Board of Health: June 4, 2024

Transcript captured from MHTV’s Vimeo auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:00 Call or the meeting of June 4th to order. We are meeting, uh, a week earlier than usual. And I’m glad to some people here, but, uh, we never meet on election day. Even if we don’t have an election in our pre in our own community, we don’t meet on election day. So, um, we are having an election in our community, and we will not meet next week, but we will certainly be around town. And, uh, I wish all the candidates their best and I hope they put in their best. So, uh, we’ll be watching. It’s very comfortable on the other side. All three of us are gonna be comfortable, right?

0:47 Right. Yes. So, um, okay. Um, we have some guests that would you mind. We have first on the agenda to approve some, uh, minutes, if you don’t mind. It would be very brief. So I’m looking for, um, let me just change this review because right now,

1:39 all set? Yes. All. So there’s, uh, three, uh, uh, uh, um, minutes, not agendas, three minutes of March 12th, uh, April 9th and May 14th. And I think we’ve all had a chance to look at each of them. Is that correct? Mm-Hmm. Yeah. And I think they were being passed around today. Few, uh, tweakings. Nothing important. Nothing important, except my name is spelled. It’s just nothing important at all. Well, we’ll take care of that, um, on all three of them. So, uh, I’d like a motion to, um, approve the minutes of March 12th, if I could. Motion to approve the minutes of March 12th. Second.

2:27 All those in favor? In favor. It’s approved unanimous.

2:33 All those two, like to approve the minutes of April 9th. Uh, that was, uh, de meaning where we had some substance, substance abuse conversation and, but very important and healthy, healthy conversation. Not, not the activity, but, um, so I’d like a motion to approve that. Uh, those minutes of April 9th. Uh, motion to approve. Second. All in favor? In favor, unanimous. Thank you very much. And then, um, meeting of March 14th. Uh, that was meeting when we had a May 14th. Thank you. You’re welcome. It comes after lesson.

3:20 Um, and that’s where we had our, um, health department, uh, employees come. Tracy, she spoke as a public health nurse. And Bobby, uh, Cody spoke about her inspections. They both have married of duties and we are happy to hear them speak, and we thank them very much. So, motion to approve that. Motion to Approve the minutes of May 14th. Second. All vote in favor. In favor, no seats unanimously.

3:55 Motion. Creating some minutes for June 4th by having, um, our guests here tonight to speak on, uh, the model head, uh, youth high school survey and substance use. That was, um, for the, uh, 2023 year, is that correct? Yes. The survey was taken in October, 2023. We have Gina Har and we have her colleagues. Uh, Juliet. Yes. Julia Ferrera. Hi. Hello. Julie Ferrera. And Julia is the assistant superintendent, superintendent, business manager, whatever. I, What Else are you doing? All things, all things. Happy to Be here after custodian, you know, what, Whatever it takes to get the job done.

4:40 So thank, but thank you for having us. I do. I’m sorry to make a joke of it, but it’s true. Okay, now, isn’t It? Thank you. Yeah. So I’m Julia Fer. I’m the assistant superintendent teaching and learning, and I had the pleasure of working with Gina Hart, our social worker extraordinaire from the high school, who every year I know does a really fantastic job and presents. I’m, um, just here as a support because I really thoroughly enjoy collaborating with Gina. And we’ve found that a lot of the work that, um, Gina’s doing at the high school that I can help support with at the district level, um, and using the data to help inform our decisions is always really best practice. So thank you for having us. I’m sorry my back is to everybody, but Hello. Thank you for being here as well. I’m gonna turn it over to Gina. Okay. That’s okay. That’s a great introduction. Are we

5:26 Ready for the data? Sure. Let me, uh, do this. Maybe I just wanna make one statement. I’ve, I personally, and I think the whole committee has been waiting almost the whole year to have you come. So I’m thrilled to have you here. I’m happy to be here. We’ve had a lot of conversation around substance abuse. Mm-Hmm. And our substance use, I guess that’s the word now, and mental health and, um, myriad of other things. And, um, I, that’s why I’ve been very interested personally, and I’m sure the board is interested too, because otherwise we wouldn’t be having you here. But I, it’s been difficult to, um, go through this process ourselves without getting the facts. I I’m a public health person and I go with statistics

6:12 and facts and it’s very difficult to not have those facts. But now we will have them. So thank you. Yes. Happy to be here. And we can continue on each year looking at the data. And that’s what’s great about this year. We did keep, um, and Gina will address this. We have a lot of the same questions from years past. We did add some new ones, but as we do, we will continue to have longitudinal data. So, and grateful that, um, Gina’s very inclusive of her process and a lot of different, um, people get involved and we get to share our feedback, um, year after years. Question related to that, so this is a marblehead created survey, right? It’s not like a standard state one or is it a standard state one? It’s both, so, okay. So you can manipulate it if you want, like to change questions. Okay. Yep. We’re gonna talk all about that and, and please feel free to ask questions.

6:57 Are we ready to go? All right. So my name’s Gina Hart. I’m a social worker at the high school. This is the third year that we are collecting data, um, similar to the youth risk behavior survey that the state does. Some of the questions are the same, some are not exactly the same. Um, if you wanna go to the next slide, we’re gonna talk to you about exactly what this is. So the whole school takes the survey, all grades, ages 14, 14 to 18. We work with a grant funded project through MGH, and they provide us with the MGHC, which is questions around substance use and mental health. So that is the standardized survey. There’s going to be eventually, because there’s a lot of schools, swans got uses it, there’s over a hundred schools in the state that take these, this survey. And so as they go and they collect more data, we’ll be able to kind of see the state data for the survey.

7:44 So literally the YRBS or the YHS, um, so there’s that survey, 743 students responded to it, which is an 85% response rate, which is great. We’re always trying to do new things to try to engage students and increase buy-in to take the survey. So, um, that was up last year from 75%. So the MGH um, survey. So is that required? They can opt out? Yes. And that’s actually really important. We can’t force them to take it. There’s a parent opt-out option as well, because it’s really important that the parent has a say in what kind of things their students are doing in school. And so some parents do opt their students out and students are told right before they take it. This is not mandatory. If you don’t wanna do it, you don’t have to. And so the fact that that many kids do take it is great. Um, and this survey is great. It asks a lot of questions,

8:30 but it doesn’t ask all the questions we want to know. It doesn’t ask questions about like, age of first use, which is so important. Um, a few other things so that we, we are able to sit down as a leadership team and say, what do we wanna know? What do we wanna ask last year so that we can kind of see the exact question again, what do we wanna ask new this year? Do we wanna change the way we ask that so we can capture the data to be more valid? So that’s where we have a supplemental survey. So they have two links. And for that, um, it’s a, it’s basically like the Marblehead Youth Risk Behavior Survey. It’s an anonymous Google form. We had 677 responses, so about out of about like 830 students. So that’s really great. So we have a lot of data. So this happened on October 11th, and it’s also important that, so we, we wanna share the data. What’s the point of this? We wanna share it with people, we share it with the faculty, we share it with the school committee.

9:16 We share it in different avenues. We share it in different leadership meetings. The students also need to see it. And so before they take the survey, they get a presentation, like a shortened presentation of, you know, where’s your community at. It’s also a way to, you know, get students to see that people actually are honest on this survey. ‘cause you know, towards the end they’ll talk about what’s the limit of this study? Are students really honest on a school survey about substance use and mental health? That’s what people always ask me. And I think the really important thing to remember is we have to look at relative differences and trends over time. It’s most useful if it’s used over time. So we’re looking at this as a baseline data. We can never be a hundred percent sure that every student is being a hundred percent honest. We have to look at trends over time and relative differences. And that’s how we use it as a baseline. So as Julia mentioned, you’ll see for some questions,

10:04 there’s three years worth of questions. So you can see a trend if the question wasn’t asked exactly the same way, we don’t compare it because it, it can’t be valid that way. Um, and like I said, we improve on the question that we’ll say, Hey, that didn’t capture what we really wanted it to, let’s change it. So here we talk about risk and protective factors, which are things that make our students more vulnerable toward or protected against substance use, mental health. Um, any questions on that? That’s the overview. All right, so now let’s get into the data.

10:36 Uh, and the, that’s it.

10:46 And MGH sends us back like a really detailed data report where they can do cross tabs and stuff like that. So it’s great. Um, okay, so here’s the demographics. I won’t go through it all. I’ll leave it up for a minute. But just a couple things to note. So, gender diverse, under the gender identity, that’s transgender, non-binary, gender queer, another gender, and then sexually diverse is gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, asexual, pansexual. Another thing to note is that, um, under race, 85.4% indicated white. Last year it was about 91%. So information showing that our population is more diverse this year.

11:25 So just some of the basics. Um, 95% of students reported positive connections with peers. Obviously we know that this is a protective factor for substance use and mental health. Um, academic and social emotional success. Um, research tells us is better if our students feel connected and have relationships to staff members. So about 63% feel that they do. Another protective factor is being engaged in structured activities. So, um, almost 90% report being engaged in this, um, music, sports and clubs, which is great. 30.3% of students report getting eight hours of sleep or more. Um, that’s the recommended for this age group. So it’s a risk factor that not more students are getting the recommended, um, hours of sleep. However, it actually increased last year, 14%. So that’s better. We’re gonna see a lot of data trending in a positive direction, which is great.

12:16 Okay. Mental health. Um, so above the risk threshold, so this is based on a symptomatic questionnaire. So it’s not just a like, you know, we looked through it, right Andrew? There’s a lot of questions about all different symptoms of depression, anxiety, psychotic experiences. Um, so red is last year and blue is this year. So above the rest risk threshold for anxiety, about 25% this year. Depression has gone down a bit to 15%. Psychotic experiences is about the same. Um, about 11%. And this is something that surprises a lot of people. It’s not something that’s talked about a lot. It’s actually pretty comparable to state data. They don’t ask the exact same questions that there’s a Harvard, um, research study that I looked at, um, and it’s between seven and 17%, like clinical experience of, of, um,

13:03 psychotic experiences. Um, in the way they ask it is a little bit different. So we can’t compare it exactly, but it is pretty comparable in Massachusetts.

13:14 Self-injury and suicidality, non-injury, injurious self, sorry, non-suicidal self-injurious behavior, which is self harm. Um, stayed the same around about 11%. Suicidal thoughts decreased a bit down to about 16%, having a plan for suicide stayed around the same at 12%, really interestingly, attempted, um, increased to 3%. So this is something we wanna pay attention to.

13:45 Body image eating disorders. This is, um, this is a question that we ask. So last year we asked you struggle regularly with body image or negative perception of how you look, just to capture how many people are struggling with just general body image. And about half, almost half of our students both years were a new question just to kind of capture, um, somebody that might be a little bit more at risk for developing an eating disorder or disorder. Eating has thinking about shape or weight made it difficult to concentrate on things. You are interested in about 25% of our students. So that’s important information. That’s a new question. Mm-Hmm, yep. Experiences of discrimination based on race or ethnicity. Ethnicity. So students that identified as something other than white answer this question, others race do not include you in their activities.

14:32 People assumed your English was poor. This, you know, this is something that is something that we need to pay attention to. You were called racially insulting names, discouraged from joining an advanced level class, discouraged from joining a club. People act as if you were not smart and people acted as if they were afraid of you.

14:51 I have a question on that. Yeah. I sent it to you, but I, um, of This one No one previous. Um, maybe it’s, Yeah, I think it was this one. Well, no, it was, why did you not ask about discrimination based on just white? You said these are all of non-white people. Well, because I think that there are white people that feel discriminated against For sure. But that question was about being discriminated against based on race or ethnicity. That there are a lot of people that Yeah. Addressed to different ethnicities and, and race that are white. Yeah, that’s a good point. That’s, that’s from the MGH survey.

