School Committee: February 4, 2021

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

0:55 yes yes okay all right welcome everyone uh sarah fox are you on

1:37 sarah fox is trying to get in thank you i just let her in

1:49 hi sarah just to give you a heads up i had a hard time getting in all right well we’ve got 130 people in right now so all right i will call the meeting to order at 702.

2:15 sarah i’m assuming you can hear us okay great i think we finally have our mic issues worked out thanks to stephen okay so that leads us to commendations first this evening we’ve got principal brian oda with us to talk to us about the glover school brian welcome good evening good evening thank you very much for the opportunity to be able to speak about a program that we began last year and continuing this year and you’ll understand as i go through the presentation how important this is now more than ever amanda lockerby our school psychologist had been concerned over the last four years that at least eight students in the glover community have suffered a loss of one of their parents so she reached out to care dimensions a

3:02 local non-profit organization which offers a variety of services for adults and pediatrics for people with life-limiting illnesses and they provide support for their family and caregivers so on march 4th of last year kristen kowalski a school and community outreach specialist from care dimension delivered a one-hour presentation during the glover staff meeting on developmental understandings of dying death and grief the psychologists and counselors from other schools were invited and attended this presentation the facts are shocking by age 18 one out of 15 children will experience a death of a parent or sibling so the question isn’t will this happen in our school but when it’s likely that 70 percent of our

3:49 teachers have a grieving student in their classroom at any given time little did we know that over a week later march 13th we had to close our school do the pandemic that had reached our community since then it’s changed our way of life and the landscape of education and sadly to date the pandemic has claimed the lives of over 450 000 people with district support and permission amanda has been allowed to offer glover families a six-week virtual group this past fall that was co-coordinated with khmer dimensions the purpose of the group was for our students to express their feelings and talk about their loss with others who’ve experienced a similar loss the grief group allowed our students to

4:35 release their emotions in a safe place it was an excellent opportunity to partner with a community resource and to offer additional experience for amanda to become a grief counselor this grief counseling is now being discussed weekly at the mental health group that meets every thursday and the this is comprised of all of the school counselors the school psychologists and social workers they’ve expressed a desire to be able to expand this program now to the whole district and are hoping to be able to implement this program also and that’s what i want the place accommodation for the hard work of amendment and seeing an

5:21 issue of this magnitude and then bringing a program in to help facilitate grief counseling with our students wonderful thank you brian i know amanda is a real asset to the glover community so she’s always hard at work and on on issues like this that really need the attention in the schools so thank you um anybody else have any commendations this evening all right all right quiet evening uh that will lead us to our student representative dan howell stan are you with us

6:01 yep hi hi uh so there’s a bit to talk about so we recently just had our virtual club fair which basically was a slide presentation that was put together detailing all of the different clubs at the high school and also it had contact information for that club’s advisors um so hopefully this will be a chance for particularly freshmen to get more engaged with the school community you know oftentimes you’ll realize oh i didn’t even know that this was a club that existed so having all those in one place i think will be good and positive for these students

6:48 the freshman valentine’s day fundraiser is going on normally um they’ll be selling candy and flowers in the cafeteria but in another display of adaptability from students the freshman partnered with stowaway suites and have created a list of select items and 15 of each purchase on one of those items will go towards the freshman class um yarntown the musical will be streaming uh tomorrow and saturday um at 7. so a question that i’ve gotten a bit is um

7:33 uh will it be available afterwards and the answer to that is uh unfortunately no uh in the same way that uh we aren’t allowed to record a live stage uh production um we can’t really redistribute this afterwards for uh licensing uh issues um uh myself and a couple other members of the cast along with mr scolio and miss skeffington um have uh are doing some presentations about the musical we did um one today with the seventh grade and we’ll be doing a couple more tomorrow to kind of detail what the musical is about and the technical challenges and

8:18 things like that that we went through to make it all happen and finally the student council is holding a spirit week next week um to celebrate uh the last week before vacation so this is uh the most spirit weeks that we’ve ever had in a single year um but i think i think we you know have have earned it uh as we all know that um getting through even uh one week uh in a time like this is uh an accomplishment so um i think it makes sense it’s a it’s a safe way of getting together and being unified and yeah so this is i think our third this year when

9:04 we normally will only have one but i think it uh it makes sense and is a positive positive thing for students wonderful dan thank you and i’ve got my ticket for urinetown for tomorrow evening i’m very excited about that and if anybody wants their ticket still that they can go on to the school committee website and which is megan mhdschoolcommittee.org mhdschoolcommittee.org thank you um and there is a link right there so anybody who wants to pick those up can i just wanted to ask dan real quick i got mine yesterday and then i got them for my kids and then it occurred to me um i looked up a little bit about the about the play and i actually saw that it was

9:49 it was it was about municipal politics which i thought was pretty hysterical but is this a pro i’d gotten tickets for my younger kids is this appropriate for younger kids standard do you think maybe we should skip that um it’s definitely appropriate there are some underlying themes of things like this um uh and uh you know the you know issues with um preserving resources and things like that because the whole idea is there’s a water uh water drought and um yeah so so there there are some uh you know underlying themes that i think uh a lot of the adults will pick up on and appreciate but uh there’s nothing uh um you know explicit or dirty the name

10:35 had me a little nervous afterwards but i’m excited me too at first i at first thought it was your in town

10:44 [Laughter] [Laughter] well and as someone with uh high school musical experience usually the ones that are adapted for high school stage are a little bit more friendly to all audiences knowing that kids are going to be involved well good luck dan and i’m really looking forward to it i i can’t wait thanks dan all right that leads us to public comment um i i think public comment is going to be a popular thing this evening so i’m actually because we’ve got such a hefty agenda i’ve got a couple of things that i’m going to request for public comment first i would like to take public comment for all things not school name related so anybody who wants to say anything pertaining to any of anything other than the school name

11:30 please keep your hand raised and then after we get through those people then i will ask for uh people to re-raise their hand and talk about the school or the rest sorry the school name um so i will also ask that when we do the school name part of the public comment that people keep their comments to about a minute long um we did have about 221 emails i think was what i was wading through earlier today um so we have quite a bit of feedback so if you already emailed us we have received it um it is tallied and i have it with us um and so if we you know if you don’t need to speak please don’t um and if

12:16 somebody says what you want to say um simply kind of giving that thumbs up on the zoom would be great for us all right so i’ve got catherine martin up first

12:28 thanks sarah um so my public comment tonight um i was thinking about the village motto and it’s keep each other well and i’m just thinking about how do we keep each other well right now when everybody’s struggling and how do we support our kids who are struggling and the parents who are struggling and everyone’s kind of mental health this winter after one year of pandemic and i think it’s time that we do start looking at the cdc and deci guidelines at reducing our student spacing from six to three feet and i think we try to work hard to get our kids back into more school time and i don’t even know if it’s learning time but it’s time with peers conversely how do we keep our teachers well because

13:14 this equation involves them too they are members of our community and i don’t think the short answer is you just reduce that number i think we do this by instituting the desi six week pool testing program and we followed the deci guidelines for random testing this is going to require community participation and hard work on par of our current nursing staff and it’s going to require a lot of transparency from our administration i actually think this needs to continue beyond the six weeks and we need to work out all the kinks and i think that this needs to become part of our normal school activity because we don’t know if we are going to be in a similar situation next fall and we want to do everything possible to make sure we can be in person next fall the last way we can keep each other well is a well-funded budget

13:59 this year in previous years school shortfalls all track back to the budget no owl cameras budget bad internet budget ingenuity budget we know we’ll have a significant education and social emotional gap next year we need to fund it this year this is how we keep each other well this means sitting through the dry part of this meeting this means attending the budget subcommittee meetings this means you call your school command committee members tomorrow and you let them know your budget priorities if they’re not asking tough questions tonight you ask them the tough questions tomorrow the school committee alone controls the budget at last year’s budget hearing only five to six people asked questions about in-person learning technology janitorial spending and many other issues that we’re facing at that time

14:47 due to covet our questions went on went unanswered by the chair and we were called the vocal minority don’t let that happen again this year we fund next year now and while we’re all itching for a little enormous normalcy and looking to to the short term we will be in the exact plane same place as we are next year if we do not fund our schools now it is very important that people ask questions and demand our elected school committee members hold our superintendent’s feet to the fire for a needs-based budget and our town accountable to fund our schools this is how we keep each other well thank you katie don johns

15:33 hi can you hear me yep okay thank you um just building on what katie just said um i think we need to reduce the six feet to three feet and i’m wondering can this even happen can we re-negotiate the teachers union contract now is this possible everyone keeps talking about it no one seems to know this answer so unless we can do that then it’s just we shouldn’t even talk about it anymore because it’s a done deal until the end of the year thank you don okay thank you uh emma lee dewitt

16:20 hi everyone um i’ll keep it quick i just want to echo my very grave concern about the mental health aspect of not only the physical pandemic that’s going on but the real mental health pandemic that is very closely associated with every aspect of this year and how it’s affecting our families how it’s affecting our children our small businesses our substance abuse users um children in the home with substance abuse users to families who can’t work because their children are at home and we don’t have a support scaffolding that’s even close

17:07 to fitting the need this six month waiting list at the marblehead counseling center is just one example our families are in trouble our town is in trouble um to mitigate these mental health issues i do believe we need to give our kids the chance to get back into the school i do think that spacing is something that needs to be closely looked at especially since my son is participating in contact sports currently there is no way there is a six feet distance being maintained while playing basketball and pretty soon football and i don’t understand the disconnect between sports being okay although i’m all for it and being in a classroom is not

17:53 i understand from speaking with teachers that vaccinations are really important to them and i couldn’t agree more i want everyone to remain safe how do we get them to the front of the line i don’t know if that’s something we can all raise our voices to help with but in the meantime we can’t wait the situation is dire our kids need our help our families need our help the tone is palpable out there in our community it’s not frustration anymore it’s alarm bells going off left and right i raised this issue to the board of health the other night and i’m really hoping by raising it here tonight that it will help move the needle because i’m just

18:44 that’s all thank you thank you emily kim day

18:51 hi there can you hear me yep um i’ll put my video on see don’t go look at my um i just wanted to speak to what a lot of parents have been raising as a concern in terms of getting our kids a little bit more normalcy in their life and more time in the school with their peers and you know there’s a lot of really important topics and considerations that you have in front of you right now and in the coming weeks with the budget and pool testing and technology and i just want to remind you that this marblehead community is another resource i mean parents look at how many people are on this call 203 parents are like waiting for you to tell us what we can

19:37 do to get this kids back into school right so i just want you to remind just as a reminder as you’re thinking through everything that’s in front of you that all of these big decisions that you’re having to deal with and you know the hours upon hours that you are working um diligently on all these various issues please reach out to the volunteer community there are parents waiting to like be tapped do you need you know help backfilling for substitutes that you can’t get into the schools do you need um support in terms of more funding for the you know technology do you need help contact tracing if you decide to do pool testing just once you re to keep that in your mind um and to be well aware of how much this community wants to be able to step up and help so thank you thank you kim

20:31 hi there thank you for um allowing me to speak um you know i i do believe that we’re on a brink of a major mental health epidemic um and i just cannot be silent about this anymore um i’ve asked my son to speak you can see he’s a junior at the high school he’s in a full remote program and he’s the reason why i’ve been involved over the past few days to really bring his voice to your school committee to our community so that we start talking about what we’re extremely worried about with uh the kids in our district and in our community um personally i’ve just woken up to the impact that remote and hybrid learning has had on my children

21:17 you know i’ve been really focused on the academics i’m worried about sats i’m worried are my children learning math um you know they don’t have a lot of time in the classroom they’re in a hype most of them are in a hybrid my twins are so that’s where i have been focused and i haven’t really thought about the mental component and the health component of how this is impacting our community um i did a lot of research today i know in 2014 there was a study by the national research council of medicine that showed that already in 2014 13 to 20 of the u.s kids are experiencing a mental emotional or behavioral disorder every year that blew my mind

22:03 several studies show that only 10 to 40 percent of the kids receive any treatment at all this was prior to covet um you know i i as a parent i am i’m here i’m a short order cook i’m helping my children helping them navigate their way through we have family dinners my son nyle has spoken to us several times both my husband and myself at dinner about his concerns when he logs on to his zoom classes at the high school um he’s worried about the kids he’s worried about what’s going on and you know instead of now focusing on what my kids are doing what they’re learning in school i’m starting to check in with them and say are you okay and oftentimes there are tears there’s

22:51 frustrations there’s there’s fear um the impact of the remote and the hybrid learning on our children is is real um the impact of losing people that we love our fears for you know those who may contract the virus is real the fear with the teachers is real you know we have we have a lot of concerns as a community but my biggest concern right now you know unfortunately in our family we’ve received two phone calls from friends in new hampshire and in california of children who have taken their lives and i’m worried i don’t want anything to happen to people in our community and i would be remiss if i did not speak up you know niall has been bringing this up in conversations bringing statistics

23:38 to our dinner table it’s time for me to speak up um and i will turn it over to my son at one point and you can hear what it has been like for a junior in a remote program and he can he also has a lot of friends who are in the hybrid and i believe they also feel the same way so thank you so much for listening to us thank you alexia um kristin pratt you’re technically next but i’m going to skip you to go to nile and then i’ll come back to you of course thanks welcome niall how’s it going thank you guys for having me on tonight thank you um so as my mom started off by speaking about what i’ve been going through and what i know countless of my friends have been going through is the mental health crisis that we’re now facing i

24:24 myself have never had an issue with any sort of mental health ever in my life and just recently it’s been very hard for me and i know the exact same thing is happening to countless other students in marblehead high school no one is spending very much time with other people and it is very challenging for all of us at the high school i’ve been talking to all of my friends they all feel the exact same way the highs are not very high the lows are very low just this week i brought it up in one of my remote classes and every single person their job on the call their their jaw dropped everyone feels the

25:10 exact same way even the teacher on the call acknowledged that she feels the same way everyone’s in the same boat and this is something that the school is not taking care of every single month one emotional check-in is the extent of mental health that they’re taking care of at the high school something that’s not mandatory and that students three students a month go to and play games we talked about it and we said that it was kind of a check off on a box it felt it feels that way to us that the school’s not doing anything to help us nothing at all and i’m sick and tired of getting call after call about my friends

25:55 having to cut down their friends at boarding school and at college and i’m sick of it and it needs to end and action needs to be taken nothing’s the end is not really in sight students have nothing to look forward to and the least we can do is to help our students fight mental health it’s way more important that you that your kid is living at the end of the day than if he’s learning it’s way more important thank you for hearing me out thank you niall i as a mental health counselor in this community i completely agree kristen pratt there i know we don’t typically respond but i just want to commend niall for speaking up um not only for himself but for his peers

26:44 it took courage and you spoke with empathy for others and and i just want to thank you for coming forward and speaking absolutely kristen um sure first i just want to thank you for uh asking for comments to be held on the school name i dialed in last week uh in the hopes of kind of getting an update on some of the things i hope we get to tonight and i’m glad that we’re sort of jumping into jumping into this because last week i was sort of left thinking like you know i have an opinion on the name i fundraise for the school i’m excited about it but what does it matter if we can’t get those kids in the school and this week i read an article in the globe about all the grassroots efforts that various communities across the state have done that have been successful to get pulled testing in place and ultimately to get the kids back in

27:30 school i mean and one of those programs in wellesley is now the basis of what the governor is putting into this state that hopefully will be trialing for six weeks and it just it leaves me up at night thinking about you know what is the help that we can bring um you know i think there’s been an increase in communication efforts which i really do want to acknowledge because it was clearly a gap but we’ve got three different websites a lot of emails that sometimes seem redundant and at the end of the day i’m just trying to get clarity on what is it that we as a community and we as parents can do and you know how you know what are really the issues that we’re facing is it funding is it tracing is it spacing is it you know what is it so that we can

28:16 be pragmatic and and help support you like and i don’t want to reiterate what kim said but a lot of what kim said you know we’ve got a lot of quarried parents that would probably happily volunteer if we knew that was the issue that would help cover the lunch hour to get the kids in-person day extended to full day um and just to kind of share you know in my family we kept our children home from school today um it’s hard and i’m sorry i’m following niall and it it made me very emotional but um it’s taking control on everybody and i am very fortunate and i my husband works part-time and we have a lot of flexibility but i can’t imagine how hard this is for people that are single parents or both have two jobs

29:02 and we need to do something we need to be transparent and work together to change what is happening and i just i really would like some some clarity on what are the phases there’s all this there’s so much out there on social media and speculation and i guess i’m just looking at this group of people to be more clear about this is what the issues are this is what we’re facing and this is what we can do to help because i think we’ve all sort of hit a collective wall of realizing that you know if it’s fundraising we’ll help if it’s volunteering we’ll help um but we need some direction and we need some transparency so thank you thank you kristin

