Acton-Boxborough School Committee Meeting 5/5/22

001okay good evening noting the hour and the presence of a quorum i call the acton-boxborough regional school committee to order uh we are in person tonight and members of the public who wish to view this meeting can either be in public with us or do so on actin tv's youtube channel that is found at the top of the agenda this meeting is being recorded and it will be posted on actin tv's website so welcome everybody as a point of reference there are only four regularly scheduled school committee meetings left for this school year i mention this because there is a lot for this committee to complete in the next four meetings but before we move forward to our business we need to stop and say thanks to two members for whom this will be their

002last meeting nora shine and john peterson will be stepping down following the next town election and annual town meeting and i wanted to stop and thank john and nora for their service to the committee first to john i'll miss sparring with you you've changed the way i think on many topics turn backs and i greatly appreciate that you don't take yourself too seriously i think kira has some more appreciation for you as well yeah i got the homework so i'm going to read this all right here we go so small town volunteer service is a choice this is sacrificial time lovingly given to our community to make it better the sincere hope for anyone who chooses to sit in these chairs come to these meetings and do this work is that we leave the community

003a little better than how we found it and that will put down the work satisfied john peterson chose to pick up this work twice once for a term starting in 2008 and then after a short break again starting in 2019 in his service john took on many of the unglamorous but important posts that help assure good stewardship of our school district including sitting on hit capital improvement and warrant signing subcommittees i'll leave it to others to talk about some of his other roles i have said it in the past few meetings and i will say it again the town of acton owes john peterson its thanks for the time he has given the care he has shown and the expertise he has applied to his service as a member of this committee serving alongside him

004at alg this year i've seen how all of that has worked in action and what a difference it has made for our work and our collaboration with the town i have not always agreed with john and i have not always enjoyed his belaboring of his points but i have come to appreciate how his well-placed questions can move the needle on something big how his firm stances have reminded us of our duties and the nature of our relationship with our colleagues in administration and how being consistent while good humor can cut tension and push us forward we are losing something today yet i take heart in knowing how much we've gained by your presence here as we look ahead to the pivotal work next school year i hope we will each channel at least one of

005your lessons studious attention to the work steadfast commitment to our duties and perhaps most importantly a touch of humor even in the face of challenge i wish you the best of luck in your next chapter john thank you okay john so you wanted a poem so i found one today during my break it's not reflective of you actually because as um kyra noted you tend to be a little long-winded but this poem is all but five words people don't change opinions do and um i have seen you change in the three years i have worked alongside you many of your opinions about many things and while i will not say that i have changed many of mine alongside you i certainly agree with kira and that um i think that you are thoughtful i think

006you are everything that a school committee member should be i think you pay attention sometimes to the wrong things but often to the right things and that i think that that's an incredibly important quality and i think that there are lots of things that i could care less about like the health insurance trust but you care greatly about it and i think that that's the important balance of having a committee of 11 people that we get to have somebody who cares about turnbacks and the health insurance trust and all the things that do not keep me up at night but they do keep you up at night and i think that that is a really important thing and so working with you over these past three years i think really has highlighted for me the

007importance of having different opinions in different styles and different ways of doing things on the committee and even though i have given you an incredibly hard time especially during the two years that i was chair i really do appreciate the work that you've done and i really have enjoyed working on the committee with you so thank you thank you anybody else have comments for john john i think it's a fitting time for you to share your thoughts with the committee well adam told me in advance he said no more than 30 minutes i think you added a zero to that but because tessa started with a poem i'm gonna of course immediately depart from my prepared remarks to share with you richard bradigan's famous poem the titular poem from the spring hill versus the mind

008disaster and the entire poem consists of when you take your pill it's like a mind disaster i think of all the people lost inside you so you can let that resonate against the events of the day and we'll go on as adam said the agenda notes the retirement of nora and myself with tonight's school committee meeting while it is true that this is our last school committee meeting nora and i will continue to serve through our town meetings over the next two weeks besides this technical point service to the school committee in the district need neither begin with the start of a member's term nor end at its conclusion in the transition i look forward to working with the new school commission school committee members serving on the health insurance trust and supporting steve noon

009as he becomes the hit chair i thank all of you for your service and the opportunity to serve with you and in particular to adam and tessa for their indulgences while sharing our many meetings reflections on transitional events may look backward my objective is to focus on the future every school committee member is a caretaker of our community resources and the futures of our students we recognize that others have served as caretakers to pave our way and that we in turn will hand those responsibilities to new members tonight i make explicit the work that i have tried to do over the past three years so that to the extent it has merit it will continue as my children progress through a v i told them they will never speak or write too well in our

010meetings i have tried to keep this dedication to improved communication at top of mind i hope you will work to improve communication as our family embarked on our scouting journey we were reminded to be prepared i hope my preparation for meetings has been visible and served as an example not only for my fellow members but also for staff students and members of the community to the extent that i've been able to dig deeply into some issues this was not the result of magic it was simply working to be prepared i hope you will work to be well prepared you have heard me remark no one is perfect and i think i've heard some of you recognize that i represent a working example mistakes will be made recognizing and acknowledge them should be like breathing it

011is at the core of what we ask our students to do every day i hope that you will recognize and acknowledge our mistakes and like our students use them to form a base for continuous improvement finally there will always be a tension between our desire to achieve and the limitations of our achievements each of us will need to find a personal balance between our interests and the abilities and resources that we have to pursue them personally i have never resolved this conflict with great certainty and in fact think that the resolution is found in the form of accepted ambiguity and ambivalence the thought that i could be wrong is at the center of the ability to change and to find a better path i hope you will embrace ambiguity and ambivalence as you search for

012better educational experiences for our students and endeavor to build an even more vibrant and fulfilling community thank you thank you john nora you joined the committee just one year after i did yet you hit the ground running and you brought a unique and valuable perspective to our work the time you spent on policy committee helped to drive the direction of the district and we were lucky to have you help raise awareness of the advertising practices of some of our software platforms that our students interact with i feel so grateful for the conversations we had about your leadership of the policy subcommittee this year you were never afraid to ask for guidance or help but in reality you already knew what was best you're also a great sounding board you're level-headed yet passionate you've been a

013great sounding board for me and challenged me to be better thank you for your contribution to our district and for your friendship thank you anybody else have comments for nora thanks norah thank you we have yep go ahead peter i just want to very briefly just thank both of you uh you know in very different ways you each have offered a lot of different guidance over the course of your term um i appreciate that and you have also helped me to think in new and deeper ways about what the work we're doing ways to carry that forward and ways to be stewards for the schools in service of our children so thank you both i really appreciate it you know john you have an uncanny way of thinking about the question that's going to provoke

014a lot of deep thought and i will always appreciate that about you and nora you just have this passion for thinking about children as a whole um and really making us think deeply about all of kids needs and you know helping to be stewards for that so thank you thanks peter i've presented both john and nora with cards of thanks from the committee nora is also receiving an acton-boxborough chair which will help shove into your car john as much as you would like to build a dining room set of acton-boxborough chairs i've learned that you only get one no matter how many times you choose to serve on the committee so we have a nice gift for you as well though thank you we do not have our student representatives with us this evening so

015we'll have them at our next meeting and next we're moving on to public participation so as per policy bedh members of the public are invited to speak for up to three minutes regarding items that are not already on the agenda for items that are on the agenda the public is asked to wait for them the committee does not typically respond to comments made during public participation again i'll ask our speakers to be respectful and civil the institute for local government defines civility this way in the context of democratic debate civility is about how people treat each other civility involves the display of respect for those who have positions with which one disagrees even though disagreement plays a necessary role in governance and in politics the issue is how one expresses that disagreement the key is

016to focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed solutions to the community's problem not to engage in personal attacks against those who favor different solutions an even more powerful strategy is to listen for the concerns and the values that underline people's diverse perspectives to try to identify points of agreement and common ground and with that i will open the floor for public comment there we go thank you scott smyers 382 central street thank you john thank you norah for your service on the school committee i got to know john a few years ago when our sons were in scouts together and he was he's a very nice man he was very helpful to my family but i'm here tonight to follow up on some emails i've been exchanging with superintendent light specific to three

017topics one is discrimination and that is the civil rights act of 1963 or 64 prohibits discrimination in hiring in any policies i've been asking him some questions about that he's been answering them as besties as best he can but it seems like the more i look into this based on the information you've provided the anti-bias training that your staff is going through and you're implementing in your hiring practices seems to be a way to just have a new kind of bias and i'm concerned about that when you're hiring when you're asking questions of candidates we want good quality candidates we don't want to discriminate based on race ethnicity gender sexual orientation we want the best quality candidates we can have and what you've been saying over and over again is that you're going to look

018to discriminate towards certain ethnicities and other sexual orientation candidates and that is not necessarily a good thing and could get you in a lot of trouble in the future so i would appreciate if you reconsider that perspective what is anti-bias training really just a way to bias yourself the other way then think about that hard before you implement that throughout the entire school district and your policies thank you thank you scott hi good evening martin benson 21 deacon hunt drive uh first i would like to thank mr peterson for his service to the school district your wealth of knowledge experience and insightfulness will be missed on this board second thank you to mr klein for reaching out to mr cadleck and empathizing with the real hurt he felt given his life experience over the nazi

019contingent comment which appeared on facebook it's unfortunate that there weren't additional communication to mr cadillac from other board members third with respect to the text messages by committee members during school committee meetings of october 15 2020 and december 17 2020 the administration and school committee continues to engage in dilatory tactics and refuses to comply with the public records law the school committee acknowledged in an open meeting law complaint that there were text communications between tessa mckinley and caro wilson cook during the october 15 2020 meeting yet these text messages and hundreds of others have not been produced we will continue to pursue this matter through the office of secretary of state and if necessary through litigation in the superior court thank you good evening my name is madeline and i live into townhouse lean over

020at yankee village i want to start off by saying thank you to all our educators as it is teacher appreciation week equity diversity and inclusion are inevitable changes happening all over our world today continuing to push for a past mascot that does not equally represent all of us is indignifying and quite frankly an embarrassment some of you claims people against the colonial mascot live in a bubble wow what an irrational ignorant thought we know we do not live in a bubble we live in reality please stop spreading i'm sorry the comments about the mascot we want to wait until the mascot portion of the meeting oh i didn't see that on the agenda i'm so sorry so i guess i'll come back up then please thank you hi david hello i'm david martin i live

021on high street in acton at your last meeting one of the people in the group against the mascot changed made an accusation against me and the superintendent i just wanted to say that the accusation is false in several respects i won't go into details but i wanted to say that the school committee should have full confidence in the superintendent he's managed the mascot change process very well under very trying circumstances although i don't agree with the harassment that the superintendent and the school committee have faced in the past year and a half i completely understand that some people are disappointed in the mascot change and i respect their right to say so i especially respect the students that i've heard who've commented how they feel negatively affected by the change in mascot it took courage

022to speak out i'd like to thank the school committee for their commitment to our schools in the face of harassment thanks david hi good evening i'm steve ballard i'm from boxing sorry one second steve thank you no problem um peter pointed out and i and i i just don't want to remind anybody who's here to speak the the mascot is an item on our agenda um as soon as we get through our new business and presentations from our principals so if anybody again wants to talk to anything about the mascot happy to have that public participation at the right time during the meeting thank you adam yes i'm here for that but i've got two other points i just thought of making thank you john and thank you norah for your service and i'm sure

