001noting the hour and the presence of Quorum I call the Acton Regional fact in Boxborough sorry box for a regional school committee to order members of the public who wish to watch the meeting online may use actent TV's YouTube channel found on the top of the agenda the meeting is also being recorded and will be posted on acting acting TV's website at actentv.org this evening we meet as a community one week after our Regional High School was put on lockdown for two hours because of an anonymously reported allegation of danger to our student body the timeline and details of what unfolded last Wednesday September 14th will be addressed later in this meeting there has been communication from the administration accusations thrown around on Facebook at a standout in the streets there have also been hours
002of phone calls meetings coffees and time spent with community members who have simple questions that must be answered by those decision makers who took part in the events as chair I hold the agenda I am purposefully making space for the grief and frustration of the community that experienced an extra layer of trauma during last week's lockdown black families in our town make up a mere four percent of the community that leaves us vulnerable to being unseen and underheard in situations like this because we're told this situation is complex that nothing is simple and binary and we have to wait until all the details are sussed out in investigation I will make more remarks on this later but I want to be clear today's meeting purposefully makes room to hear from our neighbors hopefully many of
003our black neighbors and then those who are caring allies as well today you will be seen and heard there are some who would like to attach this moment to our broader necessary and yes adjacent conversation about the school resource officer contract I believe that there is time for lament airing and truth-telling and then there is time for change work and executing on new ideas we will have a full and transparent discussion about sros and the memorandum of understanding for them I believe that it is imperative that this Committee conduct that discussion separately from that event from this event at the beginning of this meeting we will talk about the infrastructures of socio social emotional learning programs that have been implemented in our district to support all of our students it is important to note that
004all of our students have endured a traumatic event over the last three years and it shows the presentations you're about to see were scheduled weeks ago and frankly they are appropriately timed please watch and listen with care afterward I will open up our meeting to talk about last week's events there will be ground rules and I will explain them when we get to that portion of the meeting for now I thank you for coming per school committee policy 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 I appreciate that
005wonderful uh introduction you made Madam chair and I uh happy that you well you've sort of preempted my comment that's not on the agenda still not on the agenda so I'm going to say it it'll be short I think um and I have to leave before the other thing but I'll see the rest of it I'm glad you made space for uh this uh discussion later on on the the events of Wednesday but um I'm here to um State uh that um I I want to register a vote of no confidence in the school Resources office program the the police and schools program and it's not about what happened on Wednesday because I only know a little bit about that but it's a lot of things that happened before that uh and peculiarly have hit
006us in both towns Boxborough and acted this year and over half of the school resource officers that I'm aware of in the last year were involved in either being put on leave and then resigning for numbers a number of issues too in Acton and we're also involved in the Miriam case that I was involved in years ago and um um you know the chief has been for a whole year has been on leave in Boxborough and he's one who's been um you're writing letters right before this happened to the legislature uh to oppose the criminal uh law reform that happened at the end of 2021 which made us um no longer mandate this one school resource officer per district and Jamie Eldridge and other of our legislators have been involved on the right side of
007this issue that I find in in not making a mandate and making it changing the language of the statute to say at the request of the superintendent not in consultation shall appoint so that's why this is so important you ask for it um at on August 25th one minute and we have a few um meetings since then I know one was for bargaining um an executive session but um we we shouldn't wait too long especially given all the stuff that's going on because people are uncomfortable and I'm sure you'll hear that uh from the others who are independently involved and uh thank you very much for all your work and uh and I hope you do the right thing and immediately demand that your requests be honored very soon the next meeting hopefully with a
008report thank you foreign thank you Steve any other comments just want to make sure you want to talk about something that's not on this agenda because you want to talk about last week then that's common oh okay okay very good just want to make sure y'all okay then with that I'm going to pass it off to superintendent light for his update okay so I'll just do a few quick updates before we get into our presentations tonight I just want to recognize even though we already sent this out to the district I want to you know congratulate uh the students staff and families over at the Conant Elementary School for receiving recognition as a 2022 National Blue Ribbon School for an exemplary High performing school as you recall a couple of years ago Gates school also
009received a Rec same recognition but for an exemplary achievement Gap closing school I think one thing that strikes me as a community we are so fortunate and blessed to have six absolutely fantastic elementary schools with great communities in them staff students and you know while we you know might have one recognized or two every once in a while it really is a system that we have that is all designed to serve our students well so congratulations on that I also want to just thank the committee for some previous work on our district policy for digital tools I also want to thank our curriculum staff we are actually highlighted as a model policy in a new book by author Susan Lin called who's raising the kids this was actually just reviewed in the New York Times
010so it's really neat that Acton box policy for digital tools is highlighted in that I just want to again thank all of the curriculum staff who gave input into that as well as the school committee members working on that policy and procedure we have been working in in-person open houses again it's really exciting that we finally get to welcome all of our families back into schools as we normally do so thank you to all of the staff students and welcome back family so we're excited about that we recently sent out a pool renaming survey as you're aware the school committee is considering renaming the high school pool in honor of former coach Jeff Johnson the former Hall of Fame swim coach for acton-boxborough the subcommittee formed to make a recommendation to the school committee and
011is seeking Community input about the decision members of the community who would like to provide feedback May complete a brief survey by Tuesday October 4th 2022 we've already sent that out broadly to the community we'll send that out again tomorrow to our families we want to make sure everyone knows the grand opening of our Boardwalk campus is scheduled for 9 30 a.m on Saturday October 15 2022 over at the boardwalk campus um you know we are going to do a ceremony at 9 30 followed by a series of Tours uh leaving um between 10 and 12 in the morning and then we'll be done at 12 because I know Boxborough has a Diwali celebration that we want to honor and be able to make space for both um we want to make sure that everyone
012knows school committee you are obviously invited and but this is also an invitation to the entire Community because this isn't just a school effort this is actually a community-wide effort and we're excited to be able to unveil that and welcome our community into the school we the next major presentation we have and you know we've scheduled a series of presentations and tonight we're talking about social emotional learning but the next big presentation we're going to be doing for the school committee is around special education and that is going to be on the October 6th school committee meeting so we're sending that home to families tomorrow to make sure they're aware uh that if they would like more information about programming across the district they can tune in and then finally we made a couple of
013adjustments to our community coffee schedule that Kira and I do to add another evening opportunity for families and also to make sure we are providing a good mix of in-person and virtual opportunities to be a little bit more convenient for families so the updated version of that will go out as well so thank you are you ready to do you know how to control the volume I I can try and make that louder all right yes why uh let me introduce the next group so we keep moving and then I will work on volume all right so we are going to slide right into our social emotional learning program overview um and I'd like to welcome Heather stouk up to the presenter table foreign one of the things that I had an opportunity to do
014with the last year was to go and attend some optional faculty meetings at each of our schools and you know the most prevalent theme that came out through those meetings was a feeling that the the social emotional needs and mental health needs and Behavioral Health needs of our students exceeded our ability to meet all of their needs and that was incredibly frustrating for staff I think one thing I know about our staff is they're extraordinarily dedicated and that they you know the number one thing our teachers want to feel is that they're meeting our kids needs and that level of frustration really wears on everyone when you see kids that might have a need that's beyond what you can do that was backed up through some of the surveys that we did over the course
015of the spring with our faculty and also our families that we really needed to prioritize students social emotional needs it's been in our strategic plan but as you know as we went through the pandemic a lot of that strategic plan got rocked by very very urgent and pressing changes to school and how we were offering education to kids and everything else so this year we wanted to make sure we were really committed coming into the school year to prioritizing social emotional needs so it's our first presentation of the Year to you and I want to just talk a little bit about how we're thinking of these and Heather if you could just go to the next slide please um one thing that we've talked a lot with you about is the work we've done as
016a district to develop a multi-tiered system of support and we want to make sure that there's a really clear understanding among our school committee community staff and families that you know this is not just an academic system of support but it's also designed to meet the social emotional and Behavioral Health needs of students as well and so when we think of a tiered support system of support what we do is we understand that students most students are going to be successful with high quality evidence-based instruction in kind of a tier one setting is what we call in tier one is what all students receive and then through a system of assessment we in screening we can understand which students might need additional supports beyond that a smaller subset of students typically around 15 percent and
017I'm generalizing that might need supports in that second tier and those are typically short-term interventions that support students as then students can return to being successful in a general tier one setting of instruction that all students can receive some students however are going to meet need more formal assessment or evaluation and need longer term or more intensive short-term interventions and that's what we would call tr3 typically about five percent of students in a school setting would fall into that tier three we because we've been working on the academic side with the development of a coaching system as well as making sure we had licensed specialists in all of our schools in mathematics and literacy we also wanted to think about our social emotional learning mental health and behavioral supports as well in a tiered system
018of supports and so what we're going to do tonight is just present a little bit of the work to you that we're doing across some of those tiers so we're going to start off in tier one thinking about what all students receive and I'm going to turn this over to Heather to do more introductions we're going to start off in tier one and make our way through tier three and just give you a little bit of a sampling the structure of tonight is a little bit different than what we've been able to do over the last few years throughout the pandemic we couldn't bring large groups into school committee we're very very excited to welcome our staff back to school committee meetings to talk about the work that they are actually doing not just the
019work our administrators plan for them and keep creating but you know I'm very very thankful to all of the staff we're going to present we're going to bring them up and Heather's going to be able to introduce some of our staff first but Heather why don't I turn it over to you and again thank you to all of our presenters the format will do some short presentations per topic with an opportunity for a couple questions or comments in between hi um I actually want to introduce myself first I am Heather stouk I am the coordinator for social emotional learning and mental and Behavioral Health for the district it is a new position within the district this year and so I'm coming to you in that new role so I'm excited about the role and I'm
020also excited to be here with you all to share some of the opportunities that we have in the areas of social emotional learning and mental and Behavioral Health I'm just going to provide a broad framework sort of for us to listen to the presentations within um I wanted to take the opportunity to start off by reviewing what exactly we are talking about when we're talking about social emotional learning on the screen you will see the castle definition of social emotional learning this is one of many definitions of social emotional learning really what we're talking about is the process by which individuals learn the skills both interpersonal so person to person in intra personal so your own regulation and other skills that you need in order to navigate the world and the challenges around you um
021Castle specifically breaks down these skills into five broad domains which are depicted on the graphic on the screen they the domains include self-awareness self-management responsible decision making social awareness and relationship skills Castle 5 is one widely referenced framework and that they have there's a lot of research that they do that links the success in school and the community directly a student's success in the school in the community directly to the developmental skills that are encompassed within these SEL Frameworks mental health um I wanted to this is the World Health organization's definition of what mental health is mental health is really we're talking about the state um a mindset um we're talking about the develop not so much the developmental process and skill acquisition like we are with the social emotional learning but rather an individual's
022current presentation in regards to their psychological emotional and social well-being overall I just wanted to take the opportunity to distinguish the two because they are substantially different although they do there's overlap in a lot of the presentation that we're seeing in the students within the school Community but they are substantially different and so some of the presenters you'll be hearing tonight are talking more about the sdl and behavioral and then we'll also talk a little bit about the mental health aspects of it um while social emotional learning helps to cultivate protective factors that may mitigate mental health risks they are one is not necessarily indicative as students social emotional well-being is not necessarily and skill development is not necessarily indicative of a student's mental health and vice versa so they're often spoken to in in
023concert although you're going to hear a lot about a subset of practices that we're implementing in the district to integrate the social emotional learning and mental and Behavioral Health supports across the K-12 Spectrum this year one of the themes that you will hear about is really focusing on relationship building the Research indicates strong supportive and sustained relationships with adults in the school consistently predicts that students can consistently predict be predictive of a student's capacity for resilient Behavior even when faced with the trauma and strong student-teacher relationships also help to students communicate effectively develop personal relationships with adults and with peers practice teamwork and collaborative problem solving resolve construct conflict constructively and seek and offer support when help is needed many of the supports being presented tonight focus on the core tenant that establishing those safe