30:00 sorry sorry thank you sorry about that no worries for those of you that don’t know i’m on the board of health and um this is not our forum for um for speaking or commenting on policies etc but i did want to say um just a couple things one is that um you know for those of you who were at our board of health meeting um you know we are listening and hearing what you’re saying and we know that um as i said the other night that um you know as the pandemic wears on um things shift um things change over time and we are always um

30:45 recalculating and rethinking um not only based on the latest science but based on where we are as a community as a society and um this isn’t the forum for us to for me to comment um but but we do um mental health is part of the purview of what of what the board of health um addresses and we take this very seriously and um but we also um you know are concerned about concerned about um the spread of the virus and we just we just have a lot of um thinking to do and but we are listening and we are listening to the anguish um that we too um as community members

31:31 are are experiencing so we just want you to know that we are we are not taking this lightly and we are thinking and listening and reading and considering everything that’s um that’s being shared um here on social media and and we’re considering and following not that these are the decisions that are made by the board of health but of course we um serve in an advisory capacity um just regarding the um two other things i wanted to say one is about volunteering um when it comes to anything that has to do with regard to contact tracing or people who want to get involved in vaccinations or um you know it’s been really hard because we want to take advantage of people who want to volunteer in any of

32:17 the kind of health aspects um and right now we don’t have a lot of opportunities but should opportunities come our way um the best way that you as a community can be ready to volunteer is to be signed up through the medical reserve corps um that link i put on our um facebook page for the um that it’s on the town website and it is also on our facebook page for the board of health i will repost it there and i will make sure that it is easily accessible also on our town of uh the marblehead um health page as well so um even if you’ve already been quarried if you want to participate in any kind of board of health volunteering aspect um please

33:03 make sure you’re registered there um as that will be the way we can tap people um and um yeah i don’t need to make my other comment that’s all but thank you for sharing your thoughts and concerns thank you michelle um we’ll probably reach out afterwards and just make sure that we have all the links on that because we can put them on some of our websites as well thank you uh aaron noonan yeah um i just wanted to quickly thank michelle for coming to this meeting and um i know that they all take their their role very seriously and it just shows the community spirit that we don’t operate in like a vacuum and um our um boards listen and come together and we work together as a town in a community and i just think it’s amazing that people showed up

33:49 to speak today because it’s hard and it takes a lot of bravery this is a hard time people are walking around like shells of themselves we are there are families with real financial insecurity um and um clearly students are suffering um there’s a lot of tears it just you know six months into this school year now with three and a half left to go it just feels like it’s the time to take a step forward if you think about like our risk analysis as a pendulum as we approach this year you know we’ve rightly approached this year with extreme conservatism um but it just feeling like a little bit in

34:36 the community that the pendulum has swung so far to the left that we’ve like wrapped it around the tree three times and maybe it’s time to take that step forward um and maybe we can be leaders among other towns in our area and not wait and be followers um i have faith that we can do that i have faith in our administration i have faith in the school committee and i know our command you know i think important part of that is having teachers in the room um and i’m not sure that we’ve done that justice i don’t i don’t know um it doesn’t seem to me there’s like i mean joan miller is the union leader and by

35:22 all accounts has an incredible reputation and i just doesn’t mean any anything towards that but just that um there’s a lot of voices that i think aren’t being necessarily heard that you know we you know this is we have to start listening to people um you know this whole mental health thing has become its own epidemic you know and so what does it mean to take a step forward i mean part of that for me i just don’t see how you take can get to that if you don’t relax some of the social distancing and you know maybe it’s time that we start to you know pivot and take a look at the american academy of pediatrics recommendations the world health organizations the massachusetts public health organization um because at this point we are measuring real actual harm in terms of

36:09 mental health against hypothetical harm right and um you know part of that also you know that’s just not it’s just not one step you know part of that means we um need to show support for whatever testing that um as a community we need to voluntarily opt-in parents in this community if we do pool testing are you know need to show good faith and good will and participate in this in this process you know maybe we need to start getting some pcp testing or whatever it is that long testing and the rapid testing we have money for that we have i don’t even i mean we have an ester grant coming 335 thousand dollars of cares a second round of cares funding we have two hundred thousand dollars sitting in an

36:55 appropriations line for substitutes we haven’t used let’s get let’s let’s figure out what it is the teachers will need to feel safe um and let’s start to engage the community and let’s stop maybe thinking of all the reasons we can’t do something because logistically it is incredibly overwhelming some of this contact tracing pool testing all of it but maybe let’s have the audacity to hope to borrow a phrase let’s try to manifest something here and just take that first step forward

37:39 all right thank you everyone um all the all of these comments are are you know received with with heavy hearts and you know we we’re we understand where you’re coming from so that these things will be addressed a little bit later on in the meeting and so just to continue forward with the public comment part i will ask people who want to weigh in on the school name to now raise their hands sarah there’s been a woman who’s physically been holding her hand up in the screen her name thank you virginia brown i don’t i don’t know if everybody knows where the raised hand function is but i just wanted to give her she’s been very polite and held it up for a while thank you sarah virginia go ahead

38:28 sorry about that thank you so much sarah i’m sitting here asking my each mirror how do you raise your hand in class on the zoom squeeze it so anyway i apologize about that but thank you for your acknowledgement um so i have to say i have to step back and say for a minute that i feel like maybe i should have been more involved all along and so i apologize for that piece but i just want to reiterate what everyone’s been saying here tonight i have an eighth grader here in the marvel head public schools i also have a seventh grader in at brooks i mean a 17 year old at brooks and um i just wanted to share with you very briefly an experience because my son seems to be have done okay with it but because they’re only in school half days he really doesn’t know his teachers it’s very difficult to develop a rapport in the environment that we’re currently all working under

39:16 um my student my student was a b plus b minus student throughout the first quarter throughout his sixth grade year here we’re kind of newer to marblehead and this saturday morning i opened up his report card and his report card was across the board ds and d-minuses i never got an email i never got any correspondence and i’m sharing this only because for an eighth grader you have to i mean and obviously we all do understand that it’s truly a mental health issue at this point i mean that his self-esteem obviously he just shut down and i feel like the teachers at on some will possibly it’s happening too and it’s nobody’s fault i take 100 accountability for this issue i’m obviously holding my some responsibility responsible too and i know the teachers are working very hard to provide these communications but without knowing a kid

40:02 who typically would not be getting d’s and d minuses across the board um and not being able to to kind of proactively support a child like that these are the type of things we’re dealing with and quite honestly like i just and i want to be as helpful and supportive and collaborative as possible i’ve always worked in education public and i have experience with both public and private um experiences so whatever i can do i want to be 100 supportive and helpful i’ve i feel remorse that i haven’t been more involved and so i apologize about that um but we have to do something because i really feel and i’ve talked to many many districts in massachusetts i have family throughout massachusetts and they’re at least going full days so the teachers are at least having contact with their students for like you know two full days and most of them are many

40:49 of them have plans that are moving in a direction where we get our kids back in school but for a kid like mine he has to be in school i mean it just did and i’m a public i was elementary principal i was a director of special services in connecticut for many many years i support public education 100 but this right now is not working for him yet we asked for recommendations for his school for next year and quite frankly i felt kind of bad asking the teachers for it because i don’t know that the teachers know him well enough to give him a recommendation and that’s not a fault of theirs it’s the contact time the amount of um instruction they’re having to do in this new format and the amount of kids they’re seeing every day are you know eight hours a week or you know two hours a week or whatever it might be so anyway i just i you know i just wanted to reiterate what niles had said it is

41:36 truly a mental health issue for these kids for a kid to come home one semester with b’s and b pluses and feel successful in school to d’s and d minuses across the board i opened the report card i was shocked so i i mean that is for an eighth grader or a self-esteem issue i you know i’m concerned i’m really really concerned and i want to be helpful and i want to be supportive and i want to be collaborative so i again i apologize for being new to coming to this um and i feel badly i hadn’t i hadn’t been more involved prior but i just wanted to share that with you because these are like real things that are happening in our community and you know that that it wasn’t okay thank you so much for listening and thank you sarah for acknowledging me thank you jenny

42:21 all right all right can i just say one other thing i have to say the school the school board um the superintendent the principal have been extremely receptive and supportive to my concerns so i just wanted to add that too so thanks i feel supportive thank you all right um [Music] i’ve got now we’re going to switch gears over to the school name for a little while and so i will reiterate that [Music] we’re going to keep this to a minute and if someone has already made their comments then please just give a thumbs up and we will know that that you’re with them all right um henry turner

43:08 hi thank you very much henry turner i live at 18 taft street i speak to you in support of naming the new school the lucretia and joseph brown elementary school because representation matters my family has lived in marblehead for the past 11 years and we love it here we love the close-knit community we love our proud history and we love our schools as a long time history teacher and now high school administrator i could not be happier about our daughter’s experiences at gary coffin and now village schools at the same time when we when my family walks around town we are well aware that we are one of the few multiracial families in town and that my daughter and i are one of the few people of color in town we also know marblehead is not immune to racism it was just last year that my

43:54 daughter observed the n-word written at the coffin school playground the well-documented trauma that implicit bias systemic racism and microaggressions have on students of color is a national crisis although small in number marblehead has a long history of people of color living in this community it is true that the browns are honored in many ways in this town and we have a lot of work to do in this community to address racism but with this new school we have an opportunity to demonstrate during black history month in this historic town that black that black history is american history i have had the opportunity to work with school systems throughout our country around issues of racial justice and equity during this work i too often hear worries of women and people of color

44:40 being endured or told that it’s not their time all of the finalists are worthy names for a new school but by choosing that the name of the new choosing the name of the new school after lucretia and joseph brown we have an opportunity to say loud and proud that representation matters thank you henry jonathan letterman hi thanks for uh i wanted to make a couple of comments uh that the previous speakers who spoke prior to the naming discussion really highlighted the problem there’s a real lack of transparency from the school committee and as a consequence there’s now a real lack of trust from the broader marlborough community about so many decision-making processes which seem increasingly opaque coped has made this much worse a large

45:25 part of the stems from the school committee’s almost total lack of willingness to directly engage with the public during the public participation portion of these meetings i can’t understand why you rarely answer questions posed by the public it has never been this bad why aren’t the school committee packets posted so the public can see them before in advance so they have the opportunities to comment on agenda items why don’t you answer the questions why are school committees in the past answered questions from the public we are all your constituents this is the first time in more than 50 years that a marblehead school is potentially being renamed after an individual the idea that each member of the school committee has a personal preference and that somehow this decision will potentially be made by three members most of whom don’t have deep roots in the community is just

46:12 wrong at many levels your job is to hire the superintendent make policy and balance the budget while you certainly can pick the name of the new school using tallies of emails that process is wrong the taxpayers and citizens of marble had paid for the school and have been paying for the schools here for generations the idea that email solicitations individual committee members again using italia or online surveys should be guiding these decisions as just undemocratic and is not keeping with the democratic ideals we should all be proud of every citizen of marblehead should be able to have a voice marblehead is blessed with countless individuals with extensive knowledge of our important historical figures including those whose namesakes have been proposed and this is the time to bring representative experts forward to offer a small diverse set of recommendations

46:58 so the entire community can be invested in this decision i hope you will seriously considering taking a step back putting a proper experience naming committee together and then putting the final decision on the town ballot in june we have an annual election every year in june and the name of the school could at no cost be put to all of the voters on this ballot this is not a decision you should be making on your own i hope you will seriously consider engaging the public in a meaningful way so that the entire community can be invested in the final decision the schools belong to all of us and all of us should have a voice in its naming thank you uh melanie lloyd

47:43 hi um i’m melanie lloyd of 26 arthur avenue i’m reading a statement from the marblehead racial justice team where i’m a part of the school’s action team the marvel head racial justice team supports your naming our new building the lucretia and joseph brown school this would be a wonderful step forward for our town and a huge honor for people of color in our town’s history it would also be a courageous bold action toward realization of inclusive history in our town this couple faced tremendous odds and discriminations as people of color and colonial times they overcame impediments to thrive as successful business people and entrepreneurs along with raising a daughter they adopted

48:28 elbridge gary joseph story and malcolm bell are all meaningful figures in history of our town and its schools we hope that each of them along with ms lizzie coffin can be represented in memorable ways in the new school an anchor as representative of a firm foundation is also good and we hope the administration can weave that idea into the fabric of the school as well your choosing lucretia and joseph brown is vital in so many ways it would recognize a couple who may have been ordinary people but whose accomplishments live in our town 200 plus years later it would recognize them as a couple a key message about the value of female and male contributions to accomplishments in this vein town leaders recently voted to recognize a contemporary couple judy

49:16 and jean jacoby both of whom contributed to our collective well-being in the renaming of 10 humphrey street you now have an opportunity to reinforce that message finally it’s important as well from the standpoint of a gesture to present marblehead as a welcoming place for people of color numerous commentators have described how valuable it is to introduce age-appropriate anti-racist education at the elementary level naming the new building after lucretia and joseph brown aids our town’s advancement in regard to an honor lasting generations about people of color please vote to name the building the lacresha and joseph brown school thank you thank you melanie uh sherry

50:05 hi um to all that are making the decision to name the new elementary school my name is sherry gagne and i’m a resident of marblehead i’m a native american indigenous person i am metis mohawk abenaki algonquin and choctaw it’s my understanding that one of the options for naming the school would be to name it the lucretia and joseph brown elementary school though i’m not wampanoag myself many of my friends are wampanog i believe that they would be so very proud though i am not qualified to speak on their behalf that this was even a consideration for a name for the school seeing as joseph brown was wampanoag i myself as an individual native to this country

50:51 country country and as a resident of marblehead we’d be really honored and proud to know that this school would be named after such an important figure in marblehead history and a native hero it’s so important that we as a community celebrate the accurate history of our community and its original inhabitants and their contributions to our community thank you for your time and consideration of honoring a true hero a native person of color and his wife by naming the new elementary school after this couple that has unfortunately not been honored the way they should have been honored all along in this town

51:37 we have a number of persons of color and students in this town and we need to honor the diversity that we do have in this town though so little in percentage and this naming would be a nice start i thank you personally thank you sherry and then cindy tower lowen

52:09 i will try to keep it more than one minute and less than three minutes that’s fair i’m starting your clock now okay no anyway um many of you know who i am i am an active member of the community i work on racial justice work i believe in justice inequity and changing the narrative in marblehead my vote would be for lucretia and joseph brown elementary school my vote doesn’t matter it’s your vote that does but these are the reasons why i think it’s important marblehead has not been a welcoming town it has a history of being a sundown town though many would say they have been welcomed here

52:55 welcomed here welcomed here and they love this town there has been enough racial profiling with residents students non-residents which show a different picture this name would be a first step in changing that image no it will not happen overnight yet

53:18 it is an incredible opportunity to have this as our first step with our elementary students the young ones the ones that are still absorbing their environment their history and so much more imagine having a town that embraces a new narrative a learning opportunity for the young students and for the adults our white black and brown students would learn about the browns just by the nature of being in this school with this name the learning would not and should not stop here the browns were property owners hard-working they owned and operated the tavern that some know as black joe’s tavern

54:03 lucretia was a baker she created the jog for joe froeger frogger cookie sorry lucretia was black and she was free joseph was black and he was indigenous and he was enslaved until he obtained his freedom from slavery after his service to this country the stories would be woven into the curriculum and taught to our children whether white black or brown at a very early age our children our students would be part of changing the narrative here that blackness is a good thing

54:50 that we honor it that we respect it we embrace it and we elevate it our students from boston would be able to see people that look like them in the school and the knowledge that this couple was and is a part of our town and our history when is the last time the school district the town elevated a black woman a black and indigenous man that lived here that were part of this community that’s part of our history for over 200 years and yet here we are 200 years later and we’re having a meeting and we’re talking about name in the school

55:35 you the school committee can change that tonight here and you can take this first step and then commit and make a commitment to our students that we will continue on this path of honoring our black and indigenous people of creating a new narrative here of elevating and making the person not quote a black person but part of who we are here in marblehead and our history and i thank you thank you cindy um leah bockenkamp hi yeah thank you um i’d like to uh voice my

56:21 support also for the name joseph and lucretia brown and i’d like to um

56:30 i’d like to go a little bit deeper than that um there’s been a lot of conversation on facebook um that has that that i think this name has brought up and that has that if it’s it’s spurred on a lot of conversation and i think that’s really important to not lose sight of because i think it’s more important than the actual name of the school um a lot of the points that cindy made i i agree with and i feel really strongly that along with the name comes the commitment to engage in a lot of education

57:19 not only about the educate the um history in marblehead although that needs to be addressed to be more inclusive and accurate i also think we need system-wide some education on systemic racism on implicit bias and as a majority i mean hugely white community we have to do that work as white people we have to do that work both for adults and for our children and i really feel strongly that that is the only way that this town is going to be a more welcoming town um i think the the downfall of marblehead i i love it

