001all right thank you everyone for joining us we began at 6 30 with an executive session tonight and i apologize for the couple minutes delay thank you for waiting for us this meeting is being conducted remotely via zoom webinar per remote participation policy bedja the following members are in attendance in the auditorium evelyn abaya issa diane baum adam klein jenny cramer nora shine john peterson angie so yeben wang and myself and kiera cook is attending virtually amy christian murthy is absent tonight in an ongoing effort to make our meeting as secure as possible we ask members of the public to view the meeting using acton's tv acton tv's youtube channel found at the top of the agenda those who wish to comment during the meeting were asked to register to the start of the meeting
002using the link also found at the top of the agenda these procedures are now posted with our public participation policy bedh this meeting is being recorded and will be posted on actin tv's website at actontv.org for our remote policy all votes will be done by roll call i will call each member's name and they will state how they vote so welcome to everybody who's joining us via the webinar i first want to say congratulations to ben blumenthal and andrew schwartz who will join us on school committee after being sworn in at the end of actontown meeting in june that is a little bit of a change for us because ordinarily actontown meeting would be this coming monday and then they would start right away but instead all of our regular meetings for the year will
003already be over when they join um bucksboro's election is may 18th and as of now i believe that adam klein is the only person running for his seat so congratulations to ben and andrew and we look forward to having you join us um it is the time in our meeting when we have public participation if members of the public who registered would like to speak at this time to anything that is not on the agenda they can raise their hands so you can be recognized for three minutes each and adam will be managing that all right scott you're permitted to speak thank you uh congratulations to the new members of the school committee hopefully uh you know change in the team will uh be a good sign for moving forward in a positive way but
004i i do want to say that the school committees should provide a statement in response to the full police report released uh just last week on the zoom bombing incident from last december and there was emergency meetings and tremendous tension in the schools and community and it all resulted from what we now know is a teenage prank that the perpetrator admitted to from arizona no connection to the schools in early march school-sponsored political message signs were placed in the town common a burial ground for three of america's first to die in the revolutionary war signs have since been removed who decided to put put the signs there there's two new vague policies that will be talked about tonight and possibly voted on on curriculum and this seems to be a door that is now open
005to make it easier to teach morals and not academics without the parents having input on this thank you very much that's all i see for public participation thank you adam okay uh then it's time for peter to do your superintendent's update all right so thank you everyone and good evening um welcome back i wanted to start off by giving you an update we've had a series of um anti-semitic incidents at the the high school where we found graffiti two of them were in bathroom stalls and then we just had another recent one where there was a swastika on a student desk we've continued to investigate those it's very hard to investigate something that happens in a bathroom because you don't have a precise time and date that you can pinpoint that too it's you don't
006have cameras you don't have witnesses you know for obvious reasons um the desks you know it's interesting we we just brought 300 desks out of storage at the high school and have been putting those into classrooms so we're unsure if it's recent or if it's older um however what you know we've been thinking about is even if it's not recent it still happened at some point and so that's you know a perspective i want to make sure we keep that even if it's not happening right now it's happening at some point we certainly need to be be working through that i wanted to just make sure we reaffirm our commitment to making sure that our schools are you know increasingly more inclusive and more just as schools i think you know we certainly don't tolerate
007hate we don't tolerate hate symbols or graffiti like that and we're doing everything we can to investigate investigate those incidents we have taken some additional steps over the last few weeks at the high school in particular not only to work on incidents like this but combat hate and intolerance in all forms in our schools so i just want to share a few things one most recently we're asking our faculty to actually really look carefully at all of their learning environments to see if there's any additional graffiti that they might see especially as we're bringing more desks out of storage really take stock of that so we can get a baseline but then we're asking them to check all of those environments on a regular basis we have administrators in the administrative team checking our bathrooms
008on a more regular basis so that if something pops up that's new we can make sure we get to that fast and are aware of what's happening in the moment we also over the last several weeks have instituted a series of advisories at the high school that have focused on a variety of topics around bias and including race religion and gender bias so that's something we're working on as well and then i think one thing we're learning out of all of this is that being able to identify and stop incidents of bias depends in large part on accurate and timely reporting of the incidents to our admin team after april vacation we are implementing a new anonymous reporting tool that will be coupled with upstander training so that we can better encourage and make it
009easier for our students and staff to report incidents of bias harassment um or other types of incidents to us as well so that's kind of what's happening in the immediate future um as we think about you know what's gone over not only this year but the last few years and how we can continue to make it easier to have students in particular report to us things that are happening so i wanted to update you on that we recognize though i think overall that it's not going to be any one strategy that either the schools or the communities do but it's going to actually take a sustained community-wide commitment to address hate intolerance and bias in a way that continues our path toward more just and inclusive schools and communities so i i just want to
010say you know we're certainly going to take all of the steps we can but this really has to be a community-wide initiative our kids you know don't operate in a vacuum when they're in school and they don't operate in a vacuum when they're out of school and we need to be able to make sure that we're sending really good consistent messages to our students i'm going to talk a little bit about public health and transition to that right now so i included a chart in this week's update and the chart that i'm going to point you to and this will go out to families tomorrow is covid cases over the the two-week period and this was published a couple of days ago now but we have heard a lot about increasing cases today i think