024and trusted adult relationships within the school setting is one of the most important roles that our Educators and our staff more broadly perform throughout the day when they're working with students in front of them this line is just a highlight of the guests that we have here as Peter said we are very grateful to have our Educators here to talk with us more at the elementary level about the responsive classroom work that's being done at the junior high and high school level around advisory and then we have two of our community partners that are also here with us today from Leslie the lifts which is the institute for trauma sensitivity and also cartwheel care and so I am actually going to turn it over to Jill Crystal and I'm not gonna Touch This thank you
025for having me I'm Jill kreisel I'm a second grade teacher at Blanchard and also a responsive classroom trainer so grateful to be yeah I'm so sorry the microphones are really sensitive and what we have and just to go we did try to increase the volume but the volume on the mics is actually up all the way already so we I think we're going to have to just yeah keep the mic close thank you so grateful to be here tonight to share with you about the responsive classroom approach and about the summer training that some Elementary staff participated in this summer so the responsive classroom approach is a set of practices intended to promote joyful safe and inclusive classroom and school environments and here is the core belief so in order to be successful in and
026out of school students need to learn a set of Social and emotional competencies cooperation assertiveness responsibility empathy and self-control along with a set of academic competencies which are academic mindset perseverance learning strategies and academic behaviors responsive classroom is informed by the work of educational theorists and classroom teachers and it's Guided by these six principles so number one teaching social emotional content is as important as teaching academic content number two how we teach is as important as what we teach number three that great cognitive growth occurs through social interaction four is all about how we work together as adults to create safe joyful and inclusive School environments is as important as our individual contributions and competence number five my favorite what we know and believe about our students individually culturally and developmentally informs our expectations reactions
027and attitudes about our students and six partnering with families knowing them and valuing their contributions is as important as knowing the children we teach responsive classroom isn't a curriculum it's an approach that creates the conditions for social emotional and academic success using practices that fit into these four domains engaging academics positive Community effective management and developmentally responsive teaching so in responsive classroom schools and classrooms it's creating an environment where students can do their best learning where they can be their authentic selves where everybody feels a sense of belonging and significance so here are some of the practices that are at the heart of responsive classroom morning meeting teacher language we're using language and tone that's intentional interactive modeling this is an explicit process where we're modeling a behavior or routine and giving students opportunities to
028practice guided Discovery is when we're introducing a new material to generate excitement rule creation this is when students and teachers are both involved all involved in the process of generating rules so that all members can achieve their hopes and goals logical consequences are a non-punitive approach to responding to misbehavior where teachers can set clear limits and expectations and students can learn and fix their mistakes while preserving their dignity role Interactive Learning structures this is where students can engage with the content in active and interactive ways this is a four day training in five minutes so um role play is um where students can practice and act out the rules in real life scenarios academic choice choice is embedded into lessons quiet time is a brief purposeful and relaxed time of day transition that occurs after
029the hubbub of lunch and recess energizers are brief and joyful whole class activities that often involve movement or mindfulness and closing circle is a five to ten minute gathering at the end of the day to promote celebration and reflection additionally in the four-day Institute we talk about teacher empathy and teacher leadership styles so responsive classroom teachers are authoritative they're firm but fair they respond to students with empathy and Grace while still holding high and clear expectations for all students we talk a lot about teaching self-discipline and responding to misbehavior responsive classroom teachers spend a great deal of time and intention in teaching positive behaviors and promoting pro-social skills so that ideally they're spending less time responding to misbehavior and also connecting with families so morning meeting is one of many of responsive classroom teachers favorite
030time of day it helps us to promote Community first thing in the morning and fulfill students need for belonging significance and fun to carry them out through the rest of the day it's made up of these four components greeting sharing a group activity and morning message so this summer Educators participated wholeheartedly in this four-day training which always seemed to occur during one of the heat waves um what's so great about this training is that participants get to experience themselves some of the Interactive Learning structures we start each day with an adult morning meeting and end with a closing Circle it's really active and Interactive reflective so whether it's a brand new teacher or a veteran teacher of 20 plus years there's often some profound or sometimes even subtle yet powerful mindset shifts that are happening
031during the training we received lots of really wonderful feedback that teachers were feeling more prepared and reinvigorated and empowered to continue this work with hope and joy in a more proactive approach so here is a quick video of some teachers that attended reflecting on a highlight for them one thing that I really took away from the summer responsibility this is the importance of interactive modeling in my roles reading Specialists I support readers from all across our school and we do a lot of routines together through modeling and having to be interactively with the importance of on the student they're able to see the goal the purpose to why we do it so that not only are they independent in their routines of supporting their book bag routines and supporting their reading goal routines but also
032to supporting their lives as readers I love that I can do it with my students and I love that I can really continue it through other behaviors so one of my biggest takeaways from the workshop is the energizers just learning about how important it is to schedule them throughout the day I think the most favorite one my kids love is the double double this sis we learned it they were like wait what it was really confusing but they got it they help each other and now they're playing it during down time in our classroom and also while waiting for the bus so it's been really great this summer I took the class with Jill and a bunch of my colleagues and I was really re-inspired you know by responsive classroom had some training in the
033past but what I really took away with me is the importance of morning meeting it's always been my favorite time of day but I was really invigorated by really building this routine into our classroom for our earliest Learners and at the beginning of the year so our morning greeting is so so fun we change it up and we're trying to build routines with them and the sharing part which I sometimes skipped over before and not doing so now is the perfect way for us to get to know each other loved it the start of every day in grade three begins with a morning meeting it's one of the best parts of our day but one of the most chaotic times of the day is at the end of the day when students are waiting for
034pickup or buses so what we created is a very quick uh closing Circle which is a high five at the end of the day the students know when they come back from specials they sit right down on the rug and they share one of these five things the favorite part of the day a hope for tomorrow for our class one moment of pride a shout out to a classmate or a whole class grow not only is this a very quick way to end the day it's a very positive way to wrap up our day and become more of a community and also it turns into a high five a high seven a high ten we all give each other a virtual high five and buses are called it's the absolute perfect way to end the
035day what I love about responsive classroom is it's a mindset where everyone can be their best self whether it's the teacher or the student we work within a framework where we're assuming best intent and every experience it gives us the grace to make mistakes and is a learning opportunity so that we can be our best selves in every moment we spend together so coming up next for elementary Educators we're hoping to offer a guided workshop and book study on the power of our words language really is one of the most powerful tools available to us as teachers what we say and how we say it has a big impact on building positive communities um so thank you so much for having me if anybody would like to talk to me more about responsive classroom or
036see it in action happy to have you in my classroom and thank you so much thank you okay Blanchard we see who went to the the train we did have representation from a lot of of other schools too cool I could say we're all shot um we're gonna do just quick questions between some of these presentations do any um members have any questions that's me hi thank you um I think the stuff is also great but I just wonder and I don't know what the class sizes right now are at Blanchard but it seems like that's a whole lot to accomplish if you have 23 kids and families and all of that so I was just wondering what your thoughts are on current class sizes so when we it's a like you saw all that
037big list of practices what we really encourage for teachers is to pick one or two like morning meeting is a really big one just to start with and take it slow because it's really overwhelming and teachers really want to be perfect at everything and take it all at once we just tell them like take it slow pick one or two practice and and work on that no sorry I I was probably unclear but I just mean in terms of you know relationships and getting to know I just it's just I know that you guys do it because I had Elementary School students I just don't really know how um but you get to know that that many kids it's just amazing Evelyn did you have your hand waist yes I had a question I don't
038know if that's a Peter question on you but thank you so much for sharing it's exciting how are we what metrics are we putting in place to ensure that teachers are really adhering to this model of teaching because this is great right and it's one thing going for training and there's another thing adhering to that training and actually putting it to practice yeah I can do you want to jump in on that or I can take it yeah I think first is Jill stated there's a lot of excitement amongst teachers and so there's a lot of sharing in that way I also think that in our observations in our visits to classrooms being able to see it in action and comment on it and bring that back to some staff meetings and some sharing about
039what's happening and what's not happening and then as you know we're going to be doing and I think Peter you might be speaking to this a little bit later or Heather some of the surveys that we'll be doing around culture and climate in the classrooms from the student perspective from the staff perspective will also help us get a better sense of what's happening in the schools on a daily basis so as students or families sort of surveyed on some of this to understand if this is presented because if this is happening in the classroom the students will experience and they can speak to it or their families would know that it's happening right if the teachers know you're coming to observe they are on their good behavior no offense to teachers and this is not
040to say you're not doing what you're supposed to do I'm just saying that how are we really making sure that because this is fantastic this is great and if we can pull this off this will be good but I'm just trying to understand how we're actually making sure that this is happening because if my kid was in Blanchard and was experiencing this they will talk to me so I can speak to it and say they are actually experiencing this new way of learning so is there something that other than observing in classrooms I think we should be trying to figure out a way to really make sure that this is really happening now I appreciate that I think um you know one thing I think with social emotional learning as soon as we think about
041trying to raise the stakes of accountability for social emotional learning we're probably defeating the purpose of social emotional learning at the same time so I I think we want to you know I I think Educators the the value in doing this is the reward that Educators see and how it helps them manage classrooms how they see progress in their kids and that is how we continue to promote programs um I think to answer your question though I it's a little bit separate of how we're thinking about making sure we understand our students and families and their experiences in schools we piloted last spring a family survey of kind of school climate and culture and we similarly we surveyed our staff we want to expand that to include students this year and have a regular survey
042pattern that goes out I think we're planning twice a year as of right now and we're working to finalize that that's not really about accountability for how teachers teach responsive classroom it's more thinking in terms of how our staff students and families experience schools and what are the ways that we can continue to improve that I think you know it's really important to be sensitive to how we approach the SEL work with staff because if there's a feeling that um there's a negative association of accountability with it then the the value of SEL can intrinsically go down so I I just I'm cautious and I agree with you we need to understand how our students and families experience I agree with that I didn't mean for it to be punitive not that if the teachers
043are not doing what they're supposed to do they should it should be I wasn't meaningful to be punitive but just to really try to understand for our own selves how this is working and whether we're making some strides around it I just want to share a little personal thing because we I do responsive classroom in my own classroom and I have 19 Kids and we've been in school for three weeks and I still have kids who don't know each other's names but watching them greet each other and they've learned how to say I don't remember your name it makes such a humongous difference and so like whereas other programs we look for I don't know how many sounds they know or whether or not they can meet the math standards or whatever this is like
044a really quick check-in because as soon as you know someone's name you're going to treat them nicer you're not going to do something crappy to them you're not going to take something off their desk or you know whatever let them you know you're gonna let them sit with you at lunch or whatever it's like a really quick it's astounding to watch how like the tenor of the classroom changes when everybody recognizes that they know something about the person on the rug right like they might remember that someone else has a cat or they might remember that someone else's favorite food is pizza because all these little teeny tiny things that literally take 10 minutes in the morning build this classroom Community like they all know that I have four cats you know like it's a
045really quick you know way to connect with each other and so I think that when we're talking about is it doing the work it's like such a simple thing of we're all here together and we're gonna all support each other and when we know each other's names or we give each other a high five at the end or whatever it is it's just like that little teeny tiny bit that isn't measurable necessarily except if you're the teacher in the classroom who sees the the way they interact okay thank you Joe thank you Joe who's next all right I would love to invite Jess eagle and Patrick McClellan up um they are two of our Junior High teachers extraordinaire um and they are going to be talking about the advisory program uh which is new at