15:37 So that’s not a question then. So we have, we have three white people sitting here Yeah. And we all have different backgrounds. Mm-Hmm. And we may feel that we’ve suffered discrimination. Sure. Yeah. So that’s something that we can look at adding to our survey. ‘cause this, that previous question is, um, from the survey that we can’t edit. Oh, okay. But yeah, that’s, and I definitely feel that these are far more important because they’re, they’re true minorities. Mm-Hmm. You wouldn’t call 85% of a student body might, I mean a minority. Mm-Hmm. But they also, um, yeah. They fit into this weight business. They fit into somebody else. So, so what I will say is people could still answer the question if they identified as what, it’s just when we go to make this, um, presentation, there’s so much data

16:23 that we have that we, we, we kind of, you know, in the interest of time put what we think is, so honestly, I could go back and look at what, you know, people that identified as white had said about their experiences of discrimination based on race. But that’s just kind of what we put in the slides at. Okay. I, I’d like to see it if you could. Okay. I mean, good time, I mean Sure. Another week and a half ago. Yep. Yeah, I have to go back and look at exactly how the question is asked, but yes. Let, we can take a look at it for sure. Especially can always go back and look at what data was sent to us. Children had body problems and, and they could, they just terminated against, they could have problems. They were probably included in those. I mean, I agree with Helene on this.

17:08 Uh, like, I’m not gonna get into specifics of what happened, but I, you know, I had some racism towards me twice in the past six months at a gym. So like, it does happen, you know, it with marbled high school being so, you know, predominantly white probably is not as prevalent, but it’s still, you know, it’ll happens. Body image, I’m assuming was encapsulating everybody. Yeah. The Yeah. Yes. The body image question and the race and discrimination question, they’re completely separate. They’re not, everybody answers the body image question yet. All right. It’s just something And, and, and I honestly, it’s my only question through the whole thing. But I, I felt that living as a white person, I, I have felt, and we all can, I hope we can all say it.

17:54 I’m not, I hope I’m not alone, that I, that I felt discriminatory things through my life. But Like I said, I wasn’t worried about it when it happened to me, but it did happen twice in the past six months. So it’s real, it does happen. You know, I’m not gonna put myself on the same level as some other bad stuff, you know, I survived. So it’s, uh, but yeah, she, it’s a reality. I can go back and look at the raw data and just see what’s there, if that’s helpful. Yeah, We’d be happy to follow up. I think we also identified experiences of discrimination based on other categories of the race. So Gina will share about, um, those as well. Yeah. What we’re gonna do, so, um, red is last year, blue is this year, gender identity, um, increased a bit. Sexual orientation was another one that was high. Religion increased, which is interesting

18:40 with everything going on this year to civility, um, socioeconomic status and other people were able to write some stuff in. So the, this is important information. Too difficult. Okay. And you’re gonna find that religion going off the charts next year. Yeah. And I think, you know, we talked about this as a school, kind of what are the things that we’re doing? Like this is new data for us. This is perfect example of this has increased. We need to take a look at the things that we’re doing in the next year to kind of support that. Um, okay. So other vulnerable populations, students that were above the risk threshold for anxiety depression, 64% of students that identify as sexually diverse, almost 80% of students that identified as gender diverse. 30% of our Asian population, 23% of students who identified

19:27 as Haitian black or African American. 40% of students who identified as Hispanic Latino, and 34% of students who identify as multiracial. And almost 50% of our senior class was above the risk threshold for anxiety depression. So we’ve had some conversations about kind of paying attention to that and what can we do to kind of support our seniors. Is it such a transitional year with a lot of stress? Hmm. So that, that 47% is the seniors only 12th Graders. So, so of the people that were of Yeah, 47.8% of our senior class are above the risk threshold for anxiety depression. Well, I think that, that you could have had that number back 15 years ago. Yeah. If we were collecting data, then we Mm-Hmm. And we’re gonna touch on some of these points too when we talk about like

20:12 next steps and stuff like that. So we’re not just leaving the data, we’re gonna obviously share what we’re, what We hope. I mean, there’s just so much anxiety of what are we gonna do if, if you go to college, if you don’t go to college on the application process. Mm-Hmm. The questions you get at home, you know, around it. Um, I think that In FAFSA this year, I think, yeah, it had to be really stressful for kids. ‘cause it was fast Kind and it got on the fast. Yeah. They just got this stuff last week. Oh yeah. That took all, couldn’t Do the awards this week. Oh, I was supposed to do the awards this week. Yeah. Okay. So another either protective or risk factor. Are you talking with people about your mental or emotional health? Um, and so a little bit concerning that some of these categories decreased. So parent or caregiver is the, one of the bigger ones. Um, it decreased a bit. Same with friend or romantic partner.

21:00 Um, right below 60%, there’s some school mental health, um, people outside, professionals outside of school decreased a little bit. Um, school staff stayed about the same. So this is something that we wanna think about. What do we have control of in the school and how can we, um, de-stigmatize mental health? Make sure that people know where to access the mental health staff. Things like that. So this is, can I ask a question on that? Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Um, phone and text. Is that like, uh, tech services? Yes. Like a health services, like the suicide. I gotcha. Support line or a mental health support line. Yep. Yeah. Sorry. Some of these get cut off. All right. Now we’re gonna talk about substance use. So some questions around parental attitudes on substance use. These are some questions that we asked three years in a row and we can see a trends. So currently your previously had any adults you lived with, used substance in front of you in a way that made you concerned.

21:46 So are you concerned about your parents’ substance use? So the numbers are on the lower side, but it did trend upward up to 11% this year. Another question that’s a, a protective factor. Um, would your parents or guardian be upset or give you a consequence if they knew you were using substances regularly? Almost 90% both years said yes. Which is helpful. Putting structure and, and consequences and, um, rules in place around this at a young age is important.

22:13 Okay. Lifetime use. We have alcohol, cannabis, or THC, which is marijuana and nicotine. So, um, all three years we’re, we’ve seen similar numbers and we didn’t include state data because it’s from 2021, which is three years old at this point coming up the pandemic. However, I can say that when we did compare it, it was pretty comparable. But 40% of our students had ever tried a sip of alcohol. That’s the way the question is. Um, asked, um, cannabis or THC marijuana, about 20 in 20%. And then nicotine did increase a little bit this year. Um, and that includes vaping, nicotine, cigarettes, cigars, and dip age of first few. So it’s really, really important

23:00 that we’re talking about this. This is my, my quote I always read, chances of developing an addiction are nearly seven times higher for teens who begin using before the age of 15 than for those who delay use until 21 or older. And 96% of people with the substance use disorder began before the age of 20. So it’s really important that we’re taking a look at when are our students using their brains aren’t fully developed until the age of 25. So if you look at this kind of like the 15 or younger for every substance, um, we, we have students using it a at a young age. Um, and so it’s just something to pay attention to for sure. Because, you know, what can we do in, in schools and communities and homes to kind of educate and, um, use harm reduction around this? Did, did you ask, uh, often

23:46 or it just Yeah, that’s gonna come up I think on the next slide or it’s gonna come up if it’s just once you know it’s different. Yeah. If they use, no. So there’s regular use also. We asked about use in the last 30 days. I’m pretty sure I included it in here. If I didn’t, we can read it off the executive summary. Um, this, this one you asked about the last 30 days. Um, no, it’s gonna come up. Can you, will you click forward if you don’t mind. Is it? Yeah. So they said there. Okay. Oh, alright. So social norms theory states that if we think that our peers are doing something, we’re going to be more likely to do it as well. So if you look at the right hand corner, um, here’s use. In the last 30 days, 6.6% had use alcohol.

24:32 4.5% had used marijuana. And then I included the every day for nicotine because it’s so addictive and so many of our teenagers are struggling with it. 5.1% of students have used nicotine vape products every day in the past 30 days, which is the highest of the most common use substances. So if you look at that data and then you look at the question, what percentage of your peers do you think use substances on a regular basis? There’s a lot of students, um, indicating that people use it more than they actually do. However, the zero to 20 category, um, was in better shape than it was, which is like the accurate one in years past. So what this shows us is that kids think that their peers are using more regularly than they actually are. And that’s a risk factor ‘cause it’s gonna make them more likely to use. Um, okay. Impaired driving.

25:18 Do you mind actually going back ‘cause we missed? Sure. One more answer. Yes. Alright, so these are also our questions. Um, had you driven after drinking alcohol? These are low numbers, it’s still concerning that anyone’s doing it, of course, but um, about 2% had said yes this year. We asked about driving after using marijuana. Kids are a little bit more likely to do that, like at 3%. Then we had a question about, have you ever been in a car with someone else using alcohol or someone else using marijuana? Um, a little bit of a decrease from last year. 21%, 15%. I, we definitely wanna change the question next year. Like somebody that was actually intoxicated or you were concerned about it. Because there’s people that could have one drink at dinner and drive home.

26:04 And that’s not necessarily a safety issue. We wanna capture like, people that are actually impaired. So we’re gonna, I changed the question even further because when you’re dealing with the high school, only half the people have a license. So you have an opportunity there. Maybe add a, add a section in of, um, I don’t have a license. You know, because then you’re really not gonna be, it’s gonna change. I mean the percentage still might stay the same, but it, they’ll be more the accurate, the data will be a lot more accurate and, you know, yes. And that could kind of into the impaired driving. Um, you know, when you say, have you been, I, you know, I you, I think you’d wanna pull parents out of that just to, ‘cause you wanna gauge the students. So I’d say, have you ever been, um, you know,

26:51 I think you’d have to put opportunity as well as circumstance in there. So like, have you ever been in a car with a, you know, upperclassmen or you know, someone with a driver’s license outside of school activities or school, you know, basically kind of going into the weekend type of thing? Um, because I’d say like me as a freshman or a sophomore, like, you know, I wasn’t in the car of many upperclassmen unless it was sports related, you know, getting a ride home or something like that. But in that case, you know, I’d, I’d be a no, but the opportunity wasn’t there. You know, we are leaving practice, everyone’s sober, you know? Yeah. So it’s not gonna give you an accurate rep. It’s gonna throw the statistics off and, um, you know, the correlation between it, like I said, once you get the question more refined in this one I think you’ll get better numbers.

27:37 But the correlation between, um, the two point, uh, one and the 21.3, that one seems pretty off. It, it means to me when I read that, it means the driver didn’t know they were impaired, but everyone in their car did. So maybe they answered it by saying, no, I wasn’t, you know, I don’t drive impaired, but everyone else did because that number’s so much higher. Otherwise I’d have to assume that everyone’s just carpooling with the same drunk driver. Hmm. So it’s, so the numbers like refining those questions, I think you could get a lot more, um, yeah. Data more accurate. I think you’re exactly right. And we kind of already talked through a few ideas to like, make it better. And to your point about the license driver, we actually talked with Chief King about,

28:23 can you go to the next slide? He said that exactly the same thing. Yeah. Um, so we asked this question about texting while driving. Um, this is Julia’s. Yeah, Same thing. Yeah. Um, and so he, you know what, chief King had a lot of great stuff to say. Like basically what he said was this, this is encouraging data. However, what, yeah. He sent me some extra data that I included after there’s 3,308 deaths nationally by distracted driving, which counts for about 10% of fatal accidents. And he said exactly what you said, next year we need to ask first, are you a licensed driver? If you are. And then like ask a quick and that can Yeah. You know, go back To, and I know the second one will get tricky ‘cause you’re asking, you know, if they’ve been in the car, like I said, opportunity. Yeah. You know, maybe lowerclassmen females might have more opportunity to be in with upperclassmen guys probably.

29:10 But, uh, lowerclassmen guys tend not to get too many rides to parties and stuff like that. So it’s, Yeah. So these are some questions that we’ll work on. Do you have a, a program? I mean, you used to of having, uh, sober drivers Okay. In the school? Yeah. Um, no, I mean, we had it back when I was, it wasn’t a big hit school, so it was, yeah. It didn’t, it kind of died. Yeah. Um, there’s been some conversation about a couple different programs like that. Like, um, being somebody that’s like a, um, known as like a safe person. I think it’s like the re band red. We’ve had some Yes, yes. I know we’ve talked about a few different, like student led initiatives are on this, which is important. But yeah, no, we don’t have anything currently right now. I Think, I mean, my kids were always athletes,

29:57 but if they found themselves at a party, number one, they would leave because if they were found up there, even if they weren’t drinking, they were, they were a part of it. But they also, if they did hear of anybody, if they could get them out at appropriate time, they would, they would always Drive them. Mm-Hmm. But I just thought that that also was helpful. But anybody that’s with the MIAA that they are ever caught driving, it’s done. They’re done. Yes. Okay. A couple other things to note on substance use. So, 68 points, 2% of students who use nicotine vape products are planning to reduce or quit in the next month. Kids know this is not good for them. They don’t wanna be doing it. It’s really hard to quit.

