001meeting is being conducted as a hybrid all of our school committee members are here in the auditorium with the exception of evelyn abaya issa amy krishnamurthy and jenny kremer who are absent along with any members of the public that choose to join us in person the following members are here diane baum kyra cook adam kline john peterson nora schein angie so yemen wang and myself in an ongoing effort to make our meeting as secure as possible members of the public who wish to comment virtually during the meeting were asked to register 24 hours prior to the start of the meeting using the link also found at the top of the agenda members who are here in person may stand up at the public microphone as we have done in the past members of the public
002who wish to view the meeting virtually may use actin tv's youtube channel found at the top of the agenda this meeting is being recorded and will be posted on actin tv's website at actontv.org welcome everybody to the last real meeting that i have to chair [Laughter] um thanks for coming anyone who's actually watching uh the day after we actually got out of school so we hope to have a speedy meeting tonight um if well there's no one here if there's members of the public who are pre-registered who would like to speak about an item that is not on the agenda would they please raise their hand so they can be recognized to speak for three minutes each corrine go ahead and unmute thank you um karen hogseth and acton first i'd like to thank angie
003and diane for their years can i go okay hold on justice i'd like to thank you it is not coming through we're just having a technical difficulty being able to hear you in the room right now so give us just a sec you can hear her okay all right try again corinne okay can you hear me is that better we're just going to do it this way all right i hope you don't get feedback um all right i'd like to thank angie and diane for their years of service to our school community many of us will especially miss their candid input and much needed voices of reason with the recent election this board has lurched even further to the left and is now firmly and indefinitely under the control of those who will continue to
004push their personal liberal agendas rather than focus on the education of our children last summer every family was asked to participate in a survey regarding their preference for in-person versus remote learning as i recall about 80 percent of the families wanted their kids back in person and i'm sure like me most assume that in person meant in person five days a week when was the last time 80 percent of our families agreed on anything by mid-august the state had issued guidance which would have permitted low transmission communities such as ab to offer classes full time but our administration and school committee ignored the state the science and the community they decided to stick with part-time school for everyone instead of focusing on an issue which had the clear support of the community this school committee
005chose to start off the year by entertaining a proposal they knew would be extremely divisive to get rid of the colonial name and mascot actually it wasn't a genuine proposal we all know the fix was in before it was presented the community to the community they knew there was no consensus for this and that doing so would most certainly lead to more division at a time when we least needed it this was discussed at the first meeting of the school year when nearly all of us were thinking only about when our kids would be back in school we foolishly expected education to be a priority of the school committee and administration now until september 25th was the community made aware of what was about to be forced down our throats that was eight days after
006it was officially presented to the school committee and after months of collaboration among members of the faculty and administration and some hand selected students two school committee members voiced concerns about the impact of a rush decision on our students and our community two other members asked for more time to learn about the issue on the other side one member said that this was simply not an issue which should take public input into consideration because it was simply the right thing to do of course the chair held this position as well and rammed the vote through even though nearly half of the weighted votes would have preferred more time the school committee and administration have failed our students and our community this year you had an opportunity to pave the way for other school districts to
007actually lead but instead you chose to do the absolute minimum good for our students while inflicting maximum harm but hey no more pain will be caused by the word colonial right and that's the near my family will be done with ab schools and it can't come soon enough the quality of education has deteriorated noticeably over the last 10 years it will be up to the families with younger kids to hold you accountable for delivering what many of them moved here for the best education their tax dollars could buy have a great summer i don't see any other hands raised then peter you get to follow that all right so a couple of updates for you you know the first one i just want to recognize that over the last week um both the at the
008state and federal level uh we've seen legislation signed in that recognizes juneteenth as both the state and federal holiday uh which marks the end of slavery you know i just want to take a moment and go over a couple of other dates that were important in that just to make sure we understand the reasoning so [Music] it was actually in 1862 that abraham lincoln had issued the original emancipation proclamation and then it was set to take effect on june 1st in 1863 on january 31st in 1865 was the date the 13th amendment passed congress and um it was later ratified on the 13th excuse me december 6th of that year so there's a lot of different dates that are important in history but juneteenth is recognized june 19th as the date that word of that
009reached the westernmost territories and in particular texas um so we just want to recognize that um we talked with the town the town is recognizing the town of acton is recognizing juneteenth as a holiday for all employees we are doing the same thing as a school district this year due to the late nature of it i made that decision myself to recognize that for our employees but that is something that we should talk about from a school committee perspective on the calendar for next year and how we want to proceed with that into the future i think that's also important not only from um just thinking about a typical work year perspective but also from a school calendar perspective as well this year it's after our school year ends but in some other years it
010might be during the school year so that is certainly something the committee is going to want to talk about the rest of my update i do just want to just thank a number of people for work over the course of this year you know i want to thank marie altieri for just extraordinary work um in hr or if you know you remember back to last summer we developed a fully remote learning program that has over 60 staff she worked with staff across the district to look at the various staff needs medical needs across all of our schools and departments and really think about how we could place staff in a way that prioritized everyone's individual needs so marie thank you for all of that dawn led all of our operations and management teams in determining
011deci protocols working directly with the nurses all year round and contact racing that involve nights weekends vacations i mean just an incredible amount of work there deb worked with all of her curriculum staff to plan professional learning to support new modes of learning provide curricular resources lesson plans for educators working with val gransowitz in supporting the development for the new remote program and scheduling for that dave vertolino has been working through all of the numerous grant opportunities over the course of the year to make sure we maximize every dollar that comes into the district debbie dixon had an extraordinarily extraordinary challenge that she faced in trying to think about how individualized education plans could be delivered in either remote or hybrid settings for about a thousand students so she and all of our special education
012staff worked in overdrive for the entire year jd was in charge of transportation and operations so multiple reroutes of all of our school buses had to take place over the course of the year cleaning you know protocols and all of our schools had to be in place amy bizowitz we can't think of a year where the tech infrastructure of this district was more prominent in what we were doing you know it probably became the most important operational element in this type of pandemic environment she got zoom contracts for us signed quickly she deployed devices for every single student in the district and had been really focused throughout the year on improving our network infrastructure to make sure that could all work at the same time aaron betes you don't often hear her name at school
