Acton Boxborough Regional School Committee Meeting 10/15/2020

001to be able to join we'll give it a minute right noting the hour and the presence of a quorum these are loud tonight i call the acton-boxborough regional school committee to order this meeting is being conducted both in person and remotely via zoom webinar for our remote participation policy bedja the following members are participating via zoom kira cook amy krishnamurthy yep and wang the following members are in the auditorium with me evelyn abbayo issa adam klein jenny kremer john peterson nora shine and angie so i expect that diane bomb will join us in a little public participation is possible via the zoom link or call in phone number our school committee meetings are also live streamed on actin tv's youtube channel although public participation is not possible with that option the links and phone number

002are found on the posted agenda on the abschools.org calendar this meeting is also being recorded and will be posted on actin tv's website at actintv.org for our remote policy all votes will be done by roll call i will call each member's name and they will state how they vote thank you for joining us all right i wasn't going to say anything at the opening of this meeting because what else could there be to say but the last 24 hours have been a roller coaster and i would be remiss if i didn't know my disappointment in some of the members of our community it bears repeating that those who sit around this table as school committee members are volunteers we are elected officials and we stated our desire to be in this position but we are

003also parents and neighbors our kids go to school with yours we shop in the same grocery stores we borrow from the same libraries the tone that some have taken in their disappointment over the last few days is disgraceful a few weeks ago the students in our district were reminded by the counseling department to be kind in their remarks to others apparently the grown-ups should have gotten the reminder as well i hope that those who are tuning in will truly listen to the remarks which i know many have been preparing all week i'm prepared for this to be a civil discussion about the question that was put before us i recognize that there are many who don't understand the process and policies by which the school committee is governed i'll lay out again the timeline of

004events that has brought us to this evening in early july the school committee was presented with a petition that at the time had over 1300 signatures requesting that we retire the colonial mascot in august i along with other district leaders met with the student group that brought forward the petition as it was closely tied to the anti-racist work we have been doing as a district the group absej asked to give a presentation to the full committee that meeting occurred on september 17th when the students put together a presentation and answered questions from the committee shortly after i sent out a request to all members of the community for feedback this request went to every single junior high and high school student it was sent to the beacon it was sent to alumni groups and sports

005booster clubs we received feedback from many constituencies during the nearly three weeks of public comment there was also a counter petition started which those on the committee are well aware of this petition has not been formally presented to the committee so here we are we've received nearly 700 emails in my time on the committee that far exceeds any other issue we have taken up including the reopening of schools in the midst of a pandemic i for one am incredibly proud of the students and their eagerness to be engaged it's one thing to sign a petition it's quite another to write a coherent thoughtful email to a public body with your perspective and beliefs hundreds of students took the time to send us emails they represented both sides of the issue they were respectful and thoughtful

006whatever conclusion the committee comes to tonight i hope that all the members of our community will remember that words matter be kind and with that it's time for public participation and i will note that this part of public participation is only for items that are not on the agenda so if you are attending the meeting tonight in hopes to participate and comment on the mascot item then that time will come after the committee discusses that's how we handle that process when any item on the agenda is before the committee the committee has the opportunity to discuss amongst themselves and then we open it up to anyone from the public who would like to make a comment or ask a question and that's how it will be handled tonight so is there anybody in the audience

007who wishes to make a comment on something that is not on the agenda right now we have one person tessa can we also remind everybody that we won't be using the chat feature or the q a feature anybody who wishes to make a comment should do so by raising their hand and then we will allow them to speak and just one quick reminder that tessa just said it but um right now this is only for comments not related to the mascot because that is an agenda item later so anyone wishing to make a comment now it's not related to the topic all right we do you have one person yep it's a call-in person and if you'd like to speak you can unmute yourself now and speak and identify yourself do they not have a

008name on that thing if the person who's calling in that has their hand raised would like to speak now on an item that is not on the agenda then you are welcome to speak now but you need to identify yourself nope all right we'll move on okay so we're going to actually uh peter like to give his superintendents update um at the beginning of um the discussion regarding the request to retire the mascot so the very first thing then on our agenda would be the approval of meeting minutes from 10-1 move to approve is there a second second is there any discussion on those minutes nope okay then i will do a roll call vote adam hi john yes evelyn yes nora yes angie yes ginny yes amy yes kira yes yes yes and me

009yes those pass unanimously okay so in your packet there is a cover sheet which just sort of outlines the way the discussion sort of will go tonight um i did include um well so i already said this but i'll say it again the committee was presented with a request to retire the a b mascot last july from a group of students ab sedge acton-boxborough students for equity and justice who felt that it does not represent who we are what we stand for as a community they presented at the school committee meeting on september 17th along with staff members of e-cares who agreed the school committee asked for public feedback before october 14th and agreed to return to the discussion of petition and possibly take action at the school committee meeting tonight the naming district facilities

010policy ff states that any request to name a facility including a program such as the mascot must be brought before the school committee for approval so i just want to remind you what the question is tonight the question is should we retire the mascot we included some possible motions to move to retire the a b colonial mascot with the understanding that programs and new purchases made by the district will no longer bear the name colonials but changes to existing capital items such such as uniforms scoreboards and other items will be undertaken as time and funding permit or to move to keep the a b colonial mascot i am not going to entertain a motion at the beginning of the meeting as i know that some members like to do because i'd like to us to

011have an open discussion without that hanging over i think it can be confusing and even though that may or may not be the right way to do it hold on john um i just wanted to those those are just suggestive motions that if and they they don't uh reign us in to any anything in particular i just wanted them to be on there so that we would understand what the purpose of the meeting was tonight what is your question john i just wanted to clarify because some of the commentary we received you know separately discussed the colonial name and the mascot and i just want to make sure that for the purpose of this discussion the intent of all of this is to retire both the name maybe colonials and the mascot yes so this

012when when i say that it is to retire the mascot we're talking not just about the plushie figure but the idea of colonials as representing our school district thanks sean i know that several people have prepared statements peter wants to make a statement i know that larry dory the principal of the high school is here tonight and he would like to make a statement right um so once um peter goes his i don't know what order you're going to do that in larry's going to go first and then peter will give a superintendent's update and then i will allow members of the committee to make their statements so i think adam is going to bring larry in as a panelist briefly so that we can see him yep larry you're all set you can unview

013turn your video on and share with us your comment how's that we're good we can hear you but can't see you i'm not seeing a video option right now why don't i speak go for it if you get me brought in i don't i don't see myself and that's that's okay you're probably better off um first of all i'd like to thank the school committee and superintendent light for allowing me to express my own views on the av mascot as a member of the high school i've considered myself an ab colonial for the past 27 years i've attended more school events under the banner of an ab colonial than i can possibly recall i take pride in past traditions and i have tremendous respect for the alumni who graduated at cb colonials who live in

014high school in my opinion our mascot should be a symbol that unites and instills pride in every student and staff member at the high school by reason we are here tonight it is evident to me that the colonial mascot no longer unites or inspires pride in all of our students and all of our staff with all due respect to the community and ab alumni the mascot should represent the students and staff that reside in the building today and it should be viewed in the context of the world we live in today finally it should symbolize something that all our students and staff can embrace if we're going to be an inclusive learning community where every individual feels valued then allowing symbolism that represents less than that for any number of students and staff is unacceptable

015thank you larry all right peter you want to go sure you know so first good evening everyone and welcome i decided to forego the traditional superintendent's update since i know this is a pretty focused meeting on the topic of the mascot i think from what we've seen from the feedback we have had quite a few passionate feelings about people who from people who support the mascot and from people who support retiring the mascot i want to add a few thoughts on this myself but not before i give you a couple of disclaimers the first of my disclaimers is that i'm a relative newcomer to acting in boxborough and i hope everyone listening understands that i also acknowledge my status and its limits on my ability to speak to the topic however my second disclaimer is

016that as the leader of the district and our faculty and staff and most importantly for our students i actually also feel compelled to say something about the topic for their sake the final disclaimer is that i am a multi-generational new englander i have family that has been in new england for generations i grew up in a house built in the 1640s my brother is i think the third or fourth generation occupant of another house built in the 1650s or 60s uh these are all pre-revolutionary times and so when i hear the word colonial i very much relate that to my own history because it's the history of me it's the history of my family having been in this region for that many generations um so i think i just need to start by saying that

017i understand my own perspective as part of that history of what we call colonials since we received the petition though um you know i think the work that i've tried to do is to listen to some of the voices who hold different perspectives than me because i actually think that's been one of the more disappointing elements of the process so far i haven't heard a lot of people seeking to understand an alternate position but rather reinforce their own and i think it's so important that we think about how we better understand other people's positions so i've asked questions for myself like what would it mean to be a colonial if i'm from another place or have a different life experience other than my own for example if i was from india what would colonial mean

018to me or what would colonialism mean to me if i was from vietnam what would it mean to be a colonial similarly i might have a different perspective if i was from a place of a dutch or spanish colony or possibly even puerto rico or the philippines which have been american colonies so i think it's really important to think about how the idea of a colonial may be viewed differently i also wondered how the perspectives may change if we were to provide more education about our local history so that students can more deeply understand our version of what it means to be a colonial there's probably some merit to this and no matter how much we educate students about our community's past we can always do more i think many of us with strong ties

019to new england feel deeply about the american push for independence from britain and the sacrifices of those who came before us providing us the opportunities we have today what occurred to me though while thinking about this and listening to the feedback we received is that i along with many members of our community not only have an intellectual connection to the history that we're talking about but we actually have an emotional one as well because this large this history largely represents us and our experiences i may have empathy for those who have an alternate perspective but i won't truly understand their feelings because i have not lived their experience we've seen emotion run high in many of the responses we received arguing both sides of this issue so my focus has been on listening to the

020voices of others who have different experiences than me there's no level of education or re-education that will change the emotions associated with being a colonial for some in our community regardless of which perspective they take because while being a colonial represents me it does not certainly does not appear to be representing us in all similar ways over the past few years since i've been here i've heard our community speak with pride about our diversity this diversity is something that sets us apart from many communities around us i've also heard people talk with pride that a b has been a community that has embraced this change 20 years ago our student body was over 95 percent white and we are now just over 50 percent white what we're hearing from many of our students and faculty

021is that while being a colonial may represent me or even half of this community it does not represent large groups of us in the same way moreover we have heard that for those among us for whom the colonial is not representative it damages their ability to feel truly a part of our community from what i believe i'm hearing our continued use of the colonial as our mascot has created us and them and insiders and outsiders based on who a person is within our community this simply does not feel consistent with our values we hold it isn't done with poor intent but now we have an opportunity to know the impact interestingly despite our colonial history acton and boxborough schools have not always been called the colonials thanks to one of our school committee members for

022their outreach to the act and historical society it appears that the use of the colonial as a mascot began gradually in acting during the late 1950s and was possibly linked to the telephone exchanges to the area at the time so when you called a business enactant it was colonial 1430 for example just the way the telephone system worked the colonial was then gradually adopted by an increasing number of high school athletic teams until it became more widely used the junior high school however was the warriors until the 1990s when a group of students came forward because they felt that being represented as the warriors was no longer socially conscious at the time working with their school administrators they decided to call themselves the colonials to align with the high school while we have a several

023hundred year history tied back to colonial america there were decisions that we can find in our own history when people usually led by our students made the decision to either adopt or change the mascot based on their social principles on a technical note colonial is on many of our uniforms courts scoreboards and other places throughout our schools and the cost of making these changes is not going to be inexpensive to replace the athletic uniforms purchased just over the last few years is estimated to cost between two and three hundred thousand dollars rather than replacing those new uniforms which we simply just can't afford to do right now likely what we would need to do is as uniforms come up for purchase because we purchase uniforms on a rotating basis for all of our teams we

024would simply need to not use the colonial name on those new uniforms but we need to go in with the expectation that this could not fiscally be an instant change that would really damage our educational program rather than replacing the uniforms so it would be a process on a positive note though doing some research into the band uniforms that is actually just a patch and so those could be changed relatively inexpensively that is not the same as changing all of our athletic uniforms however for items such as scoreboards sound systems gym curtains and floors these larger capital expenses will need to be further explored and the cost could be significant our budgets will likely be challenging over the next few years and we will not have many resources available to implement changes quickly from a