046the Junior High School this year um so you know Jess and Patrick thank you so much and I know we have Jim Marcotte sitting in the back carefully watching over yeah welcome y'all thank you so again just to introduce ourselves some Jess Eagle I'm a school counselor at the junior high and I'm Pat McLean I'm an 8th grade social studies teacher and so we are really excited and I think proud to be presenting on behalf of a large Committee of Staff members who have been working on developing this advisory program for over a year um and as we've already mentioned an advisory program is a tier one uh program and we're focused on developing our social emotional skills to contribute to a positive School climate and by supporting diversity and inclusivity um and so while
047going through this process of researching and developing what this program could look like at RJ gray we were looking at this question how can we teach model and practice skills in these areas while having fun and so fun is really important to us this year as well as just building strong relationships between students in The Advisory Group so student student to and student adult relationships as previously mentioned and why that's so important next one yeah so just to kind of help us see what it looks like in the building groups are roughly 8 to 12 students in size with one certified or licensed staff member although some groups might have additional supports depending on their student loans um we meet multiple times a week we kind of frame it as like a short or a
048longer advisory short ones or 10 minutes the longer ones are 25 minutes each month we also also dedicate a theme that is based on one of the SEL course skills to that month so one of our 25 minute or longer activity or advisories are dedicated to learning or practicing what those skills are the majority of the remaining wines are purely about developing community and often one of the best ways you can develop Community is through like fun activities and games as well as some kind of quick check-ins um sometimes with a central question but sometimes as simple as a game like uh Rosebud Thorne what's going on what's going well what are you excited for what are things that have been happening that you maybe want to share opportunities for us to share a little
049bit about ourselves and have better Community is going to help those groups to come together we find that when kids are heard and when they're having fun then that's easy for them to feel like they are valued by others when they feel valued they feel safe and when they feel safe they feel like they belong so just to take a give you an example of some of our social emotional learning lessons so these are the school-wide lessons that we're providing staff and everyone is doing on the same Wednesday when we have a 25-minute advisory um so in September we're focused on the theme belonging uh we participated in the international dot day and we had all students um after kind of talking about the story then also take the time to design their own Dot
050and thinking about what kind of Mark unique Mark they leave on our community in October we are going to focus on perseverance and we'll be doing a letter to yourself and we'll be looking at setting goals for the school year and identifying setbacks and challenges and and doing a brainstorm with each other and bouncing off ideas in the group about how to overcome those challenges in November we're focused on communication and we'll be looking at strategies for conflict resolution and then just listing a few others that will be coming down the line courage mindfulness empathy gratitude anticipating changes and celebration and then also we are using Community circles as our protocol for practicing how to be active listeners be respectful to each other and do perspective taking um and so we actually practice that protocol
051this week with the students and then it will you know be something that we can continue to go back to as different discussions need to take place as just mentioned we are the co-leaders but we are just two of many people in the building admins and teachers who have really put a lot of time and effort since really last October um some points weekly meetings for months on end talking about how we make this really successful and one of the things that we felt that was going to be important is we need to make sure that all advisors felt like they were supported and could do a really good job of creating a really fun inclusive environment so one of the ways we did as we made activity banks for teachers to draw from these
052are ideas that many of us who have run advisories in previous schools or previous settings have brought in and again any teacher can go to these Banks find something that fits their advisory for that day and then they would have something to do so it's not necessarily that you have to be have any kind of education on how to run an advisory you could go to one of these Banks and run them we made two different banks for the 10 minute quick ones as well as a 25-minute advisories a lot of them are game space but we also want to provide opportunities like yeah there's going to be times where we should have discussions like it's not always just about games we should take some time to be intentional about getting to know each other
053as well as utilizing Community circles because if we do that um now when it's a little bit easier and then we have a heavier topic that we have to talk about well practice as a community to know how we have discussions where we can hear each other and respond to each other in empathetic ways um these games and conversations are about individual but also group Reflections there are a lot of movement things because they are middle schoolers and they definitely still need to be moving but also how do we also work together collaborate on things from games to also some of these discussions that we're going to be having foreign and then as you can see these are just we've only had a handful of advisories you can see it's very wide ranging from having
054games to getting to know each other some activities from like believe dot day but also a couple examples of norming how we're going to treat each other in this advisory going forward as well as I believe some work around Community circles and that is it thank you yum questions hi Liz hi I have a question um do all the students participate in these groups or is it just certain ones yep every student is involved in an advisory nice and quick nice I liked how that went other questions okay thank y'all you did good who's next all right and now we'd like to welcome Nikki Junot and Darren guinn uh who are two of our high school teachers who have been involved in working around the high school advisory program as you may know the high
055school's had an advisory program for a while and decided to take an opportunity this year to re-envision that a little bit and so welcome Darren and Nikki welcome y'all thanks for having us I'm Nikki Jeanette I'm a special educator at the high school and I'm Darren Gwen I'm a social studies teacher at the high school um so as Peter mentioned we've had advisory for a lot of years at the high school about 10 plus years and um our our advisory presentation compared to our other friends is going to look pretty old and tired compared to that theirs they have really a lot of activity on our slides and we were pretty simple so um so I want to mention the other folks on the committee because it really has been a pretty special group to
056work with Carrie chartier Rob Donaldson Darren and myself Kerry's in biology science and Rob is in history and um I think it's a great group because we've collectively worked at the high school for about like 90 years in all different corners of the building and and we have gone through advisories all together and and we've discussed a lot of feedback from previous structures in goals of advisory and we've not only been able to go through the the formal feedback and data that we've collected over the course of the years from students and and teachers and families about what has worked and what hasn't but we've heard a lot anecdotally about what's worked in advisory and what hasn't worked and we came to the table with a lot of those conversations um to prepare for our
057work I don't know the next slide do I just all right so um like I said we've had advisory for a long time and we've had a great many goals and we haven't really had a specific goal at the same time so we've carried a lot of things into advisory and we never I don't know that anyone was really very clear about what the purpose what the what the purpose of advisory was so one of our goals really early on after our preliminary discussions about the feedback was to create a goal and that that goal needed to be um valuable to everyone in the school Community all stakeholders so no worry that it's not meaningful to someone or it that should be meaningful to everybody that it should be manageable for um for for teachers
058and for students and for to be comfortable for everyone so our goal this year is to create a cohesive community that encourages students to connect with peers and staff and so we really broke it down to something very very simple and we've created many any communities in all of these advisories and so with that in mind we really kept that goal in mind throughout the whole entire time when we were trying to figure out hey what's the best way to structure this advisory what is an advisory really going to be about so we wanted to keep advisory small so we have 8 to 12 students in each advisory we also spend a lot of time thinking about should advisory should our advisories be single grades or should they be mixed grades and we want we
059really felt that by having mixed grades we would enable students from all different grades to be able to connect and younger students would be able to interact with older students and it will almost be like a rotation where the 12th graders will leave will celebrate them leaving and then the each advisor will get a couple new students in it and for the next year and as a result these students who are younger uh will be like leaders of these newer students we meet 20 minutes every Monday and so that's really kind of our routine and uh we we really spent a lot of time thinking about certain routines and rituals and having a reoccurring format so it felt safe and comfortable to everyone we have uh like Cuts we've created certain Norms such as like
060we want people to sit in circles because it's important that people like when they're best talking to each other they they talk to each other's faces and not to each other's backs we also felt it was really important to keep keep it device and Technology free so we're all like connecting with each other for these 20 minutes each week uh and uh what we do with these routines is um we're in a circle there will be certain questions posed the questions give lots of options like is something uh like what's something in the past week that what you did that was healthy helpful or new um and so it's really a safe question that all students are able to answer obviously if a student's not comfortable answering like that's something that is okay too um
061but through these rituals and we're in Tunes we're really hoping to get kids connected in these small groups and establish positive relationships that will really help hopefully uh the community at a b as a whole colleagues hi Evelyn how do you manage to get high schoolers to be technology free I just want to learn you know honestly um you know we've done advisories in the past and it has always been an issue having technology having their phones and even now that the Chromebooks are there but it has not been an issue we set the ground rule right away everybody knew this was a new structure and it was going to be new for everyone and we really just haven't allowed them and I haven't heard any any trouble with it at all it's only 20
062minutes so they get right on it afterwards foreign I just want to say one other thing about um so thus it's obviously a new thing for us but the students and staff we've been kind of like checking in with them uh anecdotally and uh while for the seniors there's maybe a little bit of reservation considering like they've had four different iterations of advisory and in over four years for the most part students are really open-minded about it and so we're really kind of optimistic about how this is going to go in a really positive and and nice Direction questions yes um I have a senior and the past four years have been like a crazy iteration of this so was there training given to all people who are advisory teachers because I think that that
063was one of the greatest challenges of the past three iterations is that you could get a really awesome awesome advisory teacher who was engaged and invested and you could get someone who was like okay like you can sit over there for 10 minutes until this is over yes um so we forgot to mention actually that we met with an advisory coach this summer several times for day-long sessions and she gave us some really really good feedback and structures that um and she came with the routines rituals and recurring permits and then we brought that that training to The Faculty on the first couple days of school um and then we actually practiced advisory our current faculty meeting structure we meet for a bit in the in the auditorium all together and then we go off
064into classrooms and then we sit in this exact in this exact situation and practice these rituals um together and um I mean to be perfectly Frank there are people there's a spectrum of feelings about advisory and there's a spectrum of effort in in advisory I think that um no advisory is going to ever look the same and some people are really comfortable with this work and some people are really just uncomfortable with this work but I do think that of all the advisory structures we've had to date we have more people on board with this one than ever before I think that's safe do you think that's safe to say 100 so um so you know and and we're very available and we've been very honest about that from the beginning of people and we've
065problem solved and troubleshooted with with folks who are pretty disc uncomfortable with it and we meet with them and we talk about it and and we've been pretty fortunate with people coming out and saying like this is not what we're not comfortable with this but we have a lot of effort people are really really trying to do this so that is a win and we also just know that it's going to take time like if we're trying to establish authentic relationships you can't just fake that and you can't do it over the course of like four 20-minute uh advisories and and so at times it's going to be uncomfortable especially at the beginning but we're working towards establishing and making it more a little bit more comfortable each time and uh and if we're doing
066that I think we're really headed in the right direction thank you okay thanks y'all thank you so much yeah and I I appreciate hearing this idea of community circles going through all of the levels uh whether it's responsive classroom or advisory so that certainly is a consistent theme uh next we want to welcome uh Joe vastutia who is with the Leslie Institute for trauma sensitivity this is a program that we brought in to our district this year we're very excited about being able to offer this with our Educators through professional learning opportunities and I will let Joe tell you a little bit more about it welcome Joe button you can tell I'm not a technology Guru right to forget my age so I want to start by introducing myself my name is Joe ristusa I
067am a lead clinical faculty at the Leslie Institute for trauma sensitivity and I want to thank you for the opportunity to work this year with the wonderful staff and and Leadership here at acton-boxborough my job this evening is to give you a quick overview of the work that we do and the work we're going to do here um in a b the Leslie Institute for trauma sensitivity is located in The Graduate School of Education at Leslie University we offer five graduate level continuing education courses on the impact of traumatic experience on student learning and what we do about it you know there are a lot of folks that can talk about trauma and the impacts but we find that there aren't many folks who can talk about so what do we do and that is
068uh one of the things that we build into each and every course we teach we also have a research arm that consists of students from doctoral programs as well as supervisory doctoral staff and we do Executive coaching and consultation uh I am the lead clinical faculty at uh Leslie uh Institute for trauma sensitivity and I am a 35 Plus year Public School educator I've worked in a variety of schools in a variety of towns uh in districts um the other two members of the team are Marisa Del Rosario and Donna derosha they are both long-term Public School Educators they are also um uh actually the two of them are in the top 10 percent of our adjunct faculty who teach these courses at Leslie so that is the team that is working here at Acton
069box Pro Leslie's or if you will lifts work you know the goal of our work is to continue to support the development of safe and supportive trauma-sensitive schools and classrooms for all students and and I emphasize that a lot of people when they hear trauma they think about small number of kids isolated out who need tier three or specialized support our work utilizes an understanding of the impacts of traumatic experience to develop community-based whole school and whole classroom uh context or if you will communities where students feel safe supported and can learn and the building blocks about how we do that are the graduate courses that I mentioned we do training and consultation to support leadership and staff and again the research and I want to share with you a couple of key Concepts that
