Acton-Boxborough School Committee Meeting - November 1st, 2022

001foreign [Music] the hour and the presence of a quorum I call the acton-boxborough regional school committee to order members of the public who wish to watch the meeting online may use actent TV's YouTube channel found at the top of the agenda this meeting is being recorded and will be posted on actin TV's website at actentv.org I have no chairwoman's remarks this evening just to say thank you all for coming out on a Tuesday thank y'all for two months in a row of three meetings I am happy to share with you we will only have two this month so thank you for all of the time that you've given and for the time that you will continue to give um we will now accept an update from our three student Reps for this year they will

002be reporting um at the first school committee meeting each month and we'll share some student perspective on current events at the high school this is per our policy jib student involvement in decision making um today there's two of us yes just introduce oh yes to all of us please thank you my name is harshini magesh and I'm a school committee rep um so today I'd like to address the need for more gender-neutral bathrooms at the high school currently around school there are three gender neutral bathrooms but um therefore students who don't feel very comfortable or safe using the restrooms allocated for girls and boys specifically are left with limited options and I've also heard from many of my friends and classmates that teachers often tend to use these gender neutral restrooms as alternatives for staff

003bathrooms and this causes such students who maybe for example part of the transgender or gender non-conforming Community or persons with disabilities to have to wait for extended periods of time and or travel long distances to gain access to these restrooms so thus I feel that it's necessary to implement more gender-neutral restrooms within the high school to foster a more inclusive community thank you yeah I also talked about that at the end of last year um I have mentioned that too so I agree with everything she's saying um do you kindly introduce yourself yes I'm Molly Norris I'm a sophomore uh today I'm going to be talking about the crowded hallways and our school's dust problem but I'll also be discussing a positive change that I've noticed since beginning the school year to start off I'd

004like to give my own opinions about the crowded hallways every day when I'm trying to get to my classes I find myself at a standstill in the hallways especially surrounding doorways and staircase entrances an anonymous student said people stop in the hallways to talk they'll walk four across they'll walk down the middle of the hallways where people are usually using that room to pass they'll walk super slow due to this when you have a class in Upper East and your next class is in Lower West and makes it very difficult to get to class on time because of how crowded and busy the hallways are if you are unfamiliar with the layout of the school upper east and Lower West are pretty far apart especially when you only get a five minute passing period the

005problem isn't how crowded the school is the problem is people's attitudes in the hallways to get to class sometimes you are forced to push past people who have decided to stop in the middle of the hallway randomly to talk to a friend they saw although we should be encouraging socializing we also need to keep in mind that others have a class far away to get to in the same passing time these people who are stopping in the hallways have another issue in the hallways is the rough housing Rica Schneider said people run or mess in the around in the hallways which poses a hazard to people walking and poses traffic I can attest to this I often see people shoving others against Lockers in the hallways or running to chase their friends and grab them

006as I said before we do recognize that it is important to have social time in school however when the social time starts affecting the ability of other students to stay safe into the school and get to their classes on time it's something that needs to be changed on a different note I've heard from multiple students that our school has a dust problem a student named Rye said the school is very dusty and it bothers my allergies another student Reika Schneider from earlier also shared their thoughts Dustin the school is affecting people's ability to learn because it's triggering their allergies causing irritation during class I know it's hard to keep a school completely clean especially a school like a b but I believe that we should have some sort of way to keep the dust levels

007to a minimum this would positively impact the school and I think it would be a good idea and investment in the long run amidst these problems there are also many things going right as one of my friends mentioned to me it's nice to be able to see everyone gathering in groups and being able to hug each other again because of covid the last few years have required us to be very distant from each other it's a good feeling when you see people getting back to their old rhythms now being able to hang out and be close to each other thank you thank you thank you both any questions for our students committee members or comments all right very good thank you all right here we go per we're here for public participation per school committee

008policy b-e-d-h members of the public are invited to speak for up to three minutes regarding items that are not on the agenda for items on the agenda the public is asked to please wait for that item the committee does not typically respond to comments during public participation Mr Ballard thank you oh wonderful good evening uh Steve Ballard from Boxborough I want to continue my last three minute uh comment from the last meeting uh not your joint meeting but uh the last open public meeting that we had here um and just to continue there are a lot of questions I will send them to you committee members but I just wanted to help you to to think about the stuff that you're going to talk about in December uh again and I want to say again

009what Tessa said was absolutely true when she said you know let's wait till we hear the whole story because we didn't hear it at that meeting but she herself and two other members one of whom is here and one of them is not very smart members of this committee and all with the well-intentioned uh actions that I've seen including cancer um were did not wait to thank the administration for making them feel safe or with their kids at the school and so when you don't understand another member is not here it's anger about that um maybe it would help just to see the reality that we all know okay the hindsight is 20 20 but um Mr light did his best I'm sure and I'm sure other people in the administration did but they did

010not make the school safer it made it more dangerous because now we know there were no guns in the school except for the six or seven or eight Glocks that went in with the police that the First Media report I've showed they stormed in there they were all six seven Cruisers in front of the the circle the high school went in to do a search okay two hour lockdown and then now we know um these students didn't know student had a gun and we've heard about searches okay searches um apparently it was a search of the school I'm assuming that was a blanket um a locker search but we don't know we were told and there were searches of the students we were told and we don't know what those entails except that they were

011in a room they were taken out of the classrooms now why wouldn't if you had reasonable suspicion that there were six students that might have a gun probably don't because yesterday we determined that the police said it's not really a problem one minute why would you not say instead of calling those six black men out of their rooms and isolating them and questioning them without their parents there why wouldn't you instead say okay kids coming to school there are a couple of places where they might have a gun Locker room so why wouldn't you go to the six rooms or five rooms or how many rooms there were with the administrators and say stand up everybody let's go to the cafeteria all of them nope leave all your stuff here go out and then cops

012come around the wall you know go in and search the room the rooms okay and then then you're not singling out these black men that you already have an idea that they probably don't have a gun single them out they everybody knows who they are now instead and then why you have a question from the administration that you can't they can't answer because of one person supposes privacy issues it sounds like the person one of three white people who who are on the Press thank you Steve that we know what about the Privacy interests of these black men thank you are there any other members of the audience who'd like to do public participation and address this committee hello Molly sorry I just like to comment again on that comment um I looked up after

013that situation the statistics in a b of black students and I found out that it was I'm not sure if these are completely updated they might be from a few years ago but it said there were around 3.7 black students and when I did the math that means they're around 30 something black students in the school and when six black boys are getting pulled out of their classes and accused in an anonymous bullying report system of be having a gun I think it is important because it is a risk and it's something they have to like look at but I also think when they sent the email out to the students afterwards they said they were going to consider if there was any racial profiling involved and I think it was very clear there was

014racial profiling involved and I know my mom is a school administrator and I know how hard it is to get these things right and make everybody happy and just make sure that it's all going well and I know how hard it is to keep everybody safe but I think the wording in that email and some of the opinions and reactions of the staff and administrators was not the best way to handle the situation I'm gonna make space if anybody has any other comments and then I'll move on to superintendents update very good Mr superintendent all right thank you Kira so first you know I want to say I'm excited to welcome some of our staff in a few minutes to do a little presentation on some of the work we're doing around culturally responsive schools

015I want to just update you on a few different things first I want to congratulate one of our High School coaches um Bill Kane who is the MIAA coach of the year for gymnastics we just received that and I'll just read a little bit this was in recognition based on Excellence of character impact upon students and community and coaching credentials so congratulations to Bill very very pleased I also just want to point out if you read the Boston Globe recently there was a wonderful write-up on our girls soccer team and some of the students involved in that so if you haven't gotten a chance to read it I would highly encourage you to to take a look we just received in the mail a proclamation from Senator Eldridge through the Senate congratulating us on the

016opening of the new school so thank you Senator Eldridge as well as leadership in the Senate and then finally um just a very quick update um if you're headed to the masc conference you may see some some familiar faces we have a panel presenting um around the work around culturally responsive schools and in particular some of our partnership with the leadership academy out of New York to continue to develop that and around you know the efforts this year to think about expanding teacher leadership in that area and giving more voice to our faculty and then additionally we are also participating as a district on a panel on green buildings so I know Kiera is presenting on our panel around culturally responsive schools Adams participating in the panel on Green Building initiatives in the state so

017you know thank you both and we look forward to seeing you if you're headed there questions about that because we're on time we can keep it moving all right so then um Peter are you going to introduce our uh our guests I'm going to do the initial introduction um of our assistant superintendent for teaching and learning Deb bookis and our director of diversity equity and inclusion uh Jennifer Faber they have done a wonderful job of preparing this presentation for you I'm going to let them do some more introductions of everyone who's going to be speaking because we're going to do this just like a few weeks ago when we did social emotional learning we're going to do this in some smaller chunks so that you have an opportunity to ask a few questions in between

018we do have a number of items so as you think about questions um you know we just want you to be wary of timing and the agenda as well thank you good evening y'all welcome good evening thank you um as Peter introduced I am Jennifer Faber I am the director Joe come closer I could be real if you need me to um I am the director of diversity equity and inclusion and I did start in July so I am a new face to many of you and tonight I'm we're here on behalf of all the Educators and we'd like to thank you for this time and space to be able to share and highlight the work that's happening here at a B um so for tonight's presentation we um you can see up above we

019have our agenda and these are the talking points that we want to highlight the work we have District strategy seed crtl curriculum and Welcome Center all of these um will be presented by some of our Educators and myself as well and after each section just so you know we will have some time for questions as well as at the end because we do have a lot of moving parts that are happening here for each section so we want to make sure that we allow for time for any questions or comments that you might have so thank you so I'll start off with sharing our district strategy you've seen this slide before I want to call your attention though to the lower left portion of the diagram where we talk about culturally responsive and inclusive professional

020learning and culturally responsive curriculum instructional practices and materials and so this is going to be the area of focus for us this evening around our district strategy I also want to call your attention to the square on the bottom right hand side for this year we will be able to gather some baseline data around this work we will be conducting two surveys for all of our students our staff and our families focused on belonging and relationships and school and District climate and culture so that'll give us a sense of our starting point the framework that we're using um is the one by the leadership academy it's a portrait of a culturally responsive school system and within that there are rubrics and Frameworks for superintendents and principals in um eight different practice areas from everything from

021self-work to our looking at our core values to adult learning and to Community Care and engagement the Frameworks also include some indicators so we can gauge our work again starting with that Baseline foundation and then moving forward yeah so our next section is going to be focused on seed and seed is seeking educational equity and diversity and we have two presenters who are current seed leaders we have Maureen Lynn and Karen drown who are hopefully walking up to present the next section welcome y'all thank you I'm Karan Brown I teach social studies at the high school and I'm also a seed facilitator so Maureen and I are here to talk about seed so um seed was founded in 1987 at Wellesley College um by um Dr Peggy McIntosh she's probably the most well known for

022um a really uh popular article that students reading graduate school um called unpacking the invisible knapsack and it's about white racial privilege um and Seed essentially started with the belief that teachers learn best from other teachers particularly the peers that they work with so we become facilitators in seed programming and we do a lot of fashioning our own curriculum so we we go to new leaders week and we learn all about what seed is about and then we create curriculum based on what we've learned from seed and we continue to develop that curriculum as time goes on and the purpose of seed really is to encourage teachers to learn from each other's experiences specifically related to inequity in terms of race gender class and then other systems of Oppression and privilege hi I'm Maureen Lin