025pragmatic standpoint changes made now will likely need to be phased in over time as budgets allow this doesn't mean it's a reason to steer a larger decision on the issue but it's an important acknowledgement of the reality that even if the change is made it will take time possibly even several years to make these changes in a fiscally sustainable manner as we've seen from the many emails over the last two weeks the mascot carries meaning for our students as well as our community unfortunately though what we've heard is that this meeting is not universally held and agreed on because who we are as a community has changed significantly in the last 60 years we have a deep and rich history as a community and this decision will need to continue to recognize that history as

026we move forward however we also have an opportunity to be part of a new chapter in that same history in recognizing not only the past but also recognizing our present and our future of our community as well so thank you for indulging me for a few minutes and i look forward to hearing more from all of you i also want to note that peter did bring updated numbers this evening and i also want to emphasize that when i released these numbers in the memo that i wrote to the committee which by the way was not my stated opinion but really just a summation of all of the correspondence we received because anybody who's watching knows that when you have over 600 emails in your email inbox it's hard to sort through all of them and

027so it was not a tally of votes so to speak more an accounting of how many people were on each side of the issue and it doesn't reflect the comments or the um depth to which some people shared share their feelings about this so peter did pass out some updated numbers that went past actually the time at which we had said public feedback was no longer going to be accepted but as of midnight last night and so that doesn't count any of the people that wrote today and there were many of those as well this is an updated listing of the numbers so the people that are watching at home um the alumni again were nearly split 66 people who wrote in to express their preference wanted to keep the mascot in 62 to retire

028the mascot of the community members 114 wanted to keep and 113 wanted to retire of current students and staff which we did not separate into categories um they all fought into the high school or the junior high and and we left it at that 126 wanted to keep the mascot and 154 wanted to retire there were 23 people who wrote in who had no preference or had other thoughts or asked us to listen to the students or whatever but they didn't express their own preference so that totaled 658 responses it wasn't a vote it wasn't a tally the committee is also aware of two petitions both of which have over 2 000 signatures on them but as i noted to someone else change.org is a national organization allows people to pay and chip in to

029have the petitions promoted and it appears that that was done with at least one of the petitions so i don't really count those as members of our community i mean obviously we don't have 2 500 students on either side so um that would be voting on the petition so um i want to note that we we did receive those petitions and obviously everyone or we received one of them was presented to us formally the other the keep the mascot petition was not presented to us formally so although many here are aware of it it was not presented to us as a committee so with that said um if there are people that would like to make comments i am more than happy to call upon you and then we can have a discussion so who

030wants to go first diane can you just clarify that the we're the school committee is empowered to to vote if we so choose to change the mascot so by the naming policy um we we have the power to decide to either name a mascot or rescind retire the name of a mascot it all falls under that policy thank you yeah diane i think that's actually a great question it's something that i just wanted to clarify because i think it's important so we have a policy it's titled in its policy ff naming of district facilities however the opening line and i think it was john who maybe ortessa who referred to it earlier but the acton-boxborough regional school committee believes naming or renaming a building structure space property program or other district asset so i think

031you know it doesn't clearly specify mascot in the title but when we talk about programs and assets i think it falls into that category and specifically what it says is that if a suggestion or petition to name or dedicate a facility is brought forth to the school committee the school committee will first decide whether the naming or renaming of that facility is necessary and or appropriate so the first step is for the school committee to decide if naming or renaming of something is appropriate if the decision to move forward with the naming is made the school committee will then convene a screening committee pursuant to the procedure and the purpose of the screening committee is then to determine how we're going to move forward with naming or renaming something so the first step according to

032this policy is for the school committee to determine if the change is warranted or if the new if a change in the name is warranted the second step is to form the screening committee which then would help determine what the new name would be that's how i'm reading this policy and because the um kind of first sentence of the policy talks about that idea of programs and assets i think it it covers as close as possible within our manual what we're talking about tonight evelyn so i have a statement i like to read it so um in as much as i understand and respect that the colonial mascot is a source of pride and whole sentimental value for many there's no doubt that the mascot has excavated major issues of race in this community by

033the mere volume of emails and social media posts we've seen what has come to the surface of this discussion is the embarrassing and completely disgusting embodiment of privilege of the white people most people in in the community especially the white male who is afraid to lose their power and i mentioned the white male because when i was reading through the email that was what stood out to me the tension in charge of hostility that this topic has brought upon our community shows the institutional and systemic power some white people are afraid to lose and they disregard their actions may have on non-white residents in this community and it depicts the inequality in acting boxborough and the fact that the white male is by far the beneficiary of this divide the racial discomfort many of you

034who oppose the retirement of the mascot are experiencing is as a result of the deeply internalized sense of superiority and entitlement over people of color and blacks in this community the fact that those of you who oppose think you are deserving and that something as small as changing a mascot presents a change to your racial identity it's concerning it saddens me that the smallest amount of racial stress is incomprehensible to many in this community and the mere thought of retiring a mascot triggers such discomfort and anxiety the fact that so many of you are so fired up by this topic it's evident to me that acting boxborough has a long way to go as a community when it comes to equity diversity and inclusion it saddens me to see the fear this has exhibited in

035this community there's so many ways to remember the history of the united states of america and i'm not an aficionado in that because i'm an immigrant who came to this country in 1999 but i've learned a bit that does not internalize racism or glorify colonialism like my country was colonized and the colonials you can't even think about the impact of that i take the anger and resistance to mean that many of you view a direct correlation of retiring the colonial mascot as taking down the power of white people in our community some of you see yourselves as entitled to and deserving of more than any other people in this community why do i say so let me share a few comments with you from the emails we received someone said we cannot cater to the

036less than 2 000 people in our town of 25. another person said you should have thought about it before moving to acton someone said many people said this was a complete waste of time another person called the kids that presented this radical activist someone said by allowing a minority to change the mascot you'd best be prepared to change it every few years as the community grows and diversify so there's someday that white people will be a minority in this country and it's not gonna probably not be in my lifetime but it's coming irrespective of how we think how we view the colonials if we can't agree that there is a violent and unacceptable part of the history then we have a huge problem in this community as a community if we're truly committed to honoring

037our diversity and making it inclusive we must make a conscious choice to relent our understanding of the history of america as it relates to race not the vision that is learned in school not the version devoid of black voices and experiences in order to truly understand the modern form of racism and the small tabs steps all our white neighbors and colleagues can take to make it inclusive for neighbors of color and friends of color like me you must be open to understanding the point of view of blacks indigenous people of color in this community the incomplete and historical understanding of racism is what has us even talking about this today and the reasons for the comments that i just shared if we cannot change small things like an image on a school uniform that makes

038many in our community feel disempowered and sad how are we supposed to change the larger issues of racism and equity in our community let's stop deceiving ourselves and wasting people's times for those who took the time to support the retirement of the mascot i want to say thank you for those who oppose i have advice for you racism has taken a different form from the jim crow era use the discomfort you're experiencing now to help you understand why you feel s so by this topic and why the issue of racial dynamics make you cringe we as a community we need to stop seeing ourselves from our individual narrow viewpoints and perspectives and see each other each other as humans first if you deny the sentiments some of you have displayed is racist then we cannot

039fix the problem in acting boxborough the issue of race is woven into the fiber of our country and thereby in this community as well so for those of you who have tried to justify all the good works of the colonials let me remind you of something thomas jefferson turned to science to try to justify the natural differences between black and white i think he's a okay guy he read the constitution may not have thought about me but i value that you know the colonials did not fight for people like me no my kids so whilst you enjoy your sprawls from the colonials take some time to think about how that affects others people like me we could be on the right side of history even if it makes us uncomfortable or we could let that

040slide that's okay my dear school committee members if for nothing giving the tension this discussion has brought to the surface it's time to retire the mascot it's not worth it we don't need the divide in this community and i hope we do the right thing tonight and i would like to echo my fearless chair tessa mckinley where's mother let's be kind to each other irrespective of how things end tonight thank you thank you everyone who wants to go after that adam it's a very difficult act to follow but i'll do my best uh i too have prepared some comments in fact this is probably draft 17 of the drafts that i've written in my head um while i understand that this is a challenging and potentially divisive topic i'm so grateful that we have the

041opportunity to have this discussion and deliberate as a committee over the past four weeks i've taken the opportunity to review comments from the community i've spent time reflecting on the rich history of our towns and region i've considered the perspective of others and looked at this the lens of our charge as school committee members most importantly i've struggled with my decision now this is not the first time that this committee has struggled with who we are serving some parts of our roles and responsibilities are clear we set policy we approve budget and we hire and evaluate the superintendent but who do we represent is it the students of our district is it the taxpayers is it the voters whose perspective do i consider when i make this vote at the end of last year the

042district in this committee made a conscious decision to engage in anti-bias and anti-racist professional learning we spent the summer learning on our own about the topic and held a workshop at the school as the school year started to share our experiences and it's through reflecting on this work that i've considered some additional questions how do i take action to be anti-racist knowing that there's no such position as a non-racist through my lens as a cis-white male how can i work to understand those from vastly different backgrounds how can i work to raise the voices of those who've been systematically silenced and how does our work on diversity and inclusion get us to the ultimate goal where everyone feels they belong and it was upon this reflection that i came to my decision and i'm not

043here to tally votes or pick the majority in fact our work should be to our work should be to do the opposite if even one person feels marginalized by this mascot then we must do our work to understand why we must all take action to make sure that our entire community feels as though they belong i encourage this committee to take swift action to retire the mascot and to take thoughtful action to identify ways to engage our diverse community on an inclusive path that leads to everyone feeling as though they belong thank you thanks adam raising your hand yep oh and then you can go john okay amy thanks um yeah following both of these cut guys is um humbling so i did prepare a statement and again it was it's been being been prepared

044multiple times throughout the day um because i will tell you the first time this came before us i was completely ambivalent and thought why is this important why is this something that we should be talking about now and how does this truly impact the is the humongous issues that we face as a community with um the deaths of george floyd briona taylor the the the racist ideals that we have decided that we feel so strongly against um you can tell i'm nervous because this is difficult it's not difficult to the stand is not difficult for me it's um it's something that i feel so passionate about that it's hard for me to um get it out in a cohe in a coherent way after listening to the students give the presentation i was incredibly proud

045and moved by the information they shared including their own personal experiences and then having the privilege to read letters from students and teachers and i will tell you alumni who wrote in sharing their own feelings of being of not being included and their own feelings of their experiences with the mascot and with their fellows their fellow students to many of our students this mascot represents conquer enslavement and the slaughter of indigenous people it's not my experience because i grew up in this country i have ancestors that started out as indentured servants in jamestown i have ancestors that owned slaves i had ancestors that fought on the right side of the revolutionary war and ancestors that fought for the south in the civil war i have despicable history and i have extremely proud history as we

046all do but that's my personal history what our students are experiencing is their own personal history and experiences and i have to honor that listening to their stories about feeling completely unacknowledged dismissed ignored not a part of the community in which they want so much to be a part of really makes me understand that we can't continue with this mascot the e-cares educational committed educators committed to anti-racist and i'm going to have to look this up because and social justice has they've written us a letter asking us to please retire the mosque mascot the students from acton-boxborough students for equity and justice have asked us to retire the mascot the towns committee for deputy sorry for diversity equity and inclusion has asked us to retire the mascot the two towns committees for race um committees

047of racial justice for black lives has asked us to retire the mascot and our own state senator and state representative tammy govea and jamie eldridge and by the way jamie eldridge is a very proud graduate and played soccer and um basketball for the colonials which is no surprise if you've ever met jamie ask that we retire the mascot so it's clear to me the only choice i have is to vote to retire the mascot thanks amy all right john before i i speak i did want to ask one question i was reflecting on the our policy which is a renaming policy so we don't actually have a formal sort of retirement policy and i was wondering if when we come to the point of emotion the motion should be a renaming motion rather than a