070really underlies this work on the development of safe and supportive trauma-sensitive schools and I think the first piece is the prevalence and the impacts of adverse or traumatic experience that prevalence um the research would show that over 80 percent essentially all of our students will by the time they're through High School experience it at least one category of significant adverse experience and the impacts of this experience can be broad-ranging and deep it can be academic it can be um relational it can interfere with relationship development and it can be behavioral it can create behaviors that not only interrupt that student's ability if you will to regulate themselves in school but it also can result in individuals who have learned to kind of go inside they keep it in and they just kind of float through
071and they never have a chance to really deal with um so that's a brief overview of our work what it looks like in Acton Boxborough is that uh two components the first is coursework and and I should emphasize that this coursework these are three um credit graduate level courses that are heavily subsidized by uh a granting agency or agencies uh one of the most significant being the oak foundation in North Carolina and so it makes these courses affordable for practicing Educators um and we have already scheduled the first course uh course one to begin on September 28th uh we have a second course scheduled to begin on October 31st and other courses in the sequence will follow as the demand exists from the district and from the staff in addition to that we are working
072directly with preschool uh the preschool the elementary schools and the Middle School to create a deepening understanding of the impacts of trauma on student learning and those initial trainings have already taken place at the elementary in the preschool the middle school training will take place on October 3rd our initial sense of those trainings is they were well received and certainly the uh those of us who have done the trainings were very excited uh to have the opportunity to work with your staff to do that each school will have three subsequent trainings to address staff identified needs or urgencies and we'll also be Consulting with building leadership to make sure that this is integrated and fits in the way that they would like to see it with the work that they're doing in other areas thank
073you questions nice and quick I like that that was good questions y'all hello Evelyn yeah I feel like I always have a question but um thank you Joe for your presentation this is great you're welcome um my question is you mentioned the areas that you're covering like behavioral academics um about the relationship yes I didn't hear anything around race racism anti-Semitism any of that which is caused a lot of trauma for a lot of people in our district how are you addressing that or is that something that's supposed to come later the creation of safe and supportive schools is uh it incorporates addressing systemic trauma and systemic traumas include racism gender bias sexual preference it includes all of those and the foundational components of a safe and supportive trauma-sensitive school is that all students feel
074that they belong that this is their community that all students feel safe and all students feel supported and so a school where racism exists a school where you have gender bias does not meet those uh standards if you will um and so we acknowledge in the training the impacts of those systemic forms of trauma including racism and that is incorporated into the to the work we do around that did that answer your question I'm a little confused so sure put in Layman attempts for me so it's your training incorporating some of these elements or no yes okay racism and systemic traumas are integrated and woven into the work that we do got it okay thank you you're welcome other questions y'all hi Adam you mentioned a part of the program was academic coursework that our
075teachers are are able to Avail themselves to what has been the interest in the the pickup of people wanting to take that coursework uh there has been a significant amount of Interest which resulted in our not only setting up that first course one but also setting up a subsequent course one to follow that based on demand thank you um I actually think you know we're I think running uh sections of 25 yes through you for each of those courses I believe we have about 50 Educators on the wait list for second semester who want to take that first course right as well plus this group of Educators would be able to then proceed to the second level right that is excellent now you're welcome thank you who's next thank you Joe um so now I'm
076also pleased uh to welcome Joe English and Juliana Chen uh who are with cartwheel uh this is a new organization I'm starting up this year and I had an opportunity to be introduced to Joe and this idea of a startup last year is really a way of trying to help students access expedited mental health services on a short-term basis and so we met over the course of the spring and it seems like a you know really great opportunity to expand our menu of of services with kids so I'm going to let Joe and Juliana come up and talk a little bit about their organization so welcome and thank you for joining us foreign thanks for having us um I'm Joe I'm the CEO of cartwheel here my background is working mainly in social emotional learning
077with a focus on lgbtq inclusive classrooms to really enjoy speaking with Peter and Heather and Todd and Jen over the past several months and excited to start delivering care here can you guys hear okay okay can you guys hear my name is Juliana Chen I'm a child in Adolescent and adult so double boarded psychiatrist but work predominantly with Children and adolescents a little background on me I'm a child of immigrant parents I was born and raised in the Boston area I went through the Newton Public School System went to school outside of Massachusetts but returned to Boston for my Psychiatry residency and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship so trained through the Harvard system and have stayed in Boston and practicing the Boston area supporting children in teens and families and I'm really passionate about collaborative
078community-based work and family-based interventions and addressing youth mental health and I should have said at the beginning forgive me I'm the medical director or cartwheel and we're very excited to be working with acton-boxborough this year so I'll just start with a little bit of context on on the organization I won't spend a lot of time outlining the problem you're all on the front lines here so you know this very well over the course of the pandemic the temperature in schools has gone up and up and up in terms of the level of mental health needs right the number of students that fall into those tier two and tier three categories that Peter was describing it's just been ballooning and ballooning while at the same time again I'm sure Juliana can speak a lot more to
079this the wait lists and the ability to access care quickly high quality Care has gotten harder and harder so of course families are turning to schools to fill a lot of that Gap so the purpose of cartwheel is to work exclusively with schools to help them meet those student mental health needs and and the needs of families so just a little bit about us we're based in Boston we work exclusively with schools and with schools in Massachusetts and we support across that multi-tier system of support and we can tailor the types of support that we bring to the school district depending on what their needs are we tailor it very specifically to the district we're able to see students who are in grades 5 through 12 with a 100 Telehealth based model we use evidence-based
080techniques it's typically a short-term evidence-based model so a school counselor can refer a student to our program and we work with that student for six to ten sessions or more and I just want to highlight I mean it feels especially relevant I think in some of the conversation today around the types of folks that work with students we really hand-picked the care team that works with each school district and worked closely with the staff here thinking about you know the types of language backgrounds that could best support the students here the types of licenses so very excited to bring a really interdisciplinary team with a lot of school-based experience to support the community here the last thing yet that I want to highlight there is in terms of affordability obviously there are a lot of
081students who struggle to meet um you know the cost of accessing really high quality care so we work with health insurance including with with MassHealth Medicaid to make sure it's really affordable for all kids zero dollar cost of care for any kid who's on a Medicaid plan and for any kid who's uninsured so in terms of the specific goals for this partnership this year I think they really fall into three buckets first is rapid access to care to make sure again kids are not waiting on months on end to access care second is for kids who have more specialized needs or need for longer term care helping them and their families coordinate with providers in the community to make sure that they can get off those wait lists and get those needs met and then
082over the course of the Year again working really closely with the school staff here and the teachers to understand other ways that we might be able to support and build and strengthen those multi-tier systems of support foreign so multiple people have talked about this tonight Peter you gave a really nice uh overview in the beginning of this idea of multi-tiered systems one two and three and clearly acton-boxborough has some really wonderful programs that you guys have in place like just through the wonderful presenters we've heard so um cartwheel also can offer support across those tiers one two and three um tier one as you guys know is kind of the broader thing and um we kind of offer things like specialized workshops for parents and families and particular passionate about parent guidance we're available for
083school consultation as needed but we really want to focus our very brief presentation today on the tier three the Intensive support that people have talked about in terms of access for mental health care very quickly this is Big Picture kind of how cartwheel Works essentially when you're thinking about a family accessing care with us we see ourselves as an extension of the existing actin box Pro counseling system you have an amazing program in place and a very devoted care team and we know that families and and students very much are connected to the school and this the school is a huge community and that school teachers counselors faculty and staff often know their kids best and so the way that cartwheel works is that the school is the hub for referral so if a teacher
084a faculty member a school counselor identifies a child in need but they think might benefit from cartwheel treatment they would identify that student and speak to the family and the student to First have a conversation and see if the family would be interested in a referral if the student and family are interested in referral they make the referral to cartwheel and we contact families within two business days that that referral is submitted to us and we offer appointments a first initial appointment with a therapist within seven days of that referral so kind of as Joe had mentioned we know one of the biggest challenges in the pedia Mental Health crisis is the really really extensive weights or we know I know many families who say they've been searching for months and months and months and
085still can't find a therapist so this is the the whole point of that timely access that a child can get seen by a therapist within a week of that referral again assuming a family's interested nothing is done without a family and student's interest and consent then as Judd mentioned our focus is really on short-term evidence-based skills focused intervention and we would work with that student on average for two to three months really being a supportive space scale building safety planning if necessary and throughout involving the family and coordination with the school where it's appropriate so we can also help support the school to say how can we help support this kid who we've identified as struggling in some way we also have the capacity to do medication evaluation and management over the course of cartwheel
086treatment if necessary because our care team includes not only licensed social workers and psychologists but also a Child and Adolescent psychiatrist and then for children who we identify as needing longer term needs you'd mentioned this earlier Peter about certain conditions maybe a certain five percent of kids needing higher level of care or have chronic conditions need more support our care team is there to support to help assist families through identifying longer term options for maybe regular therapy or more specialized treatment that's outside the scope of our services and that was really just a big over a 50 000 foot foot overview we're happy to take questions but just wanted to say on behalf of Joe and the rest of our care team that we're really so excited about the acton-boxborough partnership we really believe in
087the power of schools and the power of community and everyone working together to support children and it is cliche with this idea of how it takes a village I think everyone has to work together in order to make positive strides and just very excited about our partnership this year happy to take any questions that per as time allows this is extraordinary this is it is really extraordinary um questions hi Evelyn Evelyn again we're happy to take your question thank you for your presentation I think you all are feeling and very important Gap um I have a question about Telehealth restrictions right I work in healthcare I know their restrictions um you know the restrictions about out of state care we have families here that may need care and people have vacation homes outside of Massachusetts
088I know giving the covet the pandemic you were able to get like many New Hampshire licenses you can treat somebody outside of Massachusetts all of those regulations have changed how do you handle within that six six to ten week periods or six to ten sessions when a kidneys care but it's out of state with their family and the family calls and really needs care how are you bridging that Gap because that's important right if it's within a time when school is closed as vacations the kid is out in Maryland or wherever you must wherever Ohio with a family has a crisis how you handling that I appreciate that question and you probably also know then that the restrictions and rules around this change dramatically when covid started and they continue to change and so we
089also our organization is um uh monitoring all those shifts in terms of insurers and restrictions and state rules very very closely the short answer is so though there are rules in place um uh licensures and our liability also this is just good care I am able to see people out of state for times of Crisis so if you have a patient that's under your care and they need you that that trumps any other regardless of where their child is um in terms of ongoing care that would be a different issue but your students reside here and they attend school and act in box bro so though that situation may arise my sense is it's what you just said like they're on vacation or it's a a weekend away otherwise your kids are here in actin
090box bro so I don't actually foresee this as being a recurring issue does that make does that make sense a little bit because your kids live here in Acton box bro sort of yeah but I yeah I I have to I haven't looked at the regulations I don't know I'm just making I just my my intent here is to make sure that the kids that are under your care receive the appropriate care that they need of course given the fact that we know that their Telehealth restrictions that prohibit providers from providing care to patients that are out of state I suppose if a family was leaving actin box for on a permanent basis we would talk with that family make sure we made arrangements that there wasn't a gap in care but otherwise there shouldn't
091be an issue since they'll be residing here there are other restrictions related to Telehealth on the prescribing end um which I'm happy to talk to you more about those details too but we're keeping a close eye on all of those restrictions and addressing as needed all of our staff care team are also licensed in Massachusetts and have extensive experience working in Massachusetts schools so we have that side covered as well thank you I just want to make sure that you know it's a good question and it's so careful when they need it yeah and and that there's no Gap in care when kids leave this town and go elsewhere to spend time with extended family members thank you other questions thank you so much thank you very much if I could just add if I