011we had almost 2 400 cases in the state um two days ago when i published this there were 1683 but what i want to point you to is the age breakdown of cases more than a quarter of the new cases from two days ago were ages 0 to 19 years of age so that is squarely in our school age student population is where the new cases are coming up most prevalently and that's really significant because we're thinking of reopening our doors beginning next monday and then again the junior high school right after april vacation when we know a lot of families are traveling and then the high school you know a few days later and you know we really have to make sure that our students know to follow the public health measures and all
012of the safety protocols we're going to continue to message that with our students but we need to have families couple with us as well and make sure we're really messaging good sound safe decisions this past week as of if you look at our public health charts that we have published on our transition website over the last few weeks we've really had a nice dip in cases uh where we were down to managing you know three or four cases total a week so far this week we've had nine cases um so you know that probably is going to be a pattern uh based on everything else we're seeing around the state so we need to be really cautious about how we're managing cases and i just want to again point you to that pooled testing is
013going to be one of our strategies so far we're pleased to report that pooled testing has been implemented at all six of our elementary schools now in preparation for our return to in-person learning on monday uh the district is collected to date 192 pools of samples all of which have been negative so we have zero positive test results in all 192 polls we've submitted participation rates for the elementary pool testing program remain relatively low and we're currently testing about 44 percent of our in-person students in grades one through six it's important that we achieve a participation rate of around 85 percent for the program to be an effective screener and we're encouraging more of our families to consider participating in the program as our schools reopen more fully registration is open and rolling to participate
014in the pooled testing program at any time families can log into the powerschool parent portal and complete the form likewise families who want to withdraw their consent can also do so at any time we review forms on thursday of each week so that all the new consents we receive can be processed for the following week's pools so we are encouraging families and we want to get the word out for more and more families to begin the pool testing program we plan to roll out the pool testing at the junior high school on wednesday may 5th and at the high school immediately after break uh that is the correct date right for the yep so we that's a great question tessa just asked if may 5th was the correct date for the junior high school it
015is in talking with our nursing staff and our public health team we actually have made a decision to prioritize testing the high school first over the junior high school based on how we've seen cases evolve this year and we believe it's most important to get our high school students enrolled and started in the program right after april vacation before they come back because we know the density of classrooms is tighter at the high school there's more students in the school and we also know that the behaviors of students at the high school level can be markedly different outside of school than the behaviors of our junior high school students so we are delaying the junior high about one additional week beyond their rollback date but it is intentional in terms of vaccines we are pleased
016to report that 600 staff members which is roughly 60 percent of all staff in the district have now reported being fully vaccinated and a total of 120 additional staff for about 12 percent have reported receiving at least one dose of a vaccine and are scheduled for the second dose of the vaccine by april 17th specific to teachers 70 percent of our teachers are fully vaccinated and another 10 percent have their second dose scheduled by april 17th as well it's important to note that staff are not required to report vaccinations to the district and we believe the number of individuals having been vaccinated may be higher than what's reported we believe that all or nearly all of our staff who wish to be vaccinated will have an opportunity in the coming days and weeks as the
017state continues its educators only vaccination dates in the mass facts sites in terms of return to full in-person dates and information i just want to remind you we are returning grades one through six on monday april fifth we are returning grades seven and eight on april 28th and grades nine through twelve on monday may 3rd so at this point the detailed information about any of those returns is being sent out by individual schools um elementary schools now need to really take over communication for their individual school communities and the junior high and high school have been managing the communication mostly because they are not only you know in a school but they're also an entire level to themselves so it makes most sense to communicate directly from families with schools bus routes and a reminder
018on bus routes as we begin to bring our students back to schools families should expect significant changes to bus routes most of our bus routes are changing elementary bus routes will be published in power school and on transfinder by the end of this week so by tomorrow we'll have those all up secondary routes will be published as we approach the date when junior high school and high school students transition back to school families should be checking bus numbers and bus stop times carefully a couple of dei updates um one we're excited to announce that we are working jointly with the two towns to host a two-part workshop along with the towns of acton and boxborough that will bring together leaders from organization and groups within both towns the workshops are being facilitated by visions inc
019and the goal of the workshops is to bring together a diverse set of community stakeholders to provide feedback on the towns and schools dei initiatives and to share ideas for how we can move forward in building a more unified just and inclusive community dei family advisory update the district is committed to building an inclusive culture for our students and families to increase new families sense of belonging and promote and celebrate amazing diversity heritages and cultures of our existing families our dei family advisory in the district plan to create a video that we saw happen in albuquerque public schools a few years ago and basically it will be a welcome in a variety of languages and from a variety of families from different cultures traditions backgrounds just saying welcome to a b we're glad you're with
020us last week we sent out a request for broad representation of family structures cultures languages abilities and more we had over 70 families respond with interest and we're in the process of reviewing the applications to create a video that highlights the vast array of differences that make us strong we're grateful to be working with vivian virtual at acton tv to create this video celebrating the diversity within our school community that we will be featuring on our home website and share with new families when they come to the district public service announcement regarding a family learning series coming up parent caregiver well-being and sel workshops in collaboration with danny's place youth services and the institute for social emotional learning we're offering a four-part series to come together as a community to uncover a range of practical