013committee because she does a lot of our work behind the scenes with community education but they had to completely re-envision what a community education program could look like that included driver's ed but all of our extended day programs were actually repurposed from after school hours to in school hours to support students who needed care during the day as well every single principal was on the front lines of this all year working through you know student staff anxieties constant changes to operational guidance making sure our staff had what they needed in schools making sure that our students had what they needed when they came to school you know dealing with a wide wide range of beliefs about the pandemic certainly was a challenge for all of our principals nurses gave up their nights they gave up
014their weekends they gave up their vacations and these you know the nurses i don't know if we appreciate this but think back to what we understood about covid in august and september well if we had a suspected positive case in the schools the nurses were the person who actually took those students into their office and they were not vaccinated at the time but really putting themselves on the front line so we have a ton of appreciation for everything they've done they also were on the front line of dealing with parents who were very very frustrated with the state coveted protocols and just frankly didn't believe in the way the pandemic was being managed and that often got taken out on our school nurses as they were making protocols to have to quarantine be out of
015school for periods of time counselors really had to do a lot of work to make sure students were connected with the services that they needed and that was a herculean effort for a lot of our counselors the bus drivers had been transporting students all year you know they have to take time in between every single one of their runs to clean their buses sanitize surfaces and they did it with a smile on their face we just had a retirement ceremony in here a few days ago for our bus drivers and just what an awesome crew they were all year you know and the bus drivers did this willingly but they also worked reduced hours and they didn't get the same pay and salary that they would have had in a normal year and that's not
016insignificant our cafeteria staff were just absolutely incredible you know we've talked a lot about the community food program and we're going to recognize that in a couple of minutes here but in addition our caff staff had to individually package every meal for every student every single day and that takes a lot of extra time a lot of extra effort and we're just so grateful for all of that and then on the community meal program we served about a quarter of a million meals over the course of this year to members of our community who needed it classroom assistance and i know we've talked about them before this year at school committee but our classroom assistants don't forget actually picked up the ball and providing that flexibility that allowed us to check in with students when
017they were at home so they were managing in-person environments they were managing remote environments they were learning zoom along with all of the teachers in the district so a lot of gratitude for our assistants our custodians had additional cleaning protocols all year they spent the entire summer moving furniture in and out of classrooms rearranging classrooms making sure everything was ready to go our in-person teachers the ones who were here all fall had constant changes to protocols they were switching back and forth between in-person and online learning they were doing zoom check-ins with students who were at home while they were in their classrooms with other students and they quite frankly they had the courage to come in this fall when we really didn't know a lot about the virus and they they did put their
018students first our remote teachers and staff were absolutely amazing they spent count i don't know if you could ever imagine how many hours they spent but they had to develop an entire school from the ground up in about 30 days that they had to do it before they welcomed students back they were absolutely amazing doing this in the remote environment that never existed before the pandemic they placed students health and well-being all year at the forefront of their work and really focused on how to make meaningful connections with students and their families even though they weren't physically together we had an awesome rolling rally for our lrlp students that was just so well attended by families and it was what an incredible experience we've seen some pictures of it and we're just so grateful for
019all the work our remote teachers did i want to also just talk about our families for a moment they shouldered so much of the burden of education over the course of the year they had to support students while they were at home in either hybrid or remote environments and quite frankly the biggest thing the families did was they trusted us um as we started the year in person and they were patient with us and were they stayed flexible through all of the different changes that we had to enact that really you know shook family personal schedules um people were balancing work supporting students at home and that that's no small feat i also want to make sure i note our students they just demonstrated absolutely remarkable resilience over the course of the year and the
020courage to weather the incredibly difficult and challenging year that they had many of them did not get a chance to participate in a lot of the traditional activities they would have expected our seniors who just graduated it's not lost on me they actually lost their last two years of traditional high school experiences that they had planned on and that is a major time in our kids lives it it's also really important to note our junior high school students the ones that are leaving eighth grade now never had a full year at r.j gray they will never have had a full year at r j gray and are so it's just such disruption to our kids lives and the way they've come through this and the resilience they've shown is absolutely amazing and i also just
021want to end by thanking you as a school committee too you had to spend so many more hours in the last year than probably any school committee has ever had to spend meeting all summer long last year a lot of you did committee work over the summer helping us to plan for reopening that was absolutely herculean feat on a school committee level as well there was no way that in the last year we were ever going to meet everyone's needs and i think probably for me what's most frustrating about the last year is i think we all worked harder than we ever have and knew we were putting out 75 to 80 of what we could typically produce in a given year but what i will say is you know i think we're going to
022see that our kids are going to be able to bounce back from this we're so fortunate that we have better days ahead of us we're looking forward to a very very normal year next year in our schools and just very excited to be able to kind of close out this pandemic but i just wanted to end by making sure i recognized a lot of the people along the way and i just want to note that the entire effort around this year really took every single person in the community whether they were staff whether they were volunteers whether they were students whether they were families whether they were administrators and it really was a real group effort to try and get through this so thank you to everyone thank you to all of you for your
023support over the course of the year and um i will turn it back over to tess actually i'm not turning it over to tesla because i want to do a little bit of recognition um so we're going to go up and we're going to grab that microphone over there so we're so fortunate right now to be able to have with us kirsten nelson and some of the volunteers from the community food program that i just talked about serving just about a quarter of a million meals i think we surpassed a quarter of a million didn't we yeah i mean that really is no small feat and so we just wanted to welcome you and thank you for that as a school committee and so i'm just going to read a little bit here so i
024want to take an opportunity to recognize the partnership of the abu food services and the ab neighbor brigade volunteers since the pandemic the food services department and i said it has actually it's 265 000 meals at our curbside meals pickup we could not have done this without the amazing leadership of carson nelson so thank you kirsten as well as the support of the acton-boxborough neighbor brigade uh co-chapter leaders kathleen certain and cat did i pronounce your name correctly sir dan thank you norah mcmillan and all the neighbor brigade volunteers well over 800 activities were filled by 72 different volunteers so that is absolutely amazing i just can't imagine the level of dedication and support you did throughout the year i think a lot of community organizations would have started that pandemic gotten something started and