048retiring motion so you can think about that and i'll go on to make my comments i do before i go into my formal remarks i want to say that you know i've said in the past that the school committee is always dangerous when it doesn't have public comment uh to educate us and in this case as people have noted you know we were very fortunate that there were many many thoughtful comments and although people might know me as a math guy i'm not much of a vote counter as i read through the comments i'll i'll be honest about the things that were most impactful to me it was the people who took the time to write to both sides of the question so regardless of where they came down they had empathy for the people

049who had lived with colonialism had suffered with racism and at the same time they understood the rich history of place and at the end of my remarks you know i'm going to come back to this as the theme that there are reasons to be very proud of things that have happened here during the colonial period and at the same time to feel incredible sadness about things that happened during the colonial period and for people who remember my remarks last time coming to grips with that means that we will need to accept that we are human so with that let me begin you know my rent remarks which i have shared with everyone one thoughtful respondent to the school committee said i hope you can hold two ideas in your head at the same time i

050will ask you to hold at least four first in the school committee discussion in which we designated indigenous people's day as a school holiday evelyn asked what can we do to make sure that future school committees don't change the name again i responded that we cannot bind the action of future committees however the likelihood that a future committee would take a different approach is minimized when the school committee takes the time to thoughtfully consider an issue and documents our process and conclusion with respect to the av colonial name and mascot i believe we should take the time to assimilate our history and the perspective our community before we act second several comments noted that there is a pandemic we are in a novel and less effective than usual learning mode and wondered why a name

051had risen to the level of an important item on the school committee agenda i accept the valid validity of this perspective and fully agree that we have never been more challenged and it is also true that a capstone of elementary and secondary education is a sense of personal identity and of our roots in the history of mankind we must do both we must address myriad operational challenges and support our students as they search for individual and collective identity third many many comments spoke to the horrors of colonialism and the urgent need to remove the connotations of colonialism from the a b colonial name and our mascot i accept that human history is stained by the global actions of colonists and their actions in north america we know that some colonists engage in the destruction of

052cultures the taking of land and property slavery and murder here's my perspective the questions we must ask are who are the ab colonials and what did they do is the word colonial or colonialism so powerfully tainted that its attachment to anything is damning to the combination name as we review the history of colonial new england and of acton and boxborough there should be no rush to judgment i do not accept the facile conflation of colonialism and the acton-boxborough colonials from my view this is an example of the fallacy of ambiguous reference first we should consider who the ab colonials have been since the adoption of the colonial team name about 1957. the term av colonials is most closely aligned with the students family faculty and staff who have worn the colonial uniform or cheered for

053the colonials as they competed in sports or the arts or designed graphics for our yearbooks the positive and negative qualities associated with the ab colonial name most strongly relate to the positive and negative qualities of these modern people whether or not we adopt a new name the acton-boxborough colonials of 1957-2019 will remain colonials in our videos in our yearbooks and on our banners and trophies while the rationale for the acton-boxborough regional school district's adoption of the colonial name is not known we can reasonably speculate that the reference was to the qualities and lives of the colonial men women and children of acton and boxborough in the period focused on the 1700s and in particular to the blanchards the conants the hosmers the weatherbees and others who established and grew the communities we should recognize that

054the colonials of this era included free black men as well as slaves these colonials included indentured servants jews and quakers we should consider how they treated each other as well as how they treated the nipmucks we should understand what they built along with what they destroyed we should recognize that the stone walls that still run through our communities reflect the primary occupation of most of these colonials farming and we should reflect on the fact that in 1642 the massachusetts bay colony passed the first law in the new world requiring the children be taught to read and write the strong school system in the commonwealth was born in the colonial era then we can weigh the historical actions of acton and boxborough colonials both good and bad recognizing that they like us are human beings no

055name will separate them or us from human history kwai chang kane said is it good to seek the past master po does it not rob the present master paul replied if a man dwells on the past then he robs the present but if a man ignores the past he may rob the future the seeds of our destiny are nurtured by the roots of our past i believe that our community will benefit from further discussion of our history and our name before the school committee acts the immediate effect of acting this evening will be to create division in our community not to move us forward jenny and then angie thank you i want to start by reading four lines of one of my favorite poems it's by the rude bridge that arched the flood their flag

056to april's breeze unfurled here once the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard around the world that poem by ralph waldo emerson is inscribed on the statue of the minuteman that stands by the old north bridge and it's one of my favorite things um so i like amy was pretty ambivalent about this when it first came to me but i did spend hours and hours reading through almost all of the emails and there are a few things that struck me one there were many many many emails about isaac davis captain brown deacon hunt and it made me wonder who who else was here were there any women because we haven't memorialized any women's names in any of the streets or neighborhoods why are the only acting residents we've memorialized and celebrated the white men

057and is that still acceptable like many of you i was struck by so many of the thoughtful responses on both sides and um there was a lot to speak for for both sides but i was more struck by frankly the absolute hostility of many of the responders who are against retiring the mascot most stunning to me were the responses that actually attacked the students of our community that brought this petition forward and what peter just said in the beginning really sums this up this is about insiders versus outsiders this is about the people who have the privilege of feeling like insiders pretty effortlessly and the people who feel like outsiders and are constantly struggling with the pain that feeling like you don't belong and you're not acceptable brings now both of my parents arrived in

058this country as were refugees as toddlers so i don't share any colonial history whatsoever but you would never know that by looking at my children they can walk around the school looking like they might have had ancestors that were here in the colonial period that's not true for all the children and students in our district so at this moment in history when long ignored and marginalized groups are speaking up and as a result are facing increased hostility and even continued violence that has been ignored and rationalized and minimized for the entirety of our country's history i really can't imagine telling the people who have come to us students educators and alumni to inform us that the colonial name causes them pain and anguish and causes them to feel like they are not valued by our

059community i really cannot imagine at this moment in history telling them that they need to wait or telling them that their pain is not the most important thing and it's not something that we're going to value enough to change the name so that's how i'm voting tonight thank you angie i also spend almost whole day prepare a statement so i kind of want to start by acknowledging the acton-boxborough student for equity and justice brought up these topics it's brought up because many students do not feel comfortable being represented by colonial as he stated in the petition the student sees that we use a white male colonist as mascot a glorified glorifying colonialism at the same time with the same color the mascot colonial mascot there is a very different view on what's seen on the

060same mascot instead of seeing the mascot as a white male colonist many people see it correlates with pride and and are inspired by the courage and the spirit of the 37 actonian who fought for liberty so that we can have to build this beautiful place to live now i don't know how about you but i was very surprised to see the response of getting of getting email at almost one one email per minute rate yesterday from both sides and you know more than two thousand votes on both sides the 2300 plus on the returning 2100 on the changing at change.org petitions to me it shows that our community is divided at this point we're making a decision now i have a couple questions that i would like you to like to invite you to think

061about before you make the decision by the end of this what are we trying to build with all these efforts will a simple retain or not result help us to build a better community can we achieve our diversity and inclusiveness goals if we just focus on move to retire or keep vote without further conversation or our understanding how much will our students learn from the process what values do we want our students to learn or characters we want our student to build i feel by pushing the vote tonight without a broader and deeper understanding of these issues in the community and engaging conversation from both perspectives we are not setting a good example of how we can learn from each other and work together as a community i do not think we should vote with

062the current suggestive motions tonight by not voting as it is not in is it is is not equivalent to the case being closed it means we want to establish a community with engaged conversation listen to different perspectives it means that we want to take the time to learn more about the issues so that when when we come back to revisit we have a better understanding of each other for example school can have activities activities in social studies in or in extracurricular activities like speech and debate that can foster deeper conversation have students discuss and engage in finding ap identity and spirit together at the same time foreign study group in a community consisting both to retire and retain points of view and then the study group would work to summarize the the arguments from both

063sides for both the av colonial names and the ab colonial mascot and the report to the school committee was summarized to summarize the arguments for each point of view with with no recommendation and the argument will be submitted to the committee by um by next year early early next year something like february the this kind of with a pause it provides an opportunity to unite a different perspective and we'll be able to move the topic that lines up with our district goals in inclusiveness and diversity i just want to well as you know that i'm also the first generation of immigrants racism is really not foreign to me just three weeks ago and my daughter was on the street and a car passed by and the window would pull down and what she was being

064yelled at chinese virus so it's clear that we have a long way to go but because of that should we retire the mascot that's the question and then the answer may be yes or no by the end but i urge that we take time to work this out in a united way thank you norah i also have something prepared to say um my hope is that the question of the high school mascot will be the beginning of the learning process for members of our community our school community and our wider community just as it has been a real learning process for me my first reaction when i heard students bringing forth the question of changing the colonial name was what could possibly be wrong with the word colonial i thought about my love of little

065house on the prairie by first day my pride in the revolutionary war and our heroes who come from the specific area that i live in now it's not my own family's history my mother's spanish my father norwegian my husband's german i don't have long-standing ties to new england i moved here from texas but i've come to love it here and i've come to embrace the colonial history that is here then i began to see emails flooding in with anxiety and anger at the thought of changing the school mascot i wondered why is this so important to people and then i realized that this has to do with our country's current reckoning with our own past and current racism the idea of the mascot is something that is taken on broader importance because it's a symbol

066it's a symbol of change and that could be scary for those who stand on the side of power i found myself staying up late at night when i should have been doing other things reading long historical accounts of acton and boxborough's specific history one interesting thing i learned is that school building projects in the 1800s were just as complicated as our most recent ones kind of fascinating reading for those of you who get into reading historical documents i learned that acton high school was one of the first high schools to open up high level math courses for girls that was a source of pride i also learned that yes here in acton and boxborough there was enslavement imprisonment and genocide of the native americans who at first befriended and helped the colonials who came here

067i've been learning about the multiple viewpoints those who saw the people living here first were not seen as fully human and i hope that that is something that is very different today it's been 350 years since the first colonists came to settle in this area in the 1660s it's been 245 years since colonials fought in the revolutionary war it's been 70 years since av regional high school began to call themselves the ab colonials the 1950s was a very different time culturally with much less awareness on the part of young people at that time then there is awareness for our students today there's a broader understanding of the rights of women than there was in the 1950s and a much broader understanding of the importance of including all persons in what we consider human and what

068we consider valuable in all of the 350 years since the colonials first came there's been a lot of history i believe that as a community we should continue to celebrate aspects of our local history that are true stories of pride i love pfeiffer's day and patriots day in our revolutionary monuments i disagree with vilifying our heroes entirely though i do believe that we must look fully at the history including that which we do not want to repeat we're connected to where we live we're connected to this land and we must realize that our history connected to this place began well before the colonials arrived and includes non-whites the people who lived here prior to the arrival of the colonials have an important history and a different experience of colonials that i hope will be better

069understood by our students and our community as for the question of the school mascot i believe the intent of a school mascot is to bring together inspire and insult and celebrate our school community should not be a source of pain embarrassment or damage to any community member i was very moved by the letters that came from both teachers and students talking about the real pain that they experienced the idea of colonials being the school mascot i hope that that will be reason enough for members of our community as we look to embrace each other and be a true school community with equity and as as peter said when he first joined our school community where all students feel loved and how important that is we can do better than the colonial mascot we have to

070move to change the mascot and i believe we need to move immediately i hope our community will now as they move to explore the possibilities of a new school mascot work together to begin to explore what would be a mascot that could represent all of the different sources of pride that we have here in our community diane do you want to go i'll go unless um yevin or kira want to go ahead okay like my colleagues on the school committee i've been struggling with this for weeks very many late nights reading as many of the emails i could get to it's up to like one o'clock in the morning trying to read everyone's emails because i want everyone to feel heard in this community i was very troubled by what i what i read and

071i i have written some comments to kind of try to encapsulate how i feel about this issue of the colonial mascot symbols they are easy targets take them down and you don't have better housing you don't have better education you don't have better health care i share concerns voiced by many in our community that this is taking up a lot of oxygen and i thought to myself well if my colleagues on school committee want to change the trajectory of the lives of minority students then we should be pairing the diversity equity and inclusion in initiatives that are currently in our long-range strategic plan with stronger advocacy to eliminate the educational practices and policies that hold minority students back like like the discipline policies and practices that prioritize suspension and expulsion over restorative justice models like