023you'll be glad not to have to hear from me anymore and um i was glad to get that email today uh about the the dei person that's been hired jennifer weber and just wanted to note that see that she's from the woodland school in in weston and i just went on their site and i looked at the kindergarten registration and i didn't see anything about tuition just just to note that thank you thanks steve hi my name is kim mazzioli um and i live on great road and i grew up in acton i've lived here my whole life i actually put my kids through school here and i came back here because when i graduated we had gotten that flag of excellence and we had been like number 10 and now i you know my

024kids are both out of school but i love the town and like i said it i've grown up here and i think that there's what's what's going on is creating more division than it is unity and i don't know why the message isn't that we don't pick on anybody not that we don't pick on a specific race or a specific gender or somebody who chooses to identify as something else and and the rest of it isn't just reading writing arithmetic and all that but it to me it's wrong for anybody to pick on anybody and i don't think that the you know equity and and all the i think it sends a lot a wrong message to a lot of people and now you're singling these people out singling these people out and i think

025the message should just be acceptance thank you any other members of the public wish to comment at this time okay thank you moving on to the superintendent's update peter thank you adam so you know a few different things i want to start off by also echoing some earlier comments we heard that this is teacher appreciation week so i want to extend my gratitude to all of our staff and for their continued efforts on behalf of our students this has been a challenging year for everyone students families and staff included i'm constantly impressed by the efforts of our educators and teachers support staff to make on behalf of our kids i would encourage our families to maybe take an opportunity this week to just send a note of gratitude uh to one of the child their

026child's teachers um i think those notes as they received by staff from everyone i hear from is by far the best gift that can be given is just thank you i love what you're doing for my kid and i really appreciate your time and energy so i think i would just encourage people to think about taking a moment to do that i also want to note and we sent out the announcement earlier but we have appointed jennifer faber as the new director of diversity equity and inclusion for the district i'll just read a little bit about jen jennifer is a long time massachusetts public school educator currently in her seventh year as the principal at the woodland school in weston she's consistently worked toward creating a learning environment using holistic approach toward educating students using

027her native language of spanish she previously served as the assistant principal at the barbari school a two-way bilingual elementary school in framingham prior to her three years at the barbari school she was a classroom teacher in both the sudbury and lexington public school systems additionally she is one of 20 administrators in massachusetts selected to participate in the influence 100 program a two-year fellowship focused on equity and inclusion jennifer matriculated from barrie university in miami shores florida with an undergraduate degree in elementary education and received her master's degree from lesley university in special education and literacy raised in miami beach jennifer relocated to massachusetts with her husband in 1998 and has been actively involved in a number of charitable efforts benefiting children and young adults including her current role as the co-chair of the boston children's

028museum president's council she and her husband have raised their two daughters isabella 20 and alexa 18 in sudbury mass where jennifer has found a great work-life balance with travel being an activity of choice so we are looking forward to welcoming jennifer and at some point in the future we will invite her to a school committee meeting so you have an opportunity to meet her covet cases i do want to just give a quick covet case update um if you've been following our coveted numbers uh over the last two weeks uh you have seen that we are in the middle of a push in cases um and have seen quite a few cases of coven in our schools based on a conference call with the desi commissioner that we had today this is pretty consistent with

029what the state is seeing and districts everywhere are seeing during the call we also heard some information though that epidemiologists are actually hopeful that this week was the peak and we're going to see a decline in case numbers over the next couple of weeks we want to draw families attention to that increase in cases we understand that many families may choose to wear masks indoors for some period of time we have no reports of any adverse consequences from the cases in our schools with many staff and students reporting mild symptoms we have no plans to modify existing protocols at this time other than to make families aware of the increase in cases but we continue to also monitor those cases in conjunction with our health advisory team so we're watching things you know we certainly

030continue to talk about that with our health advisory team right now we're not intending to modify protocols but we just want to make sure families know so that people can make good choices for themselves miriam principal search that search is underway as you're aware juliana schneider has announced that she's accepted a position in a district much closer to her home i want to congratulate her on that we currently have an interview team composed of various stakeholders including staff and families and some of our administrators and we are awaiting results from the initial round of interviews which actually concluded yesterday so we're keeping that process moving early college update uh we've been in discussions with middlesex community college in pursuit of a partnership that will allow us to offer concurrent enrollment courses at abrhs beginning next

031fall discussions are proceeding and we're planning to pilot one course next fall and hope to expand the program over the next several years our goal is to allow our students at arb abrhs to earn college level credits while completing coursework at the high school we have offered dual enrollment which is slightly different opportunities for students at the high school for several years where they can actually go to a college campus take courses there that are then recognized on their transcript this is slightly different from that and i'll explain that in a second um essentially what concurrent enrollment is is our teachers can become credentialed as adjunct faculty at middlesex and then for high school courses that are equivalent to college level courses students can choose to earn credits from middlesex while they're sitting at abrhs

032taking their high school coursework um the cost is traditionally about 100 to 150 per credit and is transferable to most colleges and universities around the country um that is a huge value to many many many families um that's something we want to actively pursue and make these opportunities available for our students so we will keep you informed of progress and i know the high school will be sending out more information as we solidify those plans but i just wanted to give you that quick update of kind of what's in the works i also just want to talk very briefly about planning for next year and give you a little insight to what we're thinking about our leadership team has been deeply engaged in planning for the 22-23 school year and over the last few weeks

033i've actually had an opportunity to visit most of our schools now and speak with many educators across the schools about their hopes and concerns for students next year i've also heard highlights from families through surveys community coffees and through email the consistent theme across many many of our stakeholders is that we have a lot of students struggling with social emotional skills and mental and behavioral health challenges um that message is absolutely loud and clear and it's shared among many many stakeholders that has been primary um in all of our minds as a leadership team and in the coming weeks i'm hoping to be able to give you a preview of some of what we have planned for next year we're also beginning a process of you know we kind of listened to staff first to

034gauge what they thought the needs were we've now been developing that plan around social emotional learning and mental and behavioral health for next year and we're actually just about to share that back with staff and get some more feedback um from them about what you know if they have you know they see a gap that they'd like us to address or they have a question they think needs to be answered before we roll it out so that our leadership team can continue to work through that but i also want to be able to give our families as we head into summer a little bit of preview of what we're working on for next year as well so you know more to come in that regard but i think social emotional learning mental and behavioral health

035needs of students have to be a primary focus if you look at all evidence on learning and brain-based learning and you follow the neuroscience around cognition you know that when students are experiencing trauma they cannot engage and learn effectively it's science it's proven over and over and over again and schools are going to need to be able to adapt to what students have been through over the last two years if we're going to help them adjust you know as people but also as students and if we want to improve academic outcomes we also have to improve their social emotional and behavioral outcomes and i think it's really important that we're able to share that with our community and make sure that everyone understands there's a link between academic performance and the social emotional needs of

036our students so we're looking forward to that and we'll start getting more information out to people over the next few weeks thank you peter any questions for peter john if you insist i do i i'm really excited about the uh the middlesex opportunity you know and particularly excited because you know one of the challenges in a school of our size which is a good size school is still to offer the range of things that students would like and provide for the range of experiences so this kind of activity and more activities like it i think you know are great you know as we go forward thank you yeah no thank you i i completely agree i will share we actually have some private schools as well that are pursuing partnerships with us on some different

037fronts one that we were a little bit more in advanced discussions with just had a major change in leadership and so that has put a little bit of a pause on that so we're waiting to to see what comes of it but we actually are starting to have more and more colleges and universities knowing that we're interested in this pipeline and reaching out and maybe thinking about a partnership what my eventual goal is to be able to do is actually have a range of opportunities for our students so it's kind of like a menu and it's not just about any one partnership for us it's actually about providing choice to families and students about what's going to work but also providing the value of being able to go into college and i think what our

038goal of this is is to be able to allow students to really think about the first two years of college which is mostly general education requirements there's a tuition piece of this that obviously reduces costs to families but additionally it's an opportunity cost too because if students can enter college with general education requirements under their belt and receive credit that means they get into their major sooner and it means even if they're doing their degree in four years they get a richer deeper opportunity to take a wider range of courses so i think it's about cost and it's about opportunity and we're really excited about getting this project going evelyn so as someone who doesn't see equity as a problem i have an equity question as we look at getting students the opportunity to take

039courses at middlesex um are we thinking about this in an equitable way what if kids that are bright and can take courses of medicines cannot afford that fee what are we doing to be able to support those kids we don't i wish i could tell you we have a solution right now but we're in talks to figure out how to develop maybe some type of a scholarship fund for students who cannot afford to access that type of an opportunity um i don't have the firm answer for you but i do know it's something we're certainly talking about because we want to make sure that we're not creating an equity as we advance other kids slightly different direction of comment on this but while i appreciate that we are pursuing this because i know lots of

040other high schools have dual enrollment and concurrent enrollment i'm kind of disappointed that given that we've had lots of discussions about why so many kids are going to minuteman and going to other tech schools that we aren't pursuing those kinds of things within our school because we already are like a heavily college driven success you know pushing high school in lots of ways and this is just gonna add to that it's sort of like high school plus college all in one high school and i just really wish we were giving opportunities to kids that aren't looking for that um you know there's no one from voxpro got into any of the tech schools this year like there was at least 12 students that applied and um you know i imagine the numbers at minuteman are

041are from acton or even higher than that i know that there are kids from member towns that didn't get into minuteman so that's clearly like an interest and a desire amongst many students especially given the social emotional challenges that you've mentioned so i sort of wish we weren't really moving full steam ahead with like more college but that's just my opinion any other comments nope thank you uh next up on our agenda are presentations and first up is the rj gray junior high school presentation with principal jim marcotte jim i was hoping to see the ice cream truck make a return for our meetings so following jim will be principal joni dean of the high school so they're going to come sit next to each other keep each other company it's clearly about safety exactly

042safety numbers is important and we get along really well so i'm happy joanie is sitting next to me and i'll sit next to her when she talks to uh so for those of you i don't know i'm jim marcotte i'm the principal of r.j gray junior high i am going to set my timer for 10 minutes because i was told 10 minutes is important so if i can interrupt yes you'll notice he didn't say interim principle he said principal at rj gray i just want to make sure we clarify that pause your timer yeah we'll pause for the applause i'll take more applause later if you want um no i appreciate that peter it's been a great year for me um i'm very happy to be continuing as the principal of the junior high so

043um thanks for letting us talk tonight so you know the goal of me sharing with you tonight is just to tell you kind of what we've been working on kind of big picture and with some specific examples as they come up but if you've been if you're a parent at junior high and you've seen some of the stuff i've written or if your student goes to us they know that the expression we've been using this year is we're building a joyful inclusive community of engaged learners and those three pieces the joyful part the community and the engaged learners is important it has really guided a lot of our work and a lot of our planning as we go forward so i kind of broke down my presentation around those three buckets of things and you

044know we really as i as i took over the position after having been in high school junior high excuse me for a long time prior as an assistant principal i recognized like there was a void where we weren't really finding the joy and the fun is what i think a middle school should and should include and so we have been purposeful this year in trying to do that our schedules that each team operates get pretty fixed and it's hard for teachers to find oh let's do an hour and a half activity that focuses on one thing and so we built into our master calendar team community building days um we put three days on the calendar that you know all eighth grade would engage in some activity that their teachers have planned for them uh