025then you see it fade off with volunteers and the fact that you were able to remain strong throughout the entire year is just such a testament to not only all of your leadership but just the tremendous community support you had and so thank you so much on behalf of the entire school district on behalf of the community and we just want to recognize you so kirsten we have a small token of appreciation for you and amy french i don't think i mentioned you earlier i'm so sorry amy yeah i think i skipped something amy thank you so much gene thank you i don't know what i did i think i skipped a line on my my script i'm so sorry please accept my apologies um but in all honesty thank you so much for everything
026you've done over the course of the year this was so big for the community and i can't imagine the number of families students and community members who really were able to you know be fed just as a result of everything you did so thank you congratulations peter can i add something over here marie so jean tibbetts is our junior high cafeteria manager and amy french is our high school cafeteria manager and in addition to all of their responsibilities if you can only imagine serving food in this environment they led and worked week after week after week and preparing all of the meals for the community and it and it's not stopping they're doing it through the end of july and literally without a day off or sometimes even a weekend so thank you thank you
027thank you [Applause] so i'm also going to just turn this over to marie for a minute and we just wanted to share the list of retirees with you and just read their names just so we can kind of appreciate all of the work and service that our retirees have given to the district thank you peter we were not able to do our district-wide retirement party this year the schools did do individual school celebrations for folks it's a pretty phenomenal point at which we have 42 staff members retiring with a total of 829 years of service to the district we have 11 teachers two administrators and 29 support staff and i'm going to just go down the list but as you're listening i'm going to talk about their years of service in particular the support staff
028that we have support staff really the district could not work without them run without them and many of them have been here for 20 to 30 years so at blanchard we have loretta krumlish who is a kindergarten teacher she was at conant for many years as a kindergarten teacher and is at blanchard now and she's been with us for 13 years we have patti harrison who's a special education teacher has been at blanchard for 20 years we have sue manhertz who is a kindergarten assistant and has been with us for 15 years and cheryl polano who is a special education assistant has been with us for 21 years at our carol hebner early childhood program jen weisberg is retiring she's a speech and language pathologist after 22 years with the district at conant we have
029robin harding who is a sixth grade teacher who has been with the district for 22 years and this year she taught in the rlp at douglas we have nancy mcgirl nancy has been a kindergarten assistant and has been with us for 24 years and tais savage is grade two classroom teacher who's been with us for 25 years at gates we have marian beardsley who is a physical therapist 21 years of physical therapy for our district mccarthy town david crane principal for 12 years kathleen cartier special ed assistant 26 years of helping students heidi cooperman is our visual arts teacher has been for 15 years and heather wilson is a first grade teacher at mccarthy town has been with us for 19 years miriam had quite a few carolyn benjamin is a kindergarten assistant has been
030with us for 11 years tria ellis is a special ed assistant 27 years mary pat gorham is a special ed assistant for 20 years colin mcdermott is a third and fourth looping teacher has been with us for 21 years monica scanlon is a special education assistant formerly a technology assistant 21 years and she worked the rop this year karen sauner has been a teacher with us for 26 years mostly first and second grade most recently kindergarten and then this year the rlp and as you know karen had really big roles with our acton-boxborough education association as vice president and president for a long time and she's a big part of our collaborative working relationship with our union fran strom has been a first and second grade teacher she's been with us for 20 years and
031yes there's a back at the high school larry dory our principal 27 years as a counselor assistant principal associate principal and principal tony amendelia who did the send fourth at graduation this year is a pe teacher has retired after 21 years eileen flannery is retiring a pe teacher for 37 years marge johnson is a special ed assistant for 24 years judy painter and some of these folks retired last summer so this is sort of since june 30th of last year but judy was a speech and language pathologist for 28 years and nancy silva special ed assistant for 24 years at the junior high school florence gilfix is retiring she's a french teacher she's been with us for 16 years and pat lauria special ed assistant for 18 years in facilities and transportation we have mickey
032bontempo he's the lead custodian at gates and he's been with us for 11 years we have some bus drivers nancy derost bus driver for 23 years yvonne haynes koliani bus driver 19 years daniel kerr bus driver 10 years and janice nichols who is our transportation manager was previously a bus driver 27 years community ed has three folks from the extended day program retiring jen benoit after 14 years lisa gravel after 19 years and jennifer gulliver after 13 years food services between last summer and now we have had three cafeteria managers retire out of eight so the douglas cafeteria manager kathy clifford after 24 years the conan cafeteria manager deb deduca after 32 years and the gates cafeteria manager linda mccusker after 26 years just imagine that 25 to 32 years of being a cafeteria manager
033for us and for our kids in human resources and central office karen call is retiring karen's been with us for 16 years she's the central office admin assistant as well as most recently she took on registrar responsibilities sally cunningham after 11 years has been our registrar previously she ran the extended day program and in student services linda blanco has been an admin assistant for 16 years so again over 800 hours 42 folks and we just want to really thank them and thanks for listening i'll just say oh that makes me feel a little old because mrs duka i believe was indeed there when i was at conant and flynn was my track coach so okay um now we want to take a moment to thank um diane and angie who are um retiring or leaving
034their positions this year um john do you want to go first i would love to and you know let me um tell people as somebody who's been on the school committee and then off the school committee that you're welcome to return and i hope you know we will see your faces you know in the cheap seats um and to share you know your reflections you know having had a little chance to set some distance between um this intense period of service and the future but i particularly wanted to recognize angie each member of the school committee brings a unique voice and perspective to our deliberations most members of the school committee are fortunate that we deliberate in english their native language angie so has been three years hard at work in english her second language
035and understanding u.s state and local government also a second language of sorts angie has exemplified the lifelong learner that we would like our students to become on undaunted by the apparent complexity of the course of study while some members of the community see the work at our full school committee meetings only a few recognize that substantial preparation for those meetings occurs first at home then in subcommittee angie has been an active member of our budget subcommittee discussions this year and a contributor to other work throughout her term of service having considered the issues angie has been a valuable double minority she has spoken on many topics and voted her minority opinion on many occasions perhaps this is related to her upbringing in taiwan the republic of china a much smaller country than the neighboring people's
036republic of china she has never taken the easy route of just going along each time she has done so the school committee members and the public are reminded that we are not of one mind but of many the strength of our actions relies on robust debate angie has been one of our debaters i am glad to have had the opportunity to work with angie over the past two years and most thankful thankful for the energy and intelligence she has brought to our committee thank you so angie i have a card for you and beth says if you would like to take your chair home tonight it's in the back of the auditorium but if you don't want to pick it up until next week you can do that too all right so diane in true
