Acton-Boxborough School Committee Meeting - May 4th, 2023

001note in the hour and the presence of a quorum I call the acton-boxborough regional school committee to order members of the public who wish to watch the meeting online may use actin TV's YouTube channel found at the top of the agenda this meeting is also being recorded and will be posted on Acton TV's website at actentv.org Welcome to our newest school committee members from Acton Tori Campbell Lila ramachandran yes okay and yanchen Schmidt yes we're excited to have you here at the committee um and to begin your tenure box resolution is May 16th so the committee will welcome two new box World members of the next meeting due to my retirement and Evelyn Abaya isa's retirement um I wanted to use my chairperson's welcome tonight to actually do some business that kind of got left

002off at the end of the meeting last time because our meeting went very very late um until almost 10 30 last time and we didn't have a proper time I don't think to thank the retiring members so the three active members who are not here tonight Amy Christian Murphy Kyra cook and yabin Wang um we didn't really take the time that's something that we generally do as a committee is take the time to thank and recognize the time that those people have given to the committee um Kira served one term on the school committee she was the chair this year she served on the budget subcommittee and gave of lots and lots of time to um to the committee and she actually is is moving on and it was wonderful that she gave her time

003as the first African-American chair as of our committee which was also important um yevin also served one one term he was on the policy subcommittee I believe for two years and gave his perspective as a member of the school committee and it was it was a valuable a valuable perspective that I think brought a lot of information to the to members of the Town who were not also part of the educational community and Amy served three terms on the school committee she was a member or chaired actually member and chaired of almost every subcommittee that the school committee has so she was a member of the budget subcommittee she chaired the budget subcommittee she was a member of the policy subcommittee she's chaired the policy subcommittee she served on negotiations three times she was the

004vice chair of the school committee twice she was the chair of the school committee and all of that happened during a tumultuous time and she gave almost half of her children's lives to the the career that she served on the school committee so we thank her very much for her time and just wanted to take a few minutes to to recognize those 12 years between the you know 15 years between the three of them that they that they gave to the community so tonight we also have some of our student Representatives here Molly's here dictions here and Julia is here would any of you like to come up foreign there we go oh I actually figured it out this time it's amazing um so the last time we were here was two weeks ago or

005three weeks ago or whatever so not much has happened in that time because one of the weeks was break so you know obviously nothing happened then and then the last two weeks have been pretty chaotic at school not because anything has happened but because it's been like AP tests which I don't take any EP classes but I've been feeling the stress of the fact that teachers are just pushing a lot of Assessments in which is not their fault it's that's what happens at this time of year this time of year is just always very busy at school because it's nearing the end of the year and everybody wants to get everything in before the end of the year so I've definitely been feeling the stress I know my friends have been feeling the stress but

006other than that not much has happened so they have stuff to talk about too foreign I'm Julia I'm a freshman class leader and school committee representative so um like Molly said there hasn't been too much activity at the high school recently because of break and then everyone's been busy with ape AP tests but the Freshman Class leaders have been organizing the book fair as I mentioned last meeting um in April and so far we've had four days and our final day is tomorrow it's been successful and we've managed to overcome some earlier technical difficulties with the credit card machines um as well as some other things so that's been nice and we hope that this can serve as an example for like future community events since we're doing with the silver unicorn bookstore and um

007I know that a lot of the community at the high school both students and teachers have been really involved with helping us advertise and sell our books and yeah I hope that this can be an example for the future and I look forward to continuing doing this work thank you hello I am diksha and I am a freshman and I am also a member of appsedge the AP students for equity and Justice currently we are working on a proposal for gender-neutral bathrooms and we have met with Miss Faber and Miss Dean about this um currently an issue is that um we do have gender neutral bathrooms at the school yet they are a place in inconvenient locations and um there isn't proper signage as well so students and staff aren't completely aware of the fact

008that there are gender neutral bathrooms and to counter this issue um our proposal has stated um improving signage and also moving a bathroom to a central location so that can be convenient for students during class to access these facilities and so um we've talked to staff and admin about this and this is just a process nothing has happened yet miss Faber and Miss Dean are working out the logistics but I hope it works out well so yep thank you thank you all so much for coming and Reporting tonight per school committee policy bedh members of the public are invited to speak for up to three minutes regarding items that are not on the agenda if her items on the agenda the public has asked to please wait for that item speakers must be recognized by

009the chair before speaking the committee does not typically respond to comments during public participation is there anyone who would like to speak tonight hello thank you uh Scott smyers Central Street I'm glad to see some new faces the school committee is going to be good I hope we have a fresh start I've come to a lot of meetings I've been quite critical of many of your decisions and ideas over the past and I hope that going forward with the new faces on the committee the new the election we just had you'll be open to parents not ignoring them please maybe if you can't answer their questions you can think about it long and hard and try to be able to answer them next time because some of these ideas that are being proposed are just

010not adding up to scrutiny you've had I want to thank the members that are retiring but not like most people who thinking thanking them I'm thanking you for please not doing any more damage to our community except for yebin I will give an example of where I saw yebbin provide some incredibly valuable advice and it was completely ignored by the rest of the members of the school committee after you decided that we were going to get a new mascot name and decided on the term Revolution which I still don't see anyone excited about you have been pointed out that Revolution is not always a positive thing it can be very negative millions of people die in revolutions he had some first-hand experience in that and there was no discussion about it you know so you

011have to look at those diversity of opinions and not just focus on the same Dogma that we've been hearing over and over again like the students are either from a victim class or an oppressor class we have a climate emergency and if we don't do something to change our whole economic system immediately we're all going to die or burn to a crisp this is making children very anxious stressed out and it's unnecessary and unresponsible of a school committee to stand by and let that happen so please listen to the parents don't talk to them like the chair from the last the the chair that's not here today has been doing especially at that last meeting talking down to parents as if they were badly behaved farm animals you know that's not a way to treat

012our citizens please be open transparents and uh respectful to the parents and the students I always my favorite part of the school committee meeting is when the students give their updates that's always very refreshing and realistic thank you Scott Maybe uh good evening Martin Benson 21 Deacon Hunt Drive first the behavior of the previous chair at the last school committee meeting was out of order and not compatible with a democratic approach to local government during the public comment period following the ongoing discussion regarding academic leveling the chair interrupted and threatened a speaker and anyone else who opposed these reforms this past year the former chair implemented and forced a rule that all comments during public comment sessions must be quote civil unquote this rule provided her the ability to interrupt and silence anyone expressing an

013opposing Viewpoint this past March the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled in Baron B collenda that quote under both articles 19 and 16 such civility restraints on the content of speech at a public comment session in a public meeting are forbidden end quote thus the chair's practice was illegal as the attorney who represented the plaintiffs in the baron case sits on the ver this very board there is simply no excuse for this board to continue violating the Free Speech rights of the public secondly the during the school committee's October 15 2020 meeting this board voted to illegally retire the colonial mascot in direct violation of the district's naming policy throughout the meeting the current acting chair was seen engaging in text message Communications with two other committee members while she was chairing the meeting this