021tools and insights to nurture the social and emotional well-being of whole families and answer questions that include what skills should all parents and caregivers have in their toolkit as they navigate the ups and downs of their child social and emotional development how can we better support our children and ourselves through difficult times everyone is welcome we recommend the whole workshop series but each session also can be a standalone experience we're hoping that as many families as possible enroll in that series tessa and i are hosting our next community coffee on april 7th which is next wednesday that is an evening coffee from seven o'clock to eight o'clock p.m we will send the link out to families next week and then to end on a positive note april fools happy april fool's day our fourth graders
022and i included a picture that was right out of the globe and on wgbh's website um but congratulations to our fourth grade remote learning program students for making the front page of the boston globe today they successfully lobbied wgbh to use its digital billboard along the mass pike for an april fool's joke by posting a picture of the 1980s uh singer rick astley which if you know what rick rolled is that's you know very popular right now among our students so they wrote letters to wgbh and wgbh that we think it's a great idea so um i love the quote that wgbh used from some of our students for the purpose was simply because they wanted to share a little joy and laughter with everyone so i think that's a wonderful message to close out
023the april fool's day memo the rest of the memo was serious however and there was no joke intended all right thanks peter did anyone have any questions angie yeah thanks peter for the update um yeah i really like the uh to see the actions that you're taking and i have a specific question in in regard to reporting tools so is that only um gonna be used for the racism or related or any inappropriate behaviors so an anonymous reporting system can actually be used for a whole variety of behaviors the actually i don't know don if you want to talk to it i i can or you can it's up to you so the tool we're using um we're upgrading a system to be a live monitored system so it actually could be used if someone
024has a mental health concern that's urgent if that gets reported through the system it will be immediately flagged and a live operator on the end of the system will look at it and decide if it needs immediate action in which case they could steer it right to the police department or if it's something that is maybe non-urgent it can wait for the school to be able to respond during the regular work week it could be used for incidents of bias it could be used for mental health concerns it could be used to report harassment it could be just used to report you know graffiti in a school it really could be used to report anything that we just need to be aware of as a school district but the the live monitoring piece i think
025was a really you know that's something we had been waiting for to find and was important for us because we wanted to make sure that you know anything that was urgent could be handled appropriately and we know our administrators and counseling staff can't monitor a system 24 7. yeah thank you yeah it's good to hear that because some like for example the harassment sometimes you cannot prove you don't have any like graffiti you have some proof you know sometimes you don't have a proof but i it would be great that we have a like a system be able to let the student be able to let the people know about it so another kind of the other side is there any kind of training and how we train our student to say no or firmly
026communicated um when your property behavior happened are you referring to any improper behavior yeah um so yeah racism or you know any inner property or harassment so there are elements of that throughout our curriculum at different levels we start talking about for instance consent for any sort of sexual activity as early as grade six i believe and it's definitely a much heavier presence in the junior high and the high school and the health curriculum the other places where we talk a lot about consent is when we start to talk about the digital tools that our kids use and we think a lot about like we have an own your rep program where we really work to help kids understand that what you put out is out um and it's out of your control sort of
027a thing so we start that also in the elementary schools um deb did you want to add anything no no can you talk a little bit about the upstander training that's coming yes next week 25 of our high schoolers will be trained with the quabbin mediation group in the training for active bystanders and as well on april 5th and 6th there will be training for the high schools high schoolers as well on bystander upstander training so same same thing some people say bystanders some people say upstander um well upstanders are what bystanders should do um if they're able to the um and then that's when we'll also roll out the anonymous reporting system so we'll talk about part of being an upstander is reporting and supporting others around you in your school community thank you
028i just wanted to go back to the the vaccination issue and the return to school and comment that it's fantastic that so many of the staff have been able to get vaccinated and i also wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that the system will become fully open on april 19th and that what that means for us in practical terms is that a significant portion of our high school students 16 and above will become vaccine eligible so by way of things that people can do that will be helpful to the community as vaccines are available and high school students can be vaccinated that would be fantastic in the next few weeks we'll be sending a parent communication home that encourages parents to get their kids on the pre-registration list for vaccines i'd also say
029you know there's been a lot of positive news in the medical world around vaccines particularly around the 12 to 16 age bracket i think it was pfizer that just re released its most recent results with a hundred percent efficacy um i i believe was the statistic if i'm not wrong but uh it was that's about as positive as it gets i guess going back to the anti-semitic incidents i'm very pleased to hear these three things happening with the quabin meditation group for um i'm sorry not meditated mediation group for um upstander training and the anonymous reporting and the advisory this is happening so often my fear is that it's becoming normalized and i think this kind of destabilizes that kind of process of oh there oh geez just there goes another one i was i
030was also wondering um who reported the most recent uh swastika found on the desk was it a student or a janitor or do we know it was a student that reported to a teacher and then the teacher reported to administration okay all right thank you so i was just wondering um pertaining to the anti-semitic events have we been able to loop in the synagogues around to help us really resolve some of these issues i know that we're still investigating but um i'm not quite sure how rather mike and the synagogue and that group have been able to really help us think through how to really helps sensitize people to the fact that this is not right and we need to do better so i'll let peter talk because i know that that every time there's