045we had to skip the one in january because our coveted numbers were way up and we didn't want to take risk but you know we had fun days that included things like obstacle courses out on leary field we had people making scarecrows back in our fall day there were board game and puzzle competitions and kind of a lot of team challenges moving a golf ball from one end of the gym lobby to the other using pvc pipe so kind of team work stuff that we wanted kids to engage with that it is teacher appreciation week but we have amazing teachers who pulled that all off for us so and for our students we're psyched about that we got into a habit this year especially at the beginning of the year about our morning announcements something

046that i always begin and then we've gotten back in the practice of having students do our announcements but for a while we were asking kind of a question of the day and the one one in the fall that i remember stuck out stuck out to me because i had a strong opinion on it you know is apple picking worthwhile um and so in the homeroom that the kids were hearing that announcement there was a quick conversation so bringing a little bit joy and a little bit of community which is the part that comes next of course i highlighted their thanksgiving assembly we had a relay race of you know pumpkin pie and turkey and canned cranberry sauce back and forth across the gym in a really fun and atmosphere and i'll be super honest that

047kind of watching that all unfold was when i was more firm in my belief that i do want to continue to be the principal here and so that environment and that kind of fun just seeing 12 and 13 and 14 year olds interact that way affected me and i think affects some of our kids too for sure we brought back things like spirit days pajama day formal dress day things like that and we're very happy to have our athletics back our clubs and activities meaningfully in person and really you know pretty popular for a lot of them this year we've um twice now in november and then in march we've done a student survey to try to collect some information on things that matter to us and things are you know based on our school

048goals and so i just pointed out one here and this is a slide that i actually used last week for sixth grade info night you know for sixth grade parents who are nervous oh my kids come to the junior high for the first time i flashed this up there 97 of kids said this year they made new friends to me that's important you know there are three percent there who named that as not being the case we're concerned about that um but i think we have a strong showing there that says that something's happening in our school that kids feel good about being with each other um working on our inclusive community we through our morning announcements and through other avenues have been trying to recognize holidays and celebrations so you know i know it

049doesn't matter it is and it is should be bigger than just february for example for black history month but every day that month we had a fact or a quote or a person of interest that we read about in the morning announcements that now is represented on bulletin board in the front lobby um i had a student write to me a few weeks ago saying mr marcus can i come on the morning announcements and talk about ramadan sure you can come on down so we've been trying to find ways to make that feel a little bit stronger of an inclusive community i put up there common ground which is our lgbtq plus group that includes allies as well it's been a really strong group this year 18 to 20 students attend weekly meetings to connect

050with each other we have a great advisor who just last week brought students to worcester to see prom the musical um i don't know if you call it a musical prom the show and a couple parents went and the kids had an amazing time so it's really that's a highlight of what we've seen this year um we had a goal in our school improvement plan that for el families particularly we were going to find ways to connect with them face to face this year um and that's a group that we've recognized over the years doesn't always get the face time or the interaction that may go to other families who who have english as their primary language so i'll shout out in a big way our academic support center and our el team um that

051really works to engage with these families using um new mechanisms of communication including the remind app is a great way for us to connect with a lot of families so you know we're not 100 on that so we need more work to do but it's a point that we have made really important this year we have had a lot of conversations and we've had two attempts at a first meeting of a student affinity group and we're purposeful you know we're following up we know what the decision about coming out of wellesley was about affinity groups and we're calling it a group that says if you want to i think the way we word it if you want to talk about race in positive negative or neutral way come to this group um we have a

052we have an advisor who's ready to lead it um we haven't done what we need to do to reach out individually and make some potential invitations and kind of get that going so while we've begun the planning for it i do believe in next year that will be right from the beginning something that will really firmly take take hold and be great for our students and we're also going to be planning for we have been planning for our advisory program to start next year which i'll talk about particularly in a slide or two this is another question from our survey um you know and there's a lot of it that makes me feel great there's a lot of it that makes me feel like oh we're not there yet um so the question being i

053feel welcome to be myself you know i look at things that say strongly agree um agree and somewhat agree like the somewhat is a little bit iffy for me but you know at that point we're seeing 23 and 43 saying yep i agree with that i can be myself here um so we have a lot more work to do i think advisory will help us with this a little bit to get students to really own their identity and feel you know who they are and yet they are 12 and 13 and 14 and they're still figuring that out so if someone doesn't answer that affirmatively at this moment there could be reasons that we need to know about as well as it could be a developmental piece that we're looking at the final piece that

054we talk about is engaged learning our staff went through a udl training this year and really the conversations now that we have are different than in prior years because it's now talking about like all right what's the barrier that that student is facing how do we remove that barrier for the student access you know we're certainly we've been for a while you know a lot of student voice and student choice and activities and assignments but that has become more common language with our staff in our english fundamentals program so students with ieps whose potential reading level is significantly below grade level for other reasons they might be in a what we have always used as kind of a separate english class where for next year pursuing a co-teaching model we're pushing back into the regular

055the general education english class you know english teacher special educator connecting and working with students together so we're really excited about that there will excuse me be growing pains we know but it's the right thing to do and we're really pursuing that for the first time at the junior high we've used i ready uh three times we'll we'll do our third assessment in ela and in math and reading and math this year we are working on giving the assessment is easy taking the data and modifying your instruction and all that is where we now need to continue to grow so you know i'm naming for you all the things we're working on and saying like oh but we're not there yet which i hope you appreciate is just the ongoing work that we'll be doing

056the final point on this slide is for our compass program which is our social emotional learning center we have had issues that's at points where we feel not great because some of our students dealing with their social emotional challenges are in the learning center too much they can't make it to science that day they can't make it to english that day we have looked at our incoming our next year kind of profile we figured out a way to say all right a team teacher for example teaches five english classes they're going to teach four full-size english classes and that fifth class is going to be focused on the instruction that some students from compass may need ideally and the goal is those compass students attend english in the class of 22 students on the day

057that they can't make it there the english teacher will come to them and so we're working in a way using our you know our current size um and we've actually just reshifted out we've shifted our team assignments for teachers so we have people now in the teams associated compass who really want to engage in this so we're very excited about it 45 seconds left i'm going to miss my 10 minutes um we asked a question how often do you actively participate in class you know and that's a that's a strong showing for us that you know always and often and sometimes yeah those are those are good numbers um we want to make sure we're knowing what does it actually mean to participate i was in a class today and recognizing my head huh if

058you're an introvert how are you feeling right now and there's ways to be involved and participate that don't always mean verbally finally the biggest goal that we have for next year is implementing our advisory program and we're taking it simple in year one and the goals are forming connections and relationships with other students and an adult um we're going to make those a looping connection so if you start next year as a seventh grader same group same adult into the following year all right i missed it i'll get like 12 minutes maybe um we really again the goal being forming relationships we want students to be able to be themselves and yet we want to create this space that feels good to students and teachers in the event that there is something we have to

059talk about as a school we have that space and we want to embed in there a lot of our you know the work that we want to do around social emotional learning and dei work um when we create that small environment you know up to 12 students is our goal in a particular group um advisor is going to meet three times a week on a typical week you know four day week feels a little bit different we'll adjust but on a monday and a friday a 10-minute check-in after second period with your advisory group and that could be a quick game it could be a quick you know community circle or something and then on a wednesday after lunch will be a 25-minute session where that's where we'll do more of the kind of heavy

060lifting type work we want it to still be fun still high levels high interest stuff but that's where we know we'll embed some of the work that we want to accomplish we've had a great team of staff members really into it this year and really working with us to come up as far as we have come with this particular plan you know and our ultimate goal is to improve this number which says if you have a problem of concern you have a teacher in your building about 80 right now says yes i have somebody with advisory i want that number to be much stronger because i think that's the goal is creating connections for kids um with other kids in other adults too the other questions that match this one on the student survey asked

061if i have a problem or concern i have a family member at home that number was higher it's in the 90s if i have a problem concerned i have a peer who i can go to also in the 90s so our kids are very connected and which is which i think is a really important piece to know um but we certainly want to work on what we have to be the ability to control which is our adults and our students working together and so there i am at the end of my 12 minutes or so so i'm open to comments or questions if you have any um before we turn it to joni thanks jim joni you've got to beat 12 i think is the number eight i think there's no shot i'm sorry i've

062seen your slides that's good i just want to acknowledge what a great job you do there we have had two experiences of an incredibly challenging junior high and i just want to note that like 13 and 12 and 13 and 14 year olds or i don't know how you guys do it i if i had to spend all day every day 180 days a year with 12 13 and 14 year olds i would have a really difficult time and people ask me like all the time oh but what about the junior high and i honestly think that the junior high is one of our greatest schools that we have here i think that the things that you're doing are amazing and i think the places where we as a family have felt struggles may be

063answered by things like advisory i think that that advisory thing is awesome because i think that there's only so much you can control i think you have phenomenal staff and i think the things that are part of the curriculum are really good i think the pieces you don't have control over are the other students and so advisory i think is an amazing thing that i i'm not going to say i wish we were still going to be at the junior high to see that but i'm happy for the other kids two years at a time is enough to stay two years is enough yeah no and to that point tess i appreciate that um you know people say oh jim your job's so hard like it it's not as hard as the teacher's job like

064the teachers are killing themselves to you know make connections and good stuff for kids um and we are where we are because andrew chen was the principal for nine years you know so i am very lucky to be taking over after someone very competent in who put the school in the place that it's in so i appreciate that i hope he's watching any other questions for jim john you already have the job say it again you already have the job i do i know i appreciate that go ahead john uh you talked a lot about um the importance of the mental state of the students and trying to understand where we are and how things are going for them and of course you know students are and how they feel impacts their families and vice

065versa um but the community of course also includes uh the staff and you know how they are feeling at this point in the year and i wonder if you could say a few words about um you know how you feel about the the mental health of the staff particularly because it is teacher appreciation week no it's a good question um and i say to them often you know when we get together that i'm very happy to be with them oh he he texted me i'm watching good job so that was from mr chen i knew he was um the day actually that i was interviewing um you know the day-long kind of site visit i it was funny i'd run a staff meeting and then i went and put on my suit coat and became

066the candidate for the position and peter and marine were in the library watching as well and there was a well-respected teacher who said jim like you've talked about really exciting things how are we going to do all of this and i i completely appreciate it in the idea that like yeah we're really balancing a lot on the backs of people who have families and children and outside commitments and i reference that point my wife's a teacher my sister's a teacher like i get that teacher vibe i think the junior high has a lot going for it in that you know our team model really lets teachers support each other with the support of the administration as included but you know they're not on an island by themselves trying to manage this there really is a

067teamwork focus actually being set up on teams or in departments that are you're not necessarily on team groups but yeah i mean you know when mike valoska gets up and talks later ask him that question about the vibe of our staff i will say and i think i'm not being you know too idealistic that we're in a very good place i think teachers are very appreciative of the work that the district is doing people are on board with what we're trying to do when we gave the advisory when we gave a summary of advisory was back in february at a staff meeting you know a little bit we prepared for like oh how is this going to go over no one no one can dispute the goals behind it we want to work to make

068experiences better for kids and then actually in effect better for teachers themselves so you know while there are questions about like i've never done this before how am i going to pull this off and that's a legit question um i think what they're seeing us do is work towards making kids lives as good as they can be while they're only with us for two years so um my take on the state of the staff at the junior high is that we're doing really well and i think people are pretty positive about our work but ask mike b when he comes up a question for the principal let me just see one more round around the committee anybody else on the committee have a question for jim no come on back up to the microphone please