023I'm the special ed coordinator at the junior high back in I was one of the first a b Educators to go to see new leaders week and be able to come back and provide seminars for our district and our community we now have 15 seed leaders throughout the district who are able to offer seminars we have two going in the fall we have two planned for the spring and we have some also planned for the summer a common misperception is that seed is a training that's not a word that I like when we talk about seed because I think with Equity work it can never be trained it's more of a beginning of the journey and learning all that you need to continue to learn and understand to do work um seed leaders guide colleagues

024and experiential interactive exercises and conversations and really try to cultivate spaces for self-learning and peer sharing to create more inclusive learning spaces and communities one of my favorite Parts about it is that it's district-wide PD so in the seminar I'm leading right now we have preschool Educators all the way through up to high school Educators and it really creates a great way to build community and work on common goals I think it also helps us to think about the needs of kids and families in a holistic way which is a unique aspect of this PD so um one of the great things about seed I think and this is something I learned um going through new leaders week and then also learned having taught um three sections of seed already is that um it really

025creates an enormous transformative change for a lot of teachers I get emails all the time about how differently they see the curriculum that they perhaps have been teaching for 10 or 15 years in ways that they hadn't looked at it before because seed provides this this alternative lens and so I think that can be a really powerful change for a lot of teachers new teachers and older teachers to be able to to shift the the focus and the filter of how they see education how they see their their practice in the classroom and then the other thing I think it does too it is also really asks us to look at our curriculum deeply particularly if we've been doing that curriculum for a long time how we deliver that curriculum what types of materials and

026resources we use from where those resources and materials come from and then change the way that we interact with our students the ways in which we create curriculum and create pedagogy in practices within the classroom I think also having a number of people go through seed allows for us to to be able to find conversation Partners in our buildings last week I had three people come to my office because the student had made an insensitive comment um and each one of these Educators was is completely capable of coming up with a thoughtful response but it struck me the power of being able to find people to say can I just run this by you can we talk about this and so we're seeing a lot of people do that it helps you to kind of

027identify who are the champions for Equity work and for for um for advocating for kids and Families we know we like to think that seed is having an impact I know that a lot of school-based work is happening some of which you'll hear about later I can point to one example from the junior high Molly Wong who you'll hear from later is a a librarian at the junior high and she and I have teamed up to create a gray block class for students that we're calling perspectives and so we're allowing students to have access to some of these interactive activities as a way to keep spreading the work and the and the learning anybody have any questions about seed work questions some of us have been through this training so I'm sorry some of us

028have been very common the introduction to seed um any committee members Center for Women and you know the 87 1987 the year I graduated from college 87 that's when this article was written by the founder of seeds who is the embodiment of white privilege and she used that term my privilege uh first I think uh you know and made it part of a vernacular but um you know she has to do three degrees from Harvard and one from Cambridge or Oxford whatever and she's been there the first generation feminist and now uh we have second and third generation white teachers all over the place who are learning from this top-down hierarchical authoritarian uh teaching system which is what I see is a problem with seeds with udl and all the stuff that's on here pretty

029much I'm a progressive Democratic Socialist and I like I see okay it's great that she recognized that she was privileged and that she's in Wellesley and talking about it but my parents are 86 she's 87 years old she's teaching lots of white women seven one out of seven six out of seven of us the teachers here are white women okay one out of seven are men we have we have people of color they're at the bottom okay they're the teachers so we're gonna spend a couple of years training people my age who look like me but they're women to teach the 20 and 30 year olds the only ones who are teachers of color mostly or the ones who also are more hip to stuff that 87 years so I don't understand like why why

030we have this top-down thing we have a nice horizontal Equity with with you know classes that are not authoritarian structured now within you know it's in all this stuff but we don't have we have a hierarchical structure we're going to teach people to teach people you know the most privileged to teach the the other privileged people to teach to trickle down why why is this good I mean I guess I would argue that even in seed training um much of that training is in fact done by many individuals of color of a variety of different ages um and the experience is not one where um the facilitators direct everybody to think or believe certain things it is very much an experience where people are we're sharing information we're sharing content and we're asking people to

031think deeply about that it is not I think as Maureen pointed out it is not a training where we're asking people to think a certain way it is very much about engaging individuals to think deeply about about systems of privilege that exist and I would say the seed sessions that I attended were some of the most diverse sessions in education I've ever been a part of so I argue that there is quite a lot of diversity in seed in 20 yeah go for it no I think Steve point I think one of the other things that it's easy to Discount sometimes in equity work that there's actually a specific body of knowledge and skill set required to do work well um I think you know to Discount that lessens that type of work in comparison

032to some other academics and I think of you know take music for example there's a skill set that people develop over the course of their lives through the study of music and if we want someone to Be an Effective music teacher we expect them to develop skills before we put them in front of students in a classroom and similarly our mathematics teachers go through years of training to be able to teach mathematics well if we want our teachers to understand strong principles of culturally responsive schools and examining their own bias there's a skill set that they want to develop and so there is that point of reflection and you know bringing people together to do this work so I just think you know we don't want to Discount that there's a skill needed to be

033able to do the work well thank you I want to be really clear oh okay thank you hi Tessa hi um Maureen you mentioned that um that there's some work at the junior high where you're hoping to put together a class that sort of teaches some of these principles too um those junior high students and I'm just curious because I heard some really not positive feedback about my child's experience on Halloween and some slurs that were thrown around and things like that and I just wonder are we still participating in the ADL program at thaya school and my follow-up question to that is is there a hope to kind of bring this to the general population of the high school because I know that we have classes on the Holocaust and we have some social

034studies classes that you know bring up controversial topics we have bioethics but these are all choice-based classes and the kids that tend to take them are the kids that already tend to look at different perspectives and think more widely about things and it doesn't seem to be going away you know we still have these incidents with swastikas and slur you know everything and everything that we just talked about with you know the black students at the lockdown I I just I I think the seed program is amazing as well I mean that was one of the most life-changing uh professional development opportunities that I've participated in and I think it's amazing but it has to extend to the kids and I feel like it has to extend faster than it's extending um so I'm just

035curious about those things sorry that's a big question I mean I just work at the junior high so I can only speak to that piece um and you know I I do have still a student at the high school but at the junior high we're we are currently running a grade block class we're running two next trimester um and the following trimester so it is work that we are are trying to get out there and have kids you know it is Choice based so kids are opting into it um so that's that's something we'll continue to think about um you're gonna hear more later about culturally responsive teacher leaders but I know people are trying to embed topics throughout the curriculum which is probably a faster way to see an impact with kids than the

036choice based classes Evelyn and then I'm going to keep it moving so thank you so um my question is are they teach us of color that um a part of the sea training that participate because I recall when I joined the school committee about three years ago it was I believe Maureen you were one of the folks that came to train us with Betty Baker and I asked the same question um and I see you and someone else yes that is not of color coming to talk to us about sea training and I think there's some kind of power in the people that have lived experiences talking about this issue which I haven't seen in my three years been on this school committee or close to three years being a disco comedy so I'm just

037curious do we have teachers or staff of color that participate in this yes I mean there was so we sent I think nine Educators to go to see new leaders week this this past summer and at least half of them were teachers of color maybe you have the exact four or five of them it's correct and actually the other piece that oh God um and the other piece to add to that is when we do we actually are working together for some of our sessions that we do so that we can have Affinity groups within the participants so that we can have enough participants that can divide into Affinity groups that they identify with so yes we do have C leaders including myself that went this Summer that are bypoc and we are also trying

038to create Affinity spaces within those seed sessions for participants and so we're working together to with two different sessions to see if there's enough that we can create those groupings so is there a reason why we haven't seen those back teachers or staff that are associated with the c training here talking to us because in any time that we've talked about seed at this committee we have not had uh they're brand new this year I mean we have four new seed leaders that are out there running seminars they're just brand new so we have a little more Comfort level and in all transparency I also asked and said who would volunteer for tonight's presentation but that's noted that next time we can have um people of color okay thank you so much thank you who's

039next that would be me so I'm going the section we're going to talk about now is culture responsive teacher leaders um Deb is is a culture responsive educator but she's not one of the leaders just to note that it is a brand new implementation this year it was visioned last year to include this Leadership Model in our district and this year is the first implementation so we're just in the beginning of this story in this journey so I'm here speaking on behalf and then hopefully in the future once we get up and running with the professional learning that we'll be doing with them and the work that they're going to be doing in the schools they'll be here also speaking about their experiences so the first thing I want to start with before we get

040into the distributive Leadership Model I want to talk about what is cultural responsive teaching and it's important that we start with a common definition and this definition is actually from zoretta Hammond and her book is culturally responsive teaching in the brain and this is the professional learning book study session and this is the book that we'll be using for cultural responsive teacher leaders I'm not going to take a moment to read you can and there's a lot of words up there so you can take a moment to read yourself there are some you can see bolded words and I want to highlight some of those so what exactly when you look and you see it says teaching moves so what does that look like in a classroom so in a classroom what you can see

041is that we're tapping into students cultural frames and their learning tools and what does that mean that means their identities and their live experiences that they have that they bring to the classroom every day they say you walk into the classroom with 50 of your culture and identity every single day so that means that we have to consider what the children are bringing into the classrooms so for instance if you come from a collectivist culture which I do for me storytelling and song are a really important part of the way that I socialize and I learn so as a teacher you would think about how am I tapping into those lived experiences and cultural norms and how am I putting that into the classroom another big piece or a teaching move that we consider is

042that relationship building it's critical for connection connection is really an on-ramp into engaging students in the classroom a community of Learners is another teaching move like how do I create a community where we can collaborate and have those connections so there that's not a curriculum that's a move that you do um in order to have a responsive classroom and when we talk about responsive we talk about that Educators can mirror those um the way that their students learn and that they incorporate that into their instruction every day so I wanted to make sure that we had sort of a little context as to when we talk about cultural responsive teaching what that means and we'll move now into the Leadership Model so um I was not here when this was Visions but um but I'm

043now currently implementing it so culture responsive teacher leadership came out of an out it's an outcome of a culturally responsive practice District goal to expand the leadership and have that distributive leadership last year 38 Educators were interviewed to be part of this new initiative in the district we currently have 32 across the district and it ranges between two to five within each School and the roll overview so I want to talk a little bit about like what does it mean to be a culture responsive teacher leader I shorten it by calling them crtls because it's a real mouthful every time I say that so they're supporting the school administration so if there's a Dei related goal or if there's some work that they want to work through together that's something the cultural responsive teacher leaders

044can support the building Administration they also are building their own capacity as Learners so in the next slide I'll talk a little bit about the professional learning that's going to be happening for these teacher leaders through the work that we're doing with Leadership Academy myself as a co-facilitator and then once they've sort of grown that capacity for their own learning then they're also going to be providing professional development in their buildings depending on what the school administration school principals would like to see the other piece of it too is that this is a constant way to make sure that you can be a thought partner for your colleague so if you know Maureen mentioned a little bit about being a seed leader how someone came up to them and mentioned something it's the same thing