58:05 here i’ve lived here for i don’t even know how long since 2003 a long time a lose trek um but the the low point for me is a lack of diversity and i really really think that it’s important to do that hard work to have these hard conversations across the board in the schools yes but also outside of that and that’s not i get that’s not the point of tonight’s conversation so i am hopeful that you do choose um to name this school after joseph and lucretia brown and i if i could insist i would that that comes along with a commitment to do that hard work and have those conversations and make

58:51 and make and make the effort for some more substantial change that will be longer lasting thank you thank you leah um we’ve got two more people with their hands up i will just ask people to keep it brief since we are starting to run a little long and we’ve got a big agenda they got through so natalie bellai hi everybody um wow so as far as names are concerned my children all three of them the youngest being 27 now attended the malcolm bell school and i just as a teacher who’s taught american history as well as world history just want to shed a little bit of light on as far as marblehead is concerned and what perhaps

59:37 what perhaps what perhaps we might consider when we drive into marblehead it says welcome to marblehead the birthplace of the american navy and one of the things that we don’t talk about and most people don’t know that we were also the birthplace of the first slave ship called desire this is very very small piece of information that’s in the archives at um in at the historical society and museum um but the reason why we had the ship the ship was made here and the issues that were arising at the time were that um the the first nation indigenous individuals that were living here um just weren’t

1:00:23 working out so well the those individuals knew the lay of the land um and what we ended up doing was building a slave ship for some of the indigenous individuals to be exported as human cargo to the um west indies but once in the west indies we would bring back um african african indigenous individuals to new england and the when the ship sailed that shell sailed out of salem but it originated in marblehead um i think it’s really important to know that because sometimes um towns give partial history and we have

1:01:09 that single story and i think it’s really important just to be able to consider like all right um i wasn’t to tell you the truth i i wasn’t even thinking about brown as a school i was thinking my loyalty is to bell because my kids went there but when you think about the importance of a name or the absence of a situation or an absence of history i think it’s really important for us to bring um the whole equation into it as far as what we acknowledge and what we know thank you thank you natalie all right that actually brings us to the end so thank you everyone for your comments um they are certainly going to be taken

1:01:55 into account this evening all right so that brings us to the minutes uh we had two sets of minutes um i think one of them was a smidge late so if um is everybody ready to vote on these two tonight before i ask for the motion um sarah i did notice that in the january 21st minutes there was large portions that were missing um like in in where it said vote like the actual the way we voted wasn’t noted and so i don’t know if maybe we want to skip those and shorten it off yeah i know lisa had said that there was something that she was trying to get back to on that one um i was under the assumption that she had so we can absolutely um put that one on next time okay all right so i will ask for a

1:02:40 motion to approve the minutes from 12 17 20 20. so moved megan moved second david second any additions to those all right sarah gold yes megan taylor yes david harris yes emily baron yes and sarah fox yes all right those pass and we will look at 121 and get that back on for next time okay that heads us to john’s superintendent report and first up is going to be principal bower with the marblehead high school program of studies for 2021 2022. welcome dan thank you and thank you for having me um and i just wanted to thank nyle

1:03:26 for his um his impassioned discussion and points and he’s a wonderful young man and and uh really enjoyed working with him so it took a lot of courage to say that in front of 200 something people and um thank you very much now excuse me um i just also want to thank our awesome staff um we’re doing the best that we can through challenging situations and certainly we’re coming to a point in the year where we need to start planning for next year as crazy as that sounds uh we’re getting ready to start the course selection process and the big piece of that is aligning our program of studies to make sure that it matches uh for next year’s programming so it’s important tonight to go through the nine proposed items with you and i think the big piece is working

1:04:13 with the administrative team and our staff is looking for creating as much flexibility um through challenging times and making sure that we still provide the great programming that we do um the first there are two items in science the first item is in the science area with the additional lab block we did not run that this year because we needed to create flexibility and agility within our schedule to offer options so we’re going to propose to do that again next year to keep the same theme in mind so that allows more opportunities for scheduling balancing the schedule and we’re moving forward with that piece number two the second component within science is we are looking to extend our

1:04:58 engineering course which is currently a semester course move that to become a full year course that will provide more options for our students it aligns with with college majors uh and student interest as well we’re going to move that to the college prep one level so i’m not sure how you want me to to proceed if you’d like me to stop at each subject for any questions you may have or just go through the entire presentation i think you can go through the entire presentation great thank you so much um the second subject that we’re working with is the world of english um and this is an interesting piece here so our ap literature course which is run in grade 12 and our ap language course that is running grade 11 is in a sequence so the proposal came to me that we should create more

1:05:43 flexibility within our scheduling and offerings for our students just because of the demands of the courses and matching up with student needs and desires to be able to offer either course in either year of grade 11 or grade 12. so we’re very excited about this opportunity and other schools have done this it’s just a great way again to provide flexibility for students to select in grade 11 or 12 whether it’s ap literature or ap language so we’re very excited about that the second piece in english is something that we’ve been discussing for a while and that is looking for equity and inclusion within our programming and we are going to eliminate the cp2 track of english uh next year for grades 9 10 11 and 12 to the general education track we’ve discussed this with the teachers

1:06:29 that teach that and i think the big piece of that is our co-teaching programming that that has been developed that allows additional supports that work with our students and we’re very excited about this opportunity too because it’s certainly one that will allow students more opportunities and we would just have the levels of college prep honors and ap in english for next year in the world of visual arts uh there are two changes one is a simple name change currently we have a portfolio one and a portfolio two semester course that leads into uh art studio four so as you know we have a tremendous history and our visual art department does a wonderful job and and certainly it’s been challenging uh with electives and

1:07:14 enrollment and they’re really doing a great job and looking for ways to streamline and keep promoting their uh programming of getting to the uh portfolio piece so the change would be from portfolio one portfolio two to art studio 3 which would match art studio 4 to give students an idea of the the alignment vertically of the naming so that’s important to us we’d run a spring spring offering of that and a fall offering the second piece is to eliminate the creative expressions course there are many options at the beginning level and being able to eliminate that which really didn’t run last year would allow more opportunities for the other entry level electives we have in visual arts very exciting for performing arts there

1:08:01 are two changes number one is to a new course music technology and electronic music now the one thing that has come out of kovit is our students have been enormously as well as our teachers creative with programming and being able to as they’ve worked remotely and put together those awesome performances that they shared around the holidays so it spurned a lot of interest in this and andrew scolio our lead performing arts teacher and kevin gaddu our our band and jazz band teacher have collaborated here and worked with actually our new tech director right as he began in terms of the programming and computer software that would be necessary to support this course the second change

1:08:46 for performing arts would be a simple name change we have a piano lab and we have an advanced level so we’re looking to actually align and create a beginning piano level and advanced level and we think that delineation will help for the understanding of the electives and then our last piece that we have is in special education and dr donnelly our special education chair at the high school and working with eric oxford our director of student services uh and jillian bradberry our lead special education teacher a lot of work has been done to refocus our curriculum support courses to be able to allow a credit to be connected with the course which will help all of our students so that way we’re not scrambling for some situations at the end of their high school

1:09:33 experience to find credits that they may need and i know dr donnelly is tuned in and i asked if she would speak on this dr donnelly are you available yes i’m here great thank you dr not only sure um so as principal bowers said in short the rationale for this is you know a little bit multi-layered but we did find that students were to students that received special education services through curriculum support were coming up short as they approached graduation in terms of credits and it truly is a course that they take to you know learn the skills that they need in order to make effective progress in the curriculum but we did some research and found that other local schools are offering credit for this course as it you know as it should be it is

1:10:20 work that they’re doing another piece to the change that we’re making is to try to embed more of a developmentally appropriate executive functioning curriculum along you know to follow students starting in freshman year if that’s where they’re if that’s where we’re receiving them and follow them through so that they’re working on executive functioning skills organization organization study skills and developing more independence and self-advocacy as they as they grow older

1:10:54 thank you dr donnelly appreciate your efforts so that is uh that is the um the presentation all right suggest changes all right thank you dan um with the permission of the chair matt absolutely i just want to say as somebody that’s done program of study work for two decades i’m very impressed with principal bauer and his team and any changes to the program of study elicit questions and concerns in the research and the back work that they did for these are all based soundly in educational practice and so i fully support what he’s putting forward for the high school

1:11:39 great um dan i really like the curriculum support um dr donnelly i appreciate that that you highlighted the um executive function piece i think one of my biggest concerns as i watch as a middle schooler as i watch the middle school over these past couple of years with um covid and everything that’s interrupted their educational um life uh is that these executive function these kind of soft skills that we that we build especially at middle school to ready them for high school i think we’re going to have a real problem with that um and so i’m glad to see that that’s that’s you guys have plans for that um um

1:12:26 hi dan thanks for presenting us this to us um just two quick things one is um i really appreciate the cpt cp2 move and the co-teaching model i think you know you know i’m a big supporter of the co-teaching model i um am very happy to see you know a start to shift to that more inclusive model i would ask um maybe that you could come back and talk to us again about how you see those classrooms working and with the hope to potentially continue to expand that model um the the question i have is can you just talk through the um lab piece within the science curriculum sure absolutely um so

1:13:12 so so at this time we we instituted this year we eliminate the extra blocks so typically our classes they all run three cycles out of the four days our labs our science classes were running four blocks out of the uh four days actually so they jumbled it on to that um and obviously with with what is needed with the flexibility for the schedule and being able to uh align all of our other courses uh that proved very helpful so um we will be working with our science team and our science department because they’ve made adjustments this year in terms of the curriculum the labs are still running the labs have been running i’ve actually was in a potential energy lab uh a couple of weeks ago and um we employ we implemented this

1:13:58 year some virtual labs to make it easy we’re starting to move towards more of the hands-on lab so they’re still running um and adjustments have been made and still will be made so there will be work that will be focused with our science department within uh the courses to make sure they have what they need to make those investments so it’ll be ongoing work as well okay thank you sarah

1:14:23 i have questions on two of these um for the visual arts uh program that we’re removing do you feel in any way that the limited enrollment may have been because of the situation we’re in this year or did you see this downward trend already occurring so it’s been it’s been occurring and it was occurring when i arrived actually and it’s been ongoing we’re working to create solutions uh we need we need to work on this and it’s an area of emphasis that’s part of the reason we brought in elective day to stimulate interest but we offer lots of different electives and they’re they’re competing so there’s there’s work that we need to do in terms of our requirements that we will be doing through this year to make sure that um that matches up for the demand but also for in terms of

1:15:09 enrollment into those courses so yes there’s been a steady decline but it’s it’s basically when they removed uh before i arrived they made a shift with the uh the arts requirement uh from a two year to a one year so uh we’ll look to again uh put together a committee and work on that this year to to re-examine that moving forward but it is a lot of work and you need to make sure that with a lot of moving pieces it has to be a coordinated effort okay and then my next question um talks about the curriculum support class but more precisely what dr donnelly spoke about um how the implementing that um executive function piece and education um my question kind of surrounds you

1:15:54 know i’ve often heard matt fox say he has 360 days to take an elementary school student and make them a high school student um which is a tough feat and then you cut that down to you know i don’t have the exact math but with what we had last spring and this year we’re looking at you know maybe 170 maybe 150 maybe 180 but a lot less um and i worry that it’s really that piece that that some of these students may have lost so is there a potential for that that i don’t know if it’s a full curriculum support piece or if it’s just kind of the executive functioning class piece to be available to incoming ninth graders next year because i really worry

1:16:40 about that class getting left behind in that skill set well i can speak in in general and dr donald can speak a little bit more specific with the executive functioning but one thing that is on our radar is the transition and we want all of our students that first year is critical there’s no question about that a good start at the high school in grade nine will more than likely be a successful four years so in in terms of the english piece without going in too much detail you know looking at where we position our co-teaching teams that might be more of a year that we put an extra co-taught team there to help spread that out amongst that level and i know that there will be more discussions in terms of how we can make sure that the students when they arrive it’s our job to

1:17:27 teach them and to bring them to where they need to be we need to meet them where they are so that’ll be a lot of our discussion as we transition into next year as well so and i don’t know if dr dolly wants to add anything on the executive functioning piece yeah i think certainly one of the challenges that i found in my relatively short time here is that we do find that there are a lot of students that are referred because they do lack those executive functioning skills or they have legitimate executive functioning deficits and disabilities in that area so i think one of the the constant tightrope that we feel that we’re walking is trying to balance providing students with this level of specialized instruction while also ensuring that we’re not closing off their schedule to

1:18:13 allow them the opportunities in all of those electives for kids to have a chance to find their passion and to find something you know we’ve talked so much about engagement this year to find something that really helps engage students in school so i think it’s a point really well taken that there are going to be some skill deficits that all students are going to have um so my hope is that with the you know with being able to re install co-teaching at the you know hopefully the baseline level that we hope to have it this year that the special education teachers that are working in the general education setting can bring some of those executive functioning skills and strategies into you know all students into those classrooms without having to you know hopefully have to

1:18:59 remove you know just in the structures that we have now have students lose the opportunities to take electives for some of those things that we want to provide to everybody so it almost becomes like a tier one support i would love for it to be so nice you know i’m more in the tier three and tier two-ish realm but yeah i would love for i would love to see executive functioning be a tier one support k to 12.

1:19:29 absolutely i agree you have my support um yeah you’re muted do you mind if i just follow on from that real quick because um i was going to mention this later on in the meeting but since it’s come up um as the cpac liaison i sat on the recent cpac um district meeting or board meeting i’m not sure what it’s called but dan and dr donnelly um and eric presented some of these changes to the cpac board um you know specifically thinking around the co-teaching and the curriculum support piece um so that you know is a key piece being a former cpac number you know to create that collaboration between the parents and the c you know the cpac members and the school i mean that um i

1:20:16 think speaks volumes to the dedication here and the kind of breadth of research that’s gone into some of these changes so i was just really happy to see that level of collaboration yeah that’s great i appreciate that guys um so i will ask for a motion to accept principal bowers marblehead high school program of studies changes for 2021 and 2022 school year so moved sarah fox moved second megan second all right sarah gold yes megan taylor yes uh david harris yes uh sarah fox yes and emily baron yes all right thanks dan zero thank you very much dan

1:21:02 and thank you dr donnelly okay so that brings us up to our pool testing discussion um i will ask our lead nurse deanna mcmahon and um the other high school nurse um megan i’m going to blank on her last name i apologize for that uh you guys can unmute yourself and dr bucky do you want to share your screen for that with the permission of the chair i’d just like to give a brief introduction pool testing pool testing was announced by the governor before the department of elementary and secondary ed got it out to schools i got it out to school committee the minute i was made aware my phone rang probably 10 minutes later with the school committee member saying

1:21:48 this is probably not a good program for us based on experience with somebody else in another district i hung up from that call i had an email from another school committee member saying i really hope you’re looking into this so what we and opinions have changed over time as people learn more about it it becomes more attractive or less attractive and so i thought that it would be important for the committee to have a presentation on specifically what the program is what it looks like we have proceeded in marblehead as though we are doing it so we have put ourselves in the queue we have done the readiness checklist we have become a bio next now district so i figured it was easier

1:22:34 to ask forgiveness and say yeah we aren’t interested then to ask permission oh we didn’t say we were interested but now we would like to jump in so we’re in the queue for this but in order for us to do it we’re going to have to hire a nurse and school committees hire nurses and so i thought it was important for you to get an overview from people who are much better versed in this and deanna is our lead nurse and you’ve heard me praise her repeatedly and i will continue to do that and her assistant in the office has really run or not her assistant in the office the second nurse at the high school that was really a misspeak on my part so i apologize um has done

1:23:21 yeoman’s work in making sure all the boxes were checked and the readiness so i will turn it over to them take you through the presentation and then entertain the discussion that will likely follow

1:23:39 so people know it’s megan calpin megan is doing the presentation thank you deanna sorry megan that’s okay sometimes i barely remember my own last name if it helps you feel any better it’s uh it’s been a week um so i have like they said i’m megan kelp and i’m one of the nurses at um the high school i have attended um jesse’s pool testing webinars and i’ve been working on the paperwork to kind of get this whole thing started um so i put together some just brief stuff for you guys like an overview about what pool testing is so it’s desi supported it’s a six six-week program for pool tests pooled surveillance testing it ends on march 28 2021 starts on february 8th

1:24:26 february 8th february 8th minus february vacation um so what it is it’s groups of students and staff organized into pools it will be from 10 to 25 people but that will depend on what vendor we get paired with um everyone in the pool gets a pcr test all those sample samples are analyzed together as one pcr test if the pool result is positive then all those people get re-tested with the rapid antigen test um which the binex now we don’t currently have it but we’re we’re working on it in most cases if a person’s rapid antigen test is negative that person returns to school um if a person’s if the person’s rapid antigen test is positive um the person is going to