072fighting for access to ap courses for all like revisioning how we teach foundational literacy skills because 85 percent of juvenile offenders are struggling readers and three and three out of five people who are in us prisons can't read and as we all know minorities are disproportionately represented in these populations so that was really my first kind of phase of thinking about this and then we received 700 letters and to be honest very few of them struck me as particularly inclusive symbols have power they hold historical memory the petitioners and their supporters see in that symbol intergenerational pain land theft genocide intolerance whiteness in its most pejorative sense and the lie of a sanitized history others see acton's honorable courageous principle-driven social visionaries battling tyranny and dying to secure for future generations the ideals of self-determination

073and individual liberty that were eventually encoded in our founding documents and that is really important to me because i don't see and i'm not sure no one spoke to this in the letters i don't see our founding documents as static and fixed and unchangeable they are our nation's policy and as we well know policy is updated with the times so i don't really see the disenfranchisement in that because because of what's possible what symbols make possible i think the mascot should honor the history in a way that is not controversial but i don't know i don't really see that happening and the petitioners offered nothing to us on this point which is unfortunate when the mascot is dismantled and replaced with a dolphin or a tiger or nothing i fear that the with what the

074petitioners will have won is a new symbol that of perhaps an unbridgeable crevasse filled with hate and division for white against brown and brown against white for cancelling each other's single story i don't have the answer to this conundrum i think it is imperative to call out injustice when you see it and i commend the petitioners for doing so but to vote to vote tonight to resolve this with a vote to me it is even to further entrench a culture of deafness and indifference on both sides this conversation offers a unique opportunity for our communities to grapple with each other's single story if our minds are open enough to do so so i would like to see abs edge and ecares come back to us with some choices for a better and more inclusive mascot

075we as school committee members have an opportunity here to shape the narrative and understanding of our students identities as members of the community black and brown and white a vote either way tonight in my view would squander this opportunity to engage students and this community in a conversation and a process that kind of can erode the racism here in acton and boxborough and offer the promise of a better future which embraces the complexity of our past and envisions a more empathic and equitable future all right so yevan and kira you have yet to um to weigh in yep and did you have thoughts that you wanted to share with the committee tonight yeah so uh first of all i like the idea just olivia the student leader her idea is far better actually i like

076that so sagan is a uh i'm not a big fan of uh colonia uh because i'm a immigrant but on the other hand oh can you hear me yes yes okay so on the on the other hand i would say i would like to actually see uh see the petitioner to be more constructive uh say i i don't like the idea say let's demolish everything then uh hope to find a better one to unite our community uh so basically what i'm trying to say is i would like to actually see more discussion and collect more information it's uh takes that we need time to deliberately deliberate basically because see first up because seems it seems looks like to me mascot has a has a is a very powerful has a lot of meaning so it's

077a swift uh motion on this probably will create more uh conflicts i was that's my concern thank you yevan kira thank you i also have a statement on april 19 1775 acton resident captain isaac davis alongside abner hosmer and so many other neighbors including at least one black man records show marched into the dawn to answer the call of a nation that had only just begun to dream of its own future they stepped away from their homes and their families to push back bodily a government that no longer represented their values didn't know or care who they were what they believed in what they hoped for or what they lived their daily lives for in the cold and in the dark in the face of bullet volley unto death they sought what they what we

078now enjoy generate and uphold 245 years later the opportunity to articulate our own future the expectation that we live under institutions that see us know us care about us and protect us and that we and our neighbors abide by the mutual understanding of our shared values and humanity the same spirit of restlessness and desire for recognition equality evolution and growth whisper to the young inheritors who walk these ancient streets and tread these ancient fields we taught them all the right things that they should speak up in the face of simple wrongs but they should be brave in the face of significant opposition and they should give it all they've got until the end win or lose thirty days ago a group of students came to us with a simple request to provide them the opportunity

079to choose for themselves what best represents them as a student body they asked us to shed a symbol that no longer represents their collective values fails to celebrate them as a tapestry of diverse individuals and declines to recognize the humanity we share with the nitmuc nation who were here long before our town's forebears furthermore the colonial mascot fails to recognize the shared humanity of the many many different groups of people who came to live here after the events of the revolution we should all be reminded that many of the groups that have come to settle in this town share their own histories of facing down tyranny and empire a mascot is a symbol to rally under a touchstone a representation of what we value and who we are by anchoring ourselves in one time with

080one romanticized caricature we have denied ourselves the opportunity to represent ourselves to the world as the dynamic community we actually are these students should be given the same opportunity our venerated forbearers were given to articulate for themselves who they are and how they want to be represented we should honor their request and then we should honor their choice the choice before us is actually that simple will we honor the spirit of restlessness and desire for recognition in our students or will we stand in their way it's obvious that everyone has spent a lot of time i think this is probably the most prepared everyone has ever been for a school committee so bravo um [Music] i just um i i didn't share my thoughts in particular although i know some people think that i did

081um i echo what a lot of my committee members have shared and i don't actually think that there should be any more discussion about this at all i think that people have shared their ideas and their perspectives in abundance more than i ever wanted to know from some people in fact because it will make me make it hard to look at them if i pass them in the grocery store because such terrible things were shared as i said in my opening statement i hope that everyone tonight can be kind i view this through the um the lens for from which you know the school committee has taken a lot of time to do anti-bias training i am so grateful that we've been able to participate in the seed training that the district has offered to

082educators and requires of educators at this point and what i said in my memo i still still holds true the intent of the mascot and its representation as a colonial is is valuable the intent is that we are honoring those who came before us for courageous things that they did the impact on some of our student body and our staff is that that's not how they feel about it and so i feel really strongly that there's no amount of discussion that's going to change that i think that it does not fall on the shoulders of those who are disenfranchised to educate those who are disenfranchising them i feel really strongly that as a white privileged ally it's not my place to sit here and say can you explain it more can you help me understand

083can you help me see your perspective because i've been listening and their perspective is abundantly clear and that includes many students of white privilege that signed on and and sent us really impassioned emails about supporting their classmates and teachers who feel that this doesn't represent them so for me i don't really think that any amount of discussion is going to further this cause i understand that it's incredibly divisive but i feel like if we're going to move forward as a committee that um making a change and then educating after that is the way to go i don't think that i think that i've listened carefully to i've asked a lot of students who have crossed my path what their what their views on this were and you know people had enough time to weigh in

084i don't buy this that oh the student athletes didn't know this email was sent to every single student in the high school in the junior high that has an av school's address many students chose to write to us and share their thoughts and perspectives many did not um so i'm going to open the discussion with that i think that you know what i've heard tonight is in passion please to change it immediately i don't think i've heard anyone that says necessarily that we shouldn't change it but i've heard that there are people excuse me who would like to wait and have more discussion and so i open up the discussion with that because i think that's something that we should discuss as a committee and then i know that there are members of the audience

085who who would like to weigh in on this but since we've all just really made statements and not actually had a discussion i don't think we're really done with that part of the committee meeting yet so would anyone like john thank you um i brought kendy's book tonight because one of the things that's striking about the book is that candy as a young boy was different than candy as an adolescent and as a college student and as the man he is today and his understandings of things and appreciation of things evolved it is in fact the responsibility of the school district to educate our children and to make them all aware that what they believe in seventh grade may be different than what they believe in college and you know 50 years later when they

086reach my age they might still have some different ideas there is only one thing in all of this discussion that is critically important to me and that that is we learn the key lesson of kendi's book and that is that we cannot apply labels to groups of people and have a deep and thoughtful discussion from what ensues if i can't see each of my fellow school committee members as individuals different some of them are women some of them are men but they're different people they have different experiences we can call ourselves school committee but if we say the school committee is x we've really failed to understand what the nature of individuals is and if you read the middle section of kendi's books this is exactly the point that he has made that all these

087statements of the form that there is a group of people that isn't good at math and doesn't understand math statements of the form that there's a group of people that's lazy they just that group doesn't work hard or there's a group of people that's genocidal you know failed to appreciate that that wasn't true of all the people that you just threw into that bucket and everyone desperately desperately needs to understand that we need to walk away from that language because that language is the core of what is racism evelyn i saw your hand up and then amy i know your hand is up on the on yeah so i guess you know i the way that i approach this whole issue i remember when i was sitting here having a seat training and the issue

088of the mascot came up and diana said oh i don't even want it to come out because i you know i said listen i don't really know anything about this i'm open to learning when upset came to present i was still i still did not have an opinion about how this was gonna go i was open to being educated about the history of colonials in this town and what that meant i was open to looking at constructive criticisms about this but what i have seen in the last three weeks is so divisive and yes i agree john the danger of the individual story but the problem is acting boxborough is changing the dynamics is changing the demographic is changing what i see as a person of color in this community is that many people do

089are not even open to understanding our struggles what what makes us feel sad how we can be included that is the core issue and to be honest setting up a diversity and equity committee either in boxborough or in octane doesn't really help and it's like checking off the box as a person of color and i speak from most people most people of color in this community we want these are the small steps that people like you that call yourself allies people that i consider my friends will say we're gonna do that will make these people feel included and to tessa's point there are people in this community that i actually considered my friends people that i cared about people that i thought cared about me and when i read some of the comments that they

090wrote i was appalled it was disgusting it was disgraceful i don't even want to look at people's faces that's how i feel and honestly i don't want to continue this conversation any further it's not going to do anybody any good we know our people of color and i know there's a lot but care and i at least have the privilege to see these things we're not sharing with our community of course but if they had the opportunity to see some of the things that were written and i know some of it was on social media but some of the emails that i was reading and people that my kids played hockey with kids before that my kids rode with before that my kids play field hockey with people that my kids go to sleep over

091sweat if kids that come to my house that i know their parents write it they were not constructive if somebody told me listen the colonial the sentimental value this is the good this is the bad but there's a reason let's just keep i i'm not stupid i would have understood but the language people were using was so hateful sometimes and for those are the reasons that i think that we should not even have this conversation any further irrespective of how things end up today whether we vote to retire the mascot or we vote to keep it end of story this is too divisive to go on it's not worth the pain that we're going through as a community of color and indigenous background blacks it's not worth it we can keep the colonials it makes

092people happy let's keep it let's move along it's not worth the pain amy did you have your hand raised yeah thanks it's crushing to hear you talk evelyn um i just want to say that i am absolutely against delaying this vote and i am i'm i'm really saddened that committee members would even consider doing this we have had more feedback than any issue that i can remember in my seven years on the community and honest to god i have been on this committee and been through a a lot a lot of very controversial very very important issues we were elected to represent the towns and the schools and it would be a terrible cop-out and i will say an act of cowardice to delay this vote and give it to some arbitrary committee that we

093can so that they can study it for the next year and come back and give us recommendations or or whatever they're going to give us so that we can feel better about having to make a very hard decision i'm absolutely against delaying this vote ginny thank you i want to thank you evelyn for communicating um how a lot of this made you feel um i you know i was i was troubled by a lot of it like like like people said and i i agree i think we have never gotten this much feedback we've pretty much heard it all and then some and um you know to the people who say that we shouldn't vote because it's too decisive or we're dividing our community that's not true the community is divided they we asked them

094what they thought and they responded that they are very divided so that's not nothing we did and it's certainly nothing that we should be blaming the petitioning students for i think as kira said very eloquently they're doing what they have been so well taught by our school district so i agree i think we need to vote and we need to move on and to those people who are vehemently opposed to retiring the colonial mascot i would only ask that you just reflect a little bit when you throw around words like cancel culture on the fact that there are people in our community and in our country who have felt cancelled and who have been treated as canceled and unworthy for a very very very long time and as evelyn said um i don't i'm sorry

095i don't want to paraphrase you but you know now you know if you're experiencing a little discomfort because you feel like something that you have an attachment to is being canceled think about what marginalized groups have have felt and dealt with on a daily basis for a very very very long time and i hope that you can understand this decision in that light just you know open up your heart and your thoughts a little bit to consider you know where you're coming from and where other people are coming from and i think that that is the way that we can come together and heal as a community is to listen to each other and to instead of saying stop the craziness stop the madness understand that people are expressing pain and discomfort and and they're