014was later confirmed in writing by the school district's attorney thus these text messages are considered public records on November 5th 2020 I submitted a records request to the district seeking these text messages for over two years the school district and its Law Firm fought the release of these public records despite engaging in dilatory tactics the school district's attorney stated assuringly in a letter quote school committee members have been advised to preserve their personal records in light of an instant appeal and quote however when the school district could no longer defend the withholding of these public records the district acknowledged to the Secretary of State that members were no longer in possession of these text messages this despite assurances that school committee members would maintain these records in accordance with the law the school district included

015a written admission from Miss McKinley that she had recently deleted the records which is a crime under Massachusetts General law these deleted text messages are likely still recoverable though it will require extensive legal proceedings which the school district will likely obstruct it's not right that this board continues to cut programs staff and services while concurrently providing unlimited funding for Legal Services intended to impede the adherence to the public records law in the fall of 2020 this board voted to authorize unlimited spending on legal services such as response to records request and open meeting law complaints during the discussion superintendent light estimated the price would be around one thousand dollars the total cost the district has spent on legal fees far exceeds the quoted price further the district has provided incomplete responses to inquiries regarding this

016matter hopefully this the newly elected members from Acton and those to be elected from Boxborough will provide a much needed change of direction from what we have seen over the past two years thank you thank you Evelyn I forgot to say thank you to you and the reason was because I was so caught up and nobody in in the lack of acknowledgment about the active members who retired at the last meeting and you weren't here I'd like to acknowledge your service on the school committee and I apologize Evelyn has served one term we ran together three years ago and um you have been a remarkable member from Boxborough and I thank you for your service you served on the policy subcommittee yes yeah for three years and thank you to you for getting me into

017this Peter I'll throw to you all right so a few updates for you um first April 28th uh was our 29th no no intention there I guess annual community service day over 400 seniors participated in 47 service projects throughout the community at camboxborough students worked in teams on projects such as raking mulching cleaning painting and much more um maybe this for us this is a rich tradition that goes back obviously 29 years um in the making so I just want to say very proud of all of our seniors and just to express appreciation for all of their sponsors faculty staff who helped make that happen and the community members who were able to get engaged with it so thank you seniors I also want to congratulate our special Olympians who participated in our Special Olympics

018at Leary field on Wednesday April 26th that was a fantastic event I had an opportunity to get up there and see a little bit of it just really well done we also recently hosted our first ever unified track meet so that's also very exciting to be able to have in the district um and you know just want to thank all of the students who are participating all of the families who support the kids but also our staff for working to get these programs up and running so thank you very much this is kind of the traditional month of celebration in schools I think every day we're celebrating something different but thank you to all of our principals certainly for all of the work that they do nurses week is May 6th through 12th we know

019that they've done a lot of work over the last several years to make sure everyone is healthy and safe and May 8th through the 12th is teacher appreciation week that we have coming up so thank you to all of our staff um Project Graduation I just want to put another plug in for that organization if you have been following the last few meetings you'll know we're continuing to make announcements and try and send out information about Project Graduation it's an incredibly important Community event that is hosted for our graduating students they are struggling with volunteers and they have been struggling more and more each year over the last several years so particularly parents of younger kids who will be with the system for a few years we'd love to encourage you to get involved so

020we'll send out another sign up link to all of our families tomorrow with the update the next cartwheel care webinar is coming up and that is on recognizing and managing anxiety so that one is going to be held Wednesday May 31st at 7 pm and we'll send out all of the registration information to families about that I also want to plug put a plug-in for Open Door theater and Danny's Place Youth Services they are having an ask me Fair which is a special event to meet and talk with some awesome grown-ups the event is free but registration for the event is required this is an opportunity where children are invited to ask questions listen to and Converse with presenters from a wide range of backgrounds and who are happy to share their stories and experiences

021so they are inviting everyone to come with an open heart and an open mind to listen and learn and hopefully go home with a better understanding of the world that we all live in so we'll send out some information to our families about that we also have an upcoming in our last Community Coffee is going to be May 24th that is going to be virtual it was originally scheduled in the evening we have a conflict now that night so we're going to move it to the morning but that is a virtual event for families that will be the last one of the year and then we also have our safer home safer Community event when we put the flyer in that is the gun buyback program that we run with the police so we'll send

022that out as well um also want to just give you a heads up at the next meeting we're going to be giving you a more in-depth update on the Welcome Center and the work that we've been doing around that we're actually progressing very well number of updates that I want to share with you one we are beginning some of the you know facelift in the area that we've designated to be the Welcome Center we actually use the funds from if you have been following school committee for a couple of years we were members of a collaborative Edco that has dissolved once that dissolved and the final accounting was done we actually got money back from that so we were able to allocate that money directly to looking at the Welcome Center and making that a

023better place for families to come and register but also to come and receive ongoing services and supports throughout their time at a b um that's underway but even more exciting we are at a stage now where I can publicly announce we've actually been in pretty deep discussions with acton-boxborough United Way to actually do a district United Way partnership um to bring the Welcome Center to fruition the United Way has a long and Rich tradition of you know providing services and you know kind of connecting families and people in need in our communities with different services and so we are kind of at the final stage now where we're looking at an agreement that would actually take United Way and house it in The District administration building with us and they would actually provide the Staffing

024and volunteer support for the welcome center so it's a really nice Mutual beneficial Arrangement so we're going to be giving you an update on that at the next meeting and we'll have some people from United Way here to speak but we'll also have Jen Faber and Marianne young who have been really spearheading that initiative be able to speak to that so very exciting stuff it's coming to fruition we're into participating that opening this summer I did talk to Senator Eldridge because I had connected with him early in the you know state budget process and requested that this would be a good opportunity for an earmark for the district we had noted that you know acted in box Pro have not really received any very many earmarks over the last few years at the state level

025so I spoke with him yesterday and he indicated that that earmark is still sitting in the state budget on the Senate side so he's hopeful that we'd be able to get something from that to continue to help with that so looking at uh you know a lot of different opportunities to really make this a cost neutral Venture that will have a high value to the community so turn it back over to you all right um we have a need to vote the new school building committee membership the school building is built and as things change every year people step off the committee people retire there's a need to remove certain members from the school building committee so Marie Altieri is retiring Dave verdolino is retiring Lucia Sullivan the principal Douglas is leaving and Amy krishnamurthy

026is obviously retired from the school committee so we are replacing Dave's position with our with our new Director of Finance and operations Sherry Matthews as of July 20th July 1st 2023 so we need a motion to remove do you want to say anything about it or yeah I had to say a couple words um so you know the building project we've obviously been substantially complete um for a long period of time there's some ongoing work that will continue to take place in throughout the summer and into the fall we anticipate that within the next week we're going to actually be Paving um the gate side of the parking lot Paving will work will continue uh over the summer on the parking lot that will be on the Elm Street side we are also resurfacing the

027basketball courts that were CPC funded along with the district so those will be refreshed over the summer and then available for use in the fall and then we have a new softball field that they're constructing right now on the Elm Street side where Douglas used to be that will be seated in the fall but it actually takes a whole year of growth before you can use a field after it's seated so it will be done with construction this fall but not the actual you know usability that we'd like to see um from a building committee perspective at this point there's no more design work the only thing we're doing from a building committee perspective is looking at the invoices from the project manager that's submitted through our you know contractor that we have um that's

