School Committee: March 18, 2021

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2:01 just having a little trouble getting youtube going so stay with us for a minute

2:44 okay sarah fox i see that you are on uh david harris is not able to join us this evening so i will call the meeting to order at 703 uh uh matt fox i’ve got you up for commendations this

3:06 evening well thanks um i have three accommodations tonight um i’d like to start with uh accommodating our new nurse this year andrew agoski she’s new to us this year but has made an outstanding uh jump right into the fray i guess you can say um she’s hit the ground running and you know it’s you know we’ve only had you know we’ve had less than 20 positive cases in our building we’ve been pretty fortunate but we also do internal tracking to make sure that our communication is up front and complete with everybody who’s handling cobit issues so drea as we call our new australia has tracked over 228 different covid instances or issues or things like that which include self-reported travel um so i mean she’s done an outstanding job making sure we stay on top of things

3:52 um sort of in the same vein we’d like to recognize a staff member another staff member and one of our students who took it upon themselves to get vaccination appointments for a majority of our staff and i believe even the superintendent sitting there leslie dexter one of our tutors and jared kaplovich one of our eighth graders um sat down and literally i think uh secured upwards of 30 or so vaccination appointments um they did an outstanding job for our staff and like i said i believe dr bucky uh received his appointment from jared kaplich and then using jared as a as a segway to

4:38 my next commendation uh overall we’d like to commend our cornerstones which is our volunteerism and leadership group uh with assistance from the two advisors jen vlatour and meredith reard and our guidance counselors our advisory board which is comprised of jared kaplawicz william crookshank lonnie gilmore sadie newberg molly blander will rudy addison rotigliano uh olivia goldwater greg collins and molly titus and they they’ve worked so hard this year to make this strange year sort of feel like a normal year for us and they’ve run over eight events already this year um they started with a spirit drive around winter vacation a can drive around uh halloween uh toys for tots drive which was one of our most successful ever with over 180 toys brought in they ran a jeopardy contest a

5:23 school-wide jeopardy contest where there were 50 participants 10 student teams and two faculty teams uh today and tomorrow actually our spirit days are running two for the ncaa tournament so everybody’s wearing sports uh college gear to school we have a talent show that they’re trying to put together which is the deadline tomorrow so students all have that email that they can respond to if they have an interest in showing us one of their talents uh we’re finishing up also tomorrow a pajama and book donation drive and then next tuesday march 23rd we can advertise this to everybody if you go to menos uh for either lunch or dinner um 20 of the daily sales uh will come back to the cornerstones which is then going straight to the jimmy fund so they’ve done a lot of outreach uh and also some

6:08 social events too for our students to try to make this unusual here feel a little bit more usual for us so those are my three commendations thank you so much matt uh that that last group i can say as a middle school parent has done really great things in trying to kind of move this year along in some semblance of a normal direction so thank you very much can i just say i am so glad that we added this to our agenda because things like this we would you know probably not know all the great things that are happening through student-led and teacher-led um you know initiatives so matt i’m really glad that we could have you thank you thanks matt all right does the committee have any commendations

6:53 so i was as i was pulling out a village this morning after drop off um and watching kids come in i just want to commend the students um because i think that they’ve done an excellent job of wearing masks you know it’s it’s not the easiest things and as i was sitting in my car pulling through the line i just watched all of them just kind of you know normally going about their school drop off with their masks on and i i was just really impressed so i just wanted to give a shout out to all the good math squares out there because that in my opinion that is you know what’s keeping us afloat um i think data shows us that so that’s off to the students all right um there’s no other commendations um i will move us along to our student

7:38 representative dan howell dan are you with us yep

7:46 uh so first of all the football team won their first game of the season against uh beverly last saturday um uh so in a normal year the um on game days the cheerleaders and the football players will wear their uniforms uh and last week when they had their game they uh brought that tradition back for the first time since uh last fall uh and it’s a small thing but it was kind of funny when i when i saw that it i was kind of taken aback because i was like oh yeah you know this didn’t happen the fall but it’s happening now and it’s just good to see normal things happening essentially one of our school social workers mr ed reiner uh has been hosting 20-minute

8:33 zoom meetings for each grade to allow students to have a chance to discuss and reflect on the past year and all that has uh occurred um so it’s a uh we really appreciate having opportunities like those to uh express how we’re feeling especially at times like these when a lot of our typical events are being cancelled and things like that so uh having a space for that to happen has been great the jewel tones a cappella group came in second at their virtual ichsa international competition for high school a capella quarterfinal and then we’ll be moving on to the semifinal round

9:21 the jefferson forum club is holding a food drive for the whole month of march and finally we have a scheduled change starting on april 5th so this was just recently announced and now you know students are beginning to talk about it and discussing you know how uh you know how we’re feeling about it and i think that the overwhelming response is positive from students uh they’re excited to see both cohorts um and just have no more normal uh days so we’ll be in school um each of the five days now monday tuesday wednesday thursday and friday uh but half days and then the online classes in the afternoon so another step in the

10:06 right direction and then a bit later in april um we’ll be having full days uh where students will even have lunch at the school so we’re getting there uh and we’re almost no we’re almost back so uh lots of good things are happening thank you dan can i ask you dan a quick question so with the new information that’s come out that anybody 16 or older will be eligible for a vaccine on april 19th is there any you know student discussion about that or are you guys kind of trying to find a way to help each other get those appointments or is it i know it just happened but yeah definitely um i know that a number of students you know have been working to pre-register i know you can do that on the massachusetts [Music]

10:52 [Music] [Music] gov website um additionally a lot of teachers have talked about you know they’ve gotten the chance to get the vaccine so now that’s kind of being pushed onto the or not being pushed onto the students but now it’s the students opportunity to do so as well um so i think a lot of us are really eager uh particularly the seniors as you know we’re mostly old enough uh 17 and 18. so uh we’re looking forward to it and uh you know we’re excited about it good good to hear great and thank you dan for the update on that as we push further in person with the five half days and then the five full days it’s great to hear that students are aren’t seeing that as a positive you know as a whole i’m sure there’s a handful that that are concerned but um it’s really that’s

11:39 great feedback to know no problem thanks dan thank you dan okay that leads us to public comment um anyone who wants to make public comments and raise their hand and i will call on them uh when i get called on please state your name and your address for the record uh catherine martin nice you’ve got your hand up yes good evening katherine martin 29 west shore drive i just wanted to note that the packet tonight for the school committee meeting did not get posted until 6 58 pm and the reason i bring this up is because a lot of us were at the budget subcommittee hearing and a lot of people wanted a copy of the excel spreadsheet that michelle projected onto the screen

12:24 that showed kind of the budget tracking at which point we were told we couldn’t have it because other school committee members hadn’t seen it yet which quite frankly isn’t the truth because it was a public document the minute it was shared in that public meeting and it should have been made available to the public and multiple people had asked for it so i think it’s a little disappointing that it didn’t get posted until 6 58 tonight the other thing is i know that there isn’t a covet spending update tonight that being said if you’re going to launch a major fundraising campaign and listen i have nothing but respect for the boosters the pto the pcos i’ve worked with all of those groups over the years but you need to come and be transparent about how we are using our coveted spending

13:10 spending spending before we go to our parents and ask them to help pay for what’s been deemed as the opening of school um i think that you know everyone likes to throw around these words about transparency and collaboration well that’s transparency is getting out there and saying listen we got this 450 000 we’ve got 200 000 of it earmarked but we’ve got this gap and we need tents whatever it is just get it out there get it to the public it will get rid of the conjecture and get it in a timely manner so that people have questions they can bring them up at public comment um and that’s it i’m just i’m just hoping that you know as the year goes on we can

13:55 we can start to get a little better at these things so that those of us who are trying to follow along can follow along thanks thank you catherine um i believe john you’re going to address some of that this evening in your update great thank you all right i don’t see anybody else’s hand raised uh so we will move along to uh approval of the minutes we had one set of minutes in the dropbox today and it was uh february 4th can i is it sorry is there any additions or anything that needed that needed to happen sarah i i had a few yeah um so alexa kearney’s name was spelled incorrectly and her son below niles of the same last name um so um

14:41 i know that what was there wasn’t it but i i don’t know which order the two letters go in so um i believe it i know that we can get it through um aspen and i believe alexa our alexia has emailed us before so we can get that easily um and then under the pool testing i was um i wanted to have it noted that david harris and i had voiced concerns that there was seem to be a discrepancy from what we had read in the guidance from the state with what was being presented um and i know that amanda rivers did a tremendous amount of work um after you know the following presentation and helped to really get those clarifications out but i just wanted that noted and then um at the end the statement

15:27 the statement the statement the where it was noted that um the chairman hit a prepared statement in regards to miss martin’s um uh memo um i was i would like to have the original memo by miss martin as well as the prepared statement by ms gold added to the record of these minutes okay sounds good you definitely work with lisa on all of those things um so can i get a motion to accept the minutes for february 4th 2021 with the addition of the comments made by sarah fox megan moved emily second all right sarah gold yes megan taylor

16:13 megan taylor megan taylor emily baron yes and sarah fox yes um i don’t know if we can put a mic near megan and emily but i i can’t even hear if they’re responding at all okay they’ll speak up a little bit i can uh no i can’t move the computer so i didn’t speak that loudly so i’m sorry all right uh that passes four to zero so that leads us to the superintendent’s reports got quite a few things on there and john i will let you tee up uh dr benedetto’s presentation yeah dr benedetto has been a great uh proponent for looking at how we do busing in the district she’s put a good deal of time into a proposal and because it has a fee

16:59 associated with the proposal i thought it should come before school committee so you could hear the thinking behind it but i just want to commend her for all the work that she has done and i think that you’ll really appreciate um what she’s put together so dr benedetto hello hello when you’re ready yes when you’re ready for me to put up the map i will share the screen and put up the map okay just let me know okay yeah i’ll let you know um good evening to everyone and thank you to dr bucky for giving me the opportunity to speak this evening um i’d like to propose a pilot program of a neighborhood bus with kids of all grades the rationale behind this pilot program is to start with a small area town um and one bus

17:44 and this small pilot will introduce the idea of expanding busing to our community without adding to the school budget for this year the pilot program is to start when the new brown school opens the location of the brown school creates a state mandated required busing from the tip of the peninsula essentially old town reds pond area around by gracie oliver and through the beacon street area this is based on the two two-mile distance rule for k-3 students this is based on deci’s bus transportation policy this proposal is designed to both maximize utilization of this bus in a budget neutral way and also potentially defray the cost of the bus by attracting

18:32 families willing to pay for a bus pass additionally this bus will provide a safe reliable form of transportation for families living off of beacon street deci guidelines state that all child pedestrians quote shall have a commonly traveled route with a sidewalk accessible to pedestrian traffic end quote beacon street does not fall under these guidelines as a safe walking route regardless of a child’s grade level in relating the distance rule to determine a publicly funded bus deci clearly states that quote exceptions to this policy may be made when road conditions do not provide for the physical safety of the children end quote the lynn public school systems has stated explicitly in its policy

19:19 quote the students will not be required to walk down primary streets that do not provide adequate sidewalks end quote beacon street has also been deemed unsafe for children walking to school based on the safe routes to school audit completed this january for the village school for these safety reasons children in grades k-12 should be offered a publicly funded bus pass if they live in this area which there is no safe walking alternative maximizing student utilization of this bus in addition to promoting walking for students who live closer to our schools will both serve to decrease parental traffic and congestion in the safe routes to school safety audit and