30:44 Um, students who use nicotine in the past 30 days, almost 35% re report having craving within the first hour of waking up, which is usually an indicator of addiction. Do you offer any, uh, nicotine product like, you know, um, the patch or any of those things to help students get off nicotine? Obviously they’re not supposed to be using it, but, you know, how do we help these kids get away from vape and all this stuff? Yeah, we don’t offer like a, like any sort of health related things in the school. Um, it’s, there are some, like MGH has like a vaping cessation program grant that they’re working on. So like, that’s something that we could look at. We do have a diversion program. Um, it’s actually something that run, I’ve spoke about it before, um, for when students do get caught vaping instead, you know, research tells us that if you just punish somebody, especially with something like that, with an addiction,

31:31 it’s not gonna help them, you know, it change their behavior. So instead of being suspended, they have the option to do a diversion program, which is like an evidence-based, it’s called, I decide it’s through MGH. Um, and it’s about, you know, education awareness, harm reduction, goal setting. It’s very individualized to the students. So it’s like a three or four session thing that I run. So that’s one thing that we do offer. And it’s also a tier two intervention, so you don’t have to get caught vaping to, um, get in the program. If we have a concern about a student or a parent reaches out or a kid wants to do it, they can do it without having an infraction, which is really nice. And let me talk to the state about the nicotine cessation programs we used to offer them from the health department side. Um, and they stopped, we stopped doing it, you know, I wanna say at least five years ago.

32:16 So let me kinda see where that is and, and see if we need to bring that back. Obviously these numbers are really high. Would the Students come? Yes. We’ll have to work through that. That’s the thing. You have to make availability is key. Anonymous and kind. You know, I mean, every, anytime people come to our office, it’s anonymous, you know, um, but let me talk to the state and see, you know, how we can work this program. My sense is that it’s a really great thing that the schools could work with the department of to help ‘em, because I don’t know, you know, would they be going during their school day going to get treatment for that? Right. I’m not sure if that’s like the best fit, but we could work and to refer. Yep. Which would be a great, I think a really great collaboration. Yeah. How many would you say on average per year do you get in like that diversion program? Yeah, I think it’s like, it’s not a huge number. It’s like around 10 maybe or less. Yeah. That’s it. Yeah.

33:03 Um, yep. This year it was, I think it around, I was gonna say, if you get the number higher, then maybe you could add in an honest question. Did you do this diversion question and did you stop? Oh, you know, type setting just to see if it works and whatever. But if you’re only getting 10 outta Us, yeah. It’s not a huge number. Um, but I mean, we’ve been really surprised by, with the vaping we went, we went to Tobacco 21, um, you know, Marblehead one was one of the first communities in the state to adopt it. We really thought we had tobacco beat and then vaping came out. You know, all these different special products, they’re obviously targeting, you know, kids. Um, and obviously this has, you know, led to these issues.

33:46 Uh, and you know, I just, another point to make about that is like, it is, it’s an issue that a lot of kids are struggling with. And, um, it’s not just happening in school though. It’s happening if they, if you’re addicted, you’re doing it all day. And so it, it’s, you know, school needs to be doing things and, but community and prevention and like education for parents to more prevention. Because once kids are addicted, like we talked about, it’s really hard to quit. And their ability to focus on school and their curriculum is, is Im, you know, it impacted. So it’s something that like other community and the schools need to work on together. But do, do you have a sense of where kids are getting vape products from online? I’d assume, I mean, and the laws have changed to try to mitigate some of this, but we, we haven’t seen it really be, you know, raising the use of it. Um, sorry, raising the age of legal use, um, making illegal the, uh, flavored products.

34:33 Um, but they’re still getting them. Yeah. Either from a different state or people selling them. Yeah, we think a lot about a state, obviously. So, you know, the Tobacco Control Pro program that we have, Mar is the same program that we offer. And Lynn Swamps got all the surrounding communities. Um, so they send an inspector in to see if they can sell to underage individuals, um, if they do that, you know, obviously. Yeah. It’s one of those things. Yeah. Well it’s like, like, I mean, like I was saying, like if you grew up in Marblehead, you’re not gonna buy cigarettes or anything like alcohol on Marblehead because you don’t wanna run into your neighbor. And so like, I don’t, vapes weren’t a thing when I was a kid, so I don’t, I knew where people got like cigarettes and alcohol and stuff like that, but I, I vapes are kind of just the idea. I’ve never even bought a vape. I’ve never tried. So I don’t know anything about these things besides the,

35:21 The tobacco control program is that, you know, the same inspectors that come to Marblehead go to all the other establishments in this area. So they should be, yeah. You know, it should be a good compliance check. We obviously know it’s not never perfect. Yeah. Did you have a question on there? If, how many, uh, of the, of the students that smoke whatever they smoke, um, if they, if they see it at home, because I am imagining that there’s very little smoking in the home, Meaning like, did they see their parents or like siblings? Yes. Um, no, we didn’t ask that, but that’s, I good Question. I mean, I don’t think that the, the 30 to 50-year-old people are smoking that much. I’m actually shocked by how many of my friends vape. Yeah, there’s a lot of adults that vape you. Yes. But that’s a good question to ask, I think. Yeah.

36:07 Um, you know, are you seeing this in your home? Um, yes. Okay. So I’m Making a different assumption. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I’m never, it’s never interested me, so, but I see a lot more than I would’ve expected more than smoked when I was a Kid. So, ‘cause I think it’s easier and not unhealthy. So marijuana use, we’re seeing a lot of students feel anxious or paranoid, um, or even having hallucinations, 7.5% and then 4.4 0.5% prescription. Uh, so here’s some of the other highly addictive substances. I always wanna talk about this because, you know, the overdose risk for fentanyl, um, prescription filled out category could be opiates. Um, benzodiazepines. These are the things that, um, people are buying off the street that have fentanyl in them that are killing people.

36:52 It’s not a huge number. However, it’s important that we look at this because if this percentage of, of students in our community have tried these, you know, that that’s certainly concerning enough because there’s a high overdose risk. Um, and so we’ll talk about what we’re doing districtwide, but there’s now a, this data helped inform the need for the Narcan policy that our nurses have in the school. So we have Narcan in all of our schools. Um, hallucinogens and psychedelics, 3.7% cocaine, 1%. These are, they actually, I have to ask for this data because they don’t send me back anything that’s like, like low data. And I’m like, no, we need to see it because if anybody could overdose, we need the, the information. Yeah. Um, so that’s important. Okay. We’re getting close to the end here. What’s next? What’s next? Okay, we also, it’s so much quantitative data,

37:42 but we also like to hold a focus group to talk about qualitative data. We have students come in and, and have a really nice conversation about, um, you know, their perceptions of mental health and substance use. Big takeaways is students recognize the important intersection between substance use and mental health harm, reduction in substance use. Education is important. Research tells us that scare tactics and a and um, awareness campaigns are not helpful in prevention of substance use. So harm reduction education around reducing the risks of substances, um, nonjudgmental approach. Um, that is what students wanna see. ‘cause that’s what’s more realistic. A lot of talking about parents are very accepting of alcohol. Um, and then about half the students who’ve participated felt that they had been peer pressured in some way to use substances. So this is also important information, like

38:29 actually hearing from students anecdotally, third bullet point, the current education, the high school substance use, they found that to Be very helpful. Um, and actually talked about learning at a younger age. And so that’s something that we’re excited that we’ll be talking about more too, as well as That’s great. Yeah, Absolutely. Which, and so now we’re gonna talk about what do we do with this? Yes. What do you call a younger age? Um, the 15 and younger. Yeah. And so that was like call the younger. Some of it’s very, you know, a little bit older middle school or let, um, could be specifically geared towards substance use. But at the really young ages it’s really more about social emotional learning and mental health because those are the protective or risk factors to developing a substance use disorder. So we just put a couple slides together, you know, we need to improve upon what we’re doing. We always should be enhancing and looking at the data,

39:16 but we are doing a bunch of stuff. And so here’s, here’s some of it. There’s diversity, diversity, equity, inclusion. This is all student and teacher staff involved. There’s some informa our health. I can’t give our health teachers enough credit, um, for, they’re always trying new things, getting feedback from the students. What’s a good fit for the students? They’ll ask my input. They’re, you know, they’re amazing and they do look at all the things they do. They’re covering more than anyone probably realizes. Um, so I just wanna like Carla and Abby Anderson in the high school doing a great job. Absolutely. Um, there’s another slide of stuff that’s happening. I’ll leave that up for a second. And then Julia is gonna talk a little bit. That’s just at the high school. I think your next slide is everything else. Yeah. Oh, we got some information from the middle school

40:02 because they do a great job as well in their health classes. Um, here’s what some of the health class curriculum covers. And then we also do, which is a state mandated screening and brief intervention referral. The resources in seventh and ninth around substance Use. And that second to last bullet point that you, me, together, vape free is a new program actually we applied for this year. So our health educators at the middle school found a program through Stanford, um, that we could be part of their study group and we were selected. So it was really exciting that we are on the cutting edge of that education. Um, so we, uh, our students can participate in the surveys and that was something the parents can sign up with the student to do that. But everyone will, everyone, all of our students will get the curriculum. It’s just if they wanna do the responding to the surveys, they had to get permission and they’ll, um, they’ll be part of that study.

40:49 So that’s some really cool stuff coming from Stanford, um, district wide. So go next. Yeah, thanks. District wide, we have a lot of great things that are happening. So as a district, we focus on the multi-tiered systems of support. And so we wanna make sure that we are supporting all students and, um, through academic and social emotional learning. Um, Gina talked a lot about tier one, two and three. So tier one, that’s everybody getting access, um, to all of the information. And so that’s where we look to, um, through health education and other curriculum classes. Um, and so what we’re doing, as you saw at the high school, the pages, right, the slides of, of amazing work. There’s also some great things that we’re doing, um, in the K to eight space. I wanted to share some of that with with you this evening. Um, so for our youngest learners in the K to three,

41:34 they have responsive classrooms. So as a district, we’ve paid for the teachers to engage in professional development. And responsive classroom is all about building a community and sense of belonging and feeling confident and safe in their learning space. Um, so that helps from, that’s a protective factor at a young age. Um, as our students get older, um, and through Gina’s work with this, uh, as a critical data point for us, we realized that we had to do more for our younger students. So I’m very proud to say that we were able to put through our budget for next year. We’re gonna have a health educator at village school. So for the first time ever, we’re gonna have a dedicated health teacher for grades four, five, and six. Um, so we are very excited and very proud of that. And that’s gonna help us when we’re talking about that data. Looking 15 and younger, we know great things are happening at the high school

42:20 and the middle school and now that 12 and younger now we can say we have something actually in place through our school district. So I think your statistics are telling you the fifteens to two old already, Right? That’s what they consider, um, the young, but yeah, we agree. So that’s why we went younger For sure. I’m glad to doing that because what we just saw that the 15 year olds are are responding. Yep. Yeah. So very proud of that. Um, and obviously we’ll have our, all of our health educators collaborating. So there’s that alignment through, um, from grade four through 12. So we’re very excited about that. Um, we also do support our teachers and every year they, um, engage in professional learning and we’re doing a lot with social emotional learning. Um, we are also doing a lot of, um, where teachers are coming together and talking about best practices

43:05 and health educators, physical education teachers, um, a lot of great things that are happening with professional learning. Um, and then Gina mentioned that we do have the Narcan policy, um, to support in case of those emergency Situations. So even like the elementary schools have Narcan and that’s, you know, that’s not because anyone thinks that little children may, but it is there potentially a parent that, I mean it’s just important that every, it’s a district-wide policy. So every school has, you see, it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t Hurt you see that they’re taking it.