028certainly nowhere near the level of involvement that we need particularly for our principals things like that there are some required members of a building committee like a finance director for the district has to be on that so we're replacing Dave with Sherry but what we're really looking to do is Pare down that building committee from a staff perspective to you know the minimum that we need in order to keep the project going we're really entering the closeout phase of the project so we just don't see that we need to continue to add new members to that so we're just asking for a vote on the proposed membership that's in your packet tonight move to approve the actin box Pro School building Committee Member list as posted in our packet seconded starting discussion you have somebody

029say no okay all in favor any opposed any abstentions great that passes unanimously Beth that was an exciting first vote wasn't it yes Dave it's your turn good evening I apologize that we don't have uh slides tonight because somebody you're looking at him didn't do slides tonight so Dave this is so disappointing how are our new members going to understand are you just letting them down lately since it won't be you anymore I I have so few opportunities left I really am upset with myself that I missed this one but we forgive you I guess leave it at that I'm very sad that there won't be a meme I know yeah well thank you for pointing that out too but you have the materials that I'm going to just fly through that were scanned in

030your packet the memo was the first thing it's a number of pages long I'm not going to rehash it this is all this material was reviewed with budget subcommittee uh just for some that if I just hit the down arrow or oh it's the okay I got it Dave can you press the plus sign at the top two it's just hard to see from here and keep going keep going yeah this would be so much easier if you had slides just saying yeah yeah there's that let me just see what's going to happen here nope okay it's the best we got um so just a real quick summary um the the operating budget uh has been reviewed through three quarters of fiscal 23 and this memo summarizes our findings and our projections of where the

031district will end up at year end so revenues you can see we've we've grown in the projected variance from Q2 from uh 771 000 to over a million dollar projected Surplus in revenues uh it's primarily in interest rates which continues to drive up interest income for the district and based on recent news the rates could still be higher before year end reminder every time I tell you that we're we're making out to the good in interest income I want to also remind you that we are in year three of a 30-year bond for payment of of that new school at a at a fixed interest rate of about two percent so the the increase in interest rates won't hurt any of the existing districts uh debt so we're currently projecting a very substantial Surplus in

032revenue for expenditures the requirement is that we break even the goal is about as I explained in the memo and go through the various categories is about a two hundred thousand dollar turn back based on typical results of of the closing process especially the the liquidating of encumbrances as we as we get nearer to year end the memo goes through each of the budget categories and shows the projected year-end variances in each of those admin categories with the measures that we have to close what's currently projected as deficits so when the year is closed I'm thinking that the district will settle at about a million to turn back which is the uh which includes both revenues and expenditures I'm sorry there's no other way to get through this than than this way and about a

033million two of turnback is is consistent with the district's average uh since full regionalization as as we've done in analyzes of e d I've also given you a summer just a capsule summary of the major um finally it fits on one screen the major revolving funds and noting that there are there are no major issues in in these funds I'll continue unless there are any questions on the memo Dave can you talk a little bit about Athletics as a revolving fund I'm gonna I know that's an area of concern that we may come back to the committee on later this year yeah so Athletics I said no major issues Matt Athletics as of the end of the third quarter is is in a deficit position a fairly minor one there's still a season to go

034um but we've my department and Steve um Martin the athletic director have been have been discussing where we think it's going to be projected and it'll probably come in um worse than than what you see here use they had no cushion excuse me to begin the year they ran at a at a fairly slow small deficit last year and so there isn't any cushion to alleviate a deficit in this year um I've I'm working with Steve to put together a comprehensive presentation of where Athletics has come from where we are now what the budget is for next year statistics such as participation athletic fees and things like family caps how do they compare with other districts how do they uh how could they um secure a better Financial picture for athletics if they were adjusted

035and that will be at one of the one of the next couple of meetings okay um I'm going to interject here just as we're talking about it and sort of cover one of the conversations we had at budget sub particularly with regards to the expenditures part of the memo so Dave points out in the memo quite clearly that um if you were to look poor report we have overspent by about a million based on each individual budget line but we have the opportunity to reclassify that and what we vote as a is a bottom line budget for the district and the Administration has the opportunity to move those funds into the appropriate areas to make things even out we had a fairly deep discussion about that in budget sub and I'm happy to talk to

036people more in depth about that but I think the the point here is to say that this is somewhat atypical for this year driven a lot by employee costs HR cost salaries and it's it was atypical we did dive into it a lot in budget sub and I think it's just important to provide that context here not necessarily something we need to go through in depth during this meeting but it is something that the budget sub did review as part of our meeting okay you know two of the biggest cost centers that we we talked about with budget sub and we've actually talked about with this group at different times during the year too uh one was special education assistance um we had a number of students that had moved into the district after the

037budget process last year and as you know you know if a student has an IEP those are lead that's a legally binding document with a family and we're required to provide those Services when we think about the Staffing levels and special education we actually look at all of the IEPs we have for our students and we look at the number of minutes and how Services have to be delivered and if we don't have enough staff to provide the minutes of service then we actually have to add staff to make sure that we do that because we have that legal obligation so we had a number of students last year that had moved in Circumstances had changed IEP Services had changed after the budget process so there was about 275 to 300 000 worth of special

038education costs that came in after the budget process um in terms of assistant hours and then the other area that's been really challenging for us is in substitutes um we are seeing a period of time where a lot of medical procedures had been deferred during the pandemic for staff and those catch up but certainly you know substitutes was an area of the budget that we were really challenged on this year and again two things that I know we've talked about at different times of the committee but this is you know a way that that has come home to roost so to speak not to pick an argument budget one of the first things you said is we had overspent by a million and I think you will agree with we haven't overspent this is what

039we are projecting and the spreadsheet that is an Excel spreadsheet no not much mystery to it that my department uses to project costs the it there 800 line items on it each with a budget it without better information what they do most often is if an account I'll give you just a clear example if a count has a two thousand dollar line item to it and there has not been anything charged to it by this time of year it's probably still sitting at an expected end of year cost of two thousand because we don't have any information otherwise that's a lot of the stuff that falls off the cliff between now and the end of year as we do the closeout process the million is what's projected at the end of the year with all

040of those conservative projections built in and a number of reclassifications not yet made you typically don't see the sausage being made in that detail from me because what I have done is taken the the original recipe if you if you will of the finance department spreadsheet and through discussion with the budget uh the budget administrators and just information that I know done a more refined projection of where I think we're going to be at year end this is an unusual year for the reasons Peter just enumerated and I wanted to be transparent about it rather than just you know doing one of these and and hiding it and I as I explained to budget subcommittee so just wanted to make sure that that the representation of what's happening is is accurate thank you Adam Dave

041can I ask a quick question just about the athletic fund so is that mostly because we had two years of covid we didn't have sports we didn't have Athletics we've got an increasing number of students that can't afford and ask for a a waiver on on the athletic fee but not because we've spent money on reclassifying mascot items no generally correct what I would say the covet impact is in the beginning balance so we basically we're basically in a break-even position starting this year we have no cushion if you look at what's up on the screen now every other one of these programs has a pretty significant fun starting fund balance in relation to the size of its program so for example extended day started the year with a million dollars in the in the