045for culturally responsive teacher leaders if you're thinking about something you're saying do you think that's something that I should do in my classroom these are the leaders in the building that can say yeah let's talk a little bit more about this I'd like to support you in that work so that's just a general understanding of some of the things that they'll be doing and then wanted to talk a little bit about the professional learning so for the next 10 months we're going to be do Michelle Shannon and I from Leadership Academy will be co-facilitating a book study session and it is based on the book as I mentioned Loretta Hammond's cultural responsive teaching in the brain and we have an arc of learning of the different chapters that would be working with them once they

046have a little bit more of a foundational knowledge of that work that's the information that then they will be sharing in their buildings so that's how you see that distributive leadership and learning the other piece of it is that I also meet with them Peter periodically I already had our first meeting in August and we talk about some problems of practice but we also talk about what are some of the things that we want to move forward in this District that are not just school-based but also can be district-wide that we can do as mentioned they're going to be responsible for school-based professional learning in their schools themselves and the other piece that is not connected with cultural responsive teacher leaders but I wanted to highlight because it is part of cultural responsive practices is

047that we just had our first presentation with safe schools which is part of deci and we had a presenter come and speak to our district leadership team about gender inclusive curriculum and practices in our schools and in January we're going to have two additional presenters come and speak to all the Elementary staff so that's also part of the professional Learning Journey that we have for this year yep questions comments hi Adam thank you all right um I think I need a little more scaffolding here because I know we're building up to something can you more obviously make for me the connection between the the seed work that we've done and having seed leaders leading into the culturally responsive teacher leaders because I feel like we're building to something but I want it to be I

048want to be hit over the head with it it's a great question and it's asked often and it's actually asked of leaders themselves there is an intersectionality that we have to note right so we're working around making sure that we're a cultural responsive school so I say if a teacher comes up to you and they're asking something that occurred at a seed seminar and your culture responsive teacher leader you're not going to say oh no no no I only do seed everyone is learning how to become a cultural responsive educator so seed is very specific in the sense that they're seed leaders so they are the ones facilitating seed sessions and you have to be trained from the national seed project in order to do that and you can also be a thought partner in

049the schools and in fact very often the schools seed leaders and crtls are working together to produce different documents for the schools or supporting teachers or principals as well cultural responsive teacher leaders have a little different um training if you want to say that so the book study is sort of going to be their training and that's going to be very much a year-long process that we're going to be doing with them and they're also supporting any sort of cultural responsive practices in the thought partner way so if someone comes up to them and says you know I'm really struggling with this book I don't know if it's culture responsive to use this book what do you think that's a great example of something that we can work on together and also you can bring

050in a seed leader for that because seed really talks about race and privilege and oppression so they're also Educators that have that that foundational knowledge so they can work together and there's a clear intersectionality but there is the differences of you have to be a seed trained leader from the national seed project a quick follow-up so I I think I understand it from the leader perspective I guess my question is as a practitioner as a teacher in a school why do I do one why do I interact with one versus the other what do I get out of one versus the other um what I'm seeing and possibly Marine you can add a little bit more about seed what I'm seeing with seed is that once you've taken a seed seminar it's a very introspective

051process you're really it's very much transported I think Tessa talked about this earlier it's very transformative for yourself so I think seed is a little bit more intrinsic and I know like I had recently someone follow up with me from one of our sessions and say can we talk a little bit more about that I've never really thought about that ISM and I don't want to share specifics and so that's one way that I think is a little bit different than culture responsive teacher leaders which is such a broad topic for instance one of the things that we're working with cultural responsive teacher leaders is supporting the different holidays and acknowledgments that we're having through the school year so they're sharing that information with their their school staff around if you're going to talk about

052Veterans Day let's talk about what it means what's the historical background what's educator how are you building the Educators knowledge on that here's some better resources that you can use that are appropriate and culturally responsive so that's one example of what cultural responsive teacher leaders are doing but see see leaders are not doing that thank you hi Rebecca hello um I guess I have one nitpicky thing which is I and I understand you guys didn't come up with the the name for this I'm wondering why it's not culturally inclusive and instead is culturally responsive as in we're responding to other cultures being here now which is kind of a weird way of looking at it but my other point I wanted to make is um we do not have a culturally inclusive school menu it's

053a lot of chicken nuggets Pizza stuff like that and I can't imagine anything more soothing and welcoming and familiar than seeing foods that you enjoy at home other committee members Mr hi I have a very quick comment which is if you've been following the ab Food Services social media accounts they have been highlighting culturally responsive food options in in regards to Diwali and there have been a couple other options that have been presented to students actually I think that today they did um I'm going to mispronounce it diaste muertes they did they did that today so that was I saw I saw that so shout out to Food Services for that okay so I'm I'm cool with with public comment I'm gonna give it one minute for per person okay as someone who eats the

054school lunches I don't I bring my own lunch lots of the time but I eat the school lunches sometimes and what I've noticed from the food that's meant to be more diverse is it is like always worse than the food that is just basic like chicken nuggets and I think that is because we don't have people making the food who really know what they're doing with that food and also um this isn't really about culture but I'm lactose intolerant and there are often no main lunch options for lactose intolerant people for gluten-free people for meat-free people it's it's very um you have to be like a certain sort of type person with no dietary restrictions to be able to eat the main lunch and if you don't eat the main lunch then you have to

055pay for a different lunch and some people have to do that because they have dietary restrictions that make it so they can't eat the main lunch thank you Mr Ballard one minute okay oh so sorry about that is my minute up um yeah so a question about this this also like when I echo my own comments about the top-down approach and the teaching of teachers to teach other teachers uh and it doesn't work the cultural responsive stuff when the people who are the experts are the ones at the bottom and uh so and I have the leadership academy an article that seems more appropriate if we're not going to do we do something else a principal's guide to leading in the time of change effective and Equitable family engagement strategies and resources one important lesson

056from this pandemic is how much schools need more Equitable practices support all parents as partners in learning in and outside the classroom now more than ever we must build on the momentum to Foster and sustain meaningful school home Partnerships that are granted and trusted based on a more shared and actionable understanding of student progress for parents and teachers to be allies in this learning process they need a shared understanding of where students are academically and developmentally so they could work together to accelerate learning this principal guide was created to help School leaders support their teachers as they use acid-based Etc what we need is more engagement between the parents who are the people who are the cultures we need to understand and their children and you know teachers are overwhelmed with all these things they

057have to learn thank you and you're trying to teach them why don't we instead learn from them instead when they have professional development that's for you to ask what how can you we help you teachers how can we help you to engage thank you thank you here this is what you should look for the leadership academy website that that guide for engagement the parents and students thank you foreign who's next thank you um so the next section is on curriculum and when we think about curriculum what we're talking about is the design that our Educators use to plan Implement and assess the learning outcomes for our students and curriculum really includes five different components Jen's already talked about you know knowing our students and developing relationships with our students what motivates them what challenges they

058face what's happening in their daily lives really establishing solid firm relationships with our students the second piece is the instructional practices which we've also talked about and touched on so culturally responsive practices I've also heard culturally sustaining practices so that's another term that's that's out there as well inclusive practices and social emotional practices as well so there a lot of those practices cut across and there are some strong similarities the other piece that we need to be thinking about are the learning Targets in Massachusetts they're the Frameworks or the standards you might also known them as learning objectives or essential questions but where do we want our students to go what do we want them to know be able to do by the time there they leave acton-boxborough instructional materials is another important component of

059curriculum what is it that we have on hand what resources what programs what tools do we have in order to instruct and then finally what assessments do we have for learning to know that we've met those targets so all of that comes together in the classroom by a highly skilled professional it's not something that we can take off the shelf curriculum is what happens in the classroom now to the extent possible though we do try to write down what we can and we'll do that through curriculum design creating units creating overviews curriculum mapping course development and projects and so you're going to hear a little sampling of that tonight you'll hear an elementary social studies unit the 7th grade civics project at a new high school course that's been developed you'll also learn about our

060school library's efforts to ensure inclusive and diverse book collections and instruction and all of these curricular Endeavors align with the recommendations of the Dei curriculum subcommittee that came out of the family Dei steering committee last year those were to continue substantive K-12 curriculum work that includes the history of indigenous and black Americans specifically as well as other marginalized groups to highlight the stories and narratives of minoritized groups and to provide a wide range of books including those written by authors who belong to traditional underrepresentative groups and so we you know did that survey last year so that we could better understand how our families and our students feel they're represented within our curriculum and these are a few of the examples that we're working on to work towards those goals and those recommendations so I'd

061first like to introduce to you Lori Taylor and she is our Pre-K to 12 library media department chair thank you Deb good evening my name is Lori Taylor I'm hey Laura can you do me a favor move your microphone a little closer please sure thank you thank you um I'm Lori Taylor Library um media department chair and the librarian at McCarthy Town Elementary School and tonight I'm going to talk to you about culturally responsive practice in the acton-boxborough school libraries and I'm going to focus on two areas Library Collections and instruction we need to have books that reflect our student population and in addition to students seeing themselves in books students need to have lenses into others experiences to build empathy and understanding in our school libraries we need diverse book collections and more importantly

062we need inclusive book collections I'm going to explain what the difference is examining our libraries for diversity alone is not enough for example are most of our books about indigenous people historical are most of our books about latinx characters about immigration we need books that show representation of marginalized groups in all genres genres like fantasy science fiction graphic novels and more and this is what inclusion looks like how do we do this first we need to perform diversity audits there are programs that are out there Follett has one and diverse book finder for analyzing Library collections for diverse authors subjects and characters we need to also look closely at our collections to ensure that they are inclusive our library collections need texts with diverse characters and plots across a wide variety of genres so the

063next slide another way to build diverse collections is through acquisitions these are some of the resources that we use as Librarians to select materials for our libraries and I won't read through all of them but you can take a look up there the ones on the left are Publications and organizations on the right award-winning or Award books I want to point out that RJ gray has a new collection of World Language books um that they've just added recently they're popular titles for independent reading in Spanish and Portuguese and this is for multilingual Learners to continue building their reading fluency in their first languages the high school library recently purchased a wonderful database called Ethnic diversity Source it's a full-text database looking at culture Traditions social treatment and lived experiences of different ethnic groups in the

064United States in our school libraries we also need to weed books and that allows us to have updated and accessible collection so one thing I want to point out is weeding is not censorship as you can see from these images the top three books portray indigenous people in a stereotypical way the bottom three are recently published written by indigenous authors and have received multiple Awards and starred reviews here are some examples of culturally responsive Library instruction at McCarthy town and Blanchard School libraries and I'm going to describe just one of these projects I wish I had more time to go in depth about all of these and more details about each project but time is limited I teach a fifth grade civil rights project at McCarthy town in my school library classes and in this

065unit I incorporate both udl and digital literacy using primary sources and research databases students research people events movements organizations and legislation from the 20th century civil rights movements including African-American women Native American Disability and lgbtq rights students have a wide variety of digital tools to choose from to present their information so as I said I wish I could go in more detail I certainly will answer questions but I want to let you know as the new library media department chair I am committed to integrating culturally responsive practice into our Pre-K to 12 Curriculum by working with the library media Specialists with Deb and with our wonderful curriculum coordinators and I'm um happy to answer questions now or after our next group goes up yet we can go to the next side okay hello good evening