031an event i believe he and rabbi might speak about it i also know that he is they're they're taping an interview with him right now with a student um where they'll talk about their experiences and about anti-semitic incidents and how it impacts um people in that community in that in the jewish community and and victimizes them so um the students will see that as well later this month and advisory that's what i would have said so just i just want to just mention because in my other volunteer role um for communities for restorative justice we get a ton of cases where graffiti involving swastikas happens and there's really very little awareness of the depth of pain that causes people when they look at it and so i'm glad to hear that there's some education around
032this because it's it's not a symbol you know that generation that went through the holocaust is pretty much you know dying off and it's really up to us now to really educate students on what that symbol means so i appreciate i appreciate you letting me say that so is the teacher mandatory to take a vaccine no it's not required for teachers to take the vaccine okay okay so on my on my agenda it says return to school update is that something separate from no the the return to school update was very much folded into the superintendent's update tonight however what you do have in your packet is a memorandum of understanding with the acton-boxborough educators association i'll let marie maybe say a few words or tessa you're going to say a few words that's why
033i asked if you were going first because it says peter light and then it says me so yeah no go ahead all right so um we i mentioned at the beginning of the public meeting that we had just recently adjourned in an executive session and that was regarding the memorandum of agreement between the acton-boxborough regional school committee and the acton-boxborough education association and in this public meeting i just want to note and acknowledge how much work our teachers have been doing and the teachers who sat with us to negotiate this the last couple of weeks have been doing all of that on top of doing this and representing all of the educators in our district and the amount of gratitude we have for the for the work that educators are doing each and every day
034um is immense and this year has been full of changes that were not necessarily welcomed by any of us and were mandates handed down by the state and the teachers have continued to roll with the punches so to speak and have continued to do their jobs and with a smile on their faces and they have been providing an extraordinary education to our students this year and so i present this memorandum with um in immense gratitude for the work that our teachers are doing and for the the sacrifices and things that i know that they are they're giving up in order to make learning what it can be for our students this year and anybody who has students knows that they are so grateful i didn't think there would ever come a time in my kids
035lives when they would actually be asking to go to school and that has indeed happened so i have immense gratitude i know that the entire administration does and um and so over the last couple of weeks uh the negotiation subcommittee which was made up of me and jenny cramer and amy christian murthy have been meeting along with peter and marie and some representatives from the um acton-boxborough education association and we have been working through all of the items that you see on this which many of which had things had already been agreed to at the beginning of the year in order for us to get back to school but i i know that um you know when we started in september there was many who did not believe that we would make it more than
036a couple of weeks and here we are in april and talking about returning all of our students to school and that is an immense accomplishment so um that is really due to the teachers and and what they have been willing to agree to so i present this memorandum and um if we want to discuss anything here ask any questions now is the time to do that john i'd like to begin by thanking you and jenny and amy because obviously anybody who looks at a document like this and sees that there are 16 points in it realizes that you know it was a serious discussion um and obviously as everybody who's thought about going back to school fully in person realizes you know a balance has to be struck between the benefits of in-person learning you
037know and and some of the risks that we can't completely avoid and um you know i appreciate all of the work that that the three of you the administration you know as well as the abea uh put in to finding that balance and moving us forward in the return to school so i very much appreciate it but i do really you know people see how hard tesla works in these meetings and i think people sometimes forget how much harder she's worked than anybody else sitting at this table and i just feel that it would be wrong not to recognize that as we move this particular agreement forward thank you john there's something of note that actually um we didn't talk about but and it actually isn't something that the teachers you know necessarily agree to
038but something that is a little different from what we've been i mean they agree to it it's in the agreement but i mean it wasn't a point of contention that deci has decided that no remote learning will count anymore so if there are additional snow days or heat days calls which is something that we had talked about in the beginning of the year that those would be made up at the end of the year and will not be able to be conducted remotely so that is something of note that that is a little bit of a change um from deci and also that um wednesdays will be an early dismissal day at the junior high and the high school that was something that you know we've been experiencing this year as a remote day but
039it will continue once the students go back in person it's not really a half day as the elementary schools have a half day in order to bus everybody that would be impossible so um those their dismissal will be at one o'clock um there any other questions oh quarantined students yes so one of the notable things from the memorandum is that there is a change to how quarantined students will be able to access their education and that is that teachers will be live streaming their classes within the agreement there is there are some notable differences between what elementary teachers um expectations are for that because it's not necessarily pedagogically appropriate for a third grader to be streaming into their class all day long but that will be happening at all levels and so when students are
040forced to quarantine because of um because of covid close contacts or because they've contracted covet or any other reason that they are forced to quarantine they will be provided access by their teachers to um be able to to to stream into their classes um so that's a significant change as well you know just one notable comment on that that is if a student is required to quarantine by the board of health because they've been determined to be or our schools because they're determined as a close contact or they've tested positive what this doesn't cover is if students choose to travel with families we're not able to provide that live streaming option for them for for vacation purposes and travel purposes so that's an important note for families this is in that's consistent with how we've