042the program fund balance it's a big program it takes in and expends over a million dollars a year integrated Pre-K it only has 43 000 fund balance but it's in the hundreds of thousands in and out the the outlier is Athletics that had no safety net if you will this year yes they are there there is absolutely more uh financial hardship waivers and I'm expecting Steve uh to provide me and and for us to work on a presentation that summarizes it in more detail for you and so with the with the memo done the memo was intended to summarize some of the individual and there's an eye chart um information for you the revenue spreadsheet that you got breaks down the components anything shown in pink on this spreadsheet in the projected variance column second

043from the right in the numbers uh means that there's been a meaningful change since our projection in the second quarter and is an end is explained in the notes at the bottom the overview is what it is that was summarized already by me and here are all the pages of the expenditure line item details we've been doing it in this manner for a couple of years now and not had any uh suggested changes I think it's a pretty helpful explanation of where costs are being charged to versus budget for each category in some meaningful detail another small one again I've I've talked about I capsule summarized special Revenue accounts above and there are three pages of those and then the last things and I and I provided you with the uh munis details again just

044in the in the category of transparency here's the information that we have I summarize it I I narrative it in a put in a narrative in a memo uh but I'm providing you with all the details so the last couple of things I have um this is the most recent cherry sheet estimate and it was submitted after the house budget proposal there's good news and bad news the good news is that in several of these categories most notably Regional School transportation you can see that there's a significant uh uh I need glasses to do this ironically oops Regional School transportation the previous estimate in the governor's local Aid the governor's local Aid proposal was 2.075 at a hundred percent reimbursement they're estimating at over 2.7 million that's the good news that's that would be found

045money relative to what was used to construct the budget for FY 24 next year the bad news is if you read it yesterday or the day before is that state tax collections went off the cliff uh for the month of April and now there is concern about I I guess everything is on the table from the standpoint of the state they're in a deficit position for the first time in several years I would assume that a hundred percent Regional Transportation was put in the budget based on optimistic Revenue projections we won't know what's what's going to happen for another probably this month the Senate budget comes out and next month the conference committee takes place and the final budget is voted so good news and bad news and lastly the end letter which was received

046in February and is finally just again being presented to you just under 3 million is the uh is the total amount which works out to a 2.9 percent Reserve balance in the end fund and for those new members the e d fund is like your free cash fund in a town right similar yes anyone have any questions for Dave Dave I just want to say I always love seeing the munis streets there's there's no retort to that so thank you very much Dave even without the slides we still appreciate you all right so so next up we have some updates on the superintendent annual evaluation do you want to introduce that do you want to go first which one of you wants to do Peter okay so hello again everyone uh so in your packet

047um a couple of documents for you and I'll just go back to last meeting and I know a lot of you are watching even if you weren't sitting in the seats that you're in now uh but at the last meeting I gave you an overview of the actual process used to evaluate the superintendent um and so I've included in um you know an email to you you also received uh editable either a word doc form or Google doc based on your preference of the individual evaluation that members complete the way the school committee has set this up is that the members who served during the superintendent's you know evaluation term are the members that complete that evaluation process and so that would include you know Evelyn and Tessa here but also the members that aren't

048with us tonight still participate in the evaluation process the evaluations are completed by the members who are on the committee at the time they are you know sent to the chair in this case Adam has agreed to step in um and be one person and they're also sent to my administrative assistant so that she can actually make sure that everything is filed appropriately once they're submitted the chair has two weeks essentially to you know gather all that information and compile one composite evaluation for the committee that reflects all of the information that was shared with them that evaluation is then brought to a school committee meeting in this case it will be the June 8th meeting and is read aloud into the formal record for the evaluation for this the school year for the superintendent

049um I still receive all the copies of the individual evaluations um so you know I'm able to you know understand feedback from each of the members but the one compositive valve becomes the formal evaluation of the superintendent for the school year so just to refresh process I'm presenting some information for you tonight obviously this is not really the only thing that goes into the evaluation process I think one of the things that it's easy to lose sight of is we do so much work around District goals which is certainly an important part of the superintendent's evaluation but the idea of any employee evaluation is it's an evaluation of the employee's performance and so ultimately at the heart of that for a superintendent it typically includes all of the information that you get through the year

050and your impressions personally of the superintendent's performance and your assessment of the progress that we made toward our and then those are combined for that overall evaluation of how you do it I just always like to remind people and I think you know as Educators where the goals have been still relatively new and when I say relatively new in education I mean the last you know 10 years um that's still a fairly young in education terms but you know there can be sometimes a struggle to find the right balance between overall evaluation and performance and progress on goals so I just want to highlight that for you um you know I try to give you a memo that's a little bit of an assessment from my school year and just to look back on things

051that happened so you'll see here in this memo there's a link to the actual goals update it's also in the packet so you can certainly take a look at that but I also tried to give you some ideas of other things that have happened over the course of the year that you're certainly welcome to also consider anything that we've done over the course of the year is fair game from my evaluation and you're welcome to comment on that I just tried to put in some things that I think you know were particularly impactful across the district so just going back to the beginning of the school year we opened the new school that was very exciting we had a great Community event around that we have been very successful in our leadership searches this year

052where we have a deputy superintendent Finance director we actually just hired a facilities coordinator who is coming from the city of Somerville where he's been responsible for over 40 buildings in that City exceptional references we're thrilled to be bringing him on board and he's starting in a couple of weeks as our interim steps down we brought in Cartwheel care to expedite Mental Health Services to students we're excited about that we a kind of a side project of mine has been to think about our engagement particularly with our seniors in the community and so I went over to the senior center at the beginning of the year just spent time with our seniors talked about the district talked about our kids answered questions from our senior citizens we then actually organized a day for our seniors

053to come to the high school and we did a short tour of the high school but then they had an opportunity here from the high school principal a little bit about what was going on in the High School this year and then eat lunch with our students and we had a bit of a conversation just sharing back and forth between our students and senior citizens what was school like then and now and then we have all also been working with the Council on Aging and we're piloting a senior reading program for our elementary students and so Conant and Blanchard are actually going to be piloting that for us this spring so we have some representation in both towns and I've been seeing the emails go back and forth between the Council on Aging and the

054principles to schedule dates and times so you know really wanted to focus on that population because I don't think that our it's clear to our seniors how our schools can add value to seniors and how our seniors can add value for our students as well so I want to try and build that relationship we had done a lot of work and I want to credit Deb and our principals and the literacy steering team there was a lot of educator input that we solicited to select our new core literacy program this has been a long time in the making we have slowly built out our early literacy program specifically around phonics and phonemic awareness and that is shown in our data a lot of improvement but we knew that there was going to have to be

055another step to select that core literacy program that goes towards study comprehension vocabulary that has been selected and we're going to be in an implementation phase next year it'll probably be a two-year implementation plan where we do you know one or two of the modules at most next year and then you know finish the implementation the following year but we're very excited about that um we certainly had a challenging budget process I think for me communication with staff and families was important as you know superintendent's updates provided regular information about the budget and what was happening that we sent out to families to make sure people knew what was happening at that end but I also hosted two different budget webinars for All staff one very early in the process before we went public with