066my name is Dora Sanchez I'm the 3-6 literacy and social studies curriculum coordinator more sorry about that Dora Sanchez curriculum coordinator for grades three to six for literacy and social studies curriculum and I'll be sharing some curriculum work that we've been working on along with my colleague Carol um Paige Carroll who is a barium grades two to three educator next slide please okay in the Massachusetts history and social science framework principle 2 educators are asked to incorporate diverse perspectives to Value students Heritage while embracing our common ideals and shared experiences as students develop their rigorous thinking our social studies curriculum work shows how we are working towards this vision for example on this slide there is an r d that was designed to research culturally relevant award-winning children's literature and pedagogy to portray the diversity

067of our predicated to students according to our a b PowerSchool data 20 other languages besides English were identified this work included classroom teachers eldts special Educators speech and language Pathologists Sharon Ryan my colleague the Pre-K to curriculum coordinator and Dr Erica tooling Dawes professor at Leslie University and the author of Texas in action the group the group created a list of titles as you see here presented on um up in the projector this shows all the work that went into selecting some titles that represent about 20 other 20 home languages that are represented in our school district this work aims to incorporate high quality culturally relevant literature representing cultural backgrounds in our classrooms this can be through story walks mapping skills and discussing Traditions associated with various cultures our next steps will be to create

068lesson guides embedded with culturally responsive practices engaging activities that build students identities and opportunities for students to share their stories next slide hi like Dora said my name is Paige Carroll I'm a second grade teacher at Merriam so this past summer a group of Educators worked on an r d titled the geography and native peoples of Massachusetts for grade three this also addresses the supporting questions from Massachusetts history and social science framework how did the native peoples live in New England before Europeans arrived the focus of this work was to create a unit of study in which students can draw attention to untold stories and narratives of native peoples both present and past in Massachusetts and the New England region through multi-genre texts authored by traditionally underrepresented groups this unit draws attention to historical representation

069of events that shaped our country from all perspectives and opportunities to learn about continuous contributions to our society by indigenous groups students are invited to make connections to their cultures and the land around them we've also included professional learning opportunities to build Educators background knowledge this includes professional journals online modules or recordings of webinars this past spring we applied for Dusty's Civics teaching and learning Grant we were awarded 26 563 dollars to support grades three and four in Civics education we will partner with primary source to help us unpack and implement the instructional resource Cornerstone for civic engagement the units include culturally responsive and great appropriate sources student materials and content then integrates social studies and literacy instruction all aligned to the Massachusetts history and social science framework culturally inclusive multi-genre texts will will complement

070this work we are super excited to be partnering with primary source they are known for supporting teachers and cultivating students Civic mindedness cultural awareness and Global competence preparing them for all sorry for preparing them for our increasingly diverse and interconnected world any questions for this piece I'm so excited because I have a McCarthy Town fifth grader so I can't wait for him to come home with a very good project about civil rights and it's on public record that mommy has high expectations so he's never going to see this that's right um are there any questions I just want to thank you guys for um putting together such a great list of books I was looking at it and I could recognize names from my home country and I wish my kids were backing in the

071school system to read these books because they never had an opportunity which is really sad right I hope that you know the kids in the district was evaluating these books and then and the names that they can pronounce from this book so when I my kid is called sunbowera it wouldn't seem strange to people so thank you for putting together such a great list thank you just a second that the way you're opening the lens for the kids in our schools is brilliant living in a multicultural world is it is is difficult when you don't recognize it's Multicultural and having these two these skills these tools these building blocks at the beginning it's it's incredibly refreshing and wonderful to see so I was really happy to see that stuff so thank you um I just

072want to note that we don't usually talk about budget and all this content and curriculum at the same time but I do think that it's important to note that decisions we've made over the last couple years are resulting in a presentation like this um having certified librarian leaders is incredibly important and this is the work that they do and I think that you know allotting money for this culturally responsive teaching leads to this kind of impressive program so thank you hi Rebecca I know you um are talking about the elementary um can I ask at the high school level um I remember American history we started with pilgrims Landing are we also teaching at the high school um I have a third grader at Conan and I have been so impressed with what he's been

073learning about um you know the Mayflower and Plymouth and also the native peoples that were here first I never got to learn that is that also happening at the high school so it just so happens we have the history department chair here in the audience who's going to be presenting so I'm going to let David answer that question yeah hi Adam I just want to bounce off of what Tessa said from a budget standpoint to see that we've got 26 000 grant for professional development is a really big deal being able to fund that type of work outside of our operating budget is a great way to make progress on important District goals and still giving us funds to keep the lights on in many cases so thank you for that I want to just

074recognize Dora's efforts and securing that Grant I think about libraries you know that there's there are the libraries they're so beautiful and wonderful right and then we know that there are classroom libraries so can you talk just a little bit about how that list will then translate into individual classrooms yeah so um we Deb and I have been talking extensively about this I'll lean a little more forward and we are planning to come up with a similar to a diversity audit that I'm doing in libraries but in a simplified form for classroom teachers to go through and look at award-winning titles diverse titles look and see if their classroom libraries represent the inclusion that I described tonight and Deb and I are in the process of working on that to provide to all teachers so

075they can go through their classroom libraries and see if there's representation that's needed there all right brilliant y'all thank you so much thank you thank you [Music] hi hey I don't believe Rebecca's question got addressed are we doing this in oh oh oh okay thanks um my name is Kat contini I am in my 21st year at acton-boxborough I spent 17 years teaching Ela and social studies at Blanchard and I am now in my fourth year teaching social studies at RJ Gray and I am Molly Wong and I am the junior high librarian and I'm in my near second year I'll get them later they're the bane of my existence right now um I would just like to start off by saying that part of the reason I switched schools is because of the seventh

076grade social studies curriculum so I was a graduate student at Leslie when I read Peggy McIntosh and a lot of and I took a course on culturally responsive teaching and I'm now the proud graduate of two of Maureen seed trainings and I love how a lot of those principles and teachings come together in our seventh grade social studies curriculum where we do start the year with identity and values and culture and then we build into types of prejudice and discrimination and then it fits perfectly with our new state mandated Civics project and so this did begin as a state mandate and then the four social studies teachers last year Mr zazie Mr Lewis Ms watchen and myself came together to figure out what we were going to have this look like for our 12 and

07713 year old students so for our Civics project it begins with students picking this topic of their choice we had everything last year from book Banning lgbtq plus rights we did talk about one student did do um a project about bathrooms we talked about immigration and we talked about voter restrictions we talked about gender Equity the students got to select a topic that was relevant and meaningful for them and if you know a lot about what's helpful in middle school education relevance is key they want to know that this is something that's meaningful and important in their particular lives as well once they were done with their research which was a lot of one-on-one conferencing all throughout the process they were given the choice to create the visual and to display their learning and their

078information in the manner of their choosing so they were book creators there were posters they were public service announcements unfortunately there were no songs there was a poem um there were posters and so again bringing in culturally responsive methods where students are able to present in the way that shows their learning the best um we then have them write a piece of argument writing and we've turned that piece of argument writing into a letter which we did mail to local and state legislators the challenge with that and so I put 2022 is in the parentheses there the challenge with that is out of the 400 some odd seventh graders I would say we got about 10 to 15 responses to the letters that we mailed um and they took a long time to get to

079us and again if you know about middle schoolers patience is not a virtue um and so that didn't really feel super authentic for them and they felt like their voices actually hadn't gotten heard probably one of the best things we did last year we did arrange a zoom meeting with Senator Eldridge and representative Cena and they did Zoom with all of the seventh graders and they did give them the Forum to talk about some of their issues and they responded from the state legislator point of view so that was exciting we did have a group of students who were doing multilingual education opportunity and they did get to go to the state house with Mary Kay from the junior high school and meet with some representatives and talk about that as well but besides those

080two opportunities they didn't get really a chance to voice their topics to voice their issues besides what their classmates now last year we did have some restrictions as far as visitors to our buildings were concerned so this year instead of writing letters to legislators that will always be an option and we do encourage it as part of our curriculum we are going to host a Civics Fair stay tuned invitations will be sent out in the spring and we hope that community members and local legislators will be able to attend as well as parents and siblings and give the students an authentic audience for their voice and what they would like to see changed in their community and let them know that their voice matters and their voice can be heard next slide again I think

081this came through hopefully in some of the things I was just mentioning but again relationships is kind of core to that seed to that culturally responsive teaching um I did a whole dissertation on relational engagement I could talk to you about that for a very long time if you want but this project definitely emphasized the relationship in the classroom students collaborated with one another students collaborated with teachers students with the help of teachers emailed people who were working on their issue of choice because they can't always get emails from outside sources so those were emails that their social studies teachers helped them facilitate and then there's the relationship between the student and the text and the studio student and the media and the different resources that they were looking at which is where our lovely

082librarian came in and helped us out and she's going to help us out even more this year like to what Thursday you're taking my class I am so um similar to what we heard in the elementary school presentations there are obviously curriculum Frameworks and skills academic my skills that we want them to be working on in this project but I'm sort of trying to tie those other ways of looking for other lenses as they're doing their research finding reliable sources is a key thing for that we are all learning is a very important skill and middle schoolers particularly with their broad exposure to social media and everything are really starting to flex those muscles of choosing what is right for them from our perspective it is looking for in their research topic they come with

083a voice they come with an understanding of what they know about their topic our job is also to help them see what voices are missing what other voices would be important important in understanding that and it is our job to help us locate those because they're new skills for them and also then making sure that we are finding resources that they can access at all of the different levels we will be building in claim evidence and reasoning sort of that idea of argument building you know so that you can share a full well-rounded project and writing an argument paragraph is also part of it as well the argument paragraph writing this year has planned to take place following the Civics fair I'm a big proponent of speaking first writing later because the more comfortable you

084are in presenting this and after you've been able to explain to your peers and your community members your topic the better you're going to be able to write about it and so we'll be doing the writing after the presentations this year so a couple of Anthony zazie and I work together this summer to reflect on what worked and Molly joined us we had an English teacher member from The English Department join us we had several teachers on that team we looked at what worked what didn't work how do we want to tweak it and since RJ gray has done some professional development in the udl arena as the district is working on that as well that was part of our consideration this summer what are things that we can tweak so we make sure that

085we are supporting all Learners and so with engagement obviously the choice the relevance multiple reading levels and multiple formats for sources that's where we're collaborating more even more with Molly this year and to make sure last year we're kind of building the plane while we were flying it this year the planes kind of built and now we're putting in the seats in the safe in the air masks and all the other good things um one-on-one conferences was essential during this project talking to students every day where are you at family members were communicated with through email letting them know like talk to your student about the topic like this is obviously something that they're passionate about get involved with them and we were with them every step of the way they were the ones driving

086the learning we were just facilitated we were facilitators and I learned a lot about some of these topics from them that I wasn't as passionate about before I did a project alongside them so I could model that and my topic was about child homelessness and what a problem problem that is even in Massachusetts and so every step of the way there was modeling of the process for them why don't we stop for questions here this poli-sci major wants that wants that invite for real hi questions no questions really was that clear great that's awesome thank you so much we look forward to emails from our from our middle school students too we're planning for mid-may awesome so thank you so much all right and here comes the high school team welcome y'all hi everybody thank

087you for having us here tonight I'm David Green Department leader of social studies at the high school and I'm here with Karen drown and Alec Lewis and we're here to talk a little bit about a course that we developed last year that we are offering for the first time this year called understanding race and so I'm going to have Karen and Alec tell you about most of the substance of the course I thought I'd speak a few moments about how we arrived at this and of course we're all open to any questions that you might have in terms of how we got here um I think we have been grappling in our department with ways to to help students older students access this incredibly complex Topic in an adult way and of course it has