20:05 morning drop off the auditor counted 163 cars on the jersey street loop 119 in village street 31 in the bus loop 37 walkers and six bikers she referred to the dismissal behind village as a quote free for all with idling cars lined up for 20 minutes before and after dismissal this was done with the hybrid with smaller cohorts going to school so now the problem will become much worse the pilot bus program would include three populations um sarah if you can put up the map and and this the colors on the map include riders in k-3

20:51 who the town must pay for a bus to the brown school and this is based on the two-mile distance school distance rule the red area on the map and then potentially the bus could utilize riders in k through 12 whose parents may choose to purchase a bus pass which is the yellow area on the map the third population may be included from the beacon street area based on hazard busing taking into account both desi’s guidance on what constitutes a safe walking route and also the safe routes to school audit done for village the pilot bus program would include seven pickup spots and drop off students at or near four schools village vets baldwin pleasant intersection near the high school and the brown school

21:38 pilot program would include morning and afternoon busing options for a fee of 300 dollars per student or 450 for a family maximum this is for families who don’t qualify for the publicly funded busing families may apply to purchase a bus pass on a first-come first-served basis with priority given to families who live the largest distance from their respective schools the goal would be to get enough interest including paying families to maximize allowed occupancy on the bus this would maximize the fees added to the budget paid by parents and this would offset the required fixed cost of the bus driver salaries maintenance etc offering a neighborhood bus to children of all grades is the best way to increase demand and make the option more

22:25 convenient for parents thus the parents would be more likely to purchase bus passes to avoid driving children of varying ages to multiple schools ideas to manage a bus with children of all ages include a required seating plan by grade the older kids in the back third of the bus the village kids in the middle third of the bus and the elementary kids in the front third of the bus we could set up expectations up front about bus behavior and and parents and children could sign a bus behavior contract at the start of the year and this would outline a policy to address if there’s any behavioral issues on the bus with the consolidation of our schools coffin and evaluate gone with adding only brown school there is a decreased need for crossing guards at

23:11 each school this could be ad used to add a bus monitor the length of the pilot would be one year and the school department could ask for feedback from pilot parents at the end of the year feedback can create areas for improvement with the idea of expansion of busing to other neighborhoods if the pilot goes well also at the end of the pilot a general survey to all parents about expanding busing would go out to gauge interest and busing from other neighborhoods and to determine the potential for expansion starting this pilot with the beacon street neighborhood is ideal because it captures the population who lives the farthest away from all schools and therefore are the least likely to walk due to distance and safety concerns

23:56 this pilot will allow the school department and school committee to have a cost-benefit analysis to help decide about expanding our busing budget in upcoming years we will have valuable information on how to make the bus appealing and convenient enough for parents to purchase a pass bus stop locations for pickup allow children in these catchment areas to have a short walk to their bus stop and a drop off at or near their school um the green dots show the bus stops which go through old town around by gracie oliver and through to the evans street uh west shore drive area um drop-off stops are also shown with the stars at each at the schools um

24:43 in conclusion this proposal will have a number of potential benefits for our community first it will provide expanded access to safe and reliable transportation of school for many students who live in sections of town where there are currently no safe walking or biking routes to their schools second if we can generate enough interest this program can produce revenue to help offset the cost of the new bus required by the location of the new brown school third by increasing access and utilization of public transportation we can decrease the pollution and congestion caused by hundreds of individual vehicles currently needed for school pickup and drop off daily

25:29 lastly increasing access to busing will help to bring marblehead up to par with the busing programs that are already offered in many of our neighboring communities and don’t our kids deserve that thank you

25:49 thank you jess um obviously you put a lot of work into that and it was very thorough and helpful um john did you want to follow up with anything on that yep this has been um on the radar for michelle presta and we met this week and she’s uh investing in some routing software to look at bus routes and this information will certainly be helpful and clearly um she has invested dr benedetto has invested a lot of time in this and i think you see firsthand uh the proposal and i just would like the blessing to continue down the path to explore this program

26:31 so uh jess thanks so much for putting this together and all your hard work on it um i think bussing has been a topic that we’ve been batting around for a while now so i think this really gives us some traction on it um and i love the idea of a pilot program to figure out how it how it could work um before we kind of go a whole hog i always think kind of a pilot program’s a great idea um and obviously dr benedetto raised a number of reasons why it’s beneficial for our town um so i am very much for you continuing to work on this i think you know i do have a few questions about it but they’re more detailed and probably things that you’ll work out and come back to us with um so i definitely support it and just want to thank you

27:17 just for for all your hard work thank you megan sarah go ahead i thought i was in a mute i’m going to apologize right here now for i really thought i was i mean you could hear me saying i’m going to go off me you got to pull it together so i apologize um so first of all thank you jess i know you’ve worked really really hard on all of this um a few things popped up on this first of all we are absolutely positively from what i read in this budget not carrying the budget to add an additional bus for fy22 um above and beyond what we’re carrying right now it is it is was not listed as a budget priority it was not listed as a new line item um so either we’re able to fit those kids

28:04 on a new bus or we missed something so we got to go back and look at that um it was something that came up a lot during um the feasibility study you know at one point i recall ken actually hit a stopwatch and was riding the bus to figure out who went where when and how um and we carried the estimate of 60 000 um that it would cost to add that additional bus that’s what a bus roughly as of two years ago cost for a year and that was mainly in staffing because as you know we own our buses or or lease them um so so you know that was in fuel and things like that um staffing fuel and everything else um so we need to look into why we aren’t carrying that in the budget and if we should be um next as far as i was under the

28:50 assumption that we just we we’ve gotten two new buses in the past couple of years one that i remember from under 10. we’re not um we’re not carrying staff to run that additional bus we don’t run that many bus routes right now okay but the bus is not the issue it’s not the actual physical bus we own that it’s the it’s the fuel and um and the staff so so we’ll go up there sarah i just i just wanted to mention so the the current situation is that when gary closed um and kindergarten had to move to evelyth which is across town from gary then the response was we’re going to offer a bus from gary and no i remember all that yesterday and

29:37 then currently the bus is from coffin and so that bus busing from coffin is really extremely um inconvenient in terms of routing to bring a child to coffin to then be bussed to evaluate and if you look at the other areas of town uh marblehead neck has a bus that goes all the way around the neck and brings children with from with within walking distance of their houses yeah they’re right now the policies they’re two different things ones we call the courtesy bus and you didn’t you don’t need to be a distance away it was for the transition so they are they’re you’re totally on target for what we promised during the study but um

30:23 they’re kind of currently working as two different functions um but i don’t that that’s kind of you know i’m not opposed to this at all i just want to make sure we’re actually including what we’re supposed to in our budget um and then the next piece is i actually don’t think we should be charging anybody as a courtesy boss i think this is a sustainable idea i think it’s something we want to be moving towards the idea of charging kids um kind of feels a little bit more like we’re again dividing you know people of means and people not of means because if your family can pay you can get to school a little bit safer and if your family can’t pay then you can’t so i would say we just should do this pilot program and not attach a fee to it would be would be um

31:09 my take on it because um i want to make sure we’re providing equity um and again it’s just it’s it’s safer for kids and also it gets cars off the road helps the traffic in town and sustainability wise you know this is a really big deal more cars off the road more people in buses community bus stops um that benefits us all so you know i totally support this but um i just wanted to make sure that we really are carrying it in the budget for next year and also i you know i didn’t want to charge students and currently we don’t bus anybody to the high school so we need to look at that policy but i think that in the middle school as well i think we boss k to six correct emily yeah um so

31:57 because the red shaded area from um justice map and thanks jess for putting all this together they have to be blessed next year k through three anyway right so that’s already been figured out okay

32:12 do they just it’s whoever is two miles or more from because village is in essentially the middle of town um there’s no one in that area that would be two miles from village school however sorry yeah there’s gonna be kids going to the brown school who are more than two miles right right so they have to be yes it’s just k through three four brown yes yes that has to be limited and then the piece about charging for the bus i think that’s a pretty standard practice and i i’m pretty sure that if your family could not afford the bus we would offer subsidies for that and we would never not let anyone ride a bus that could not afford it because

32:57 i know we don’t practice that in this town and that’s not something that i think ever happens i just want to make that clear that anyone who would ride a bus would be offered yeah that’s a good plan it would be structured like the sports and activities yeah that’s how we do everything yeah all right well i mean it sounds like i think the divide still exists though with people not being comfortable asking for that help and so they sometimes kind of like hold back you know i don’t want to jump ahead but we know nan’s going to be presenting some information on equity and um openness as far as certain tuitions go and i think that this you know would fall in the same vein of um of you know

33:43 if if they can’t walk safely to school by the deci guidelines i i would say that there is a um onus on us to get them there so i think that’s noted um and i think you know this is one of those pieces we talk about with other fees that we charge with athletics with kindergarten of you know what you know where does where is the line there um so it’s you know i think this just kind of adds to that and um and absolutely you know as we as the administration continues to dig deeper into this um can certainly that that type of stuff out all right so it sounds like john you know that the committee has support do you do you want an official motion on that okay all right so yeah so you guys will move forward and thank you because that is

34:29 something that has absolutely been coming out for quite a few years i mean as long as i’ve been on the committee um and i’m glad that we’re starting to chip away at that a little bit thank you dr benedetto very much thank you all right john keep going all right i have the cool testing update this was shared with the committee um just some fun facts if you are a data person i think amanda and greg provided you some interesting stats and as of late this afternoon they had done another pool of athletes so these numbers are um old um but it’s interesting to see that you know over 700 tests would be the number now the average number uh included in a pool the largest the smallest staff

35:16 smallest staff smallest staff by school um we also have only one positive case which they gave you the percentage for and then some information on athlete testing and how that program is going i wanted to give greg and amanda the night off so that they didn’t have to i know that they’re probably in the audience but if anybody has any pool testing questions they presented this morning as well and so hopefully i should be able to feel those if this raises questions great thank you i appreciate that we’ve got this information and it’s you know it’s great to see it all sort of in action and moving forward exciting i might anticipate a question is if we

36:03 will be continuing full testing after the free trial is over and deci has still not gotten final figures to district on the cost of the supplies and materials and um so i will have that in a future meeting for you once that is done john can you refresh my memory on when i know the desti program was extended but what what date are they at right now it goes through spring break april 18th okay again any any timeline from destiny like any expectation of when we might have those costs no because then we’ll still have then we’ll still be responsible for organizing all the pieces right because they’re not organizing it for us we would then have to reach out to the vendors and all those pieces

36:50 okay on on that question is it is it going to be somewhat seamless have there have been have they provided any information like that well i think we would continue with beacon and so we wouldn’t have to go out and find a do it’s just getting those final figures and we do have a nurse out on leave right now and amanda is doing this pool testing and so you know we we do we haven’t had anyone to fill the long term substitute position i know there’s some concern about if a nurse has to be out and being able to cover the district and if we continue with pool testing that would that will those will be pieces that we’ll need to answer i’m probably a bit premature here but just since we’re talking about it i