056any information and then another one is we started to know what the reductions might look like to make sure our staff were hearing information before our community we thought that was just being respectful especially with reductions on the horizon um we were able to Pilot our first ever concurrent enrollment course at the high school it was an economics course taught by Rob Donaldson where the students in that course have the option of actually receiving college credit through Middlesex Community College we've also been building out some other Partnerships with other universities to try and bring some value for high school students in thinking about earning college credits while they're in high school for those of you who weren't on the committee when we started talking about this we all know the cost of college I have

057a senior in high school I'm looking at that cost coming up for next year but you know for students to be able to take on some credits at a vastly reduced rate while they were in high school makes a lot of sense not only from an engagement standpoint and expanding opportunities but from a financial perspective so we're really you know looking at a lot of those opportunities for our high school and that's you know certainly something we need to start slow to make sure we get it right but we'd like to expand that type of programming over the next few years for our high school kids um we're currently you know looking at the school resource officer program you know that's a slow and deliberate process by intention we know from the initial feedback we

058got from the community during the first round of discussions that it was a topic that we needed to study in depth so the school committee chose to form a subcommittee that's certainly something I've been supporting as well as other District staff who are on that committee so that's some of the work we're doing I didn't write it here but another piece of work that we started this year was the co-leadership coalition to really look at hate and bias language and speech in our schools because we've seen you know preponderance of that that we're not comfortable with and it's really a persistent problem that we're we're seeing over several years so we're making good progress on that and you know we'll be excited to be able to give you a little bit more update probably at

059the next meeting um I've been doing a lot of work myself with the Massachusetts school superintendents Association they have a racial Equity diversity and inclusion Foundation series and application strand as well as I attended the district management groups annual superintendent Summit with Deb bookis and Jen Faber and the two focuses that we really looked at there were strategic budgeting and academic return on investment which is really the process of making sure that we're funding programs that have a high rate on return for student learning and how do we make sure that when we're investing citizens money that we're doing it smartly and in ways that are going to return value from a student perspective so that's something we looked at as well one of the things I think you know based on some of the

060work that we've done over the last several years we also have had an opportunity to kind of expand the district's profile with other communities so I had an opportunity to present through the Massachusetts superintendent's associate I was one of the presenters on a Wednesday webinar looking at kind of developing a guiding Coalition for Equity work we then had panel from the district present at the masc Mas conference and that was building a sustainable Leadership Model for culturally responsive schools and then I also co-presented with cartwheel Care at the district management group's National Summit looking at school Community Partnership to expand mental health services so I linked those presentations in there if that's something that you're interested in taking a look at um you know I also try in addition to just telling you the stuff

061that happened over the course of the Year give you some highlights that I thought you know were either personal successes or successes of the district but also areas that I think we can continue to focus on or I personally can continue to focus on so that was the second half of this memo I think certainly you know a really challenging budget process but trying to do it with transparency I thought we did a reasonably good job with that I'm not going to say it was Stellar but I think you know we were clear with our staff we were up front we were honest and transparent in communication um yeah this was also to me a personally exciting year because we've been talking for three or four years about building out an mtss framework and you

062know some of the members Amy's not here tonight but who are on the committee nine for nine years know that it was six or seven years ago that we did the initial study with George Batch who was out of Michigan um who came in and really highlighted that we didn't have any type of a data informed process for looking at student learning as a district and that was something that was going to be a priority and we've spent the better part of four and five years really planning to get to an implementation stage and it's been a lot of work a lot of budgetary transition and thinking about the types of roles that we have in our schools it's been thinking about building out a data culture it's been you know making sure that we

063have really good evidence-based tier one instruction that's consistent across all our elementary schools so the when I say tier one I mean our core literacy program the work around dyslexia and phonics awareness has been a big one for us moving to one math program that serves all across all of our elementary schools is really important and then building in the data systems and the assessment systems that can support Educators and looking at that data to actually now impact kids there's a lot of work for this District that went into that from our staff over the better part of three or four years but this is the year that we're actually seeing that now start to take hold so we're certainly not there but it's an exciting first step for us cartwheel care we've talked a

064lot about that I'm just very excited we were the first ever partner cartwheel care had we took that leap of faith that they'd be a good partner for us and you know that has returned you know well beyond the expectations that we had going into the partnership um I think that you know due to the really heavy lift of our staff we are starting to be seen as a leader in the Dei work across the state we're having districts ask us how we're approaching different topics the work that we're doing um it doesn't mean that we've solved the problems but it means that I think we're being seen as we're putting the place the systems that are likely to yield the results that we want but it's really generational work on a lot of the

065Dei work so that's slow and steady I mentioned the Welcome Center you're going to hear about that at the next meeting but I'm very very excited about that you know we have a really growing population of families entering that are coming from all over the world in different parts of the world than we've traditionally seen here at Amy and to be able to provide a Welcome Center that can centralized services and language Services language assessment El screening right up front so that kids are in a better spot when they hit school is going to be a I think a real positive step for our district and then the grand opening of the boardwalk campus we actually have an opportunity on Monday we are hosting the Joint Committee from the mass legislature on there's too many

066words in this one that I'm going to remember but it's everything from telecommunications to the environment and sustainability um to really take a look at some of the highlights of the boardwalk campus and share with them the sustainability path that AB has been on for the last four or five years and where we want to head over the next three and talk about the type of legislative support that we certainly will welcome in helping us get there so that's happening next week that's just a nice kudos to you know the citizens for funding that fantastic building in terms of I think opportunities for growth and areas for Focus that we need to think about next year one management of expenses we've now reduced our budget significantly and in part of doing those budget reductions it

067means we have really left ourselves much less margin for error we trimmed budgets over the last few years as well and I think what you're seeing in the expense side of the budget this year is there's just not a lot of room for error in this so we really have to think about how we're managing the expense side of the budget as we go into next year and that's going to be a focus of mine want to highlight that I think transparent communication around some of the big strategic work that we do that's an area that I'm not really as happy as I'd like to be at this point with um and I I heard a really nice definition at a recent Workshop that I was at around what is transparency and they talked about

068the difference between honesty and transparency and it it made me think a little bit differently they defined honesty as telling someone the truth when they ask a question they Define transparency is thinking deeply enough about the people that you're working with that you anticipate the questions that they'll have and provide the information that they want before they have to ask and so how do we shift toward that I will say I'm also a bit nervous about highlighting you know transparent communication because we just unfunded the only position in the district in our special project position that was actually dedicated to communication so it will mean that we have to actually rethink how we're communicating and how we embed some of that work into other roles of the district so it needs to be done but

069I'm not sure about how it's going to look at this point um presence in schools and classrooms I'm hoping to improve next year I think I've always met with principals on a monthly basis in their school and then we were able to walk classrooms I think as we've come out of the pandemic I'm spending a lot of time I'm finding with principals but we're talking through different issues around supporting students and some of the challenges that they're seeing in their schools but it's taking a lot of time away from me being able to be in classrooms as well and so next year I've already actually booked out all my days for the year my calendar's all set for next year at this point um but in addition to my monthly you know hour hour and