088as you well know international national local and therefore highly personal Dimensions to it and so for me it goes beyond just what you'd present in a history course that there has to be a has to have a soul it has to have a more personal Dynamic to it there's long been a department interest and passion in this topic but admittedly some challenges too how do you bring kids to a topic like this authentically especially when admittedly the majority of people facilitating it are white so over the past few years as you may know we've received some student feedback around these topics largely based on experiences they've had in the community and in the schools and through their activism they've made it clear to us that the department and the school Community needs to do more

089to address race and racism in our courses be it our history courses as you asked about earlier and in a course undo itself I think we were really impressed with this activism and in thinking about it had an epiphany around it that activism is really a skill and as we saw some of this raw emotion come from our young people we realized we need to be thinking about this the way we think about writing and the way we think about critical thinking and the way we think about reading activism is a skill and it we cannot expect a 14 year old to just know how to do that and yet it's a pragmatic piece that we don't teach anywhere so that became part of the conversation how do we how do we embrace the content

090need and the skill need and offer a course that will meet what students are asking for so our process began really at the departmental level we spent a year reflecting as a department how could such a thing occur what would it look like what would the content be who would teach it how could the community be involved I spent the year reaching out to the different student Affinity groups getting feedback looking at resources together answering questions did a lot of research across the districts to see how and if these topics are dealt with and we were really surprised there's not a lot happening race and racism show up in sociology courses sometimes there's a quarter in sort of a larger social sciences course but no actual course on how you talk to kids about what

091whiteness is or what race is as a construct nothing like that uh we partnered with primary source which some of you may already know is a non-profit based in Watertown and they do a lot of work with International Education but have also been I'm doing a lot of Dei work and work with Desi as of late um we worked with them primarily for resource curation but also to talk about pedagogy how does one actually go about facilitating discussions with kids about this and we also created a student Advisory Group so this group was with us really from the beginning we worked with them at first to hash out a general framework for the course what would you like to see in this course you have asked us to teach and also we've then since then

092shown them lesson plans assessment ideas we've had them work with us to create some of the projects that they would do and some ideas around how to work with the community and we continued the work this past summer with an r d the two people teaching it are sitting here with me two wonderful wonderful Educators Karen and Alec who I will have um speak on their behalfs so again I'm Karen drown um I've been teaching at the high school for 22 years um so this class I was really excited to teach this because I've thought for a long time this is a class we need to have very specifically about race um it's a semester class it's an elective for sophomores Juniors and seniors there's an option for students to get honors credit for this

093course and that involves reading a book of their choosing and we have a really lovely curated list and the students I think did a really I can chime in on this who did a really nice job of choosing books that were out of their comfort level which is what we asked them to do we ask them to think about choosing a book that was really going to challenge their thinking and we have a nice collection of students in grades 10 11 and 12. so we do not have tons of seniors we have sort of a nice almost relatively even mix I would say of students of all different grades and about half of those students are students of color um so we spent the beginning of the year right we spent a lot of time

094talking about how do you get kids to talk about a topic that they have probably historically been told not to talk about or comment on and so that meant that we had to think about ways to really get them to connect with each other and build community and so we spent a long time on community building and that has been probably the most successful thing we have done this year because it is a really bonded connected class and they really enjoy each other we already have seen a lot of kids become friends who never knew each other before and that's that's been a really powerful experience for us because I feel like they're in a place now where they really want to absorb this difficult information in these difficult topics and talk about them deeply

095so we spent a lot of time working on that we spent some time looking at the changing demographics of the town of Acton towns of actin and box bro and what that means about how education is delivered how we address issues of race that come up in the communities whether it's elementary school or in the high school and now we are are at a point where we are jumping in on sort of our very first big project and we're just about done with that project so the the major thing that we're thinking about we've we thought a lot about doing is really focusing on where stereotyping comes from particularly racial stereotyping so we spent some time looking at what stereotypes are we spent a lot of time thinking about um what uh portions of our

096own identity do we feel connected to particularly relating to race and now we're asking them and and we've explored how race has been created so what that looks like um historically politically legally scientifically and and debunking some myths and then this project they're working on right now is is called myth and race and so they're exploring a racial stereotype a racial myth um in the history of that myth and how it was created for what what purpose it served and then how it sort of shows up in the curriculum I mean shows up in the world that they live in now and and how it informs stereotypes about groups of people um and it's been really really interesting to watch them learn about these topics because they are things that they have said all of

097them have said I've never talked about this in any other class this is the first time I've really had a chance to talk about race deeply and to ask questions deeply about race that I have felt uncomfortable talking about or asking before so that has been really for me personally but I think all of Alec very meaningful to be able to create a class where students feel a comfortable talking about race and then engaging in conversations about it that are meaningful and are asking them to to change so so my name is Alec Lewis it's my 13th year teaching in The District in the social studies Department uh going off of what Karen was saying after we so right now we're wrapping up the racial myths part and they're doing their project after that we're

098going to look at case studies in American history specifically and our goal is going to be to try to trace how these myths affect big Flashpoint moments in American history and then also at the same time we're going to cover a lot about systemic racism and show how the systems create a lot of the underpinnings for Flashpoint events but then how the myths really rise up to the top and are what are often catalysts for big events so that's the framework we came up with in our r d and through the the the committee was actually really great in helping us order all of this they were really honest about what they thought students would be most comfortable with first and then how to spin it so that students could really dig in and engage

099without shutting down but also challenge themselves so that I really I thought that was great we are then going to ask them to present case studies we have a nice list that primary source helped us with and we're going to challenge them because voice matters how do you tell these really hard stories what perspectives do you include what perspectives have been forgotten um or buried as we'll see in some of the case studies so that's that unit and then we finish up with a community project the uh the committee and I think we all felt it was really important to make sure we ended on the local and to have students dig into something in the community that they felt was important to them and then produce a product on it and I should say

100all the products we've really um given a lot of options for it we've been using we have a new resource a maker space where we've been having them do different um more visual presentations there's a lot of still research skills that's been really great about the course so far uh progress so far uh we've gotten really positive feedback and I think as Karen said the students seem to something's happening that they're bonding in a way that this is more than just a regular class it feels like that we have gotten that feedback from parents on back to school night uh as well and from several administrators so that's been really nice we're hoping to continue it's still our first semester but uh we're really glad to be doing it and we think it's really important

101work wow questions somebody's gonna have a question well it answered my question about what I asked before I just wish everybody could take it I will say that when you made that comment I thought that is exactly the kind of thing that we're hoping that students will get get on right that the things that are happening in the community that bother them that are related to race that those are the kinds of things that will research and really think deeply about so that is exactly what we hope to happen yeah yes I know I how best can I speak so seventh graders are working on social justice Civics engagement we talk about some of those flash points in history that some of the ones that you bring up maybe some of the ones that we've

102discussed in some stuff we're talking about Civic engagement with sixth graders I wonder if there was a future possibility to have some cross building discussion about what that looks like because we know a lot of times in education Elementary Middle Highlands and we don't [Music] have David in a community circles training and we had a conversation but it was kind of like on the fly or I've seen Karen and Mentor meetings and our conversations are on the fly but I would love to see some Cross grade level Elementary Middle School I think once the Civics the cornerstones for civics the um the primary source work with Desi once we can really get our hands on that and understand that a little bit better starting in the elementary and then working our way through will be

103a really really important piece to do yep hi Adam thanks um so David you mentioned sort of in your intro the the um a lot of the impetus for this class was around some of the activism that we saw in our students so I'm so I'm curious how that's got enrolled into this course and what type of support and encouragement that's been given to the students around activism so I wanna I'll give you my quick perspective but I think you might be better off answering this so I think um in complete transparency when when we initially started to get some student feedback it was in the form of some fairly kind of raw emotional feedback that came directly to me and so so the the question was how can we how can we kind of

104um address this in a way that feels productive to students so that it isn't just um venting emotions and that's where it ends like how can we actually show that we're delivering on this and so I think um to the questions that came up a little earlier about history I feel like you're a little bit Limited in history class because you're still bound to the events that have occurred in the past and for these kids it was a lot of like what is the school doing to think about what is happening now and what is happening in this community there doesn't seem to be an academic setting in which that can be discussed and so I would say that's maybe a generic answer to your question but I think maybe Carn and Alec might be

105able to flesh that out a little bit is that an okay start yeah okay I think one of the ways that I position this I do this in every history class is that we didn't get here um just randomly we didn't just get plucked down into this way of living like this has been built up over many centuries of ways in which people have developed so I think that's the history piece is so important um to get to where we are now so that's why we're backtracking and really focusing on how did we get to this point where we have these issues of racism now where did that begin and how did that develop I think the second part of that question is though and this was something that I spoke at length with David

106about an art we argued a lot about it and that is that I I deeply believe in activism but I also believe that it's important that students learn information and think deeply and critically and that that is our job as Educators is to really develop that knowledge and critical thinking um being an intent listener to people of different perspectives and listening to learned experience and if activism comes out of that wonderful I I sincerely hope that's true but I'm I don't want to make an activist I really want to make really deep thinkers people who listen to all perspectives and think carefully about what comes out of their mouth right and and really just and I think that's that's what we've been working really hard on um and I think those those things will naturally

107evolve I really do believe that one thing I just wanted to add about that is that the the committee we worked with the students said that they wanted to lead with that sentiment that Khan just shared and not the activist sentiment first because they thought they said we want anyone to be in this class and we have a lot of students in the class that are learning to talk about race so I think this is It's a building block but I think that they a lot of the people in that committee I think were activists and considered themselves activists and they very strongly felt that the course should not actually lead with that because they wanted the impact of the course to be very wide and to draw as many people as possible thank you

108all very much thank you um so are there similar classes that are on level and the reason why I ask is because Mr Green I know you taught a class on genocide that my daughter kaburra took but that was an honest level class I believe at the time and um I heard from other parents how they would have loved for their kids to be able to have the opportunity to take the class so I don't know if that class got unleveled to allow other folks to be able to take the course but um these are important topics that we need to be able to open up to a wider group of kids rather than and I like the way that you structure this race class where a kid could take it as an honest class

109but they have to do like a little bit more work foreign I just want to make sure I understand your question you're speaking to just making sure that the class is accessible to all students am I hearing that correctly yeah yeah the similar classes for instance the genocide class similar classes that are on level but I just use the genocide class which I believe was an honest level class is that now open so I can speak to that for the genocide class and for for this class it is there's an unleveled option and then within the same class there's an option to receive honors credit if students do additional work and our reason for that is just pragmatic is that right now we have weighted GPA and what we recognized is that if we do

110not offer an honors option this is purely pragmatic to be transparent with you we were concerned that students would opt to take leveled electives rather than this course simply for reasons of GPA and we really grappled with this because honestly philosophically it didn't feel wonderful to feel like we had to put an honors option in this but to your point Miss McKinley earlier we want as many people taking this course as possible so that is the reason why we set the genocide course up that way and by the way when we did that the the number of kids who enrolled in that course went up quite a bit and then with with understanding race what is the breakdown right now our kids kids are doing both at this point okay so kids are doing both

