cohorts of about 150. And when you start getting into larger multiples of that, it becomes more and more difficult to manage to have, as you say, as Jim said, um the difference between having everybody's name in your head and knowing most of the people. And I'm curious about how we when we look back at the research and we see that smaller the school, the better the outcome. And when you can have a more specific relationship with your administration, the kids, the students, the teachers are able to have a better time. I'm I'm curious about the questions of capacity. We mentioned a little bit earlier about bringing people in. If we would go towards option six, how many lunches would we have? How
112many recesses would we have a day? Would we be able to fill the library up with enough information for the kids to be able to take things out? How what have we identified along that level of change management for this? Because it's not purely like it's going to cost six people, it's going to seven people. When you look at a school day with 900 kids in a building planned for 400 kids, how does that shift the end result of this? >> So the simple answer is we don't have that level of data because that's the next step in the process to think about what the how this how a model like this would come to life. Um I think for options five and six, a lot of the the ways those two buildings operate would
113would continue to operate as such, right? Because you have there there are structures that that support the total number of students in the full building. Um but there's a lot of a lot of thinking and planning that would need to happen for um some of those more specific details that you're talking about. To your other point though about the smaller communities, yeah, you're you're absolutely right. Um and that is that is a knock against the larger school models. Um I think what the research or what the research would would suggest around um why a model like this could still be beneficial is because it gives the district a lot more flexibility with the kinds of positions it would it would it would staff its schools with. Um, so yeah, maybe your principal is not the
114person who's going to be who's going to know everyone and in actro that might not be a great idea. And so in which case option six is not a great option for for actin box. In other other communities in Massachusetts, across the country um that kind of a model works pretty well because they have different roles that sort of um play that that provide that that kind of support and create that community for students. And I don't know if there's a way for us to be able to come up with these answers prior to our series of conversations and voting, but I think it's important for us to think about the result of the life of the kids inside the schools. And if lunch starts at 9:30 in the morning to be able to accommodate
115600 kids in the school, that becomes a different kind of issue. And if you can't have recess because already the Gates and Douglas, the boardwalks campus is is packed as it is. um what does that mean for again the quality of life of the kids as they're going through this? So just a thought to be able to look at >> you know I just I'm not completely following it because we're not talking about like doubling the size of any of our student populations in a building where there are all of our lunches and recesses and everything else are actually organized around 850 students now and we're talking about an increase of maybe 75 or so students to that. Um, Blanchard, you're probably talking about an increase of 100 plus um, in that school community. Um,
116whereas Blanchard's facility was originally designed for 700 students. But we also know program has changed and we need to use it differently. So, but Blanchard would would go up, you know, pretty significantly in terms of population, probably 100 plus. The other two buildings were actually probably talking about 75 more students, but split over, you know, seven grade levels. So, I'm not sure that the operational piece of this is that significant of a change. >> Having that information would be helpful to inform the conversation. >> Okay, I'm going to go Glenn. I'm going to go Lisa who has actually I'm going to go Lisa who hasn't gotten to talk yet. And I'm also going to check in with Leela and Ben because we do need to move to public comment and then not be here till
11710:00. We've done that already once this week. So, you two were thinking, you're on. Thank you. I think a wonder that I have and something that really struck me that you mentioned Tori was when we're talking about disruption disruption, when we're talking about student outcomes, when we're talking about things that will impact all of the students and how they're going to feel with changes. I guess something that I really wonder is what's more psychologically impactful, everyone moving at once or like what you alluded to, this would be the fifth year of cuts and when we get to a point there's nothing left to cut and if we have to cut general classroom teachers, how is that going to feel for a student in a school where one class just disappears one at a time and
118students are watching this and it's not this moment that everyone's having together, but it's, you know, the trauma of seeing this ongoing and kind of this trickling effect of just one classroom at a time disappearing. I really wonder how that's going to impact communities. And um just thinking about spelling out the fact that even with all of this, we still have to make cuts and what are the schools going to look like as we continue making those cuts cuz we are thinking about the students at the end of all of this. And we're thinking about their emotional outcomes, their, you know, we want them to thrive. We want them to be successful in schools. And as a parent with a kindergartener and a fifth grader, I think I'm having a hard time wrapping my head
119around what that would look like for my kindergartner. Um, witnessing that all throughout her elementary school as we have to inevitably continue to make cuts. I think I'm still absorbing information and some of the comments are helpful and I'm looking forward to the public comment. Um, I think the thing that I'm holding in this moment is just hearing from so many of the emails that folks would like more time. Um, and that this still feels rushed. Um, and I think I'm also holding hearing from educators and like don't want to oversimplify how educators are feeling. Um, but I have heard repeatedly that there's kind of the sense of like we're in this weird transition period and don't even know how to plan for the next year. Um, and so like wanting some level of like
120where are we going towards to be able to think about what does it mean for teachers themselves, but what does it also mean in terms of planning for next year? And so I think I'm holding some of that tension that like I think all of us would love to just keep pushing it off and have more time for information gathering. Um, but it actually doesn't feel possible for the people who then have to turn around and implement the decision. Um, but also just want to acknowledge that many people are feeling like it was super rushed and they didn't have enough time to process and we've kind of kept the process going even as folks are trying to like take in all of the information and hours of sessions. Um, and so just wanting to add
121that into the space. >> And I will add that I have read all your emails. I am still behind in answering them. I'm working on it. Ben, >> similar to Leela, I'm still just taking this all in. Uh, I have a son who graduated from Conan and just hearing his comments and some of his peers and he's a high schooler now and the impacts that are going to be felt for many years to come. I'm just like Leela taking it in and trying to absorb as much as I can. >> Okay. So, let me ask the group one quick question um because I think this is probably most helpful to Peter and anything else that we might um ask a DMG group to help us with. While we're sitting through with public comment, can you
122think about what other information you need that would be helpful? Um, because we probably need to name that tonight in order to hear it in a in a reasonable amount of time. Glenn, how fast can you make this? And Vicram, how fast can you make this? Because I see your hands quick. >> 25 seconds max. I think we what would be useful for me in what you just mentioned is when we're talking about disruption I would it would be helpful if I had more concrete language about that we keep saying disruption it's not a one-dimensional axis of volume it's much more three-dimensional than that anyone that's tried finding a babysitter on a Friday night knows that disruption happens all the time but so like there's disruption of moving a kid from building to building and
123then there's what I consider a much more drastic disruption staffing cuts. So, I just like those specific like when we're saying disruption, I want us to be as concrete as possible about what do we mean? That would be useful for my decision-m process. >> Um, I I would just like uh to to clarify. So, it seems to me that option five and six are very similar. Uh, option three, I'm not sure what's right there, so I'm not going to talk about that. So really between four and five um is it is it basically the case that option four is less disruptive but doesn't save as much money and option five is more disruptive but saves more money and I would like clarity on on levels disruption and costs. I I'll just share again something that
124came out of the the steering committee is in in any of these options we're closing a building which means that we have to redistribute the staff and the 450 plus kids to elsewhere in the district and so every school will be touched by this. Um and so I think that that level of disruption, you know, every every school is going to be touched by this, every staff member will be touched by this. And something that was very um interesting in the conversation was, you know, we asked the question, well, what happens when you you know, you have a school community and you a new staff member comes in or or you know, and that happens every year. A couple staff members move around. And the response from the principles, well, yeah, we welcome them into
125our community. But the case that we'll have here in any of these options, particularly in three and four, is that you will take an established school community and you will break it up. And you will have people who did not necessarily want to leave that community, go into a new community that while they may be welcoming, they're not they're not necessarily going to change to support those new people. So I think it's a it's sort of a panacea to think that one has less or more disruption. No matter what we're doing, we are taking 450 kids and the the staff that come with them and we are distributing across the remaining five buildings. So disruption is inevitable no matter what we do. >> Well, I think the thing is the dis degree of disruption, right?