096your neighbors and your children's friends so you should listen to them um and and consider their feelings too thank you diane i just since since i made that the comment about refraining from voting i think i just want to clarify something i do not need any more information i have 700 letters as do all of us do and and i did not say that we should not bring this to a vote because i need more information i am saying that this is all very well and fine the well-intentioned and and i i agree the mascot is not working if we vote think of this from the student perspective you read the letters someone wins and someone loses and that is scares me right now because i don't want there's no resolution from absence there is

097no like here are three mascots let's let the students vote maybe we should be talking about the renaming piece it's not me that needs more time it's the students it's the community that needs more time and our resolution of this matter by vote is going to give one side or another a victory and an entrench division in our community even more than it has by bringing this up in the first place i really do believe that it's worth it's worth thinking about for just a couple of minutes and discussing what a renaming process would look like because when you have to be careful when you dismantle something and have nothing to replace it with that's not always a good thing if you look at what happened after the rwandan genocide i remember seeing news news

098coverage of that when i was in my 20s something like a million tootsies and tootsie supporters in rwanda were killed were horribly massacred in a hundred days what that country has done since then to rebuild a sense of national identity is is is a model that we should be looking at i i just i it's it's not enough to just say get it out i'm worried about the renaming and what happens next so diane i just have to answer that because the students were told when we met in july this was a process and what the fear was at that time and if if larry's still here he can he can speak to this better than i because he was part of that conversation as well which is that we didn't the students and and

099larry and others did not want this to be about what the mascot should be it was that this mascot is offensive and this mascot is impacting members of our community and so it's not that that wasn't thought about it was actually thought about quite a bit and was made entirely it was an entirely intentional decision to conduct the process in this way because no one wanted this to be about whether or not we should have a colonial or a dolphin it was about the colonial is offensive and we would like you to remove it and then we would like to have a process in which the students work through what they would like that mascot to be and i've seen lots of really helpful suggestions there have been lots of people that have said things

100like we would like this to still you know embody the sense of our colonial history but in a non-offensive way there have been other people who have said there are you know animals there have been other people who said we shouldn't have a mascot at all but the decision was made intentionally to bring it to the committee in this way because what was most important to the students was that this mascot wasn't working for them anymore and so it isn't the committee's process to create a new mascot nor does it fall on the students of absence to create a new mascot i believe and like i said if larry wants to chime in he can what he's not on anymore all right well peter can join me if he feels like he can say something

101about that but the idea was really that the the process would then move to the students he is there larry do you want to speak to that is he there yes a presenter if he wishes to speak larry would you like to speak to the process that would come after the removal of the mascot so i just i don't hear larry but i think you know just to to summarize some of the thinking um when we when larry and i had talked about this you know and i think tessa talked about the idea that you know the first step in the process is to determine whether or not we think the colonial is worthy of reaffirming or retiring right and and moving on from and you know i actually found some solace in looking at

102the policy around that because it that process remained consistent with at least one school commitment school committee's thinking at a certain time when that policy was written that there should be a process for that because i think what i've seen in other communities take place is you know we get there's really two distinct operations you know one is whether or not we want the current name and then the other is what's good for us and when the two get combined you know it it becomes you know not to you know go off testers whether we're the dolphins the ferns or you know the i i don't i don't have another one eagles um whatever they are um you know people in a lot of communities get to the point where they're like you know a

103third say well i like the dolphins the third say i like the ferns i thought they say i like the eagles and they say yeah we you know what let's just stick with what we have because we couldn't agree on a new one and so you end up mixing the intent of the two different processes um and i've seen that happen in a couple of towns um you know and even just from my own experience it it this i think the intent of doing it this way was to make the decision a discreet decision about whether or not the colonials was something we wanted to reaffirm or not first and then move on from that you know in terms of what a process would look like my you know sincere hope is we would turn

104it over to the high school administration and we would have them form a group of students to really think deeply about this for a period of time and allow you know the student body and the student leaders within the high school to determine what that process needed to look like to get feedback from students you know in all honesty communities that go through this and once they make the initial decision that there there is a level of excitement on the other side for students and i know for a lot of our students listening that's not gonna sound true right now um i happen to live in a community that literally just went through this process and i can tell you from going to my son's soccer practices that the kids were talking about well i

105think it should be this i think it should be this um you know well you know the the name of this district you know means wolf at a time so maybe we should be the wolves or something like you know so you know kids start to think creatively at that point but but you're not going to get the creative thinking until you get through that blockade of is this really what we want right now so that that was the intent you know of course there's all sorts of different perspectives on that but that was the thinking at the time adam uh first dianna i i want to thank you for for clarifying your position and sharing that with us um when i when i think about this and and i i share your concern around

106having someone feel that someone is is one and someone has lost but at the same point i don't think that we can effectively engage in the conversation when half of that community is saying to us i don't feel comfortable with this so if that mascot is still in place when we have this conversation about who are we what are we going to be what are we going to look like what's going to represent us we can't do that with the existing mascot looming over us so you know i think it would be important for us as a committee to make sure that we're communicating the fact that this is the first of a multi-step process where we're we're saying the mascot today does not serve the community as a whole we need to find something

107that does but to begin that conversation we have to have everybody feel like they're in a safe place to do that and and to me that's what voting to retire the mascot means is we start the process and we start with not necessarily a blank slate but with equal standing for everybody kyra you have your hand raised yes i do i really like what adam just said i i'm really i'm loving that thought um i i just want to reiterate a point that i made back when this whole original thing started which was it is really really hard to be a minority and listen to the majority wax poetic about the status of our humanity and i i said we should i i said at that time that we should have just done the thing

108and started this process and and we didn't but then what happened what i was worried about happened which was we got these females and and you know the the ones that were supported were supportive and the ones that were pragmatic were pragmatic and the ones that were destructive were destructive and i i want to um uplift the pain that evelyn just articulated because it's so important because those emails were hurtful and they they blew up our phones and they blew up our ipads and they blew up our headspace um and and we got those emails i i don't and i know that there are some parents of teenagers amongst us so i know there was a separate thing going on in our student culture and to extend that um that energy and that harm for

109the purpose of delay and and little more frankly i'm gonna i'm just gonna say that um i i think it's not helpful i think that we were elected to be leaders we make hard decisions this is what we were put here for let us make this decision let us do the right thing let's do the hard right thing that we were asked to do give this to the students and honor their choice i think that's really important i know i personally do not want to be subjected to this anymore because evelyn i just said it and i will say it again it is really hard to look at your neighbors after you get some of these emails i i'm thinking differently about how i live in this town and where i choose to raise my

110children it's a real hard space to be in i don't want to be in this space anymore let's do this thing and be done with it angie yeah um i kind of want to start saying that i hear what you say adam which is there are people who are not comfortable and we should acknowledge the the discomfort i totally agree with that at the same time because this decision is so decide you know it's so divided well with the uh what we are acknowledging the discomfort and i kind of agree with what diane said in the petition language that i feel that 50 of the people is not feeling okay or comfortable with retiring a mascot that have served our community well for over 50 years and kind of being taken down in a very

111disgraceful way and it is in that petition it is described as um you know it's not only equal it it's a colonial that disregards the generation 10 and suffering from the european colonies inflict upon the black and indigenous people of color in their guests to colonize the americas and our colonial is represent the the spirit of courage of the liberty fighting for the liberty so i feel very uncomfortable of i hear what people were saying and like that like you know like i'm not gonna wear a skirt in the 50 you know in the 60s style on the street anymore i hear that but at the same time i want to acknowledge that the colonial that we are have have been in the in the past it is a spirit of fighting for the freedom

112it is a spirit that wants to protect the people so i don't feel comfortable with the language and and retiring in this way and this is why i feel that we need a little more time and without resolving this i feel that's hurting the other side as well have one so you know i think cara took the words out of my mouth i was gonna say that kiera said it now let's do let's do what we needed to do i voted that we send it to the community but as i listen to everyone speak a few comments i want to make and angie as i listen to you speak i wonder if they had said the colonials did something to the asians in this would you have thought differently and i i i say that

113and i don't say that with disrespect but i just have to ask you that because i almost feel like you're oblivious about why people of color are facing that's one thing and i'll let you respond to that because i wonder if there was a word asian in it whether you would think differently because sometimes when you don't walk in somebody's shoes you really cannot tell how tight it is um the next thing that i wanted to say was that this community is very decisive divided it's very divided there's nothing at this point that we can do that's gonna change that every issue of diversity equity and inclusion is divisive it doesn't matter what we do whether it is a colonials whether it's allowing kids of color to get into ap classes on a class whatever

114we do in this community with diversity equity and inclusion is going to be divisive we better buckle up and take this right if we have this in our strategic plan that we're gonna make acting boxborough an inclusive and equitable and diverse community let's buckle up because it ain't gonna be a good ride it's going to be rocky the emails we're getting we're gonna get them so from where i sit this is an opportunity for us to begin the healing process in this community irrespective of where the vote goes today this community needs to heal feelings have been head and people need to heal on both sides the pro and the core the against everybody needs to heal we need to learn to be friends again we need to learn to live with each other we

115need to learn to trust each other we l we need to learn to recognize each other as human beings black white brown asian we need to learn to co-exist together it doesn't matter and this i i almost said i should have backed care up and not made brought this voted against this but i think this is an opening this has allowed us to see what the real sentiments are by the fact that you have a black adopter kid doesn't make you an anti-racist by the fact that you i'm your friend you have a friend of color doesn't make you an anti-racist it's in your subconscious it's sitting there somewhere the way you treat so this is an opportunity for us to rethink things and start to heal as a community start to live together start

116to do things together my daughter and somebody were fighting about this until 1am last night somebody told my daughter i am of polish background i'm a person of color hello when did polish become people of color okay so please i think it's time to take a vote and put this to rest angie i will let you reply i'm just gonna remind everybody like we can still continue to have the discussion i still have to let whoever's in the public speak and and then after that we can have more discussion if we want and then possibly we can have a motion but i just wanted to let you know how that's going to work angie did you want to reply to to evelyn answer the question that um whether that if the people are asian or

117not i don't think that would make a difference for me i see the people as i don't see the color i see the people as a human so so that's why i have i think i made a comment and in the inclusive um training i think i still hold the sam's ground one member made a comment when it's it feels doesn't it doesn't feel right when he goes to the underclass when it only sees the non-white and what i see is all the people sitting in that classroom than with the effort and the dignity and diligent that so they can make it to the class so that's where i see so i agree with what just john said in the book it is the human it is the people that we see of each person

118it is not it's i i kind of feel that if the when we see it the colonial the only thing that we can see is white male i don't know i don't know how to respond to that so i i i do sincere no matter whether asia has no lack of colonial history i'm just this definitely i came from taiwan and it's taken by japanese for over 50 years and there is no lack of history and it's more of how we come back and look at the people and be able to to work with this and so like the other day my daughter's people yelled at her chinese virus and she shrugged her sugar showed her and she said those people and she didn't bog down by those comments because she knows how good she

119is so that's kind of my response back to you i know kyra had her has had her hand up for a while and then nora i'm sorry i just want to add one more thing about this and about this discussion if we are waiting for somehow this to become more palatable we will be waiting forever waiting for palatability is not helpful it's not anti-racist it's not progressive it's not leadership you know us and and people articulating their pain and saying please let's do something different let's please try something new um you know we shouldn't have to sanitize um and over process in our sanitization our pain to make it palatable for the majority or you know for the for those who came before you know there's there is something to be said about this waiting

120um we will wait forever um change can't wait and there's a reason for that and it's not just a slogan it's a real thing this change should not have to wait until we feel better and it feels good uh we shouldn't ask people to continue to not feel good and feel disenfranchised so that way other people can feel good about the right decision that they should have made a long time ago if we are asking this body to make this feel good and not do this right thing because it doesn't feel good then i you know then then we need to have a conversation about all this anti-racism work and all this other jazz that we've been talking about this is what we're here for this is the work let's do this work it doesn't