37:36 mean i’m i’m hoping that you’re also you know even though we’re not sure what the exact cost is going to look like you’re thinking about how we might implement it if we’re going forward does it need to be the whole district would it be certain grades would it you know just thinking about how we might so that when we get that information we can literally just plug it into whatever spreadsheet or whatever you’re working through great great i hope that those numbers come back reasonable because i think this is a valuable program especially yeah push further in person yeah exactly okay and uh just another shout out to amanda and greg for putting this together because i mean 700 tests with pretty much amanda and greg doing it is amazing so just you know a big thank you to them

38:25 okay okay so in person uh instruction update k to six started five days a week we’re four days into it and i will say i have received so many grateful emails from families indicated i actually had a parent approach me at the gym on sunday saying that she got a lump in her throat at target because it was like back to school shopping and so many families have said that they actually got teary on monday when they were dropping their students off so um so um things are going well each of the principals reported out uh this morning at the reopening meeting uh kind of the wows and wonders uh that have come up this week and i think that you know number one under the superintendent’s

39:11 report was transportation and that was one of the wonders that came up that transportation is an issue in this district and when the combined cohorts drop off and pick up doubled and so there were some hiccups as we like to say and so those principles are working on those to make sure that pick up and drop off is uh more seamless uh next week i think is a way to capture that um also i don’t think it helped that it was below zero on that first day absolutely certainly i’ve walked most of the days but that day was not a walking day so i was a glover and mr odo was devastated that all of their outdoor planning and their uh banner got whipped in the wind and their balloons all had to come in

39:56 but it was really it was an exciting morning and i enjoyed being a glover and i know i think nan was at coffin or village and just the kind of excitement and energy really was like the first days before we get to seven and twelve um i thought about doing a commendation but i think it fit better here just because you know we talked about it in one of our previous meetings about the anxiety of this change and all the work that the teachers and the staff had to do to get us this point and and families too to kind of prep prep their students um they had one other group the custodians this came up in central council over the weekend they moved 35 classrooms in village and

40:41 um they just did it without a hitch and so they also need to be yeah no thank you um i guess the point is it’s been a team effort it’s been a community and school and teacher and student and um you know not to like jinx us at all but this first four days has been a success and the students the students that i’ve heard from have been so happy so i’m glad we took this step and i’m thankful for everyone who’s put in the hard work to get here and i’m looking forward to getting the next round of students in in person so i just felt like this might be a natural place to say that and all of that planning continues for seven to twelve and uh matt and dan reported out this morning that dan or matt actually made

41:29 me chuckle he said he’s no longer going to try to predict what will happen because he had about half of his full remote families say they wanted to come back in person and i think if you’d asked us two weeks ago the worry or the concern was what happens if we have a mass exodus out of our hybrid in learning program going to remote and dan reported out similar numbers at the high school so we continue to plan for an april 5th launch uh 7-12 kindergarten was a question that came up and i have to give full credit uh to nan murphy uh for this idea and i’m actually

42:14 going to let uh nan describe it to you i did give you a heads up via email about looking at a full day kindergarten program so nan you’d like to describe your great thinking on that great thank you good um good evening everybody um i had sent john a email recently proposing that our district um recognized that this has been a complex year and if ever there’s a time to think about equity and access and inclusion it’s this year and as we go into our final three and a half months of school i’d like to propose that marblehead public schools offers the opportunity of a full day for kindergarten students that that is not fee-based that all

43:01 students um are permitted to come and attend a full day of learning and practice and rehearsals and um quality instruction and quality social emotional experiences and that we remove the barrier of finances should any family in the district be experiencing any pandemic related hardships or just completely remove that as it’s not a situation right now that we have um planned on for certain funding that we that we maybe lift that barrier away for families so that’s that’s the proposal i put forward and i’m hoping that we’re able to to bring all of our kindergarteners back

43:48 for full day learning i completely support dan great um nan can you just talk a little bit about what those afternoons would look like perfect so in the um i have met with principals i met with principals on monday at leadership and then i followed it up with meeting with our kindergarten staff yesterday and we talked about stamina for little our little students and the the way classrooms are structured right now they are very structured kids are sitting at desks and we are very cognizant of our six feet distancing at this point

44:33 so um it was agreed that the morning hours would be spent primarily on content the ela the math the focused reveal review and drills and our afternoons would be spent with more tactile play outside experiences hands-on science any opportunity that we have for more uh physical engagements outside the kindergarten teachers were talking about great opportunities they’ve already always been able to provide their kindergartners such as nature walks and things like that so we talked about um talking with transportation getting buses to be able to take our kindergarteners in the afternoons on little

45:20 afternoon excursions around town for different hands-on type of play and experiences so the structured learning piece would really be concentrated in the morning with review and maybe some small group review and practice in the afternoons with teachers but the primary focus being on hands-on activities and curriculum in the afternoons and then in terms of timeline would it follow the same timeline that we’re looking at for the other elementary school grades it would be exactly the same okay well i think you know the kindergarteners haven’t had a real school traditional or typical school experience yet um so i think you know these last three

46:05 months especially since they will be going into first grade a full day um i think that that makes sense and let them you know get get some experience before we before september i think that makes sense i think it’s a great idea man thank you great see your hand raised so to piggyback off that this is something that’s come up you know at budget season for multiple years and and when we talk kick around the idea of you know will we do an override when will we do an override what will we look at and what are our priorities this idea that we’re charging for kindergarten um full day tuition here you know while there’s some town still doing it the majority of massachusetts do not and the reason is because it does impede equity

46:51 access and inclusion um even though we have tuition assistant programs again there’s you know often people who aren’t comfortable asking for that or it’s they’d rather just do the half day and not you know not go down that road um so this has been something that’s come up i i wish we were in a position to do it for next year to be perfectly honest i think you know this is this is the right first step but um i i don’t think we sh i i think that we should be offering a full day kindergarten program that’s what we want in education to look like in marblehead um and you know the the you know anybody that’s he had a first grader in the last few years or in the you know last several years knows

47:38 the caliber of what we need them to know and they really need this full day um so i fully support this but i would like us to take it a step further and see if you know if we can’t do it next year which really would be a shame and is a shame um when can we do it and where does that fit into our strategic plan um but i i think what you know nan hit it on the head it’s equity it’s access and it’s inclusion and if those are priorities for our students this is what we do sarah i was just thinking the strategic plan as you were talking i just want to say that i support older kindergarten as well i think we’re like sarah said one of the very few who still

48:25 you know charge a fee for that afternoon and it’s like especially in marblehead we you know we should be providing that full day for everybody so i support that too and when we can get it and when we figure out the best time to start that i think as soon as possible we’re working towards that goal yeah absolutely i think this is another thing as i kind of alluded to earlier that continually comes up um as we talk about you know where we’d like to see marvel head schools be as we move into the future great thank you nan

48:58 and then uh just some other pieces of our plan do we not need a motion for that because our policy is that we charge for kindergarten tuition so if we’re changing a policy even if temporarily for the rest of this school year i would think we would need a motion to change that it’s not something we’ve been doing at all this year

49:20 so i don’t know that we need one um if we haven’t had one at this point i mean i can i can definitely check it and we can if we need it we’ll we can put it on and vote it next time okay i just want to make sure where we’re going against a written policy that we we’re within the confines of where we need to be yeah i’ll i’ll look into it

49:48 and then we talked about uh lunch and then uh with change in distance what quarantine uh would look like in consideration of close contacts um and so we continue to plan for april 5th and are making good progress to that end yeah i think um you know one of the i think this has come up a few times at this point i think it’s you know and i actually had quite a few texts about it this week about the number of high school students that continually come out positive um that that’s kind of where where we’re seeing it at this point and it is worrisome as we start to push towards a three foot distance because that does mean that in the past it anybody who has tested positive hasn’t hasn’t really impacted anybody who’s

50:35 learning in their in the learning space that’s about to change and and so i think you know we’ve done this a few times but i think the call for you know honesty within the community um of reporting you know any kind of not feeling well any kind of exposure and and really you know where everybody wants in-person learning and and you know this is a massive priority for us right now and it’s a priority for almost everybody and um and so i just really you know i really i really like to ask that it’s prioritized in everybody’s daily behavior as well in that you know it’s going to start impacting people who would not otherwise have been impacted

51:23 and um you know i it may be an unpopular opinion but um i just like that just keeps weighing on me so just to clarify so right now if um someone is symptomatic or test positive it’s the six foot close contact radius right so because they’re at six foot in their cohorts it’s not an issue but bringing them together and in some cases reducing that distance now that radius includes other other students correct so therefore it’s not just that one person who is symptomatic it’s then everyone in their radius would then also have to quarantine right so that that’s really the crux of the issue right and when we start to talk about you know the reduced distancing at this point of what we’re

52:09 working with is our older kids and so it’s this it’s the kids who are traveling classes who switch every period and so you’re not it’s not only as if it would be in a grade school classroom where it’s those handful of kids in every single class at that point and so you’re really talking about a pretty big impact on one positive case and you know i do have worries in the background about you know if it could jeopardize our ability to pull off you know as we’ve talked about in the past when we were looking at remote versus hybrid of building level situations that could cause a building to have to take a step back and i just really don’t want us to have to take any steps back i really just want us to push forward and and this is sort of that one

52:55 weak link that you know there could be others that i just don’t foresee but this is one that i could foresee becoming problematic i think this is why jesse still has not provided dates for high schools that for marblehead with this in the sincere belief in our parents and our students and our families that honesty is the best policy that we’re not coming to work if we don’t feel well we’re not sending students to school that might have symptoms and that the daily attestation form is something that we take very seriously in order to be able to do this and to maintain sarah i know you’ve got your hand up um yes so

53:42 looking at that um this really makes i i’m wondering do we currently or have a plan or or are we working on one on how these children who will would need to quarantine for however many days will be educated because right now i think that they do the um remote portion now but where that will be gone um and the high school doesn’t have like a program like the elementary schools where you could jump into a remote class if there was space um how will we educate these students will it be fully uh asynchronous whereas like it’s just you know google classroom or something like that or will they actually have instruction during that you know ten days seven days fourteen i i that never moves around i don’t know what absolutely yeah

54:28 absolutely yeah absolutely yeah yeah that was brought up at reopening this morning and matt and dan talked about things that will be in place and things that they’re currently working with faculty on uh it’s a it’s easier for sure nothing’s easy but matt indicated uh teams at the middle school where students that would have to quarantine how that would work and dan is working there are some teachers that have the ability to do simultaneous uh or live streaming others do not so i think it’s gonna be on a case-by-case basis in some instances but again i think that’s why sarah’s point and megan’s point about making sure that we’re all

55:13 adhering so that the instances of this are limited i do think there’s some really interesting data coming down the pike too about distancing there’s a really great study that was was done um in massachusetts um on the six foot to three foot distancing and the differences and so you know i think that there’s hopefully some some changes in guidance that might be coming but for now we are where we’re at and um and you know i think just that plea to kind of wear a mask when you’re outside of school um and and it can just flap paper so my other question with the bringing the high school kids back and this is probably gonna make dan and um dr bucky as a former high school principal shutter but um