126So option four, it's only three schools that are disrupted whereas option five. >> No. >> Well, I mean, well, okay, take into account the the fact that the building is simply not large enough for three schools, some students will necessarily have to move, but that's going to happen in option five anyway. But that's going to be option five plus even more disruption. >> So the question becomes and we've gotten a lot of feedback around this is the disruption and like I I don't know how we describe the the depth of of this disruption but the three words that I've sort of been struggling with is what is an equitable disruption? What is an equal disruption? And how do we balance the two of those? Because something that may feel equitable to some may not to
127others. And some that may feel equal to some may not to others. So, I'm I think where where I'm struggling is how do we balance that? Because as as you've seen in the hundreds of emails that we've received, everyone has their own perspective. And as I communicated this to the Boxboro leadership forum last night, sure, some group and maybe a majority of a group of a building is going to be happy, but our charge is not to make the majority happy. Our charge is to do what's best for our students. And inevitably what we will get are individuals who come to us and say you have ruined my student who's had the hardest time who loved this building and love this person and you've made it miserable for them. And so I'm trying to balance
128how do we make a decision that inevitably will disrupt every you know some a majority of the people are going to feel some level of disruption and I just don't know do you it it it feels unfair I guess to me to say that option four only disrupts three people one group has lost a building two people have lost a full identity and everybody has to sort of bear that that weight whereas other options don't necessarily other options may feel like they're more disruptive, but it's spread out and there's an opportunity. And I think the last thing I'll say is there's an opportunity to create something new. And we had teachers who were part of the remote learning program on our steering committee. And one of the things they said was, "Oh my gosh, CO
129was a nightmare. It was hard, but we came together and in the course of the year, we had the opportunity to make something absolutely brand new." And it was magical and it was short-lived and it was a really tough time, but they really valued that opportunity to create something new. So I think one of the things that we need to balance is the disruption but the opportunity to create something new and as people get to sort of I want to move people to thinking about what are the opportunities in these options versus what are we losing in these options. >> And with that I'm going to say I think we've set public comment up pretty well because I think these are some of the things that you are all here to talk to us about.
130So um can I have a show of hands about of everybody actually? Okay. So, um, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15. I feel like we are back at our 45se secondond time, which is what we did last time. And Adam says I'm killing him, so that's okay. Um, so we'll get that set up. If you can come up and uh make a line um to the microphone, that would be fabulous. Thank you. >> Yes. And Joe and Yash. Yes. Um, as as you were lining up, I want to say a huge thank you to our our DM group teammates here. They have You may or may not have heard that their boss thinks that this might not have been uh the best deal that he's ever
131made because they have worked incredibly hard for us and you have all given them lots and lots and lots to work on. So, thank you to everybody for all of your feedback and Joe, Yosh, and to the entire team. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right, we're almost done. Hang on a sec. I can start while he's setting up. >> All righty. Here we go. >> Okay. This was going to be a nice accessible conversation, but it's not anymore because y'all only gave me 45 seconds and I wrote 3 minutes cuz y'all said that was what I was going to have. I want to thank Tori for finally taking the time to acknowledge that the steering committee on Tuesday night voted to close Miam Elementary School. I have been dismayed that the depth of
132concern of the loss of a school building has not also been shared for the loss facing our children, our community, and our school. While our community has deep misgivings about how and why our school was targeted, at this moment I would charge the school committee to do their due diligence and investigate exactly what the district has chosen to eliminate. I know that many Mariam parents, myself included, have participated in the feedback processes with an expansive view of school and utmost respect for the difficult situation this district is in. We expect the school committee to demonstrate the same respect for us that we have demonstrated for them. This includes acknowledging the difficult situation that our children are in and committing to investigating and documenting the unique opportunities that Miriam provides for our community. It also requires
133a commitment to ensure that our students don't lose both their school and access to an innovative pedagogical model which goes far deeper than looping and project based model project- based learning that has enabled them to thrive in school. I will be clear that cannot happen in option three version two and is unlikely to happen in option four. I also want to address the unfortunate conversation around equity that has happened at the steering committee meeting on Tuesday night and tonight in this room. The district has an unfortunate history of using the concept of equity as a budgeon. Equity is not the same as equality. And the conversation that has to occur around equity is not about evenly distributing emotional trauma. It is a conversation about the fact that our town is not able to increase funding
134to the schools and that in the face of rising costs, we cannot ensure equitable access to services, supports, and opportunities to the children throughout the district without undertaking a large scale reorganization. >> Thank you. >> So, >> thank you. >> So, if you have more comments, please feel free to email them. again I will get I'm working my way through but yes acknowledging that we laid out 15 minutes it's divided among whom we have if you can't get to it all just send it to us please go ahead >> could we get them to identify themselves >> yes please also identify yourself that helps too thank you >> hi uh my name is Nishant and uh thank you for the opportunity and the work you're doing um I'm seeking more details on how these three
135opt four options would be implemented specifically the most popular 5 V2 because to me it feels like 5 V2 is very much similar to 3 V2 uh wherein Conent building and school is being closed and there the students are getting desperate uh to me it feels like the actton schools they're going to continue I understand that some kids have to move from one side of the building to the other side but for a conent student it's it's like I have 60 kids with me right now and it feels like they're all going to be dispersed throughout the community and I'm going to lose my friends. So I'm seeking more information on how this popular option is going to be implemented as a parent to understand what impact is. Thank you. >> Hi. Uh my name
136is Kathy Cuddy. I'm a parent of a conent parent. Um, I think we need to name the reality out loud that the proposal is on the table put the greatest disruption on the only majority minority school in a largely white town as well as Miriam, which I also think is an incredible school and I totally understand their rage about what they're seeing here. Um, even in the case of creating three larger schools, we're stopping short of saying that we would redistribute the entire student population. In all likelihood, the families in the four majority white schools will be able to have their students continue learning in their current buildings with their current classmates. When we talk about identity, it's the relationships and the friendships that you're disrupting. So, >> thank you. >> Hi, I'm Molly. Um,
137I don't have as many facts um and compelling arguments as um as you did, but I'm also the parent of Conan kids and I want to implore you to think about the outsiz impact that this process continues to have on Conan. Um, Tuesday evening's conversation addressed things like equity and how many people are impacted and I was starting to come around to the idea that in 5v2 we would all go through this together. you know, a new building for the Conan folks, but a new situation for everybody and and that's okay. And what I'm realizing is that um Conan students are basically at the end of this list for 5v2. They're going to go wherever there's space for them. So, you know, first I had to explain to my seven and nine-year-olds that their school
138building is not going to be their school anymore. Sorry. And I reassured them that at least you'll have your friends, you know, um just like every year you get a new class and maybe your friend will be in your class, but maybe they won't. But it's okay cuz they're still going to be there. But um now I can't say that and I have so much empathy and respect for Miam and Mti parents and it's not fair for them either but just I beg you to hold on to the shred of stability that they have and keep them together in option four. >> Thank you. >> Hi I'm Vishal. I'm first time Conan parent. uh I have a kindergartener uh in there and in last few months she has developed such a great bonds in the
139school with the friends her teacher thought they all grew up on the same block together they did not and now when I look at the most popular option in front of you guys I'm very concerned the way it will be implemented and the concern is that only Conan kids will be dispersed throughout the school district all her friends all her bonds that they develop little kids they need that emotional support school is like their second home and they're going to lose that. So, I highly encourage you guys that you use option four and find a way to keep all the kids together in one building. Do not do not distribute the kids. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Hi, I'm Rob. I'm a Conan parent. Um, echoing what's previously been said, I also feel that
140um, right now the majority of the impact is leaning on Miriam and Conan families and dispersing Conan students or Miriam students across the rest of the buildings would be unreasonable to those communities. Whereas I feel like if we all as a community were in this together and distributed the students and allowed ourselves to all form a new larger community or larger communities, it would be more evenly balanced and we could proceed together as a you know a larger actin family. >> Thank you. >> Good evening. My name is Lacy Johnson. I'm a McCarthy Town parent. Um and just for everyone out there, McCarthy Town is also on the chopping block. So, um, I stand up here in in honor of that. Um, I was also on the steering committee and our work was grounded in