092can just add one quick thing I just want to you know extend my appreciation um cartwheel so far has been extraordinarily flexible in working with us as well um and so there was a plan in place and then we reached out to you know Joe and Juliana as well as a couple of other staff after our incident last week at the high school and they worked really quickly within about 24 hours of talking to us to think about kind of a customized program that we might have to be able to support some of our students so I really appreciate the flexibility that you're approaching this with and understanding that you know even the best laid plans sometimes shift on a dime so much appreciated we're really looking forward to you know a great partnership and
093the rest of the year so thank you you're very welcome Peter we're very happy to be working with Acton box bro and look forward to working with everyone this year and thank you for having us this evening thank y'all any other presentations Peter that is it I just want to extend my sincere appreciation to all of our presenters tonight School staff guests your presence here is much appreciated as well as all that you're doing to help support our students and staff through the year all right everybody a very brief five-minute break so that we can say goodbye to our guests and reset our mindset and then we're going to do this work okay here we go all right one minute y'all all right everybody okay everyone we're we're not as far behind as I thought
094we would be um but I do want us to get going here because I want to give us the time that it will take so the next item on our agenda is new business which is a discussion of the acton-boxborough Regional High School incident on September the 14th 2022. I'm gonna let you all know how this is gonna go down I am first going to invite superintendent light to give us an update on um what had happened and what has happened since I am then going to invite members of our school committee to make any statements or ask any questions and then I will open the mic to the public I'm going to limit our con our our comments to two minutes so that way I know that we can all take the time we
095need to speak we can all be heard and we won't be here until midnight I'm going to ask you to please not mention student names and I think that there's a thing about faculty and not mention individual faculty names so basically keep it to the purview of the school committee if you want to mention superintendent light by name you can do that he's part of our purview everybody else is in his purview okay are there questions about the ground rules hi Evelyn no ma'am superintendent like all right so thanks Kira um so you know I want to start out by recognizing this has been an extraordinarily challenging week for many people in our community um the shelter in place that we had last week at the high school made us simultaneously kind of hold this
096idea that the actions that we take as school administrators to make sure our schools are safe places for our kids can also result in creating a sense of less safety first for some of our students um that was certainly the impact of what we saw happen last week you know I think that as we think about our students that were involved their families as well as other members of the black community here at acton-boxborough um you know we're so deeply sorry that the actions we took had such an impact on especially our students and families but also the broader community I do want to you know share just a little bit and I want to you know stress that while you know the information available to us necessitated taking some actions there were no weapons
097found at the school and the police have since determined that the report was not founded so I want to be really clear about that um I also just want to recognize too that there are going to be details of the information that was available to us then and is available to us now that I just cannot share because it could identify individual students involved in the incident and that's something that we we cannot do for a variety of reasons um I do want to share what was sent out to families last week by way of an update just to make sure we have a common shared understanding during the meeting of what we're talking about so on Tuesday evening of last week our high school administrators overheard one of our students in the high school
098sharing some concerning information with peers specifically they heard that student sharing that they had been accused by someone else in a different community of potentially possessing a gun when the student was engaged by High School administrators the student had indicated that they had been visited by police from that other community and that they wanted to clear the situation up the high school administration contacted the act and police to make them aware of the situation and the act and police informed the high school administration that they had looked into the situation contacted the police in the other community and verified that the uh that the student at the time report was accurate based on the results of that investigation though at the time and limited information that was available the police and schools could not conclude
099that there was any immediate concern for the high school the high school administration and police officers at the time working on this informed me and the chief of police on Wednesday morning the school received through its online Anonymous Reporting System a report that listed its primary concern as a gun in the school the reporter identified themselves as an abrahs student but because the system was Anonymous we did not know who that was the report listed six students names as being involved one of whom was a student with whom School administrators spoke that Tuesday evening the report indicated that they did not know the location of the weapon but that quote something had happened in one of the students old cities and that one of these students has a firearm the report continued that quote one
100of the students was holding it and that there were quote two Firearms involved these events along with other information we cannot share for confidentiality reasons caused me after consultation with the high school principal and police to decide that we would have students shelter in place the only goal of the response during that time was to conduct a search of the school as well as those individuals named in the incident in order to ensure there was no weapon in school police and school administrators did not question or interrogate students at the time other than questions which the police needed to ask in order to determine there were no weapons on campus the school has not investigated further and the police have concluded through their investigation that the report was unfounded as we move forward our first
101priority is the students involved and their families we've worked with administrators and mental health professionals to develop supports that include identifying trusted adults in the building additional counseling support both in and out of school for individuals and small groups of students resources and supports for members of our black student union as well as an ongoing communication as well as ongoing communication meetings between the families myself and the high school principal Additionally the district's Equity coach and Dei director will work with high school administration to focus on the repair work for our school Community that's been deeply impacted by this event we are also beginning the planning for ways that we can promote community-wide healing our director of diversity equity and inclusion is currently working with our school attorneys to determine the most appropriate way to
102investigate the report to determine if bias played a role in the report or response we know from our initial investigation that we cannot identify the reporter by a digital footprint we also have strong reason to believe that at least one of the students was identified in the report because the reporter overheard them discussing a weapon we do not know however why the reporter listed the additional students in the report or why all of the students included in the report were black when given information about the safety of our schools schools administrators and police have no choice but to respond with caution the impact of placing our school into a shelter in place and conducting a search of these students contributed though to their feelings of being singled out and marginalized this feeling extended to many
103of the families and other members of our black community this was a complex situation that evolved quickly it's critically important for us as schools to remain safe places and continue to take all of our threats seriously at the same time though we need to recognize that in doing so there are students and families who are being deeply impacted by the actions we take we remain committed to ensuring all of our students and their families feel safe at school and this commitment extends to the students and families directly impacted by the incident as well as other members of the black community who because of the actions we took may feel less safe we're going to continue to learn all that we can about the incident and if we find that racial bias played a role in
104the report or our response will take steps to remedy that we also look forward to sharing in the coming weeks ways that we can promote Community healing around this incident so thank you thank you hi Jenny thank you for that Peter um I have you know I'm sure you know a lot of concerns but the two things that I haven't heard and or read anything about is um I'm hoping that once the list of students was generated that it was understood that they were all students of color and I'd like to understand if that is the case and if so how that was factored into how you know what what the reaction was by by Administration or police not necessarily to be answered now but I think it's important given how small our black community
105is that that was understood up front um and that that that was you know that that was taken into account um and then the second thing is I would love to have some clarity around what weapons what kind of weapons were carried onto our school campus and why and whether that is something that's subject to regulation um and because I don't believe you know most of what I see on Facebook but I I did see pictures of what was presented as act in police carrying assault rifles or holding them on our campus which I just find deeply distressing so so those are two things that I want to put out there for um for answers you know when appropriate sure and I can actually clarify a little bit so you know during Joni in my
106initial conversation when we saw the report she originally received the report called me we certainly recognized immediately that all of the students were black I'm not going to share why but it was more than just a bias that we had there were we had we knew the students involved um so you know we certainly talk about that there is some very very specific information from Tuesday and knowledge that we also had about the incident that made it so it was a situation we could not necessarily ignore um you know the the challenge in this situation is some of the specifics of it if if I release it it's going to identify a very specific student and we can't do that as part of this and I know that that's going to be frustrating for a
107lot of people but um you know when you have a couple of discrete points of data you you can't really ignore that I think you know when we make decisions like this they really have to be made in a matter of minutes you can't sit on information that you potentially have a gun in a school and even if we may not believe that we have to do something with it um so I I think that was really one of the challenges that presented itself and I'll speak to the other if I could just I want to clarify because I I wasn't I don't think I was clear I am happy that you that it was identified that these are students of color if it wasn't that would mean that you don't know you know your
108the students in your school so I wasn't meaning to make that a criticism but given that I hope that you know where there was some extra level of intentionality around what you were dealing with and I can take no position I'm not in law enforcement or School administration not suggesting that there was a possibility that you could ignore the report based on that information but just that you know that's a a really distressing fact that you know the all that all the students communicated happen to be students of color I mean that's just distressing on its own regardless of what the the report is so I wasn't I wasn't suggesting that knowing that was a result of bias on your part I just want to be clear or anyone's part I just want to be
109clear about that no absolutely I appreciate that I think I can share a couple of decision points that we can speak to um you know one we did recognize that you know some of the students involved because they were all students of color there would be increasing distrust potentially with us through the process because you know students know each other and if they feel like they're being identified that breeds an immediate sense of distrust uh because of that we actually determined in time not to interview any students before we informed parents now the police have an obligation that if they know of a weapon in school they have to make sure that there's no weapon there but we certainly determined that we would not interview students prior to know of notifying families and then based
110on the information that evolved throughout the day we then determined that we weren't continuing this as a school investigation so there were a couple points and then Additionally you know as soon as the incident had resolved we then were bringing in our counseling staff and our Dei director to think about how we were going to support students moving forward so just a couple of you know thought processes that we used it doesn't mean that it's perfect and that people felt great or continue to feel great but it certainly was something at the Forefront of our minds that that we needed to really think about how we were going to help students through this and help their families through it yeah the piece about the weapon um you know there were actually no act in police
111that had anything other than you know a standard issue I think they're required to carry gun like a pistol with them at all times per police regs but there there were no assault weapons carried by Acton police at one point Acton police did reach out to Boxborough because they knew that they had the officers that they had on staff at the high school at the time and they wanted some traffic control on Route 111 and so I I do believe that there may have been a an officer from boxpro that that had a weapon I think my understanding uh briefly I haven't had been able to talk to Boxborough but I think there was some miscommunication in the dispatch part of that um and that's that's what that was thank you madam chair um as
112a member of the Jewish Community I'm acutely aware of racism bigotry and xenophobia within our community with that said I'm absolutely horrified that students of color again have been targeted within our community what steps what concrete steps are being taken by this Administration to address the trauma these students adured and to address all other hate that seems to be you know manifesting within our community I know you touched a little bit upon it in your opening Preamble but can you give us a little bit more concrete examples of what the administration is doing to address that trauma and then secondly you mentioned that there has been no digital footprint identified through the anonymous Reporting System but I find that hard to believe because everybody has an IP address and I would assume law enforcement which
113is working with the community or with the Administration has the ability to to utilize the tools in place to do the work necessary to identify who or whom you know filed these report or these Anonymous reports yeah so you know we use our Anonymous reporting form uh is a Google form um there is no way and we you know quite honestly we we developed that with the intent of addressing in a more effective way incidence of hate and bias in the community as well as issues of harassment um and it was Anonymous so that people would continue to submit information to us um clearly that did not work in this sense the way it was intended to um we work with our Ed Tech staff has pursued this to the extent they can and we
114we cannot access an IP address um it's just not part of what's submitted um law enforcement you know and my understanding with law enforcement is they could potentially if they were pursuing this is a criminal case then they could look at you know maybe a way of contacting Google but there's a very very high standard by which law enforcement can also access that technology it's not a simple process and it would probably have to rise to something of a substantial criminal nature for them to be able to do it would be my my basic understanding Genie you actually may know more about that than I do but um you know that would that would be a challenge there and so you know I don't know Jenny if you have anything to fill in there but