43:35 No. So it’s held in the nurse’s office. Yeah. Have it. Oh, but but do you see that anybody’s asking for, is what I’m saying no good That I have that information to share, right. Do we No, we wouldn’t be able to share. That’s like private health information. Well, I Mean it’s just that doesn’t matter who’s taking it, it doesn’t matter if it’s being used. Yeah. I don’t have that information to share. I’m sorry. Um, but at the end of the day, what we’re looking through, you know, K to 12, we want our students to feel safe, supported, um, and feel that they have the best possible learning environment. And that’s really important for us. So looking forward to that. Anyone, uh, miss? Yeah, We talked about all this really, but what, you know, we’re doing a lot, but how can we improve upon it? Um, so early use harm reduction, SEL and mental health support, L-G-B-T-Q-I and DEI programming based on some of the data that we saw on looking a little bit more at body

44:20 image and eating disorders. The point I made earlier about just, you know, it’s really important for the schools to be doing this work, but how do we partner with communities and parents because, you know, that is so important too. How do we do more community programming so that it’s not just coming from the schools and how do we educate parents around census so that they’re sending the same messages at home? Um, and then using the school-wide survey as an annual tool. Like we talked about, like we come back and share with you next year where we’re at, we come share with the school committee, we share with our staff and we look at kind of is some of the programming we’re implementing has been helpful. And we also collaborate with, uh, normal Head Mental health Task force. So we’re so excited. Um, we have some great things. I’m not sure if we’re ready to share everything yet, but we have some really great things that we’re planning some collaborative efforts to support with the community efforts as well. Um, and then, um, just, just, I’m grateful for

45:08 that opportunity to use the expertise. And we heard last night from the N Project and that got me really excited. So we’re always trying to learn ourselves and, and do better for the sake of our students Families. Well, the Marvel Head task force is under the auspices of the Board of Health. Correct. Point to them. So it it would behoove you to inform us whatever you’re informing them because they are pointing. But Yes, Absolutely. So last night we just had our meeting and we, we discussed potentially, um, coming together for collaborating the task force in the schools for two co uh, community events. We’ve not made any further steps that, that was part of the discussion just last night. And then I was really personally excited about the NAM project and knowing, um, they spoke about the seniors, how they work with, um, older students and younger students.

45:56 And we know from our data that our 12th graders are gonna need some more support. So just last night I mentioned publicly that, um, I could really see how we could, um, connect with NM project. I haven’t connected yet, but those are some things that just came up last night. Wonderful. Thank you Jillian. Well thank You Julia. I think it was a great meeting. Questions for Us. That was way longer than we That was, I’m sorry. Excuse me. Thank you. It was way longer than it was. We said it All the time you wanted maybe all the time we wanted, but Great. There was one thing that I just at the end Yes. You were talking about collaborating with with the health department. Yeah. We always felt the health department was autonomous as is the high school or as the school department.

46:43 So if we could do something together, I think that our board would be happy. So we are always currently working together. Yeah, we, yeah, we do have a BS a S grant that we’re working with them on currently. Alright, well, but if we could even do a program together. ‘cause um, we’ve been talking about a substance abuse program and if, and if we bring one of these groups in or Yeah. So you’re talking more about a, a speaker series or, you know, you know, like a, the drug story theater. Um, so yeah, obviously we can, you know, Gina, I can talk further about that. Um, but yeah, you know, obviously it would be great for some of these programs, our speakers to go into the school and then potentially have them at nighttime for their parents. That’s what I’d love focus on this year is like a parent.

47:30 We did like a vape, like vaping education night, especially for like, we included the middle school. Like that was really great. We had a pretty good turnout. Something like that I think would be, and we had something parent, parent focused. Um, We were looking, uh, a couple weeks ago, month ago on that, uh, a drug, uh, what’s Drug Stop play? Is that what it’s called? Yeah, the Drug Story Theater. Drug Story Theater. And it’s the, the actors are former addicts. Mm-Hmm. Young. And, and they’re, they’re teens and they have a director and it’s, it’s formalized. It’s not just people getting up there and moving around or they have, they have a script and they worked it out

48:16 and I guess Swamp got tried to get them and they, but, but delayed Sudbury just had them last week and I was trying to get a report from them for today, but I have, We did, um, last year we did, um, second act, which is similar to what you’re talking about. It’s, um, people in recovery who are actors that put on a performance about how substance use affected family. We actually, we had every grade come in and, and watch it. Um, so it was similar to what you’re talking about. I haven’t heard of, um, that I think it’s basically the exact same thing, so Sounds Yeah. Yeah. Um, so we did that last year. Um, and I feel like you Said it was successful. Yeah, I, I think, I think it was a pretty powerful message. Kids’ feedback was mixed about, you know, there was Yeah. Kids’ feedback was mixed and so

49:03 They, they’re always gonna critique their people their own age. Yeah. These were actually adults. So it, it sounds a little different. You’re saying it’s teenagers? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So that sounds a little different. Can I ask you a question about, so I really appreciate this data and, um, and your efforts and help. Thank you for walking us through. Um, something I’m always curious about is the stigma associated with mental health and when you were leaving through the, the data, is there, was there a a sense that, is there any data points that looked at how kids are feeling, uh, about the stigma of mental health? I feel like young, younger people and there’s a lot of data to support that. They’re much more comfortable talking about it. They feel, um, you know, comfortable discussing it

49:52 with their peers and accessing care for it was, do you see that going in a positive direction from any of the survey? That was The, the question, the only question that I think related to that was the question around who do you talk to about your men? Which, which kind of talks about that, which people are more willing to talk about it if they, you know, if there’s a stigma or they’re, they’re guarded about it, they’re not gonna be as willing to talk about it. And so we did, you know, it wasn’t a super concerning number, but we did actually see a little bit of a decrease in the last year with, um, talking to parents and talking to friends. Okay. And so, you know, it’s a one year data point and so we, we need a little more time to see where, which way it’s trending, but it’s enough to say that we can do more to try to do safe health for sure. I, I definitely think over the years more people are just

50:39 speaking from, like anecdotally my office, like more and more kids are like less worried about going to Ms. Howard’s office than I think when I first started. But there are definitely still students that are like, you know, don’t tell anyone that I’m coming here or like, I’m not gonna talk to you. And so I think, um, it’s becoming less stigmatized, but there’s always more we can do because there’s still people that struggle with accessing the support they need. Anything else? Yeah, I, um, the body image one just questions on that because I realize, you know, it’s high school so there’s puberty now there’s social media and all that stuff. Yeah. Um, but I also know like obesity has been uptick over the past. You know a bunch of years. So, you know, when I was a student there, they, there wasn’t really much talk about nutrition and stuff like that. Is do they have that now? I don’t know. Absolutely. Through the health classes. Yeah, They do now. And this

51:25 is one of the things too, like, I, I don’t wanna speak for the health teachers ‘cause they’re so wonderful and educated, but I do talk to them a lot about like, what are they covering? And they do basically like a tier one, which is appropriate for class. They’re covering body image and nutrition. Yes. And I think, I think it’s junior year, which, you know, we’d have to look back At And they do it middle school as well, just haven’t been in the middle school. I know they do that. Yeah. No, it’d be, you know, if the kids can learn now, like they’d be educating their parents. Mm-Hmm. That’s, that’s, we did not get that back then. So. Didn’t did. I did. All right. Maybe it, I also, I’ll just say that we, um, so this was last year. We found out this past, uh, fall. We did the middle school did win. Um, America’s generation for healthiest school. For our, um, for the health program.

52:11 Health education program, and our school nursing program, our school, what we offer Mm-Hmm. So just a little plug for, we are very proud of the work happening, um, at the, the middle school and then in through the high school. And just excited for next year to see what we can um, yeah, like do That Village. A village. Exactly. So, Excellent. Mm-Hmm. So one more thing. Last, uh, meeting. We spent a lot of time talking about smartphones and the new book. And, um, I think that we be discussing it at this table more. Um, did you do anything, uh, around that as far as your survey? Have you done it elsewhere in the schools? I, I feel like you are, you’re not the first person to ask that. I feel like I’ve gotten that question just around the addiction to phones. I mean, a question about risk behaviors

52:56 and it’s certainly a risk behavior. So no, we don’t, there’s not currently a question on there, but I think that’s a really good, um, suggestion. No, I think it’s going come out big. The book came out in March and I think a lot of people are gonna be reading it and, What’s it called? Understand, give his code a Minute. Generation, What is it? The anxious Generation? Generation. Generation. It, It made Oprah. I noticed that it was, uh, it Was on Oprah, but I didn’t have the $35 to pay for the Oprah thing, but I will get it the next, I also, uh, notice that they have a, an American. So make sure you, Jonathan, I Oh, interesting.

53:42 Unless you wanna talk as a bridge. What, what do you think the appetite for, um, the yonder bags in school would be like? I dunno if either either of you have ever tried one before. Have you ever tried One? Yeah. Yeah. So we have, um, it’s Free Ing, so I’m really proud of, um, uh, Dr. Carlson, our high school principal and the leadership team took on, um, this year they piloted, um, really focusing on, uh, reducing phone use during schools. So, um, it’s been a huge shift and Gina’s there every day. I’m not there and I’m there a lot, but not every day. Um, but we’re gonna, at the end of the year reflect on how the year went. Um, so grateful for the PTO. They bought, instead of the yonder bags, they bought, um, stands or, Yeah, like putting it on like a little like Yeah. Cubby

54:28 Kind of thing. And, um, so students don’t have access to their phone during academic time. Um, they do during lunchtime magic block and, you know, maybe a passing period. You know, You don’t, they didn’t know what the under bag was. Do you need it to No. Yeah, once. Okay. It’s just, Sorry. It’s Sometimes, so they do now when you go to like, comedy shows and some concerts, ‘cause they don’t want you filming, so you put it in there. It’s magnetized. It’s actually super quick. So like I, you know, I went to a, a comedy show at the TD Garden, so that’s 17,000 people, you know, and they kind of flag through it, you know, um, and what’s in your po It’s in your pocket. You have your phone, you just can’t use it. And so, okay. Like I said, it’s really freeing because no one else can You very pregnant, You know? So it’s, uh, yeah. And then on your way out, they just hit it with whatever, which, in this day and age, I’m sure the kids would figure out the math,

55:14 but it’s, um, you know, The department of elementary and secondary education actually, um, put out some grant money. We decided not to apply ‘cause we wanted to do the pilot year before committing to, it’s a substantial purchase, so we wanted to do that. The high school is the only school in the district that even allows students to have a phone and out invisible, you know? Um, not during academic time, but, um, we’ll have to, we can definitely come back and talk about that because I mean, that’s, I it’s also good be said, you know, just if you put ‘em on a stand or something like that during class. Yeah. Whatever, you know. Yeah. So it’s, um, but no, I, I like, I like when I get to use yonder bags. Nice. It’s, that’s Cool. Same thing happened to me as well, so I know, But then I hear that the, that some of the teachers are asking the kids to take up their phones to look something up.