141more than 2,000 stakeholder engagements and guided by a clear decision framework that safeguarded students well-being, fostered inclusion, inclusive communities, ensuring financial sustainability, and allowing for straightforward implementation. I am deeply concerned that option four falls short of those principles. It would disrupt three school communities and based on the meeting Tuesday night require the creation of an entirely new school versus emerge under financial pressure and tight timelines. Culture takes time, structure matters, and rebuilding under pressure is rarely student centered. Option four also narrows diversity. Preserving racial and ethnic diversity is critical, but diversity and inclusion must mean more than one thing. Closing the district's only two schools that are built around alternative learning mo learning models eliminates meaningful choice and how children learn. We should not protect one form of a diversity by erasing another. I urge
142the committee to choose a path that aligns with the values we establish as a committee together and minimizes disruption to students and staff without marginalizing what changing buildings means to a child. Thank you. >> Thank you. Hi, my name is Kalpna. I'm a Conan parent as well. Um, I also have concern about the 5V2. I know the steering committee and all of you doing um it's a monumental task. I don't disagree with that one, but we feel like we are cornered the most because one thing we lost the building and now it feels like even with a 5v2 where the existing kids would obviously choose the existing buildings. So, what would the Conan kids do? they will be the last on the list and they will be the one requesting the transfers and obviously they
143are going to be and the second concern I have is with the different teaching models that we have how is it going to be uh accommodated in the 5v2 model because Miriam and McCarthy have a different style and Conan Gates and uh Douglas and Blanchard have a different style. How is that going to be integrated so that the parents feel uh you know included in this um whole scenario? Thank you. >> Thank you. Hi, I'm a Conent parent as well. I came in on Tuesday uh with a plea of not closing closing Conent and I walked away thinking that option 3 v1 is off the table only to realize 10 minutes later that 5v2 is essentially going to do the same thing like redistributing Conent kids into three different communities while I I definitely disagree
144with a lot of people who mentioned that it's across the board. It's not across the board for from the children's perspective. If you're in the same building, you have more kids, you have more teachers, it's actually more fun. There are some mix of cultures, but that's very minor considering what Conent families have to go through. It's a complete disruption of Conent and it's exactly the same as 3B1 in my opinion. And uh that's really unfair to one community and where is the equity there? And the other thing is if you really want to go through with 5v2 there are many ways to create two schools from five schools in that case why does one community have to be disrupted like put all the five schools on the table and figure out what is the best
145way to merge them and figure out which families would need to go which way I know it's like basically asking everyone to pick something reenrollment is a big deal but on the other hand that's that that speaks to equity in my opinion >> thank you >> so considering all of this I think option and four is probably the least disruptive option. So, thank you. >> Hi, Leah Lai. I was also on the AB Forward group. Um, after spending significant time defining our district values, it has been really difficult to see options three and four advance. We say we are committed to supporting the whole child, their learning, well-being, sense of belonging, and identity. Our decisions should reflect that options that remove an entire school community from its space or close two schools to make room
146for one do not align with those values and leave many feeling devalued. The handling of options 3v1 and 3v2, which were nearly identical, has also contributed to a perception that some school communities are being prioritized over others. This process has highlighted long-standing divisions in our district and I believe we need a solution that helps us repair and unify. For these reasons, I believe option 5v2 offers the best path forward. It's more financially sustainable, promotes equity and how students are distributed across schools. It gives us an opportunity to refine, tweak open enrollment in a way that strengthens and not divides our community. >> Thank you. Most importantly, this is a district-wide issue. It should be a district-wide solution. Children in one, two, or three schools should not have to carry the burden. And moving forward will
147be easier if we all move forward together. >> Thank you. >> I'm Carol Leandro. Um, my mind has been swirling with grief and denial since I first learned that Miriam's dissolution is one of is on two of the four options that have moved forward. I say denial because I never thought that this amazing district would eliminate this gem of progressive elementary education. How could we lose Miriam's long-standing focus on the constructive process of experiential learning through real project-based learning, multimodal instruction and assessment, looping, student reflection, social emotional learning woven throughout the curriculum, and community building, all best practices. And how could we eliminate a school that was designed to embody the district's mission, vision, and values? My children thrived there, and so did I. I've been working there for almost 20 years. Then last night,
148the swirl of negativity stopped. All of a sudden, I thought of this restructuring as an amazing opportunity. Really, this horrible situation is an opportunity for us to go in a whole new direction. Make the choice for a genuine restructuring of our elementary schools and save money, too. The two options that save most money and move AB forward with a truly new vision are options five and six. I pref prefer option five. I have heard many people believe options one and two are less disruptive and therefore better. Unfortunately, all options are disruptive. >> Thank you. Your time is up. >> Yep. >> Thank you. >> I wish that we knew that we would only have 45 seconds. I could have prepared better. >> Hello. Uh my name is Anon. I'm a McCarthy town parent and I
149would like just to start to say it's an amazing school and both my wife and me are horrified of the thought of losing it. Um I would like to make two points against options five and six. First of all, I completely agree increasing the pain so everyone breaks their arms that just doesn't make sense. You heard the pain of what it means to close a school. I would minimize this as much as possible and for me that's option three. Uh, I would also say five and six completely erase what we have right now in Actton. You may be losing people that would come here or you may be losing people that currently live here. You may see the enrolling rate going much faster than it should go. Right now, you're keeping families here and you're
150drawing families here. You may lose this this amazing advantage over other districts. So, keep this in mind when you think about budgets. >> Thank you. Hi. Um, my name is Carrie James. I've been a classroom teacher at McCarthy Town for 33 years. I've chosen to spend my entire career here because I believe so deeply in what the school was founded on. From its opening in the early 70s, as I've been an innovative, forwardthinking, child- centered school, not focusing on test scores and numbers at the expense of fostering creative, well-rounded, problem-solving students. I'm incredibly am incredibly disappointed and saddened with the committee's consideration of closing two of the elementary schools. It is not only inequitable, it is divisive and damaging to the very community you are tasked with supporting. Singling out one or two schools for
151closure effectively places the burden of the district's challenges on a small subset of families, educators, and children. It communicates that some communities are expendable while others are protected. A message that contradicts every principle of education. the only way to move forward now is to share the responsibility across the schools. Thank you. So I think one point that I want to clarify um I heard a lot about the draft enrollment procedures that are in there and I want to emphasize the word draft. Those are provided as a starting point for the school committee to start having this conversation with the administration of what this looks like. Um, and I think I think we certainly heard some uh thoughts for potential needs to explain a little further with each different option what that might look like. Um,
152so thank you for all of the feedback. Thank you for being thoughtful um in sharing what this means to you and what you're thinking about. Okay, so last thoughts on what information we need. Glenn, I >> I was going to reflect a little bit on all that, but if that's >> we're not Yeah, I No, I'm just doing this as this is an information thing and I also wanted to clarify point of fact so that this is not out there as >> as a misunderstanding. Um, from what you all heard, has anybody heard anything else of information we need to ask Peter for? Adam? Yeah, I would like to see another draft of reassignment procedures um particularly focused towards option five and six um that have a focus on more evenly distributing students um throughout
153the the schools. So, not necessarily a preference to your existing building, but some new and innovative approach to distributing our our students recognizing. So with that, we're going to discuss that and I think one of the things that we want is more feedback from you about the overall approach that you're hoping for so that we can then go back and revise these. So like yes, and I think the feedback from the committee at the next step will be helpful. >> Can I follow up with something then? I I I am I I'm just heartbroken to hear about uh every every one of our school communities that feels like they're losing something. And I really do not like the fact that we're pitting each one of these school committees against each other. Um so at this
154point I'm not comfortable with options three or four at all. Um and I'd actually like to make a motion to remove those from the options tonight if anybody wants to second. >> Second. >> Okay, hang on. I got to write that down. I >> I think that's really really um >> early to do something. >> So let's we we'll have discussion. I think Tori just wanted to so the motion language just for the minutes the motion language was I move to remove option three and option four um from the selection and I believe I heard >> seconded by Lisa. Okay. So we're going to do what we did last night. We are going to have some discussion here. We're not going straight to a vote for anything. Andrew I believe you had your hand up.