037tessa fashion i did not write anything formal as i would expect you i i'm sure you would expect nothing less so um diane i can't thank you enough for the last four years that i have been on the committee um if we take a little road back in history my first meeting was the resignation of glenn brand which was quite a meeting to be the first meeting and i was quickly thrown into all of the personalities of the then members of the committee which made our committee look just really meek and mild at the time so that's how i met diane and over the course of four years i can't tell you how much i have learned from you i think that we won't really recognize until we start our work in september what a
038gaping hole you have left in the committee and the knowledge that you bring in the work ethic that you have maintained over all of these years despite hardships in your own life and work responsibilities and everything else and you truly embody what it means to be a school committee member you are the most thorough person i have ever met in my entire life you are a policy wonk like no other i don't know how you hold all of the information that you have in your head because you seem to know everything and if you don't know then you will find 18 articles that support you know the information and it's really truly astounding so the most important thing we have to thank you for though are the comfy chairs that we sit in right now
039because this may have been one of your greatest contributions to school committee was enabling us to move to this space which those who are new may not know but we used to sit on those chairs or chairs actually some chairs like that some chairs that were worse sorry they were wooden chairs with like 25 year old cushions sort of on them only special people got cushioned see it's been that long i didn't know we sat on hard wooden chairs and it was miserable it was horrible and so all of you people who just joined who get to enjoy these comfy unbelievably you know great chairs it is because of diane so diana had a vision for this space and you know sometimes on school committee it just it really takes someone to say i think
040we should do it this way and to do the work to explore what it would take and diane really did that it was it seems easy now that we're sitting here but it was a wholesale change i mean we talked about moving furniture back and forth from the two spaces and it's just we take it for granted now but thank you for this space because i think it makes a huge difference and i can't imagine how we would have done it in covid without this space so that's truly remarkable and your work my favorite part of you is that we share the same passion about literacy and so to have worked for the past four years with a partner hand in hand on pushing our district to do the right thing and to really view
041literacy through the eyes of science and to do what's right for our kids has been nothing short of amazing so thank you for that you've become an incredible friend i will miss you terribly seeing you every other thursday night but you must promise me that we will still see each other and i just really want to thank you for the amount of work you've you've led to subcommittee meetings you've chaired subcommittees and your work is always incredibly thorough and it's truly a model for other people to follow so thank you so so so much so if other members of the committee want to chime in i know that angie has something to say for herself but if other people want to share their accolades your now is a time to do that nora go ahead
042i also didn't write anything formal but i just wanted to say to angie how much i've enjoyed working with you and i've only been on school committee for a short time but when i was first getting to know the members of school committee when i was new angie and i had a lot of really interesting conversations and one of my favorite things that i remember from it is angie just saying to me in the beginning you know we can listen to each other even when we disagree and it was really important for me and i hope that's something that we carry forward that angie's so good at at hearing a different point of view and expressing her own point of view and still having a friendship even when we didn't always see eye to eye
043so thank you thank you for that and i will um miss you miss that that aspect that you brought to the committee and for diane i [Music] think that you're a school committee member that i would have found extremely intimidating when i first started on school committee if you weren't so compassionate and kind and warm and generous with sharing your knowledge and i have always felt like you were someone who was really willing to mentor me so i want to thank you for that any question that i had or just about policy or something that happened in a meeting i really appreciated your willingness to talk at length or just give me a quick answer and i think i remember one of my first meetings afterwards asking you on the way out the door what
044is a stakeholder and i felt like i just didn't know anything there was so much new vocabulary to learn and um so i just want to thank you for that your um your hard work and the amount of research that you put into all of the things that you're considering are really um inspiring to me um so thank you angie go ahead yeah i also didn't write down something formal but i just want to say from diane that you are set such a role model to all of us and um it's a passion that you have for the kids it's a passion of love and it's a passion of the education that you have and nobody can beat your quote anymore i just don't know how i can be able to and for every subject
045and if i have any question on the school community process or whatever and you're always there you you'll candidly answer the question and help the new members and i remember when he was chair then you set the uh like a intro for the new members you set up that process and that's tremendous help and also when we in the superintendent search you chair that and we have this great superintendent here and with all the years to come and i really think we ser without your dedication effort and the leadership there and i don't i don't see how that would happen so um well we're both coming then we hope i hope that we i still connect with you and keep learning from you and thank you for such a great membership member thank you oh
046okay thank you yeah i just want to take the chance to thank you all for an unforgettable three years and the chance to work with you i sincerely thank all of you and the ab community as the first generation immigrant originally from taiwan i have frequently been the person that usually has a different opinion from most of you i view homework as a channel to refresh that has been learned of the day and help students to form time management and working habits and there are other perspectives but i hope that or you also see one aspect of my personality which is my strong curiosity and that may explain why i always have so many questions okay so i'm really sad that this is my last meeting but i'm hoping that my curiosity will stay and
047keep brewing in the community in a committee so what is curiosity to me when a person has a different opinion not only do we hear the opinion but also we are curious to understand the basis of the differences vice versa when there is a unanimous vote are we curious why there are no different opinions in such a diverse community with a global environment nowadays how do we connect communicate and balance the differences this is an important skill set to own i'm looking forward to seeing that we are not only creating the best learning environment we also keep the strong curiosity of each other to keep this community growing and stronger as the diversity committee mentioned i want to reiterate the buddy recommendation this summer please maybe treat or buy a cup of coffee with a
048person in our community that has a different perspective on the chosen topic and you want to discuss until both of you have a richer understanding of the differences between both of you this can be challenging in many ways for example english may not be the first language so the person expressed may not be what it meant to express or there is a culture barrier or there's a character or personality clash on the fun one fun fact one day when i when i uh one day sorry i'm lost my line here one day when i checked my health data recorded automatically automatically by my eye watch i noticed some abnormal heart rate heartbeat rate i was curious about what happened and guess what i find out that is a time before i was speaking at the