56:01 have we looked at you know what some towns are doing i think swampscott’s doing it the idea of returning to an open campus so during like lunch when they’re on mass you know for student that drives or whatever they could go home during that period um i know it was you know standard in marblehead years ago it had its pitfalls um at the time and it you know definitely had its positives if she asked some of the students but um i whereas other districts have looked at this as a way to minimize spread quarantining things like that have we looked at it i think everything is on the table it reminds me in 1999 when i did my administrative internship at watertown high school they tasked me with looking at open campus

56:48 and every school that i called that had it was trying to get rid of it and every school that didn’t have it was trying to implement it but i think if there were ever time for looking at options especially at lunch and deanna did go over lunch this morning at reopening but being creative at the high school is going to be a necessity i would actually put a word of caution in on open campus at this point because i think and it’s this is anecdotal but i think some of the things that we hear right now are that when kids when kids get into their cars the masks come off and they’re together and the masks are off and we know for sure and the data supports this all over the place that when they’re in school buildings they’re at their safest because the mitigation is in effect and so

57:33 so so i would just call like that would be my caution on that it’s i don’t have anything against open campus generally speaking um i just it makes me a little antsy right now

57:50 so dr bucky okay if if i could make a um a comment i uh dan bauer and i have recently had a conversation about this very thing we’ve had a couple of parents reach out and right currently the high school lunch blocks are only going to be a half an hour which does not provide enough time for students to get safely off campus and return safely to campus and so and where there won’t be any afternoon remote instruction so there’s really we want to try to encourage people to stay on campus during that time and that’s why i did add an additional tent at the high school for some back outside

58:36 eating spaces for kids because we are really trying to be creative and where we put students uh and and be able to keep them distanced as much as possible during that block of time but really try our best to keep them on campus as well that’s a good public service announcement for your tent campaign nan i was just getting ready to turn it over to you to talk about the kindergarten to grade 8 math curriculum update so that that ties in nicely perfect so uh the math committee met today we’ve been on a roll they have sat through hours and hours and hours of presentations by different vendors that they have selected through a rubric and some different

59:22 some different some different state-provided guidance that we’re using to choose and select evidence-based curriculum that’s being well used and showing uh positive results throughout the nation and districts in massachusetts as well so today they met to review i was in another meeting so our assistant principal steve gallo chaired our committee today and they had kind of taken a minute to step back and to refresh their memories about everything that they’ve seen thus far and also to talk about the materials that have been delivered to to schools how those are getting presented and in

1:00:07 the hands of teachers and then giving the people on the committee the opportunity to speak to the lessons that they’ve been piloting so not only are we listening to vendors and researching programs teachers are actually at this point in the process modeling class using the the materials so today was unpacking kind of those things that they’ve discovered we at this point there are two programs that the committee is considering although we were really hoping to find a k-8 program there is consensus around a k-6 program and consensus around our k-5 program and consensus around a six seven and eight program

1:00:53 program program so we haven’t gotten to the vertical piece which is okay there they are they appeal developmentally to the age groups that um that they’re being presented to so it’s not uncommon for teachers at different levels to have a discrepancy around programming so we have one more presenter that’s coming next thursday the materials are already on campus and being distributed to teachers some of those teachers are already piloting we have some people on the committee that have had experience myself included with uh the program that is coming on thursday so we have a little bit of an understanding of what that program offers

1:01:39 offers offers and megan i know you’ll be interested to hear this the one that we’re looking into on thursday of next week also comes with an assessment opportunity so it actually comes with an additional cost but but one that’s reasonable you are able to access their assessment components in both math and ela so that’ll be an interesting it’s the only vendor that we’re looking at that has that opportunity for us we did initially have uh next week as our date where we wanted to announce what program we had selected

1:02:24 but in uh trans and true transparency we weren’t going to push through a process like this to beat the budget we really wanted to make sure we got the right program and so i think what we’ve done is um put a fair number in the budget as to what we think a good program is going to cost but we are a little bit behind the timeline that we had set forth with but we’re ready we’d rather go slow and steady and make sure we get to the right destination uh and then then be too swift and maybe hear about a great program that we wish we had taken time to look at sarah um thank you nan

1:03:11 um so is it unusual i i know i won’t say because we’re one of only two districts in the whole state that have the k346 model um is it unusual to have two different math curriculums um and play within your the same school building and will that present a problem at all with alignment within that building i’m i’m you know i appreciate you asking that question because it is something that that we’ve talked about uh especially where we are thinking of bringing instructional specialists in to support staff so it certainly is a consideration that we’re going to have to have as a as a team as we narrow down our process because if we’re bringing on additional coaching staff

1:03:57 asking a t uh a a member of a in that role to build content knowledge and pedagogy around two different programs and and work with teams within one building that would be a hard ask um and also likewise if we had two people doing that it’d be hard to bridge you know the way we present things at the middle school is very different than the teaching model we use at village so that would be a hard juxtaposition as well i would think yeah absolutely so and then the other thing is this is two programs now versus one so are we talking two times the cost i mean i i don’t i’m guessing we don’t know deal because we know no it wouldn’t be an additional cost because it’s per pupil typically okay

1:04:43 all right so there’s not there’s not a uh a cost like we what we saw last year just to buy into their online support service nope okay the one the one piece that i do want to add part of the conversation around budgeting was when we were looking at priorities and trying to decipher where does the math math program fit as in terms of a budget priority the conversation was around one-to-one devices for students so a lot of the pr all of the programs that we’re looking at have really rich and engaging online activities for kids and it goes in in their instructional they’re not just activities it’s to the extent where a teacher can actually log on and watch a

1:05:30 student do some work at home during homework time and provide real in-time real-time feedback uh via the the technology piece so the question i was posing was around you know if we purchase a program and can’t use a lot of the tools that that make it such a great investment for the district is it is it the right time where we don’t have some of the components necessary but then steve has done such a great job since he’s been here he helped to build the understanding that we’re almost at one to one and expects to be at one to one at the elementary levels next year so that kind of took it uh

1:06:17 put it back into perspective is around it being a budget priority for this this budget that’s so great to hear because especially with the brown school coming online we have a lot of wiggle room in that f and e to really purchase some of those um devices for for a big the majority of the bulk of our k through through um third graders but i’d hate to see us put off a math curriculum because you know as far as our strategic planning goes or or our structural you know issues with our budget that we can’t afford to you know do the one-to-one or something like that so i’m happy to hear we’ll be able to use some of that brown school funding to do that but i want to make sure we can also keep up with that moving forward and that becomes part of our strategic plan as well

1:07:06 so man just with this breakdown of k through five and then six through eight can you just talk talk through how you implement that are they literally two separate implementation streams or would you stagger them a bit i think we would implement it similar the same so we would have professional development time set aside for all staff k to eight k to six or k to five would attend the the pd with a with one the vendor and the remaining staff the secondary staff would go with this the other vendor the both all of the programs that we’ve been looking into

1:07:51 part of the cost is access to being professionally developed by the program so we do have built into the fees regardless of whether we pick one program or two that part of that is being professionally developed so um we would it’s about it’s a it’s about us finding the time for teachers and then supporting them in that work but it wouldn’t it wouldn’t be that we’d have to stagger start times everybody would be expected to start with their new curriculum in the fall

1:08:26 did you have any questions all right great thank you dude i have one more given where we are with what you know what our staff has been under for the last year and where we are with any potential funding um would we be able to implement the and have enough time to implement the professional development to get everybody up to speed over the summer um to put this new program in or whatever’s left to this school year yeah you know it’s not the best timing i’ll agree i mean there it’s going to be eric i’m sorry dr oxford and i we’re talking about that recently and we uh are going to set aside a a block of time in early may with rebecca brand and we’re going to

1:09:11 really try to lay out a professional development calendar for staff so everybody will know when and what is happening for the year in terms of professional development and it’s and a lot of professional development is in the classroom in my experience so it’s one thing to have a vendor visit you and come and give you the overall but it’s it’s almost equally important during those ongoing staff meetings that we that we provide dialogue for people to talk about it to co-plan lessons to look at materials so um it’s not all standard it’s it’s minimal stand and deliver it’s more ongoing professional development with colleagues

1:09:56 leaning into each other and helping each other navigate a new program and that will be provided monthly if not but weekly okay so where we won’t we potentially won’t have the funding to buy the program until july 1 and we want to implement at the beginning of the school year would we be in a position that will need to stipend teachers to learn it before they have to teach it on day one or how do we make that juxtaposition because we’re not buying it until july 1. we don’t have the funds until july 1 when the f the new fiscal year rolls out so i i think i would i would defer to john and how he would like that i i don’t play a big role in the in figuring out when things are purchased and in terms of timelines

1:10:42 but we i do know in in working with the um the union that we will have some professional development prior to the start of the year and i will certainly be using some of our grant money to stipend teachers as we were also talking about really targeting our lead teachers and asking that that this be leading this work becomes one of the priorities in each school and that small group i would expect to work with over the summer now i’m sorry by the way i know i’m throwing a lot of questions out you’re popping my mind as you talk and this is you’re giving great information so where we’re looking at eliminating the lead teacher position at village and they’ll have two potential math curriculums to roll out i i just want to make sure we’re we’re

1:11:29 setting ourselves up for success and and you know if we’re pulling away that position we’ve got you know we have to replace it with something and we i want to make sure we’re setting ourselves up for success that we have the budget to pay for what you need to make this success for our teachers and for our students yep all really great considerations and i think we’re those are all kinds of things that we’re already trying to project so we’re not planning in the moment that we really are thoughtful and having these conversations well in advance so that when time does present itself we aren’t trying to scramble and figure out what the agendas are going to be that we already kind of

1:12:15 have them sketched out and i think also part of the conversations we have as a leadership team is about building the capacity of our building leaders to drive some of this work in schools and so me and and john working with our building leaders helping them understand the content so that they can also serve as a resource to their to their teams and in classrooms thank you so much this is where curriculum coaches would be huge right man thank you so much sorry nan i i have a question that you mentioned timing yeah and in my head you know one thing that and tying back to the assessment piece

1:13:02 so we know that this year has been different in terms of education for our students so just and we’ve done some great assessments recently to kind of compare where they were last year at this time to where they are this year and then i guess my question is around being able to continue those assessments and really know the impact if there is one of this year at the same time that we’re changing a curriculum so then are we technically comparing apples to apples in that from an assessment and student tracking standpoint okay great question it depends on the assessment so really when you’re looking at assessments and measuring student progress you try to triangulate which

1:13:48 means you’re using three different data sources so then you’re really getting a solid picture so it wouldn’t necessarily be if we changed an assessment source the assessment the online electronic assessment sources like aims web which we’re using now or a new one if we were to bring one on they’re standards-based so steve students are either meeting standards or below standards and so the questioning is really they’re they’re all kind of calibrated to measure a student’s proficiency around a standard but the the important piece too is all the formative assessments that teachers are doing now so they’re doing teacher college running records they’re doing all of that and that won’t change those

1:14:33 data points won’t change so there’ll be that familiarity for teachers and the um understanding of what that means when they get it when they receive a new student from the grade before so there’ll be some material some things that are a very new and some things that are from very familiar but they’ll all provide solid information so i i don’t worry about because we use one tool it’s kind of like getting this is very um some people might companies would resent me saying it but it’s like getting unleaded gas and uh premium plus gas your car runs the same