1:25:11 follow dph isolation protocols and gets contact traces and contact traced and they become a positive case um so let’s see so the test would be performed once a week it’s an anterior nasal swab it would be random it would be randomized depending on who opts in um samples are going to be administered by trained staff certain age groups of students can take their own sample under a trained staffed supervision so so the the per the vendor that we get paired with is going to be responsible for delivering the test to to us

1:25:58 all the testing supplies the lab processing the software associated with the pool testing um training for school and district personnel and then customer service and support for those those personnel as well and this this is only going to be covered during that six-week period so what we are going to be responsible for um is all this here so coordinating with desi managing all the logistics of the testing including the test administration data entry software management and then getting those completed tests to the laboratory um all the communication education about the program um distributing and processing all the consent forms conducting the follow-up

1:26:44 um on positive pools um and then also that would be contact tracing as well once they’re confirmed the person in the pool is confirmed positive um administering and supervising the specimen collection and then reporting all the follow-up testing that’s done with the binex now so what we need is a healthcare professional to oversee the entire program um it’s hope they would likely be a nurse or other healthcare professional and this person would pretty much just be in charge of the whole program for the six weeks

1:27:25 um so this is proposed costs from neighboring districts um proposal um so for the first this you i mean you can you can read it what the what that they they would cost us in this first six weeks and then what it’s going to cost us going forward if we decide to continue doing it um so this was the proposed cost from a neighboring district not our personal proposed cost with the permission of the chair this is from gloucester and they just recently voted and i was on a call with the superintendent of gloucester and five other superintendents who are exploring this and looking at it and the 65 000 once the program ended was pretty

1:28:12 much a consensus opinion for the cost once the six weeks of deci quote unquote funded

1:28:26 um so the vision that we have well the vision is ideal so this is the hopefully ideal it’s to participate in the six week program where the costs are supported um through march 28th we’re going to try to start with them the high school and the middle school students those are where the highest number of cases are right now um and there’s more likely to be transmission in the older students testing should occur on thursdays and fridays so cohort a and cohort b after in-person school this will hopefully reduce the amount of time that students will miss class as they will need to remain out of school until a negative pool result is received if there’s a positive pool so if a pool is positive they’re going to remain out of school until the individual students receive the negative binex now antigen testing and then

1:29:13 if follow-up testing is so the follow-up testing would ideally be done in a centralized location um and ideally outdoors um but but in some of some of the cases it will require like if the pool is positive but all the binax now antigen testings come back negative that is going to require that we send that whole pool to have an outside pcr test done because the binex now testing the the actual testing mechanism is not as sensitive as it could be

1:29:52 um so where we are now um we’ve submitted the survey in the statement of interest we’re trying to get set up with the binax rapid antigen the testing now we i was able to submit the order today they weren’t able to give me a timeline as to when um we will receive it um [Music] we have a so we’ve established that we have some sufficient ppe for this um we’ve developed family and staff communication about the program and the and the consent form um so next step would be to advertise for staffing getting set up with the binax now rapid antigen testing um by we wait basically we just have to wait for it to be delivered and then the testing healthcare professional hire would need to be trained and then after all that we would need to submit the materials to get started with the actual pool testing

1:30:45 that’s their presentation thank you very much okay any questions emily

1:30:57 i just have um a couple of questions the first one is if with all these next steps what’s the time frame to getting this all done if we have to find a staff person to you know do all the testing and they’re gonna start on monday are we going to be able to do that um i don’t know if you want to take that question dr bucky sure yeah i don’t think that it would be feasible for us to be in until after the february break if the school committee tonight said we want you to pursue pool testing i did have one community person reach out to me who is a health care professional who said

1:31:43 that she’s home right now none of our current nursing staff want to take this on because we offered it internally first and then we would hire a nurse as like a substitute for that person but no internal staff wanted this the realistically we could do it for five weeks yes okay um for free for free yeah yeah no that’s what i mean um i’m just talking about the pool the free testing so i remember when we first got the information about the testing that they were going to provide the transportation of the test to the lab did that change or did i read that wrong so they’re going to provide the stuff getting to us we didn’t have to either

1:32:30 get it to them put it in the mail i i don’t know if i want to put it in the mail but right that’s that’s what that was on us we have to somehow get it to them yep okay because i remember reading it as they would do both ways i guess i just probably read that wrong um and then my other question is how long do the pool testing like when you get all the swaps how long does it take to get to the results uh 24 to 48 hours so if the children or the students are tested thursday they would have to be out of school for sure on that friday so if their tests so we would break it i would we would try to break it down by cohort so oh so thursday yeah i would try to do cohort a

1:33:16 i guess when i said that it actually made more sense to me that that would work and then how are each um selection um taken so of the 10 to 25 is it one class does it or is it just like a random group of people like how does that work so i i think the best way to do it to get the best results would be like a random number generator have everyone who wants to do it on a list random number generating um and picks like that rather than it’s like all if it was that one classroom it would kind of just be centralized like isolated rather than a picking from every where we can basically okay so then unfortunately

1:34:03 individual people all over could potentially have to stay home yeah right okay um all right i think those are my questions thank you thank you for your presentation that was really helpful yep just add though that the free is not really free because we have to hire staff for this and there’s also equipment and then there’s also disposal of materials that cost marblehead public schools money

1:34:29 so deanna just following on from that so we talked about having to hire one full-time nurse to facilitate but i guess my question is is that really enough or are there other resources that we’re going to need to really implement for six weeks i’m sorry i missed the last half of your question i said is the once the one additional staff member enough to implement this when i look at it honestly and i honestly look at the amount of work i think it will be difficult for one person i have to be honest about that um the pools we use the pools can be between 10 and 25 students per time uh and then there’s a lot of time to do all those other pieces one thing i noticed that might not have been in the

1:35:15 presentation and i could have missed it too so i apologize if i’m making a mistake here is this also when anyone comes into a positive has to be placed in the maven system for the board of health um so that massachusetts is aware of any positive cases that we were defined in pool testing so that’s a whole other step that i didn’t see added in the presentation even the negatives from the binax now testing would be needed would need to be placed into maven so it would be correct i i just i’m sorry i think positive is more important but yes you are yeah yeah no no need to be put into the maven system yes another thing this person would be doing in their job okay so we heard from the community um you know in public comment that there’s a lot of willingness to help out is this actually an area where we could have community assistance

1:36:01 community assistance community assistance for perhaps some of the data entry if we have health professionals that could help on the testing and retesting days i was asked several times she’s asked essie about the confidentiality piece and i don’t think she’s gotten a straight answer but megan i don’t know do you have any updates no updates i did reach out to them and tried to rephrase my question a number of times to them and they really beat it around the bush in terms of if you could or could not use community volunteers so the way that i read between the lines was that you couldn’t however i could maybe try to nudge them a little bit more for a more direct answer but i i did try okay so i guess really my question is if

1:36:47 we cannot use community volunteers to help with us what’s the true staff requirements in terms of budgetary implications um neighboring gloucester i think talked about four or five staff people being hired megan do i have that number right yes do they do it for their full school community they’re doing it for their their they are starting their pilot program with the same that we’re doing so for the high school middle school and high school yeah okay um and so yep go ahead

1:37:25 sorry i think you muted since we’re comparing ourselves to gloucester i think we need to be a little careful we don’t know how many nurses gloucester has on their staff compared to what we have or do we okay and the number of students i could probably find it out for you yeah the number of students that are being tested versus the number of students that we need to test might be more than gloucester too yeah i’m not 100 sure right no i agree um one of the other things you mentioned um was or someone mentioned was about getting the um the swabs or the pools to the actual labs where are the labs located is that something we have to drive to like what are we talking about there it would be a drive um

1:38:11 one so it depends on the vendor that we are that we’re paired with there’s three vendors one is the cambridge ones i believe in cambridge um i think they’re mostly located in within the city within boston okay and i think you may have talked about this but maybe i just missed it so it’s 10 to 25 members in the pod or the pool how many pools do we do is it just one pool per week is it the same pool membership every week um so it would be one per week each week it would be random each week it’d be random based on who who opts in

1:38:56 because we can’t do this without people’s permission either like we would have to have buy-in from the community and people actually consent to they’d have to a consent to to test for us to um for us to place their information basically in a database and then to retest if needed okay and so that kind of goes on to one of my next questions what’s our what’s our participation threshold um hard to say um when i was in the desi meetings they did say that there is a i can’t remember the exact number and i couldn’t find it off top my head i think that they are off of the webinars i think maybe they just said it out loud but it was about i think they said about

1:39:42 eighty percent to be to to really show us the to show us the true data it would need to be about eighty percent and that’s eighty percent of students and teachers correct so okay so okay rotate so like one day one week we would do mbms pooling the next week we would do high school so if you’re talking about we have five active weeks at this free not so free price we’re talking about perhaps pooling the middle school two times and pulling the high school three times so it doesn’t really end up being a lot okay um and then you also mentioned if you have to do that pool and put them you know if you have to go through a second pcr test is that also covered by this program or would that be at a cost to us

1:40:27 it wouldn’t i mean it depends on where they go i mean the school would definitely we would need to coordinate it whether it be with stop the spread or project beacon but it would it would be us that have to coordinate it coordinate it but the test would technically be free of charge if we do it through stop the spread or um project beacon yeah because that ends up being the family’s choice at that point yeah finally get to that point we have to let the family know that we require them to get a pcr test so if they choose not to they would just have to isolate like any other person and just stay away from school for the 10 days yeah and then if they choose to find out whether their family member is positive or not they would then go get tested but that’s really more on them than it would be in the

1:41:13 pool testing piece is already is already completed by the time we ask them to go get that pcr for confirmation am i right about that megan yep okay and then sorry just two other questions and then i’ll pass it on but um what’s the what in your opinion what’s the impact of doing this right after february vacation you know i feel like after both the thanksgiving break and the winter break we’ve seen an increase um in positive cases in the community so i guess i just want to make sure that this is an accurate representation of what’s happening in our schools um um i mean the week that we come back from february vacation i don’t know that it’s gonna be an accurate picture of what february vacation might bring but i hard to say

1:42:01 okay um and i guess just the only other thing i would ask if we do decide to move forward with this is that we limit any kind of pull outs from actual class time so if we could schedule it on the way in or on the way out so we’re not impacting the amount of time that students are in their physical classes of course that was that was the idea i figured that i figured them to do it after school okay but again it has to be all consensual families that are consenting that their children can be involved yes right or staff people have consent that they’ll be involved yeah okay all right thank you sorry thank you guys sarah i know you’ve got your hand raised so i just want to clarify something before i go into my questions and comments you’re saying you’re going to test one pool

1:42:47 per week 10 to 25 correct okay that’s the recommendation by jessie i there’s a lot that is deeply troubling me and i and i’m i you know i’ve done a ton of research on this my sister’s an rn in new york she’s been running one of these programs at a school in new york since august i just got off the phone with her before this got a lot of information they have a consult weekly with um the dean of public health from dartmouth university who weighs in on you know how they they’re doing this um in the best way to keep their students safe they’re testing 456 students every week and they didn’t hire a single extra nurse

1:43:34 for nurses are doing it in addition to their normal duties um i find it unbelievable the idea that we are that a nurse would call one nurse would is estimated to cost five thousand dollars a week i my entire family’s in medicine i don’t know anybody that makes that wage it’s not just the nurse it’s also the cost of disposal the cost of getting your staff line you you noted staff and that was five thousand dollars a week that was from yes that was from a neighboring district’s numbers but yeah well but they are also hiring five people yeah well then we’re looking at a thousand dollars a week not five thousand dollars a week i just want to make sure that when this committee is voting that

1:44:19 voting that voting that that’s a big number difference i mean over the life of this program that’s a difference of you know almost fifty thousand dollars it’s significant um we don’t have the exact number so it’s somewhere between what you’re saying and somewhere between what is has been already put together by a neighboring district i i think it’s safe to say one nurse is closer to a thousand dollars a week than five thousand um so i just want to make sure we’re looking at this accurately um i also don’t know why if it’s tender i would i would hope that you guys would be able to fit in 10 to 25 um

1:45:03 tests a week um i i really think that this is a public safety issue we heard students crying we heard parents crying our community is on their knees begging us to find a way to safely bring kids back we’re in a public health health crisis we’re in a mental health crisis we need to keep our teachers still safe i have to believe that there is a way to do this and make this work um for less than those numbers say i i’m kind of saddened that i’m not seeing more support um from the from health professionals

1:45:49 for for this i think the way through this is to identify cases and to contact trace cases and that’s how we’re going to get through this that’s how we’re going to shut this down um that’s all we hear is identify and trace and so i don’t disagree with you but i don’t think the way that desi has it set up is going to be beneficial for us no i i understand that pool testing in this fashion where they don’t do the secondary round to identify the person is problematic i called john right away and i said listen my sister’s school they’ve tested three different ways this is problematic i understand that i understand the hurdles that come with it um but the fact that you’ll have the secondary testing option on site

1:46:35 and to be perfectly honest i think most families when they get a call testing is so easy to get in in massachusetts right now compared to neighboring states i i think most families when they get a phone call are going to go right away to project beacon i mean we had an issue and it took us an hour and a half to get a test and within 12 hours we had the results i i think that that’s probably going to be what’s happening and my assumption is that they produce a pcr on their own then that since the pcr is more accurate than the test we would have as a secondary test that would save you guys from a step i think we should all be you know at the very least jumping on board for the six week session um i i don’t see why we can’t start on february 22nd i don’t i i really don’t i don’t think that

1:47:22 i think that you guys can can figure this out you care about our students you care about our staff i know you do i think we can make this happen

1:47:36 david did you have anything yeah i’m still not clear on the total numbers per week sarah just said that 10 people a week are going to get tested so it depends on the on the contract we use yes some of the pool testing will allow you to have 25 pool people in the pool test and some will only allow you to have 10. so it depends on who we contract with to get to do the work and then that will give us the number of what we can test for that week and that’s how we’ll figure that out is that correct megan correct there’s two so there’s three total options for the vendors who we could potentially use we don’t get to choose desi gets to choose so two of them their max

1:48:22 pools are 10 and one of them their max pool is 25. and there’s no way that we so it’s and what deci is providing is for one one round a week so that we can’t do two rounds a week through deci their recommendation is one i i didn’t look deeper just because that’s what they said they would provide um but yes but can we push back and ask them how many rounds we can do

1:48:57 um sure um sure david can i still follow through with this thought process i’m i’ve read the faqs and i guess i’m missing what was described in the faqs that it’s estimated to be 50 a pool so we’re going to have a pool in each grade 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th and 12th so we’ll have six pools no it’s gonna happen random grouping well that’s not that’s not i guess i’m not seeing that and the faqs also recommend that the students get tested with their teacher so that your your pool would would be defined it would be randomness but it would be uh

1:49:43 effectively teachers and you know that actually teach these students so that you’re more likely to have a cohort or or a grouping of of teachers i mean you wouldn’t take a high school teacher and match them up with the pool of students in the eighth grade if they don’t even no we wouldn’t cross schools it would be one school or the other and again everyone has to consent to want to be part of it so what i’m hearing is if so if they were at the middle school and it was eighth grade cohort a then on the black team that would be the pool they’d pull 10 or 25 if we’re lucky plus a teacher or with a teacher from the black team

1:50:29 team team or maybe more than one faculty member yeah yeah and it’s not just teachers they want custodians yeah they want custodians they want bus drivers they want admin they want guidance they want everybody they don’t they don’t want to limit it to just teachers they want everybody to be part of this anybody who consents to be part of it okay yep god doctor barney i just think an important piece in this is the participation because some districts have not been able to get a threshold of participants so the next step i think for us if we would like to continue pursuing it is to put it out to families in and staff

1:51:15 how many people are interested in participating i know a neighboring district was very excited about this and got below 40 of people that were willing to consent because you have to have their consent for the testing and for the binex now testing so we would be doing two um we can do anything i’m fully supportive if that’s the direction we want to go but i want us to have all of the information um yeah so this so that’s it we’ve had this conversation for a couple of the reopening meetings at this point so and i’ve um i’ve kind of changed my tune around it um i you know i i guess i start from a place of frustration because

1:52:01 frustration because frustration because i personally think that this and i don’t even know how wisely i want to choose my words i personally think that this is the bottom of the barrel testing that we ever could have been given and that makes me irate um we have begged the state as school districts from the beginning of the summer for any kind of help and then this is what they throw at us with testing um and you know to test we have a small district and so we’re testing you know 10 kids a week like that’s insanity to me um even if they covered every single dime of it for that first six weeks so i’m i start at a place of extreme frustration here um

1:52:47 here um here um i don’t know how you know to me this is sort of not dissimilar to what they did with our reopening stuff and sort of saying that they’re gonna help us and then like oh actually you guys can do it on your own um and and it just it’s time after time um and then we end up holding the bag and looking like you know now we’re in this spot where it is incredibly difficult to sit here and talk about turning down testing and i quite frankly don’t know how we do that um but it’s also such a tax on our system and it again it just infuriates me that this is where we’re at um so so that’s kind of where i come in on this and and then i get to this point where i don’t know how we turn down