55:59 Are they asking teachers not to do that? Or it’s, there’s definitely a policy that teachers are, yeah. And not to do that. We’ve got the technology to support. So if a teacher does need a student to access, we do have the Chromebooks and the, and at the high school specifically, a lot of our students do bring their own devices. So, um, it’s just kind of, we have that culture at the high school where there’s definitely technology if it’s needed for their learning, um, beyond their phone. The on phone. Yeah. Yeah. We have that Because also we heard about the, um, the, the, uh, scare a couple weeks ago, and parents were notified Mm-Hmm. And that the only way they were notified was by their kids, not by the school department. Um, that’s what I was told. No. Is that, yes. Yeah. I don’t wanna get into that. We definitely did a great job of communicating, I think,

56:46 with our families, but, um,

56:50 Yeah, that’s not what we heard. Sorry,

56:55 I think, I think I saw a letter. No. So After things, Uh, I don’t remember, but Anyhow, we don’t, yeah. But yes, the board has the copies of the executive summary, uh, and the slideshow. Um, so if you guys have questions afterwards, I can definitely get those to Gina. And, um, so Thanks Sandra. I think they have, there were two or three questions, if they don’t mind getting back to us. Absolutely. Yeah. I can look into what you asked. Yeah. And Tom asked a question. Mm-Hmm. Yeah, you can just, my, my suggestions more. You can take, Wrote those down. Thank you so much. We, I’m easy To reach if you need to ask questions. Okay. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. Thank you for this time tonight. Thank you so much. You very much for coming in. Are you talking about this anymore,

57:41 or, well, a little bit actually. Julia, I think gave the highlight that would be most relevant. Do you wanna, um, Do you wanna bring that agenda right up? It is the next item. So why don’t we, okay. Can I go very quickly through our mental health force? And I’ve got lots of people here. Can’t go quickly go because, okay. Done. Um, so Mark Labon, who has been serving as co-chair for the task force for the past year, is, um, going to step up and share the mental health task force going forward. He’s just wonderful, strong leader, and I’m very grateful to him for his leadership specifically, uh, to our program. Last night, he did bring the NAN project, which was a presentation we had, um, Donna Ick, who was the clinical director,

58:27 and Lizzie McClellan, who’s an assistant director of programming. And it’s storytelling and how, uh, how engaging storytelling is that people putting their, their vulnerability out to others. Um, and the young woman, Lizzie, was able to share her story of growing up with anxiety in the schools and things that everyone can remember, you know, test taking. But she had exponential stress and anxiety in that experience. And she, her story, I mean, it was very profound and extremely moving, and she was able to invite all of us to walk on that journey with her. And then she talked about the hope that she found, um,

59:15 when she was able to access care by having someone see her, hear her and say, let’s get you some help. And then she was able to talk about her recovery and her, her journey towards wellness. And then she displayed it by saying, you know, here she is speaking about a really difficult experience that she had to all of us and sharing it so openly. So, um, I think that’s their, that’s their hook. People that they engage with. They have a number of these, um, storytellers that go into the schools and share their stories and then talk about how they were able to reach wellness and, um,

1:00:00 recover, uh, in their mental health and then lead beautiful lives where they’re able to give back. And one of the things that, um, Donna shared was that, you know, that giving back is very rewarding for these individuals, and they’re always looking for more individuals who have a story where, you know, as a young person, they suffered with mental illness and, um, were able to, to build, build their mental health back. And it was just absolutely inspiring. And I know the Nan project is in, I think she said 75 schools around, not just the North Shore, you know, all the way around Massachusetts. And it was an organization that was, um, founded by a family who’s,

1:00:46 I believe 23-year-old daughter took her life. And they just looked back on her life and thought, what could we have done differently? How could we have changed this outcome? And they did a lot of research and found out that you really need to connect people to these, these opportunities to, to get help, get the help that they need. And they built this programming around that service. And so we’re excited to hopefully, um, have it available for our students here in Marblehead. And, um, so that was really a very big part of our evening last night. Um, we also talked to the, oh, sorry. So where Were, where are you guys with that? I mean, obviously it sounds like an incredible program. Will you bring that back to the school committee? Do you guys still need to look at it more?

1:01:32 Where did we kind of stand with that program? Well, one of the wonderful things is that it’s free. It’s, there’s no funding. So that makes, that takes a lot of the challenges out of it. But, um, we’d love to work with the schools and support that in the schools. I know that the task force is, um, really enamored of this, this programming. And certainly when, you know, we’re looking at the data where there is, um, an increase in the number of young people in our, our high schools that have, um, attempted suicide. There’s, you know, if these stories can help one life that would be and connect one person to a path, um, to toward care. Do we have to train our own students or, or do they have people? They have speakers that go into the schools

1:02:17 and they have all different, um, types of speakers, people with all different stories, you know, younger, older, uh, people to speak different languages. They’ve got, she was talking about, um, enabling some technology that can translate into different languages for the different audience in the different schools. So they’ve really tried to meet people where they are. And, um, it looks like it’s an organization that’s, you know, really growing and building and trying to, um, make sure how local are they? So one of the person that was with us is last night lives the next town over. She didn’t say which town over, but there’s not too many of them. So, um, very local. It started on the North Shore. It’s not the ocean. We know that. We know that. Right? It’s one of two, I think. So, um, something we’re really excited about,

1:03:03 uh, potentially. That’s great bringing it in. Yeah. And then we talked about also, you know, some of the other programming. And based on this data, this is so helpful. It’s a, it’s a, a director for us. Where can we bring resources in to help support the needs within the schools with our young population? And we’ve got some speakers that, um, some of our task force members have, um, think very highly of and have heard and think could bring some value for some of the different areas of need. So just to support that bring, you know, hopefully those speakers could, uh, talk to parents and families and help people feel supported. And, um, of course it’s a challenge to fill chairs, but I think even if you have, you know,

1:03:48 the right people in the chairs that need to be there and find this resource to help point them in the direction that they need to go, um, that would bring some value. So we’ve got a lot of energy on the task force about how can we do that for next year. We’re thinking about two dates. One in the fall, one in the spring. So we’ll make sure it’s aligned with where the needs are for some students. Julie, actually I have a question. Yes. I’m sorry. Um, are you having an opening day for faculty and have you started to think about that and maybe some of this work about mental health or substance abuse, one of these topics or even the smartphones would be, uh, a, a good one too. You probably have to work with a superintendent. Had, has that person been hired at, came yesterday?

1:04:35 Uh, no. That person has not been hired yet. So, but We are in the works of planning. There’s a lot of planning that’s happening, a lot of great things that are happening. Um, we call that day with our staff, like our convocation where it’s a welcome back and then we do some professional learning and stuff. Right. Um, what we’ve been talking about so far, um, are things that we feel like would be essential for them, just welcoming students the next week. And what we’re looking at is then we do have scheduled professional development throughout the school year. Um, so just today actually, I was in a meeting, we’re talking about social emotional learning and when we’re gonna be, uh, we’ve done some this year. We brought in, um, uh, Dr. Menahan was, um, is she clinical? A clinical clinical psychologist? Yeah. So we, we, we started some of that great work, work this year. We wanna continue that. Um, so, uh, last year our convocation speaker was Dr.

1:05:22 Jody Carrington, um, who is an author and was really well received. Um, we were really grateful for that opportunity. We don’t have that type of planning happening right now, um, but really excited to continue the great things that we started. Um, So, so maybe with some of these issues that you brought up tonight, it might be good time. Oh, absolutely, we will be. But that, it just, to your point of, it might not be the first couple days, but it absolutely will be part of the, um, um, program. And if I may, I would just like to add like the, the n project. Some, one of the things that really resonated with me is when they just, they come in, you know, once, maybe twice, but the idea of what they leave the students with would be a lasting, um, message. And I think that’s really important too. We look at not only just bringing in something once, just be to check the box, but we really want it to have a,

1:06:09 a really positive effect on our students, um, and, and families. Um, if we do a community, uh, speaking series. Um, so we’re looking at that too. So how can we not just do a one-time, but how can we make that sustain, uh, throughout the years? Yeah. And My question was just kind of more outta curiosity, could, because the attempted suicide, not percentage was high, I guess you could say. Did, and I’m, and it’s a serious thing. So I’m assuming parents had contacted you. Was it higher than you expected when you got the survey, or were you kind of expecting it to be around that percentage? I mean, 3%. You know, I guess it’s, it’s really hard to tell without being able to look at state data from this year. Like what it, what’s going on in other towns. It’s hard to know. I think just the fact that it increased from one to three, because a suicide attempt is a very serious thing.

1:06:56 Yeah. And we talked about the reduction with anxiety, depression. Yeah, It’s interesting. But Then the increase in that Mm-Hmm. And I think the thing, you know, one of the things I didn’t mention is, is the survey is completely anonymous and confidential. I think I might have touched on it, but we really encourage, you know, students to feel free to be honest on it. So one of the things that, um, and then there’s also, because those questions are really difficult for kids to answer, there’s then a bunch of resources that are shared after. And even in the survey itself, there’s like resources and suicide hotlines and support and our mental health staff available after the survey. So what I will say is, unfortunately we don’t know who those students are because it’s confidential and that piece of the survey is so important. Um, but yeah, I, I think just to see it increase, especially like her point,

1:07:41 because the mental health data was also decreasing. So yeah, I think it’s a little bit of a surprise and okay, you know, 3% of 800 something, how many kids is that? But still, I mean it’s, and we don’t know, was it when they were younger? Was it recently? We don’t have a lot of the specifics around when it was or do people know about it? And that to them, what does attempted mean? Does it mean they got some pills and put on the nightstand or they actually in ingest one? Or, And the question is as specific as it can be. I don’t have it in front of me, but, but yeah, I mean, any question can be up for interpretation. They MG does a great job making it very specific, but yeah, you’re right. Like it could it have been up to interpretation at all? Because have you had a suicide in, in the high school in the last four years?

1:08:32 So that 3% would have to have been like earlier that it was more attempted than anything else? Well, It was attempt. It is just an attempt. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Was that the question attempted? Yeah. Yep.

1:08:49 And I think you, I think you’re taking the right approach by making it optional because then you are gonna get, you know, honest answers. Oh, right. I mean, why would you opt into something if you were just gonna lie? Yes. I mean, I’m sure there are still people that couple, but I’m sure you get the most honest answers. So Yeah. It has to be optional so that they feel,

1:09:12 Um, I just have a few more things about the mental health task force. Uh, June 22nd, again, they, we reiterated the Marblehead counseling centers, um, health Day Wellness Day that they’re having at the house field. And it seems like it’s going to be a really huge success because, um, Ron Granier is I think orchestrating a lot of the organizing everything. And he lives across the street from, he tells me about all the tables that will be filled and there’s gonna be lots of gains for children. And, uh, lots of people that care deeply about health of our community will be participating and bringing resources to the day. So we’ll have a table there. Marble Hood Cares Table will be there and we will be well staffed, fully staffed.

1:09:57 Um, everybody wants to come. So it seems like that’s gonna be terrific. That’s right next to the counseling center, right? Yes. Is that what That called? Right? Yep. And I think they’re gonna close one of the roads ‘cause there’s hopefully gonna be lots and lots of kids. And there’s no rain date. So it will be sunny that day. Yes. What time is it? Perfect. Um, I think it’s from 12 to three and Is a dedication And Oh, maybe it, does it go later than three? I can give wait minute. I can’t give it that 10. Uh, but there’s a dedication of a, of a flower of garden to someone who’s uh oh, actually took away. Oh yeah. Pretty sure it’s one to four. One. Thank you Tom. One, four. And when’s the, when’s the other four? One four. Thank you Tom. It’s horrible. So, and then, uh, our next meeting will be

1:10:45 August 5th, Monday, August 5th. And, um, we, we were, we’re getting so much momentum on the task force, but I think in the past they’ve taken the summers off. We’ve taken the summers off, but that will not be happening. But we will take a recess in July and then step back up in early August.

1:11:06 And you’re going to step down as you role, I am gonna step down as chair and I am going to as co-chair rather. And I’m going to be an administrative, in an administrative role. ‘cause I’m so great at administrative roles, especially when there’s technology involved. But I will be, um, hosting the meetings and, uh, supplying the minutes We can Yeah. So we can complain together. We have to thank you for the last, uh, three years that you’ve run this. You came in here with, with not any knowledge about our board or about the mental health task force. And you’ve really, uh, embraced them both. And thank, thank you so much for doing it because I don’t think you had, you knew what public health was because you are one,

1:11:52 but you really didn’t know what was going on in either place until you sat here and did It. You have to be in the room where it happens. And you’ve done a my little story.

1:12:05 Thank you very much. Thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. Thank you for your Thank you. Amazing work. Okay. Thank You. And Eugene, I’m sorry it was such a pe for a year, But No, I’m, I’m, I’m so happy we got, we got here and now we continue Each Thank you. June. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you so much. Have a great evening, Julian.