069you are doing well there you go so i did hear you talk a lot about the children and their emotions and the teachers and my my only question is have you it's kind of outside of the box and i think we treat our kids so differently now than than we did back then and school kind of hasn't changed like they still sit in class they still is there any kind of like i think they communicate better with other kids and i was wondering if there's any kind of program or thought process to maybe having some high schoolers help out the junior high kids and maybe it would you know give they could earn some credit or get some you know kind of something in that and it might you know there might be experience that

070they can talk about with them that can be overseen by a staff member rather than just feeling like you want to you know get all these kids comfortable to talk to the staff members which is maybe a little bit unrealistic you know so maybe that you could intertwine them a little bit it might make a confidence boost for the high school kids and give some direction for the junior high kids with maybe an overseers i mean is that yes let me give you a couple of examples of what i think you know we have had and prior to kovid went away but you bring up a good point why couldn't we bring those things back um the particular example i have right now is the ambassador program at the high school which is high school

071students that we connect when they're coming up into the ninth grade we connect experienced high schoolers with the new freshmen coming in that doesn't directly affect the junior high at some point for many years we had the peer leader program from the high school and students would come to the junior high um particular days of the week in particular periods to meet with students who we knew this was an important connection and i'll be very honest i believe that that fell apart a little bit when the high school no longer had a fixed schedule so the student had fourth period off every day it was easy for them to come to junior high where it now rotates it's more complicated but you bring up a good point the community that we're hoping to connect an

072advisory is not only about adults to students but it's the students to students and getting them to get connected um and you know hopefully process with each other like oh yeah that was a really terrible thing that happened on social media or whatever right right but you're right i think the example of uh older students may very well serve us well so as joni and i know keep working together you bring up a really good point that we should just wanted to throw it out there you know i think they learn so much from each other that sometimes when we talk they're like you know oh yeah i have three kids in my channel not quite that old yet but i do hear that too okay i appreciate it thank you jen okay you're welcome

073joanie welcome thank you what do i have eight minutes the time to beat is 12 i believe i'm going to try for 10. okay good evening it's really great to be here after almost one year of of being here even more excited now than i was was before there's a lot that's been going on in the high school and i'm excited to share that with you tonight i will do sort of two portions and the first one will probably be a little shorter just in terms of what's been going on this year goals and updates and then related in terms of me coming in and what i've assessed and everyone's helped me think about i'll just share some entry findings in in in the form of questions in four different category areas and that will

074hopefully frame some of our work going forward all right so to start with a year in review i think it's appropriate to first talk about some celebrations and then some actual realities uh additionally of the year we're coming out of covid still in covid in many regards so first of all i just want to say that it has been amazing to witness for this year and i think everyone here knows this that through flexibility creativity and tremendous work we've been able to continue to provide an outstanding education along with a lot of support for our students in the third year of the pandemic i think we have many academic successes and additionally and probably as important especially during this time is a social emotional support that we're able to provide for students we see that

075in classrooms the work that teachers have done through udl training this year our counseling and support staff and how they hold children and also our peer-to-peer assistant and support for students i've been really impressed with from the beginning of the year with the ambassadors program through all of our class meetings school spirit days all the way through this end of the year as we're celebrating our end of year celebrations and what that means to our community i think with great enthusiasm we're able to bring back lots of in-person events this year and that has been refreshing and therapeutic i could list a number of events which many of you probably know better than i do veterans day breakfast senior dress-up day was absolutely amazing to feel the electricity in the gym after two years off

076our grade level meetings our athletic events world language week we were able to bring that back this year um p and health days in person performances right now matilda is going on we recently had our spring concert at mechanics hall in worcester we recently had our nhs induction we were able to have 12th grade community service day last week i'm so impressed that over 400 seniors work in over 60 different community service projects on one day it's an amazing testament to our community and our values and just logistically being able to pull that off we are all looking forward to prom tomorrow that may be why some students aren't here tonight and i can't wait for graduation at the end of the year and i know students and families feel the same way all right

077if we were to talk about the realities of this year i'm just going to say the challenges of a pandemic and the impacts on teaching and learning have been real and in terms of the social and emotional place that students are in and also i'm probably going to share a harsher uh perspective of where teachers are in the high school um than jim did and and no i just both are accurate um in the high school this is this has been tough and this has been a lot and it's been a lot for teachers and teacher appreciation week comes at the perfect time um yep so i would say that um working through all that with students at teachers at the same time is something that is real and continue to be appreciative of all

078of that and recognizing where we are is important talking about specifically this year and what we worked on um if you if you think about students first and then and then we talk about faculty i'd say that we were focusing from the beginning of the year on a culture of care especially coming into into in-person school coming out of pandemic thinking about pandemic emergent students and and teachers so we're focusing on the social and emotional needs of students first and and then also academics and so those have been our main focus this year where our students how can we meet them where they are even if it's not the same as they were two years ago in this very same class and so that's really been a focus for us this year our diversity equity

079and inclusion work has focused on equity coaching with michelle shannon we've had some great student events this year our deer asian youth group led all of our a b affinity groups in a forum this fall we also had our queer youth walk out recently implementing our anonymous online reporting system i think has been helpful in providing opportunities for students to share incidents with us i'd say that in terms of responding to hate and bias incidents a focus on education and restoration has been key this year and we're going to continue to work in those veins faculty and staff as i said before the impacts of covet and how that has affected staff is real i would say that um attendance and student behavior and how that's affected everything that's going on in in the school

080is something that we want to pay careful attention to sorry we are paying careful attention to i would say the administrators in the high school are now devoting about three hours a day to just following up on attendance and attendance issues and how that impacts student learning and their behavior um okay i want to comment on teacher workload and that has been a phrase in high school this year and a lot of this comes out of covid so at the beginning of the year we had a committee to invite to examine teacher workload in the high school and in terms of how many classes different departments were teaching additionally teachers have been focused on examining our schedule and how that has impacted their workload this year i'll talk a little bit more about that when

081i get to my entry findings in terms of focused work dei and cultural responsive practice has been at the heart of things that we have done in curriculum analysis again our equity coaching work with dr michelle shannon and our early college initiatives are something on the front burner as peter was noting additionally we had pl focused on community building circles in november for teachers um our early release collaboration time has been focused on udl and departmental collaboration udl is universal design for learning and then i'd say the last area of focused work is in examining our course levels at the high school in order to examine and provide increasingly advanced coursework for all students equitable opportunities and increasingly diverse learning experiences and so we're forming a plc a professional learning community to help examine um

082our course levels at the high school i think my timer's off and i don't know how long all right i don't have much time all right i want to share some of my entry findings with you now the second portion of my um presentation i want to say first of all i express a great deal of gratitude to the entire community for their welcome and how supportive they've been and that hasn't just been for me i noticed that in our community and that comes out in pride and care in everything that we do i say that our excellence in terms of academics and activities is a parent and something that's living and breathing that i i experience and notice and i believe everyone does in our school on a daily basis focus on social emotional

083learning and diversity equity inclusion are at the forefront of what we're talking about and what is important in this district i'm very excited about that i think that's incredibly important and i think that as peter said before in order to continue excellence in academics and activities that's necessary if i were to talk about what i've noticed and what other people have helped me thoughtfully understand about this school and how to move forward and this district i was able to organize my thoughts into four categories and so i will now go through those four categories i'll just list them for you quickly first is mission vision values second is school climate and culture third is teaching and learning and fourth is school operations and structure and so if i'm going to talk about mission vision value

084i'd say that it's it's apparent that a b has a history of excellence in all facets of academics and activities as i've said before i think that everyone takes great pride in all that a b represents i have also noticed that due to time and space constraints educational practices and approaches can be specific to departments or groups within the high school additionally and mostly i'm over my time my daughter programmed that i forgot about that mostly due to remote and hybrid learning the pandemic there's been great impact on social on students social and emotional development that's affected their well-being and school performance i'd say that in the future we're going to focus on developing a set of mission vision and values statement of which we can then look through other decisions and programs within the

085high school that we can look through that lens i think that in terms of the significant factors that affected teenagers unlike ever before from the pandemic we need to consider the impact of the pandemic a societal focus on social justice inequities and the mental health situation of all our students and staff as we develop our mission statements and and revise our handbook and so my two questions for vision vision values are framed in first the vision of student experience and what ways can we develop a school-wide shared vision of the student experience that centers students and promotes collaboration between our departments and staff members we can model that for our students and have a shared experience the second one in terms of student behavior how do we implement an approach to student behavior that reflects

086our vision of a student experience and our commitment to restorative and equitable practices in particular framing that through after the mission vision values our handbook my next category and i'll try to go quickly school culture and climate i would say that we have a great support team at the high school this year we've been examining advisory and we've also been examining how we respond to incidents of hate and bias opportunities ahead for us in this area include implementing our advisory program once a week next year instead of once a month and we're working in a committee right now to develop plans for that um and i'm happy that we can partner some of our work with the junior high [Music] continued focus on dei work and including student voice and feedback and all we do

087and i'd say that we have a few questions here first community spirit how can we continue to build upon the high school's success and its warm caring spirit diversity equity inclusion how can we continue to foster the school's social justice equity and inclusion philosophy and goals within the curriculum student support and community events a robust advisory program and what ways can we provide a meaningful advisory program for students within our given schedule and staffing constraints social emotional well-being and learning how can we continue to focus on balancing students social emotional well-being with within their academic achievement with their accurate sorry balanced social emotional well-being with their academic achievement and success okay teaching and learning we of course have a very successful high school and teaching and learning i want to bring up again the realities

088of teacher workload this year and the examination of how many classes teachers were teaching in the different department additionally there are many strong feelings about our schedule two years ago we moved to uh the rotating schedule in which one of the blocks dropped and when i say um a dislike that was among a good portion of the teachers so we spent some time examining that this year we had a group working on it that met for two and a half months we conducted a survey and we talked about it the final decision was to continue with the current survey for at least two more years until we go through a mission vision values process and then evaluate our schedule through that overwhelmingly students and families i believe like our schedule focus on student engagement is

089important and then thinking about our course levels is another thing that we're going to examine in the future and so if i were to put that in in the questions i would say that teacher workload how can we move forward in a way that manages teacher workload and focusing focuses on improving student outcomes engagement how can we continue to assess and improve teaching and learning in order to fully engage all of our students course levels how can we ensure academically challenging courses equitable opportunities and diverse learning environments for all students all right lastly and this will be the shortest one school operations and structures we have a large school many people many people are working simultaneously on different tasks communication and coordination is paramount and so some opportunities ahead for us include next year we're

090going to rework our administrator structure so that each administrator is not working with 850 students but rather 425 students each and in groups of teams with counselors to improve the focus around students which is needed right now as students are coming as we are coming out of the pandemic and coordination between the adults in the building and so questions along this lines there are two of them school leadership how can we how can the high school staff and leadership team best work together on a shared set of goals to unify school-wide efforts and encourage cross-departmental communities of educators and secondly school operations how do we identify areas to adjust in order to best manage the daily operations and communications across the school thank you for listening to my entire presentation i think i will i

091went well over my 8 or my 10 minutes i want to say again as i started i'm really excited to be here thank you for listening and thank you to everyone who helped contribute to what i put together thank you very much joni questions from the committee [Laughter] next time i'll just go like this john and the important thing is he said questions um i i think you know one of the things sitting here as a school community member is you always wonder you know what can i do to help you um and there are lots of things you talk about that are extremely interesting that's like not sure what i can do as a school committee member but there were um two things you know one that came up sort of tangentially and one