1:53:34 testing um because in the at the end of the day some testing is better than no testing in my head um and and even even testing that isn’t doing a great job um because we we could particularly from a community perspective and i sort of started here kind of in the weeds with just school and then i have a friend who is a doctor and we often i often use her as a sounding board and she kind of pulled me out she’ll do this from time to time when i get too focused on just the schools and she pulled me out from the schools and said like listen this is a bigger issue this is a community issue um and and you kind of have to start to think of it in that way so you know and and then there’s

1:54:19 frustration that i don’t see a lot of support on the community side of things and i know that that’s that we’re all super taxed every every department in this town is super taxed um but you know it is frustrating to me that you know we have been told by the board of health that they cannot they do not have the capacity to help us here and i think that’s an important note you know we have followed up on that um we’ve had multiple conversations and they just can’t they’re inundated with their own contact tracing as well as the vaccine piece and they they just can’t take us on with this um so you know i i this conversation is meant so that we all go into this eyes wide open um so i just this these are the pieces that kind of have been stewing around for me for weeks

1:55:05 weeks weeks and i just i needed to kind of put that out there that’s why i shared that article with you the other day the study from johns hopkins and duke and the rockefeller foundation because i felt like it explained a lot of the layers that are very difficult to explain to everyone in the little presentation like we have tonight sarah you’ve got your hand up so sorry before we move on i just want to make sure everyone has a chance to speak so i know it kind of cut david off so i just want to make sure dave if you have any other questions you get it or you have a chance to ask those thanks meg

1:55:44 i guess i’m clear now that it’s one pool but

1:55:50 the presentation also talked about doing cohort a and cohort b and there would be a test on thursday and there would be a test on friday so that’s two pools it would oscillate between weeks yeah i didn’t mean for it to say to be it’s going to be two pools i meant like my the vision is to do it for cohort a on thursday to do it for cohort beyond friday i’m sorry if that wasn’t clear so when cohort a’s being tested they would be tested on thursday when cohort b is being tested they would be tested at their on their friday in person yeah okay i’m sorry well if if in to your point that it i think the the bottom of the barrel seems to be the number if if that’s the number because i’m just sort of

1:56:36 it’s it’s not how i understood it so it’s good to get this clarified but um it’s also um you know i have a personal example where my wife’s school gets 600 students tested a week in boston and they do it in about four hours exactly so that’s kind of the similar experience david i i wonder if we misunderstood this entire program if gloucester is saying they need four to five nurses they don’t need four to five nurses to test one pool of 10 to 25 kids so clearly they’re testing large groups multiple pools that it wouldn’t be that lobster got one set of rules and marble had got another

1:57:22 and and david read it and i read it the average price like none of this fits together to be perfectly honest like gloucester’s not hiring no school district is hiring five rns to test 10 to 25 kids a week they’re testing multiple pools they have to be there’s there is no way on earth that we are that this is being understood the way it is so so i think it’s clear that that we need to gather a bit more information starting with our

1:58:07 our our community who would be interested in it um because you know that i listened into one of the earlier webinars i think actually i listened to it as a recorded version um and so i also remember that 80 threshold um so to me that seems like kind of where it’s at um so you know i don’t know if somebody wants to help me with emotion or if we just want to keep kind of talking this through a little bit before we make a motion um you know we’ve got we’ve got two budget workshops next week so we are meeting um so we could sort of you know carve a smudging of time out for for this um we also have the ability to meet over

1:58:54 february vacation if needed um and we can do that remotely obviously so if anybody is going anywhere um because i think i think this needs i think we need a little bit more information um and and you know and i know i appreciate the the presentation that we’ve gotten tonight for sure i know that there’s been a lot of webinars um i missed the most recent one um so i you know and the first one that i listened to was relatively lengthy so i i really appreciate all of the background work that’s being done on this and i i want to say i particularly appreciate the fact that right now buy now um i’ve had many conversations about that with the nurse over at tower and i think that in and of itself is a highlight and then that is testing that

1:59:40 i can get behind because if we have a kid come into school and develop symptoms that’s that’s where that test can be used and that test can be used after this is all you know whether or not we do the six weeks and stop or continue forward you know that works for us on a larger scale um in all of our buildings so that’s a really good thing that’s come of this already um so i’ll ask motion okay i’ll make a motion to approve the pool testing program participation as laid out by the state

2:00:19 so i just want to make sure that we’ve actually that the state has actually laid out enough for sarah’s motion because i’m a little confused as to whether they have

2:00:33 i i would like some clarification on some of the pieces that we raised tonight and i think one other piece that i’d like clarification not clarification but further investigation on is you know i know we’ve had conversations with the board of health but this is desi sponsored obviously and there is obviously benefit to our schools but there’s also benefit to the community and i would like to explore that a little bit more maybe with the town administrator or with some of our other services within town to see if there’s any of any possibility of partnership um for the for this program so i think personally i need some more information before i’m ready to vote okay so there’s a motion on the table we don’t have a second

2:01:21 it’s not good thank you david so so my big question right now is to i guess to john um with the motion on the table does that give you enough to send out the the forms and ask for permission from our students sure okay yep and those are ready to go okay and i would i would think it would be beneficial to send out at least the bionx now one to the entire district yep okay that’s can hits end after the meeting tonight so with those consent forms is there a deadline on them how long families have to turn them around we can create one

2:02:07 create one create one i’m just wondering if we can have that information and maybe you could potentially investigate with um you know other community departments before you know by one of our next meetings next week so we know you know if it’s something that whether we voted or not that the community is actually going to participate in so maybe we can add this to i mean does tuesday sound too rushed on that no okay i i think your point is well taken megan because in that call another community was using emts and firefighters to help facilitate some of the testing or the follow-up testing so you know that could be something for us to explore here

2:02:52 here here as engaging community partners

2:03:02 okay so we have a motion on the table um and it’s been seconded do we have any further questions before i call for the roll call yep yep i’m looking at the um faqs on deci and it says five to ten people in the pool test per pool one pool is what they’re recommending from what i’m reading so that’s just because i know we want clarification so i say that again um um the pool size should not be lower than five while most vendors will cap at ten and and right and um there’s a vendor as the nurse has mentioned there’s three vendors right

2:03:47 now depending on we’ll go up to 25. right if we get that there’s one vendor out of three that will allow 25. but still just one pool that’s what this looks like it doesn’t actually say right it doesn’t no you’re right i think we should clarify that for sure and we’re not sure if that would be a lottery or dependent on the size of your town we don’t have right okay there’s also other factors obviously right yeah all right all right sarah gold yes megan taylor yes david harris yes emily baron yes and sarah fox yes i’m proud we adopted a pool testing policy

2:04:32 um and we will we will make sure that that is um on our agenda for tuesday probably i’ll probably place it at the beginning all right all right megan and deanna thank you very much we really appreciate your time and all the effort that you put into this yeah i think that that’s that’s an important thing to note our nurses have worked so hard and have put in extra effort and so um i just don’t want that to be lost in a discussion about additional work or if we have to hire another nurse or taking on additional responsibilities as

2:05:19 a lack of recognition for the good work that they have done since june absolutely yeah i absolutely agree john i mean i think this pandemic you know has been over taxing our nursing staff to begin with and then the amount of information and time that you’ve had to put into researching this you know it’s above and beyond so absolutely thank you for your time yeah and all your energy on this yeah in my role at tower i work incredibly closely with the school nurse and um and you know i know how stressed out she is at this point and and what an amazing job she’s doing and you know deanna i i know you better than i know megan but i have to assume throughout the district that you know all of our nurses are working equally as hard as my

2:06:05 co-worker um and none of this is easy and and you guys are taking care of the contact tracing within the schools when we do have positives that within our student and um faculty population and and i you know that’s a huge task and um none of this is easy and and i think you know as we’ve seen um from our public comment tonight that that there’s we’ve really hit a crescendo here with this entire pandemic and um that goes for our nursing staff within the schools in particular as well um so i really appreciate you guys taking the time to do this put this together you know i’ve been coordinating the presentation piece of this and how

2:06:51 it was going to function um for this evening uh with via email for the past couple of days with deanna and megan um and so i thank you for for joining us tonight thanks and i just want to thank all of my nurses because just so that everyone knows we have had no school in school transmission of covid19 for staff or students the entire time we’ve been in school since september 14th we’re now in february which usually as we uh get close to valentine’s day i remember the little kindergarteners walking around with their 100-day um little halos on so we’re close to 100 days if we were in regular school and i’m very very proud because of the mitigating factors we use in marblehead public schools we have kept no transmission of covet 19 staff or students in our schools so thanks yeah i really appreciate that and it

2:07:37 just it it i think you know as much as we’ve just talked about pool testing and that it can be an important tool i think it’s very clear that that our other mitigation approaches are are wildly successful in keeping our staff and students safe and and i know how often kids come down to the nurse even in a regular year um and so and i know that teachers are sending them down even more out of you know an overabundance of a precaution so i you know i really appreciate all the work that you guys are all doing and and playing a massive role in keeping our schools open you’re welcome

2:08:31 do a presentation here all right i will try to move uh expeditiously through that because i know that there are several other things on the agenda um we just did that uh just a reminder i said i would touch base with you on my goals periodically i’ve listed them there continue to do the new superintendent’s uh induction program have gotten into a uh once a month meeting in linfield with uh chris mcgrath my coach and the linfield superintendent um so continuing with the three monthly meetings on that which goes well budget is underway you each got a budget workbook or notebook this evening and i won’t steal michelle’s thunder but we have a

2:09:16 wonderful budget subcommittee um and we’ve been meeting and there’s a calendar and you all receive budget priorities uh the leadership team uh continues to develop uh in spite of kovid might i say uh we do get together for in-person socially distance masked uh meetings we will be meeting over the february break i will talk a little bit more about that but we’re having a two-day retreat over the break um i would say area for development continues to be school visits as much as i’d like to get out of wedger road and as rewarding as it is every time that i do um i’m not in the schools as much as i

2:10:01 would love to be and every time i’m in the schools it’s affirming and i’m like why do you ever stay on widget road but then the phone rings or the email comes in or there’s another fire uh that ignites so um instructional improvement continue to work uh nan is an invaluable resource she has been so great and is leading that math adoption work so i do feel good about the instructional improvement things uh and all of these are tied in because it’s a leadership team and it’s the budget and then diversity some great stuff happening across the district i was so glad that henry turner spoke tonight he is such a valued

2:10:49 colleague of mine he was on the state principles association uh when i was the president and he is so articulate and so thoughtful and such a resource across the commonwealth so the fact that he is a header and part of our community and somebody that i can reach out to particularly when we have a diversity goal so i wanted to give a nod to henry turner in my work on those goals um collective bargaining super exciting something that you will take a vote on we do have a an agreement with the marblehead educators association and that will extend to all six contracts tonight only we are voting on the unit a and this is the language that they have proposed for that motion

2:11:35 uh joan who has been noted in this meeting but i’ll just again uh say she has been an invaluable partner and there are some language things that i would like to address and so she has made this um caveat which we have talked about that uh we could establish a subcommittee um to look um at maybe doing some memorandums of agreement uh around uh language in particular contracts in particular the custodian contract or tutors paraprofessionals there are some things that i would like to do there but right now tonight what is in front of you is uh what i think is a very successfully negotiated unit a collective bargaining agreement for the

2:12:20 next three years and i will say some districts have said because of kovid let’s just do one year to get through it and then but i’m really proud of the fact that we were able to get a three-year bargaining agreement

2:12:39 sure do you want the motion before questions uh sure i’ll read the motion let me find my paper all right so can i get a motion that we actually have two motions that i’ll need with this um can i get a motion to approve the memorandum of agreement for a collective bargaining agreement with the marblehead education association unit a the teacher’s contract covering the period from september 1 2021 to august 31 2024 as presented so moved megan moved second emily second all right megan do you have a question or a comment

2:13:22 my question is around the subcommittee piece so is that the second that’s the second yes so um oh wait my question was pertaining to that sarah fox i actually don’t have you on my screen right now so if you have any questions um yeah um so i just want to confirm because i didn’t see in the dropbox the actual so is is this usual and customary will will we make the terms of the memorandum of agreement available to the press and others yes okay so i just do confirm i’d like to just say that i want to thank everybody who’s been involved in this i mean um this is uh i think i came in on the first year of uh this might be the third contract

2:14:07 since i’ve been on the committee and uh years of being on the finance committee and i i want to recognize um the work that was done here and the agreement that was able to be reached with the marblehead education association and um it’s i think it’s just will support the initiatives um that we need to fund in this town i think it is something that recognizes as well the commitment that the district has has made to its um staff here you know throughout throughout the last year and that we’ll be able to continue that certainly along with

2:14:54 these agreements come other benefits that are provided to our employees but um i just think this is uh really a good agreement that is fiscally responsible for the town and i i want to thank everybody who was involved for being able to reach a three-year agreement in a pandemic and um keep us moving forward so that we can do just that continue to focus on delivering education and not having to um be going further down the road and and dealing with collective bargaining agreements so thank you everybody for getting us to this point yeah i completely agree david well said okay i just want to go back to what i was saying i want to confirm i know what we’re voting on

2:15:41 i know we talked about certain things in executive session but i actually thought we’d see a redlined version of the previous contract and any changes so i want to make sure i know what i’m voting on my understanding is there’s no language change whatsoever outlined in anybody’s roles responsibilities commitments anything of the sort that the only change is outlining the pace the pay increase which will become five percent over a period of three years that is correct okay so nothing else nothing else okay all right i just wanted to make sure because i just i hadn’t seen anything all right we have a motion in it seconded um or emily do you have anything did you okay

2:16:26 all right sarah gold yes megan taylor yes david harris yes emily baron yes in sarah fox yes okay that carries five to zero so now they’re as as we had discussed previously as well i i need a second motion because there is going to be a little bit of work behind the scenes still um i need a motion to approve the establishment of subcommittees to investigate and report out findings or recommendations to the parties for consideration and negotiation regarding language changes so moved megan moved second emily second megan you had a question previous yeah just about this because we there is um mention of a subcommittee in the

2:17:11 existing moa that we um that we voted in september six you know six people on that can we just use that committee i wouldn’t why not yeah we don’t need another committee right because that one’s already kind of got the people that you need on it right and that committee already exists who’s the school committee rep on that me right the chair so i just want to make sure where some of that stuff might be stuff that comes up at um uh uh reopening you know for instance when you talk about possibly changing distancing and stuff like that that we’re not in

2:17:56 that it’s not technically you know that that subcommittee is all present or a majority of them present at the reopening which isn’t i just want to make sure we’re not we’re not getting into any issues with open meeting on that that’s my concern

2:18:13 i don’t think we are um the moa hasn’t been discussed in depth other than just being mentioned that it is a thing and that these things need to be vetted out again if we’re going to move anything that we’ve got going on um so i don’t i don’t see it as an issue at all so there’s no discussion of changing spacing or distancing at all or the need for it because that would qualify

2:18:43 are we talking about the contract piece where there’s gonna be a committee to review some language yeah i’m just saying that some of the topics that are covered in that committee are also kind of being discussed at reopening just by the nature of what is involved in reopening and i want to make sure we’re not getting ourselves in trouble

2:19:07 yeah yeah that’s why i wondered if it should be someone that’s not on the rio like if the school committee rep should be someone that’s not on the reopening committee so that fixes that can we just check that first i just hate to like create another committee that we if we don’t necessarily need it so can we just confirm that and then and then if we need it we can come back and vote it absolutely next next meeting yeah so then what do we do with this motion do we just do we pass it we can pass we’re just going to name the person you know clarify the name of the person who will be on the subcommittee at a later date so it will establish the subcommittee officially that we need one and then we can go back and so is that not is that convenient already established because you know

2:19:53 like it’s already referenced in that in the moa and the membership is is in that in the way i would i i would just say that

2:20:06 i would just suggest that if there’s like an issue in the custodian’s contract joan would likely want to have a custodian as part of the conversation for that or tutor or paraprofessional or something like that so maybe we need to reach out to liz valerio and clarify what the subcommittee or i mean it says subcommittees so we may be talking about multiple yeah okay but i still think we can pass this motion

2:20:41 because we’re not cr we’re not creating the entire committee is going to vote on whatever comes out of those so if the custodians say we want to extend our lunch break for example that would come to you as something to approve and this isn’t work that’s being done in the next three weeks this will be going on for a while yes okay

2:21:13 all right sarah gold yes megan taylor yes david harris yes emily baron yes fairfax we’re not we’re not voting to establish the makeup correct correct nope not at all yeah just the fact that we will establish subcommittees yes we’re going to do a little bit more digging on uh what the makeup should be what’s the best practice all right so that passes five to zero thank you guys