1:15:20 but the assessment tool i’m saying that with assessment tools that are kind of online that they’re all measuring the standards and so they ask different questions and maybe have better graphics and more engaging for kids but they get to the same place okay all right thank you thank you nan um can we circle back to the tents um because i just wanted a little bit of an update and i don’t know if that would be you or nan um just to kind of clarify i think some misunderstandings that are out there in the community would you uh field this and i’ll fill in the blanks sure so um we when we were planning as as a leadership team um about coming back there were a lot of um

1:16:08 big big hurdles and and one of them was really around serving lunch making sure kids are are being able to spread out as much as possible when um when we’re asking them to be within six feet of each other in very tight spaces at the at the elementary levels and now we’re doing the same at the secondary level so over the course of the year we’ve been hearing or i’ve been interpreting messaging around um you know we as parents will do whatever we can whatever you need and so i thought this is something that we’re all as leaders saying we need space for kids to be outside and we can use the spaces for lunches and then we

1:16:54 can use them for academic instructional spaces when they’re not in use for lunches and it’s something that will be in every school and so if i’m if i’m a kindergarten parent and i make a contribution it’s my student is going to benefit and if i’m a high school student i have a high school student and i make a contribution my student is going to benefit so it it really was one of those opportunities where regardless of where your child attended a school you would be able to contribute to something that we feel is in the best interest of kids and teachers in in getting kids back in person for full days of learning um so i guess i i hadn’t anticipated

1:17:40 the the questioning around the covid funding and for that i apologize because i feel like i may have put some things on your agendas that weren’t previously placed there i do know that over the year being part of all those conversations an exorbitant amount of our money so much so that we don’t have additional pieces of things in our curriculum budget and other places where i where you might think we’d be able to benefit from from money coming to to the district so i just kind of thought that was an opportunity for us as a community to to provide some of those resources i would just say that nan i don’t think an apology is necessary at all that this

1:18:27 was an opportunity to take advantage of families that had said just tell us what you need and this was something across the district and then maybe as you guys have gotten regular updates on covid funding and where we’re spending money and how those dollars are being allocated to use the parent willingness to fund something to put that money towards something that is a rental that would go away but would be an immediate benefit and then additional cova dollars to be for something maybe more permanent so i think that muffy and uh nan have done a great job and i think they’ve raised over ten thousand dollars already true to what your families have been saying just tell

1:19:13 us what you need so this was a need and i think it benefits children k to 12 as nan said it’s just there’s there’s no tie to us being able to open at full days by to getting these tents like one does not equal the other we are opening up full days regardless of tension correct that is correct yep your hand is up um yes do you so are the tents for um through the end of the school year nan or no i when we talked to teacher and learning you were still like calling every tenth place yeah tri-state area and i want you all to know that i was um calling to try to get them made so that we could have something that stayed in the district but because of the way the

1:20:00 fabric that they’re used that that is used they’re flammable and and because of that we are not allowed as a school department to purchase items that could potentially um be dangerous so that’s so i’ve tried all different kinds of angles um but i sarah i’ve had to go back to the tent company and kind of say i’m not sure our end date because pending how much money we raise um we might have to return sooner rather than later so i don’t have an end if we can fully find it are they available yes as of right now but they aren’t going to hold them because i i am i really wanted

1:20:45 to make sure we especially had them at the high school in the event we could use them for you know outside evening activities for seniors or junior you know a prom related event i’m not sure but um at this point we give those kids something i think it would be like social emotional wise i think it would be really super impactful i just i hesitate to commit not knowing how much money we’re going to be able to raise and the the tenth at the high school is the most obviously expensive so it’s it’s a yeah it’s it’s a lot of money so i think this is a great example of where it’s not just a binary choice and that there are layers to all of this

1:21:33 that nan becomes a tent expert who finds out that you can’t have a particular type of tent because it doesn’t have the correct fabric and i think that it’s easy to look at it and say well that would you just do that but hopefully tonight this clarification will really give a shot in the arm for the the fundraising effort because i do think they’re important so to follow up on that um i know you were really thorough but could we i mean could we rent a container to store them in so they’re not adjacent to a building if we were to purchase them or no i i actually called a a company recommended by somebody in the community for the same reason and they don’t have the capacity right now so many people

1:22:19 are are doing exactly what we’re doing that the local company i called about storing and uh like are you talking about if we were to purchase something if we i didn’t take it from them yeah we could potentially have this problem in the fall again so my next question is yeah can we reserve them for the fall so that we really can purchase them so they own them and then um we have them for the fall and i was thinking you know for instance we have containers that are storing our equipment you know our pte and our various stuff like that is there is there a capability to get one of those and store them you know off site i can certainly ask todd about that i haven’t i haven’t gone down that only because i didn’t think we could purchase them and

1:23:05 safely install so i didn’t even go into this i only say that because i don’t see this as a short-term issue i see this as you know a potentially longer-term issue that these would be helpful in the fall and things like that and if we can buy them and then we’ll you know it’s more more initial cost but shorter long-term cost plus we have them and we’re not like in july in august racing every other district to find them again i just want to add it don’t want to prolong the conversation um we did look at this option in the spring and the trouble is we are not able to find tents for purchase with the proper fire rating required by the town bylaws um that is basically what it came down

1:23:51 to we tried to contract with the company out of new york tried to contract with the company out of california they were not able to provide the fire rating that was required by the town of marblehead um in addition we have to have the tent staked into the ground we’re not able to use weights um so that adds something else so we we have looked at it if we do find a company that we can purchase tents we will gladly purchase them but we have come across this challenge since you know april we’ve been looking for them and we have not been able to secure them yeah that’s too bad and i don’t want to prolong it either more but you know there are i know we’ve done it for clients there are sprays that that make things fireproof i don’t know if that would that would qualify but i’m just looking for a

1:24:36 long-term solution here if it’s possible um absolutely i’m getting too far in the weeds so i want to move on but um but like i said like if we if we can solve our problem now and in the fall then let’s well we we now have a great relationship with this one company um that is on a procurement list that we’re able to use um and they’re wonderful they’re super responsive they give us pretty much what we want so we have built this great relationship with them and they’ve been wonderful so i’m sure we’ll be able to get them back in the fall if needed thank you michelle that actually completes the superintendent’s report which one’s on the show all right great thank you nan as well so michelle that leads us um on to the financial part i will uh deal with the

1:25:21 schedule of bills first that’s first on the agenda um can i the the uh schedules were in the dropbox so can i get a motion to approve the identified schedules of bills totaling two hundred thousand two hundred seventeen thousand seven hundred fifty seven dollars and seventy four cents still moved sarah moved emily second any questions on any of that all right sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily baron and sarah fox yes yes thank you all right that passes four to zero um all right um the student opportunity act budget plan i’m actually not sure if that’s michelle you or a van is involved

1:26:09 in that as well actually that is nan all right man take it away again hope you’re muted i hate it when people have to say that to me um

1:26:26 uh so initially the state had shared with us that we had to bring it to school committee and then john got an email a couple of weeks ago saying that the school committee needed to vote on it so i’m bringing it back to you i will summarize very quickly the sum of the funding coming from the student opportunity act is 90 000. 690. and 70 000 690 has been allocated to adding a position for a district math interventionist again that position would would work with primarily adults to unpack new curriculum and to

1:27:12 remediate student gaps and instruction and help with offering training and professional development around tiered instruction ten thousand dollars dr oxford and i are working on a summer literacy program that would target uh students with decoding and fluency deficits and the final sum of ten thousand is going to be around professional development for our staff using um developing the skills around intervention in classrooms so instead of looking to outside

1:27:59 expertise in special education or in tutoring in that we really look internal into inside that core instructional block and how do we provide multiple entry points for students based on skill and give them that opportunity for independent practice at their instructional level where they can then move to the next level so there’s a lot to learn about that and the state is it’s a huge initiative across the country it’s called multi-tiered systems of support and dr oxford and i again are partnering in bringing that thinking to marblehead and wanting to be able to bring in some uh contractual vendors and maybe uh provide stipends for

1:28:45 staff to do that work megan so man thanks for that i have two questions one is just administratively on the vote are we just do we have to vote that this is how we’re going to spend the money okay so nan can you elaborate on the math interventionist is that just um would that just be a one-year position as we kind of roll out this new math curriculum hopefully not um this this and i’ll i’ll lean into michelle here i in my understanding it’s a three-year commitment that the state is making to us with this fund with these funds michelle am i correct i believe so i’m not 100 positive i do know the first year is the 90 000. okay

1:29:32 so my understanding is it’s gonna for three years maintain at 90 if not increase a bit so it would be at least a um at minimum a three-year commitment and hopefully at that point we’d be in a position to to either see where the state funding fits or maybe absorb the position into one of our title grants um but it it’s it would be specific to we have the position provided by rebecca brand in the district where she is is offering coaching cycles to staff now where she’ll go in and model instruction and then they’ll debrief around a lesson and then a teacher will

1:30:18 pilot a lesson and she’ll provide feedback and they co-plan and and look at student work together and she’ll drive some of those conversations at their professional planning blocks we’re looking to bring somebody in that can do that for math so so okay so i wasn’t aware that the soa was confirmed for three years okay all right so this position will last as long as we can fund it yeah i i actually don’t michelle i mean is it confirmed or i mean it was we were semi-confirmed last year and it disappeared i don’t think with state funding anything’s like confirmed the only thing that’s confirmed which is not set in stone i mean 100 is the 90 000 for the first year which

1:31:04 would look like that is going forward at this time yeah so that that actually brings up my question of you know then we’re using one time revenue to fund a reoccurring what would ideally be a reoccurring position um and i i am fundamentally usually opposed to that it’s as a way of of balancing your finances um so that is a concern and then my other question is by the way i i support the role it’s the one-time funding for reoccurring operational costs that make me nervous um and then you talk about this being for the adoption of a new math program we’re not sure

1:31:51 where we are adopting a new math program so would you still want this position even if it wasn’t to focus on implementing that new and aligning that new math curriculum absolutely so definitely teachers would benefit from the professional structure that this position will provide but also sarah the the way that our title grants have been title 1 and title 2 grants have been written in the past i think if we are more strategic we could fit this position as an ongoing position through those title grants which any which any title funded position is a risk for a person that signs on knowing that that’s how their position is funded is through title grants but

1:32:37 grants but grants but um i’ve you know that’s just the the nature of that cycle um you know i mean do we find ourselves with a 71 000 surplus in our title grants currently it’s it’s not a site surplus at all it’s about really looking at um what we want to focus on and maybe instead of having a bunch of different things that we’re spreading the money around on is really prioritizing the funds for one particular thing right like transferring funds from one area to another uh not you know it’d still be under the title from

1:33:24 then i i think on the budget priorities this was listed as a curriculum coach so i just want to be clear this is not you know a curriculum coach for all curriculum this is a math curriculum coach is it for k-12 or k-3 it would be k through eight and it’s it’s this is a different position than the curriculum position that’s posted as a budget priority okay so this is different yep okay um because you know a big deficit in our our district has been for a long time when we did away with those curriculum coaches and they never came back um you know they’re it’s an important position it it really you know allows a lot of work to get done as as nan obviously knows um so i’d like to

1:34:12 see us support that in you know a mult in multi-disciplines um so i was just wondering if this was you know just math in in what grade levels thank you