111so the idea is to to move forward with it being as accessible as possible we make him more accessible so thank you for that okay I'm gonna say thank you thank you to all of the Educators who have been here this evening thank you for all of your presentations and all of the great work that you're doing and thank you for staying so late oh we do yeah oh one more I'm so sorry y'all hey so sorry about that hi welcome hello hi um so my name is Marianne young I am the multilingual education coordinator for the district and Jennifer and I are going to talk about the Welcome Center that we have been working on which is really exciting so currently we have a substantial increase in new families many of which are multilingual

112in the district we currently have 325 multilingual Learners in our program this year from all different countries all different demographics all different economic statuses and as a result of that we started to see a need for more support navigating the culture of school navigating the registration process navigating communication and norms and so we decided to look into creating a Welcome Center as a culturally responsible or inclusive way to Welcome All Families into the district while honoring their experiences languages and the culture that they bring so we started with creating a vision which is to develop a central location for new and existing families to streamline the registration process to gather helpful information about services that the District offers and to be a link between Community Partnerships and resources that might be available to families so

113as we begin we have started with researching best practices so Jennifer and I have traveled to a couple of districts that have great functioning welcome centers already created so we have been to Lynn and Framingham we have also engaged and participated in a retreat with directors of family engagement for different districts because we know that family participation is going to be critical to running a well-functioning um welcome center and then I also just went last Friday to a Desi run conference about it was a Better Together Summit which again focuses on ways to bring and connect School communities with family communities and I also just want to emphasize that this is for new families but not just immigrant families all new families to the town and district and also we are hoping to extend services

114to those that are already enrolled in the district that might have a need for some of the supports that we provide thank you and you're probably wondering why we've included this within the cultural responsive practices information it's because the first minute that families enter a welcome center it's the first minute of their story at a B and it's their first impression so it's critical to make sure that we are being inclusive of all families and making sure that we honor everything that they bring to this community and that's a way for us to be able to engage with them immediately so um I know it's getting later in the night so I will speak as fast as I can what part of the planning process is that we've created both a steering committee and advisory

115committee the steering committee is composed of central office administrators Marianne myself the superintendent director of Special Projects as well as the coordinator for mental health and Behavioral Services for our district and then what we've decided to do is create an advisory committee that's composed of several stakeholders that would really be integrated into a Welcome Center we already had our first meeting a couple weeks ago to talk about our why and why we're doing this talking about what we should name it there's welcome centers there's Family Resource Centers so we've been working on that and then also talking about that we're going to be um dividing the work so we're going to work smarter and we're going to be dividing the work and having some subcommittees these are the four subcommittees and Marianne will talk a

116little bit more about what the subcommittees will entail so our first subcommittee is going to be about Staffing and we're hoping that this subcommittee will look at ways to fund any new positions that we might need if there are any grant opportunities if there are any positions that we can reallocate you know Staffing to the Welcome Center and look at all possible funding sources we also would like to have another committee looking at facilities so we have an area in mind at the front of this building that we're thinking of for a welcome center but we need someone or the subcommittee to look at what changes might need to be made if there's any Renovations that might need to be necessary and to investigate whether the space works as we hope it would for a

117Welcome Center we are also going to have another Community another subcommittee looking at Community Partnerships to see what resources are already out there in Acton in Boxborough and the surrounding towns that we can build relationships with and and offer direct connection between our families and those agencies and then one of the last things that we would like a subcommittee to look into are services that can be provided so some examples of services that a Welcome Center might be able to provide our translation interpretation registration language proficiency testing social workers connections with nurses and health so these are the things that we're building towards as we move on to the next stages in this work any questions y'all I know that this is these are in the early stages but they're very good we're in the

118planning phases hi Adam so I think you mentioned a bit Community Partnerships I think it would be really great to reach out as early as possible to the Two Towns because it feels like there's a pretty strong intersectionality between the work that the towns do in welcoming new residents to what we're talking about here um and then the other one that I was thinking of would be looking to see if there's grants this feels like something that's that's right for a grant of some sort from the state in terms of creating welcome centers I'll just comment on that second half of that Adam because we've started that process already you know I actually talked to you know one of our state legislators about possibility of looking at an earmark through the budget process for something

119like this um you know I think there's going to be one-time startup costs that are associated with especially getting the facility accessible and ready for families and you know configuring it the way we need that would be a great opportunity for an earmark so if the committee is interested in some advocacy work on that I would you know suggest maybe reaching out to state legislators on this I learned on Friday there's also a new Grant that's going to be released in January so we're looking at all those opportunities too um I just have a different perspective on this now because I'm a second grade educator in Clinton where there's a huge El population and I just can't emphasize the importance of this I think that you know in Acton when I graduated it was like

12098 white and so it's a huge difference and how important this is not only for the students and the families but for their success in schools because I imagine that you know when they're given the tools and things like that it helps the Educators as well I mean I often find myself just filmex as to how to best communicate with families that may speak a different language or have a totally different you know perspective and um Landing in school so Bravo all right so thank you to all the Educators and everybody who came and everybody who presented thank you so very much thank you all very very much for coming tonight it's incredible work that you're doing and being able to share that with the committee so thank you okay friends this is what we're

121gonna do we're going to switch to budget I'm going to let this room clear out we're going to do a very hard five minute break and then we're gonna come right back here okay okay we're all here so we're gonna come back from this break thank you everybody for your your patience and for letting us go through that I realize it's late so I want to keep it moving Mr vertolino is going to give us a financial update on the first quarter ready to go and just to set expectations this is going to be a vastly inferior presentation to what you all just witnessed but be that as it may um okay so this is I've entitled this discussion points this time I think you did get the memo and Report submitted electronically so this

122is a very brief highlight of what you've received this is through the first quarter the project projections for where we'll be with revenues and expenditures at the end of the year so this is not um our gain so to speak this is not a net income statement for the first quarter but it's where we think we'll be at the end of the year expenditures is just too early to project anything nine months further out and so we're about three hundred thousand dollars projected to the good on the revenue side as you would read in the memo that's probably on the conservative side given given some things that are happening including if you read tomorrow that the FED raises interest rates another three-quarters of a point or possibly less we should continue to do better with

123interest income um significantly so so I've identified the details of that three hundred and fourteen thousand dollar variance in the report and again too soon to tell on expenditures and there's where I think we're going to be with end right at three million dollars and just under three percent at this point the next three slides are reminders I I presented all of them in the last presentation but they're here for in in case there are uh they're here for reference in case there are discussions on this so here's our e d history I won't go over uh what each of the bars means but you can see that we're a little bit on the downside compared to where we were but still relatively robust in my opinion we talked in the last meeting about a

124possible budget starting point um for end usage we turned back about a million dollars in a million one in FY 22. excuse me and So the plan is to present that as the starting point for end usage for the FY 24 budget we had a meeting with members of the actin fincom we discussed in general terms a plan like this I think we agreed that e d usage certainly can't be zero we'd like it to be less than 1.5 million but getting it to 1.1 might prove to be rather challenging and a reminder that special programs collectively are in much better shape than they were following two years of pandemic and just for for what that's worth that I don't think there's the need to bail out if you will um our special programs and

125so I think I've said this a few times already it's very early in the process both for FY 23's actual results and FY 24's budget development hi Adam I have one quick question in relation to the budget positive variance that you're predicting at this time of the 314 000 has that compared to our previous predictions at this point previous years the same from the about the same from the standpoint of I try to be conservative I try to make sure that that number is not too high but the pieces are different from year to year so half of that is the fact that in FY 23 the state the state uh awarded sixty dollars minimum Aid per student instead of 30. that's 150 000 to us or about half of that and the rest of

126it is interest income largely interest income which we didn't have a positive variance for the last two years hi Evelyn so are you saying that we did not have a positive variance the last two years after quarter one is that what you're saying this is what we this is what I'm projecting at year end revenues will be three hundred thousand dollars more than budget and stay tuned that the number grows during the year positively positively the the variance grows yes okay that's good news because of the rates the rates have been historically low we got we all got all that right Revenue sources the the assessments are locked in when there's no variance there the Chapter 70 is locked in at 150 000 to the good Charter rate Transportation Aid we don't know those until

127the until June we get we get half the the amount in December and the other half in June for transportation the only other variables are Medicaid reimbursement which we're doing a little better than the budget we had brought that down and interest income we had brought down significantly and we're exceeding that significantly hi Evan some simple questions so the difference between the budgeted revenue and the budgeted expenditure is a that's 1.8 million that's basically either comes out of end and the CIP stabilization fund correct Okay so that's okay that's great another question is a TBD for the projected expenditure so looking at the positive side on the revenue side that's great right but although I saw this DVD but I just wonder what is the sense of if that's on the safe side or on

128the I don't have enough information I typically don't give you a projection until the second quarter report I'll just add a little bit to that um I mean so what Dave is showing is we know the revenues that we've been told are coming in um and expenditures say TBD and it's very early in the year the biggest part of our budget is Personnel this is part of the memo I think early on it's October we think we're close to balanced with Personnel we know that we had some additional students who needed some additional support so we have hired some additional special education assistance we've also kept three or four positions vacant on purpose as we knew we got to the end of the year and and that we were coming into a really tough budget

129year those things are semi-balancing out as far as we can tell so far there will be some some expenditure savings by the end when all is said and done so he's not saying I'm projecting 300 for the end of the year he's saying this is what we know about so far so just wanna you know in terms of hiring I think we're okay but we're not great and we're not terrible those were accounting terms by the way great and terrible yeah okay I think we're keeping it moving oh yeah good we're good thank you thank you Dave hi Adam hi this is a new perspective on our committee all right I am going to talk us through budget guidelines from the budget subcommittee um raise the money it's it's it's surprisingly loud behind you when

130you sit here now I can say that um so I'm gonna I'm actually gonna switch this around a little bit I'm gonna uh sort of rehash a bit of the presentation that we did at the um Town leadership meeting last week because I think it's an important uh thing for us to as a committee to look at so I'm going to start with some of the numbers Parts first particularly around how we get to assessment and budget numbers um because I think that will then inform some of the discussion that we want to have around the budget guidelines so uh let's see here I think I want to go to this slide this one okay um so uh really uh I found this a really helpful thing to understand about how we get to an

131assessment from our budget or how we get to a budget from an assessment particularly as we look this year at some of the constraints that we have on the town side for for increases so as a point of reference and I'm going to go through this relatively quickly because I know where we're already long so just give me big wide eyes if you want me to slow down we're looking at last year's FY 23 our budget increase last year was 3.2 percent um the way we funded that then was an increase in our use of revenues or an increase in the use of reserves and an increase in revenues that we had projected so you see a positive increase in those non-assessment sources to get to the balance of our budget we assess the towns

132so we take our budget increase and that was 3.2 million dollars we minus out the revenues that we're projecting and then that turn in turn leads to an assessment to the towns of 3.4 percent so the numbers that you want to look at here are the budget and the assessment numbers so we had a budget increase of 3.2 percent jointly to the towns it was a 3.4 percent assessment increase and then based on our formulas for making assessments over to the towns Acton saw a 3.2 percent increase to their assessment Boxborough saw a 4.6 increase to their assessment so this is what happened for last year great getting some nods um when we look at fy24 if we start with a budget increase and let's say we're gonna again and these are hypothetical numbers come