049school committee just like right now okay so i know it's funny but making a public speech in a second language second language in front of a community where you know you consistently have a different perspective and guess what i have data to prove the situation can drive you heart rate to root to the roof by the way my heart rate has been dropping a little bit now thanks to school committee for the training as yebin will become the only asian representative now with english as the second language and different cultural background i know how challenging it is to capture all the differences in two minutes i think he will appreciate support and consideration from this perspectives in the future i just want to say thank you all again it's just a great honor to be
050able to work with all of you special thanks to john and diane who answered my numerous school committee 101 questions and thanks to peter and the great leadership team and uh thank you for your strong leadership and keep av strong and best is not here her non-stop admin support thanks to con a b community for giving me the opportunity to serve and i want to thank tessa for sharing in the two historic years and also each of you that uh for your dedication and support by the way heads up i find another commonality between you and me i also do not public speaking thank you thank you angie i know that you and i have not always seen eye to eye at all but um i do have a tremendous amount of respect for the
051amount of work extra work that this takes you to sit on this committee and i do understand and appreciate the fact that what i'm i understand that both of us hate public speaking and so it does it does take quite a bit i guess it's good that you've never had to present a town meeting because that's a whole other level of heart racing problems but your voice will be missed and i hope that you will attend school committee meetings or send in a question once in a while and um i i think that the committee will have grown from your time on the on the committee so thank you do you want to say something for once i have not written anything down so i just want to thank everyone for allowing me to be
052a student of good governance and leadership over the past six years i i don't commit to things unless i can pour my heart and soul into what i commit to and i do that with everything so it's been quite an honor and i'm in a selfish way i've you know i i did it for me and and for the students that i serve and i the growth has been exponential and it has changed my life so i i just um i appreciate i i feel like it's my job to find out what i have to learn from everyone um as individuals and as the group it's like paul's uh 12th member and um i i have the growth has just been exponential so thank you to each and every one of you because i couldn't
053be who i am without you so you know i just want to say you know angie i very much appreciated the time that you've been on the committee um you know pre-pandemic we had a lot of one-on-one meetings and more opportunities for the one-on-one meetings and it was just always great to be able to sit and have that conversation and understand the perspectives that you had on different issues and really use that to be able to inform our thinking and kind of keep growing ourselves as leaders so thank you so much you know diane you were the first chair i came in with as a superintendent um you know so i just can't thank you enough you know for all of the leadership that you've shown on the committee uh whether it was as the
054chair when i started or on budget sub or on policy sub this year you know just your ability to lead be thoughtful in the direction that you're trying to set for something and you know be consistent and follow through with what you're doing is just so impressive so thank you so much for everything i've really enjoyed working with both of you i very much appreciate your time and service tessa you know you've been chair for two years and i i think as angie just said you know these are probably the two most historic years in education of the at least the last 100 um in terms of the level of disruption the challenges that education faces um you know and it's it's not just the pandemic it's society it's you know where are we going
055with education what does equity mean to our schools um and you know your ability to be able to navigate those um and to do that and really just continue to prioritize the work of the committee to try and navigate you know a a diverse committee that has different opinions on a lot of topics it's particularly hard and diane can attest to this having been a chair but when you have 11 people trying to run a meeting in less than three hours and still give people an appropriate amount of voice and time is really very very challenging and your ability to do that and keep things moving and focused i just very much appreciate i appreciate all the support and your ability to give me kind of community perspectives on different issues that arose over the
056last couple years was invaluable so we just wanted to give you a small token of thanks that i think someone stole oh no adam took it but we just wanted to say thank you for all of your time and service over the last two years uh this has been uh you know i i don't unless you have been a chair i don't think you know the amount of time that the chair needs to put in uh to be able to run the committee i mean it's probably you know on the order of a half-time job in terms of time commitment that it would require to be able to be an effective chair so thank you so much you get some flowers for your halftime service [Laughter] but thank you thank you i'd like i'd like
057to add um a couple of comments about tessa as well uh so when tessa accepted graciously her second term the joke was that she would get a new car out of this and i'll point out that she and i drove in a loaner car today that maybe will be your new car in the future but uh i expect at some point we'll get you a a greater token of our appreciation that that may have four wheels but that just may not be something you can sit in on your own but i i mean i think your your service to to the the committee in the community as a chair over the past two years has been absolutely amazing through some of the most difficult times that we've seen in the district in um and i
058just want to thank you for the amount of effort and thoughtfulness that you've put into it um at i think a great deal of um challenges on your own to to be managing and and also to sit here as a leader i know that the few times that i've sat in your place i've felt woefully ill-prepared which which only speaks to the amount of of work and effort that you put in behind the scenes to make sure that when the 11 of us sit here twice a month we have a smooth and efficient meeting that's that's really thoroughly thought out and so you leave big shoes to fill and i hope whoever fills them is is ready for that challenge so thank you for your your dedication to the district thank you everyone for all
059those kind words now this is the part of the meeting where i get to read something [Laughter] again okay so over the last couple of weeks um you all have put in some work in writing some evaluations um about peter so thank you for turning them in even if it was a hair past june 5th as jenny wrote on the date of her of her actual evaluation so in looking at all of those evaluations i did my best to summarize them and put together something that best reflects what people said um it is it is difficult to look through 11 evaluations and be able to come up with something coherent i told peter jokingly that it was going to say you did a great job 5 stars love tessa so i i did write something
060that ended up being much longer than i thought it was going to be so um i guess the process is that i will read it and we can discuss afterwards if you'd like and then we'll have a vote to accept it evaluating a superintendent in a normal year is a daunting task evaluating a superintendent on his stated goals as we slowly emerge from a worldwide pandemic seems almost unfair by all accounts peter has helped our school district whether the storms brought on by pandemic schooling the transition from the complete closure at the end of the 2020 school year into the hybrid remote environment that started this year was nearly seamless peter and his team worked tirelessly throughout the summer months to craft a hybrid program that ended up keeping kids in person for 170 days
061as well as fully as a full as well as a fully remote program that was universally hailed as a success it is important to note that although all goals were not met to the extent that i know peter had hoped there was significant progress made in every area it is also important to note in looking back at last year's evaluation suggestions that were made by committee members for improvement have been largely addressed the uncertainty related to the current school year began as soon as schools remotely let out in june of 2020. scientific knowledge about covet 19 was sparse and although members were dropping numbers were dropping not members we continued to wear masks and social distance these barriers didn't deter peter and his team as they immediately dove into planning for the 2021 school year