155Absolutely. I will be voting no and I encourage my colleagues to do so. I think this is far too premature. We just had these options introduced to us. This is the first time we are discerning about this. I will be voting no. >> Lakshmi, >> I'll be voting no. work my way around. I'm going to work my way back up at uh Lisa. Lisa, >> I think we have had all the information we need. We got a 101 page report that a long time ago that all of us should have read. I certainly did my homework. We have had a lot of community input. We have the handover report talks. It's mostly about transitions and there is an option that I see that would be a leftover that reduces transitions by having the upper lower
156in the same building. And on top of that, I think that there's nothing else that we can have in terms of information that will help us make this decision other than just waiting and watching communities tear each other apart. One thing I just from the human side of this I'm really really struggling with is watching this drag on and watching our community just at each other's throats. This being a competitive thing. I don't like the competition of this. I don't like seeing schools pitted against each other. I don't like seeing families pitted against each other. Um, we are a community and I don't think that there's need more time needed to recognize that. Vicram, um, I I'm frankly appalled that you would make such a motion after it's very clear that option four has pulled
157the highest over about 2245 messages from the community. It's very clear that option 4 sits right at the top of the list. So to come right here after people have done this to then make a motion to dismiss two of those now when we have not gotten any of the data that we need to actually make a really informed decision is incredibly irresponsible. And coming from you who is sitting on the steering committee I'm I'm appalled. >> So I'm going to jump in here and remind us that this is not a vote. >> Yeah. >> We the school committee are >> about to make a vote. >> Vicram I get to talk right now. We the school committee have to do what is in the best interest of the district. I get that parents have
158very strong feelings about what they want because they have to represent their own interests. They're in charge of representing their family. You know, there's there's an interesting bit of karma here. When I was in second grade, I went through a school reorganization. In the middle of the year, my second grade class moved from the primary building to the main building. The reason I remember this is because Brent Stevenson, one of my good friends, he and I used to wait for the end of recess and when the teacher gave us the heads up, we draw a line in the sand and when the bell rang, we used to race back to the big school. That's what I experienced. I'm not saying that's what everybody else is going to experience, but that's my remember my remembrance as
159an 8-year-old. What's really interesting though was at the same time my dad was the parent at that microphone yelling at the school board. And the reason I know this is because he made the headlines. There is some sort of strange karma that I am now sitting up here at this very moment. Right? So that that's the role of a parent. They have to have those interests. But I implore us all to remember that our job is to do the best thing for every student and every educator. And I need everybody to understand that that might not be the thing that is the most popular by the numbers. Okay, who's next? Ben. >> Real quickly, I do not think it's equitable by pulling out two options at the last minute during a meeting right after the
160steering committee came up with these four options. I'll vote as I see fit. So, I I'll share a little bit more. Um, you know, we've we're dealing with a great deal of uncertainty right now and there's a lot of emotions around that, but also there's a great deal of uncertainty for our staff, um, for our principles. You know, we dealt with this a little bit when we had the act and override where we asked our administration to create two budgets, one that was eh and one that was terrible. Um, and I don't think we have great options here. Let's be clear, no one went into this thinking that this was going to be easy or fun or, you know, rainbows and ponytails or whatever it is. But what I'm worried about is the quantity of
161messages that we're getting that are really pitting community members against each other. Um, but also, you know, we're asking the administration to provide options and we're asking them to provide options in a year where they need to permeate over four of these options. But please don't forget that they again need to produce two budgets. One that is an okay budget and one that will essentially gut us no matter what we do. Boxboro is up for an override this year. Um and they're asking for right now roughly uh an only 2% increase in the Boxboro assessment which is roughly $1 million more on next year's budget from this year's budget which is somewhere in the real realm of $9 million in cuts. So, I don't want to be I I don't want to sugarcoat this. We're
162not in a good place. What I'm trying to do is reduce some of the uncertainty, but also provide some better guidance to the administration. And I hear I've heard all of the spectrum of of feedback. We're going too quick. We haven't heard everything. You all have gotten the same emails that I have gotten to the school committee shell. You all have gotten the same presentations and the same information that was presented at the steering committee meetings. All of that came to us all at the same time. Um, and we've we've said this over and over again, the decision comes to us in the end. So, that's why I'm looking to reduce some of the options so we can have more meaningful conversations. And the last thing that I'll end with is it's been very hard
163to read all those emails. And I've been dealing with that for a long time. Um, but it's even harder to be called shameful by my own committee members. And I recognize that I've had outbursts of my own in dealing with this stress. So, I would just ask that all of you consider that when you're you're speaking to me about an option, what I'm trying to do, and bring the best to the community. >> Okay, we'll start back around here. Glenn, >> I I I have a lot of thoughts. Um, I'll do my best to distill it. Uh so while I do think that the first meeting we're having about this, I personally think it's premature to eliminate any of the options for this particular meeting. If we were to eliminate an option, I'd like to
164see a maximum of one eliminated and for there to be one from each bucket remaining. Like that's what I I don't think we should be removing any right now. If we were to remove one, I would prefer option 3v2 to be the one removed and then the other three remain. I'm not I don't I'm I unfortunately lack the dexterity to introduce that as a as a in Robert's rules. >> So, we could do that as a friendly amendment which Adam could accept and Lisa could accept. >> Um, >> is that within is that >> you can do that? Yes, we did that. We did that last night. Not last night. Two nights ago. I kind of want to ask Adam if he's cool with it first, but I could just >> Yeah, that's what when
165you're asking for a friendly amendment, that's what you're asking for. >> We're figuring this out, folks. So, like >> I I would not accept the friendly amendment because that that leaves still two to three school communities named and that's really what I'm uncomfortable with is that we continue to name those schools. >> Okay. So, in in that ca Well, how do my other do other is there any appetite? Well, let let's just work our way around around um because Lakshmi and Andrew are waiting as well. >> I'm g I will revoke I yield the floor. >> Lakshmi. >> So um maybe not option three but option four probably. I would like to so I would like to ask Peter to give four, five and six. what what does it look like for the stakeholders, the