133in with a 3.2 percent budget increase so that's an increase for us Dave already talked a little bit about this we know we're going to get more revenue from the state modest amount of additional state aid as a starting point we're talking about using less reserves for next year which is why that's a negative number so the increase that we have to our budget from the non-assessment sources is actually a decrease it's down 1.5 percent so again if we take our hypothetical budget increase and we take out minus out the revenues the assessment to the towns plural goes up to 4.3 percent so you can see how what we might say is a quote-unquote modest budget increase of 3.2 percent turns into 4.3 percent to the towns and then act and we'll see an increase

134of four percent and Boxborough would see an increase of 5.8 percent so really the the thing to look at here is if we're if we're driving our budget process through an increase in our budget percent it almost always is a much larger percentage increase to the towns so let's flip this right we know that our constraint is what the towns can bear particularly in this year so what if we look at what will drive as an assessment increase to the towns so in the previous slide we we ended up with that four percent increase to the towns let's say the towns can bear a 3.2 percent um assessment increase again hypothetical maintaining consistency with that 3.2 percent what does that mean the non-assessment sources are still the same for next year we know we get

135a little state aid we're going to use less reserves so our overall contribution of reserves and non-assessment sources is less than previous years so that means if we take our assessment increase and we add the reserves that monies that we're going to put towards that the District budget can only increase by 2.3 percent so you can see very quickly if we're driving our budget process by what the assessment can increase to the towns just to sort of complete the story here that looks like now a percent a three percent increase to actin's assessment and a 4.3 to box Bros assessment so if we're driving our budget process by what the towns can afford which we kind of have to do as we know we've got some pretty serious constraints there it means that our budget

136increases even smaller than we might start off with I'll pause really quickly for questions on this before I take us to the next sort of Step here just want to repeat for the folks in the back but the number that you see that 3.0 is what we have heard is what the town can't afford we need to we need to hold a number in our heads for this process hi Evelyn so uh hypothetical increase of 3.2 that was the same percentage from last year and it's reflecting the same number is that by coincidence or is that the number that we're just working with so the the the number at the top is hypothetical for next year and so we're looking at what is a 3.2 percent budget increase mean and how does that relate to

137the assessment to the towns or what does a 3.2 percent assessment increase mean and what does that mean to our budget yeah but but the question I have is that we were using this we use the 3.2 percent last year so are we just using that number hypothetically because it was a number we used last year to sort of model out to see what it would mean exactly okay really what I'm just trying to show here is that relationship between our budget and the assessment to the towns plural and then the individual towns as we put it through the formula you got it I was just curious why we're using the same number to model out thanks but for the lay folks the assessments that we bring to the town is the number that that

138really you know that's the one that folks are really looking at so you know there is a difference between these two numbers we that's why we're going through this exercise hi Rebecca and the 4.3 is what Boxborough said that they can do oh I think we can be very very plain about this Acton has a very hard financial limitations oh I've heard that number that acting three percent or whatever the the assessment that is delivered to Acton is really what's going to be driving our budget processes okay so we're just ignoring box and they're along for the ride a little bit too yeah because of what happened at the last town meeting right okay so I mean the end result is boxborough's increase will almost always be a little bit more um and that's for

139a couple reasons primarily we're looking at rolling averages of student enrollment and the student enrollment is moving more towards box bro um but the the other bottom line here is whatever we bring down to support actin's ability to to fund our our operations we'll also bring down what box Bros assessment would be um I have kind of a newbie girl question uh for the the revenues and reserves are those really our only additional pots that we can be or is is there maybe another creative well that we could be drawing upon I'm gonna I'm gonna say right now probably not maybe something we can discuss more in depth at a budget subcommittee but for the for the these are the big boulders that we can adjust there are lots of other budget drivers that we'll

140talk about and as as we work through the budget process this is really like setting the ground to understand um and I think the last bit of information I'll share before I go on to the guidelines is when we look at fixed cost increases there's just a few areas that come up as as regular increases so our health insurance costs our contributions to other post-employment benefits retirement funds and whatever contractual obligations we have to our employees which make up over 65 percent of our budget those are the things that that go up each year that we have um we we have limited control over so if we know that that actin has we have some limitations on how much acting who is willing to contribute why are we if you go back to your last

141slide why are we then putting in less of the reserves that is an excellent question let me go through the guidelines because that's where I want to end the discussion this evening okay yes great job Evelyn okay so um the budget subcommittee met um we came up with a list of nine which have now sort of been revised down to seven budget guidelines that are actual guidelines um that we want the committee to review provide us some feedback on um and then we'll bring them back to the committee as a whole to vote um and we not only did we come up with these guidelines but we really tried to sort of prioritize them in terms of what was most important um for this year in developing a budget so the first three that you'll

142see here first is consider the budgetary impact of collective bargaining agreements on the district's ability to provide services for the students um the next one to evaluate opportunities to create organizational efficiencies in order to provide prioritize services to students and including those who have been disproportionately underserved and then the third was to evaluate class sizes at all levels and budgets to the degree resources are available to maintain class sizes within the school committee guidelines so these first three were really around how do we control the budget from a financial standpoint and what does that mean in terms of our staffing our class sizes and making sure that we're still meeting those needs for some of those students who we've seen disproportionate outcomes for the next four five four items are really more aligned with our

143goals so the message that we have for the administration as they're building a budget is control costs but stick to our goals so you'll see item number it's not six anymore I haven't reordered these the next item on the guidelines list is to ensure that students have access to a robust system of supports for their social emotional mental and Behavioral Health needs and academic needs so that should tie with our our goals and our activities towards a multi-tier system of sports continue to fund work to promote all students sense of belonging through a strong and inclusive School climate and culture so we saw some of that this evening already provide resources that continue to address the disproportionate outcomes for students who have been historically underserved by our schools and then the last guideline is to

144continue a path toward tuition-free all day K to the extent that it's economically feasible thank you Kira and I think that that's one that we'll probably have to discuss some more there's definitely the language in here is not continue to do it as we've been doing it it's continued to do it as we can afford to um so with that there were two other items that we wanted as a school committee to be able to provide to the administration as some real overarching guidelines um and those were these two items so very very blatant very upfront what do you want what do we as a school committee want to have the administration limit our budget increase to and to Evelyn's point before what is our Target use of reserves uh for next year so those

145are the the two sort of as we looked at the first part of the presentation those are the two driving factors that will then result in how the administration can go about building a budget for us foreign so basically we have to wait to see I mean from Dave's presentation this evening if things are trending in the direction that they're trending we may come up with a positive violence right so if we're looking at I don't know we have to wait to see where how we spend this year then we can think about how we limit the budget to increase or how whatever and then so in Dave's presentation um briefly this week but more in depth uh last time he shared that on average over the past four or five years our average turnback

146is 1.1 million dollars and so that one and a quarter thank you we just found more money so there's there's an average turnback and in that chart that he put in the presentation this evening you can see that turn back versus what we've been budgeting for the next year so that's why in his presentation and his suggestion was we look at the 1.1 or the 1.25 million as what we would see as our turn back and so if you think about that what we turn back if we use that again in next year's budget our our Reserve monetary value Remains the Same but based on our increase in budget the percent of money that we hold in reserve would continue to go down but it's used by limited Financial knowledge but if we know that

147on a yearly basis we have one and a quarter 10 back right why we usually front loaded it while we're front loading our budget or only to get a 10 get 10 bucks to use it to offset the budget for the next year when we can probably just do maybe zero base budgeting and just put in what we actually need for that year so that we're breaking even I I have not understood why we have we we want to have those 10 bucks a year by year basis we don't typically want to have the turnbacks in fact I asked Dave this question at the last meeting which was so we we come in at roughly a one percent turn back every year and and on a 100 million dollar budget to come in with one

148percent is that is that a good position to be in and the general consensus is yeah I mean if we budget too tightly then effectively what we'll have to do is at some point towards the end of the year have a special meeting to allocate funds out of our end to close the gap I understand that but my point is that we we have data and we can project but it seems as though our projections are not I'm not saying that we shouldn't have a buffer but it seems like when we go back and look our data over we Trend it out we're coming back with a million point something every year right could we didn't use those projections because there are seven things that we want to find right that we often have to

149cut because we don't have the money to fund them but at the end of the year we then have a 10 back of 1.1 when programs that would benefit the district are suffering because we took them out of the budget for instance all day K we took them out of the budget because we didn't have the money for it but then we then turn around and say okay now we have a 1.1 million 10 back which which we're using to upset the budget for the next year it almost seems to me as though we're not using the data we have to project at least tightly what we actually need to do and put in programs that will benefit the district at least in my mind I mean I may be completely wrong on this everybody's

150looking at me um when we budgeted revenues for FY 23. it was in December Jan December 2021 January 2022 we budgeted minimum aid for example his his one piece we budgeted minimum Aid uh in chapter 70. the decision to bump that up from 30 to 60 dollars was not voted on until possibly August of 2022 town meeting had been over for four months if I had a crystal ball to see that was going to happen we could have had a hundred and fifty thousand more funds available to budget in the FY 23 budget but that hundred and fifty thousand dollars and I I think we're talking semantics Evelyn that hundred and fifty thousand dollars would not be going back into free cat into uh replenishing e and D this year the levers for using e

151and D are how much you're going to use and how much is replenished if you if you budget your projected replenishment too tightly you can't use e and D be it'll it'll evaporate you won't be restocking it from from what you use from year to year and that's where we are right now the if if you recall the slide with the multi-colored bars where I show the the level of e and D over the years the replenishment has been a significant replenishment in green it's the the green bars are the most consistent ones up there the the balance at the end of the year in Gray has has been a bit of a roller coaster the the downslope is fairly fairly minimal at this point what we've used started very little at the beginning of

152regionalization it's gone up in a couple cases for special projects and most recently in the last couple years over a million dollars to fund the budget I understand that and I appreciate your answer and I know that we need to replenish e and d and we need to budget in a way that allows us to replenish e and D my question is if we go back maybe five years from now right and we Trend it out what has been I was what has been our 10 bucks for each budget season that we've had and if and I'm making this hypothetically that for the last five years our turnback has been a million and a quarter let's just say let's let's just say for the sake of this discussion it's been a million right that we're

153getting 10 bucks every year for the last five years it means that we don't have a problem with replenishment right because we're getting money we're budgeted in a way that was sort of like we have a buffer right and I'm not we use that million to upset the next years right yeah but there's another part of that but the point I'm trying to make is that necessary I'm not saying that we have to budget in a way that gets us in trouble but do we need a million dollars of 10 back every year when you say is it necessary part of it is timing so we set the FY 23 budget before we knew the July 1 2021 e and D there's a there's a lag between when we set our budget and when e

154and D gets certified and by certified that means can be used and and one other one other thing um there's an expression better to be lucky than good right so Adam is very kind to say we're within one percent and is and isn't that great but I honestly do not try to see where I'm stashing a million dollars for the end of the year last year we had a tremendous uh gain the unforeseen gain in the um program that the no that was two years ago the unemployment program related to covet tremendous amount of funding that we hadn't planned on expense increase no a refund from the state for for our costs it and it doesn't we'll take this argument offline um but things happen and last year it was Medicaid unilaterally changed the rules

155and we ended up with a six hundred thousand dollars to the good variance that was not at all considered at the beginning of the year so things happen and what I think my job is is to budget revenues relatively reasonably but relatively conservatively and expenditures reasonably but relatively conservatively just to go from a practical statement you know and Dave can talk to the mechanics of the budget but if we said okay this year we're going to budget our goal is to try and tighten the budget to within half a percent of the budget we will have had you know maybe an extra half a million dollars this year but we'll have a bigger half a million dollar problem next year because we won't have that same level of turn back and so now all of