2:21:42 okay the next thing is the am i still on yep annual town report um i am uh proposing to revise um what we submit as the annual town report it seemed really bland to me in that you need a measles mumps and rubella shot to enroll in the marblehead public schools and these are the phone extensions for the people i get that some pedestrian information is utilitarian and we want to include that but i have asked each principal and each director to write a synopsis and boy can they write so um i had said you know three to five sentences a paragraph or two

2:22:29 most are coming in at three or four pages certainly i know the town administrator is not going to want to have a marblehead public schools novella so lisa and i are going to go in and trim that down but i think it gives a really in-depth look at the district over the last year and as a new superintendent coming in it’s kind of hard to write because i wasn’t here but bill did such a great job and his continues to be a resource that i can reach out and ask him questions but i think it it’s important for people to see september 2019 was a very different world and you hired a new superintendent in january and that was a very different world and then you had a pandemic hit

2:23:17 and so seeing that through the lens of each building i think is important for the community and if we need to ask the community to support us going forward then it increases the transparency into each building and each program and what they were able to do provided the resources they had at that time so um i don’t have that for you tonight deadline for administrators was friday and so lisa has done what lisa does she work saturday and sunday pulling it all together and we will go in and edit it and hopefully have something to you um it is due uh next friday to the town february 12th but i’m hoping to get it to you individually next week

2:24:02 next week next week great

2:24:11 um i’m gonna race through this and you can ask me to come back and talk to you about it but i know that the agenda has some bigger things than me talking about the survey that we did this just gives you some information on survey participation the red is what we had in november the white is what we saw in january the second graph gives you the elementary school participation middle school high school faculty and staff um

2:24:45 what you get is a 30 000 foot view of surveys the real value is what we give to building principals and so they get the anecdotal comments that are related to their school their programs their building their students their families and so when i present to school committee you’re getting a very global view of the information and you don’t know well as that two high school parents that are saying that or is that 40 middle school parents saying that the principals get that level of granularity in the surveys just some areas of strength pacing is on track and i’ll have a slide coming up that says a little bit more about that

2:25:30 in person parents and students continue to feel very positively about the health physical health and wellness and deanna talked about that a little bit families feel that they have some efficient information to make their learning model decision and i’m going to talk about learning models here in a minute but anytime you see close to 90 85 percent of people feeling that they have the information they need to make a decision that’s positive and then people are pleased with the communications that we have done social emotional concerns across the board and that does not surprise you based on what you heard at the opening of the meeting tonight and i will be talking about plans uh to address that um when i move through this

2:26:17 um teachers still reporting that they are feeling very stressed and the balance in the work life remote students feel that the workload is too heavy that was resounding and i have a slide on that coming up and as time wears on fatigue increases and i think you heard that in public comment tonight this is a little bit about the remote students and this is concerning that these are students reporting out that nobody feels that the workload is too light but many people feel that it’s too heavy or much too heavy and that’s interesting because sometimes as we talk about school and what

2:27:02 students are doing we get into the idea they don’t have enough time on learning what they don’t have enough time is direct instruction with a teacher and i’m going to talk about that a little bit later but i think that this should get our attention and it has my attention

2:27:23 and again this breaks out the information where people feel that they have uh enough to make an informed learning model decision interestingly back in november when you asked teachers about pacing less than a third reported they felt like they were on pace with the information january survey over half and again do you want 54 of your teachers saying i think that i’m on pace no you want 90 to 100 but it shows a precipitous increase in where they were in november compared to now um this is what i want to speak about is

2:28:08 a question on the survey is what would make you leave the hybrid learning model and i think it’s very very telling that two-thirds of our families say nothing would make us leave but i do want to point out that reducing the distancing which is something i’m going to talk about in a little bit there are 184 families that say that could be a lever for me that doesn’t mean that we don’t do it but as we look to increase in-person learning time and again i keep saying i’m going to talk about that but i want to get through some of these slides that’s not a negligible number and so if half of those

2:28:57 if we changed the distancing 90 families i know then the spread of that is it two first grade families and 30 second grade families so looking at that numbers and maybe some of them would say no the in-person time is just much too valuable um i didn’t i would change my opinion but i think it’s important for the committee to see that information now john you have that right breakdown don’t you because on the survey it asks us what grade our children were in so you should be able to correlate what grades are willing to leave absolutely okay so this is just some information

2:29:44 about remote parents and hybrid parents and their views of district communication i would say because communication has been a priority for me great pride in over two-thirds of our families are reporting out that it’s comprehensive and clear frequent enough some would argue too frequent too much the level of detail again some would argue get to the point enough of the superfluous is a word that i hear information uh the breadth of topics and then the sufficient context and again there are certainly areas for improvement in there

2:30:27 so that brings me to um

2:30:33 i think we have reached a pivotal moment in where we are with hybrid learning i think the public comments tonight underscore what i was planning to talk about we asked for a pause in october because

2:30:56 teachers felt we were listening to parents too much and again that’s a generalized statement parents are now feeling that we listen to teachers too much i think we have to start listening to the students and their voices particularly tonight

2:31:19 the board of health this week said that the six foot distancing was a suggestion and i think that that is a prime opportunity for me to say that’s the only lever that we have left so we have not been sitting on our hands since october we have looked at do we do an am cohort in a pm cohort where children could be in five days a week but reduced time and so there were liabilities with that people didn’t like that we were like okay can we take the cohorts and bring them in full days include lunch and keep them into until 2 30.

2:32:05 people didn’t care for that particular model the president is saying in the first hundred days he wants students back in school the governor has been making this push the commissioner is making this push districts are starting to do this and there’s no reason we cannot so i would like the committee’s support in working with the administrative team over the two-day retreat in february for bringing our students back combined cohorts five days a week logistics of it we will figure out but i think it’s the right thing to do for our students given the mental health concerns and those are borne out in the surveys

2:32:50 surveys surveys that our students need to be back in school five days a week i think we would start with the four hours we’re doing now which we have proven can be successful but look at that distancing piece and it could be in some elementary classrooms five and a half spacing as opposed to six in other classrooms it could be less we won’t go below three but we did say at the beginning of the year when we put all the planning together that we could bring our schools back at three foot distancing and the guidance and the recommendations at that time were

2:33:36 go with six foot distancing cdc is changing on that other health as articulated very clearly tonight uh are saying the six foot distancing could be reviewed and i think it’s time that we do it and we’re bringing students back five days a week i will gladly ask for a motion to support the superintendent and the principals to create a plan to bring our students back at lower distancing levels and fully in person so we moved megan moved second emily second um so for me this has always been about data

2:34:22 um and i in the fall i was very concerned because we didn’t have data to truly support that lowering our distancing was was safe we and we talked about this you know all of a sudden this three foot distance came out of the blue where did it come from what was the you know how did it back it up and i think at this point we see throughout this country that that has you know gone through so much that it that it doesn’t really impact that schools are not spreaders um that schools quite frankly are probably the safest place people can be um because the mitigation protocols are in effect and they’re being monitored and closely adhered to and you know whether a school has been in at three feet or six feet um there is not spread within our schools

2:35:08 in a massive way um and you know i i personally had a bit of a come to jesus this week on this um it’s been kind of slowly building but i and i’ve seen other people and then i think in public comment tonight it’s very clear that we that we need to move forward on this the only point of i don’t know any point of clarification but just something i’d like to advocate for is um those five half days um but to keep you know if we can keep those afternoon zooms with their teachers because i do think that’s the important um you know um consistency of schedule for the students i would agree with that um i i wanted to ask john a couple

2:35:54 questions i where there was i think it was 189 families that identified they would possibly that this would possibly trigger them to go remote i just want a commitment from you that anybody we’re not holding people at this point to semester or trimester marks that anybody that wants to go full remote because of this change in distancing will be accommodated in a remote program no one no one will be turned away i think that’s an easy commitment for me to make sarah i think that is a reasonable request because it is a dramatic shift for some families that started remote and looked and said okay the six foot distancing seemingly is safe and is working

2:36:41 i could see a family feeling like the rug has been pulled out from under them and it’s no longer something they want to do i just want to be clear that

2:36:59 depending on where numbers land teachers might change so if you had mrs gold as your teacher in second grade and we have 20 children that want to go remote mrs golden might have to be the remote teacher and her students shared with other classrooms and my guess is some families would be amenable to that just to get back in person five days but there is nothing that is just a light switch i’m committed to bringing our children back and combined cohorts five days a week knowing that there may be concessions that we have to make in terms of teacher assignments

2:37:46 assignments assignments and then my next question to this is you know if there happens to be enough of those kids leaving at the high school that would justify taking some of those kids that are in an ingenuity class and now giving them to an actual teacher i think we we hear from these high school kids that this is soul crushing we we we’ve seen them cry um at our meetings and i i think you know we’re doing this to help kids get more time with with teachers which i i support um but i don’t that group at the high school who we’ve heard so much about the impact on their mental health can’t be left behind we have to as a district help those students as well there are students just as much as

2:38:31 any other student so i want a commitment that we’re going to look at ways to improve their social emotional health and their interaction with their peers and their ability to be with a marblehead educator because i’m not ready to say this group of students we have to help and these ones they’re good i i think to be fair sarah that’s not at all what i was suggesting it’s not but we have to help those students i we’re doing right by a large group with this vote but i want to do right by everybody as do i so i think this is where we are so lucky to have dan bauer as the high school principal because there’s no one with a bigger heart who cares more and will do whatever he can so i don’t

2:39:16 want to make a commitment to what dan will do but i know that he will not leave the remote learners behind

2:39:25 i i also think it’s worthwhile to say um from my position not not on school committee but um in the within the community that i don’t want anybody going into this thinking that this is going to be a home run that you know that everything is gonna get so much better um it’s i do think it’s going to increase um connections i think it’s going to i think it’s the best thing to be done right now it’s something that we can do quite frankly that will have positive benefit i think where we are at what we are seeing with our students and with our teachers and with ourselves is deeper than school being you know half days

2:40:13 two and a half days a week um and so i just i i just feel like we need to be clear about that too because again we talk about a mental health crisis school’s not going to fix that um and that’s going to be around longer than the than kovit is much much longer than covet is um so i just that’s another piece that’s been weighing very heavily on me this week so i need to put that out and thank you for saying that because i think i think the main piece i mean education we’re here to educate students but i think what we’re hearing from people is these kids need the social interaction they need to see their peers their teachers every day and this is a desperate need

2:40:59 and you know what the kids aren’t just suffering their parents are suffering which then is this huge you know avalanche between in the whole family set up but that’s why i want to say like we have to find some way to give those those remote kids that human connection too because it is so important right now yeah and i think that’s why i piggybacked on your comment right there sarah is because this this is bigger it’s bigger than school it’s you know we cannot unfortunately like just broadly let our kids start functioning as they were a year ago today um and and

2:41:44 until we can do that we’re gonna have to continue to be creative because we do have the ability and the in the the time with the kids as as a school system um but so that we can continue to try to meet needs in in more and more creative ways but um and i think that’s to your point sarah why we’re seeing such negative impacts um with our adolescent population who are fully remote is because that is so wrong for what those kids developmental needs are um it is wrong in every way shape and form that they’re home and with their families and you know and and in their rooms day in and day out um and

2:42:31 you know they should be out you know breaking away from their families and and ex you know being you know figuring out who they are and um the circumstances here prevent that um and so yeah i i don’t have any solutions on that um i don’t think there are but i i just needed to say it through the chair i just want to say that i was talking to somebody today and they were talking about um well we’ll need time to develop that we’re not this is an immediate need and i know people question well why do you always start with the youngest i think nan could articulate the literacy

2:43:17 gaps but it’s harder at the middle school high school so i’m looking at this starting with our earliest grades as soon as possible again the administrative teams meeting over february vacation i’m hoping that the rollout will be soon thereafter we’re not going to take six weeks to figure this out and we’re not going to phase in in three week periods i’m wanting to get the distancing down be able to share out to families what that’s going to be so that they can make educated decisions but those who want to be back in person regardless of the distancing and you saw on that survey two-thirds of our families are saying there is nothing that would make me leave the hybrid even

2:44:03 with the distancing being put out as a specific example so i have great faith in matt fox and dan bauer but it is more complicated at the high school with children moving going to different classrooms with different cohorts and those teachers also understandably their needs need to be attended to as well not that we can’t do it but it is a little easier pre-k to six to get this off the ground but i think that’s a really important point and i’m glad you brought it up because this has been one of my concerns right is that we kind of did that you know we did the phase in in the in the fall and that made sense i’m not like second guessing that but in this case and i know you’re going to work out the plan but keeping that as tight as

2:44:51 possible is for me a huge priority right because like you said it’s the adolescents that from a social emotional standpoint are probably suffering the most so we’ve gotta like tighten up that timeline as much as physic you know practically possible you have a commitment from me to do that thank you and sarah i know we try not to merge the public in private too much but i’ve heard nothing but good things about the bucket system over at tower and um i wonder especially with those younger kids and we’re reducing we’re reducing spacing but we want to make our teachers feel safe too if we want to kind of talk not right now but you know look into that a little more because from what i hear it’s working really really well it’s a phenomenal system um i actually had worked a little bit with

2:45:38 emily and melissa kaplovich offline um this past fall um when i kind of watched it roll out of tower and how and how great it was um so it melissa’s actually been on my list of people that i need to text and and say like hey move this forward like let’s get the ptos on this um let’s you know can we can we make it pto or then you know do we have to take it back and if it can’t be pto then can it you know where where can we find this money well not for nothing we just heard a ton of parents say how can we help i think we put a link up there and you’ll have the money by sunday i mean we’re buying we’re buying all we’re looking for is those big home depot buckets and the kids carry their supplies and they use them as a seat and their lunch pail and everything yeah meg emily you did some work on this so i have an update that

2:46:23 third grade had two pilot programs of buckets ace hardware has now donated buckets for the other three so the village third grade all has the buckets and i know they love them the teachers love them so it it just shows that we can start kind of getting them out to everybody yeah and i think this highlights for me you know and and john as a heads up where my head goes with this is that as soon as we get these buckets are a way to get kids outside so they can carry their stuff and then they flip them and they sit on them so that they’re not sitting on the wet ground in the cold ground and they can you know there’s still plenty of glasses at tower that unless it’s cold and snowy or rainy or really frigid as it was last

2:47:09 week there are still many classes that are going outside a little bit less on learning but to eat um to do their snack and to eat their lunch um because lunch is a is an issue um you know and that it’s a it’s a that’s a big hurdle um so i am gonna i’m i in my head we roll this out our weather gets better and we continue to move forward um and and continue to look at this and the buckets to me help that nice work on that pilot emily awesome

2:47:45 no i mean it it’s a joke i mean thank you and that’s what they do they take their snacks at put them in the bucket and then they carry and they sit in a circle or in a line and they sit on their bucket and they eat their snack and it’s really it’s very cute at tower they’re they’re actively and effectively using them um pre-k through eight the the younger grades um i think through second grade have the is it three gallon versus five gallon i want to say so they have the three gallon because it’s then it’s a lot easier for them to sit on and they just don’t have quite as much stuff to carry um so i think that there’s a space for these depending on what the teachers think um you know kind of throughout our system sarah can you get some pictures next week and get them to john because i’m

2:48:31 just driving by and it’s like okay that looks like a good idea yep

2:48:39 so i will just say thank you um sarah shared a youtube video with me last night that has been [Music] um tugging on me and to hear students tonight this is the right step so thank you well i think it’s thank you for making it yep yeah we still have a motion out there but nobody wants to see a grown man choked up let’s move on to the agenda did we we voted this right oh no we didn’t vote all right come on thank you david sarah gold yes megan taylor yes david harris yes thank you emily barron yes and sarah fox yes i just want to clarify this is going to take a vote of the union to yeah

2:49:25 i am very remiss in not saying that yes so the conversation started with joan i went to joan on tuesday this week and said this is what i’m going to talk about at school committee and they are receptive to the conversation it is uh negotiation but i do not get a sense from joan that there would be um they’re not amenable to the conversation and certainly vaccination plays a piece in this and i did reach out to andrew petty to say could we just get an educator clinic here open the field house one saturday and that is not possible and that that’s not a ding on the board of health it’s just not how the rollout is happening um but joan was one of the first people i talked to and she said that she thinks people will be

2:50:10 receptive to the conversation and i think that more so from sitting in those meetings is is a lack of vaccine they’re just yeah yep for sure well thank you john all right all right so that brings us on to our schedule of bills um everybody had this in their packet so can i get a motion to approve the identified schedule of bills totaling three million four hundred and ten thousand three hundred dollars and five cents megan moved megan moved second david any questions on those all right all right um