092that's more direct that maybe do relate to what the school committee can weigh in on you know one of those questions you know with respect to the high school experience and i very much appreciated jim's comment that um the teachers operating a team at the middle school just have a completely different experience than other things and i think that's so important to keep in mind and i'm going to come back to that at the end but in terms of the high school you know i was wondering if you know difficulties in getting subs had been a significant contributing factor to problems because if that's true then you know as the school committee works on budget and things question about how we're compensating or what we might there are things that we could really be involved

093in to do something about that um and then the second thing that you know i thought about you know on your slides um in the packet they linked out to the school improvement plan and the school improvement plan of course well of course we should have a plan to improve our schools but maybe it shouldn't come out of mass general law maybe you know we could be using you know our resources that we want to devote to improving our individual schools in some different kind of way and um the role of school committee with regard to those you know school improvement plans you know is really again much more to receive here's what we we think we're going to do but there's a different role for the school committee if in fact you believe that

094these activities are not the best use of our resources and that's to tell the school committee that some lobbying with the legislature to consider reconsider you know this aspect of educational law you know would have some merit um so i'm i'm just curious you know you i assume you had no idea there was this structure when you came into the high school and among the many things it's like really this is what we're going to do so what was your your feeling about having gone through this process the school improvement plan process yeah yeah it was different to me and and i also think that and this has been typical of my ab experience i think that you can find meaning in anything that you do and i found the process meaningful and and how

095we worked as a as a district even over the summer to to start to put plans in place for our school improvement plan and then the work with the the parents and the students and teachers who are on that committee i found incredibly useful over the course of the year to get feedback and help frame our goals for next year so it's hard for me to say also being new to massachusetts it's exactly my uh complete analysis of your question john but i think that uh leaving that to the side i found the process helpful and useful because we've been able to do it in a meaningful way to your first question um about substitutes i mean i think marie could probably answer that better than me but we have been doing a good job

096of getting more substitutes in in the high school when we need them this year in order to provide support for our students so i've been grateful for that and then the one other thing that i wanted to comment on was the choice of the phrase the student experience so we're about to enter the end of the year where you know we'll have a chance to celebrate a lot of things that students have done through the years academically athletically and i think anybody who goes through that process and you know watches our graduates um you know in june will recognize how many different experiences there were so while it's true that there are some things that are shared our students are actually diversifying through the process and so they and we you know should feel comfortable

097that there will be a multitude of experiences hopefully all good ones but there will be no singular experience that is understood and something that we certainly need to to be careful of and and we wouldn't want anything to be completely locked up or uniform and of course that's part of a high school experience and one of the reasons why high school educators love the high school and being in it is because of all the differences and growth and so hopefully that will be embedded in whatever we create as our student experience goal or vision so thank you thank you any other questions for joni no john you're done you've used your allotment all right thank you both jim thank you i just want to both thank both of you um you know really tremendous first

098years very different experiences for both of you you know jim you came in as an interim and really just proved through all of the work you did that you know you certainly had staff support um you know to really move you forward as the principal i mean it was unquestionable same thing and i know you know i i heard from many people in the community that you know facebook lit up and it was like you know the first thing in the a while that the community felt like yes we all buy into this together um so you know congratulations on that and i think you know your ability to see the school from inside and keep things moving forward quickly really shown through you know in joni you had a different experience where you're coming

099in and you know you didn't have the opportunity of being in that school for nine or ten years previously so you know you've just been really thoughtful and i know i've heard from many many staff in the school that they really feel like you listen um and i've heard that from students i've heard it from families that you know you just you listen to people you acknowledge how they're feeling about things and you're able to work in ways to bring people to consensus and just taking that lens to the high school i really appreciate all the work you've done so thank you both thank you okay on to our ongoing business so in a few moments there are different ways of understanding the colonials as a symbol for some heroic and for others threatening when

100the school committee voted to retire the colonials mascot the decision was made with our current students at the forefront of our minds and the intention was to begin the search for a mascot that unified our students and did not exclude any members of our community some have feared that we are canceling or erasing the important history of our community our schools do and will continue to teach the rich and important history of our town and region what we intend to do what we intend is to broaden understanding and learn from each other and we are proud that the process of selecting a new mascot has done just that the mascot subcommittee and the students have listened closely engaging with the community and incorporated their feedback throughout the process our students voices have led this process

101one thing we know is that the colonials alumni who feel great pride in the colonials mascot can should and will always be colonials it's time however to move forward as a community and we hope you will join us in supporting the new mascot of acton-boxborough as we move forward in this process we'll find opportunities to recognize our past and celebrate our future and with that peter i'll hand it over to you all right so thank you adam so you know there's a memo in your packet um and along with a memo from uh principal dean and then we included some of the you know final survey data from the community survey that we sent out um you know i just want to recognize you know similar to adam's sentiments i think you know i want

102to make sure we understand that in the retiring the mascot it was that it it's not we have to stop seeing the world in black and white and you know we have to think in terms of there's a range of feelings in that and i think that is embodied in our community and the nature of the colonials was a complex one in this coming community and you know i think you know as you said and i said in my memo you know this is not about changing the period of time that we were the colonials i think we can actually always celebrate that period of time because many many great things happened in this community during that period of time where the colonials well represented our schools i think what this is is about looking

103forward and thinking about who our students want to represent them as they move forward i want to also recognize before we you know share what the the actual name of this is that you know there are many in the community who really wish it still was the colonials and i want to acknowledge that and i think you know we need to do a little reconciliation around that and say that you know we can understand why people felt value in that and i want to make sure that that statement and sentiment isn't lost in how we move this forward our students started this process we turned it over to them we had a mascot subcommittee as you recall that was tasked with leading the charge but only so far as providing guidance to students and providing

104feedback about how they were moving through the process i have to tell you i can't believe the work that this group of students did and i you know rarely do i speak for a group but i know i speak on behalf of the whole mascot renaming subcommittee that we were on a you know meeting by meeting basis impressed with the quality of work the students were producing not only in their own deliberations with themselves but also their ability to take in community input which was at times challenging to read and be able to synthesize that in a way that they felt could represent the community as a whole in moving the school forward um another thing we were impressed with with our kids was their ability to you know have deliberated usually you know by

105the time they came to a subcommittee meeting my guess is they probably met between one and three and maybe even four hours um in between meetings of the subcommittee and you know they were able to you know take what they got to and listen um to you know feedback that was really designed to push their thinking around different topics and then bring that back to the student group and help move that thinking forward yet again so er i think every time our students who are on the subcommittee came forward you could see tangible ways that they had then worked with the rest of the students to incorporate that feedback so i'm just really i i can't speak highly enough of the students involved in this and i want to also recognize and thank all of

106the staff that helped guide them through the process i think this was very emotional for our students to go through um there you know was there were multiple points along the way that they were certainly getting frustrated and you know they weren't sure what direction to go in and yet they kept coming back and working through the challenge at hand in order to bring something forward so you know i'm really pleased you know to be able to report that the final consensus vote of the student group was a unanimous choice to move forward with the name for the mascot and the mascot renaming subcommittee of the school committee also voted unanimously to support the name that we're moving forward i'll read that name for you now and the description that the students wanted before i

107do that i'll also note that we had you know several people who are professionals in the branding industry who are also in our community who gave us a lot of feedback along the way saying do not visually represent this yet that comes later instead talk about what you want for the term and put the definition out there so that you're really clear in defining what you want for a term and so there's no visual representation at this point that could come later um but let me share what the the name was so the proposed name is the acton-boxborough or a b revolution the description the fight for positive change and equity never ends it's the voice of the people a revolution it acknowledges our past but speaks to our future we are innovators barrier breakers

108and difference makers a revolution represents a show of ingenious strength challenging outsmarting and overwhelming the status quo so that's the a b revolution as proposed by our students so we're pleased to present that to you what we are doing we're considering this a first read i'm going to make the recommendation that we send this out to the community for some public comment over the next two weeks and give the community an opportunity one more time to be able to write in um to the school committee with their comments on this which you can then consider and we'll move we'd like to have you consider this for a second read slash vote at your next meeting on may 19th so i'm happy to answer any questions and you know hear hear initial thoughts and feedback thanks

109peter from the committee thoughts feedback questions okay at this point then i'll open it up to the public so similar to public participation we'll give you three minutes each and uh similar uh we'll take the feedback in but questions may not be answered at this time we have to come up to the microphone can we know how many kids wanted to change the name like i said you've got to come to the mic during the public participation option and questions like like i said before questions won't be answered at this time but those can be forwarded to the superintendent who can respond then go ahead thank you change is hard and we are in good company ab is one of at least four schools that have challenged the colonial mascot george washington university colonial history

110professors dane kennedy and denver brunsman spoke in support of changing their colonial mascot professor brunsman said this conversation has demonstrated that the colonials offends a broad cross section of the campus community particularly international students and faculty who come from areas still fresh with memories of colonialism he also said the term colonial denotes a power relationship of one group over another a b students bravely spoke out against that oppression i am grateful for abs institutional courage in retiring the divisive community mascot being the first to do the right thing is hard thank you for centering equity for all yes to the ab revolution thank you thank you good evening martin benson 21 deacon hunt drive i have a few questions just for the committee to answer uh one the ff district facilities naming policy forbids political

111pressure from affecting the school committee's decision to retire and rename the colonial mascot however the school committee cited the support of state senator jamie eldridge state representative tammy govea as well as progressive group indivisible acting during their meeting on october 15 2020. records requests show ms govea was in concurrent communications with school committee members on how to push back against those supporting the colonial mascot this is no coincidence at the time ms govea was trying to get her offensive mascot bill passed into law additionally the mascot subcommittee was required to select a mascot which represents the school district's anti-racist and social justice goals yet social justice and anti-racism are considered political movements how does the school committee contend the retirement and renaming of the mascot has not been impacted by political pressure mr benson like

112i said before we won't be answering questions during this time so as an agenda item the chair um will not be in jeopardy of committing an oml complaint by not answering the question this is this is public comment not public participation traditionally the chair has responded to questions that tend to in the trend of not answering questions started around five years ago is there a chance to reconsider this practice can you see the problem the fact that the school committee won't answer questions doesn't comply with public records law nor do they give straight answers and email responses which begs the question what's the point of having these meetings all right two revolutions occur in um often occur extraordinary loss of life property uh opportunity and culture how deeply has the committee considered the impact of

113revolution on members of our diverse community and the definition which it has historically provided any three according to our research this year is the first time the town of acton failed to officially celebrate patriots day with the exception of cancellations due to the pandemic how does this committee plan to rectify the misperceptions of acton's role in the american revolution um we'd appreciate some answers at some point publicly thank you hi there rebecca wilson wingate lane good evening tonight i'd like to speak about the inherent problem with claiming that only the majority should decide on certain issues in this case the retirement of the school mascot the idea of tyranny of the majority is attributed to the ancient greeks and was of real concern to the founders of our country the founders hoped that a system

114of checks and balances the bill of rights and localized control would be enough to counteract this problem unfortunately we see even locally how this problem can persist this tyranny demands continual resistance popular opinion is not the best way to make decisions especially when it comes to a minority experiencing harm the majority will naturally vote for what benefits them and the minority are oppressed it is a fatal flaw in democracy one which can be alleviated but only if there is the will to do so we do not have a marketplace of ideas where our worst impulses are naturally excluded let's not forget some other popular opinions slavery manifest destiny fear of japanese americans during world war ii and opposing the equal rights amendment so no the majori the argument that a majority of the entire town