062despite a lack of definitive guidance from desi they planned to run two simultaneous programs an in-person option that would begin the year in a hybrid mode and a fully remote option that would remain that way for the entire year in order to accomplish the structure they created a seventh elementary school that was made up of teachers and staff from all six elementary programs the rlp remote learning program had a principal and vice principal and about 800 students teachers and staff at the junior high and high school were also able to offer schooling remotely to nearly 400 students the magnitude of accomplishment represented by these two programs and serving our students all year cannot be overstated peter's student learning goal was to support educators and families to implement strategies to increase student engagement through effective synchronous
063and asynchronous instructional practices a phrase peter and i frequently exchanged throughout the year was silver linings there were many things about the new remote environment that presented challenges to our students families and teachers but our educators challenged themselves to make remote learning engaging and exciting for many students we will inevitably be using the lessons learned this year for many years to come as we continue to evaluate our students engagement peter's professional practice goal was to plan for and support leadership transitions across the district we have successfully hired a new high school principal a new special education director a new elementary principal as well as two interim principals to begin next year hiring in the middle of a pandemic is no easy feat and i am confident that peter will facilitate these new educators transitions into
064the district peter's district improvement goals suffered the most during the pandemic as much energy and time was devoted to managing the challenges that constantly arose with changing conditions much of our leadership teams spent their time contact tracing managing individual student needs and ensuring compliance with changing state guidance the goal of using key findings from pandemic schooling to guide future practices will be an ongoing pursuit as we begin to look at school next year peter has put equity at the center of his work and despite the pandemic this was evident in the final report of the district's diversity equity and inclusion family advisory group our district has suffered numerous instances of hate over the past year as well as a contentious debate over the mascot it would be easy to dismiss any efforts as unsuccessful in
065light of these incidents listening to the leaders of this group present however it's clear that there has been significant work done in the areas of hiring practices family engagement creation of affinity groups school committee policies and curriculum support it is the hope of the committee that these efforts will continue into the next school year the goal which was most affected by the crazy year of education was to ensure effective evidence-based screening instruction and assessment in literacy and mathematics in all general education classrooms pre-k through 12. while we adopted the i ready assessments this year the need for consistent assessment across grades continues we've made great strides in our literacy work and there will be a consistent math curriculum in k-8 next year but there is still work to do in ensuring that all of our
066classrooms are participating in this initiative instructional leadership by many measures peter was proficient in his approach to instructional leadership with the constantly changing conditions due to covet as well as moving targets from the state peter and his team put together an incredibly consistent year of educational programming for the students of our district many members noted the creation from the ground up of an entirely remote instructional option the 800 students at the elementary level became part of a program that truly developed as a community of learners despite their distance from each other seeing photos of their end of the year meetup was testament to the connections that the staff were able to create and maintain with their students through a screen teachers were given access to lots of professional learning related to remote teaching and as
067with our in-person staff were able to evolve and grow with their students as the year wore on the presentations we received as a school committee from the world languages department at the high school as well as the presentations around literacy and mathematics instruction at the elementary level make it clear that the district is moving in a positive direction to address not only inequity of access and gaps in learning but consistency across the district areas for improvement were consistently noted by members as the newly adopted district strategy is implemented it is clear that an area of growth that needs to be addressed is inconsistent instruction and assessment across school programs and buildings we also need to do more work in achieving consistency of data informed decision making with the implementation of a system of tiered support
068at the elementary schools it is hoped that many of these issues will be addressed in the coming year management and operations as one member put it kovid presented significant operational challenges this year and peter's performance really shined peter received many exemplary remarks in this area while six members rated peter as proficient in this area five members rated his performance as exemplary members noted the remarkable consistency of our educational programs despite the changing mandates from the state not only was peter able to deploy his incredibly competent team to manage the various aspects of our coveted response he was able to effectively hire new leaders at the high school in mccarthy town as well as a special education director peter is remarkably good at utilizing the strengths of his administrative team and this is apparent in the
069significant progress he made in achieving his goals despite the worldwide pandemic one of peter's greatest strengths is his management of the budget starting last summer peter and his team were able to accurately predict the ppe and technology needs that would face the district and effectively use grant money to meet these needs while protecting our budget what started as an initiative to begin the use of one-to-one devices at the high school became a full implementation at grades 9 through 12 with the purchase of new chromebooks for all students as budget season concluded peter's desire to implement mtss across the district was apparent as he came up with alternate funding solutions when his initial proposal was met with resistance his flexibility and commitment to the district's vision make him exemplary in this area of his job family
070and community engagement the majority of the committee felt that peter was proficient in the areas of family and community engagement although four members felt his performance was exemplary he received many exemplary remarks on several of the indicators one member put it nicely this was a year of strongly voiced opinions from the community with disparate and even opposing demands peter is highly skilled in the art of listening while he did not waver when decisions were necessary he also demonstrated that he sees the value in communicating openly about his decision-making process i have observed a sincerity that allows for trust and this has been invaluable in a year when trust was paramount throughout the many challenges our district faced from mascot changes to zoom bombing to the constantly changing conditions due to the pandemic peter maintained consistent
071high quality communications with the community we continued the practice of school committee chair and superintendent coffees but they were held as webinars as opposed to in-person meetings peter provided regular updates about covet related changes to school schedules and procedures and wasn't afraid to note that sometimes we just didn't know what was coming down the pike peter was also steadfast in his approach to maintaining diversity equity and inclusion as the central focus of the district's ongoing work last year this was identified as an area for growth and peter did not disappoint in his commitment to using this lens to shape our district's work there was one member that would like to see peter take into account more community input into the district strategy going forward this member noted a discrepancy between the desires of some community
072members and the direction taken by the newly adopted strategy other members felt that peter's engagement with the dei family advisory group as well as the input he sought from both the school committee and the district leaders was sufficient in shaping the adopted strategy professional culture peter received high marks for his work on professional culture and was rated proficient by the majority of the committee one member summed up the feelings of the majority of our members peter is not the first superintendent in acton-boxborough committed to growing school school communities in a district culture where diversity whether cultural ethnic racial or based on gender or sexual identity language or ability is treasured as one of our best assets and forms the basis of a sense of belonging for students and families but he may be the first