121get any more real or urgent than this so let's hear that urgency and do this work nora so as a school committee member we have had the chance to hear directly from students and teachers and community members in a way that the rest of the community hasn't been able to have access to read the letters letters that were written to us that that highlighted real pain that's being experienced because of the current mascot which there are teachers students and community members who feel that our current mascot causes them to feel disenfranchised from the high school and the middle school causes them to feel othered causes them to feel actual pain um i want us to set an example of being compassionate and i want us to set an example of taking a stand toward letting

122all of our students and teachers feel loved when they're at the school the thought of any teacher or student being hurt by colonial as a mascot is something that i hope would engender compassion in all of our community members i don't think this is a place where we can move slowly i don't think this is a place where we can say well let's wait till everybody agrees or let's wait till the majority of the community cares i think that as the school committee it's our responsibility to take care of our community and and make the move toward a new mascot you know let the learning begin let the discussion begin toward a new mascot that everybody can come together behind um i don't like the idea of of moving slowly i feel that that ignores

123ignores the impact of the current mascot that we have okay so i think we're going to take a pause on the community and in the committee discussion at the moment so i'm gonna i know that there are a handful of people that have their hands raised as participants if you would like to speak i want everyone that wants to speak to raise your hand because i need to gauge how much time we have for this and how much time i'll give each person to speak i can see peter's thing i have incredible vision okay so it looks like there's 13 14. just so this is on i think um why don't we so just to reiterate you know we're trying to gauge how much time we're able to a lot to people so if you'd

124like to speak we just need you to raise your hand now um so that we can understand how much time and just as a reminder to those who are going to participate in public speak it's not a back and forth conversation with the committee so whatever amount of time we're going to a lot to that you'll have an opportunity to speak and and then we will move on to the next person without comment from the committee unless it's a question that that needs to be um clarified do you want to allot 15 minutes for public speak yeah so that would be one minute a person yep all right so adam's going to be the time keeper and we'll allot a minute to each person that would like to make a statement or ask a question

125i suppose and then peter you can speak to people as you're going to elevate them yep all right so what i'm going to do is i will allow you to speak and i will ask you to unmute yourself and we'd like you to unmute yourself and at the end of one minute uh we'll tell you when it's time and then um you know we will have you go back off and bring in the next speaker and you should also just as we would do if we were in in person you should identify yourself and i believe they have to identify their address right where they live that's how we usually that's how we've done public speaking no they don't have to but you just identify yourself so that those who are watching can know what

126your name is all right so maggie you're up first you can speak if once you're on mute hi i'm maggie day i'm an educator a mother a grandmother and an ab alumni and although i'm no longer a resident of acton it makes me so proud and hopeful to see what strong engaged resourceful and empathetic young adults you are raising i strongly support the ab students for equity and justice's request to change the mascot i think it says a lot about the education and mentorship that they have received at ab that our future leaders have put together such a thoughtful organized well-informed well-supported and data-driven arguments to change the mascot they have taken the time to research the topic conduct surveys and open dialogue this is not the same student body that i attended a b

127with nor is it the same history that i learned at a b i commend these students for speaking up for their future and taking action to change the narrative because as they said narratives have power thank you maggie unfortunately i am so proud of them and okay that was what i wanted to say thank you all right uh david if you unmute yourself you can speak yep can you hear me yes go ahead you have one minute all right thank you very much for doing this you um i'm calling in from shrewsbury right now which ironically is also the colonials um and i'm a 2006 alum i served in the united states navy and i just wanted to share i mean i know you guys have gotten basically a minor degree in history at this

128point but by all that you've read but probably the most impactful thing that ever happened to me was going to a b learning how to critically think stand up for myself and proudly wear the colonial mascot but also the second most important thing that probably happened to me in my life was that i got out of ap and what i mean by that is i was able to go to different parts of the country and speak to different people and to temper my views on these things we're in a tumultuous social cultural and political time that's reinforced by a lot of media that are happening upon our kids these kids um they're going to be in and out of ab in a couple of years and um down here in shrewsbury a similar push happened

129um it did not gain a lot of traction because like the cultural times the winds pick up and then the winds die down and i just think that this is a bit of a stretch because the name colonial can somehow grammatically be linked to colonialism or colonization and i don't think that that's ever the intent of what it was meant to do and i think that this is a bit of an extreme measure and i certainly hope that faith measure doesn't pass and at the very least more time is given to get the others laying you can speak once you unmute hi my name is lying i also go by julie back in june i was with a bunch of friends the person that started the petition to change the mascot i wanted to first

130recognize the fact that i am a chinese-american woman i think a lot of times in this town chinese-american population do not take the stands or even i'm just going to say honestly take the right stance of the issue in terms of um social justice especially when it comes to racial justice and i would like to say that i believe symbolism has power i moved to the country when i was 14 i was educated in the school system not seeing a single asian teacher not having a single black or brown staff member ever being my education i was taught civil rights was civil for um civil wars not about slavery i didn't even not know the war white supremacy until charlottesville happened 2017. this education system even if the word colonial does not directly link to

131the word colonialism this education system directly supports white supremacy and i think it's time for us to change all symbolism that supports that thank you thank you um nia i'm trying to allow you to but it's saying your version of zoom it doesn't allow me to just allow you to speak so i'm going to try and come back to you in a moment olive and song go ahead you can unveil yourselves anastasia are you down the page hello from it i didn't really write a lot from it it's fine just keep going honestly this is like a really hard paper just write down what you can it's a really hard to read like i think your teacher is asking a lot to be honest like what they want i think like i think he wants

132like a lot from you guys it's like just do what you can that's what i'm saying yeah like i think he's not interested in what you took away from the book i think he's trying to just understand like how the book was developed and the background was behind there we go well clearly we're working on a challenging paper um and we are olive and song if you unmute yourselves you can speak hi i'm song issa i just graduated um this year 2020. um so basically i think that the colonial mascot accurately represents the community that acton-boxborough wants to represent um the townies the white star athletes and the white student population overall the real decision we're making here tonight is if we are choosing to continue to ignore the growing presence of black indigenous people

133of color in our community or we're choosing to invite and uplift and include them the excuses being presented it's too small it's too long of a process we shouldn't be wasting our energy or just being said to prevent change from happening and the people who are saying them are not um presenting any other changes that they would want to make in the first place so um this is not a new feeling we have just gotten enough of us to have a voice now it is the choice of the ab community to make a choice on whether to listen but i just want to caution that this will not this will not stop the voice of the black indigenous people of color community at ab we're still going to keep on trying to make a change

134no matter how many times they try and stop us so that's all all right thank you let's see we are to maria veronica right if you unmute yourself you can speak thanks peter this is maria veronica barnes i'm an acton resident and i have two kids that have gone through and are still in the high school when i heard about this petition first my reaction was one of hope not because of the petition itself but because of the voices behind it the high school students are taking an active role in issues that are important to them they have voiced their opinions and they have work to make their aspirations become i agree with the petition i have signed it and for a moment there when i realized that this issue actually ruffles some feathers in

135our town i consider sending a statement to you defending it but then i stop myself this is not for the adults to decide this is for us adults to listen and to respect this is our children's mascot not ours we say we want to raise independent and capable children show them that this is really true this is an opportunity here to show our young people that we can make change i wonder if those colonials that many here want to own or stop and waited to avoid discomfort and disagreement before fighting the british or did they instead decide to take a stand for the values they held the students have chosen maria veronica thank you but the time is up now at a time like today when we talk about the mob the uh jackie you're

136next you can speak when you unmute i'm jackie quinones goddessman and i'm an educator at abrhs a parent and acting resident of 23 years a person of color and a member of ecares regardless of what the colonial was intended to represent what impact does it have in our school community do we really want to continue to glorify the colonial and the injustice that it conjures for so many of us while i acknowledge my spanish heritage as a puerto rican americana it is my indigenous dino and african roots that i most identify with with because my ancestors endured so much suffering and hardship for me to be here today it goes without saying that i cannot relate to our white male mascot however this is not about me this is about our students in whom the

137mascot should evoke school spirit and pride if even one student feels erased by our mascot then it seems to me that by keeping the colonial we would be in our own way perpetuating colonialism and white supremacy the acton-boxborough community is growing and changing in my classes alone at the high school my students collectively speak 22 different languages at home our diversity represents the richness and beauty of who we are as we evolve together let us please retire the colonials mascot and let us adopt one that better aligns with our district mission and values and makes us all feel welcomed and included are we an anti-racist district i hope we can take this step in demonstrating that we can be thank you for listening you ashley you can speak once you're on mute uh hi i'm

138ashley i'm a junior at the high school and there are a lot of things that i would love to cover right now but obviously i'm pretty short on time i'm an absterge leader but i would say that probably the most horrific thing that i have seen recently in any of my recent years has been the anti-petition that surfaced after we proposed the change of the mascot this petition read that the american indian wars were never a genocide further stating that the indigenous people viciously murdered colonists causing relations to take a turn for the worst this anti-petition to keep the colonial mascot is an independent reason why the mascot should be changed at all it's clear that this mascot bolsters students um in believing the one-sided history that completely erases the narrative of all indigenous people

139including myself my family and my ancestors it is so painful meat to me to know that people in my community believe that this is true and still continue to bolster the colonials mascot when so many of us are graphically describing that the pain that it's causing us thank you at the end of it your time is up thank you ashley olivia if you unmute you can speak hi my name is olivia bisson i'm also one of the abscess leaders i'm a senior at a b um this is just a message from [Music] abstage is absences improving the community and allowing people to be heard no matter what we have changed things at a b already and we are very grateful for that absence work does not end here the mascot is just one initiative we

140are excited to share more projects in the future and move further into our call of action regardless of today's outcome we hope that we are able to address each other's feelings and wishes with respect going forward absence encourages everyone to do so change can't come at the expense of a group's feeling and i would also ask if neja who got cut off and had issues could go after me because she has a little bit she wanted to say after that about abs edge i'm i'm going to try and come back to her at the end so thank you okay um we are reverend cynthia you can speak and you feel mute thank you yes i'm reverend cindy landrum from the universalist unitarian church the first prayer church of stone acton um i'm new to this

141community but i'm not new to being a leader in a organization with a long and complex history rooted in colonialism our board of trustees voted to support the students and i'm asking you to do so also tonight i thank you for being leaders in this community and for all the hard work that you've done and i'm sorry for the pain that this process has caused so many of you particularly the people of color on the school committee um we are leaders in this community and it's time to lead and i hope you will vote tonight and change this mascot thank you melissa you can speak next if you want mute hi thank you everyone i'm i'm melissa clayton and i'm here with my husband mike clayton and um you know we have three boys that

142are in the school one is a sophomore and i certainly appreciate all the work that's gone into this we just feel as though this would be better served for the community if it didn't go to vote tonight um this is only representing half of the students um as far as that want to get retired in the mascot and i think taking more time to hear all the other students is worth is worth taking a pause yeah from my point of view it really is about the process i mean this came about in july in the middle of the summer on july and september 17th was was an email going out and i just think when people come back and it's a 50 50 issue and it is so divisive it does seem like more data

143and understanding what the true population of the faculty and students want as a reference point not that 51 should win but i think that it's you should understand what the true population wants and not a small minority on both sides and i would just think that the obvious thing would be send a survey to the entire high school thank you um bill i'm looking for you all right bill if you want mute you can speak thank you um my wife and son and i um relocated here five years ago for a career change and we've wanted to look for a town with diversity of both people and culture and we settled on acton the town we did move from changed their mascot from a problematic character a few years prior was making a move i

144understand there are other towns of mascot and massachusetts have done the same and i was proud of the town that i lived in when they did the right thing i don't know if the community is aware that the current makeup of the ab district has a population of 35 percent non-white students i think that's really important to hold up um and to respond to the calls of why now or let's wait my response is this we're hearing this now because we are now paying more attention to voices that haven't been heard before and why should we not wait because if there are neighbors and friends we are hearing from now of their long-held pain extending their pain any longer is untenable i just want to say that you know i want acton to really change