041always handled homework for travel that if people travel you know that's kind of an individual choice but if it's you know health related then that's certainly something that's covered and i'll just also note that this is a significant significant change for teachers and and and something that is yet another thing that we are putting on their plates it's not something as i have noted many times um this is the best example right because ciara's the only one live streaming tonight and it is extraordinarily hard to you know pay attention to those who are remote as well as those in front of you and this is with a tremendous amount of gratitude to to the teachers for agreeing because this is really as we all agreed at the table what is best for students in order
042for them to not miss any more time on learning than has already been missed because of covet if there are no other questions oh angie has a question just for the benefit of families just clarification on the process so if a family decided to travel and they are required to quarantine 14 days after that so no live stream will be provided but if the student got tested that you know positive and the report will be reported through the the health department the hospital and therefore go to the school then the school notice that notices a teacher will be notified so the not the immediate next day but the day after the student will be able to join live screen right yeah it may take us a day to have everything in place for the student
043to live stream but yeah so the notice in the testing comes into us through a variety of ways but either the parent provides us with a positive test result or you know they're determined to be a close contact but there's some kind of notification that they're either positive or close contact and that would trigger us to begin the process of getting a student live streamed into class it may take a day depending on when that comes in but we'll get them up and running as soon as possible thank you it's just clear to the families thank you adam says that we have a member of the public or two members of the public so go ahead and take care of that out all right corinne you can unmute thank you it's kind of a two-part
044question i'm still confused um so are you saying that they can't kids can't live stream while they're traveling or after they return from traveling and are then forced to quarantine and so that's the part one the other part is you might have answered the side to step away for a second is when would this start is what is it when they're all back in school or is it right after is it immediately after spring break when is it um so it's going to take teachers about a week to get up and running with this but the we're looking at april 12th for this process to start we are only doing this if a student is determined to be a close contact or tests positive any travel is completely a personal choice on the part of
045students and families and is not part of this process so whether it's traveling or quarantines after travel that's not covered why i'm sorry why wouldn't they do it i understand not doing it while they travel because that would be like not letting them stream like any other time while they're on vacation but when they get back and they're still being forced to quarantine even though there's no non-contact and no reason to believe they're infected why wouldn't we let them stream along with kids who are identified as close contacts because there may not be close contacts at that point and that's something that because that's an individual family choice we're not comfortable putting that burden on teachers i mean you know families do have a choice to stay in the area and which is actually what
046we recommend based on the uptick in transmission thank you this is amanda bailey one of the co-chairs of the special education parent advisory council my question is regarding special education services for students who test positive or quarantined and i'm assuming those are going to be streamed as well for students that's correct okay thank you angie did you have another question i just realized for the seniors in the during the april vacation they're gonna visit college it's not something that they don't they have a choice then they come back then two weeks then they they're out it's like so they're required they get on quarantine for 14 days no not under the new travel guidelines i'm sorry not under the revised travel guidelines that we released about two weeks ago okay so if uh i don't
047i'm not 100 on the updated travel guideline so we're following the state travel advisory we are enforcing that so for students who are out of the state for less than 24 hours there is no quarantine period for students who travel out of the state then they have to produce a test within hours of the return motion i move that we approve the memorandum of agreement between the acton-boxborough regional school committee and the acton-boxborough education association uh with the effective date of april 1st 2021 second with gratitude are there any additional questions from the committee all right we'll do a roll call vote adam yes john yes yes yes angie yes kira yes with gratitude sorry i don't think we could hear you i said yes with gratitude okay i can i know i'm making sure
048that it is audio for some reason okay we're using we're it's not you we're using adam's adam's volume on his computer okay nora yes evelyn yes with gratitude diane yes jenny yes and me with immense amounts of gratitude so thank you to everyone thank you to the abea we have unanimously approved that um the next item uh and we did the reason we didn't do a consent agenda tonight is because we had a couple of meeting minutes that we need to approve and they had some edits and so that requires possibly a little bit of discussion so suggestions were made for edits to both uh the meetings of 3 11 21 and 3 18 21 they've been included in the posted versions which changes tracked so are there any questions or comments about either one
049of those and if not then we can move to approve them go ahead move to approve as amended second are you moving to approve both i'll defer to the rules man over here shall i do both or should is it best to do one at a time john says i can do both so i'll move to approve both meeting minutes as amended i second both all right adam yes john yes yeah ben yes i'm going to call him kira kira yes [Music] and i just echoed that was crazy angie yes nora yes evelyn yes diane yes ginny yes and me yes all right great those both pass with unanimous consent um we also have a donation of 719.92 from the conan pto for tables is there a motion to approve that move to approve with
050gratitude second thanks for passing along the uh letting everybody have a turn adam yes john yes evan yes kyra yes okay andrew yes nora yes with gratitude evelyn yes with gratitude diane yes jenny yes and myself yes great that is approved um and now it's your turn peter budget update there's no budget update tonight we had this as a standing agenda item in case we had any updates but we do not it's a chance also i guess to answer any questions if there were any outstanding from members or from the community but there is no update all right subcommittee member reports adam uh so as i spoke of the previous two meetings uh we are looking or we were looking to form a steering committee to begin the naming process for the new school building