073to succeed at it when our communities engaged in difficult conversations peter continuously reminded us that what we own is our response to bias and injustices and the opportunity to become more inclusive that these moments make possible the high value he places on open dialogue was evident in the central role he played in bringing visions inc to our towns and in times when he expressed his disappointment when our processes failed to create an environment where stakeholders seek to understand an alternative position rather than reinforce their own he worked with leadership teams to re refine district strategic objectives and goals that strengthen our pursuit of inclusivity equity and engagement and brought this vision into the public sector as well he aligned acton-boxborough's annual school improvement plan processes with district-wide strategic object objectives for the first time in
074our history he supported equity-driven policies and built consensus for a multi-tiered system of support so that we can become a more inclusive school system with a shared vision for high standards of achievement for all this foundational work has begun to build momentum for change i believe that peter's work in the aggregate has enabled many to expand their sense of what it means to be an individual in an increasingly diverse community this kind of self-inquiry or revisioning of self is perhaps the first step toward equity in its most authentic more permanent sense that we were at times caught this year in cycles of dysfunction due to the pandemic and national and community tensions i credit peter's patient consistent and thoughtful leadership as a major contributor to setting us back on the course of building the meaningful
075partnerships that are at the root of improving and entrenching an inclusive school culture it takes a village overall the committee expressed sincere gratitude that we have peter at the helm he has demonstrated true leadership through what was arguably the most difficult year that any of us have ever faced in education we are excited to have extended peter's contract and look forward to continuing this work together for these reasons the acton-boxborough regional school committee hereby gives the rating of proficient to peter light superintendent of the acton-boxborough regional school district on the indicators of instructional leadership management and operations family and community engagement and professional culture as well as proficient as an overall rating respectfully submitted tessa mckinley so we can discuss if anyone would like to say something or share anything and then i'll accept emotion
076as well so i just want to say that um i i i had a i had a teacher call me a couple weeks ago who had enrolled in a certification program that i run and um she she said she couldn't come because her superintendent had had left and her assistant superintendent district had left and her principal left and she needed to leave a little early and there was nobody to ask so she like literally couldn't um like manage the schedule without it so um i think that that when i look around and i see you know the quality of the leadership here and and you know with with you at the helm um we're all sitting here together for a reason um and a lot of districts aren't sitting there together so it's really um
077remarkable leadership and from from peter and you're you're kind of like is only as good as your leadership team in a way so your this district is lucky to have you and to have the leadership team in place that we have so with that um i guess i'll make a motion unless anyone else wants to jump in um to i don't have the language but oh it is on the agenda to find it oh i see okay um i move that we accept the annual summative review for superintendent peter light dated june 17th this is supposed to be 2021 as presented second is there anything else that anyone would like to say adam yeah i kind of wish that the the um superintendent update that peter gave us earlier this evening was available prior to
078doing my evaluation because in there the 15 minutes that peter spent thanking everybody also included the the just the wealth of uh work that was done this year um under peter's leadership and i think um it's great to call out all the the people who you work with who who make you and the district so successful but really there were just there were so many things that you listed in that that really speak to um the huge number of accomplishments that you got done this year in a really difficult time and and i would just add that i really hope that next year we get to call out all of your huge accomplishments without the qualifier of in a pandemic year well adam stole one of my lines you know which is the kind of
079thing that he would do you know after we heard you know from the diversity equity and inclusion group last week i'm like and we had to do your review before i got this what's wrong with this um and then you know i think adam also stole my second idea which is that when peter you know started and gave his update um and recognized you know all of the things that are required from our community in order for us to be successful um you could really hear the empathy in peter's voice and if there's a theme that's running through this meeting and the things that we're trying to discuss you know whether it was angie talking about these challenges of language and nora said something similar it is in fact having that communal empathy that lets
080us work together to do things and i i think the other thing um that's true um you know diane you know has passion and and of course true love for her work and i think that's also true about peter you know and and again um i i think this is a characteristic of the community and it's great to also see it in the superintendent people who really want to do an exceptional job you know don't do it because they're concerned what some school committee might say about their future performance they do it because of their inner passion and and desire to do excellent work and and peter has exemplified that you know and i am so grateful that um we have had you know the benefit of your leadership you know from being able to
081see some of the things close hand and wrestled with some of the information there was a lot of very sketchy information through the year um that in my view you know peter did an excellent job of sort of taking the lay of the land saying here's what we know now and now you know i'll make all these operational decisions that are going to let things go forward and we had a really good example of that you know in the issue with edco it's just like oh here's your bonus topic for the year and peter was willing to say there's work here that needs to be done i'm the one that can do that work and he did it so um all of that was just you know absolutely spectacular um and i think you know
082as i also want to you know thank tessa for a really thoughtful um document that you know that was not an easy thing to put together and it sort of touched on it well it touched i mean the the job it's a big job there's a lot to it you know and there's a lot of things that that could be talked about i think you know the big challenge you know in my mind going ahead as is in there and as mentioned elsewhere is this question of developing you know a good assessment program so that you know we get that positive feedback loop or we do something we have a way to measure that it was effective and then we can see it over a period of years because you know all of this you
083know of course it's day to day it's week to week you know it's year to year you know and for many of our students we have the benefit of being providing their education for 12 years um so that's a tremendous opportunity and also for us a tremendous challenge i hope that we can work really hard at our acceptance programs in the next couple of years all right there is a motion in a second all those in favor hi any opposed any abstentions great that passes unanimously yeah so you know first thank you everyone i really appreciate that um one thing that we didn't get to do last year for those of you who are new on the committee but that i have done it each year since i started was set up one-to-one meetings uh
084with all the school committee members during the summer last summer it just couldn't happen we were spending i don't know how many hours a week at this point really focused on just trying to open our schools so that had to fall by the wayside but we will do that again i do go through everyone's individual evaluations as well and have an opportunity to talk with you about any feedback you had that maybe wasn't in the overall aggregate because you can't say everything and she's trying to kind of develop a composite but it really is important to me to be able to have those conversations about feedback talk about what each of you wants as an individual as we head into the next school year um i always do caution that with 11 people i can't