115must be in agreement for a mascot retirement as a faulty one and thinly veiled bigotry at that it is ridiculous to assert that alumni who no longer live in acton or boxborough should have a say in this and that people who are new community members should not it should matter to every single adult in this town that some students no matter how small a number felt uncomfortable with colonial representation the fact that it doesn't is deeply deeply troubling we must listen to minority voices challenge our own internal biases and stand up when we see a trampling of others rights remember be kind acton michael b alice willow street first of all i want to say i wasn't thrilled with the name at first it was a boston team but i was thrilled when i read

116this statement because the thought behind it and the spirit behind it that the students came up with made it made me go change from saying okay that's an okay name and there's a boston team to say this really means something to these students and it really has potential for the spirit of the school and the direction of the school i do want to reiterate the point that that people who are saying to save our colonials that their colonials don't need saving as was said their achievements their spirit their on the sports fields and theater and other places will always be there and their connection will always be there so it's not a question your colonials are saved they will be remembered but now it's time for something for a symbol that all the students can

117connect with i also want to say that people who feel that the changing of the name disrespects ivis davis isaac davis and his compatriots should remember that it was loyalists who wanted to stay colonials isaac davis died trying to throw off the name of being a colonial thank you lucia maracella depo road and voxpro on october 15 2020 our school committee hastily decided to retire our colonial mascot in response we created a counter petition and began emailing the committee with our input in hopes that they would change their mind we spent a year and a half fighting to get it back many community members requested an appeal process we hope you cared about the people's opinion enough to put your own personal agendas aside and allow a new process and make a wrong right but

118you didn't instead you appointed a mascot screening subcommittee to create a process to rename the mascot at this time i voted to reinstate the colonial as i felt there were no better name for our mascot but my vote was cast out with all the other colonial votes the results of the survey proved that the people wanted colonial more than any other option many people in the town didn't want the change and respected our town heritage now we the ones who didn't want the change may have the burden of a costly project to change our logo on uniforms gym floors fields and scoreboards you said that it would cost 250 000 for uniforms alone and you would replace as needed you also told us that all the costs associated with the mascot change would be covered

119by the school district budget but did you take time to learn all the costs before the decision to retire the colonial was made we don't want to pay taxes for this as this is not an improvement for our school we also don't want the school to make cuts to be able to pay for this seems like a waste of money for a change that has created division and outrage in the community in school when we came to you for support after seeing our kids being bullied and silenced certain committee and staff members mocked the colonial and its supporters through private text messages not realizing we'd have access to these public records later then you wasted money on legal fees to try to cover them up so as money seems to be an issue here it

120brings me to these questions which i know aren't going to be answered but i'm still going to ask them how much will the mascot change cost and is the plan to have costs associated with this change to be covered by the school district and how will this happen since we are already 2 million over budget thank you christine marlowe boxborough massachusetts recently you stated that you were over budget by two million dollars but not to worry you will try and get it through your petty fund now you are planning on replacing a mascot that most of the community and students don't want replaced oh i know i've heard your statement but that statement has no value the process was flawed and this start and prop and probably illegal to add to this both tessa and

121peter had each received emails during this whole process asking them what the cost would be and is it fiscally irresponsible to be spending time and money on removing a mascot that could cost one million dollars or more all this during a global pandemic where people were dying losing their jobs homes and businesses both said the costs would be net neutral only 250 000 for new uniforms which would be replaced as they wore out except now you are looking at a graphic designer to design the new logo why aren't our students good enough to do this job why are you once again spending money you don't have furthermore if donations have been made for the colonials this school must may have to return donations if you discontinue the use of the colonial mascot we have three

122to five scoreboards that were donated we have a brand new gym floor with a brand new colonial logo on it that cost around 120 000 and the list goes on talk about privilege you spend our hard-earned tax dollars like there's no tomorrow while the residents of this community are trying to manage their own budgets because of inflation and rising costs however that's not the most upsetting position you are laying off around 15 teachers assistance when we need them now more than ever our students are struggling because of two years of a remote learning minute remaining you as the school committee and administration have a dis fiduciary responsibility to us the taxpayers you are supposed to spend our tax dollars wisely not throw it away on a mascot that most of the community did not want

123i say not one penny of our tax dollars should go to this new mascot or any fees associated with this project how do you justify these decisions to this community where are you getting the funds to fund this new mascot and why are you laying off 15 teachers assistance when they are needed now more than ever can you answer any of those questions anybody you stood here and talked about the teachers and how stressed out they are you're taking away the assistance and you won't and you're going to spend money on a mascot that most of the community didn't want and the revolution compared to the colonial and because our time is up class doesn't teach the right information please hold your applause excuse me please hold your applause no applause thank you if the

124community cannot maintain a respectful decorum in the meeting we'll cease the public participation uh thank you fred smith nylan underway parent of three ab students i'd like to thank the school committee for appropriately responding to the wishes of the students and the who overwhelmingly and rightfully supported the retirement of the old mascot the process was well run we were quiet when you talk oh sorry sorry i didn't mean to okay um sorry the process was well run and i feel like the final decision was made with appropriate input of the community students parents and staff what was said earlier that the revolut the motivation for the new name speaks volume to the spirit and the hope of our student body well done it's clear that a small but vocal right-wing contingent of acton residents are

125upset about the changes on more than one occasion i've wondered how could a bunch of adults with no kids in the schools be so upset about changing a high school mascot but of course like the protest by the alt-right in charlottesville were not about the statues the complaints by the right-wing members of the acting community have not been about a mascot thank you for standing up against white supremacy and racism in our community good evening my name is bill ducette i have a child currently attending an ab school and i'd like to speak in favor of changing the name of the mascot prior to moving to acton six years ago my family lived in another school district in massachusetts with a mascot with a problematic name although that town had won many sports championships over

126decades with the old mascot name the issue was resolved and a new name was chosen within a year this was about 10 years ago and i hope acton can follow through with this proposed change in a year-long time frame like this other town i've heard the issue of money being raised tonight i just want to point out that there are many things in our school schools there we have a high school pool we have an arts program we have fitness equipment that not all the community members benefit from um so there are things that we have to think outside the box so to speak um i'm sure that there will be many students who will have a greater sense of pride in this town and our school district as a result of the change of

127the mascot and finally on a personal interpersonal level i just want to say one of the many aspects of acton that i find most appealing um is that our residents and many of the people i've met here have families with roots and cultures that are different from mine listening to their voices and people who grew up outside the united states or had family members who did i here understand and respect their interpretation of the title colonial if acton and boxborough really aspired to be a welcoming community we need to focus and need to listen to the voices of all our residents and not simply focus on those who have lived here the longest i urge the school committee to approve the name change and i thank you for your time you guys don't know my

128name but i graduated a b in 2018 and even though you don't know my name i've been called a racist i've been called a bigot and a slew of other demeaning labels and now apparently as an alumni my opinion doesn't matter but i'd like to tell you what i think of you guys since you guys get to tell me what you think of me without even knowing me and i've heard quite a bit about you guys i see a bunch of people sitting up here with a closed mind hiding behind power not listening to the student body and while that sits in i'd like to tell you a story about a big member of this community his name was coach amandalia and if you don't know who that is then that already shows your disconnect

129with the community he's known by everyone the students the teachers as a mentor a teacher a friend and when i was on the freshman soccer team he was our coach and every day we went out there and we talked about is isaac davis and yeah i heard the point about isaac davis but it wasn't about isaac davis that he talked to us about it was about the spirit of standing up against people trying to take away your freedoms and your liberties that's always what the colonials have been about and you know you guys want to change the name and i'm sure i'm not going to convince you otherwise but i'll say this much you cannot call people students who have gone through the school and felt that pride and felt that sense of i'm a

130b i'm a colonial and you cannot tell them that they are racist without knowing them and that they're bigoted without knowing them that's wrong and it's only people who don't listen to the student body who sit in a little echo chamber and laugh amongst each other while not understanding the actual damage that they're doing to the community and to the students thank you hello good evening steve ballard from box borough again i want to thank the committee here the school administration um the committee of the students and everyone who's been involved in persevering all these last few years to get to this point and i'm really happy to hear that that both the subcommittee here for the naming of the new mascot and the student committee were unanimous in this choice and i love this

131choice myself but it's not in my opinion shouldn't matter and nor should these others i my son was also on the freshman soccer team i'm not sure if that was his judge his his coach uh i can't remember now but he he was on track the next several years back in 2009 or 10 uh when he was in the ninth grade and he supports and i've got tons of photos of him in colonial uniforms for track and cross country and freshman soccer and um you know i don't want to speak for him either it's not his decision his decision of those who've made this and i think we should look at this um you know this choice of revolution as not just you know a change of the mascot in reaction to legitimate concerns which

132they are that some have um it is that but it's more i think it's we're lucky this this uh particular choice i believe is an innovative improvement um you know and and refinement of the concept to the extent that was good behind the old mascot and and for that reason also because it's cool i i think this is great and um uh you know and we heard uh you know i think we heard the junior high and senior high principals talk about school improvement plans well this is this this is an improvement plan um that came from some individuals the students even if it's not you know we don't know exactly how many people would favor the colonials thank you it's a great thing so i'm thank you all bye thank you again my name

133is madeline diversity equity and inclusion are inevitable changes happening all over our world continuously pushing for a past mascot that doesn't equally represent all of us in as a town is indignifying and quite frankly an embarrassment some of you called people like me against the past colonial mascot as living in a bubble wow what an irrational ignorant thought no we do not live in a bubble we live in the reality the past mascot doesn't equally represent all of us as a town please stop the hate accept the new mascot as a positive change for all instead how about we start talking and finding solutions to some of the real issues we have affecting our schools and town like bullying um as my daughter who's seven years old and attend gougless she gets bullied um swastikas

134written in elementary school bathrooms drugs and alcohol or how this past monday it was a half day and i had about 25 students who went over to yankee village where i live which i really don't have a problem with but it was what they were doing they went and they built atp beautiful job done now they're building a second one problem is while they were building the second tp they were war whooping that is indignifying it's disrespectful it's humiliating and that is what the town adults need to be teaching the kids positivity not ignorance not hate acceptance acceptance of all of us it's time to reflect on real issues and stop being ignorant and keep talking about something that is not going to change any longer colonials do not represent me because i'm brown yet

135i am half african and i am proudly half european with spanish portuguese indian egyptian you name it it's in my dna however i do myself know what the colonials did to people in this country can we stop with the hate and just move on and start talking about and finding solution for the real issues thank you i'm uh i'm jim carrey 11 gusty road uh where i live the minute men marched by my house about two weeks ago on their way down to uh old north bridge and the night before i went over to the faulkner homestead to listen to the colonials come and spread the alarm but i think this is easy for them to be the revolution spreading the alarm i'm proud of living in acton excited that we have this history but

136also excited that you took you had the courage here to retire the colonial name which is at best uh problematic in today's understanding of colonialism uh and i'm really excited about the ab revolution name i think it's a great name and i got a chance to look at the worksheet and the voting tallies the information that came out it's overwhelmingly supported so thank you hi my name is kim mazzioli and as i told you i've lived in this town my whole life i went to school here um i sent my kids to school here and i have in my whole life never ever ever felt like everybody is so against each other in this town ever and the colonials they represented everybody there wasn't uh somebody that you know somebody feels a certain way or