051at this point i'm happy to announce that amy christian murphy will act as chair of that steering committee and diane baum will sit on that steering committee as well and so it is um with them now to begin the process of identifying the rest of the makeup of that committee and then going out and beginning the process of soliciting uh feedback and suggestions for the name of the new school building great diane okay this is the policy um the portion of the agenda where we're going to discuss this policy the policies in question are iga and igd we had great feedback and lots of questions on both um so let's start with iga curriculum and instructional materials so this policy updates iga from 2015 and it combines it with ijl library material selection and adoption
052we had a concern by a community member around the word the use of the word moral in iga r1 so that's the procedures the first procedures and so policy sub talked about the politic the politicization of the word moral it has religious connotations and may mislead stakeholders that we may be espousing a particularly a particular set of morals are teaching a specific set of morals and this is not the intention of the policy we considered replacement terms that um reflect the intent of the policy to teach students how to think critically when confronted with curriculum content and to discern the moral or ethical stances relevant to content that students are looking at so what we're getting at is wanting to build on critical thought and character and inculcate behaviors that are ethical and principled and
053responsive to the idea that we have a responsibility to ourselves and to others so we we replace the word moral in iga uh one with the phrase the district strives to foster a sense of responsibility to self and others within each student so that was that that concern we had a request to define the role of parents guardians or caregivers in developing versus implementing policy the policy subcommittee discussed caregiver roles in curriculum development and i i'm going to ask maybe deb or don to talk about the surveys that are planned and then there's also you know school council involvement so i'll stop here and i'll just let you you know talk about the survey so one of the dei subcommittees the curriculum subcommittee had drafted a phenomenal survey to gather input from families as to
054their understanding of the kind of curricular materials that we use and whether or not they reflect the identities of our students and so john i took a look at that and we offered some feedback and our thinking is that we could give that on a manual or a bi-annual basis to gather some information that will help us further our understanding of the kinds of materials that we have and that we use we also think that it will also help us understand where we need to do a better job in communicating so if the feedback comes back that families don't have an understanding that we are doing something to represent the identities of the students in our classes that we could then be more responsive and or more communicative about what is happening so it could
055work both ways and we feel that that would be a nice way to have that happen on a continual basis if we have a standing survey that's issued out from the district to the schools and then your other was school council school council also would have an opportunity then to have input into the school improvement plans and we as a district are setting some dei goals and so the school councils would also have a say in how the school might approach those goals as well so parents also have input in the school council i actually have a follow-up question to that you know given that the family engagement frameworks just got just came out in like june of 2020 how does that is that going to be down the line as we those start to
056be you know be implemented is that going to have a bearing on our curriculum development in terms of the feedback in terms of understanding sort of what we are doing and i think one of the things we can do at the school level is better understanding for families how they can support one of the things that we are doing with literacy and for math as we build out and this is part of the mtss work is to better understand that partnership and how families can support that work at home so absolutely as part of the what can you do at home to support the learning that happens in school going forward thank you um so we had um we had a question that came in this morning from a community member about what are the
057what are these policies going to look like in real life in the classroom um when would they go into effect and will parents be made aware of changes so i'm wondering if i can turn that over to you as well and so what do it look like in real time in the classroom we have a couple of tools that we've shared with our educators one is the seven forms of bias checklist the other is a digital tools criteria checklist and what we've already seen is our educators bringing forth some materials that might be older to our attention to say these aren't appropriate and so knowing that our educators are utilizing these tools we feel like when new curriculum is being created especially through the r d process again these are wonderful tools for us to
058have in order that we're looking at things from those various perspectives to inform our decision making and so as grade level teams across the district or within disciplines we feel like these can help us be a little bit more responsive to the kinds of choices that we make in terms of families i think that again the survey piece will be really helpful in helping people understand and for us to understand what families ascertain in terms of the resources and materials we use thank you do you want to um just take questions or sure you can you why don't why don't you take questions okay okay angie actually sorry that it's kind of distant so can you so what i heard is so the family will be proactively notified if there's any change is that how
059it works when there are substantial changes to curriculum we do bring it forward to the school committee and then at the school level there's communication from the principal so for example around the new math programs so that communication does flow and i think if there are changes to a particular you know book or a couple of different resources that would be hard for us to continually add those kinds of communications but i think it would be important if there are big substantial changes absolutely we bring those forward publicly and those are communicated out at the school level as well to families so the family will be able to find out through the school committee the so but before that they wouldn't know the change is coming right um so i think when there are so
060there are various reasons why we might just change some things one might be the standards have changed and that's usually done through a process through the state that desi has changed the frameworks there's usually a voting period of time or time for input that desi sends out for us to gather that kind of input we often send that out to families as well so that they know they can also offer that kind of input and then there's times that we need to get to work on actually that the creating of the new materials and then that's when we would bring it forward like we did with im or something like that so that it publicly we're making an announcement that we are making a shift like that and then welcoming some feedback from families but