085necessarily do everything everyone wants we have to kind of pick and choose and that's why the committee has to speak with one voice at the end of it um but but that is important to me i also just want to reiterate that you know all those nice things that that tessa read and you said about me are the work of the staff who work here um you know i mean ultimately it's on the backs of our staff it's on the backs of our educators it's on the back some of the other leaders in the district you know i kind of sit here and when things go well i get to you know hear nice accolades but it really is a lot of other people's work that goes into this um i also distinctly remember you
086know the the family webinar we did last year where uh we used slido as a technique we were trying it for the first time and you know the number one upvote thing was if anyone dies or you're going to resign um or if anyone gets covered will you resign it was something to that effect and i remember that and i remember those feelings of sitting through those webinars and really dealing with the really wide wide range of understanding and wide range of beliefs about what this pandemic was doing um and just how challenging that was to navigate and so it's such a good feeling to sit on what we we hope sticks as the other side of this pandemic and and certainly feeling good about looking forward into the future i think we've have laid
087a lot of the groundwork for some of the feedback that i heard around assessment and looking at more consistency across some of the instructional programs in our district um i think we're poised to really be able to grow that next year and i'm excited about being able to to work with our staff to do that so thank you peter all right so mauren is kind enough to join us tonight thank you warren um our second read of the um abrhhs handbook and to the best of my knowledge we did not receive any feedback from the committee on any changes so lauren's here so if anyone has questions or anything we can ask her if not then we can make a motion to accept the handbook i move that we approve the abrh student handbook for
088fy 22. second any questions or discussion great all those in favor aye any opposed any abstentions super that passes unanimously thanks for joining us lauren thank you lauren everybody have a nice evening okay all right so town meeting updates so um acton acton hasn't had theirs yet so john you get to go second and adam you're listed so even though i presented you can go i will share that tessa did an absolutely amazing job of presenting our school district update and budget at the boxborough town meeting and as such the budget as a whole in boxborough was approved and so thank you to tessa and thank you to the committee for helping prepare a great presentation and i did really write a script you did and yeah looking forward to monday evening john well well
089thank you i also will be looking forward to showing adam's slides um if he looks really carefully you'll see i did a little font adjustment because there was room to to blow some things up a little bit to make them easier to read but that's it you get pdfs from now on i just can't resist what can i say the um the good news is you know we have a ptown meeting last night and i had requested to the moderator to extend our time for five minutes to eight minutes because you know one of the things we wanted to update the community on was the new building and the moderator said absolutely that's important so uh presentation that i make on monday night will be very very similar to the fleet town meeting video for
090people who have watched that john you can stay on because you get to give a health insurance trust update the most i've let you speak all year so enjoy it [Laughter] wow it's the long leash the health insurance trust date update is short because um there was a failure to post although we had all of our documents and things had been distributed and sent things over to the town clerk in acton the town clerk did not post um and we will be meeting um next thursday i will mention you know one thing because obviously we i saw all the documents that we were going to review we will end the year plus minus with a cash flow loss of about two and a half million dollars because the trust had a healthy balance that is
091not the end of the world but what that is the end of is you know less than market rate increase in health insurance so when we start to look at next year's budget we will again be looking at a very healthy increase in the cost of health insurance so that's just something to keep in mind as we go ahead and when we come back in september obviously i'll have the full you know year in review and can provide a little bit more context thanks sean um you have meeting minutes from last week in your packet um i don't know that there was any changes submitted so i'll entertain a motion to approve those second any discussion great all those in favor aye any opposed any abstentions super those pass unanimously i have to say i
092was really hoping someone would say kira you muted [Laughter] that would have been good um adam would join to update us on building committee there's not many updates since last week there were some visits for the building committee members this monday and there are some i think scheduled for next wednesday as well to go visit the building site was there anything in the fyi that you wanted to know peter we're at the end there is and i just wanted to make sure there was nothing else on the other page um deb bookers we didn't really you know our school committee meetings were so focused on a lot of the end of the year stuff right now but we deb bookers was nice enough to actually produce a memo for you with steam updates on the
093year because we want to make sure that you understand our work around science technology engineering arts and mathematics has not stopped because the pandemic and our staff has continued to really move this work forward we didn't get to do a formal presentation to you but we wanted to have just a little tidbit of information for you to be able to take for the summer and we wanted to make sure you didn't go without reading for this meeting the the um the unruly splats that it's that first the first bullet um that's at mccarthy town and what i was just wondering what grade what grades does that pertain to they're going to start off with primary and then work their way up but it's something that all the students will be able to partake it's really
094very exciting they think they'll be able to um attend to all of the computer science standards in the the um can what is it called the digital literacy new computer science standards that all the computer science standards will be met through that activity for all the students the memo is phenomenal thank you for doing that i'll just note that our next meeting is tuesday july 20th it's a workshop so it says beginning at six are we having dinner at five is that peter keeps saying it's a retreat and i have to keep yeah yep as of right now um we're planning for dinner at five and then you know a workshop at six and that's usually two to three hours on the workshop so you know five to nine is generally the commitment um as
095of right now we believe we have rob evans lined up rob is a former school committee member from wellesley he is also a psychiatrist and actually speaks nationally and works with school districts all around the country and leadership teams and school committees kind of around you know school committees and so we're hoping to spend a little bit of time i've been talking with tessa about what the agenda might look like but being able to just debrief what happened over the course of this year during the pandemic and reflect on that a little bit and then also talk about kind of the work of the committee and the roles that different members play on the committee as we move forward into next year so just a little bit of preview of that and i'll just note
096that it's a tuesday and not a thursday so we have need for an executive session to be convened under mgl chapter 30a section 21a purpose 7 to comply with or act under the authority of any general or special law or federal grant and aid requirements mgl chapter 30a section 22f to consider approval and possible release of executive session minutes from previous meetings on may 21st 2020 june 18 2020 august 5th 2020 october 1st 2020 november 5th 2020 december 3rd 2020 january 21st 2021 february 11 2021 march 11 2021 april 1st 2021 may 20th 2021. did we really have that many executive sessions please note that the committee will not return to open meeting is there a motion oh i move sorry no i moved oh yeah yep okay so do we have to do roll
097calls or go into i thought so so just to remind everyone these were mailed to you last night all right uh adam yes kyra yes diane yes norah yavin angie yes john yes and me yes