1:34:24 but i think um you know i i’m absolutely in agreement that we don’t want to use grants and and that to fund recurring positions in a recurring way um but i do think you know we set up a couple years ago with the bright program that was a grant funded position and then we prioritized it and we knew that we needed to prioritize it the coming year um into the budget and and we did and that and those two positions continue forward um so i think you know i just like i just kind of want to put that out there that that sometimes it’s a great way to sort of get something going and then we can prioritize it within our operating budget the next year i would say

1:35:10 totally agree um when we did if you recall when we voted to bring in the bright at that point we voted to make a commitment to funding it moving forward so i would hope that we would do the same thing here whether we receive this student opportunity act or not that we you know we’re not we’re not going to start something that we’re not going to see through i would hope we’d handle that the same way as the bright program well the bright program it was a pilot program to see if it was successful and had benefit and if it did then we would look to continue to fund it so if we’re using this in the same way does this rule are we piloting this role because we have to know that we might you know next year it’s a different committee it’s a different budget cycle you can’t commit to it right now

1:35:56 and i think you know with the bright program we kind of knew it was going to be successful and it seems like we know that this is going to be helpful and and you know create success um so i think you know i think just by this conversation that clearly it that it’s an important position that that would really benefit the districts as we move forward and don’t take my comments as if i don’t support this role i 100 support this role man absolutely need pressure and we just want to make sure that we fund it in a responsible way absolutely yep he’s hard to make the case again oh and i think you know we hear a lot especially lately um around the

1:36:41 curriculum piece we’ve got a couple of curriculum priorities um you know both the math program the math curriculum as well as curriculum support staff um so i think you know that’s a space in this district where there’s a real need and it’s and it’s seen and it’s being addressed and you know my hope is that it continues to move forward okay um all right so we need a motion so can i get a motion to approve the outlined plan for expenditure of the ninety thousand six hundred and ninety dollars from the student opportunity act so moved megan moved emily second all right all right

1:37:29 um all right sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes and sarah fox yes

1:37:40 thank you very much thank you nan right so that brings us the fy 22 budget update

1:37:49 yes um would someone be able to put up the budget change form the budget summary

1:37:59 or let me share my screen i will let you share your screen even better thank you all right you are a co-host that’s the easiest way i know how to do that got it thank you can you see the budget sheet on the on the screen now uh it just shrank column a that’s not good it was up there and then it

1:38:34 there you go okay not touching it

1:38:40 so um for those of you that were at the joint budget meeting earlier this week or attended this will be somewhat of a repeat repeat but i do want to start off by saying we are moving forward in our fy 22 budget process we are completely on track in terms of timeline and in terms of the process of where we should be um we also are you know have gotten feedback from the finance committee and the town officials that are on that group where they’re all happy where we are so i just want to reiterate that we’re not behind um we’re just taking our time and doing our due diligence with this process at this point so this sheet here which was posted to dropbox i believe yesterday has the and this is the same sheet that

1:39:27 i reviewed earlier this week on tuesday morning it has last year’s budget the fy21 budget of the 40 million 521 000. it has the payroll contractual cost of the 862 5449. and then um i summarized each of the budget categories basically the first part of the sheet is what we are looking at really for um a level service budget or you know same services in in real time dollars so we have a one-time appropriation for the student opportunity act which that is the exact program that nan just discussed so for next year that total will be 90 690 so we do need to add that to our budget

1:40:14 because it’s actually being funded through the state’s chapter 70 program which means the revenue is going to go to the town and be put into the general fund so they need to appropriate it to us the second or the third item on this sheet the one below that is just operating cost increases most of that cost actually represents special education tuitions our tuitions are not increasing but our revenue source in the revolving fund is decreasing so um we need to add that to our operating budget and the total of the operating cost increases total 573 629 dollars we have new school operating costs of seventy that seven thousand this is strictly utilities

1:40:59 um normally we do have the utility reserve fund however the utilities at the brown school will cause us to use more than our maximum allotment of the salary i mean i’m sorry of the utility reserve fund so we need to increase those budgets by 77 000 and then we have a bunch of cost decreases and this is also broken up into a couple different areas we have an operating cost decrease of 121 329 we have some staffing cost decreases which actually total over five hundred thousand dollars however we do have to increase the unemployment budget because we are self-employed for unemployment claims

1:41:45 so anytime we do reduce some positions is always the potential that we are going to pay roughly 50 of that salary in unemployment costs and then we have two other items other possible staffing reductions that we’ve been tossing around and savings due to known retirements so the total of all those items net to 865 000. however i do want to mention that our total operating cost increase is 1.6 million dollars um that’s in this yellow box to the right side if we take out that contract contractual obligation cost really our operating increase is thousand 741 hundred nineteen dollars or one point

1:42:31 eight three percent um our total operational savings in this sheet is seven hundred and thirty eight thousand four hundred and ninety four dollars and basically before we get to the remaining budget priorities that i’ll review on the bottom of the sheet we have 287 865 dollars to spend before we hit our target number and that target number is something we’ve discussed um it’s something that the town usually projects to us just based on our contractual obligations it’s not necessarily the number where we’re gonna land this year um maybe we will maybe we won’t but um that that’s the number that we are comparing our budget to at this point so the second half of this sheet has items

1:43:17 has items has items 9-23 these are budget requests in order of priority that the leadership had prioritized a couple weeks ago we had the leadership team together and we had some great conversations over as a whole what we really thought the budget priority should be and obviously the top priorities are the highest ones um that the team thought we should be funding and the bottom one was the lowest not by any means is it something we do not need it’s just something that made it to the bottom of the list when we really have to rate these items so we have a whole bunch of items here um we have new positions for the brown school of two teachers for preschool four paraprofessionals and we also have an increase in

1:44:02 estimated preschool revenue due to those new classrooms um that total is 147 670 we have technology as the next item i’m item number 10 for capital leases and originally it was two integration technology specialists this number right now of 80 000 only includes one technology specialist um the leadership team did discuss that we could probably try this um program with increasing the staff or adding one staff for the upcoming year so that total increase is 292 706 dollars in the area of technology um we also the third third priority or number 11 on the list would be central

1:44:48 admin for an hr director of roughly eighty thousand dollars with savings of the hr assistant position so the net cost would be roughly thirty thousand curriculum is the next item we had two instructions and two instructional specialists originally um the same thinking here with the leadership team maybe we could go for one next year and pilot it and see how that works um and then try for another one the following year if it’s very successful so this this also only carries one salary at this time and that’s eighty thousand dollars and then the new math curriculum we’ve been tossing about and talking about at length and the total is 180. the next item is village school we have discussed eliminating teacher

1:45:33 leader stipends at that location only and that total would be the 44 000 in savings but to create a guidance counselor position the net increase would be 16 503. and then we just continue going down um you can read and certainly this is also posted in the school committee um it should be on the agenda if not i will make sure it actually makes it up to the website as well um and we have ma marblehead high school academic skills teacher veterans an additional reading teacher um brown we were talking about adding a custodian glover two additional allied arts positions totaling um one full-time individual it’d be a split position same thing at village

1:46:20 um speaking of the bright program at the high school we were talking about changing the bright tutor to an actual teaching position that that program has been extremely successful in last year we did bring that into our operating budget it was previously a grant um increased position of director of guidance we currently have a department head but they were hoping to make that into a director position facilities we were looking for some administrative support or additional administrative support in a groundskeeper position and central admin originally we’re talking about a community really relations liaison and athletics was talking about the replacement of the scoreboard at the high school the last item number 23 it was an

1:47:05 additional fellows position um to make this a total of five fellows in our program for marblehead high school we actually removed this request because we found out that end of college will not be able to provide us with any additional fellows next year we’ll actually be lucky if we can get all four so um at this posit at this time we removed that request because it’s not something that can be funded so with all these items um and taking the two reductions of the one instructional technology position and the one curriculum um specialist position in removing the fellow we are down to a total budget request right now of 42 million one hundred 501

1:47:51 twenty two dollars um this certainly is not where we will end this discussion these discussions are ongoing um we have another budget subcommittee meeting scheduled for next tuesday and i expect we will be talking about this in more detail and moving forward in this process well don’t you have anything you want to add uh no the conversations are ongoing i checked in regularly with jason silva to make sure that we’re on target on process where we should be he continues to assure me that the process that we’re following on the town side they haven’t certified the free cash so we don’t have that number at this point i’d check in

1:48:36 with ben berman regularly in the finance committee they were on the call on tuesday and so um i think that you know we will have continued conversations and there will be tiers of things where we might have to you know draw a line but we’re not at that point so so i guess just to kind of add some color for the rest of the committee from our um good news perhaps budget subcommittee meeting is i feel like um um there’s a lot of moving parts right now so as john mentioned free cash hasn’t been certified yet we haven’t officially got our appropriation number which

1:49:21 there’s a you know whole host of reasons for that that’s you know no one’s to blame it’s just the situation where we’re in and typically that would have been you know finalized a little while ago and um in addition one of the things jason mentioned on tuesday is that because of the um i don’t even know what we’re calling it now american recovery act um that biden and the government just passed you know marblehead’s expecting um some funds to come into the town for that and so we had a discussion you know a that information has literally just been released and you know jason and the town are waiting for confirmation on what that will look like and then you’ll have to figure out how how does it make sense to

1:50:07 allocate that across the town but that is a variable for our budget for sure you know i think when john and michelle talk about our ongoing conversations that will be a piece of it um but one thing i would like to see us do um because we do have a set of priorities here i would really like to see us get to the point where we can tear those out so here are the top whatever number they are that we are we’re gonna fund and we’re gonna figure out how to fund them that’s tier one and i think you know we’ve talked about these enough at this point and i think in the meeting with the town it was really kind of those top five i think um but then tier two is you know other things that we you know want to fund but

1:50:53 they’re i don’t want to say their only wants but you know they’re they’re tier two and then the tier three things which are ones that you know if we can fund them great and if we can’t it’s not gonna have an impact right now so i would like to see us get get to that point from a committee standpoint um just so we’re all on the same page um but i think there are just a number of moving parts here and we have to just you know acknowledge that piece but i think that that’s budgeting and i’m not hearing anyone particularly michelle saying wow we’re way off john we need to be panicked i’m not hearing that from jason saying your number is ridiculous you need to pare that down it is an iterative process and i would just caution

1:51:38 that we’re not looking back and saying well this wasn’t a priority it should have been a priority each administrator presented to the committee their budget that was needs based and the time for pushback on that was during those workshops and so now that we’ve gotten to this stage of the process i don’t want to say why wasn’t this added to the budget um for sure and yeah i think that’s a great point we’re in michelle already said it like we’re kind of following the same timeline and we’re good where we’re at um but there are still you know not everything’s finalized at this point and that’s okay um and we’ll continue to work with the

1:52:24 town i think we’re in you know those conversations we’re positive as always and i think we’re all kind of working towards the same goal so sarah anybody here yes so i actually just want to point out that when we had those budget workshops where the the administrative team presented um i did start to try to dig in and i actually was told at that point that this wasn’t the appropriate time to dig in that that would come later this was for them to present we’d digest and we’d come back so to say now that that was our time is um inappropriate so i want to make sure that that we we understand that the budget by massachusetts state law is the purview of the school committee and we can ask for clarifications at any given time um