137does a certain thing well there were people that felt the colonials which should stay the people that you know i graduated he graduated why weren't we considered was it a small group of kids that wanted the group change did everybody ask because i read articles that said you got quite a few votes for the colonials and that the high school kids really didn't much care they were sending you piggly wiggly names this seems to be like a political move and it's causing division you're talking about like equity and inclusion like that's what the school is supposed to do the school is supposed to teach our kids reading writing and arithmetic that's what they're supposed to do and not to to pick on other kids no matter what so now you're like ramping up all of

138this division in some kind of masked way to try to prevent it you know and people and you're making these people racist and these people are you know minorities like we were just a community before and this has caused a lot of problems and instead of talking about it and working it out you're not answering questions and people are feeling you know shunted and shamed and you know you have a right to not like the name you have a right to like the name but you should want the community as a whole to feel like everybody is proud of you know the kids that go to the school that they can help each other out it shouldn't be that we're asking questions and we have concerns and you know we're not getting feedback and nobody

139should be feel like they're that because you want to keep the name you're trying to hurt somebody's feelings or exclude somebody we had all kinds of kids in my school and yes kids were bullied and that should be addressed but you can't you know force what you think or a political agenda down these kids throats at all i need for two three two little girls two little white girls when i was younger and they went to school every day there was a black kid in their neighborhood and they all played and talked and got on the bus and one day i was with them for two years they got off the bus after martin luther they learned about martin luther king in school and they said to me hey kim did you know that so-and-so

140is black time is up thank you before they were taught in school that there was a difference they didn't realize i just want to say thank you very much for to the school committee and superintendent like thank you for helping making our community better thank you for the thoughtful process and consideration you have given the naming of the school mascot thank you for acknowledging all points of view and acknowledging our changing demographics and community and also acknowledging our town's rich history and thank you for your service at table samoa parker street uh i'm the parent of two current av students um i want to echo what the previous speaker said thank the committee i happen to like the name a lot that's not really the point i would like to generally remind people that it

141is not the case that the status quo must necessarily remain in place as long as no one wants to as long as anyone wants to not change it i am pleased that the students were at the center of the process it seems like they had good guidance it seems like there was some back and forth which is also good i think that thanks hi julia day at nag hill road i'm here to speak and support i want to say thank you so much for this process which really centered the students and thank you also for allowing this opportunity for community members to speak i feel like i learned a lot today from being able to listen and participate and i feel like there's a lot of hope for our community even through this process which

142obviously has brought up a lot of feelings for a lot of people you know listening to joanie and her goals for the high school talking about how she wanted to make sure that students were centered i think that this process has really modeled that i also want to say you know i heard earlier one of the speakers talking about do we feel like our town even recognizes our role in the american revolution that's in the name revolution it's really kind of amazing um you know also i heard speakers talking about let's see i might be planking on a couple of things but um i just want to say i really appreciate all of this all of the work that went into this all of everyone's commentary today and i think we're doing a lot of

143really important modeling for our kids on how to go through a difficult process so i should also say i'm a parent of future ab students two-year-old and four-year-old so thanks again um really appreciate your time thank you lovinski jasmine from box bowl and i want to just say thank you to you on the school committee members it's very difficult for people who are just sitting you know behind or not being in your position to criticize you it is a very difficult position and um you know i've seen a lot of division in in the community and you did your best to bring everybody together and i want to challenge you all to listen to both groups continue to listen to them and i've seen you you you've done that before continue to listen to them

144and um those who are against the retire retiring of the mascot it is time for change it's time for change even even if you want it or not change is coming so get ready for it so now we are inviting you to come together let's do the change together don't stay away and try you know to um manipulate something and try to say oh change you don't want that it is i understand it it's difficult because you've been in the school for many years and it is very important to you and but yes the school committee i want to thank you again for this you accepted to listen to those who are quiet in the community those who are silent in the community it is very difficult to listen to silent voices so consider to

145do that and a lot of people are you know loud as well listen to them you will listen to them anyway because they're loud but listen to the minority people thank you okay a couple comments again we are going to be taking community feedback on this recommendation over the next two weeks and we'll be making uh another opportunity for the committee to deliberate and to vote at our may 19th meeting and i also want to encourage members of the community who were here who had questions for us please send those to us via email it's not that we don't want to answer the questions it's just that this is a difficult forum with which to be prepared with those answers so please email them to us superintendent and i will do our best to answer

146as many of them as possible budget yes peter would you mind clarifying a little bit about that sorry what i asked adam was um i heard several people you know express a comment concerned about the budget impact of this and i just wanted to clarify you know we are not carrying money uh that was beyond what we traditionally carry in our operating budget for this um we do know that you know annually the athletic director is looking to replace uniforms because athletic uniforms become worn out with use and so we think that there's a natural cycle that we can follow for this so you know i just want to make that point there are certainly capital changes and improvements that we continue to make and we'll evaluate those over time as we do this but

147um i i just want to make sure that one piece is clarified for everyone are you gonna have to return donations thanks peter okay we're going to move on again questions please send them directly to myself and the superintendent we'll do our best to answer them we're going to move on to the next item on our agenda which is the superintendent evaluation process reminder so in your packet there's a memo that uh details the process for evaluating uh the superintendent um i'll just point out attachment number one in that memo which is our timeline so at this meeting we're giving you the reminder of the process at our next meeting superintendent will give us a report on the status of the current year goals and at that meeting i'll also issue a general public request

148for input the most important date on this timeline is june 2nd june 2nd i'm looking for eye contact from all the committee members so that they understand that june 2nd it's before graduation that is the date by which we need the committee and the public feedback back to the chair so that i have ample time to write my evaluation for those in this room who've sat in this chair before me no one told you that like you'll have to send like 35 emails to get that but i will i will go from gentle reminder to nasty graham very quickly after june 2nd if i'm not getting input so adam just to clarify it's june 2nd thank you ben gold star for the evening june 2nd is the date by which members need to submit their

149completed written evaluations and then we'll have a break june 9th the school committee will provide some input on the goals for the next year and then on june 16th the composite evaluation will be included in the addendum and presented at our meeting to be voted upon we are still considering the fact this is a good point tessa s i thought we didn't have to write one this year this this review is a formative evaluation is not a summative evaluation because we have uh opted to go on to a two-year cycle with the superintendent however this being the first time that we're doing a two-year cycle we felt it would be best to try and keep to standard practices as much as possible it's the most awkward part of his job uh any questions about the

150evaluation all submissions to be in iambic pentameter only for you john let me rephrase that should they be submitted in iambic pantometer i will be contacting you to help me write the entire evaluation uh all right any other questions about the superintendent evaluation can anybody tell me what date i need all of the your materials backed by no awesome so with that i will move on to the next item which is an edco update from peter please this is a brief edco update um which should be a good sign for all of you um i am pleased to report that edco is on track with all of its liabilities to close on schedule um for june 30th of this year um thank you for your support we were able to have some conversations with lexington

151they've agreed to pay all of the costs associated with edco and we're moving forward toward closure i want to also give a big thanks to lincoln sudbury the school committee and administration there has agreed to take on retiree health plan management um for in perpetuity essentially so um that is a major undertaking i want to thank them i also want to thank our human resource department because they have agreed to essentially maintain the edco website for the next 10 years and also all employee records um so you know this was a this was really a team effort but we are you know on schedule and you know where initial estimates were coming in you know possibly at a half a million dollars um you know i think we're gonna you know end up at around

152a hundred thousand so and i i actually anticipate we might get some money back at the end of this so that's you know a reasonably positive outcome in a tragic situation any questions on the edco update for peter none john um i i do think it really was important that you know obviously av did its part but um if you want to send an email to ls on behalf of the committee that we recognize you know their contribution and are very appreciative i think that would be a good thing to do thank you okay next item up uh is discussion of the fair share amendment resolution this is an item that we're going to vote on as a committee so i think what i'm going to suggest is that we take five minutes and wait

153for the entire committee to return back to the room so more i'll let i'll i'll set it up while we wait for the missing members to return uh so the um abea came to us and shared a resolution regarding the fair share amendment for those aren't familiar the fair share amendment is a proposed change to the massachusetts constitution which allows for a four percent surtax on income above one million dollars and could generate significant funds that could be directed towards both public education and public transportation in massachusetts so we have in our packet impending before us a resolution in support of that amendment and like i said i think it's a pretty important item and i would like the committee as a whole to be here when we vote on it and i also know

154that mike is probably here and would wish to speak to the committee possibly on that amendment on on that resolution they're on their way so i've got nothing left to vamp with i'm out of poems okay so we are uh discussing the resolution in support of the fair share amendment which is in our packet and are there any questions or comments on that before i invite mike to come speak mr belisku there we go thank you um i have to say i was kind of excited about the audience and uh i i i i don't know what happened because i'm here to talk about politics so i thought i thought folks would be interested but um noting the time and seeing the visible yawns of the committee which i recognize in my eighth grade students

155i will be um as brief as i can um good evening as adam said my name is mike balulescu i'm an acton resident marion parent and president of the acton-boxborough education association our district's teachers union i'm here right now on behalf of almost 500 educators in our association to ask for your support and your solidarity the massachusetts teachers association of which the abea is a part is currently working across the state to generate support for the fair share amendment which will be on the ballot this november the mta and the abea are part of a grassroots effort to bring together educators parents students activists and elected leaders towards the common cause of funding public education in massachusetts tonight i'm hopeful that you will pass a resolution which you can find on page 13 in your

156packet in support of that effort the fair share amendment has a very simple and important goal amend our state's constitution to allow the legislature to raise income taxes on those in the state that can most afford it in order to generate two billion dollars annually to fund education and transportation needs in the commonwealth though we should all be proud of our current financial commitment to public education in massachusetts there is still more work to be done the fair share amendment will provide badly needed resources to our teachers and administrators across the state at a time when student needs are greater than ever before i know that this committee has felt personally the challenges of appropriately funding public education here in acton and boxborough i know that this committee also understands the dire need for funding

157in other districts across our region and across massachusetts you represent a broad and diverse constituency with broad views and diverse views on fiscal matters nevertheless i hope you will take advantage of this opportunity tonight to join our growing movement and voice support for a fair taxation system in massachusetts that asks those who have been blessed the most to take on a little more responsibility in meeting the needs of our students thank you so much for considering this resolution tonight and i hope your vote will be unanimous and enthusiastic i'm happy to answer any questions the committee may have any questions for mike i'll just express a word of gratitude mike for both waiting patiently for your turn and unlike the secondary school leadership meeting the three-minute timer that was associated with europe i i'm i

158want to say for the record for john peterson's benefit that i am an eagle scout and therefore if nothing else john prepared okay please go ahead jenny i'd like to thank you for your advocacy on this issue i am an enthusiastic supporter personally of this um the commonwealth have been starving our public education at both the k-12 level and at the uh and at the college level for almost two decades now um and it's inexcusable and something needs to be done and i think that this would be an excellent start it's starting to fill the the gap that's been left year after year thank you mike thank you just real quickly and not to split hairs with ginny but the the commonwealth has begun to address public funding of education through the student opportunity act

159which is three years old before that the foundation budget review commission of which i was a member their report is six and a half years old to to mike's point of what this money what this bill would do what this amendment would do you could ask the question what what do we need the money for we need the money for education we've got the soa i just want to remind people because this is something that just with every year that goes by gets buried one of the major issues that the foundation budget review commission report addressed in words but not it didn't get memorialized into action in the soa was the burgeoning cost of in-district special education it cited it as a billion dollars then six and a half years ago it's not been addressed