166community, the mainly the students, the staff and the community members to kind of get answers of where how does this distribution work, right? I think at at a rough, it doesn't need to be accurate, but how does it work? I think it would really really be helpful. And going back to those emails and concerns, yes, I I understand. I feel the pain. I went through as a parent when my kids were in school. Even though they didn't switch schools, they were going up a grade and they were split up from their friend and they no longer saw their friend. You know, that's it's part part of the school. I don't know if it hurt them, it helped them. I don't know. And I do feel the pain. I went through that every year. So, but
167I think here we are to help the community. And I think we should not take shortcuts. Even if it means we are we have to hear them more. We have to hear more emails. We have to hear them fighting each other. We owe them this work. I think we should do do the homework. >> Lakshmi. Uh in your packet, I'll I'll send you a note where it is. Um the distribution for option 3 v2 and option four is actually that draft revised enrollment procedure which direct directly addresses it. And then what Adam asked for is a revised version for five and six. So you you already have some of that and then Peter will develop the rest of >> it would get a comparative. >> Yep. >> I think it would really really help and
168I think the options start to drop off because overall it doesn't help the community. Right. So I think that would help. >> Okay. Thanks. >> Thank you. >> Andrew, you're next. >> Thanks. Um, I do think it's irresponsible for us to go against the steering committee prior to the January 8th hearing that we're supposed to have on this. I think it's irresponsible for us to winnow this down in this session to remove a category of options prior to being able to get more information about these. While we've had the steering, while we've had the meetings, while we've had all the research brought to us, there's additional questions that came up tonight that we've not had answers to. There are additional questions about operations that we've had that have come up tonight that would inform our
169ability to understand this. Yes, it names spec specific schools. All of this is about naming the schools that we know we have to change. I think we can't take away from this conversation the options that are on that table until we have a chance to fully vet them. If you wanted to come to this committee with two options, do it last night. You came to this committee tonight with four options for us to be able to banter about. Let us do it in the way that this whole system's been prescribed because if not, just go ahead and, you know, mark something off today. Forstall all of this. Adam, you're absolutely right. No one should be called shameful. I think it's an irresponsible act to do this. I have utmost respect for you. I hope you
170weren't offended. Also, Sherry, Peter, it's going to take a lot of work for you to get the budgets together regardless because there's no money because we've gotten to the point where we have to be fiscally responsible and we're seen as kind of a black box of expenses to the talents that we work with and it's difficult for them to understand how and why we need the money that we have, but everything's more expensive. The only way that we can get through this process with the integrity of the process to stay there is to look at this stuff, follow what the steering committee said, and just continue forward. Taking stuff out now is disrespectful to the community, disrespectful to all the people who came here tonight and said something. I think we cannot approve this motion.
171Liz, >> starting by pointing out that neither of you voted to bring forth these four and thereby insinuating that it was your decision to bring forth these four options. I think that is misleading. And I also think that these four options were brought to us specifically to be able to discuss them and narrow them down. We've gotten information and I view this as okay, we need we are discussing choosing whether we're still going to talk about the traditional approach or just put all of our weight behind the new approach. It would be irresponsible for us to put that much work on our administrators when I got to tell you, I'm already kind of in the camp of the new approach. I don't think that the traditional approach is going to be feasible fiscally, operationally, efficient,
172or as palatable to our families regardless of the grief that all of these communities are experiencing right now. >> Clarifying question about process. after we have this conversation about the motion that's on the table. Um, is there still time to ask for additional information about options or should I be saying that right now? So, couple of things. So, if we were, we could table it and pick it up later. So, that could be something that maybe we return to at a December 18th or a January 8th meeting. Um because I think one of the one of the things Adam is saying is that the longer we hold all four that is the more uncertainty we're we're leaving out there and the more work we're asking our administration to do. So we probably need to think
173through as a group like at what point in time do we winnow this down to maybe the things that we act that we actually think are viable. Um, so yeah, it could go anywhere from we can certainly take a vote and and and be done with this tonight or we could lay it on the table and come back to it at some other point in time. Does that help? I think I'm actually asking a separate thing. Um, regardless of how the vote goes, if I still am looking for more information about the two options on the right side, should I be asking that later? Is will there be time to circle back to that? >> Um, like tonight? >> Yes. Yes, we can do that. And don't let me don't let anybody adjourn without getting
174that question in. Okay. Um Lisa, >> I think it's very clear that the only options that allow us to adapt and survive the current um financial strain that we're under, the the pressures that will continue to face, the storm that we will continue to weather over the foreseeable future because we don't know when this will end. you know, we're going to have to continue making cuts. The only options that give us that adaptability and the flexibility to be able to make changes to increase or lower um possibly increase class sizes or to move people around if needed are options five and six. And from my perspective, the only thing that's irresponsible is to continue to ask families, caregivers, um, parents to remain in this paralyzed state of anxiety. I've had people tell me that with
175each and every decision, with each and every passing week, the anxiety is crippling and it's impacting people's emotional health. And I feel responsible because I feel like because this is taking so long. I mean, I know I'm not, you know, responsible, but it feels it feels awful to do this to our community, to make them continue to wait and to have this continued state of paralyzing anxiety. And for me, that's what feels really irresponsible. >> Um, I I just think there just there are too many questions surrounding these options. We don't know if option three or four might be in fact the most financially feasible, right? They might save us the most money and be the least disruptive, but we don't we don't know that yet. So, I think it it really is not prudent
176to take any of these off the table right now, especially just coming out of all the conversations you just had and what just happened two days ago. To just suddenly cut it in half, I think is just irresponsible. So Vicram, we do actually have the financial models that are in the 101 page packet that was I think last meeting. We have that information. No, I don't want to dig up the 101 page packet. >> Okay, we going to make one. Okay, so folks, we got to end this meeting eventually. How about we do one more lap? We figure out what we're going to do and then we do the rest of our business on the agenda because we're not done yet. Sound good? Okay, Glenn. So, just to >> Can you turn off the mic?