1:53:09 so i want to you know do that but then um i just to clarify on this budget adjustment tracking sheet are we currently at a delta from the historical way we find our town number i know that needs to be clarified um we are in a unique situation free cash is typically certified in the fall in october or november so we are definitely in a very unique situation that it hasn’t been certified yet um but but am i correct in that our delta if that number follows the same path as history has shown of 826 604 correct with those few changes that we made yes okay and then um to clarify what megan said you were saying with the tiered system

1:53:54 you were saying um items one through five would be like a tier one and then the ones below that line would be a tier two and possibly into a tier three we haven’t designated which specific items are but that’s where we’re thinking you know no i’m just um actually megan that’s what you said right that was a suggestion okay so we’re saying a math curriculum is a tier two no i don’t think that’s what i’m saying at all well i mean it’s below item five it’s it’s sorry i’m sorry i i wasn’t applying um the numbers on the shelf you know the the priorities no yeah because this first sheet is is all stuff that is absolutes

1:54:41 well yeah the first five are absolutes that’s why i think well no no the first eight on here we’re talking about the budget request in order of priority so the priority six seven and eight sarah aren’t budget requests or reductions okay nine through 13 sir but again just as an example because i was making the suggestion as an example yes 9 through 13. nation has not been made yet okay um and has there been any vacation from the town at all on sort of any of that okay sorry i interrupted sarah

1:55:24 uh can you in where we see the remaining four fy2 pr 22 priorities is 287 865 are you saying once we take our town allocated number our estimated town allocated number we put in our contractual obligations that’s your delta okay like um what we could apply to new things okay correct um but but even with that we’re still at the 826 delta yes yes um okay so that’s that’s a really good player for um clarification um and then sorry sorry sir can i just clarify that though that we would apply that 287 to the 826. no the 826 is after the 287

1:56:11 yeah the total of all the budget priorities after the basic you know operating costs um total 1.1 million so items 9 through 23 total 1 million 114 748 dollars so we take out that 287 the delta is the 826. okay so in other words two sorry sarah just to continue to clarify that 287 some odd thousand dollars can can be funded out of this out of these priorities at this point okay correct sorry that’s what i was trying to get to yes and that’s starting at line one

1:56:55 no it’s starting at line nine item nine okay um so if we were to fund all these priorities we’re at eight hundred and twenty six thousand six hundred for deficit from where our projection would would likely be correct okay just i think that there’s a lot of numbers going around and that’s hard under past practice yes you’re absolutely correct right right while we’re on this i’d like to you know bring up in the how i’d like us to have a discussion you know whether it’s at the next meeting or now but how we handle our budget hearing um you know i’ve done some research i’ve i’ve talked to

1:57:40 other school committees i’ve talked i’ve looked at how we’ve done it in the past i pulled minutes um you know i’ve been at you know probably the last five or so um and talked to to pass school committee members as well as masc and i think we really need to iron out how we’re going to handle this because last year we spent you know several several minutes of our budget hearing discussing if if we would answer questions from the public if we would interact with the public so i’d like that ironed out before we go into the budget hearing because there was what we’ve done in the past and then they’re the deeper past and then you know what the other town boards do and then there was what we did last year so i just want to put that on an agenda if we can and and have that really ironed out clearly ahead of time yeah absolutely i’ve been talking to

1:58:27 dorothy presser about that so um yeah i talked to dorothy the other day and had a really good conversation about it too

1:58:37 anything else megan well yeah a couple things one is i think we have gotten a few emails and there’s always been questions at public comment both in the budget subcommittee meetings and in our own meetings and i feel like the budget process you know it took me a little time to get ramped up um i’m sure emily you’re getting ramped up too and i think for the community it’s even harder because you know they’re not necessarily um you know they’re only getting information from from these meetings and i wonder if it would be useful to do like an faq for things so questions that we’re getting from the public or things that we hear pop up or you know just things that we’re working through if it’s worthwhile to kind of put that faq together similar to what we did for the

1:59:22 reopening post it out on our websites you know and some of the things we’ll cover here but maybe not everything but it’s just a reference point for the community who is trying to pay attention um i’d like to get that up prior to our budget hearing um you know maybe we can set the scene do we talk about this next week or next meeting but set the scene before we kind of dive right into the budget at the public hearing too but really just to help kind of clarify some things for the community before we get into our public hearing um i just wonder if that would be helpful absolutely i think that’s a great idea and they’re not quite sure what our process is and i think it would be beneficial for

2:00:09 us to even refresh the pressure for those of us who aren’t on the budget some pages to like know how it all works

2:00:19 um and then to speak real quick on the town potential money coming in from the the new the new round of you know covert relief funding i i want to be cautious i mean extra money for the town is great um you know and anything that could help us with those things is welcome and wonderful but i want to be cautious about being too optimistic that the fact that again a one-time revenue is what we potentially are relying on for what i see as a structural deficit in our operating budget and at some point we need to fix that structural deficit because this this reliance or this you know hallelujah we have another one of these one-time revenues isn’t isn’t good budget planning

2:01:04 budget planning budget planning i don’t think anybody has ever disagreed that there’s a structural deficit i think it’s the it’s sort of the the knowledge that goes underneath that so that we’re prepared you know i think uh you know two years ago when everything was so chaotic you know one of the things i said was i know that we need money i just can’t tell you where we need it and so we’ve been digging away and digging away at that for the past few years and there’s been you know covid certainly threw some profiles in there and um you know but i think that there’s been a lot of great work and i think the conversation about the all of the curriculum pieces is evidence of that and i think it goes much deeper and that that work is ongoing

2:01:50 is ongoing is ongoing so one thing just to add on to that sarah is you know i agree i think i said the same thing like we all agree that we need to get to that point but we need to have a plan and numbers attached to that plan before you make any kind of ask and we’ve talked a lot this year about the strategic plan and how that ties into that process so i guess for me it’s kind of getting that process underway i’m not saying we have to develop a strategic plan in the next two weeks but i would like to take that process off like sooner rather than later and starting with kind of you know looking at what the not people but roles of that what that committee is going to look like and

2:02:38 start formula formulating kind of that high level timeline too so that we can really get that underway i mean it’s one of our initiatives goals for this year or coming up on april so i would really like to see us on that because we want to get that done so that we can use the fall to do what we need to do now i think that you guys actually talking with john just the other day about as we were planning this meeting you know looking at our april meetings and and hoping to put that process out there hopefully that first meeting in april to really you know get it out there get the plan out there and then you know what those dates are and everything like just like you said the committee makeup and stuff and so that we can roll that out and and just really be prepared so that we’re ready

2:03:23 to hit the ground running on it yeah that’s something we can kind of get on the agenda for that hopefully that april first yeah that’s the plan right now just for clarification um i’m a little taken back right now to be perfectly honest my understanding was that this was a goal john had been working on was the strategic plan and i’m hoping what you’re talking about in april is is bringing that plan forward for us to talk about and kind of start to to dig deeper into not to start developing one um because this isn’t i mean if we knew if we if there was a statement at some point you know over the summer or in the fall that we weren’t prepared to go for an override because we we felt we really needed a deep strategic plan and that’s what we were

2:04:08 going to use this year for and and we’re talking about maybe talking about it in in april i hope i’m misunderstanding that and that it’s more that we’re presenting what we’ve thought what has been developed in april and digging in deeper because if not we have another discussion at hand um i that was never part of the conversation the conversation with dorothy presser in in our meeting about this was just that that in a normal year it would have taken place throughout the year and we would be having a conversation about what it is at this point but given the pandemic that that work you know that this fall was completely consumed with reopening and that this would be a situation that would go forward in the spring and in the summer to finalize

2:04:53 and the goal so was it not a goal on john’s goals that it was going to get done this year so i think the disconnect is the entry plan for the superintendent which i’ve been working on in the strategic plan which are two different because the strategic plan would have community representation and be a facilitated process that you would work on mission and vision and your strategic goals which would all have budget implications for them so the entry plan i’ve been working on the strategic plan is what you’re asking to be launched and that’s the conversation we were having this right the strategic plan i believe is on the school committee’s goals right our school committee goals had us kind of getting this underway yeah i would probably say that if i remember correctly

2:05:40 may time frame but i would like to push that up a bit mm-hmm yeah clearly i mean we’re behind the ball this needs to if we’re hoping to be ready next year for an override this really needs to be something that we we really need to pick pick up and run with

2:06:01 well i i don’t think that no work has been done like i think that you know there’s a lot of work being done on all of these pieces all the time it just needs to come together in a cohesive plan and it needs the community involvement with it like that it needs to be formalized so you know i i yeah i guess i’m i’m not understanding where the disconnect is on that so

2:06:31 that makes two of us well it was in a meeting that we had there’s been there’s there’s been many conversations about this and we went back and forth on it and we vetted these things out and then came back and picked them as goals so i guess i’m just confused all right all right thank you michelle that leads us on to school committee discussion items so i added on there tonight and um the mass physician paper was in our dropbox so the massachusetts association of the super school superintendent and then they wrote a position paper um i was talking a little bit with about this with dorothy earlier today um she had

2:07:19 thought that masc had had written it with it but i couldn’t really find that i think that masc is in support of it it’s a position paper on not going through with mcas this year um and it was you know it was lengthy um but really thorough and i think the piece that stuck out to me and why i really wanted to bring it forward to the committee this evening is because it talks about the social emotional aspect of mcas and the fact that you know our students haven’t been in buildings as much as they normally would have been and now the push is to get them back in buildings and the and the emphasis is on social emotional health so to bring in the mcas um

2:08:07 is is of concern and so you’ve got these two entities that we um you know all of us rely heavily upon saying they have significant concerns over this um you know obviously there’s a lot of politics involved at the state level as well as there would have to be a federal waiver um but i believe the push was kind of to have school committees and superintendents reach out to their local state leaders and state government leaders and kind of petitioned for this because i believe that’s where this is this would sort of need to come from as well um so i wanted to bring it forward to the committee for a discussion tonight i know we’ve had an mca conversation earlier this fall and we decided not to move forward on it but given our

2:08:53 our kind of our bit of a pivot from a focus on being all about catching kids up with curriculum to really looking heavily at that social emotional aspect of having kids in school i thought it warranted bringing it back onto the agenda particularly given this new position paper so just so clear on the direction of the conversation is it for us to take action as a school committee it can um you know it kind of depends on what the will of the committee is so if you if if we each individually wanted to reach out to our congressmen and senators we could do that or i could do that as chair and john can do that as superintendent um you know it’s sort of there that i could not get a

2:09:40 a solid directional on on what the physician paper was sort of directing groups like us to do but i again i just thought it was important enough especially given the direction that our district has stated we’re going to bring it to the committee and and have a conversation

2:09:58 so not to put anybody on the spot john and man but you know we did talk about this at length i think in december maybe um i guess i’m just wondering if those thoughts have or those positions have changed at all because you know things change on a you know pretty quickly right now in the environment so you know does your kind of stance or position on that change at all yeah

2:10:27 so i’m i i guess i it if we don’t have mcas it means we don’t have a certain layer of information so does that mean we can get it other ways yeah we can think about how else we want to create assessments and maybe look internally as a district of what we can do differently to try to get some baseline data for our teachers in the fall because being able to identify where deficits lie is important so that’s one piece of information that we won’t have to start those conversations in the fall does that mean we can’t have really rich conversations about kids and where they