115I'll come back to the other piece I I don't but I I'm not a criminal lawyer but I I do have a follow-up to that which is is there my understanding is it is just as possible that this was a student who was doing exactly what we've all been told to do grown-ups and students which is if you see something say something if you hear something say something so the student who called in who you know called in anonymously and is is supposed to be anonymous um it could could just have heard something and raised it up like we tell our kids to do all the time it does not mean that that student had any ill intent um I mean unless there's something that I'm missing I mean I I don't know but it
116seems like that is a potential scenario that means that that student was not um you know the perpetrator of bias but just reporting what he or she might have heard at school yeah I think um Jenny thank you for bringing us back to that I I actually think you know based on our knowledge that the student involved in this um was we now know through other information that's come to us had discussed this with multiple other students and groups of students um as part of this we have every reason to believe right now that the student who actually filed the report did so because they heard some student talking about this specifically and so they heard weapon school I'm going to file a report that that aspect of it we don't have reason to believe
117that was done with malicious intent where I think we want to look at where bias could have played a role is why were six other students identified with that and why were they all black it you know we want to you know examine that from kind of the range of bias there's biased behavior and then there's overt racism that can come into play and there's a range of behaviors in that and you know it's it's very possible although we don't know this that a student could have some inherent biases why they might have submitted other names of students um why you know but we don't know that at this point um but right now the report itself we're not being led to believe that a student was targeted because of the color of their skin
118or race that that we just don't have that so that's the challenging aspect of of where we're at right now were the other students who are of color identified in that Anonymous report or was it only the one student that's what I'm unclear about it was the one student and other students of color foreign hi Rebecca so sorry Rebecca I just didn't get to come back to the initial question Ben asked um because I think that's important because it will come up as as other questions um so in our initial thinking and planning around this um I'll start with the specific student level um we have a kind of a team that is coordinating that includes our you know District director of social emotional learning mental and Behavioral Health as well as our Dei director
119myself and then the high school principal um we're meeting every couple of days to continue to plan monitor students make sure we're collaborating between the school response and district and have good lines of communication in our immediate response one of the things we wanted to do was set up a trusted adult for each student and so the school administration and counseling staff work together to think of who each student was closest to within the school not because we wanted a trusted adult to necessarily be there to process the incident but just to form a relationship again and it might be someone they didn't hadn't seen in a little while but had a previous relationship and if the student wants to talk about that they certainly can but our goal was not to force a situation
120where students had to relive this incident we also at the time made an intentional decision not to have students call down to the office or to the counseling offices because we felt that just by calling students out of class again about this even if it was with good intent would cause them to relive that and feel like they were highlighted and pulled out again so we made that decision but all of our counseling staff did reach out to students to make sure that they knew that they were available we also have organized we know our black student union wanted to meet and discuss this we've been working with an equity coach through uh organization based out of New York City called the leadership academy and the coach we work with her name is Michelle Shannon
121she's actually lives fairly locally so she's come up multiple times to meet with the black student union she attended their rally last year that they had at the high school and she's formed some really nice relationships so she's actually coming in Friday to meet with that student group and then we also reached out to cartwheel care because they know they have a very skillful and Broad group of counseling staff available within the organization and ask them to think about ways that they might be creative in supporting students so they've actually developed kind of a menu of options for our students and their families if they want to access some additional Mental Health Services we you know certainly our counselors are ready to help anyone and they can do that but we also wanted to be
122able to provide an opportunity outside of the school day to do that our district Dei director Jen Faber is in the process of actually reaching out to some Community organizations including clergy as well as different members of some of our Dei groups within the community to bring together some stakeholders to start planning some more community-wide response to this um you know I think in terms of the broadest part of your question was around what are we doing to eliminate hate in the community that is going to be a longer path for us we know that you know certainly you know hate in the community has been increasing here like it has everywhere else I don't have a fast answer to that I wish I did but I actually think that's going to take a lot
123of work on the part of many different organizations in town to be able to impact in the way that we all want to see that happen thank you Peter sure hi Rebecca hello um I did write a statement because I find that it's just easier for me to um express myself but I did write a couple of notes that I'd like to um address at the top I'm glad that you're thinking about how to clean up after this happened but that's kind of too too a little too late it's better to not have these problems occur in the first place I'm also interested that I don't see the Dei coordinator or anybody from the police here to answer questions which I think it's concerning good evening to everyone who has come tonight to join us
124in this vital Community discussion first I want to thank the chair for reserving this evening for this purpose I'm hopeful that through this process we can get answers and move towards reconciliation but in order to do that we need transparency and accountability I'll admit that this statement was hard for me to write for a couple of reasons the most important of which is that the timeline of events as presented in the superintendent's email left me confused I simply don't understand what happened on the ground that day and it seems to me that there was an unnecessary escalation of the situation and the choice to involve the police was made in haste second there's a very real need for privacy here as children are involved I sincerely hope that we will all leave here tonight better
125informed here are my questions if there was a known false threat looked into on Tuesday why then was the choice made to lock down on Wednesday when the same false threat was an anonymously made Peter light your email stated that the student wanted to clear up the facts and did so on Tuesday this seems like reasonable action and received a measured response from the school administration how then did it go from one black student named on Tuesday to six black students named on Wednesday it is reasonable to view this as racial profiling and I wonder why it didn't give any of the adults pause to be absolutely clear I'm in no way questioning the anonymous reporting system or making assumptions about the person who made the report it's important that everybody is able to say
126something when they see or hear something concerning and it's entirely plausible that a student overheard something on Tuesday and was scared as Peter light paused and his email update I also understand that we are all on edge due to recent violent events around the country I like many of you worry every single morning when I put my kids on the bus I worry about the emotional trauma of Alice drills as well as the physical safety of my children while in class but one thing I don't worry about is adults escalating violence with my white children I don't worry about them being racially profiled or searched at school without my consent I don't worry about my children being targeted or othered instead of assessing the situation appropriately there appears to have been a rush by members
127of the school administration to hand over control of the situation to the police now the community is left fractured fearful and yes rumors are swirling this could have all been avoided through a calm and measured response as the community grows more diverse so too grows our responsibility to make sure that all families feel welcome black and brown families belong here they are members of this town their children should absolutely feel safe at school this is non-negotiable we must assess our impulse to call the police on people of color because anyone is committed to Dei work as this District claims to be cannot plead ignorance about what the statistics say the black and brown people are more likely to be shot within seconds of a police encounter than their white peers we are supposed to be
128keeping our kids safe and educating them you either black believe black lives matter or you don't you cannot say those words and mean them and then turn around and ignore black children in need of support and protection thank you is there anything in that statement that you want to address yeah sure no you know Rebecca I certainly appreciate you know the feeling there um I understand that there's some confusion and emptiness in in some of the timeline that occurred um the the comment of and I I don't remember the exact word so my apologies but the comment that the the police found the report or we found the report from Tuesday to be unfounded um is not accurate um there actually was information there but it did not rise to a level that we would
129take action as a school at the time however there was certainly information there that needed to be followed up on and then a subsequent report coming in that provided that type of a detail did cause us to respond so you know I know you know there's still information I can't share you know some of the specifics that would explain maybe what the information was that we were holding on to at the time because that really would identify one of the students and I know I and I know you appreciate the need for some confidentiality um and unfortunately what I've found is when whenever schools share details of incidents like this it's always going to leave a void for people and and listening to that because it will always feel like something doesn't quite add up
130and and I certainly respect that that's that's the case so you know I appreciate that um I just want to follow up with I guess I'm wondering why these are the procedures if this was sort of brought up on Tuesday could there not have been a chance to call people into their counselors to you know was there another choice to be made except immediately going to the police yeah no I understand that I think um you know I think as you know we've all had a chance to process this for the better part of a week at this point actually over a week um and as we respond to these things though we don't necessarily have that opportunity and I think you know knowing all of the information now that it was cleared and not
131founded I certainly would like that approach but I think having that information we didn't get the previous information until the very very end of kind of the administrative work day so you know evening hours on Tuesday and then the report came in relatively early in the morning on Wednesday so you know there really had not been time for anyone to follow up and be able to you know truly get information about what happened Tuesday before we had to then respond Wednesday and I think you know in the wake of all of the school violence that we're seeing and we're seeing a market increase in school violence it's not that we just didn't know about incidents we're actually seeing an increase in the rate of school violence um in the wake of that if we get
132a report that says I know that someone has a gun in school we're going to have to investigate that and that means we're going to have to involve police we can never put our school staff in charge of investigating weapons that can do that type of a damage and we we unfortunately at a place where we have to call police in and we've seen incidents around the country where the police haven't gotten there and responded right away and the devastating impact that that has again it doesn't mean that that is going to hold everyone harmless and it can certainly do harm and I think one of the things that we're constantly doing as school administrators is balancing risk and in the case of an urgent situation that develops given kind of the the recent history
133of 10 to 15 years of what we're seeing in school violence the immediate response is we have to first make sure things are physically safe and then we have to tend to emotional safety right after that and and we understand that the two were not necessarily compatible here I am curious about the data when it comes to police actually stopping these incidents um I mean I think a lot of us probably have Uvalde Texas in our heads um yeah yeah I I just wonder when you're talking to the police in those moments and you do want to take the threat seriously which I respect and I would too if I were in your position um I just I I feel that there's got to be a middle ground here and I I wonder what the
134story is was there a chance for some sort of de-escalation because I think the police tend to you know their Hammer they see everything as a nail it it comes down to the people who say they're committed to Dei work to pause and see the situation for what it is and obviously you can't be perfect but I I just feel like looking at this instance this was a big screw-up I'm I'm really not happy with how it played out um I guess that's all there is to say no I appreciate that I think you know I I'll be honest I think you know when something like this happens you know at the Forefront of my mind and I'm sure as you know and I was a former High School principal of a large high school
135when you hear of a weapon and I've dealt with bomb threats directly and things like that you know the first thing that goes in your mind is you are the person responsible for the lives of thousands of people in that moment and that's going to lead you down certain paths that aren't going to be perfect and I I appreciate that recognition this is certainly one of those cases um but you know and I've replayed the situation thousands of times in my mind over the last week because I wish it was a different outcome for the kids and if I had the same information tonight and tomorrow that I had Tuesday night and Wednesday morning I would take the same course of action I would be thoughtful in that but we would certainly if we had
136a report of a gun in school make sure that we involved the police and investigated that fully and I know that that's not necessarily the comfortable answer in this this setting but it was a really challenging situation and you know again you know when we're dealing with people's lives and kind of the current Society I don't know that I would do that differently now I certainly will continue to replay it tens of thousands of times and I may come to a different conclusion but I the the serious serious impact that this had to also be weighed with the possibility of catastrophic consequences and that's something that you know I certainly personally didn't get into education to have to weigh I know the principal at the high school didn't know any of the staff but it's
137it's kind of an unfortunate reality of what we're doing in 2022 around some of these situations so thank you very quickly in the Annapolis sorry as a mother of a high school student I thank you I just want to say I thank you and whenever there is a report of a gun in the school I would expect and want the school to call the police um and and I I understand that this was harmful for a lot of reasons and you know I I don't disregard any of that but I mean you know you can't fix lives once they're lost so I just want to say that um you know I don't envy your position but I thank you for for taking that Swift action um I don't think you had a choice in involving