061an ongoing basis is something we feel like is really important just so that we're not doing it just in that one moment but continually gathering that feedback in subsequent years i'll be voting in support of this policy but i want to note that this policy unlike some of our other policies is not compliance driven you know there is no state law that we're trying to satisfy in the writing of this policy so therefore the audience for this policy is obviously our internal community to understand what we are trying to implement as well as our public community and for the purpose of the internal community i understand why certain jargon you know has a desirable place in policy but that really doesn't serve the larger community that well so this still grades out as college graduate
062difficult to read and so for a policy like this where it doesn't have to meet a compliance alternative i think we can do better going forward did you run it through the yeah okay the alexa okay okay so do you want to say sure sorry i'm referring to you as the person who gets to call so um i just want to acknowledge that um that this is a tremendous step in moving forward many of the things that we have talked about as a committee as our priorities in terms of moving our district forward in the areas of diversity equity and inclusion and this is an incredibly important one and i'm sorry that the readability is so difficult john but i do think that this is so carefully crafted that it really talks about so many
063of the things that we have expressed are important to us as a as a committee i know that many in our community have expressed are important to them and i i just want to really thank you for all of the hard work on this policy because it's incredibly thorough and i think it reads beautifully it is a sea change from what we had in 2015 and i'm very proud of the the time that was given and the care and careful thought that was given into putting this policy together i want to publicly acknowledge deb and don for the work they did on it okay on to igd thank you i i've seen a few changes come in just under the last like three four years uh you know changes in curriculum that have come and
064parents have been completely unaware of some of some of the content um i i'll go back to like three years ago when my youngest was in sixth grade and they cheat you guys changed the um the human growth and development curriculum and there was some highly objectionable content in there that was supposed to be delivered to sixth graders and only i after after i asked about the context of some information you know some of the presentation and saw the slides and objected was it removed um even the teacher at the time didn't know what to do with those slides so i i think some of these changes that you make you have to really be forthcoming with the families you haven't been it happened again last year again you you think that it's just like
065changing a book here and there but some of the stuff parents have every right to know and have a chance to review it and talk with their kids before they read it and raise objections if they have them thank you thank you okay so igd is the adoption of new programs and courses of study we had a few questions come in on that as well the first one it was a request to kind of codify in the policy what are the tools used by the superintendent when deciding to approve programs so here we added a reference below the policy statement to iga but the policy subcommittee decided we we weren't um we didn't feel like it was appropriate to codify specific tools the subcommittee appreciated the question but felt there there might be unintended consequences
066if we fail to capture other like professional practice standards or practices which lie outside of our purview but that would be appropriate for the superintendent to apply when considering approval for changes in curriculum the second request was to add specific language to policy igd that we encourage adoption of remote learning opportunities at the high school the subcommittee members talked about the range of ways that educational programs may be altered and did not feel it was within our purview to prioritize remote learning to the exclusion of other models and ways of making changes to curriculum and courses so for example the policy subcommittee asked well why not include hybrid or asynchronous learning or codify structural changes like the like the proposal of the the proposal that that was floated to us uh of the changes that
067are being into the r.j gray math program and the high school world languages that was another presentation we had why not prioritize adding courses of study like world language to elementary school i think they actually had that in one or two years gone by and um and some of the future advantages in tech that open up possibilities that are just really unimaginable to us right now for learning so we wanted to kind of keep it um keep it as is and not not incorporate that these are considerations this is a very interesting question it was enlisted a lot of discussion these these are these are considerations that are embedded in the process of continuous improvement in practice it's a it's a great question and so um the comment that that deb and dawn made that
068is that they wanted to actually approach the principles and vet this and i don't know if you wanted to speak to that or just let it go i wanted to allow you to comment if you want this we have not yet shared this with um the principals um this has not been vetted with them at all yet we haven't even had time with everything that's going on to do that okay so i think that was it if there are other questions i'm happy to take them yeah angie are we talking about this the the process the the process the iga r2 yet those are procedures so we don't we don't need to vote on those we only need to vote on policies yeah anything with an r is a procedure yeah i understand but i
069have a question can i ask now or sure okay so the question is that the uh in the igar 2 it's kind of similar to the previous question that i asked which you know there is a there is going to be a committee formed and i can see that we have the assistant school administration and and the two party that i kind of feel that it's one is the student government you know they don't we don't hear anything feedback from the student and the other one is the community so the question i have is how transparent is this process to the community as and also to the student because like the previous question i asked which they don't know until kind of everything settled down so will the community either the community or the student
070government the student body be able to engage at the earlier stage in terms of this any of this process and that's for iga so i guess i want to understand your question a little bit more is this if a student has a concern about a resource that relates to one of the three categories the religion the ideology or profanity obscenity and what their steps might be in order to bring that forward i i believe that they would be able to bring it forward as any other for any other kind of consideration to a committee that would then take a look at that but i think the first step of course would be their teacher and understanding maybe why it's used and how it's being used but certainly we want to hear from our students if