177Okay. Thank you, Lakmi. Um, so I'm okay whittling down options, just not tonight. Like so our scheduled deci final decision date is January 22nd. Yes, I think so. That's 20 22nd. That's correct. So, and today's what? The 4th. I would prefer to because you know this is when we meet but like we have I I would we could I would be comfortable opening up the following school committee meeting by taking an option or two off the table. I my personal hesitation with this is that I just think at this moment right now I feel it's too soon. I do think two weeks from now our next meeting that's that's enough time >> Lakshmi >> okay I think this goes back to the first question I asked I needed information I know you you were saying
178there's information all over right I haven't been really following a whole lot because I have not signed up for AB forward to be part of AB forward I have started reading but here here is what it takes the two of you have been part of it so you you know ins and outs. I read it. It's discrete pieces of information. I don't make the connections that easily. Either you present it in the way that I like to see and then make the in immediate decision or you let me give me the time to kind of make connect the dots, right? One of the two has to happen. We can't take those options off. We just started kind of absorbing them and and the reason the the reasons are not good enough. people are unhappy. It's
179a difficult difficult decision to make. I don't think we should rush into it. >> Lakshmi, have you had a chance to watch the um act TV recordings of the So, you've seen the DMG presentations. Okay. Yeah. Um I was okay. I will send you a note with stuff to look at and where the presentations are. But yeah, let's connect and do that because homework to everybody. Nobody comes unprepared next time. Like not acceptable. So Tori Tori with her teacher hat on. Everybody do your homework. There will be a quiz. >> That's a lot of data. Like that's a lot of for this meeting. I started reading. I could not complete. >> Yeah. And you and I will connect over the weekend and I'll get you caught up. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Um next up, >>
180objectively, we set a schedule. Objectively, we set a steering committee. The steering committee provided this community, this committee with their final report to us tonight. Our intentional pathway was to look at this and to deliberate over the next three meetings to to vote on that which comes to us winnowing down. That's a longer conversation than something tacked on at the end of the first presentation of the final report from the steering committee. I will get back to objectively. We had set a path and I I feel for the district that has to put together the budgets, but the plan had always been for them to build the budgets after the 24th or after we had gone through at least this part of this. We can't jump ahead. We can't jump ahead and remove things. We
181can't jump ahead and add things. We should follow the path that came to us. It's something we do in every other prospect that we do inside the organization. We follow the procedures that are here. We have the ability to change things, but we follow the procedures. And to have the first time the final report of the steering committee is brought to this committee. And to say we're not going to follow this anymore. We're not going to talk about this anymore, I think is irresponsible. And I I do feel terrible about the way that everyone is feeling anxiety. My nine-year-old's crying at the counter tonight talking about what's going to happen with this school. I know how tough this is. It's tough. We're in a terrible situation. There's not enough money to do the things we
182need to do. But that emotion should be filtered through the deliberations that we have here. We should not protect the deliberation from the emotions. Don't remove these tonight. Don't remove these until we have a chance to ask for additional information if necessary to be able to mle over this to be able to have more deliberation on this. Don't vote for this motion. So, some more homework, something to think about for next next two weeks from now, December 18th. We should be thinking about what are intermediate steps and come to an agreement about how we're going to make that work. Okay. Okay. Liz, no. Leela, um, I'm going to preface this by saying you can totally say punt. I'm curious if you have opinions about whether about the impact on on your work and the work
183of your team um, impacted by this decision. And I'm going to reiterate, totally okay to say punt. >> And by saying it, you mean the decision to whittle things down tonight. Um, >> so at a at a personal level, there are many benefits to potentially whittling it down to allow us to focus on fewer options. And I would add a really strong caution right now. And I'm thinking back to the retirement of the mascot where we took quick action on something and quite honestly it created three years worth of additional work um in the form of public records requests you know information text me like it it was it was a really challenging three-year period um and I think it came down to the community didn't feel like we followed a process to get there
184um and you There were a lot of other mitigating factors to that and for the level of uncertainty it is you know what I have I I will say you know to everyone internally and staff principles will will know this I have constantly said you ha once you lay out the process you put a lot of thought into what the process is you then have to just stick with the process um and I appreciate where that's coming from because I you know and I certainly have my own opinions and I've had an opportunity to you know flush those out with the steering committee and everything else and I do think this is a moment where there's going to be a level of uncertainty and I I actually am am wondering for the level the consternation
185around the uncertainty now if even if we bring more certainty to that aspect of it what is the unintended consequence potentially on the other side of it. So I I would, you know, as much as I appreciate it and there's a large part of me that would say it would be great to have a fewer options on the table and be able to kind of alleviate some of the uncertainty within the community and the impact emotionally. I actually am not sure that there wouldn't be equal or greater unintended consequence to it. Well, as someone who was fortunate enough to live through the retirement of the mascot with Peter, um you know, I think um there's there's something interesting here where a lot of people say, "Oh, you're just sort of rubber stamping. The decisions are
186already made." Um and I'm fortunate enough to have the opportunity to sit with Peter and talk with him pretty regularly. Um and if I had had this conversation with him before and he had said that to me in the, you know, the the comfort of his office, I would not have made the motion. And so, you know, I think um I I I appreciate your perspective greatly, Peter. Uh and doing a little vote counting in my my spreadsheet from last year when I learned that we needed to have a spreadsheet to count votes. Um as the as the original motioner, I'm going to withdraw the motion. >> We do need the person who seconded it to also agree to that. >> I second the withdrawal of your motion. >> Okay. So, that was a really
187hard and really good discussion. I can see the tension on everybody's faces. Take a deep big deep breath. Like, we we yeah, we have more of this coming, but you know, thank you for doing what's hard. And, you know, I hope everybody can see that we're struggling with this just as much as you are. Okay. So, we all have our homework for next time. You have homework. We have homework. >> I don't need the rest of my homework. >> Yes, Le. That's right. Thank you, Leela. Um, yeah. Number one, I I know that one of the um I feel like my voice is reflecting how tired I am. Um, one of the kind of core things that we had talked about going into this reorg is around um, especially not disrupting kind of specialized specialed
188programs. And I would just love feedback from you and your team, Peter, around which of these might facilitate special ed and multilingual supports um more, easier, better. If you need clarity around the metrics, happy to think about it. Um >> can I just ask a question on that just to and I know it's late so I may be misunderstanding something. I think just for clarity, we actually have not said that there would be no disruption in special education programs. I I think what we wanted to make sure we said was we were prioritizing >> the continuity of programming for students. Um, which is certainly there. So, I just want to make sure we're on the same page and I don't overcommit. >> No, I appreciate the clarification. Um, second thing, and maybe I just don't
189remember this is I'm wondering if there's if we've already received or we can get the survey results just for staff like broken out. It's in the AB forward packet from >> Tuesday. Great. Thanks. >> Hey, Tori. Oh, sorry. >> Me, >> Andrew. Hi. >> Uh oh, God. All right. Um, here we go. Buckle up. So the reason I wanted to mention a couple things is, you know, I think certainly even though Adam has withdrawn his motion, I think some of what inspired that in terms of the concern around what's going on amongst different school communities, the desire to try and mitigate that, a few other things. I think what it has surfaced for me or it reminded me of is one of the things that we may or may not want to confront is just
190the idea of the open enrollment process in general historically and moving into the future. So right now our my understanding is that there isn't really an appetite to drastically change the open enrollment process except for tweaking some things around the edges which is fine. not suggesting it otherwise, but I think what this does reveal is, you know, open enrollment has historically been both a blessing and a curse. And I speak as someone who's in now responsible for implementing it. Um because quite frankly, and and as I said this in the in the EB Forward meeting, people often refer to it as school choice, and that's not true because not everybody gets their choice. And so one of the wonderful things about open enrollment is it has historically allowed communities to create unique identities as families
191have pointed out here in ways that allow them to be passionate and and feel very connected to their unique school community. The challenge now is now that we have to reorganize they are clearly intentionally so not interchangeable parts and so there is a loss involved. So that's the piece that I think we're struggling with a bit is when you ask me and and the team about creating some placement plans or replacement plans. A lot of it is we could create something but under what context in terms of are we still promoting the idea of open enrollment? Because here's the challenge is that in a perfect world open enrollment would be much better if we had the agility to shrink and expand a school based on interest. If there was because I think that's the pieces