138the police hi Evelyn hi um so a few comments um I don't know Peter that the Hawaiian police officers with assault weapons in school maybe we were seeing wrongly but there were a lot of photos posted on Facebook with police with kids presumably kids taking photos from their classrooms and I agree with Rebecca that we should have had somebody from the acting up Boxborough police here to answer some of these questions but unfortunately they're not here but maybe you should look into that maybe they're false photos but we did see some of that but the point that I wanted to make a few points I want to make is that no kid should go to school in fear of losing their lives no parent should drop their kid off to school or say goodbye to
139their kids going to school in fear that they may not return but in the same breath no kid should go to school or no parent she said goodbye to their kid going to school in fear that they will be racially profiled because sometimes death is not just losing your life death is losing your dignity debt is losing your fear of belonging and for those six kids I haven't interacted with them I don't know but this is probably how you're feeling black families and black kids and especially black female male kids and police don't mixed together but the comment that I have been thinking a lot about writing a statement and I chose not to write a statement today but I did choose to make a statement about our other ethnic minorities in this community I
140am appalled I am embarrassed at the emails that were sent to the school committee you know in Africa they say when your neighbors house is on fire you rally around and you help to put off that fire because you know what you don't know when your house will be on fire so I appreciated all those emails that came in saying I support the school coming the administration I support you Peter light and no offense to you Peter and your Administration and no offense to you Johnny I I appreciate that people appreciate the fact that you took the steps to save lives but in the same breath I would have wanted those in those those people who send those emails in those ethnic minority groups to have said we see the wrongdoing we see where things
141went wrong we are human beings we make mistakes maybe the actions that our school district took on Wednesday was a mistake maybe we're learning from this and we'll do things better but to blatantly ignore the fact that six kids of color six black kids in our district were profiled we're pulled to an office because somebody reported and I am not saying here that the person that reported it could have been a truth in this case we're lucky no lives were lost but I'm just embarrassed that we minorities in this community cannot bond together and support each other and see that the the only way we can move forward in this community is to bond together and and and realize that there's a wrongdoing somewhere along the line and then the only way we can drive
142and not how kids can belong and feel like human beings in this community is for us to be United it's not a black faces an Indian or a Chinese thing we're all awesome people when white people are discriminating against ethnic minorities they don't care whether you're a black or Chinese or Indian they book us all together but if you feel the need to remove yourself and say this is a black issue this is a black issue an act in Boxborough so the black people can go deal with it we don't care the black people can go deal with it that is so horrible that is so bad that is so distasteful that is so disturbing that to this day after everything that has happened we as a community we come band together we had a
143white allies since standing out there supporting these kids and their families and then we had people who felt they were better than black people saying that oh we support you Peter we support you who we support you who honestly I am just of everything that has happened reading those emails was so disturbing to me so disturbing to me that there were a group of people in this community that isolated themselves and thought they were so much better no it is I thought there was so much better than the black people experiencing this and couldn't even learn the hand couldn't even put in in their emails one statement saying I'm thinking about these families this is not about the school district doing something wrong or right this is about support for your fellow human beings and
144the trauma that these kids may have gone through the trauma these kids and their families may have gone through so I don't know I I I don't know I hope the people that sent their emails are listening and I hope that you can reflect on the emails that you sent to the school committee and actually think about a better way you could have put that email thank you hi Tessa I don't really have a statement and I don't feel other than what Jenny said that I having a high school student in that building I could not be more grateful because I received hours of panic text while I was while I was working so to know that whatever my feeling about police that that I felt that she was safe because the situation was being
145handled by adults made me feel better um but I don't have a black student and I'm not black and I guess when I've been reflecting on all of this I have gone back to what I've been talking to my second graders about which is to wait and hear the whole story to wait until the end of the quotation marks um it's something we talk about when Reading literature it's something we talk about when listening to our classmates listen for the whole message and so my only thought on reflecting on all of this is that I don't really have something to say yet because I don't feel that I've listened to the whole message yet and that includes listening to people that need to speak tonight and it includes waiting to hear if there's additional information
146that that can and will be shared with with the community and the school committee about you know what happened but I'm not going to jump to conclusions about anything about the person who reported about the children who were reported about the original um situation on Tuesday because I don't feel that we've heard the whole message yet and so I'm gonna wait [Music] that's okay hi Adam thank you I first want to express my deepest sympathy for those black families that have been and continue to be affected by horrible acts of racism although I'm a strong Ally I know I will never know what our black families have experienced what I feel is most important and I think the chair for making this space is to hear from those who are directly affected I want to
147hear their stories and their concerns their requests and expectations on how to make this better well I don't know what the path to restitution and resolution looks like know that I will stand with my black friends and neighbors to make this right thank you forward and open this up okay go for you so I didn't prepare a new statement actually also but I just wanted to say a few words uh so give it so we I I joined the committee I guess two years ago and from the two years past two years experiences I I have a full confidence about the our district leadership and and also Peters that makes the right decision it is a best precaution uh for the for the safe campus so that's one second is of course it's a if
148it's kind of suspicious definitely uh say we have all the reported identity of black from the black community so I would say we we want to be we won't tolerate any any wrongdoing or misconduct was but let it let a district probably keep following that and find out uh what's what's going on inside and hold hold any any person accountable basically I will support that so of course like Peter you already take uh kind of a ction like uh have a Dei director and also a lot of thank you activities I guess to to clear the aftermath aftermath uh so thank you yes ma'am okay I'm going to make a little statement then I'm going to open this up and I will say I wrote my comments before I got what I wanted which was
149um which was a a direct address to our to our black neighbors and black communities so I want to say thank you so much for that Peter um so I'm going to I will say that I I wrote this before new context so I am a bit more satisfied than I was when I wrote this so I am the mother of two biracial boys my oldest son a sixth grader is about as tall as I am and he is only 11 years old I lose sleep thinking about these years ahead of him and for our family I know I cannot Shield him from the dangers of being an adolescent black boy in America so many systems in our country that touch him are designed to confine him punish him exclude him or otherwise prevent him
150and other young black people from living fully and happily free I view it as my as part of my job to ensure that these schools are not among those systems I am a black woman I am also now part of this system I am frustrated by it and sometimes even fearful of it we have been through this cycle before in our community even since I started my service on this committee multiple times a racially charged incident happens outrage Rises and Falls the district works in the background to quietly calm the waters and life goes on until the next cycle starts I will be blunt here because I think we can only confront the truth if we say it out loud among some acton-boxborough has a reputation for not being fully inclusive and welcoming of black
151kids microaggressions turn into tension and mistrust that mistrust grows and is then confirmed by shared by story shared family to family Mom to Mom Kid to Kid if you're not familiar with this reputation consider yourself lucky but for some of us it is very real and yet we endure black people have been here since the founding of this town we belong here our children deserve to receive this excellent education and so we Advocate how we can we build up our children's spirits and we work hard to assure our children get what they need from our school communities we've been here and we will be here I have been blunt but I must also be fair good work is being done to build trust do justice and be better I've watched the superintendent lead this work
152and make space for this work over my tenure here on this committee it will take years of consistent committed honest work to make this place a fully safe place for all of the kids who attend our schools I would like to see after this event what I would like to see after this event is a Breaking of the cycle of making things go away after something significant happens I am not interested in hearing that this is a complex situation and therefore we should not have the details or be an active party to the follow-up and fixing well I respect that this District must abide by state laws around keeping private information safe I believe that we must get better about sharing what we can reconciling with communities harmed by incidents like this and sustaining a
153consistent effort of relationship building that started tonight I'm just gonna say that and I'm grateful I expect this Administration to do the work of caring for the directly involved students and for the black community within acton-boxborough that has questions and sincere worries about what happened and why I want to see this Administration speak to us get to know us and fold us all the way into this community we need to stop trying to retrofit acceptance of black kids into a system that wasn't designed for them top of mind it is time to be brave enough to work with an explicit recognition of these truths black people have been here black people will be here black people belong here soon after Wednesday's events I asked superintendent light to undertake an investigation of the events and to
154outline to the community how the district will make students of color feel safe in our schools in response to this incident that it started and it was outlined tonight I view this as another part of ensuring that our community understands what happened and what steps need to be taken to prevent incidents like these I look forward to seeing this work happen as part of a process of healing and growth that our communities must continue to pursue as a black mother who worries about our sons and is chair of this body I thank you for your attention and for your consideration and I am ready for public comment Kira it was mentioned to me that this that the link that we sent on YouTube may not be working so I don't know if there's anybody to
155check and make sure that this is being broadcast properly we I think that that was addressed I I hope so so we've been exploring this um for some reason the connection is not working and so it is being fully recorded and will be posted as quickly as it can be um but there's difficulty seeing from home right now okay next thanks Liz all right how much what's the time limit two minutes so I had a statement written but I'm kind of throwing it out now just after hearing some of the things that were said so I'm a veteran and like back in I think 2006 I was in Iraq um on base working on planes and my mother was worried about me being out there being fired on by insurgents with mortars but she did
156some research and she realized I was safer there than I was in New York from being shot by police I was more likely to die in my home city than I would have in balad Iraq so I understand that it makes some of you feel safer to have those police come to the schools but my concern was for those boys because they were in danger that day we don't know what could have happened to them so I've had a child in this school district for a year and I'm already exhausted I'm already exhausted I've had him sent to the principal's office for touching another kid's shoulders I've had them seen by the guidance counselor for three months without telling us I've had a teacher tell me I told her I made an offer on a
157house I was very excited she was like when are you leaving Acton I had it's just I I can keep going I can keep going but all of these small things that happen to me just over the single year this feels like the natural progression of events I'm like what's gonna happen you know have happened what stories will I have to tell by time he's 10 by time he's 15. every year there's something new every year something else happens every time I tell the school about something when I go into the school I remember that mother that was arrested at Miriam and I try to keep myself calm not to say anything too loud because I don't know what'll happen to me so please think about that thank you thank you I'm a parent of
158uh high schooler and last Wednesday was a day from hell I was thankful that nothing bad happened however I was also very hurt and I didn't know how to respond when I heard about like the kids that were targeted and it could have been my child that could have been in that kid's position so it's very um I don't know even how to express it now it's just a very bad feeling to know that it could be your child so I understand the responses that you had to take as the superintendent but I also would like to know is now that we know that this has happened and we probably will have such situations arise again where there's an anonymous tip about another bunch of kids we won't know whether it's true or not we
159have to take action we have to do this shelter in place that's all okay but the intensity of the response from law enforcement from other aspects was that accurate is that something we should be looking into further to make sure that we have an appropriate response for situations like this because we do know that this is probably going to happen again if not if not in our high school maybe in another school so I just hope that we as a community can come and come up with a better response for the future thanks thank you foreign [Music] here is what is the systemic thing that's going to help prevent this from happening again so one thing I heard was that some adults did notice that all the students who had been identified were black and
160I wasn't quite sure if that was school district or police or both and so my question is what happened with that information was that observation not enough to prompt an investigation because it seems like only after the community came up in uproar was it announced that an investigation would be initiated what I'm asking for is a protocol that ensures that if there is ever an incident like this that will imply impact our black students that the district hold itself accountable by initiating that themselves I know the district and the police department have gone through many trainings and so what I hope and expect is that over time we are building the muscle a race Equity muscle racial Justice muscle to notice and name when this is happening and to take appropriate action also one thing
161that really for me speaks to the humanity with which we hold our students is in each communication there was effusive gratitude for the police department and you know I didn't know about the assault rifle so I'm having some reaction to that but there was no mention of the acknowledgment or appreciation for the students and how they cooperated with whatever protocols were in place and I think that really sends a message of of really not humanizing our students and in particular the black students impacted I think paying attention to those things words matter and um I think we will it will help us sort of know whose perspectives we are elevating um when we're communicating thank you all right just wanted to Echo some of the sentiments earlier as a parent I am I was actually