160in the soa and that is one significant piece we look at our own district our out of district costs have trended downward in the last few years but our in-district cost of special ed has gone up because we're providing we're able to provide more more programs within the district this is what could be addressed with the funds available in this in this bill so i appreciate as a as a commission member many years ago i appreciate the the union getting behind this measure the state seems pretty flushed now so there's going to be a oh what do we need the money for this is what we could use the money for thank you thanks dave are you taking over go ahead david so i'm fully in support of this but i just wanted i've been

161mentioning this to a few people and i just wanted to mention it to the whole committee in addition um the funding formula needs to change for our district to be well-funded you know we're an affluent community but we also have many school children which offsets the affluentness right so the um i i had some months back i had done some uh division um to try to compare us with other communities in the commonwealth i didn't do it for all the communities in the commonwealth but we have a you know in act in roughly um 20 percent of our population is school age in boxborough 15 16 percent of the population is school age that which means you know uh for that each taxpayer has to fund um a large percent of percentage of a student

162right much more than other communities much more those numbers are very high across the commonwealth they were the highest that i found i didn't do again an exhaustive search uh by way of comparison boston is six percent um and so and we're 20-ish and 15-ish so um uh the you know this change for additional monies is is excellent but also the funding formula needs to change and we need to um you know i've talked with our legislators about this but we need to continue to do that thank you go ahead john and then we're moving on well if i had been better prepared i would have sent a note to peter that said that we should have included in the pack at the text of the legislation so i want to read the first sentence

163just so people understand exactly what the amendment says the amendment says to provide the resources for quality public education affordable public colleges and universities and for the repair and maintenance of roads bridges and public transportation all revenues received in accordance with this paragraph shall be expended subject to appropriation only for these purposes so to be clear there's flexibility in the allocation of these funds between those purposes so i'm a fan of both of those purposes but it would be not correct to think that you know this change benefits solely education and that there aren't some politics down the road governing what would happen um the second comment that i would make is um you know i'm a huge fan of a more progressive taxation system and since this has that element to it um i

164do appreciate it but the sad thing to note is that as much as we love all of our services and i can't imagine living in a state that didn't provide services like massachusetts does we are ultimately in competition with other states so people need to be a little bit careful about what the total tax burden looks like compared to everything else as a value i think the commonwealth continues to be an outstanding place to live but not everybody necessarily feels the same way so i'm going to vote enthusiastically in support of this but i just want to remind everybody it's a little bit complicated thank you all right is there a motion that it be resolved that the acton-boxborough regional school committee in partnership with the acton-boxborough education association supports the fair share amendment and

165endorses its packet passage all right so i'll give that to [Music] jenny uh and ben seconded that so all those in favor aye any opposed any abstentions that is unanimous thank you thank you mike thank you and mike since you're standing right there on behalf of all the educators please accept our thanks for all that you and every other teacher and staff member in the district are doing so thank you thank you all right moving on to subcommittee and member reports for his last update on the health insurance trust i'll look to john peterson the yeah health insurance trust met last thursday cook and company presented the cash flow showing a year-to-date loss of 0.96 million dollars with three months remaining in the fiscal year the projected loss for fy22 is about 1.3 million dollars

166that's uh about 0.3 million dollars higher than the projected 1 million dollar loss which is used as the basis of the rate setting process uh the treasurer's report through nine months was consistent with reported cash flow tim harrison reviewed his proposed contract for treasury services for the next three years the trust agreed to sign the contract which allows the trust to opt out after the first year trustees also approved the rfp for stop-loss insurance at levels of 150 175 and 200 000 the next and final meeting of the trust for the year will be june 16th thank you john and at this time i will mention that we are appointing andrew as our new representative to the health insurance trust thank you andrew and john why don't you go ahead and give us the capital

167improvement update as well um on the capital improvement front um we had a meeting a couple weeks ago to go through the capital improvement website you know which continues to be a good source of information about how projects are progressing we talked again about the door and whittier you know 13-year plan so an important thing that's going to go on this next year is we're going to refresh that plan and but we'll do that not as the original plan was constructed with an architect sort of eye but we'll do it in a much more operational way so i think jd felt like we learned a lot through the door in whittier process but we wanted to do something differently we also talked about the fact that the capital sub next year will need to spend

168a significant effort with respect to conan to you know so that we can build towards an soi that's the soi that really we really want in case msba actually does approve it we talked about general you know electrification efforts on campus and different things that are going on and i think um one of the things that jd is going to try and do with the website is again change things a little bit so it's more clear the role that grants are playing um in some of our capital projects which have been particularly important with respect to these energy activities and the last thing that we noted just because it is something that i know will come before the committee again is that we still need a way to pay for the upgrade to the phone

169system on the central campus i'll just add to that because we did receive a concern i forget the name of the commission in massachusetts but they essentially are the organization that oversees the new e-911 regulations um that you know they noted blanchards was out of compliance um you know due to a concern that had been sent to them um we responded that we have a planned repair you know at blanchard to the telephone system um this summer which satisfies you know any concerns however we really need to replace our phone system because it's it's not e 911 compliant and that's going to be really important that we do shift money within the capital plan and make sure that that gets done within the next two to three years we would expedite that but in all

170honesty it's such a project for the tech department to be able to do that it actually has to be managed over several years one of the reasons we're deciding to kick it off right now is that we have the new school coming online and with that we could actually build the infrastructure for the new phone system for the district into the new school and part of that building project budget and then we can build out the rest of the schools around that so but i just want to put it on the radar that it's really critical that that continues to happen and that we we follow a path to get that done within two to three years thank you any questions for john about health insurance trust or capital improvements thanks john budget kira hi

171budget sub met last monday april 25th to prepare uh review and critique the draft town meeting slides robust discussion resulted in significant changes between the first draft and the second with more iterations to come during the week as we finish things up i'd like to extend my thanks to every member of the subcommittee each providing something to the slides i'd like to also give a shout out to peter marie dave andrew shen don bentley and jd head who provided supplemental information with quick turnarounds so that the slides could be accurate and delivered on time the slides are in your packet adam and john will deliver our presentations this year thank you gentlemen in advance budget sub will likely meet one more time before the end of the school year date and time to be determined

172do you want me to do acting leadership okay acting leadership group met last thursday april 28th to discuss the budget projections to be published in the town meeting warrant and to lay the groundwork for fy24 budget process the spreadsheet now shows more realistic projections for the upcoming fiscal year though i would caution that much is still unsettled and likely all of the numbers will change for our work as a committee there are two items of particular note first the spreadsheet does at least reflect the carryover of budget stressors that drove our process for fy23 other factors will likely be determined by the outcome of our upcoming contract negotiations these must and will be addressed during budget subs meetings next year second the impact of minuteman's assessment on the town's budget is more evident in the

173spreadsheet i invite you all to take a look at this year's number for fy23 and the projected assessments for fy 24 and 25. i suspect that this is something we might want to take a look at in subcommittee and as a full committee in the next school year alg will reconvene sometime this summer or early fall thank you kyra any questions about budget sub or alg seeing none i will report on the facilities renaming committee so in addition to both amy and ben serving from the school committee the district has appointed jd head and steve martin to the pool renaming committee we'll work with those individual individuals to set up a first meeting and recruit a community member to get that process started moving on to the consent agenda go ahead um yeah is there

174a plan um i guess to include any swimmers um on this committee just seeing as they had a lot of input or a lot of experience in the pool and whatnot mr benson again we'll we'll gladly answer questions that are emailed to us i will just share that you might remember that mr blumenthal who is serving on that committee actually shared that he was a former swimmer so we will but again questions please send them to us via email happy to take your comments though i was just referring to acton swimmers but again traditionally we've answered questions in meetings um if if i may indulge mr klein or mr chairman briefly please um mr benson i swam for western high school from 1989 to 1993 i served on the duel county league which is the

175same league for which acton-boxborough swims on i feel that i should be able to represent swimmers within the dcl and av schools even though i did swim for weston thank you thank you and i was wondering could i ask mr light a quick follow-up to one of his questions about the budget and whether and it's it's pretty late again please i i'm happy to have the questions answered for you but like i've said numerous times send them to myself and the superintendent and we will answer them okay i just think a lot of people want to know um are any parts of the uh um sorry i'm blanking on it and the reserve funds being used to cover the exorbitant cost of the mascot thank you thank you okay moving on to our consent agenda

176so items on the consent agenda do not usually require discussion and are approved with one vote unless any member would like to hold an item for discussion and a separate vote i'll read each item by name and if any member would like it held please say hold item number one approval of the abrsc meeting minutes of april 7 2022 item 2 recommendation to approve donation from the conan pto in the amount of 2 400 and item three a recommendation to approve a one thousand eight hundred dollar anonymous donation for all-day kindergarten tuition assistance is there a motion to approve the consent agenda i moved seconded that was tessa seconded by ben all in favor aye any opposed and the abstentions that has moved that is unanimous with gratitude final statement of warrants and recommendation to

177approve if everyone's approved the warrant the emotional language is found in dave's memo who would like to read that motion this evening john your last opportunity let me bring us home i move that the school committee vote to approve payroll warrants as follows number p2221 dated 47-2022 in the amount of 2 million 827 thousand 52 and 52 cents number p222 dated 421 2022 in the amount of two million seven hundred and ninety nine thousand eight hundred and eighty nine dollars and forty five cents payroll deduction warrants as follows number 22-021 pr dated four seven twenty twenty two in the amount of 566 one hundred thirty five dollars and twenty one cents number twenty two dash zero two two pr dated four twenty one twenty twenty two in the amount of one million one hundred fifty

178nine thousand six hundred forty dollars and forty three cents vendor warrants as follows number twenty two dash o twenty one dated 414 2022 in the amount of 2 million 161 thousand 216 dollars and 44 cents number 22-021a dated 414 2022 in the amount of 1825.73 number 22 oh 22 dated 428 2022 in the amount of 632 000 dollars and seven cents there's a lot of 22's in there student activity warrant says follow us number 22-021 bl dated 414 2022 in the amount of 750 number 22-022 bl dated 428 2022 in the amount of 3841.13 number 22-022 dated to 428-2022 in the amount of 33 127.71 is there a second second thank you all in favor aye any opposed any extensions none that is unanimous thank you fyi so you will see that our annual town

179meeting slides are in the fyi tonight as a reminder the boxborough annual town meeting begins at 7 pm this monday at the blanchard memorial school in boxborough and the acton annual town meeting begins at 7 pm the following monday the 16th in the high school auditorium i strongly encourage you to attend both meetings as john and i will present our budget to the towns and i know we would both appreciate your support with that peter is there anything else in the fyi you would like to highlight yeah i'd just like to highlight we have the safest home safer community gun buyback program that is in the packet we'd just like to you know if you spread the word on that that was a great program last year we want to continue that this year um

180and it's not in your packet but the out of dark darkness walk uh to prevent for suicide awareness is coming up on may 14th i believe it kicks off at 9 00 a.m or 10 a.m i forget but you know that information's out there so that may be something you want to stop by if you're in town excellent thank you with that i'd like to express my gratitude to the committee for staying with us for this meeting and i'll entertain a motion to adjourn that was moved by kieran seconded by ben all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions that is unanimous thank you all good night