070a half meetings with every principal I actually have every Monday for the first half of the day set aside for the whole school year and I have my whole rotation of schools that I'm going into where it's really just focused on classrooms and teaching and learning and kind of hanging out with kids and making sure I have a good eye to what's going on in the district so that's something I want to look at for next year I think needless to say the development of high performance leadership teams this was actually in my entry report from when I started in 2018 we had had a lot of turnover in school committee turnover and superintendent turnover and leadership team at that point but we're seeing that same type of turnover both at the school committee level

071and leadership team I think we have to spend time talking about what a high performing team looks like for both school committee and also for our leadership team and make sure that we have really clear agreements about the roles and responsibilities everyone has the ways we work together how we communicate effectively to make sure everyone has the information that they need to fulfill their obligations and so that's something I want to highlight and then you know the last thing I have to put in is balancing priorities on my calendar you know when I started here the community community facing things that the superintendent did was the joint ptso which was a monthly meeting we had the actin leadership group which was essentially a monthly meeting for six months of the school year maybe seven and

072then we had you know periodic attendance at finance committee meetings but since that you know we've added you know monthly Dei family advisories we have added an SRO subcommittee that meets every three weeks I have the ab leadership Coalition for hate and bias speech that's meeting every three weeks we have you know the work now that I'm doing with senior citizens things are coming on the calendar but things aren't coming off the calendar and it's you know becoming increasingly difficult to manage three and four night weeks um if the day starts at you know 7 A.M on email or something like that so I'm really trying to think about how to keep a presence with all of the different groups that I need to have a presence but it's going to have to be a

073more balanced look at that in order to make this a sustainable effort over a long period of time so really I've done a lot of work with Julie and just looking at managing calendar for the next school year um as something because if I can't what I'm finding now is if I'm in so many different committees and meetings I don't have time to actually give thought to preparing for the meetings that I'm in that need me to prepare for them and to do the background work so how do we find a balance for that I think is going to be important so I just wanted to put that on your radar that it's certainly something that you know I've been thinking about over the course of this year and just wanted to put before the

074committee as well so those were a few of the things you know that I'm identifying that I want to make some shifts in my own practice as we go into next year but I always look forward to you know the committee's feedback when we get to that point I'm not going to go through all of the goals update um it's in your packet as you remember we had a mid-year update um in March of this year I think it was halfway through March so there's not a lot that's going to be different in this one I do want to highlight some of the language that we use in here these are the status updates for you um if you look you know mid-year status update was either completed it's in process but On Target in

075process but we're not on target we haven't started something or we actually decided after we set the goal that this wasn't something we really want to do and we deferred it at the end of the year there's some different categories and I just want to highlight a couple of language things that are you know nuanced for us but completed means we've really finished that and we don't intact it doesn't need to be continued it's it's a discrete item that you can now check off a list and it doesn't have to come back um ongoing means yeah we've actually done what we said we were going to do but this has to be ongoing work so you'll likely see it again in the next year's plan uh because one year is not going to be sufficient

076to have the depth of implementation that it really needs um not completed But continuing means we didn't get through all of the action steps we wanted but we do intend to continue it so that we make the progress we want um not completed discontinued means we got into the project and we didn't feel it ended up having the value that we hoped it would have so we're actually going to just discontinue it before we expend good energy on a bad project or not a bad project but a project that isn't meeting expectations um and then deferred means that you know similar to the meteor update we just decided early on this was not something that was going to be feasible um overall I'll just say and as I said I'm not going to go through

077all of this with the goals we felt pretty good about what we had done I will say with the SEL goal you'll see this is one where we have a couple of areas that we said not completed and continuing particularly around embedding SEL instructional practices in our curriculum and this is something that our leadership team has been talking a lot about this year particularly with the rollout of the new literacy curriculum is how do we move from seeing social emotional learning as a silo or you know um culturally responsive teaching practices is its own silo or literacy or math there's their own indefinite independent silos but how do we actually think about throughout all of our work around literacy these practices are actually embedded and we think looking at a new curriculum adoption there's really

078an opportunity to think about embedding those so that's work that we'll actually go into next year and then the other one um you know I think if you talk to our principals and leaders they would say that you know we used an existing position last year we had an elementary psychology coordinator that we kind of promoted into a role of being a district-wide SEL mental and Behavioral Health coordinator she still has to coordinate Elementary psychology so she really actually only has .2 of her job that's devoted to this other role but she's being used incredibly heavily probably to the you know tune of 0.8 of her job would would really be on this um and we have to think about you know we don't have the funds to expand her role so how do we

079actually really clearly Define what she is involved with so that it's not an overwhelming job and she can actually impact something well those were a couple areas but otherwise I think as you look through this you'll you will see that we've made a lot of the progress that we intend to do there are some hyperlinks in there if there were presentations that we did on topics throughout the year particularly from the beginning of the year I put those links in so that you would have access to those but um happy to just take any questions or you know initial thoughts comments all right so new members you just take note you don't have to do that this any of this this year you can just learn and watch but do any current members that are

080responsible for writing his evaluation of follow-up questions for Peter Rebecca um could you say a little bit more about how the district is being seen by others as a Dei leader um I don't know if there was something specific in the packet that I missed or yeah so you know this I think goes to speak on two two fronts one we were invited by the mass Association of school committees um to present around some of the work around the leadership structure we had built around Dei and in particular what we focused on um going into this year that has I think been seen pretty positively by other districts is expanding teacher leader roles around Dei so you know going into this year we had always had kind of a standalone Dei position but the person

081you know kind of became a unicorn in the district where it was one person with a very specific role but there was no system of support around them or no structure for how they would impact what goes on in classrooms and so I think that can be really challenging and so one of the shifts we made was to add the culturally responsive teacher leaders this year um that have been working with Michelle Shannon from the leadership academy as well as Jen Faber to really look at data wise so it's you know about building a culture of looking at your data but they've also been looking at zoretta Hammond's culturally responsive teaching in the brain um and then the teacher leaders have been going back to their schools and running professional learning opportunities for the rest

082of the staff so it's colleagues helping colleagues you know look deep more deeply into the work we also expanded to the number of seed leaders in the district because we have that requirement for anti-bias training for staff within their first three years and so this is a program that's been in existence but we felt like we didn't have enough well we not we didn't feel we we didn't have enough leaders and trainers to meet the demand of our staff who we're getting into this training so we did send people to the training for that and we've significantly expanded seed leadership across the district and again that's another teacher leadership role for a lot of this work so I think those are two of the primary levers that I think people have asked us to talk

083more about and how we're we're engaging teachers in the work anyone else right Adam okay so as you'll see in your packet I'll be collecting the information the evaluations we got an email earlier this week with a Word document with the supporting information and the rubric for our new committee members like Tessa said you're not required but I would spend the time and look through it just to familiarize yourself with the process so that when you start next year you know what you're looking for today is May the 4th be with you these are due to myself and Julie please in two weeks May 18th so you have all of the information has been presented to you now so please take the next two weeks to complete the evaluations email them to me and to