2:50:57 sarah gold yes megan taylor david harris yes emily barron yes and sarah fox obscene okay abstain yeah i’ve talked to michelle she can okay sounds good i’m sorry i was it’s a non-dramatic issue whatsoever it’s just um we need to clarify my daughter had outside testing done so i want to make sure that her tests aren’t in that belt gotcha sorry it took me i was kind of in autopilot there so all right um pre-kindergarten and kindergarten tuition recommendations so i will um

2:51:42 go ahead michelle are you on do you want to give us any background i see you now sure yes um yes as we are preparing to kick off the preschool and kindergarten registration coming to you to set the rates for the new school year this year is obviously not a typical year we’re only offering a half day preschool program and we do not have any full day kindergarten revenue but last year we did have 139 full day kindergarten students paying students and 23 paying preschool students so we had brought in last year roughly 430 or you know estimated prior to covid we had estimated 430 000 for

2:52:27 kindergarten and 85 000 for preschool um as you had seen the presentation from eric oxford at the last meeting we are proposing to expand our current preschool program and expand the hours as well as the actual programs and offer a transitional kindergarten program um with that being said we are proposing um the the rates as follows the full day kindergarten tuition would be set at 3 500 for the year half day preschool tuition would be set at four thousand dollars full day preschool would be six thousand dollars half day transitional kindergarten if that program is to go forward would be five thousand dollars and full day

2:53:12 transitional kindergarten would be seven thousand dollars and if you have any questions about those please let me know well i will ask for the motion and then we can take questions um can i get a motion to approve the 2021 2022 school year tuition rates for at 3 500 for full day kindergarten 4 000 for half day preschool 6 000 for full day preschool 5 000 for half day transitional kindergarten and 7 000 for full day transitional kindergarten megan moved megan moved second emily second all right any questions within any of this

2:53:59 do you want to turn your mic on [Laughter]

2:54:06 did we or do we we don’t need to vote eric’s stuff that was just for presentation in preparation for this correct okay okay michelle yes do i need to abstain because i’ll be paying that no not at all all right all right i will call for a vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes david harris yes emily barron yes sarah fox yes all right 5-0 thank you and thank you michelle thank you all right michelle will you please introduce the draft budget and budget notebooks yes so

2:54:53 um all of you should by now have your draft budget notebooks that literally are hot off the printer about four o’clock today they have a similar setup and feel as they were last year presented to you for that first time in that format um there is some additional information in those binders that’s why they are actually bigger we originally planned the same size binder and then we found it was way too much paper for them so hopefully next year we’re actually going to look towards an electronic version but we would also have paper available for those of you that do not prefer electronic version i’m personally a paper person but i’ve used electronic budgets and it’s a great thing so that’s something we will look forward to for next year but there is a tab for every school and

2:55:40 cost center in the book as as it was last year you will notice one we actually included the food service program this year while it is not a general fund operating budget you know program it does have an effect on our operating budget because if that program does not bring in the revenues to support the expenses the general fund does have to absorb it so i thought it was really important for the school committee to have a good handle on what our operating costs are in that program as well as our estimated revenues and obviously you know that program has not been in a typical operation since covet hit last march um but we’re hoping that we can resume those operations next year um so those are those tabs you do have that additional tab this year um right

2:56:27 now your summary tab is empty so do not think that there’s something missing out of your books well there is but it wasn’t missed an error um the summary tab will be provided to you by next tuesday’s meeting at the the earliest um i mean the latest would be you know at the very beginning of that meeting it will be a complete rollup of every single line with the associated budget request figure um we’re still working through some of the salary pieces and movement due to transfers and whatnot so we need to try to figure those out a little bit more but you’ll get that next week and there’s a miscellaneous tab really it’s for you as we hand out various other documents throughout the budget process so there’s not one specific document to go into that tab and there’s a couple empty tabs at the end that you can use for anything you

2:57:13 know will provide various tracking as we make changes throughout this budget process so last year’s binders were pretty full and didn’t really have extra tabs so we added a few in this year but i don’t want to dive into really any of the information i know you guys just got your books um but i will be working on that roll-up summary and we will have that next week and we will take the big big deep dive into every single budget next week yeah and i think that’s an important note to make here is that this is the rollout of the books we’re getting them tonight we will have two meetings next tuesday as well as next thursday where we will have each of the principles as well as each of the district administrators in charge of these each of these tabs come in and lay out their budgets for us

2:58:00 correct correct um you go first megan no go ahead i had a couple questions and i think you i may have you may have answered this about that tab for the um summary but will there be a tracking sheet the way similar to what we had last year that kind of tracks as we go along in relationship to i call it the town number but i think you know what i mean like what they’re budgeting for us versus where we are and what whether we’re where we are to the delta on that right well we will definitely have a tracking sheet right now we do not have a town number there is no one set town number per se there’s a lot of different issues um you know we do have the

2:58:47 contractual salary costs obviously especially now that we have a number on our unit a contract and we’ll have numbers on the other contracts um but really there’s some other other items that really need to be included in that town number without um you know going to too much discussion for example the prepaid tuitions that we paid last year while that was not part of our bottom line budget for fy21 that’s a recurring cost to us so that really needs to be part of our our base budget it’s really not an increase even though it will be an increase to our budget so there’s things like that but yeah we will absolutely have tracking sheets i actually pulled out bill’s tracking sheets from last year just a couple days ago and i love them and we’re gonna yeah i love them too so um we will be following that and that’s you know that’s what i anticipate using one of my extra tabs for is those trackings

2:59:33 trackings trackings those were great i mean it was a snapshot and then um i just a quick glance and you don’t have to answer this right now but i want to give you this so you’re prepared for it next week um i didn’t notice that the budget priorities were reflected in the budget if you know what i mean like for instance how a budget priority was an hr director and a communications professional they weren’t actually included in the budget so i want to make sure that we’re at we’re looking at what those budget priorities are actually going to cost they actually were if you go to the central admin tab they’re at the bottom of the stack um oh i started there and i didn’t see

3:00:19 it at all it should be on the last page before the blue sheet but the the number because okay the blue sheets are existing staff right now okay um does not have proposed salaries if you go to the sheet before that it will have requested you know changes okay um but i did realize that the number for the hr position got cut off i realized that about an hour before we started the meeting so um we will make sure we have that number to you for next year sorry sir can i just make a suggestion here just because it’s time we’re coming up to 10 o’clock and we still have a lot to get through so if you have any specific questions for michelle can we take those offline and then we can kind of dig into the details of the budget books next week just yeah i’ll be chat to mcbell

3:01:04 tomorrow that’s fine okay thank you yeah because we and and truly like you know not to silence a budget conversation but we’re we’re doing you know hours of deep dive on this next week um so i i think that there’s going to be ample opportunity for and i know sarah you had this a couple hours before we did um just because of the we got it when john walked into the meeting um so you know we’re literally just opening these for the first time all right thank you very much michelle these look even better than last year if we thought that was possible thanks michelle yeah wow michelle they’re getting there they’re getting minutes someday they’ll meet my uh my level of expertise here but not yet all right thank you all right

3:01:51 so that moves us to the much anticipated school name discussion so i have thought about this quite a bit um so i know that john has some information to share with us um so i’m going to let him do that because our teachers and have been very busy with the students over the past two weeks so we have some information from them and then we can talk for a short amount of time but i i do think it’s important that we kind of narrow the field pretty quickly um so i would like to do that in a um i’m going to blank on what the name of it is but it’s a rank ranked worst choice voting thank you so um we’ll number your when you number

3:02:38 them and sarah i’ll probably have you um email john and we’ll take a small recess we’ll be well john tallies these five will be your top choice four next so on and so forth one is the name that you actually absolutely do not want as the name of the new school um i’ll repeat that but that just i just wanted to kind of lay those ground rules as we move into this so i’m going to turn it over to john to share his screen again um with information from our schools so this is the fun part because you guys did such an exceptional job of doing like a marblehead history lesson that i thought it would be a lost teachable moment for students and so from evoluth up to the high school

3:03:25 and i want to give a shout out to the television production teacher at the high school who took your part of the school committee meeting and made it a section for teachers to show to their students and so and so without further ado i will show you what their results were or maybe i won’t

3:03:52 so as you can see there’s a key at the top and it goes in alphabetical order and so

3:04:04 so these are the staff votes school by school and again it’s not a hundred percent of staff it’s not scientific um it just gives you uh some insight into what the coffin teachers were thinking or village or the high school and as you see there is you know a case to be made for each of the names being put forward

3:04:30 two of our teacher or two of our leaders created that uh write-in option which was not allowed so those results might be a little skewed um and then this for me was wonderful that the students got to weigh in and certainly if you’re a kindergartner at evolith you’re gonna go with things that you know oh i know what an anchor is i like stories um belle i know what a belle is brown maybe not their favorite color so they’re thinking no not brown but it’s just so nice that they got to have a voice across the district and

3:05:16 again it’s not every student it’s not scientific um principals put this out to teachers as an optional activity and so i thought that before you weighed in you could see some student and staff perspective had an opportunity to meet with a coffin teacher yesterday in her classroom and she shared with me uh a student um what they they felt and they wrote a little story about it and again i’m not promoting any one name this was the one that came through the nicest in the picture uh for a slide

3:06:00 is that a coincidence whose son that is whose is it i i don’t i didn’t even look ben berman

3:06:11 who by the way is a very very sweet boy well it’s a sweet story that he wrote and really that’s um that’s another slide that you don’t have any interest in seeing for tonight

3:06:26 so i’ll stop sharing my screen and thank you very much and um and thank you to all the teachers and the principals that that allowed this to happen because you know um i think well last week when or two weeks ago when we put this forward and sort of talked about our names it was just a really positive moment within the committee and so this kind of brings it back to that um and and that this is a huge responsibility but also a really fun thing to be able to do um so um i’m so thankful to have the student in the input like i said last time like they’re the voice that we don’t get to hear from they’re not writing especially the little ones they’re not writing us emails or coming to public comments so thank you for doing that yeah

3:07:11 all right um so i’ll kick i’ll kick off um because i do think you know kind of as i just said that the student it was really fun to see from the students and this and the staff um i do think part of this took a little bit of a

3:07:29 turn um online over the past two weeks um and so

3:07:34 i i feel like i’d be remiss particularly as the chair to not point out that like some of like the facebook piece um and sort of the campaigning for some of the names um you know i i really truly don’t care if my name gets chosen so i’m not offended about that my name wasn’t one of the popular ones um but i just wonder what the results would have been if each name had a website devoted to it and that if if kind of each of us had gotten onto facebook and sort of campaigned for our name um but that wasn’t the case and so you know i know i kind of flashed flashed my little ticker tape thing that i did earlier today um but the results are are substantial and they can’t not be

3:08:23 taken into account for sure um but i don’t know there’s just like they i also think they can’t be taken at face value um and and for me that’s a shame um so i just want to make it clear that not emily had not even though it was emily’s name like emily had it’s nothing whatsoever i don’t wanna i don’t want it to sound like emily got herself a website and sarah gold forgot to do it for story or whatever like that is not what happened here yeah thank you i was gonna make a comment about that sorry um no that’s okay that was all done outside of this district administration school committee

3:09:08 everybody just to make that very clear can i just make a point of clarification on the process that we’ve gone through too just for people who might be chiming in in the first place um is that you know this all started about a year ago when um sarah and jen schaffner put out boxes for suggestions all throughout the town um i think we had them out for like a month or so and within schools and within the um you know the community center and places of business for the community to submit suggestions for naming a school that is where this list came from and then as a school committee we took our time admittedly but narrowed that down so all these

3:09:54 names were submitted from the community none of us kind of came up with our own names these were all community-based suggestions and then once we’ve narrowed it down we’ve gone out to the community and asked for feedback in a number of different forms through email through phone calls the email was to all the school committee members and the superintendent um and also through public comment um what you know we had 200 plus people come to public comment today we’ve got a number of you know i think sarah you said close to 250 people who’ve emailed us with their feedback so this was a community effort to get to this name this is not the school committee you know coming up with our own separate names that we might like these were all based on community suggestions and then we just narrowed it down for additional

3:10:41 feedback yeah and i i think i thank you megan because i will hop on to that and because i think that um the nonsense that was talked about in public comment regarding this process um is one million percent false um we have a policy within our district that we are tasked with naming schools and and places within schools if we choose to do so and we don’t make up all of our own policies we rely heavily on the direction of our massachusetts school committee association um partners and and guidance that they provide and so if you were to look through as emily and i have been doing and we just recently looked at the school naming

3:11:26 school naming school naming the naming policy you can look your district after district after district and this is a school committee task when it comes to school buildings so to put anything else out there is absolute absurdity to me and it’s insulting um so we have been elected to do this job and we are now doing our job so i will get off my high horse there in this past precedent in this town it’s happened before well and i want to point out this is not a new policy it’s a long-standing policy that has been on our books for many many years during um other people’s tenure on school committee as well this is there’s been multiple chances for other school

3:12:12 committees to change this policy and it was not the will of the committee then or now quite frankly um it has been very important both in the previous committee as well as this committee that this was a very community-centered process as community-centered as we could possibly get it to be and i quite frankly think particularly in a pandemic we’ve done a really good job at that

3:12:37 um i i do have a question is there no i i know we have our five names but is there no opportunity for discussion of possibly like a compromise or joining of names and i know we don’t want to make this go any longer but i mean i i know ideally we don’t ever try to say like a b c or d like maybe there’s pieces of different things that work can i can i give my two cents on that um yes there could be um possibility for that i think my only concern with it is that we asked for public feedback on the names that we shortlisted so to then change it i think is not really fair to the community um because then they haven’t had a chance to weigh in on that option

3:13:23 understandable but i actually um my suggestion came from a bunch of suggestions from the public and i was like oh gosh why did we not kind of think of that so i was just kind of trying to incorporate that public feedback yeah and i i can appreciate that and if it’s the will of the committee we can look at that um i i would say i don’t have a lot of appetite for it um but again if it’s the will of food and

3:13:49 well and i and i i’m not muted i just like to say sarah on that too i’ve thought about that a lot and even talked about it in the prior year but it was not one of the names that i put forward or anybody else put forward but i’d like to suggest that i think there may be the potential here for this to be a clearly it’s been an educational moment as dr bucky just said it’s a missed opportunity if we didn’t um talk about this uh with students and um and i think whatever the vote ends up being take for instance the glover school there’s a little history as you’re walking into the school about general glover and i think we may have an opportunity

3:14:36 as a district to recognize um all the people on this list i’m not saying we can’t incorporate an anchor somehow but anchor’s the only person that’s not on the list but that there might be a way that we could appropriately uh memorialize and recognize um these people’s names as as part of the the new school project that could be uh educational and also um historically important for the town no i agree and i and i would actually suggest that we add lizzie coffin to that list even though it’s not one of our names but that we yep we can add that in nope maybe there’s an anchor as the decal on the top or something

3:15:23 uh i think that’s a great suggestion i think a massive anchor right at the entrance of the school um would be a great how do you know it’s not going to be the anchor school i mean it might be and it’d still be fitting to have a massive anchor you do have the architect looking to procure an anchor and we’re going to try and find out what that might take thank you this has been really great for getting the conversation started though a conversation that’s long overdue in our community and i think we all can agree on that and i think no matter what the name is we really need to make a commitment in this town through our curriculum through you know maybe increasing our our co-participation um looking at

3:16:08 things like school choice and what impact that has um but i think that no matter what the name is it can’t be just a name whatever it is um that that a name is absolutely to be perfectly honest nothing more than a token and meaningless if there’s if there’s not work that goes with it um and whether the the name is the brown school or or anchor or anything else that we have heard the community loud and clear and really the work needs to be done the work will be done i have a few ideas myself i’m sure a lot of people do um but i i think it’s a really important discussion that that can’t end

3:16:54 now and no matter how this vote fleshes out um the the only guarantee of this this discussion and vote is that more needs to come out of this um and and i think i can say you have a commitment from me on that i think um not to hijack this meeting in any way but sarah absolutely you know i think i’m not gonna speak for anyone else but i’m sure we all agree with that and i think it’s actually the perfect time since we’re about to revisit our strategic plan like this should be part of our strategic plan we should be looking at cultural diversity cultural sensitivity and the teachings we do across the board the books we read the history we you know teach the examples we use in some of our

3:17:42 classes so 100 like this is the time to to get on it emily so i’m just going to give megan teed me up for my what i’m going to say so as district leaders we have the opportunity to make real change and by naming the school the lucretia and joseph brown elementary we can bring our district one step further on our journey to a more inclusive community we have to think of what type of education we want to give to our students with this name we open a door for an education an educational program that puts front and center the topics of equality and diversity we want to set our students up to be critical thinkers who know how to

3:18:28 navigate through the modern world our children should know how to understand different communities cultures and see others as equal they have to learn an inclusive and collective history because we all carry a part of the story and we must start with our youngest learners and teach them that here in marblehead everyone has a voice and our community is welcoming to everyone by choosing the name lucretia the lucretia and joseph brown elementary we solidify our commitment for change so i will step back because i know i mean passionate about this i also think it deserves to be noted too that as john mentioned as he was updating us on his goals earlier today um that