1:12:26 Okay. Um, we are going to get something that we’ve just received with last few days. Yep. And you’re going to, um, walk us through, um, uh, our mission statement that we wrote about five years ago. Yeah, that’s correct. So what this document is, is that we’ve had a lot of discussion about communication, uh, making sure everybody understands what the health department does, what the Board of Health does. Uh, even recently with our pertussis case at the high school, um, you know, we sent out a letter. We sent out information that, you know, should be coming from the health department, uh, the school grabs that takes it around, and obviously it comes out as the Board of Health. Um, so we went on make sure that the public understands the, the different roles, the mission of the Board of Health, uh, where we get our funding from.

1:13:12 And so the idea is that the board would adopt this, and then this would go on our website and people can fully understand kinda the differences between the Department of public, you know, department of Health and the Board of Health and the, and the different roles. Yeah. Um, so yeah, the mission statement. So, um, this was developed several years ago. Um, and so, you know, really, and this is directly from the annual report, um, so the Board of Health promotes and protects the health, wellness and safety of the citizens of Marblehead while ensuring the clean and healthy environment. So I did change it around a little bit. So the mission of the Marblehead Board of Health is to promote and protect the public health, wellness, and safety of the citizens of Marblehead through enforcement of health codes and regulations while promoting a healthy community.

1:13:59 Um, so, you know, obviously we can talk about that, you know, if you guys wanted to change it around, if you want to go back to the original. Um, but it’s kind of a blend of the two mm-Hmm. I certainly, since our, our, uh, board wrote it, I think we should have both of them to, if you’re asking to adopt something that’s different. So Yeah, I mean, if you want, you know, so we, we can go back to the, the original what was in the annual report, um, or the board can take a look at adopting this. Um, I have no problem changing it back to what the original was. Can you reread the original please? Michelle and I probably in, uh, 2020, since we did it on Zoom, Uh, the Board of Health promotes and protects the health, wellness and safety of the Citizens Mar of Marblehead

1:14:46 while insuring a clean and healthy environment.

1:14:53 I think, I think this is more, um, more accurate. ‘cause ensuring is, uh, can be a reach in our world, but enforcement of the health codes and regulations and promotion of the healthy community, I think is, I mean, it might be a little more direct and, and accurate. Would you Agree? Well, I know that what he, when he read the word the sense through the word marblehead was the same. So read after Marblehead in, in your book. In my book, uh, well, ensuring a clean and healthy environment.

1:15:35 Well, it was short. While ensuring a clean and healthy environment, we say through enforcements of health codes and regulations, while perform promoting a healthy community, I wouldn’t mind saying a healthy environment instead of community, but I think I like the regulations, the word regulation.

1:15:56 But in fact, the board does not regulate, they don’t have any authority. When the, uh, leaf blowers problem occurs, it goes to the Department of Health and it goes to the police. The board is a policy and strategy office Was supposed to be, Except for when they write regulations and they adopt regulations. So they adopt the tobacco con control regulations. And those are enforced by, would be enforced by the department. So if, So the, the, that’s the the point. The, the department is the effector arm. Correct. The, the, the, the board sets policy that as one who pushed for this conversation. Right? Yeah.

1:16:42 So maybe I disagree with the fact that you enforce regulations because you don’t. Well, I hope that I, that we do. So, so you, you know, and, and obviously you should be part of this conversation as well. So do you think that we should just, the board should keep just the, the basic statement of the Board of Health promotes and protects the health, wellness and safety of the citizens of Marblehead while ensuring a clean and healthy environment and keep, keep it at that and drop the, um, safety of the citizens through, you know, drop, you know, drop this other statement enforce if I were voting today? Yeah, that is exactly what I would want to do. Okay. Keep it all. So just keep the original.

1:17:27 So the Board of Health promotes and protects the health, wellness and safety of the citizens of Marblehead while ensuring a clean and healthy environment. That’s what you have. Yeah. This is the this is the original. Okay. This is what, And this is what I, you know. Yep. So could you give us the next time to, Well, I think we can change it right back to right now. I think, you know, Instead of ensuring, could we say promoting, does that make sense? That’s the first word. Yeah. First three words. Yeah. Right. The, the mission of the Marblehead Board of Health is to promote, Yeah. The mission of the Marblehead board of, uh, of the Marblehead Board of Health is to protect and pro, uh, is to promote and protect the public health, wellness and safety of the citizens of Marblehead Through What’s the rest of that?

1:18:13 Well, that, that was the part through enforcement of health codes, but the department does the health code reinforcement part. Right, right. That’s, that’s the Discussion. Right? That’s the discussion right now. Yeah. But we don’t have that in the, in the one that is in use right now either. No. This was part of the annual report, which doesn’t, obviously the Enforcement of health codes C Correct. Does not have the enforcement of health codes And regulations Correct. While promoting a healthy community. So, so maybe, but you would stick with, well, promoting a safety of the citizens while promoting a healthy Community. So yeah, the original is the Board of Health promotes and protects the health, wellness and safety of the citizens of Marblehead while ensuring a clean and healthy environment.

1:18:57 All right. Good. So We’ll keep that. We’ve Got two doctors there. What are they saying? They’re saying that’s good. The, the originals. Right. I’m not going out and enforcing anything. So that’s, I think that That’s enough. Okay. Yeah. Do you want people asking you to enforce things? Yes.

1:19:20 I call in about tomorrow. So then moving on. So what is the Board of Health and what is the health department, the board of Health and the Health Department, two distinct, but connected entities are charged with protecting and safeguarding the public and environmental health of the town of Marblehead. The Board of Health is a statutory board comprised of three community members at large, elected by the residents for three year terms. One member of the Board of Health is the chairperson and is elected for by the board annually. The health department is a professionally staffed office within the town of Marblehead, department of Health and Waste consisting of a director, public health nurse, administrative staff, and health inspector. The Board of Health holds monthly public meetings

1:20:05 and conducts public hearings as necessary. Oftentimes, the board’s functions as a quasi-judicial manner to adjudicate hearings for health code violations. Generally speaking, the board adopts regulations that provide protections beyond the minimum standards outlined in the Massachusetts general laws. And GL and State code codify the code of Massachusetts Regulation CMR and sets tile and wide policies related to important health issues. While the Health Department handles day-to-Day procedural operations, administrative duties, and executes the various health laws and regulations, the health department may also be delegated as the enforcing authority for towns. That’s where it’s bylaws passed by town meeting

1:20:50 the municipal equivalent of the legislature. The health department in Bo Broad terms also works to prevent and control communicable diseases and promote a healthy community among other things. They get a little conflated when you go from one to the other. I, if I was gonna rewrite that, I would do one paragraph on what the Health department does, leaving out the Board of Health, and then I would do another paragraph on how, what the Board of Health does. Great. Yeah. In fact, if you would table that conversation, I would be part of the conversation. This is the pathology that I have problems with. The Department of Health is writing what the board does. With all due respect, Andrew, the board should be writing

1:21:39 what the board does it, it on it on its own. It shouldn’t go to you. You, you and the board are separate. You are the operational arm that deals with the policies that the board should be establishing. It’s, it’s basack words to have the director tell the board what it’s doing.

1:22:06 But that’s why I wrote the letter.

1:22:11 Do you have any comments on this document?

1:22:15 I, um, I understand that it makes a lot of sense to, to have this available because, to, to have this written, well written so that people that, you know, to your point, the proses, they’re calling the health department, the Board of Health, and I think that gets kind of thrown around back and forth quite a bit. So I think it does make sense to set it down and be very clear and, and, um, and I, I think, I think that,

1:22:47 I think that it’s really valuable to, to have these conversations and talk about like, how, how can we work together and what, what is our, what is our role and how can we support, we all have the same, we have different, our mission is very similar Board of health in the health department, a very similar missions. And What do we need to do to achieve those missions? Right. That may have taken some research, a little bit of research. ‘cause Andrew’s done some research. Maybe we as board members should do a little research.

1:23:19 Why don’t we, the mission statement as is we would, we’ve addressed this in a manner. We’ve got the, we know the incoming board member, unless somebody has a right in, gets over 200 votes or whatever, and we have you here. So I think it’s been good to have a little bit of airing on this. Mm-Hmm. Maybe we could, Can I just say something? Yes, please. Um, and and pertain to the last description, what about what do other health depart departments do in the other communities? How about about benchmarking? Because it feels like everything is having to be created here when there may be other great ideas.

1:24:05 Certainly in medicine when we didn’t do that, we had lots of problems, you know, and when we started benchmarking other countries and what we came to much better conclusions. So I, I would say, you know, I, I understand what you’re saying. I, I understand, I understand each one. What do other places do? Because that, that doesn’t take a huge amount of research. Right, right. So this wasn’t, you know, I I didn’t create this document. I know, I know. Yeah, I Know it was from other communities. That’s what I mean. So you can say, er says this, Stanford says this. Lexington says that we’ll obviously have to find one of the same size because, you know. Right. I understand. You get my point. Yeah, no, I think you’re right. I think Anna look around.

1:24:51 I mean, because every community is different. So, you know, if you look to Nahant, the select board is acting as the health, as the board of health. Yeah. Um, you know, when you look to, to Salem, you have, you know, you have, I believe a five member appointed board and they’re appointed by the mayor. Um, each community’s different, you know, obviously some communities have charters, cities and stuff like that. Um, depending on staffing the board, you know, each community d is is very different in the 351, uh, cities and towns across the state.

1:25:27 There is an informed, as I understand it, I got it from one of the Salem board members this morning. Um, and I’m, Andrew’s suggestion to me as an incoming person was that I go to the other board and see what they’re like. And I will go to Salem on Tuesday. And Schwans got, I just missed the, the, that board. But I will go to all of the boards of health, um, in the North Shore. And the more important thing that I learned this morning, there is a group of the boards that meet the chairs of the board meet on a, during the pandemic. They were meeting quite regularly. And, uh, the, the, the board member I talked

1:26:13 to today wasn’t certain that they were continuing to meet during this off season. But, but there is a sense of do doing exactly what you said, and that is that, that’s gonna be my homework. Um, shortly after the election And the idea of, you know, when the pandemic was occurring is that we didn’t wanna have a patchwork of different reg rules and regulations across the state. We wanted to be trying to be as uniform as possible. Um, and that way if you left Marblehead and you went into Salem, you weren’t dealing with these, you know, you can’t do this here, you can do this there. Why, why can you do it there? But you can’t do it here. And so it became kind of like, this is, you know, we need to try to do this on a regional basis. That’s The worst example of say outdoor mass. Yeah. Rules in some areas and then not in other areas.

1:27:01 Try going for a run with that. And obviously, you know, yes. It is always hard to compare community. Community. Yes. Um, you know, their biggest fear was, you know, they had Halloween coming Mm-Hmm. Um, and they, and they need to deal with, you know, they had much more, uh, tourists and that when we were dealing and stuff like that.

1:27:20 So I, I think it’s very valuable to go to those meetings. And I used to go to meetings when they virtual and just learn and sit there and understand that, you know, we’re not in a vacuum. There’s other towns that have lots of similarities, that have similar challenges that we can go see. Well, what are they doing about that? So I talked to the various, uh, members since I know them, but I have not attended a meeting, nor have I been invited.

1:27:47 So, but as Tom knows, I know them intimately for most of the people on the boards.

1:27:59 Okay. Well, for next time. Yeah. But I think we should, No, I mean, I’ll review it. Yeah. Yeah. Introspection. All right. Um, the website development, do you, um, ready to, um, discuss it? So it’s the sheet that I couldn’t find, ‘cause it was in my, it was in my,

1:28:26 Has the town talked to you all about the money? They have to totally redesign Everything, so I, you know, yeah. That, that conversation has really just started. Yeah. Um, so obviously the town is looking to revamp their whole online system. So obviously when you go to the town of Marble Land, um, you know, Marvel life.org, the plan is to redesign that whole thing. Um, one of the things that I am really helpful, hopeful that they’ll include is a calendar. Um, that can include all the meetings, um, all the different events. Um, and that way we can show, you know, we essentially have agreed that we are gonna meet the second Tuesday of the month. And that way those can be posted on the calendar and everybody can see, oh, there’s a Board of Health meeting tonight. There’s this meeting over here.