156a sudden the end balance has gone down you know instead of 250 000 this year it'll have gone down 750 000. so it's gonna if we don't continue to try and be fairly consistent with how we budget you're going to see the E and D reserves run out very very quickly no but Peter that's at that point right that then when we're making we're sitting here and making those tough decisions to cut budget or to remove certain programs is the very reason why we don't want to have that additional half a million dollar problem if we are the only reason why we because we have that buffer that we use to upset the next year's budget we are not making I don't I'm not articulating myself very well but we're not making the decisions to

157cut the budget the way that maybe we all tighten our belts the way that we should be if we do know that we're only going to be half a percentage it makes me feel better when I say okay I support this budget cut and I support that budget car but when I sit here and I support a budget card only for us to have a million dollar or a million a quarter 10 back then I'm like why did I even make that decision but maybe I'm looking at it in a different way I'm not comprehending this so I I do want to share that I've been sitting on budget for four years and I'm still learning so I think it's it the the mechanics of this is somewhat complicated the one other piece of perspective

158that I want to give around the turnbacks is and you saw that in the the beginning part of the presentation when we use money out of end which is essentially money that was Surplus from the previous year we use that from E and d and it in turn reduces the assessment for the towns so from a from a perspective view in terms of respecting our taxpayers money we're saying to them you know what we need to have this one percent buffer just in case because we don't really know at the end of the year we're going to put that into our access and deficiency in our Reserve funds and we're going to use about the same amount for the next year so we're in turn reducing the assessment to the towns roughly in the amount

159that we didn't need to use this year and I think I know Evelyn what you're discussing is maybe how do you look at reducing the budget sum so that you you don't have such a big variance and I think that's a bigger conversation I think for the point of moving the conversation on tonight these two numbers are the questions in terms of does the committee want to reduce our use of e and D so back to the 1.1 1.2 million that we're seeing as an average turnback and or do we want to use more because we know that what the towns can afford from an assessment standpoint um will severely limit our budget so from a historical three three and a half percent budget increase to now a two 2.2 percent budget increase and do

160we do that knowing that we are taking more from reserves than we're putting in which means we're continuing the the downward trend of using our reserves and then the other is what is that number that we want to come to as a budget increase okay Tessa and then I want a number we we actually have to it's 9 15. the the difference in using e and D is that we're using it to reduce the assessment we're not using it to reduce the budget like there's a there's a difference between budget and assessment and I know you understand that but we're not we can't use end funds to support a program like that's not what we're using it for but but at the end of the day it's like a separate pot of money so like

161we can say our budget is X dollars or it's going to increase whatever percent and if we use e and D it's just to reduce the assessment just to be clear my question um my my concerns are not the end use at all I am just concerned about that but the turnback replaces the E and D so if you're not going away is it all of it yeah that depends on the choices that we make in terms of our budget each year and how much but so our our balance though has reduced reduced reduced the last couple years so when we when I was on budget I don't know whenever like a couple years ago the big discussion was you know we set budget guidelines at a certain at maintaining a certain percentage of e

162d and since then we've we've used bigger numbers to reduce assessments that and our balance has gone down so so the turnback isn't replacing I mean right the turnback's not really replacing everything because otherwise we'd still stay we use more than we turn back we use more than we turn Okay so that 10 back then goes to replace the end that we use to upset the assessments of each time that's what I did not understand that's why I asked so thank you for answering my question that was where I was trying to get to what do we use that number for okay friends so we need two numbers so Adam do you have a suggestion where would you like us to start so I'm going to start by just saying whatever the increases is really

163just about the assessment whatever the number it is it needs to be and act an assessment of three so I think we have to be careful when the the finance committee presented the financial situation for actin if the town of Acton used none of its free cash which is the equivalent of end there is a point six percent increase available like I said that doesn't include their use of free cash but that's sort of the that's the number and for those of you who sit on ALG you can you're you're part of that discussion so I think three is not realistic for this year and I think that it would say that when we've not listened to what the the town of Acton is sharing with us in terms of their ability to fund great

164so that my suggestion is two and a half I think we have to start with that I and I'll I'll share one last piece here we're not putting these two numbers in as part of our voted guidelines because we know we don't have enough information now and we don't want to hold to a specific number that we voted as a committee vote these are directional guidelines for the district not voted so I'm I'm going to say 2.5 percent knowing that it's a it's a swag and we need to have a workshop and get some feedback from the administration about what that looks like hi Tessa so if if our staffing budget went up like increase if there was zero percent Cola right zero percent if that's what the teachers union agreed to or whatever what

165would the increase to our budget look like with just I mean that's most of our budget I mean that that's the thing like we if we have to limit to 2.5 percent or three percent or whatever like even if we gave them a zero percent increase what is that increase to our budget this is why you and I are not administrators and we sit in the school committee with a bottom line budget I don't think I don't think that information is is well enough known yet which is why I'm saying we need to come up with a number and we need to then see the scenarios around those num that number so my suggestion and I'm happy to discuss further would be a two and a half percent budget increase and I I would actually

166Target a higher use of end I think that wearing difficult times I don't think they're going to go away but I think that we need to balance the needs of the students in our district with the ability of the towns to fund that and so I think we need to show the town that we're committed to keeping up the excellent education we provide so I I would say 1.3 million for end as a again starting point to see what the scenario looks like so before to answer the second questions I was wondering I I remember we had a like upper bound of the end percent I guess is it five percent or something but then yeah we cannot go above five percent that's why we use a big money right so in the past few

167years so what is a lower amount what what percentage could be there's a policy so so the school committee has a policy to maintain between I think four and four and a half percent of our operating budget inside ENT as Dave presented we're at three percent right now so we're already below that there's no legal statutory requirement for us to keep a minimum um so it's it's our at our discretion there is some preference and guidance from some of the town finance committees about where they'd like us to see like us to not go below that's an even more complicated conversation than the one we just had about end so I'll leave that for the minutia later but there's there's nothing that limits us from drawing that down to zero other than you know fiscal

168Prudence to not drain your savings account um Adam what okay so you're gonna so that's where we are and then now we're taking this back to budget sub yeah and and you know I know this is the hardest part but I'd also love any feedback anybody wants to send me directly around the actual guidelines there's a memo in your packet around some of those written guidance in terms of where to look to maximize efficiency and where to focus our efforts on in terms of any reallocation of spending for the district yep so I thought we have a problem with the town questioned us to use a big money of ENT right last year it's a so to offset of the budget uh their question is about the really increase over the budget not about the

169I mean so it's all part of the same formula yeah we still say three percent of the budget but then we use a 2 million of the ENT that's a week that's why they criticize right yeah I mean it's it's all part of the same formula so we could you know that again what I what I started with was we're really driven by the percent increase on the assessment to the town of Acton how we get to that either reducing our budget using more reserves is our decision which is why we're providing this guidance and to your point you have and yes we used 1.5 million of reserves last year which was more than we turned back and there was some commentary around using more than you're returning my counter to that is we were

170sensitive to the town's ability to fund last year's budget and our needs to provide a quality education to our students and that's the decision we have to make and um shorter question is basically so if we feel comfortable of using the end to 2 million for example all right and if that means we can use probably 2 million right ENT uh we we still we are sitting at 3 million if we'll feel comfortable to use to say 2 million assuming we are going to replace replenish whatever something so that means we have two millions we can restore 2 Millions right from E and D so we'll let the trigger override basically do do we have the support from the I'm not quite sure I understand the last part of the your reasoning there so if

171we use two million of red this year it'll draw our end down to one million to 2 million right because we're assuming yes we'll assume that it gets replenished so the ending balance would be at about yeah there's absolutely no vote required other than the vote of this committee to appropriate those funds yeah but I have an impression we have a comment like you said uh think on uh commented about our use just too much of USD right so not on the safe side I just wondering if we use a 2 million would that also bear another criticism I mean so yeah I mean it's a it's a fairly diverse body on the actin finance committee and I think that some people would recognize that we need to provide for our students and some people

172would be unhappy with our level of reserves so it's they're not a monolith but yes I think we would get criticism and part of the challenge for us in this budget year is to balance the the concern of the finance committees with the concern of our families who don't want to see drastic cuts great um okay Adam do you have what you need I believe so very good thank you very much again anybody who wants to send feedback on the written guidelines as well please send them to me and we'll we're going to review revise them at the next budget subcommittee and then at our next meeting which is a budget Workshop meeting we'll start by voting those budget guidelines yes so there will be even more of this at our next meeting so everybody

173get ready can I just for a clarification Adam when would you need feedback from committee members bye that's a great question I believe our next budget subcommittee meeting is is it Monday the 7th yeah so by Sunday night cool everyone got this Sunday this Sunday this upcoming Sunday night questions comments and concerns thank you Adam all right everybody here we go can somebody bring up the warrants while I'm going through consent please thank you so much items on the consent agenda agenda do not usually require discussion and are approved with one vote unless any member would like to hold an item for discussion and a separate vote I will read each item name and if any member would like to it held please say hold members do not have to have attended a meeting to

174vote on the minutes item number one approval of the meeting minutes for um the 20th approval of or item two approval of the joint meeting minutes from the 25th item number three donation of four thousand nine hundred and fifty dollars to Blanchard Memorial from Littleton Electric Light and Water Department is there a motion to approve the consent items move to approve with gratitude to the Littleton light and electric okay so Adam with gratitude uh Ben with gratitude um all in favor any objections Etc that moved unanimously all right here we go statement of warrants thank you so much oh I'm sorry committee reports I was ready to go here we go um negotiation subcommittee Amy is not here Marie do you want to say something about that to swear actively meeting with teachers we have

175exchanged proposals and we are evaluating proposals and we'll be back in touch with the school committee when we have more information thank you Marie hi Ben thank you madam chair uh the act and select board Met has body on October 17 2022 at the meeting there was a hearing regarding a taxi license moreover during the new business portion of the meeting the select board presented the fincom's point of view for the upcoming fiscal year this same presentation was made at the October 25th join actin box World Regional School District leadership meeting as presented at the October 25th meeting the fincom indicated that the town is at risk of having its expenditures exceed its revenues as we discussed earlier tonight the recommendation from both the select board and the fincom is to limit costs the remainder

176of the meeting was largely relegated to non-binding articles to be presented at town meeting BSA Scout items and a consent agenda which included but is not limited to two committee appointments sale of excess property in the name of vehicles and various other items thank you so much Ben here we go statement of warrants and a recommendation to approve ready go Tesla I move that the school committee vote to approve the below listed warrants totaling 4 584 254.62 cents AP vendor warrants as follows 23-008 a dated 10 13 2022 and the amount of 520.50 23-008 dated 10 13 2022 in the amount of 321.25 payroll vendor warrants as follows 23-008pr dated 10 20 2022 and the amount of one million one hundred eighty two thousand five hundred forty five dollars and twenty cents and payroll warrants

177as follows p2308 dated 10 20 2022 and the amount of two million 854 867.67 second all those in favor say aye aye I think that that was unanimous thank you so much Mr superintendent would you like to highlight anything in the FYI Kyra and I are holding our next Community Coffee on November 9th and that's it move to adjourn that was Adam and uh um all those in favor [Music]