3:19:16 he one of his goals is diversity um and and in everything that that means um so you know we’ve got uh we’ve like megan said we’ve got these fantastic opportunities for growth here and a desire on multiple levels to do that work um so i think again regardless of what name we end up going with um it’s been very highlighted that that this is a direction that is important

3:19:44 sorry no this is just so everybody knows out there that our district is doing stuff as soon as john got on he or started he put us in the um diversity or equity audit through metco he put us a professional development program the students are working with other students to teach them an inclusive history teachers want to teach their students about this and now that it’s kind of come up they’re starting to so we just like you said we have to make this commitment however we do it i mean the name aside that we’re doing it but we need to do more and we need to kind of you know take what’s already been

3:20:29 started and run with it and really you know do great great things so embed it within our fabric isn’t that the saying i like that all right so does anybody have any last plug for their name and then i will call for us to do our ranked vote um well since we’re now going to two i mean i’m going to plug anchor just because i think it’s a symbol of our past our present and the foundation that we want to build our future on and it kind of does that for a new school community so um you know above and beyond what i said last week but i think one of the people one of the community members who emailed us um you said this

3:21:14 is the children and the educators in our school are going to be our anchor for the community and so it’s a good symbolization of that there’s my plug and i’ll make a plug um i chose belle because i think it’s so important also to acknowledge that we took over a community we took their community over in their neighborhood over for two years they we’ve we got several emails from people from that community saying um that they they’ve called themselves the bell community it’s been their identity um and they felt strongly that they wanted to

3:22:01 keep that um also mainly because he advocated for funding education i don’t know how many times i can say this but time and time again the man spent his entire career through selectmen through he started on school committee at 24 through his time as a state rep always advocating for funding education and i that’s our job we if we don’t fund it it’s not going to happen so um that that was really important to me but also i wanted to suggest um i put a lot of thought into this because i see the importance of the lucretian joseph brown school i there was a few issues with it that jumped out with me mainly because and

3:22:47 i’m gonna sound like a prude it was the bar owning thing and these being small children um but the importance uh goes beyond that and i started to think about um the speech by amanda gorman and how that is an amazing young woman that is of the children’s generation that these children are and how important it is for them to see role models in their own generation showing them how they can stand up and affect change and you know do what needs to be done now in in their time if you will and i would feel strongly that i would like to

3:23:33 like to like to name um no matter what happens our media center for her and dedicate it to her because she’s the first ever um is it junior poet laureate or youth i think youth youth there you go and like i said it’s just so important for these kids to have someone in their own generation that um that they can look to and what better role model i think than that young woman

3:24:10 thanks sarah david any last plug i’m okay with what i said a couple weeks ago so i i’m i’m good as well all right all right so it is 10 25. um sarah are you good with emailing john it was done 10 minutes ago all right um let’s take five um that way if any of us need to go to the bathroom we can as well so we will resume we would have to go on official recess but we’re just gonna take five

3:28:35 yes yes i just was wondering if after this if we can consider tabling some of this stuff until the next meeting because it’s already 10 30. yes we definitely can um i was already going to table the protocols um check-in so we absolutely can we we do um need to vote the one the ac non-discrimination i’ll explain it when we get there okay no i’m just selfishly thinking i’m pretty feeling pretty dead right now yeah megan i think is about to pass out so

3:30:13 all right all right john has john has deemed it so we are back um and john has the results so how i’m thinking that this goes is that we john will let us know the top two that that came and then we will have a discussion around those top two and eventually arrive upon a motion to name the school one of those two

3:30:38 john is that the will of the committee is everybody okay with that top two go for it drum roll okay in no particular order the top two i’ll go in alphabetical order anchor and brown all right so there we are anchor and brown it’s now down to two

3:30:59 can i say something sure um so throughout this whole process um i think i’ve been saying it’s important to me to that

3:31:14 this is a community event and this building and its name are going to be here far longer than any one of us is going to sit on this committee um which is why the community feedback was so important um to all of us but to me as well um and i think quite clearly the community has spoken um quite loudly and you know that’s what i asked for um and i think i’m gonna support that and i do support it you know i think you know emily’s made some really valid points and really started the conversation for us which is an important conversation to have and now we’ve gotta take action and this would be the first step so i’m gonna you know i think the um lucretia and joseph brown school is what the community is asking for and we’ve gotta we’ve gotta live up to that yeah um

3:32:00 yeah um yeah um emily i do but if you wanna go first you can just um real quick when we were out you know selling this building to the town we the big um proponent that we would always say is that this is a community building and we built it so the community can use it and so kind of going off what megan said the community has really come out and um spoken you know we’ve had overwhelmingly overwhelming support for this name so again i’m gonna push the name but i think we have to remember that it’s you know people

3:32:45 people people came to us and yeah and i think it was important from the beginning that i heard you know kind of that original list that that was put into the little boxes that um that it was not and i want to be careful here um that it was not another male white male of our history which are you know we we certainly honor them um and that we look kind of outside of that box i think is where we were directed to go um and in spite of putting joseph’s story forward you know as the name that i fell in love with um i i think last you know last meeting i talked about some of the ways in which i tried to kind of get at other history

3:33:33 and marblehead and so i think that for me this name certainly gets at that um i also really appreciate it and i actually think the woman who spoke at the beginning in public comment mentioned this again i really liked someone pulled our attention to the concept of it being a couple that we’re naming this building after and i really liked that idea um i liked the idea that that it it you know it’s work is better with when when you’ve got a team um and when you’re working together and so that sort of stuck out to me as we as i was reading through the emails um and i you know i took very seriously the emails that we were getting as well about um

3:34:18 that we’re not really ready for this that this is sort of um virtue signaling um and i think you know we’ve spoken to that point about intentions within our curriculum directions we would like this district to go so i think that goes to that directly but i also behind the scenes sort of took a step back and literally i went to a few trusted people in my life and and asked the question okay so you know if where’s the finish line then for us um you know if we if it’s not now where when is it um and you know obviously school naming opportunities don’t come up very often so that was sort of where i got stuck um as to why why shouldn’t we if we’re if we’re given

3:35:05 this opportunity and this is where we want our our district to be moving um you know why not now like it makes it makes more sense and that i don’t want to be held back because we have work to do um because there’s always going to be work to do in my opinion um and i think that’s that’s an opinion that’s supported elsewhere as well um so that really was was where brown rose to the top um in my thinking over the past two weeks

3:35:41 so that was a big concern for me sarah that was a big holdback you know some people spoke very eloquently about the um virtue signaling we even got some emails from people of color who felt it was extreme virtue signaling um and and i don’t want to be the school committee that that gets labeled as making an empty gesture and patting ourselves in the back for being enlightened and no follow-through so i think that we really really have to put our money where our mouth is and um see this through as far as we can um because i don’t think when our time here is done that this is done um so that’s why i say as far as we can um i

3:36:26 would make a motion but i really think that emily has earned that and and should make the motion um

3:36:36 i’ve never done this before okay um sorry so i well i make the motion that the new elementary school be named the lucretia and joseph brown elementary seconded elementary school sorry seconded

3:37:08 all right we will we will have future naming discussions um on the other areas of the school thank you sarah i’ve been waiting to say that um to make sure that this is actually the direction that we were going to be going in um because i do think that that’s incredibly important i think for me and i actually haven’t said this yet because for me i really struggled with and then i ended up lumping story in with this um struggled with naming the building uh one of the names i heard that feedback from a lot of the teachers particularly the ones who are moving into this building that it would be really bad for morale um to pick one of those names um and i think there’s a case to be made for picking any of those names and then the case to be made for for going a different direction and again i think i said this one of the reasons i liked the story

3:37:55 name was because i liked that double entendre piece where you could create a new story with it um so i think that that there goes along that goes a long ways um to sort of just creating this culture they can move forward and and get and you know pick a new mascot and really start to have some fun with this well some you know hard work is done behind the scenes as well and as it rolls through um so yeah and and i i think we’ve said our piece on it but let’s just reiterate we you know things kind of went sideways this week and we hope moving forward that will not happen again it reflected poorly on us as a committee it report it didn’t reflect poorly on us

3:38:41 well i think to some people david they thought we in engineered that i got a lot of negative feedback oh well sorry i’m not taking i’m not gonna say that it reflected poorly on me i think the process we heard from the people and we heard from people outside of i they were just straight-up emails too i mean there were lots of straight-up emails totally unrelated to any other sideways movement yeah that’s an important note yeah no and that’s not the only driving force here we had a lot of community support in and of itself but um just moving forward yep all right sarah gold yes megan taylor yes david

3:39:29 harris yes emily baron yes and sarah fox yes the new school has a name well done well done everybody know the entire day everyone who participated in this process absolutely and i did want to say this too um i probably will not be emailing all 200 and some odd people back saying thank you for your your thoughts um so i’m saying thank you for your thoughts right now from all of us yes thank you everybody everybody see what it gets every school becomes something else so it’ll be interesting to see what this becomes

3:40:05 very exciting all right we did it we’re finally over there we did it yep all right given the time um i think we are going to move to table some of the things on our for the rest of our agenda um there are some policy votes um only one of which is actually important so the ac non-discrimination policy um we have not read through that one this is a that’s what i mean we’ve done a lot of work on this one over the past year but um it’s coming to us again because the district deci had an audit on it and we are missing the word homeless in that non-discrimination policy and so what we’re voting on tonight is to approve that the word homeless be added um where desi

3:40:51 wants it to be added to moved second all right any questions on that

3:41:02 okay sarah gold yes megan taylor yes david harris yes emily baron yes and sarah fox yes okay five to zero thanks guys we’re going to table the protocols check in to our next uh our second school committee meeting um the full meeting which is at the end after um february break that will happen because we do have a couple of budget ones as well as we may end up tossing one in there over february break particularly with the pool testing and the plans for pushing further in person to be approved um i’m going to ask that we wait on any liaison and subcommittee updates even though i don’t think we have any david any anything bigger than the school name for the budget nothing bigger than that tonight we can

3:41:47 we can wait till next week for school project updates great or you can drive by and see it for yourself can i just sorry just one little thing just because it came up um in the village sac today and i said i would bring it to the committee and to more importantly to the community forever whoever’s still listening but um uh there is going to be the through safe routes to school who’ve come out and done an audit the first annual crossing guard appreciation day so nominations are gonna open um on february 22nd and i believe um the deadline is march 24th so we have some time to um you know for anyone to get some nominations in there um so i just wanted to let everybody

3:42:32 know because our crossing guards keep our children safe day in and day out despite all the you know new england weather that we see and they do it with a smile on their face and they know every kid’s name um and the parents names so i do just want to get a shout out to that um can we get that information up on our page yeah absolutely so i’ll send it on to emily are we just nominating one or are they all being appreciated i think you can nominate whoever you want mm-hmm that’s something oh you could put every crossy guard in marblehead it’s nominations and then the ones picked out but i’ll send you the information and then it’s all it’s all in there so and thank you to gigi breed for bringing that to our attention great all right any new business

3:43:20 okay um we did have one correspondence it’s in our packet um it is a letter from katie martin um there’s also in our packet is the letter that the the email that john returned to her um and she asked that this be put into correspondence and i um i i definitely need to speak to this so over the last year and a half the school committee has earned the trust and confidence of the voters of marblehead the open transparent and honestly communicated work we’ve engaged in has brought us to this point the last election proved our community supports the majority views positions and efforts of the committee and elected a new representative to contribute to that the continued baseless claims of alleged violations and false accusations distract from the committee’s valuable time and hard work and have been roundly

3:44:07 rejected in many ways at this point to invest the committees the districts and the communities time and resources in attacks like this lacks transparency and is wasteful our voters and our community deserve better there needs to be transparency behind these kinds of continued efforts to undermine the productive work and collaboration of the committee and of the new administration and the will of the people the committee takes open meeting violations very seriously and is tired of being bullied in session and out by ms martin and her patently false accusations because of the seriousness of ms martin’s claims in her letter we did contact our legal representatives which cost the district money out of our operating budget the reopening committee was reorganized

3:44:52 or was recognized sorry as a superintendent’s advisory committee during the school committee’s summer retreat this past july the wellness and the safety committees are also superintendent advisory committees and are not subject to open meeting law a quorum of the school committee is for a subcommittee is two for anything else it is three the reopening committee currently has two school committee members school committee policy ce administrative councils cabinets and committees states that the superintendent may establish such permanent or temporary councils cabinets and committees as he or she deems necessary for assuring staff participation in decision making for implementing policies and procedures and for the improvement of the educational program functioning in an advisory capacity all councils cabinets and committees created

3:45:38 by the superintendent may make recommendations for submission to the school committee through the superintendent such groups will exercise no inherent authority authority for establishing policy remains with the school committee and authority for implementing policy remains with the superintendent the membership composition and responsibilities of administrative councils cabinets and committees will be defined by the superintendent and may be changed at his or her discretion however the school committee wishes to be kept informed of the establishment and the dissolution of these groups as well as their membership and their purpose the reopening committee fits within every letter of that policy the school committee also passed policy ebc emergency supplemental which gives the superintendent additional decision-making abilities due to the coven-19 pandemic dr bucky has been

3:46:24 extremely respectful in the use of this policy and has regularly brought recommendations to the school committee when decisions of significant importance are being made tonight being case in point to this the reopening committee has made zero policy decisions to date dr bucky brings topics of concern and interest to reopening meetings and members give their thoughts ideas and concerns are shared dr bucky uses the conversation to inform his decisions and the recommendation he makes to the school committee when their approval is needed dr bucky had a conversation about this concern that was raised in ms martin’s letter during the reopening committee meeting this past monday one participant stated that they sometimes leave these meetings wondering what was accomplished because no decisions are ever made and people simply participate in discussions

3:47:10 this is a very a very accurate representation of how the reopening committee functions as this topic was discussed in this week’s meeting it became clear that the true loss in dissolving the reopening committee would be that the parent participation that was found there would be gone these parents had submitted their letters of interest back in the summer and have been active participants since the first meeting dr bucky regularly speaks with school committee members district administrators on the board of health the parents are the part of this committee that offer invaluable insight and they have caused the committee to pause and reassess at points that would be a far less accessible piece without the reopening committee i am of the strong opinion that the dissolution of the reopening committee because i’m of the strong opinion that the dissolution of the reopening committee because of the base of

3:47:56 baseless claims of a community member would be a disservice to the district the reopening committee was also set up as an umbrella committee over all the other advisory committees related to covid so if it were to be dissolved it would seem to necessitate the dissolution of this teaching and learning committee as well which was has added and continues to add invaluable direction to the education of the marblehead children this year in the end this is one more attempt in a string of misrepresented and erroneous attacks about the open meeting violations that simply do not exist this committee is committed to the work that it is doing and to following the rules that have been established by higher authorities than us sarah i have to say i think it’s inappropriate that we’re

3:48:43 using our school committee time to um to continue what seems like a personal that you’re using your your time as chairman to um sarah i fully disagree um this letter you you have a right to disagree that letter i read to it was not directed at you i i think this is inappropriate i think it was grossly inappropriate i think that the letter was grossly inappropriate and i’m tired of it compared to the outbursts in meetings and i’m tired of the act the baseless and completely false accusations i i do have to agree with the fact that the letter accused this committee of breaking law which um you know we have to take very seriously and we do have to get

3:49:30 uh legal advisement in that case because if we are in violation of a law we need to know that and we need to know how to rectify it so which you know does come at a cost um but if we’re gonna be accused of or even if someone’s suggesting that we might be out of order we have to follow that through we have to because we can’t be um you know acting outside of the law ever get to tell you i’m not positive that at all times we’re not breaking the open meeting law

3:50:00 i i mean it’s it’s a it’s i wouldn’t i’ve gone down this path but if we open the door we’re going through it at this point we didn’t open the door it was asked to be put into correspondence and i’m not going to not respond to that type of thing that’s fine but i don’t think that you’re the only one that gets the the sole ability to respond do you oh julius chair she does the chair she’s the spokesperson for this committee as chair and i the spokesperson on things we voted on we didn’t vote on that statement megan she doesn’t get to speak for the committee she gets to represent votes we’ve taken well this was also given to us by lee like the the determination that our reopening committee is operating within the bounds of open meeting law was given to us by our legal representation

3:50:45 and the policies that were stated in here are straight from our public district policy manual that we set my issue is the way that you’re handling it which i feel your tone and your i feel i feel the way that you handle this lacks a sense of professionalism or decorum that would be fit for the chair well i think that the tone of the email necessitated this

3:51:16 it was highly offensive to my work as chair and as i said if this were the first time around it would i would probably not have caused this type of reaction but it is continued

3:51:45 on a promotion for adjournment sure yep we will adjourn at 10 52.