192right we have this idea that we have all these diverse school philosophies. You know, I will say, you know, right now, obviously, the Miriam pieces, they have a very unique um approach that people are passionate about because like someone said, in traditional public schools, you don't have a lot of opportunity to have the type of learning experience, projectbased looping, a lot of the things that uh are often very unique in a public school setting. That being said, right now, at least in the past few years, it has not been um the people who sign up for it are super happy about it and super passionate about it. That being said, with open enrollment, you're also by necessity going to have a great number of families who are going to have to go there um simply
193because they can't get the choice that they wanted. So, that's kind of the dark underbelly of it is that on the one hand, we can we can celebrate the choice, a unique choice for families who want it. the cost, the subsidy there is that you're going to have if we continue this a great many families who don't. So that's where I would imagine for Conan families who are looking at 5v2 is sort of this am I just going to be placed in a place where just by simple kind of uh percentage-wise we're just going to be kind of consumed by kind of the status quo. So that's kind of the tension there. So, you know, we don't have the luxury of time of trying to to trying to untangle, not untangle, but sort of unpack
194this really long historical issue, but right now the charge has been don't touch open enrollment, but come up with a new plan. I don't know if we can separate the two. That being said, I also know that saying, "Hey, let's revisit and debate open enrollment is a whole giant can of something." Um, so that that is a tension, but but I think the reason why I wanted to speak out on this is that I think some of the things that we're all wrestling with are the symptoms of a larger question about how do we look at the creation and the maintenance of school communities and the development of identity. Even if we encourage school communities to create new identities, that's great. Then what? Then are we sort of then saying we are still going to
195maintain open enrollment? And so that's the piece too where people are saying, hey, with larger schools, we can be more agile and and add sections and reduce sections, but to what degree does interest by the community influence that? Is it simply about financial sort of uh efficiency that we're going to add in reduced sk sections or is it also about the interest of the community? You could view um the interest of a community in ter in terms of interest in a school as potentially the right thing or you could view it as the tail wagging the dog. So, um, so I think that's what I don't have an answer for you, but I'm just saying that at a certain point I can come up with all sorts of placement ideas where we prioritize and deprioritize
196certain things. Uh but at the end of the day, I would say from an equity standpoint, there's a gener generational equity piece, meaning whatever we come up with, I then have to think about, okay, when we enroll kindergarten students for next year, what does that look like in terms of how many spots are available? What does that look like? And are we creating a scenario where you're going to have a certain number of families who are going to feel like they won't get the choice that they want? >> Sorry. All right, Adam. I >> thank you, Andrew. And you know, I think we've we've talked about this a little bit, particularly in in options five and six. We don't know what those school communities look like. And the thing that's really hard about that is
197if you change everything up and you bring a whole group of people together, they get the opportunity to decide then what is their school community. But then you may end up with a subset of the people who are in that building in that community who feel that that's not the right place for them. And then if we have school choice that has to all get moved around again. So I guess maybe what might be helpful and you know I want to be careful between us sort of going into the operations side but also us sort of visioning what we want the schools to be. But what would be helpful I think as a a request for information would be to understand from the six school programs that we have now what are some of their
198defining features and maybe if we look at um some of the options in five and six we can define what some of those features might be in those buildings to help families understand what building they may want to be in and also give our administrators and our in our school communities an opportunity to come together with a shared set of values that are not specific to any one of the schools that we have now, but an overarching shared set of values that then they can go and vision more specifically in the future. So I think the request would be what are some of the defining features of each of our elementary schools and then the work that we would have as we might vision what an enrollment policy and what a a redistribution policy might
199look like could be based around us providing a little bit more direction around what those larger or new school communities could be focused on. >> Bring it on, Peter. This is something I've thought a lot about and I'm I'm I actually had a conversation with a mentor of mine last night that who's been in the area for 50 years um in education not associated with actro but in similar communities and was actually around when when Miriam was formed um and had been peripheral to that process. So it was actually really interesting to hear from the individual. I think what strikes me about the coming together of Miriam is it was a community who had come together to create what they wanted out of that school and it created this incredible period of experimentation and innovation
200in education and created this world that hadn't been done before. It took the people who were going to be there doing it to create it. I'm not sure we're going to achieve the result of I think the there there is there are benefits and drawbacks to all of these and I'm not going to get into all but but one of the benefits of option five or six but though the benefit of that is you create an environment that is rife for innovation and people coming together in a new community to create what they want out of the community. if that's done before they're in it together, it's a community that has been done to them rather than with them. um and and through them. I in all honesty, what I really would like to see
201us doing as a process, if we go to option five or option six, hopefully not six, um but if we go to five or six, to be able to tell all of our schools, and quite honestly, I think we need to do this in all of our options, tell all of our schools, you have families that have never been with you before. You have families that do not choose what you want and what your traditional values have been. If we only ask people to assimilate, we're going to have families who are going to develop resentment for six and seven years because assimilation to another culture is never a goal. It has not been the foundational vision that we have for Act and Boxboro. It's that, you know, people shouldn't give up their own beliefs in
202order to fit into ours, right? Um and I think in any option but particularly option five and six there's this opportunity for innovation that when people come together we can actually share a lot of the best practices and let that develop through the community that has come together rather than trying to predetermine it. It means that there is less certainty initially and I think a lot more power later. So, I I think maybe what I'm saying is I still think slowing the process down. >> It's fair. I I guess my question is if I put my myself in the the shoes of someone who's maybe lost their school building, I don't know which to choose. And so, how do I know what to do? And and short of a, you know, a a redistribution policy
203that says we're just going to take you and spread you out. That doesn't feel good. That's kind of what I'm responding to. >> Yeah, I hear that. And I and I I totally get that. I think um one I think I need to think on it a little bit um and think about what that would look like and Andrew and I can talk and we can talk with our team. Um I think one of the things that we did when we created this version of the policy it's actually the procedure but when we worked on this procedure we had started just with an assumption of how do we move the least students that's only one assumption that we can make um because I think what we've seen here and and I'm saying this because I've
204been thinking about this for, you know, 18 months now, not just a few. But the there's there's disruption to everyone no matter what happens because we've already created disruption. So there's there's general disruption. There can be less disruption for some, but it increases the intensity of the disruption for others. And then there we had, you know, someone come up at public comment a number of months ago and say there's also the duration of the disruption. what's the likelihood that choosing one option now means we might have to change later um and do something different. So there's there's different types of disruption, but if if we the goal is to come back with something that tries to more fairly think about how we recreate communities, we can come back with something like that um as a
205brainstorm. It will not be perfect because what we presented you tonight isn't perfect either. Um but we could certainly come back with something like that. >> Is that the ask? Yes. >> Okay. >> Sorry for the long-winded explanation, but there there's a lot I think that goes into that that I think quite honestly we all have to have out in this type of a meeting. um to talk a little bit about what you had just mentioned. Is there a way that you can align the options of the things we know and things we don't know from an operational standpoint across these knowing for example what it means to have you know five schools and two build and three buildings or what it means to have upper and lower what operationally we need to keep in
206mind as we're going through this with specific point of view on capacity so that we can have some understanding of the flow of the day knowing there's knowns and unknowns. If you don't know it say we don't know this. I'm looking at you and just finishing writing down what Adam told me to do. >> Excellent. >> And then I will say can we get um if you look at the options can you align the operations as best you understand categories not like specifics. So we have an understanding of what each of these options means for the operations of the school from >> lunch, recess, library, gym, flow, that kind of stuff as well as potential for additional uh supervision or aids. Just a way of being able to have a better understanding as to what