145the mascot if you know the reasons to keep up with the rest of the changes in our state and our country and also bill your time is i want to protect my family's friends and my son's friends thank you thank you bill all right scott if you unmute you can speak thank you the [Music] it's important to note note that the colonials the name is the spirit we've heard a lot about the history of it but at the time when they were naming them the the patriots were already taken by the name or the conquered carlisle and the minutemen in lexington so the same spirit that we think of in a positive way for the colonials was already taken by another couple of teams and they're left with this awkward version of you know they

146weren't certainly celebrating the colonists in that way but more of the rebellion aspect you all know about and the second part why can't we see all these letters you're telling us about you know there's a lot of been meant been said about those but i can't why why can't we see them as the public is that illegal for you to withhold them i think that i know this isn't supposed to be a question and answer but please consider letting us see all of them thank you and the last person we had and i'm trying to try and come back to nia one more time at the end but it was i'm just looking for marty and marty you should be able to speak if you want mute yes hello i'm marty benson i'm a 2006

147graduate of abrhs and i'm actually here to support the colonel i want to read a section of the letter i submitted though basically this debate has only divided the town at a time when we need to be united thousands of people on both sides have expressed their opinions rather than making abrupt decisions tonight i encourage the school committee to form an exploratory committee to study this issue the committee could be composed of students alumni teachers community members and historians it's critical that it include a diversity of views in order for all sides to have a seat at the table and hopefully result in a community buy after studying the comprehensive state of town the committee may reach a conclusion on whether the mascot could be updated and how it could reflect the diverse community that

148now is acting i encourage committee members to approach this subject with an open mind and to take the time to learn the history of our unique town and its role in the founding of our nation the citizen soldier who some students find offensive sacrificed their lives for the town we all live in inspired others around the world to take up arms against their colonial oppressor let's not sever connections to the past let's add to them as best we come to these decisions together thank you marty thank you okay and i'm for the last one i'm going to try and come back to nia um so nia you if you want mute you should be able to speak now hi i'm neha saravanan i'm a junior and i'm also a leader of absej we wanted to

149take time to today to acknowledge the nipmuc people whose land we live on today we honor this land and call it by its original name the pennant we would also like to acknowledge indigenous people's day which took place this past monday we urge each of you to reflect on your support and celebration of indigenous peoples and culture during this time as well as year round actively work to uplift native voices support native artists and learn more about native culture as much as possible we also wanted to take a moment to say thank you to our teachers peers everyone who has made these conversations possible whether at home or school thank you to everyone who's taken the time to educate themselves to research learn and form opinions thank you to everyone who's offered public opinion through

150emails and thank you to the school committee for hearing us out we are glad we've been able to incite conversation thank you thank you neha and i'm so sorry for mispronouncing your name and please accept my apology all right okay thank you for all the public comment i appreciate that kyra you have your hand raised i do i'd like to make a motion please go right ahead i move to retire the ab colonial mascot with the understanding that programs and new purchases made by the district will no longer bear the name colonials the changes to existing capital items such as such as uniforms scoreboards and other items will be undertaken as time and funding permit second all right would anyone like to continue the discussion there is a motion and a second on the table

151amy do you have your hand raised still to discuss or you just still have your hand raised oh that's not you kira do you have you still have your hand right sorry it's hard to tell no i just wanted to make some i was going to make the same motion that kira did but god bless her she made it first okay i don't see john yeah i just want to clarify one thing because there might be some confusion on on this point um there's no question you know having seen the responses that the colonial doesn't represent our diverse student body i don't think anybody could really say anything other than that the reason you know that um i was interested in moving more slowly in this is the question of where we wind up and

152and the quality with which we get there and who comes along and and who doesn't um it's clear that you know when we vote you know we're going to vote to um to um move kira's motion forward um and that will not relieve us of you know the great desire to move forward as a community i would love to tell everybody that the difficulty in change is behind us and now it would be all sunny side disguise and you know i would at least note in passing that many people in their emails to us did say you know i appreciate your service i appreciate what you're trying to do um you know maybe we'll get a few of those but i'm guessing that there's still going to be a lot of pain and a lot

153of difficulty so i hope everybody as we move forward will embrace that and you know as we started out be kind and and try to deeply understand you know the pain which is a stranger to you angie um as i previously stated and by retiring the uh the av colonial in the current fashion i have trouble so i would like to make a friendly amendment is moving to retire the av colonial by recognizing the old colonial mascot represent courage and the spirit of fighting for liberty second someone remind me what happens after that happens sorry so now you would have discussed a possible discussion on the friendly amendment okay and then you're gonna take i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry could could could you just repeat that i'm confused okay so angie made a friendly

154amendment angie can you make sure you turn on your microphone and say it nice and clearly you want me to say it again okay so i would like to make a friendly amendment move to retire the ab colonial mascot by recognizing the old colonial mascot represent courage and the spirit of fighting for liberty and john seconded it so now we're discussing whether or not to accept that friendly amendment well i think no if it's if it's a friendly amendment the way it can start out is kira can either accept the friendly amendment or reject it if i do or if yeah if kira accepts the friendly amendment then it's just done kira does not accept no what what is that saying kira no no no no wait wait it's a it's a committee decision stop

155what it's a committee decision whether to accept or not is it kira's decision which is fine with me oh sorry amy you couldn't hear beth because she doesn't have a microphone beth was clarifying the process so with a friendly amendment the way it works is the person who originally made the motion can choose to accept it if they do then the person who seconded it can also choose to accept it and then it just moves forward okay so kira sorry your first motion as a as a committee member is really complicated so you have to decide whether or not you accept that friendly amendment okay so i wanted to clarify the this friendly amendment simply says that we are we are still retiring but we are we are choosing to acknowledge that the old colonial

156the spirit of the old mascot was one of bravery et cetera et cetera i just want to make sure that's what we're saying correct correct i accept okay so so does amy need to accept it it doesn't work amy were you the one that seconded it no no no no no no oh i i'll second it yes evelyn no evelyn second did it so it was evelyn evelyn seconded i'm gonna third it okay so i don't know what that means evelyn said she does not accept the friendly amendment okay all right so now we have to go around and vote on it is that what you're saying whether or not or that just the friendly amendment dies if it's not accepted okay yeah so now it's just so now it's just a regular amendment okay

157that it's been made and seconded and so now we have to discuss and vote on it we learn so much i'm gonna be we've got it all tonight i'm gonna be really ready for all those gigantic committee meetings i'll be running yeah okay so norah did you have something to say now we're discussing what is now just an amendment could we say i don't know if this is a friendly amendment to a friendly amendment or what you would call this but would it be comfortable for the committee if if the amendment said the original spirit intended by the colonial mascot was to reflect and then the words that angie said rather than that it did reflect that would that be comfortable i'm guessing that that and please evelyn if i am incorrect correct me but

158what is um not acceptable about that amendment is that it doesn't also acknowledge why we are changing exactly and we measure twice and cut once walking around the peripherals does not cut it for me we're either doing it or we're not and all this friendly amendment to me minimizes exactly what we're trying to do here so i don't accept it adam yeah i'm not in favor of the amendment because what it does is it says we're removing this mascot that some people find hurtful but this mascot is and then we're assigning attributes to it that some of the people don't actually assign those attributes to which is why we're asking to retire the mascot now i i know how confusing this can be and so i'm not going to amend an amendment but should this

159amendment come to a vote and fail i i if if it's so desired by the committee we can add language to the amendment that speaks to what we believe students that act in boxborough represent and that they represent certain traits that we find from the ancestry of our town i think that might be something that's acceptable but i'll let us figure that out once we get through this process of this amendment kiera i i am i'm just so impressed with adam i love what he just said so the reason why i accept it is because i think that this is the grace i think that the grace is important i know what we're trying to do right now and i um i i very deeply respect why evelyn did not accept um and i'm just

160expressing that i i accept it because i do think that the grace that extension of grace is really important we just talked about being kind and um doing this healing etc etc um so so we should still do this hard thing and and the motion that i i said is still the motion i want um but if we can do language uh and i especially like the elegant way that adam just proposed um that extends some grace for this i would appreciate that so now how that all gets in with this i don't understand because this was my first motion so somebody's gonna have to tell me exactly what to do um but i just want to put that on the table okay angie so i don't care clarify so what happened is that kira

161accepted your friendly amendment but evelyn rejected it and so your amendment became no longer friendly it became just an amendment so now what we're doing is discussing what you said and suggested as an amendment rather than something like if kira and evelyn had both accepted it then we would just move forward and vote with that but they didn't so now we're discussing the language that you suggested and whether or not we when we have to take a vote on that adam just says something that's add-on later so so what adam said is that if the motion to add the language you suggested as an amendment fails when we vote as a committee that potentially we could he he could propose another amendment that and that's what he spoke to does that make sense john so

162i think if angie is willing to withdraw her amendment i'm certainly willing to withdraw my second and i saw adam typing furiously away so i think that will put us on track to have a new amendment that we can discuss yeah i'd be happy to hear what adam's gonna say okay so do you would you like to formally withdraw your amendment yes okay and i withdraw the second okay super and beth is gonna need a raise after tonight we're trying to keep track of this now we're back together desserts like beyond anything because the years that she has done amazing things with all of this chaos she she deserves to give her a card okay so so adam are you suggesting a friendly amendment sure i'll i'll start with a friendly amendment um beth i've

163written this up so i'll i'll massage it as we go through this and then send it to you so um i i would like to amend uh kyra's motion um which is uh exactly what was written in our uh packet for this evening and add to it after the word colonial mascot recognizing that there are many attributes of our town history that we associate with the students of acton-boxborough regional school district and then continue on with the motion that states with the understanding that the programs and new purchases and so on and i i as john mentioned i typed that up very quickly wishing that i had recorded what i said the first time but that so my friendly amendment is recognizing that there are many attributes of our town history that we associate with

164the students of acton-boxborough regional school district so kira how do you feel about that sorry i'm gonna i'm i want this grace and i i like that that adam is extending it so i am going to again accept yes i i'll gladly read the entire why don't you read the whole motion as i've amended it so um we move to retire the acton-boxborough colonial mascot recognizing that there are many attributes of our town history that we associate with the students of acton-boxborough regional school district with the understanding that the programs and new purchases made by the district will no longer bear the name colonials but changes to existing capital items such as uniforms scoreboards and other items will be undertaken as time and funding permit okay so kira accepted that friendly amendment evelyn i accept

165okay well that makes can i yes sorry um i i don't want to question beth but i looked up robert's rules and it doesn't say anything about the um amendes accepting it it says you vote on the amendment so okay i don't think it hurts to take a vote just to make sure you cross your eyes and dot your t's you vote on the amendment then you vote on the motion okay that's what she's that's marie is contradicting what you said about a friendly amendment okay just to be safe okay so is everyone okay if we vote on the amendment that that adam suggested that evelyn and kira now just accepted and nora seconded yes okay yeah diane sorry for for the can you just read that one more time sure okay yeah and i

166i welcome support from someone who might have a better history with the english language than me as a native speaker give me just a second because i'm i'm putting it all in um so that i can share it with beth following i might suggest positive attributes or something else in there just i went like positive you know what i mean i'm just gonna throw that in there okay so uh we moved to retire the ab colonial mascot recognizing that there are many positive attributes of our town history that we associate with the students of acton-boxborough regional school district and with the understanding that programs and new purchases made by the district will no longer bear the name colonials but changes to existing capital items such as uniforms scoreboards and other items will be undertaken as

167time and funding permit okay so my understanding is what we're voting on is that amendment okay only in the amendment where this is not the like vote of all votes we're just voting on whether or not to add adam's words into the motion that kira made and evelyn seconded okay all right does everyone understand yes okay adam aye john yes evelyn yes norah aye diane yes angie yes jenny yes amy yes kira yes yevan yes and myself yes okay so now the motion as amended is what we are going to vote on unless there is any further discussion that anybody needs to have gary your hand's not raised on purpose is it yeah ben thank you tesha is this uh i just have a question about is this a simple majority or is it two-third