084Julie uh in in Peter's office and we'll come back in two weeks and I'll report on exactly those who have not sent it now I will uh just the sooner we can get this the the sooner than the the work of compiling all of this and so what we'll present to Peter at our last meeting of the year on June 8th will be a a summary of all of the comments uh in in written form additionally I want to invite any members of the public to also send any of their comments uh in around the evaluation of the superintendent I'll extend that date here since it's in the agenda to June 1st so any of the members of the public who have feedback on the superintendent they can also send that feedback to both me

085and Julie Longmire by June 1st please thank you thanks Peter all right so we're already at the time of the evening when we do subcommittee and members reports um Andrew would you like to report on community engagement the acting Boxborough Regional School District Community engagement subcommittee met on April 14 2023 our Focus continues to be on creating greater connections with the active box for our community ongoing work within our session was focused on methods of informing the public on town meeting and the importance of the vote we're not taking credit for the unanimous acceptance of the budget and the actin town meeting but we are happy with the result our next meeting will occur tomorrow around 10 45 a.m back to you Tessa thanks Adam budget so yet again what you heard earlier this evening

086from Dave was an excellent summary of our budget subcommittee meeting it wasn't this week it was last week which is why we're all off a little bit um and uh yeah we're looking forward I don't think we have any more budgets that can be meetings planned for the rest of this year so we probably will see in our consent agenda at some point a vote for the school committee to vote the minutes of our last meeting and your big success was that an act in town meeting the budget was passed unanimously indeed next Monday at Boxborough all right uh Liz would you like to report on leadership coalition to combat hate and buy a speech Yes uh we have met a few times now and it's a really great group of uh maybe about 25

087people 25 about 30. yep um Peter has been absolutely excellent excellent in communicating to everyone structuring our meetings so that they are as successful as they can be and one thing that a lot of the members have noted specifically is just the amount of student participation and support that is really helping this is a slow going process you know there's a lot of opinions there's a lot of problems to be identified and tackled and I think that we're doing excellent work if I may jump in also sure go right in uh I just also want to note that on the 25th of April the leadership coalition to hate to combat hate and bias speech at met and we worked on drafting a problem a a problem statement in the theory of action much discussion took

088place around crafting a problem statement which addresses an underlying culture that exists in the acton-boxborough school Community which allows hate and bias speech to be perpetuated in our community as someone who's actively involved in the Jewish community at Large uh the work that is being performed by this leadership Coalition is deeply meaningful to me as such it should be noted that during the course of this past school year here at the aab schools there have been a recorded five anti-semitic incidences that have taken place on school property over the course of the year it is extremely troubling that anti-Semitism Trends continue upwards and that apathy throughout the community has continued to spread as a result there is planning underway for a March against anti-Semitism tentatively scheduled in June this is a joint venture between the

089ADL and the coulanu group at Congregation Beth Elohim I'm working with the coulano group and it's my hope that members of this body will attend and show up and show support to the Jewish community at large thank you thanks Ben go ahead sure you know I just want to expand a little bit on you know some of the problem statement that we've been working on because we I think probably have spent the better part of six hours of meetings really you know when you have 30 individuals that Encompass you know middle school and high school age students we have um community members in there at large who who may or may not be associated with the school um Rabbi new Rabbi from Beth Halloween is involved in this we also have some of our teachers

090we have administrators from the schools and you know everyone's going to see a little the problem at its core a little bit differently right and one of the things that we thought was very important was to First spend time sharing stories about different acts of bias or hate that we're seeing in schools and making sure that anyone who is willing to share something had an opportunity to lend that perspective but then we use that to actually work you know in small groups and then in larger groups around just defining a problem statement I think oftentimes we rush through that and we try and just get Solutions in place but the solutions aren't necessarily matched to what the group feels a problem is so we spent time and we actually came up with some really specific

091uh elements of the problem that we all felt like we could commit to and the group reached consensus on these at the last meeting so I just want to share some of the things that we came to Ben had read kind of the first part of it which is you know there is an underlying culture that exists in the acton-boxborough school Community which allows hate and bias speech to be perpetuated and then we said it includes the following characteristics and we're still wordsmithing some of this so you know you may see a word change but individuals engage in a range of hate and bias speech or behaviors that serve to dehumanize members of our community who belong to marginalized groups these can include and do include jokes and slurs that ridicule or reinforce stereotypes behaviors

092that Target demean or harass individual tools and public displays of hate that Target whole communities so there's really a range of these everything from jokes and innuendo all the way up through over at hacks of eight hate toward communities and we're seeing all of it we have hate and bias speech taking place in different settings and it's often being influenced and Amplified by this use of social media the group felt that there was a need to call out social media and the prevalence of that as something that we had to pay attention to in any solution we put in place we also felt that some individuals in our community are either minimizing dismissing or normalizing the existence of hate and bias speech in our schools or in our community and then one of the things

093that we really spent a lot of time talking about we feel that there's either inconsistent or insufficient responses by Educators and students to interrupt the hate or bias speech in the moment that it occurs enough that we're actually modifying behaviors and changing the underlying culture and so we've really talked about this idea of making sure people feel well prepared to interrupt bias as it's occurring and not let that sit initially I think you know that does two things when we don't interrupt it in the Moment One it can serve to reinforce the behavior um for people either the perpetrator of the behavior or people who are bystanders to the behavior because they don't see a quick action in Swift action but I think the other thing it does is it sends a message to the

094Target of the behavior that it's not important um or the person isn't taking it seriously and so we want to really think about all four of those elements in the solutions so the work we're going to do now from here to the end of the year with that group is actually now more action oriented where we're at going to look at okay how do we turn the problem statement into a really coherent theory of action that we then have very clear and measurable action steps that we want to do so I wanted to just take time on that tonight to just bring you up to speed on some of the work that we're trying to do with that group it's a great group of individuals that's very very broadly representative of our students and our

095community at large so it's actually you know one of the more fun enjoy even though we're talking about a hard topic it's actually a fun group to work with because people are bringing I think a lot of themselves to the work and you know we're having great dialogue also I want to thank you for your leadership during the course of these meetings I've attended two of the four so far as a result scheduling conflicts I really see the the benefit and the Merit of this group continuing to me continuing to address these issues and um you know again thank you Peter for your leadership throughout this shortly like already had timeline for this deliverable of kind of strategy knowing that things shift one of the things I want to have the group talk about is

096having um a timeline of deliverables right you're not going to change a culture in three months right but you can have some action steps that you can take within three months so um one thing and it's it's getting out ahead of the group a little bit but we are in talks with the Anti-Defamation League to bring the world of difference program into the junior high next year they've actually agreed to move us up on the priority list of schools to be able to do that because they have a long lit wait list of schools that are trying to get in to the program and they can only train in school many schools a year but we are partnering with them we've been able to coming out of the pandemic continue with the world of difference

097program at the high school I think there's opportunities to look at how we deliver that program to try and expand the impact of that and then want to leave a lot of space for other types of things we're doing but we also know that if we don't plan something you know starting three weeks ago and a month ago it won't be there for the fall especially like with the ADL there any other questions Evelyn so does this group include student Representatives as well yeah it does um so you know one of the things we or or I set out when I formed the group is I didn't just want to have representatives from different places in the community I actually asked people who had leadership influence in different organizations within the community to be part