1:29:11 There’s, you know, and can figure that out. Obviously we only post meetings, you know, we try to post ‘em as quickly as possible, but it’s still a week out, you know, maybe two weeks out at most. And so sometimes people have a hard time scheduling and stuff like that. So I, I think having the, like a general calendar on the talent’s website would be extremely helpful. Definitely. Um, put subject to change next to them. That’s all you need to play. That’s all you the point. And then as, as we know that things are gonna change, if, you know, we, we are always kind of looking forward, oh, I have this vacation here. We can make those adjustments as best as possible. Um, so we, we can be a little bit more, you know, people can understand, all right, this is what’s going on. The mental health task force meetings can be posted up there.

1:29:56 And I think that will bring in a little bit more awareness as soon. I just wanna make sure, like, you know, I’ve obviously pushed the website a lot. Yeah. I don’t want our resources to do throwaway work that is gonna be done on the next website. So depending what, I think maybe seeing what the timeline, what their expectation is of the timeline to Yep. Get, you know, when they’ll have the new website would Yeah. Like I said, I don’t, anyone, And I think, you know, the idea is that there’s, the, that’s coming in has done a couple big websites, you know, obviously municipal websites. So I think the idea is to then also the same thing. Look at all the other health departments, you know, boards of health across the state, and look what we want to grab and, and bring to ours and say, all right, this is, we like this over here, and please remember that we need to do both the health and the waste side. Mm-Hmm. Um,

1:30:42 and so, you know, we just need to take a look at that. Um, you know, there’s so many different little pieces that you, like widgets that you can add to, um, municipal websites that we’re not even poss able to do that now. Um, so hopefully this will be a huge change. So, yeah, let me talk to, um, Alicia and Thatcher and see what the, the general plan is for the website. I know it’s a high priority, um, but it might not get started until obviously after July one Mm-Hmm. Did you say a new person was coming? No, they’re, they’re hiring the company. It’s not gonna be done in house is my understanding for the website. It might be good, you know, to your point of separating, like having two distinct lines of being like Health Department, waste Health Department, you help, I don’t know what you want, but it, yeah. I mean, we always try to like divide it, you know,

1:31:29 so when you go into ours now, you, you quickly go over to that, the waste side. And so you, you know, you’re not like, all right, where in the health department is all the waste stuff and you can go directly over there, look at the transfer station, curbside collection, all because that is, you know, very different information for the most part. Yeah. So, um, we will hear more on that also. Yeah. I mean, I think with the, you know, um, as new information comes up, we can just add it back on. We can talk about it, um, and see, you know, but everyone should be doing research, um, to see what, you know, there might be some awesome ideas out there that were like, this is a really good idea. Let’s look at the town of Brookline or the city of Brookline and see what you know, and try to grab this from them. Let’s see what, you know, how they did that

1:32:14 and, and pulled over to, As you recommended, I had looked at the North SHO Public Health Collaborative and I did make a list. Um, so I, I I did, I did that one. But, um, it would be interesting if this, uh, company could maybe come to one, one of our meetings and Yeah, I, I’ll have a little bit, I’ll talk to them again and see how they’re gonna, you know, go out and talk to all the, the boards and departments and, and see how they’re gonna get feedback, Need to guide them as they need to guide us. Correct. Right. ‘cause it’s our website. We have certain needs and they have a certain job to do. Yep. So,

1:32:57 um, this Substance Abuse talk speakers, you did talk last, last, uh, meeting about, about this drug study theater and, and I, uh, um, Sudbury did have this past week, I happen to have a daughter that lives there, and she did not go to the meeting, so I didn’t get that information, but I understand that people are enjoying it and Swamp Squad has engaged ‘em for the fall, wondering if we could even get them at the same time. Maybe they could come to them in the morning and it in the afternoon, or, Or at least hopefully somebody can go over and take a look at it and see what it’s like. You know, obviously I would be encouraging Gina

1:33:42 to go over there, um, and see if she, you know, have her watch it, see if she thinks that’s something that, uh, the high school, you know, students would be interested in. Um, you know, we, we really need buy-in from the school system as well on this. Well, that’s what I talked about. I don’t know, you know, how autonomous they want us to, they wanna be as we are autonomous, do we wanna do joint programming? Do they wanna do joint programming? I mean, I think the way to get to the kids is through the schools and, um, but if they wanna do their own thing, if it’s gonna be difficult. Right. And, and obviously there’s other programming that doesn’t necessarily have to be done through them that we can hold at nighttime, like we’ve done in the past that you have ideas about. It sounded Like they were pretty open to community-based stuff.

1:34:28 Yeah. So it was, um, yeah, I think just finding a, a, um, I don’t know, building a structure for it. Like I said, I, I wouldn’t throw it, you know, the schools, I think you’d have to delay it. I think you do have to start because there are people that are interested in doing it, but wanna see how it takes off. So obviously you can’t just throw that right in the schools. So deal, you know, something at night with parents. See how that takes. Yep. Um, probably a few times. And, um, you know, you’ll get more people that will be willing to talk and do it. So I think maybe a location that cost effective is probably the number one. I’m, I’m hoping the school would be one of those, their auditorium, but I First start small, the library is gonna hopefully have

1:35:15 some community rooms because, you know, filling an auditorium can be Yeah, no, I, I mean, I think how many, how many seats is the high school auditorium don’t seem that it’s 500, 700 in the, uh, a little bit over 700 in the Yeah. In the Past. So say the other one’s bigger. I mean, obviously the high school seems a little bit more intimate. Yeah. Um, you know, I think that’s kind of, I Think it was the right setting. Chris Har did. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, I didn’t love, you know, the pack as much as seeing some of these people speak. Um, you know, the high school’s definitely a little bit more intimate. You get to know the, the speaker better. Yeah. Um, But I definitely think the high, it’s A modern day design for it. Yeah. So that’s, yeah, That’s exactly right. Something we talk about at the mental health task force about some of these programming is, you know,

1:36:02 we wanna make offerings to the school and work with them, find out what they need, what they want, but then if there’s something that may not, you know, be a perfect fit, but it may bring value and it’s something that we would like to compliment, there are other areas that we’re kind of exploring, you know, bringing some programming outside of the schools, maybe as a compliment to the work in the schools.

1:36:26 So, um, are we going to go on to the transfer stations? Sure. You guys ready for that? Um, so obviously we sent out, uh, 22 letters to contractors. Um, we’ve received five expressed interests. Um, so currently, you know, the people that, or the companies that have expressed interest, um, we make sure that they have all the current plans, uh, bid documents. Um, but again, we’re working with the new engineer to take a look at all the bit documents, uh, look to see if we need to make any changes to the documents. Um, we’re looking at schedule. Um, the other thing that we’re looking at is that, is there any way that we can speed up construction? Um, one of the pieces that is gonna be kind of a choke point for us is changing the scale and in installing the scale pit.

1:37:12 Um, is it possible that we have a company, um, manufacture, you know, precast that scale pit offsite and bring that onsite so you’re not dealing with Q days, um, and try to speed up the process because that’s gonna be one of the biggest delays to our construction as far as, um, delays to opening delays to, you know, uh, dealing with commercial contractors, um, and, and causing some of the biggest headaches. So we’re trying to look at all these different things. Um, what other pieces do we need to maybe, um, increase our efficiency? Um, I recently looked at, you know, you can, similar to renting the trailer that we currently use now for the scale house, we can rent like a 10 by 10, um, like a tend booth that’s heated in the ac

1:37:57 and we can put that in the residential area. So when we open that gate and start to change traffic, we can move into that quickly and start to get people used to that, even when we’re dealing with construction. Um, because we’re gonna have to do some changes in traffic flow and just having people in the right place to check stickers, um, to do tip transactions and, and continue operations. Um, so currently that’s kind of what, where we are with that, uh, making sure that everything’s what, what we want, getting ready to go back out. We wanna also speak with these contractors to see if they see anything. Um, you know, again, you know, is there any value engineering that should be done? You know, maybe the contractor says you really need to take a look at this, this is driving some of your costs. Um, or, or it’s driving some of your time as well.

1:38:44 And if you can make some changes, you know, we, we would recommend that. Um, so really the, the plan is to meet again with the architect of the engineer, talk about some of these different things and, you know, really go back and talk to the contractors, um, and, and dive a little deeper to them, and then figure out a schedule to put it back out to bid. Um, that’s a, you know, effective for everybody that’s gonna be bidding on it. Do, do The GCs at all want to use their own, Um, subs? Yeah. So some of the GCs like to use their own subs. I, And is that municipal wide? Like, I don’t know if They’re, so yeah, they all around The municipal work or something, The subs have to be D CAM certified as well. Okay. Um, so they Could use their own Yep. And, okay. Yep. Um, and so, you know, obviously talking to, with the GCs, you know, they understand all this information.

1:39:32 Um, it is more that’s all done more on the bidding side of it. Yeah. So when we do the filed sub bids, the GCs wanna make sure that their people are bidding on it, and then they would take it. Sometimes you’ll see, you know, only to be used by X company. Mm-Hmm. So they, so even in the file sub bids they can say to not to be used by anybody else.

1:39:53 Questions about that. The other piece obviously that we’re looking at right now too is, you know, the summer, um, early fall tends to be the, our busiest time of year. Um, and so, you know, when do we really want to start construction? Obviously a lot of companies are already in construction right now, so when are they gonna become available? We need to kinda, you know, put everything together. When, when you begin receiving these bids, um, is the timeline according to the, the contractor who’s gonna say, well, this is my availability here and Yeah, there’s two pieces to the con to that. So yeah, the contractor, you know, you, you could put out the bid that construction must start in 60 days. That’s, you know, obviously we’ll talk to people. That’s not something that we had in there before.

1:40:40 Um, but a lot of times with these contracts, you wanna make sure that all your products are available. So we already have our compactor on site so that we’re not, you know, you’re not opening bids and then you know more into the general contractor and then they have to have this made and you’re waiting, waiting, you know, six or eight months. Um, we’re trying to, you know, reduce all that time. But yeah, you just wanna make sure like, products are available, we can get going. Um, and, and stuff like that. Can I ask a question? Looking that we’re looking down the road a bit. Um, the new, I, I know that our compactor Yeah. Is not in great shape. And so are we pretty confident that if we, this does go into say October, November post, the busy busy season and the project starts about then that if we need

1:41:27 to put the new compactor in the space where that we have available now, if the old compactor is that, is that something that we would be able to, um, So if we had a catastrophic failure with our current compactor, um, yes, we could put it in now there, what would most likely happen is that you would set it where it is existing now, and then when you went into construction, you’d have to change elevations. Okay. And obviously when you, when you spoke to our current person that’s gonna be installing the compactor, we would have discussions about that with them. Okay. Thanks. That was curious. Yep. Uh, but no, obviously, you know, there’s always a concern about that, you know, this compact has kind of reached the end of its life. We will continue to do maintenance on it, you know,

1:42:14 regular maintenance, you know, anytime we, there’s little issues with it. We, we don’t want this to die, we don’t wanna have delays and stuff like that. Um, but yeah, we understand what we’re trying to get to. Thanks. So do you have a deadline for the, uh, responses or, So the, it’s not out to bid, so I think we need to gather all this information, then we’ll inform all the contractors when it’s going out to bid. So they’re prepared for this. Now What are you waiting for it to? All the things I just starts about. Oh, okay. Until it all gets started. Yeah. Alright. This new engineer, do you feel, um, encouraged by his scope of understanding how he could potentially value engineer and come up with some suggestions? So It’s always great to have another set of eyes.

1:43:00 Um, so yeah, I, you know, I’m encouraged by that. It’s just helpful. E even just reading bid documents, um, you know, you might read it one way, I might read another, which means like, you gonna bid on it differently than I’m gonna bid on it. So you’re trying to remove all those unknowns or questions. Um, so having a kind of a third party that didn’t write it can be extremely helpful. A as well as talking to the contractors and saying, Hey, what, what do you think of this? And they might say, well, this is how I kinda, you know, looked at that. This is how you know, and be like, okay, that’s not what we mean. Or, you know, we really want the constructions to be sequenced this way. Um, how can we make sure that’s gonna happen? Well, we’ll make sure you put that in there correctly. Okay. Um, all those little nuances you wanna

1:43:46 Make sure. So how many hours has he given you so far? Um, so he’s been reading through all the documents. He’s talking to contractors. Um, you know, I don’t have a bill from him yet. Um, this week he’s on vacation, but, um, you know, we’ll keep going next week. I know next week we’ll have a meeting with the, the architect and the engineer and myself again. Okay. So, and what about Jerry? Do, is Jerry still needed? Yeah, Jerry, so, so Jerry’s really, you know, he’s still part of it and obviously he’ll be a huge part during construction. So now, um, when he’s not working, he’s not on a payroll. That’s correct. Yep. That’s billable hours. His Is billable. Both Of them are. Oh yeah. Okay. All right. Um, anything else?