168or what is the rule so it is the way that all of our votes work and that it is a weighted majority so acton members have two and a half votes boxborough members have one vote thank you okay adam aye john yes evelyn yes nora yes diane yes angie yes ginny yes amy yes kira yes yevan yes and myself yes wow not on earth did i ever expect that we would get a unanimous vote on that so congratulations everyone for listening to each other and having and conducting an incredibly respectful and thoughtful conversation i think that everyone will gain from that okay back to our agenda and yes there are other things on the agenda so i apologize um under subcommittee and member reports um diane you have a a couple of actually you have

169yep sorry you have that now policy would you like to speak and we have some you have an approval of minutes did you want to do that first oh you did it oh okay okay sorry we did it i did it really fast before you arrived i believe i lost my place there for a second okay okay so we are bringing forward to the committee a second read on policy bde subcommittees of the school committee this is something we had discussed before and we took a second look at the clause in number two which reached the committee chair's person and this is the clause that was the focus of attention in the first read subject to the approval of the committee will appoint the subcommittee chairperson and its members that has not been our practice

170for about three years it was brought to my attention that um and and thank you beth for for finding this that that clause exists in another which is near in your packet file bdb school committee officers it's number four um that that subcommittees are subject to committee approval we used to vote on this but that practice ceased to be and it has been fined the process has been fine and that is what the subcommittee discussed however we cannot predict if this will always be fine so we did we we actually recommend to keep this in kind of as a safeguard for future committees where things might not be going as smoothly as they have been happy to take any questions i forgot i was chair adam i'll i'll move to approve uh policy bde second

171is there any discussion or questions all right adam hi john yes evelyn yes nora aye diane yes angie yes jenny yes amy yes kyra yes yevan yes and me yes all right that passes unanimously was that it diane sorry yes okay um kyra did you want to report on the active board of selectmen yes the um separate uh body that is the board of selectmen um chose to uh delay the 2000 um 2000. my lord a 2021 annual town meeting which was scheduled for monday april 5th to a date to be determined but no later than june 30th 2021 um i think that's very pertinent for the budget discussion that we had uh the last session thank you uh all right i'm on here for blf so we met and discussed acton moving their town

172meeting that was really um the that was really the most of what we talked about at blf i don't think that you know um boxborough's town meeting has always been later and so the discussion was had that we would back up our um our budget season to now box bros um proposed town meeting which hasn't moved as of yet i think that that was really the only significant thing right yes okay uh building committee update sure uh you know building project is really starting to progress at this point um if you go by the gate site and you can take a peek in through some of the holes in the the tarps that go around the fencing you will actually see a considerable amount of dirt now has been removed uh all of the unsuitable

173top soils that i believe i spoke about previously have now been um moved off site i think they said it was something like 300 or 320 truckloads of unsuitable soils and you know these are not the small pickup trucks either so lots of unsuitable soil that's been removed they're now moving it around they're actually starting to grade areas of the soil for one of the four eight parts of the building is they build it in sections so that's really exciting we will start to see the foundations start to be dug and rebar start to be formed around where the conch the foundations goes go in i can't talk at this point of the night but that's a really exciting move so we should start seeing steel you know probably somewhere early in the new year

174um or even late this current year um we are still on schedule to have the maximum guaranteed price from the consigli who was our contractor in early december to mid december so everything is on target with regard to that and we just completed our last msba submittal which is our 90 construction documents uh which is very exciting they gave us comments back and those comments have now been submit responded to so things are moving along and we are in the process of going through filed sub-bids now for some of the subcontractors and that is ongoing activity but the building project is progressing on schedule right now and we have all the permits we need at this stage now so the issues with acting board of health regarding the septic have now been resolved that's moving

175forward it's just with the staff for final comments and similarly initial building inspections for some of the foundation work are moving forward nor did you have something it's not on the agenda but i wanted to give a quick report about edco okay sure do it now okay um kyra and i attended the edco round table and there was some very interesting discussion from members of area school committees very considerable concern about the budget process and about the budget for next year is definitely on the minds of school committees that are similar to ours also there was a lot of discussion about offering greater access to testing covid testing for students and staff and tracing that's something that the districts are all talking about um i think karen and i both felt pretty proud to be

176able to describe our model that has been happening in ab since the beginning of school that we were able to go back offering the robust remote program as well as the hybrid model i think it's exemplary and it felt good to be able to describe that we were able to start with both those options from the beginning and then just one thing that i wanted to share was that all of the school committees really talked about teacher stress and that's on the minds of everybody right now just what an incredibly difficult experience it is for teachers to be teaching under the constraints of kovid and really seeking ways to allow parents and communities and administration to support the teachers recognizing how hard it is to make academic progress when there's just so many difficulties that

177are there for teachers thank you angie why were you waving yeah because i have a question on the building oh yeah okay yeah sure so just quickly that you mentioned something about the budget last time is that still the building project budget is still on track that's kind of yeah the building project budget is on budget right now so the building committee had to go through a value management process as a result of some of the early cost overruns with soils that's been completed i think we were all actually very part of that value management process though the some of the other good news we received were some of the original change orders for some of the septic and soil work actually came in lower than we had estimated them but then in addition we

178did make some value management decisions along the way that we didn't believe had an impact on the educational program or the sustainability initiatives that we had so those are still very well intact and the other piece that you know we're looking to finalize which i think is going to be very good news is the town of acton is very aggressive in working with us to keep permitting fees to a minimum um so we're actually expecting that the permitting fees will come in substantially below the half million dollars that we had allocated within the budget for that sure okay was there any other subcommittee amy do you have your hand raised on purpose yes i just wanted to report that the fincom met on tuesday and there was a lot of discussion about the point of

179view which they are going to be finalizing and presenting at a later date soon um and that there was a lot of discussion about um at alg there was a conversation where the fincom asked that the two um the board the the school committee and the board of selectmen take up the idea of forming a committee to investigate cost-saving analysis um and they were they were concerned that there was a bit of a pushback from the school committee and i will say it was me um expressing that our staff administrators were completely overburdened with just getting back to school and that maybe this is not the right time to do that but we are absolutely willing to do that in the future but right now it doesn't it's just not the right thing to take

180up so there's some pushback on that um and i will say um thank you kyra so much for the update on the board of selectmen um i will say that the border selectmen took an absolutely unprecedented vote um regarding the school mascot issue which in my opinion was completely outside of their purview and in a time when they absolutely had no um right to take a position one way or another on an issue that was before the independent regional school district and i've written a letter um and we'll continue to follow up with that but but um i just wanted to share that bit of information thanks amy okay so the last big thing that we have on our agenda is that we need to choose a a delegate to virtually attend and vote for

181us at the annual masc meeting um we also need to choose an alternate if for some reason the delegate cannot attend the delegate would vote on the resolutions found in our fyi tonight which we can discuss as needed at our meeting on november 5th so i understand we have a lot of new members and that maybe sounds like a scary thing diane can you just give me an idea of when so that people know that when that delegate assembly is taking place i can't remember yep it's the delegate assembly is going to be on zoom on saturday the 7th of november there's a morning event open to all school committee members on cultural proficiency and and and the dei work on school committees pertinent to school committees and then i think the delegate assembly starts

182early afternoon and the deadline to oh it's at one o'clock one o'clock on saturday november 7th great and the deadline to submit uh the names of the delegate and alternate is october 28th yeah so um so we might we need to vote on that tonight because we're not going to have another meeting before that so i would ask anyone to nominate themselves if they'd like to do this diane can't i'm won't and so we need to have a delegate and we need to have an alternate and for those of you that are new just know that we will discuss the resolutions that will be at our um november 5th meeting before a delegate would need to vote so that you understand what we're talking about and so that you get a sense of the committee

183and how we would feel that um you vote for us yes diane do you want me to give you a 10 the committee a 10 second rundown of what the delegate assembly is okay um so this and angie you were a delegate i think last time and i think i was the alternate at the time um anyway this is a business meeting of all 351 school districts so there is there are reports from board members and such there's going to be an election the election of the new board that is i think contested at this point and um the kind of fun of it the robustness of it comes when you we all commit all all the delegates discuss the resolutions there's there's a resolution on um on moratorium on mcas on racism there are

184a lot of really good resolutions that have been put forward by various school committees and and that conversation is is very engaging and and i highly recommend if um you don't have to participate actively and you you can certainly participate actively but anyone who who is remotely interested should step up and and be a delegate because it is quite the experience to be among advocates for our students for the entire commonwealth in one room it also just gives a bigger perspective on our work here i think it can be a little you know isolating and like within a silo to just be understanding what we're focusing on as a district and it's a shame that there isn't a real conference this year because it is really one of the most exciting things we get to

185do professionally as school committee members um and it's really it is really interesting to hear what other districts are are encountering and talking about and everything else so who wants to go and i'm going to emphasize that there will be nominating involved if you don't step up on your own seriously guys i mean it's an important job i think i have more than pulled my weight on the committee so that's why i am not going to do it and diane is prevented from you're nominating yourself as as the delegate yes i mean yeah it's virtual right okay well she's got okay and who would like to be i mean as long as as long it is it's completely virtual i'm happy to do it i just cannot do it in person completely right now for

186the next four months no it's completely virtual okay i will do a virtual all right is there anyone that would like to serve as her alternate i'll serve as the alternate wow thank you adam all right so we have there's motions in the packet to move to approve that if someone would like to make the motion adam you don't need to move make the motion for yourself they are separate motions yes okay you okay you shouldn't someone else can do it john come on well i'm on i'm on the warrant page so you know that makes it hard i ass i assume the motion is something in the form of i move that we appoint amy christian murthy as our delegate to the masc assembly in november november 7 2020 that's my birthday but i'll

187do it and you know i i move that we approve um adam klein as the uh abrsc alternate delegate to the 75th annual virtual masc meeting on november 7th 2020. okay adam aye john yes evelyn yes nora yes diane yes angie yes ginny yes amy yes kyra yes yemen yes gratitude [Music] perfect yes thank you uh yes i vote yes thank you to both of you for stepping up i really really really appreciate it and i would encourage everyone else if you have time on that day um to to attend at least a piece of it um so that you can see what's going on all right john we have warrants to approve this evening nobody's going to fight me for it i move that the school committee vote to approve payroll warrants as follows

188number p two one zero eight dated 10 a 2020 in the amount of two million six hundred and thirty nine thousand three hundred two dollars and five cents payroll deduction warrants as follows number twenty one zero zero eight p r dated 10 a 2020 in the amount of 563 488 and 80 cents bender warrants as follows number 21-007 dated 10-1 2020 in the amount of two million eight hundred fifteen thousand one hundred seven sixty-one uh sixty-one cents number 21008 a dated 10 a 20 20 an amount of 30 179 student activity reimbursement warrants as follows number twenty one zero zero seven sh dated ten one twenty twenty in the amount of thirty three thousand eight hundred and eighty six dollars and twenty one cents second all right let's vote adam aye john yes evelyn yes

189nora aye diane yes angie yes ginny yes amy yes kyra yes yevan yes me yes okay so um it says fyi peter but i'm just gonna let you know that our next meeting is actually a workshop which will be on october 29th which will be completely virtual so we will not be coming here everyone will be on zoom it's being facilitated by tony ben of masc and the theme is sort of like policy and procedure and purview is what we'll call it um just so that you know what we're doing and then our next regular meeting which will continue to be in hybrid assuming all things remain healthy would be november 5th and the resolutions just so you know are in the fyi so if you'd like to look at them ahead of our november

1905th meeting that's where they are peter i'll just offer no comment on the fact that masks can't contain the excitement that i saw on your faces over procedure purview and policy not even a mask could contain that exuberance um tony is a dynamic speaker and he promised me a very exciting engaging zoom workshop i guess tony tony is wonderful so we look forward to having him so thank you very much everyone i appreciate all of your efforts and a challenging discussion tonight you know i know these are difficult topics but i think you know the committee was able to model for our students and for our community how to have a difficult conversation on some really challenging topics in a way that really listens to the perspectives of others so thank you so much for

191everything i know on behalf of you know a lot of our faculty and a lot of our students maybe not all i'm sensing but a real level of gratitude for all the work you did so thank you i will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second adam hi john yes evelyn yes norah hi diane yes angie yes ginny yes amy yes kyra yes yevin hi dave yes hi dave thank you everyone bye you