098of this so that they could bring that influence back and so you know like a lot of our student groups at the high school and our Affinity groups they all have one of the leadership members of the affinity group who's actually serving on this leadership Coalition similarly um you know we have people who are active in the Dei work in various aspects of the community or at the state level who are also serving on this leadership Coalition we think that's the best way to get the resources together but then also engage the number of stakeholders that we're going to need to actually make the change and just to let you know Evelyn like the student participation is absolutely critical and it's been the student participation in this has been critical and very very thoughtful thank

099you um I just have a question so Ben you just mentioned that they're in the topic of anti-Semitism you're disappointed to see there's apathy in your community people are normalizing the behavior is what you're seeing uh I wonder if there is a possibility we can bring educational resources to Immigrant communities language barrier is possibility a contributing contributing factor into the apathy that you're seeing and anything I can do to help I would be happy to do so in terms of my statement regarding apathy within the community as a whole it's not just here in Acton it's also within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and by and large across this nation as we see an increase in hate bigotry and xenophobia here in this country as a result of of the Litany of issues that we really

100don't have the time to go into tonight one thing I can say is that based off of the statistics as published by the ADL between 2021 and 2022 there has been a 50 percent increase in anti-semitic attacks on school property Jews within the community represent the greatest amount of individuals who have experienced hate crimes in the United States disproportionately to any other religious minority group identified unfortunately because so much of these attacks go on and whether we see it in the news whether it's you know put out by faculty and administration the more that this happens my personal belief is that the more that we get numb to the fact of these actions taking place so therefore it's not any particular Community it's not any particular person or group that is apathetic it's just the

101fact that there is so much of it out there we're becoming more and more numb to the fact that you know only a generation or two ago when you saw swastika painted on the side of a school it would create outrage within the community now it's just like oh great another Act of hate and that's where my statement in my my perspective comes in thank you to all of you it sounds like very meaningful work that we'll be going forward um SRO committee yeah I have a brief update from the school resource officer subcommittee we will be coming to our June 8th meeting with a more complete summary of the work that we've been doing to date uh I think the the most important update that I have to provide is that uh as much

102as we wanted the work to be done by the end of this year there's a significant amount of work that will remain so we'll provide an update at the end of this year of where we're at more urgently we've had a couple members of the committee uh step down including one of our school committee members Amy will no longer be serving as a member of the the school committee and so I wanted to take this opportunity to open up to anybody who's sitting on the school committee now and we'll be serving for the balance of next year as well if you have a renewed interest in joining as a school Committee Member please send me an email and we will provide an update again at most likely the next meeting as to any reorganization or

103or renewed membership list of that subcommittee as well so anyone on the school committee is just in joining the school resource officer subcommittee please send me an email thank you and so just as a no for new committee members the new Boxborough members hopefully will join at the next school committee meeting which will be May 18th and that's when you will go through the entire reorganization of the school committee um and the way that works for new members is first you'll elect a chair and vice chairs and then there will be a summer workshop and you'll have time to consider the different roles that you might want to serve on the school committee so subcommittees all these things that we're we now actually have more subcommittees than we've had in a while doing some meaningful

104work it used to really just be budget and and policy that did a lot of the the heavy lifting but these two new committees the SRO committee and the leadership Coalition for hate and speech by a speech we won't have a negotiations subcommittee next year so you'll have time to consider all of those things and think about where you'd like to serve on the committee so we only have of one item on the consent agenda tonight which makes it not really a consent agenda but we have a need to approve the many minutes from 4 13 23. you do not have to have attended a meeting to vote on the minutes so is there a motion to approve the meeting minutes of 4 13 23. so moved second oh in favor aye any opposed any

105abstentions great uh uh all right Adam do you have the warrants up great well you said we have to be out by 8 30. so yeah all right so in one breath I move that the school committee vote to approve the below listed warrants totaling seven million three hundred seventy six thousand five hundred sixty dollars and zero cents AP vendor warrants as follows 23-02102 dated 414 2023 in the amount of 729 000 271.26 23-021c dated 421 2023 in the amount of 784.39 23-022a dated 4 28 2023 in the amount of two million one hundred forty eight thousand nine hundred eighty seven dollars seventy one cents payroll vendor warrant as follows 23-021 PR dated 420 2023 in the amount of one million two hundred twenty two hundred twenty four thousand three hundred seventy seven dollars and

106seventy six cents payroll vendor warrant as follows p2321 data 420 2023 and the amount of 2988 527.49 and Student Activity then Student Activity warrants as follows 23-021 sh dated 420 2023 in the amount of 25 631.39 and 23-022 bl dated 427 2023 in the amount of five thousand nine hundred eighty dollars and zero cents that's a good second any extensions all right Peter is there anything you'd like to highlight in the FYI um I know that in the packet there is proposed uh school committee meeting dates for 23.24 as well as the case annual report I know that Leela asked me ahead of the meeting if she could make a statement about something so go right ahead yeah it sounded dramatic but just quickly um May 11th is the end of the pandemic emergency order

107in Massachusetts um and that's going to cause significant changes depending on your insurance um but especially for things like coveted tests and vaccination insurance coverage um so there's a lot of information on the State website and email me if you have questions and the Nationwide ending of the pandemic emergency order meant that starting last month everyone who is on Mass health needs to renew their insurance coverage to make sure they still qualify without the expanded eligibility so make sure you do that thanks thank you Leela Peter is there anything you'd like to highlight oh mask mandate ends on May 11th 11th happy birthday to me go ahead Peter is there anything you'd like to share uh no as Tesla said the proposed school committee calendar for next year is in your packet you will notice

108that highlighted at the top is an option for a meeting start time based on what the committee wanted to do if you wanted to start at 6 30 I know a number of boards and committees in the community do start a little earlier um thinking people might be fresher with an earlier end time as well but I also don't know what time you know people's schedules kick in from work and other obligations and things but we could think about shifting that we also will have to pick a summer workshop date so you know that's also TBD as we get to the end of the year and I think once we get our Boxborough members then you know we'll send out a kind of doodle poll from our district office around you know possible summer workshop

109dates we are hoping to do more of a full day workshop or an extended Workshop this year just knowing that there's a lot of turnover but to really have time just to talk about how we want to all work together as a team to move move work forward Foxborough town meeting is next Monday May 8th it is asked that if you are a member of the regional school committee that you attend even if you are not a resident of Boxborough so I look forward to seeing all of you there um the next two school committee meetings are May 18th and June 8th here in the administration building at 7 pm is there a motion to adjourn right to that yeah we do need to uh thank Tessa for her service to our committee for the

110past six years you know Tessa our kids shared a bus stop and a first day of school for more of the years than you and I have served on this committee and while I know that we both have cringe-worthy first day of school pictures with our kids together we will hold those against them later um you know if I were to Define your service on this committee for the past six years I would say it's extraordinary not only did you succeed in your advocacy for more and better reading interventions but you also served as our chair for two consecutive years and a day today those those two consecutive teachers were through a pandemic with significant Community input on our work during that time and so I think it's really important that we thank you for

111your dedication and service to the community thank you foreign with that I'd like to make a motion to adjourn seconded all those in favor hi any opposed nope all right have a good night