162sad and when I heard the the profiling that possibly happened and I think we have to it's not an easy problem for you to address going forward uh it is a sadly a reflection of what's happening in the country as a whole for a while now but I think as a community at least as a town it would be good if there's some Reach Out Reach Out program arrange so we can at least discuss this among parents uh just to express support thanks thank you hi um I wasn't really planning to speak um but I did go through the school district um from K to 12 and I appreciate that there it feels like it could be any marginalized child and it probably could be um and also um anti-blackness in particular has a connection
163with police and policing and also is particularly Insidious in this community in this nation um and so I hope that there's an appreciation for the collective experience of being marginalized and also noting that black students and families and black men in particular are going to experience this differently um and I I watched this happen um it feels like not a lot has changed um I watch students being marginalized and it wasn't me um I am Indian um and my experience at a B after formally learning about the school to prison pipeline um launched me looking into disproportionate disciplinary actions because of what I watched at the school and so it feels like there's not a whole lot changing and I just want to lastly note and appreciate the particular emotional labor that the two black
164women on the school committee are doing and are forced to do um by way of their position on this committee but also just because they belong to this community um and so I'm sorry but I appreciate both of you so thank you thank you good evening my heart is broken I want to say that one more time understanding that I probably only have one minute and 33 seconds left my heart is broken I have a 13 year old daughter she is 12 months out of being at acton-boxborough high school she has had eight years of having macro level microaggressions where people anticipate my excellent child being less than excellent needing some sort of support that she does not need being outside of what is typical not being received and not being received for her own
165humanity and for who she is she's also stoic she's not bubbly she doesn't complain she puts her head down she does what she's supposed to do I heard from my 13 year old daughter about this I did not hear immediately about this from where I expected or anticipated it and because we are also a military family thank you for your service for sure we put our heads down we do the right thing and we anticipate that we will earn our place in this world so when my daughter told me all of the kids that were pulled aside were black I didn't believe her and this is how we reinforce macro level aggressions this is how we reinforce and make real that whole thank you police thank you you know this one for making that decision
166and not going and saying I'm sorry kid and not going and telling the parents what happened more immediately now I do not want my child to be on the on the front of somebody's shirt because she did not survive a school shooting I most certainly care about that I most certainly care about that for all of our kids there's a reason that we picked to live here part of it is that perception of safety but just as someone else has stated my husband having been in Afghanistan I knew that he had an increased likelihood of harm and danger and death here and I anticipate the same for my child and they deserve better than that and we deserved more rapid communication there have been some discussions about how do we prevent this from happening in
167the future and you mentioned that there's got to be a TCP address of whoever made this anonymous tip I for one do do not understand why we have an anonymous tip line I've never been a fan of it I think it encourages cowardly Behavior I think when the students get out in the real world or if we were calling the police they would identify themselves this just allows kids to do this again and if we assume that there are other people who Harbor hate or racial Tendencies or microaggressions or just want to get back at somebody this makes it so easy for them why do we allow it why don't we tell them that if you if you have a complaint if you've seen something you identify yourself we are now trying to figure out
168why this person did what he or she did we don't know why we have assumed that it's gone from one person of color to six people of color we don't know what happened I think that if we got rid of this anonymous tip line which just encourages people to report and make accusations on others this is one way that we might prevent this from happening again hi I did not intend to come here and speak tonight I mean there's no way we're going to be able to hear you I'm so sorry is that better is that begin folks here okay um I'm saying I really just came here as an ethnic minority to support my black brothers and sisters and to show support for them but I've been move to speak I guess because all
169I keep hearing is the white point of view I hear we're so grateful that this you know that nobody was hurt we're so grateful that nobody was killed but there absolutely were six lives that were impacted and to Evelyn I think at Evelyn's Point um there are different types of death there's death of reputation there's death of community there is death all around the black community when things like this happen and I can speak only as myself as an ethnic minority as somebody who is a rather pale person of color but nevertheless I am a minority and I never would have looked at a list of six black names and thought this was a real threat I would not be that is because I do not have whiteness at the center the whiteness in this
170community needs to be decentered so that people can look at a list like that and realize that the threat is not going to come from six black boys the on statistics alone and I'm not saying that one should make that decision on statistics alone however statistics alone it's the lone white male shooter 30 seconds so I don't understand how the decision was made other than from a place of whiteness not from a place of looking at the whole Community thank you thank you good evening my name is Alyssa Nichol I live in Acton I was really confused uh just as some other folks have mentioned tonight how if we pursued an allegation or an overheard conversation on Tuesday and the same accusation came forward on Wednesday why did the situation warrant the response that it
171did and I was really wishing that there had been some de-escalation so Peter I appreciate the additional information that you provided tonight um about the details that you can't share with us but because I was so confused about this assessment and response I did a little bit of digging to try and determine because as the previous speaker said I would not have responded that way I would have immediately thought this is not a credible report seeing six black individuals named um the FBI has provided a school shooter threat assessment perspective it's a publication it was interesting to me to learn that in the report or in the in the document they find that schools that respond to every threat potential of violence regardless of credibility or likelihood that it will be carried out um you
172know this one size fits-all policy it can be very dangerous because it can lead to potential underestimation of serious threats or an overreaction to a less serious one and unfairly punished or stigmatized students who are not dangerous and I just want to Echo what the people of color have said to you tonight specifically the black families that they did not feel that their students were safe in the schools with the police presence I I want us all to remember that black people in this country have been shot by police when they hold cell phones and sunglasses and wallets and sandwiches so I want to recognize all of us we need to recognize that violence did happen it was structural violence we did not escape a violent incident on Wednesday last week thank you thank you
173the space has been made I will close it if we have no other comments okay everyone I have a comment that is bothering me from what my fellow School Community member Ian said I don't think that anyone is blaming the administration necessarily for the actions that they've taken I think that what we're asking for is an acknowledgment that six black kids were profiled and that and I don't know if you were listening but Peter said at the end of the day there was no substantive evidence that anybody had a weapon in the school so harm was caused although unintentionally so I'm bothered about the fact that you said that you support Peter and you support the administration to keep your kids safe I want my kids to be safe I want them to be safe
174I want every kid in this industry to be saved that's why the 11 of us sit around the stable and donate our time to do what we do we give generously to this town we spent hours reviewing packets we spent hours around this table family time that we should have been giving to our families so I am boarded that you're sitting across from me a woman of color that six black kids were traumatized and that you cannot say what happened could have been handled better that is not a lack of support for the district leadership it's not it's just acknowledging the fact that something happened and that thing traumatized a group of kids and their families we should we need money in this industry to do other things we don't need to put money through
175cartwheel to give people therapy you know what that money could have gone to I am bothered about that even I am bothered about that and I'm bothered about the other ethnic minorities that wrote letters to us not acknowledging that people were traumatized in this district and I am embarrassed that you are perpetuating that narrative okay all right I'm going to close this up thank you for this discussion thank you to y'all who came thank you for your comments thank you for your time and energy there's more that you would like because you do not want to speak out on camera I understand send us an email we have the show we are available to you thank you so much I'm going to move us now to ongoing business and our consent agenda items on the
176consent 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 reach each I mean I will read each item name and if any member would like it held please say hold members do not have to have attended a meeting to vote on the minutes item one approval of abrsc meeting minutes of September the 8th 2022. item two approval of abrsc meeting minutes of uh September 15 2022. recommendation to approve assuming responsibility and oversight of the planning and development of the Junior High School Technology education program hold okay that was held so I'm pretty sure that means we have to talk about that yes okay so then can we vote on the two consent agenda items first
177thank you Beth um foreign okay that was Ginny who moved and Ben who seconded all those in favor say aye okay so we are now discussing the held item yes thank you Adam um so I just want to make sure I clarify this and and I wanted to bring it out because we had a pretty thorough discussion about it previously this item is related to withdrawing from the Minuteman Tech program at the junior high school and continuing that program with preferably the staff in place uh through our through the district directly that is that's the question right and I think we had a contingency on whether or not we wanted to hear about the staff members is that why you're stopping us Adam I I'm stopping us only because we had a pretty thorough discussion
178of it and I felt that there was also strong Community input and I wanted to give moment one more time to see if there was any additional discussion or information and vote on this deliberately on its own as a part of a consent agenda thank you yeah I don't Marie can you provide a little bit of an update by way of staff with the teachers in the program and the active-boxborough Education Association and we have a memo of agreement with both individuals that after your vote tonight will ask the chair and the individuals to sign so we're in full agreement that they will continue to work for acton-boxborough thank you so with that then I recommend that we approve assuming responsibility for the oversight sorry responsibility and oversight for the planning and development of the
179Junior High School Technology education program okay so Adam moved that and Jenny seconded that and just so we can say it loudly for the folks in the back those two staff members are staying on at the junior high so don't email us about that one please and thank you okay so then I'm good on agenda I mean on consented oh I'm so sorry y'all all those in favor say aye thank you so much oh any opposed any obsessions thank y'all we're good okay oh Lordy um some committee and member reports pool renaming yeah I already spoke to this a little bit earlier but we had a meeting of the subcommittee um we had a good discussion um the subcommittee determined that based on all of the community feedback which really had focused on renaming the
180pool after Jeff that that would be the focus of the community survey that we sent out that's been sent we're giving it two weeks we're going to reconvene at the end of that review feedback if the feedback confirms that you know we want to move that forward then I think probably we're on track for about an October 20th recommendation to you um you know if the feedback were to lead us in a different direction that might be delayed but that's kind of the course we're on right now budget side yes thank you uh so the budget submit for the first time this year uh this Monday um we did receive a preliminary budget update from uh Dave bertolino which we will be receiving from him formally in a future meeting um we did get a
181quick update on where we are although we're just finishing the first quarter of the FY 23 budget and we began to discuss our budget calendar for this year Dave also was very gracious and provided a finance overview school school district Finance overview not just for the new members of our budget committee but also a great reminder for even some of us veteran members and we will be working on our calendar but we will be meeting typically the Monday prior to our school committee meeting so two weeks from this Monday we'll be meeting again the sub is coming right you haven't met yet Monday thank you very much oh is there a question my apologies hi sorry Gary Kushner Boxborough finance committee baseball what Adam just said about the budget calendar is actin's town meeting again
182after boxborough's that's a great question Gary and we couldn't answer that question in our meeting and so part of the budget calendar planning that Dave and I are going to do is to confirm we believe it is the week prior to the Boxborough meeting so May 1st but that will be taken into account as we finish out our budget calendar and that'll be highlighted as one of the items that we look at when we put up but as far as we know it's within a week either way okay thank you pretty sure it's the first Monday I'm pretty sure it's the first Monday Maria she is uh nodding her head yeah yeah Beth confirmed yeah yeah acting okay so Marie says yes it's confirmed for the first Monday in May she's gonna look at her
183calendar but we're pretty sure that we're going first it's first Monday in May y'all okay your mic is on do you wanna oh you want to do the warrants yeah thank you sir uh so I moved that the school committee vote to approve the below listed warrants totaling 3 million 255 771.36 payroll warrant as sorry payroll vendor warrant as follows 23-005 PR dated 9 8 2022 in the amount of 546 394.36 and payroll warrant as follows p2305 dated 9 8 2022 in the amount of 2709 377 and zero cents I need a second second okay that was Adam and Rebecca hey hey um all in favor any opposed or abstentions thank you so much I think I did good all right that passed yay all right so Peter would you like to highlight anything before
184we adjourn I'll just mention two quick things uh regarding the masc conference um if you're intending ongoing and have not yet registered um that would now would be a good time to do that as a reminder that comes up in the first week of November um our district is actually doing two presentations um at the con conference um one is around some of the work we're trying to do with the leadership academy and culturally responsive teacher leaders and seed and then the other is focused on the building project and Adam will be representing the district on that around um it's Equitable access to air conditioning um which is a fascinating topic uh it's actually more focused on the sustainability of the building so that's coming up November 2nd through the 5th is the masc conference
185you can contact Julie and she can give you information on registering well we'll get her to do another one um um just want to highlight one more time that Diwali Fest will also be on October 15th it will be after the building grand opening so come see the beautiful building and then go be with community and celebrate Diwali with Folks at the sergeant Memorial Library just gonna plug that a couple times before it happens okay very good I'm willing to accept emotion treasure okay so that's Tessa and then uh Rebecca seconded so two for you in a night and so all of those in favor all right and your post good night y'all