071they have some thinking around different materials and different resources that are being used yeah just clarify because when i see this one i don't see the procedure and the the student is formally involved or the community is formally involved and also i don't see the communication layout in terms of communication well i understand this is a procedure so the school committee is not involved but i'm just trying to see how well the communication in between the community and the student body will be involved i think the last book preparing a written response would then need to be shared back to the person who made who voiced the concern so that was would be how it would be resolved and how that communication would go back to the person who brought the challenge this comes directly
072from um this is a piece of the library that resources and the procedures that was in the previous um i guess ilb that we had incorporated into this larger um policy and procedures just because we didn't want to separate out library pieces from you know classroom materials and resources and trying to put all that together but and we do think that anyone can bring i can something for consideration and that the committee would take a look at it and there would then be communication back to the person who brought the complaint forward thank you i just want to include that include the the community and the student body that's it here so are we going to vote iga and then come back to igd so i i let diane like talk about both of them
073because this is the third read on all of these so i'm hoping that we've exhausted most of the questions although i know that a tremendous amount of work has gone into revising these based on uh on on feedback that they received so i would it it's time i think for us i'm fine with floating but i want to i'm going to vote no on igd we're going to vote them separately so i want to voted separately okay so we're going to vote it separately so if no one else has a question can i comment about why i'm going to vote now no because we're not on that one yet we're going to discuss that one yet so if someone has a motion for the first policy go for it see you've done it too long
074everybody wants you to do it go for it evelyn turn on your mic though oh i thought you said i'll do it i move to approve a policy iga second thank you evelyn all right adam yes john yes yevin yes kyra go yes andrew this is just a policy right policy ij we do not vote on procedures okay thanks what's your vote yes nora yes evelyn yes diane yes ginny yes and myself with gratitude for all of the work that the policy subcommittee put into that thank you all right so would anyone like to make a motion for policy igd move to approve policy igd good job nora what anyone liked who said that evelyn who's that second jenny said second okay jenny seconded all right john would you like to comment on why you're
075going to vote now yes i would sure you know the the this really is an autocratic issue you know i'm concerned about you know the unlimited powers of the superintendent and the administration that are embedded in this policy now the serious part about this is obviously in terms of the implementation this is the appropriate work of the superintendent and and the administrators you know and studying it but i i still believe that this policy lacks a preamble um and the historical basis for this is if i look at the way in which the chinese language program was introduced it was really you know a community driven effort to say you need to look at this you need to look at this you need to look at this and what this policy is lacking in my
076opinion is the invitation to the community that says if you think things are missing in our curriculum please bring them to our attention um then you know you can go off and study it and either decide that it has married or doesn't have merit um but i i do think that the beginning of this really should be an invitation to the community and the school committee that as you have ideas you know that you think should be brought forward in the context of a curriculum and course of study um we invite you to do so and then we're going to do the following that's in the policy does anyone else have a question or comment kyra's happily silent making lots of faces okay all right all right then we'll vote adam yes john no evan
077yes kyra now do it again i voted now okay thank you angie she said no yes i can come back to you nora yes evelyn yes diane yes jenny yes angie actually uh i like john's idea i think uh we should invite the community i said no and i vote yes so beth what is our tally on that i think it's seven and a half to 11 and a half 12 and a half i don't remember three active members voted no seven and a half but the yays are there amy's well amy's not here so two and a half that's seven and a half seven and a half and and all four it's eleven and a half it's eleven and a half i think i need some eighth grade there's three yeah but there's three
078acting members that voted yes seven and a half seven and a half and four box pro members 11 and a half okay so it still passes okay thank you everyone it was fun doing math if everyone has reviewed the warrants then john is going to read the motion language i move that the school committee vote to approve payroll warrants as follows p2120 dated 325 2021 in the amount of two million six hundred eighty four thousand six hundred seven dollars and thirty cents payroll deduction warrant as follows number two one zero two zero pr dated three twenty five twenty twenty one in the amount of one million one hundred seventy one thousand three hundred eight dollars and ninety seven cents and vendor warrant as follows number 21-019 dated three eighteen twenty twenty one in the amount
079of one million eighteen thousand one hundred seventy eight dollars and twelve cents second adam yes john yes yeah ben yes kyra yes angie yes nora yes evelyn yes dan yes ginny yes me yes um i'll just note that our next regular school committee meeting is on april 15th where we'll be having our school choice hearing our next community coffee as peter noted is april 7th from 7 to 8 p.m actontown meeting is monday june 21st box bro town meeting is saturday june 12th the box um annual election is may 18th i do not know how i remembered that date too but um is there anything else that you needed to note yeah i'll just note a couple of things on april 15th uh which is our next school committee meeting we're going to be coming
080to you with a proposal to further develop our tiered system of supports for students to be able to be do that within our operating budget but we do want to shift some resources around i've alluded to that previously as we were passing the budget but we do have a presentation on that on april 15th um i also will note on may 6th that is still going to be a meeting date however rather than a regular business meeting we're actually going to turn that into a workshop tessa and i have talked one of the goals of this year was to come back to our district strategy and i'd love to do a workshop that has an opportunity for the committee to just really go more in depth into that topic in particular and i think by
081preserving some time and doing it more in a workshop model that's more interactive and less of a business meeting it's going to provide a more effective format for that so we just wanted to put put those two things on your radar early because those are the next two meetings coming up and i will note that it's 10 minutes early and it's not an april fool's joke that we will actually be out before 8 30. so if there is a motion to adjourn i will entertain it so moved second good job adam yes john yes evan kira yes angie yes nora yes evelyn yes with gratitude diane yes ginny yes and myself yes thank you everyone