1:44:34 Uh, director’s report. Um, so Bathing Beach testing starts next week. Um, water samples are, are taken on Wednesday, so that will begin. Um, we did send out a pertussis advisory. You guys have all had copies of that. Um, we, we’ve had some additional cases. Um, this is something that is we’re seeing across the state, not just in Massachusetts, also in, uh, New Hampshire. Um, so, you know, this is the professor’s advisory that you guys all received and it goes to all the families. Um, some of the stuff that we’re seeing that is, you know, kind of why is this happening? Um, so pertussis to Massachusetts is most common among people 10

1:45:21 to 20 years old who have lost the protection they got from childhood vaccines. So the vaccines are waning. So the efficacy of the vaccine that they received is waning. So they’re kind of at the end of the lifetime. So generally, you know, 10 years and you’re in year nine, year eight. And we are not sure if it’s environmental reasons or other reasons, but the vaccine’s not lasting as long as we everybody has anticipated. That’s generally what’s causing this. Um, the age group that we are seeing in is between, um, 15 and 19 years old. They, they’re supposed to be getting those before they go off to college, aren’t they? I, I don’t know the exact ages, but obviously that’s up to your doctor. Um, there is a schedule for tdap.

1:46:08 Um, and, but this, you know, this is what the advisories is, you know, and the state is telling us, you know, we’re not the only town that’s seen this, but these are the most likely reasons for this. Dr. Maza would know the dates, didn’t you? Sorry. The date, the receiving metathesis vaccine. Well, what ages? Like 12 two kept great. Yeah, it kept, kept getting pushed down because, and the only reason it kept getting pushed down was you wanted to capture them. Right? It wasn’t that it was based on this was the best time. It was more based on you could get the kids, then you get try and do it at a teenager and you’re not getting them. Interesting. And that was, so it wasn’t medicine, it Was convenience. Teenagers, did they get, do they get the ptosis?

1:46:54 They te as an infant, they get teased up out as an infant and then 12. Well, it’s A different preparation. Yeah. And then do they get it? Is that one of the, see The p is not as strong as when you get it as a, as a child in, in the early years, Did you get, do you get the vaccine again when you go off to college or no? Uh, no. No.

1:47:18 But obviously with any of these, you know, we’re, we’re working with the state, so state doctors, state EPIs, um, we also have a local doctor that we work with. Um, you know, so if we need additional advice or, you know, additional information, we can talk to them. Um, you know, so we have a town doctor that we use. Um, they also sign our standing orders for vaccines, um, and all that other stuff. But generally we’re working with the state, um, the, in the state EPIs, If you see a big outbreak, would, would we have a, a clinic? Most likely not. So, you know, you’re, you’re, it’s more about informing the public, you know, additional information going out to them. Um, contact information, um, you know, safeguards and stuff like that. Which you’ve done in that note, haven’t you?

1:48:04 Yeah. So this went out to the high school. Um, you know, we have not made a, a full town notification, but again, we’re following state guidelines at this time. Well, it, it affects that, that age group, correct? Yep. Reaching that age group. Correct. Unless they go to private school homeschool.

1:48:24 And if we’re seeing that, and you know, when we do in case investigation, you understand where they’re going to school you, you understand all those things. And so the state deputies and so they will make recommendations. So, you know, if, if the kids were going to school at St. John’s Prep, they would notify us to say, Hey, you need to notify St. John’s prep. This advisory needs to go out there as well. Um, I did see that there, there is a big outbreak and the beach is being closed this last weekend. Did you read that? So I’m not really Sure. Beaches, I Mean, no. Yeah, that’s correct. I’m not, there wasn’t any information on what closed the beach. It just said that the beaches were closed in several surrounding areas, but it did not, it said not due to coliform bacteria.

1:49:09 Um, but it did not give a reason why. Hmm. That’s interesting. I mean, again, we haven’t started sampling. Sampling doesn’t technically start, um, by the state until, I think even a week after us. Um, we pay for an additional week, um, at both the front and the back. Um, you know, we are know, we tend to have a little bit more bathers in this area. Um, and we want to provide as much protections For us. Could be, there weren’t enough lifeguards. ‘cause there’s been some losses both boating and swimming this past week. So I wonder if that would just cause it, if they’re waiting to get their lifeguards. It’s hard to say. Obviously, you know, kids aren’t outta college. Um, you know, but yeah, we did notice that there are, were quite a few surrounding beaches that we post

1:49:57 And the sticker refund. Uh, the other thing, let me just keep going. Um, you’re still a direction. Yep. Um, so budget. So we did receive a notice from, um, the finance department. Um, the FY 26 budget development process is gonna begin much earlier this year. Um, they’re asking that FY 26 operating budgets be created by September. Um, so departments are limited to a 1% increase in reoccurring expenditures for FY 2026. Um, and we’ll also have to do a reduced service budget. Is FY 2026 when? Start the start July? Yes. No, the, no, it is not. No it’s not. So that’s ffy 2027. Yeah. Okay.

1:50:45 Um, but just, you know, along those lines, we know that’s gonna be an issue. Mm-Hmm. We’ll start to talk to companies this fall, um, and try to see, you know, potentially get numbers now to maybe enter into a new contract. Not waiting for that September 26th. Um, we need to be, have all the this information really for what it’s gonna cost us, um, you know, in September 26th for next down meeting. Mm-Hmm. Uh, we’ve had some recent vandalism up at the transfer station. Uh, this tends to occur Friday or Saturday evening. Um, you know, obviously most of the property is under surveillance on a regular basis. The camera’s now going to the, um, dispatch, you know,

1:51:33 but we are dealing with this. Um, and so yeah, what happens is we have kids coming after hours, um, smashing bottles, getting into items. Um, and so yeah, unfortunately with the glass bottles, it’s taken us quite some time to clean up in the mornings when we come there.

1:51:49 Um, and again, obviously, you know, we, we just ask everybody that uses the facility to be respectful of everybody. Um, you know, especially around the metal bin. We do see dis disagreements around there at times. Um, any items left at the metal bin cannot have any, you know, fluids left in them. Everything has to be, you know, all the oil has to be drained. No paints can be left up there. No hazardous waste can be left on site only during times that we collect it. Um, so even for hazardous waste. So people are dumping hazardous waste, we will review the cameras or if people are dumping an AC or refrigerator, we will will review the cameras, grab a license plate and send them a phone. ‘cause it is illegal dumping. Mm-Hmm. Um, and then last, I really want

1:52:34 to thank Joanne for all our hard work. Um, it’s been a pleasure working with you for the last three years. Uh, you’ll be truly missed, but thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. It’s been a Pleasure and a privilege. Serve Board Work with you. So, uh, thank you for that. You’re the sticker.

1:52:57 You stickers of the sticker Sticker to refund.

1:53:02 Oh. So, uh, we have good evening everybody. I’m here. Uh, so we have a, uh, did you say His name on the agenda though? Yeah, I Didn’t read it. Uh, so we had a, a resident who purchased two full price stickers. They had come in, um, and are just asking for a refund of the difference between their $80 sticker and their $25 sticker. So it’s 50, uh, my goodness. A $55 refund. Um, I have the information, so as long as we can put this into motion, we can take care of it. And I’ll Motion to, may I make a motion? Yes. Chair. Motion to refund the difference. I second do. Thank you. I in favor. In favor. Perfect. Thank you very much. All many veteran stickers. I, so there have been quite a few recently.

1:53:48 Um, I don’t have an exact number, but I know it’s over a, over a hundred over A And how many veterans are there? There was 707 approximately.

1:53:59 People are taking some advantage of it. I’ve got phone calls that the same day that the, what was taken, well, that was taken at night the next morning that I didn’t get any bad evening. But, um, they were ready to come down. Mm-Hmm. I think they did come down, but they, um, any of anybody from the audience has any says if anyone, anybody, um, there up there and I can’t see. Thank you, Joanne. Thank you, sir. So, um, before we close, I’m going to say a few things. Um, number one, I think we’ve had a great year, whether all believe it

1:54:45 or not, I think we’ve got a lot accomplished. We, um, had a group come to visit us every month. We, we had the counseling center here. We learned a lot from them. They got some additional funding because we liked what they were doing and we, we had it available. And, um, we had Jenny Armi come. She talked about a few of her, um, bills, which were very helpful. We had ha come and we found out that we were in arrears and we immediately paid them. So I think that that was a very good thing. And, uh, this, uh, program came with her. What’s this called? Um, I am, I am the menstrual products,

1:55:32 uh, for people that just aren’t able to get them, which is very sad. We had, uh, people come and talk to us, uh, in namely Mr. Day and Laney and Tom. Uh, and we talked about learn to cope and there were some other things that have come out of that. We have had Joyce Redford who was talking to us about the new product on the market that we don’t know too much about. But I guess it’s not in town yet, is it? It’s correct. So that, not that we’re aware of. Well, I think she would’ve told us if it were, ‘cause she gets around and, um, I think that’s helpful.

1:56:17 We’ve had wonderful school faculty here tonight that we’ve been trying to reach out to, to give us the, the real facts. And it sounds like we’re gonna be able to, uh, collaborate a little bit with them. Uh, we, uh, looking to do some other things with the wellness and the substance abuse and that’s been talked about. And I hope that we can jump on that in the fall. In order to jump on it in the fall, my two Toms are gonna have to do some work Mm-Hmm. To get it here. So, um, we’ve got, you’ve got your work cut out for you without even being sworn in or even voted. But all you need is two votes or maybe one vote. I’ll vote for him. You vote not mine. Okay.

1:57:06 I never show my ballot. Well, we, Tom, stick together. So, um, you can, and there’s another one right here that will stick with it. So we, uh, we’ve written a letter to, um, Paul Tucker, that was important. So we’ve done a little bit of quiet politicking, which we felt was important. So, and we’ve had our wonderful, uh, mental health task force, uh, chairperson who comes and gives us all this wonderful information. And I can’t thank you enough for the three years that you’ve served. And I, I’ve only sat next to you this year, but we certainly were able to be good bookends, uh, at, at, uh, the other, uh, two years.

1:57:54 And I just, we’re gonna miss you. And I would like to put in the record the, um, statement that I made at town meeting, because not everybody was there, but you don’t have to write this down. I’ll give the, I’m gonna read it so I don’t make miss, but I would like to recognize the board of health member Joanne Miller, who will be stepping down from her her position tonight. During the past three years, Joanne has brought professionalism and knowledge to our board. She chairs the mental health task force founded during the pandemic to address the tremendous increase in mental health issues. Joanne comes to meetings prepared and has served with grace and dignity. She was always thorough and asked the hard questions. I wish I could ask some of those hard questions.

1:58:41 You’re very thought provoking. Um, Joanne, you will be missed. So here’s one for and one for the record. I appreciate that very much. Oh, thank the guy. And one other thing, this is yours. Oh. In case people forget who you are at home, if they forget who I am at home, we can just put it you. Perfect. Thank you. Don’t say anything about cheap, quick and bottle washing. I’ll pass that. Someone else. That’s what, thank you. Thank you so much. Anybody else have anything else to say?

1:59:19 Keep talking. But it has been both in the office and, and the other times. So thank you for everything, your empathy. Thank you so much, Marty. It’s been a true pleasure. I appreciate, appreciate so much. So anytime we come back, Victor. All right. Bring this back with you, Michelle. Let him know it was here and I don’t know, home. Right on. I, uh, meeting is adjourned. All those in favor? In favor. Thank you so much.