207these mean when you start looking at the configuration of the operations of the school. Yes, we can we we can come back with something like that knowing that it will be in software version just a way of being able to talk to it. >> Yeah, we can do that. Andy, you know, the other thing I'm hoping to come back to you, you know, either I'm hoping for next meeting and I want to make sure I can get there before I overcommit is kind of a floor plan of each building so you can see on a map how the schools might actually physically sit too um and break down. I think that would actually be helpful for people understanding like what's a special education space versus a multilingual space, a general education classroom, art, music, PE,
208how does that all work together? So, um, that's been something I've been looking at in the background as well. But I think we can talk to the generalities of this two in a way that will make sense. >> I'm almost afraid to look around the table. Go ahead, Vicram. >> Um, yeah, I uh uh what was I going to say? Um, yeah, forgive me for not having read that 101page document. I have a lot going on in my life. I don't get paid to be here. That's that's a that's a big ask. Also, now to find it in the middle of all the communication that's come through. I literally have hundreds and hundreds of emails to scroll through. if you could send that specifically. Also, I think next time we talk about this to actually
209have the financial numbers up there with these so people can actually see that very plainly rather than have it buried in 101page document I think would be helpful not just to the school committee but everybody uh who watches. Um also is is it true that option four three of the schools would not be touched um and only right three would not be touched. Blanchard and and Douglas and Gates would not be touched in option well I mean aside aside from having an influx of students. Um other than that they would other than that they wouldn't be touched whereas in option five absolutely every single school with the exception of Blanchard uh would have significant changes. Is that true? >> And Blanchard would also have um students and staff some >> influx. So so all of
210these like any option you pick okay >> we have that going on. Also regarding uh data points, um I know that there are some requests from some schools to move to other schools. Uh I had heard that actually uh the majority of those requests are coming from the Parker Damon building. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but if those numbers could be supplied as well um because I think that would that would be helpful. >> Okay. So what I will do Friday update on Friday when you get the update I will include all the links to like the key data points the 101 page supplemental information the the other things that have come out Navy forward so it's all in one place so you don't have to go through a whole bunch of
211agendas that means when Julie sends that out everybody reads it head nods. Okay, Lisa, >> I just wanted to quickly end this discussion on a happy note. When we did our building tours on the Friday before Thanksgiving, um I knew that we had phenomenal people working in the district and that was just confirmed again when we visited six different schools, the six different elementary schools, went inside all of those different classrooms. I saw the same lesson six different times. the level, the consistent level of high quality instruction. Um, I wouldn't say it's amazing because I knew it was there, but it was wonderful to see that it was affirming. It's something that I want to shout from the rooftops. And when we talk about community and when we talk about what really matters for our
212kids, one of the things that I really saw in all of those uh schools consistently was how much our educators, our support staff, our administrators love our children and deeply and genuinely care about them and work so hard to foster relationships with them. And at the end of the day, we have a lot of amazing people here. And I just want to take a quick moment to celebrate them because it was wonderful to get to do those building tours. We haven't had a chance to talk about that um since having that. And um just really celebrate all those people that mean so much to us and our students. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so here's the deal. If you think of something else that you need to know, because I don't know about you, but I usually
213can't process school committee meetings until I've slept on it and maybe gone for a run, send an email to me and Peter. We will we will wrap anything else in that we can. But that probably needs to be what is this Thursday? That probably needs to be by the end of this week, you know, to provide some reasonable ability to be able to respond to that by the time we hit our next one. Read your Friday updates. I am planning to skip over liaison reports. Does anybody have heartburn with that? Okay, great. Um, in that case, >> Subcommittee reports. Um, oh >> yeah, >> we actually need to do one of those. Um, I think we need to do budget subject. >> Okay, budget sub. We need to do that one. So the most important
214takeaway from budget subcommittee um is that we are I I don't know if we've decided or we're strongly considering the budget subcommittee all agreed that we would like to move budget Saturday um from February 7th to the the date that we have as the snow day for budget Saturday which is Monday the 9th. The reason being um twofold um one we don't think that we're going to need 4 hours for budget Saturday. We're not going to have as in-depth a budget binder as we've had in the past because we just don't know where we're going to be and we won't have voted um our final option on the 22nd. Um and the budget binders and all of that needs to be submitted before that date. So um you know we've been we were sensitive to
215all of the work that we're asking the administration to do all the budgets that we know they're going to have to plan and said that we did not need as detailed a budget binder for this year. So we felt we didn't need as much time. And secondly, um because this is a Boxboro override year, um Boxboro is having their uh budget uh capital Saturday on the same day as our uh original budget Saturday. So, we thought that we could move it to Monday so at least finance committee members could come. Um and I recognize though that there is still a scheduled select board meeting um for Boxboro that evening, but I think we can work around that. And I think it's important that um we get some Boxboro members there and we'll be able to
216do that on the Monday versus the Saturday. So I don't know, are we looking for consent from the rest of the committee on that? >> On Friday when Julie sends you the update, please provide your availability so we know if this is feasible. So two things in Friday, all all of the stuff to to read and also the link to where you indicate your availability for meetings. just from a a budget binder development perspective. We want to be clear and you know I know we have some select board members in here and finance committee members who are pay attention. We are likely not to be able to produce the same type of a budget binder that we've had in previous years um on that same schedule. In order to have a budget binder that we
217can publish before budget Saturday, we actually have to have collected those materials like in the first week of January um from all of our departments. If we don't decide on the model we're using until the end of January, there's no path to actually creating that in the the same amount of time. So, I just I want to just prepare like all the people who like to read the 400page budget binders or 500page budget binder we do. It's not going to be the same thing. We will be as transparent as we can about the budget. And quite honestly, I actually think you the school committee and community is very likely to see most of what's going to be in the budget proposal that we present on January 22nd actually within the next two school committee meetings
218because we're going to be talking about staffing impact of AB forward and the financial models and everything else. And that's going to be pretty clear about where we're going with this budget proposal. So, I still think it will feel pretty transparent to people what's coming and not surprising, but it won't be that traditional binder on the same timeline. >> And as a reminder, what we have to do is vote a preliminary budget. That's a bottom line number, not to exceed. And we'll be able to do that on the 9th and still keep to all the rest of the schedules that we have. There are opportunities as we continue through the budget process to refine to move funds from one cost code to another, but what's most important is that we make sure we get that
219bottom line number not to exceed to the towns in the timeline that the regional agreement sets out. >> Okay, I am going to attempt to be able to read everything straight and get us out of here. So, consent agenda. Items on the consent agenda do not usually require discussion and are approved with one vote unless any member would like to hold an item for discussion in a separate vote. I will read each item and if a member would like it held, please say hold. Members do not have to have attended a meeting to vote on the minutes. Item A, approval of ABRSC me meeting minutes 112025. Item B, recommendation to approve budget transfers per policy DJB. Item C, Littleton Electric Light and Water Department $4,97925 grant donation to Blanchard Memorial School, which by the way
220is some really cool Lego sets if you haven't read that. Item D, approval of warrants as presented in the packet 12425. Having heard that no items were held, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? >> Second. >> All right. Ben moved and I heard Leela with second. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Ben, >> can I share an FYI before we adjourn? >> Sure. Very quickly, um, for those of you who get the, uh, emails from Parent Square, at 6:15 tonight, out came a notification that cartwheel is hosting a webinar for families and staff talking to children about grief and loss December 10th. Uh, so there might be a lot of people who could benefit from that. December 10th from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. there'll be a webinar. Move
221to adjourn. Second. >> All right. So, that was Adam with the motion, Ben with the second. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Great. Thank you all. Have a good night.