2:11:14 are academically no we can um we did it before mcas and we’ll we can do it without mcas it’s just a data point and i know that the state has made concessions i know they have reduced the amount of time the test is dramatically the i think it’s a one session where in the past ela and third grade or may have been three or fourth grade was three sessions two reading and a writing and and they’ve reduced it to one session so i know there are considerations like that so i guess i don’t know enough about what it looks what it’s going to look like for this spring for kids to be able to really be adamant one way or another

2:12:00 or another or another just realizing though that that it is an indeed does give us information and it is used by staff to kind of assess their own instruction and kids both as cohorts of students and individual students so i think nan has made the case clearly for and against because you know it is um a data point and historically people that have been opposed to mcas have said that the information we’re testing in the spring and then we don’t get the results until the fall so the information is not as valuable as it could be but since things have been so up in the air this year

2:12:46 this year this year it would be avail a valuable data point against standards at each grade level in ela mathematics and then science at the high school so it takes away valuable instructional time but since we’re going more in person maybe that’s mitigated by this i do appreciate the fact that mass issued a position paper on this because i think they made the points uh why to maybe take a pass this year is valuable but on the on the other side it in the absence of an assessment system against the standards this would be a

2:13:33 very valuable data i guess the question that i would have nan maybe back to you is is how reliable are our is this data going to be should we get it because if it’s if the test is being substantially changed and we know that there’s going to be additional stress you know we know that our kids are are stressed and accessible and that these tests create additional layers of stress so it’d be even more taxing you know what sort of what’s confounding about that data and and how how much of a benefit and i know you don’t have these numbers but might you think it actually would result in so i think

2:14:19 a better group of people to ask would be your teachers because what they do is they look at the standards in a year that’s been interrupted like this one they would look at the standards that they know they’ve really spent a lot of time on and really honed in on and we call them the power standards and so they would look at those and then see how did the kids do they did better than we thought not great as not as well as they thought they you know they aren’t able to identify certain characteristics well that makes sense because we didn’t really teach that so if i was getting that information as a fur as a fourth grade teacher about a third grade cohort i would be able to see okay there are some real strengths and standards

2:15:05 and i’m gonna i’m gonna maybe lean off those because i know they’ve got those and i’m going to introduce some of the standards that didn’t get covered well last year because of time and interruption so it’s just a gateway to kind of enter into what your instructional plan is going to be but also important in that is how we as a marblehead community present mcas to kids and to parents it’s just another day for kids is what i would tell my staff as prince as principal that kids should just come and show what they know like it it’s it’s the more pressure we put on students to excel on these standardized tests the more anxiety provoking they are and

2:15:51 more resentful they are of having to take them but it it really and for teachers too we get that data is not going to look like it’s looked in the past we get that and that’s totally understandable and that we would just want this data be used internally you know and and to be used to guide instruction not to critique teaching not to rake rank teachers it’s not connected to any sort of evaluation so i think there’s a culture piece that people miss in talking about standardized testing and i’ve always been a proponent of you just come and show up and and it’s just your day looks a little bit different it’s a little out of whack schedule wise but just show what you know and then you

2:16:37 know we’ll we’ll get you outside for a little extra recess or whatever so there’s there’s other approaches to how standardized testing goes goes on in a district sarah

2:16:54 so one of my concerns where i think the point about data points is very valid um especially where you know you want to figure out what what they might have grasped really well from the year before and what you want to review however these test results typically come out you know the second week the first week of november correct they’ve been coming out sooner sarah to schools so they get dropped in what we call a dropbox for for staff um purposes parents get them much later yeah no i’m going from when we get them brought together um at the socs um so so you know that was a concern do they have them in time to really that those first few weeks in september really is when we’re doing that you know where are we reviewing will is it realistic they’ll

2:17:41 have that data point and then my next question is whenever we we change our format of whether we’re going from the park to the mcas or the mcas ii or the new like whatever the version is they say your first year really isn’t a valid um data point because you need something to compare it to so this year is kind of an odd data point we had no data point last year and then at least i know at the third grade the year prior was the first year of that that new format and the kids taking it online so they told us don’t really use this data point because that’s new so what are we comparing it to i mean we do we we where

2:18:26 where does this become an effective um data point for this year and what is our cost benefit ratio of as sarah says you know any possible additional stress although i agree with you nian i really think it’s all about the marketing of it in a lot of ways but i just want to make sure that we’re doing this for valid data points and then um the mass paper i thought was really good where they didn’t say you know let’s not do this they said we’ll support this or at least that’s how i read it but with these few tweaks um and you know some of it was that it’d not be at every grade level some of it was that it accommodate remote learners um and there’s different different points but you know it’s i don’t think it needs to be an all or none

2:19:14 so i think just to to address your your what data does it give it provides a starting point for measurement for growth so the the growth the with every year except for um third grade students get a growth percentile so you’re able to look at the growth percentile to see how much growth a student makes independently from one year to another and so that is an important piece but you’re right we wouldn’t have it for our fourth graders this year because we didn’t take it last year so we would be behind in terms of looking but if we took it this year and it was implemented again next year there would be an indicator of growth that you would

2:20:01 get for on your own student your own child and you’d be comfortable comparing this year’s test study to next year’s even though this year’s is going to be pretty drastically changed where it’s you know one day and things like that would you would they be comparable subsets to my understanding i’m not a data person i like but i do know that with the questions there’s a lot of statistics that goes into the wording and the how that all kind of gets figured out so that they’re asking questions in a way that they are an indicator of growth

2:20:42 okay nan i know i’ve hammered you with a million questions but you’ve had an answer a great answer for all of them tonight i’m really sorry but no the great support about this all thing yeah it’s great

2:20:56 either of you have any questions thoughts like someone saying yes we have to do it and then i could you know but i so yeah i’m just i’m confused what we should do because i see both sides just as important so um um i agree i think i totally value um the points man made and i think especially at the beginning of the year kind of

2:21:41 giving teachers um some tools to help figure out you know how they might have to modify the curriculum as a result of this year especially i think there’s value to that um i i just you know all the points you raise too is it in the best interest of the the time we have with the students in the classroom and the impact to them i mean i guess i would kind of agree with the position paper that maybe you know there are certain tweaks that make it more reasonable um you know i think i’d support that um you know obviously um

2:22:27 mass has kind of done their research and their due diligence and i um you know appreciate the information that they’ve provided and i thought they put into it so you know i’d probably leave for their recommendation to be honest um if i had to decide right now but i don’t know i guess that that was my question at the beginning of the conversation are we just trying to decide if we’re going to send a letter or what like what are we of the action so i guess i guess emily did you want to take one another yeah so i think nan made an excellent point about the culture of mcaf in our district and how we need to change that also i know that’s not kind of well it goes on along with this

2:23:12 conversation but we make it such a big deal i think that that also impacts our decision making so that’s something that the district probably should work on yeah yeah and i think i guess that’s man that’s one of my concerns as as i’m thinking about what you’re saying is i completely agree that it should just be another day you know it’d be great to get to that type of a culture that’s not where we’re at right now um i don’t know what our current sixth graders think of them but i know when i when my eldest was in sixth grade he knew very well that that was going to be a factor in his math placement and he was very invested in being in the the you know the accelerated track and so that was a piece for him and so and i

2:23:58 you know he’s he’s you know not he’s not alone in that and i know our high schoolers are really focused on it and that they put a lot on it so you know i i guess i just keep coming back to the social emotional piece this year um i i’ll i’ll take i’ll say where i stand i don’t i would like to write our state senator and state um representative and support the mafs position paper um i’d be willing to go further but you know for me i think that’s where i just i keep coming back to the social emotional and the additional stress um for our students and and i yeah i you know they’ll make it through it they’ll be fine and you know

2:24:43 us supporting this and telling our state reps this you know may not change a thing and we may end up with them cast um but just you know in in the spirit of what can we do to advocate for our students i think i think for right now where we’re at in this moment in time that i would like to prioritize the social emotional over the data points i think our teachers have done an amazing job and that you know i have no reason to believe that they’re not going to continue to do that as we push into the future um just sort of getting to know their things and knowing where they’re at so where this what was presented to us is it both an masc and an mass um position papers i’d like to hear from

2:25:30 john on where you sit with the mass um notes and do you support this and do you recommend it to us in you know as our superintendent kind of if you could just give us a little bit of where you stand sure yeah i i fully support the mass i’m part of the conversation they ask uh they send out surveys to superintendents about your thinking on things like this and i agree that it has been a year uh like no other it causes anxiety for teachers that the results of this even though desi promises that you know it will be used in teacher evaluation the teachers take the results of these personally and that’s what good teachers do and i think the time out of

2:26:15 the classroom uh for testing would be better spent in the focusing on the social emotional so i would encourage the committee to support the masses i can support that sarah does that sound good with youtube that um you know i can i can write up something and you know put it out to you guys before i send it just to be in basic support of the mass physician paper that was in the packet tonight yeah so just um i guess get that out to us to review and then we’ll we’ll go from there okay sounds good i can do that all right thanks guys thank you van yeah all right um so next up we’ve got a review of the policies um so the emily and i met the other day

2:27:02 on monday and we reviewed a set of policies the only one that we came back with changing this time around is the one on public comment um obviously public comment has been and it always has been but particularly this year has been a hot topic um so i wanted to go back to it and really make sure that our that our um policy was as it should be you know kind of in best practice um so i talked with dorothy presser about it last week um and she she said that it looked that the that the current one that we have currently on the books um looked good the only thing that she had in addition to is this piece that occurs in red um and it was a it was about sort of

2:27:50 criticisms that can be lodged in during public comment and that they shouldn’t take on any kind of a tone towards a teacher or it’s definitely not a student um and and that they should kind of stay within the scope of the school committee’s authority that being said they can criticize the school committee and they can criticize the superintendent um and no one member of the school committee should be picked out because we do govern as a group but that the school committee as a whole can be um can be criticized in public comment so that was her one critique on our current one so when we when emily and i and john were looking at this we pulled up the mafc policy and took that number three and changed it

2:28:36 out i will say that i think as i was doing these edits the other day um there is i think it’s in number eight number eight or number six i’m sorry number six basically is redundant and we didn’t touch that at the um subcommittee level so i would i would actually like to suggest right now that we that we remove number six and then add the um the last sentence there under most circumstances administrative channels are the proper means for disposition of legitimate complaints involving staff members add that into number three

2:29:22 um and then dorothy and i also discussed um this piece about um you know how public comment functions and you know we see different boards in town structure at different ways and dorothy and the masc policy absolutely you know supported that it’s not a time for dialogue between community members it’s not a debate a discussion um so i talked with her about some of the situations that we found ourselves in this year and and she did provide a little bit of nuance which i thought was helpful and so that’s in number eight that’s where the edition is is that is that obviously it can be taken offline and that it can be asked to be put into writing so that it can be addressed later on um outside of a

2:30:08 meeting so that we can be prepared she said you know i i gave her um the situation from last thursday when there was a clear lack of understanding about a subject that had been discussed so that we could just clear that up right there and then and not let any kind of um confusion move forward and she said yes you know that would be appropriate um but that a back and forth is not and that that’s you know that’s not best practice so that’s what you see added in red on number eight so so um what i would ask that we look at possibly is where it says however the committee can address questions as they are deemed appropriate by the chair if we make that or by majority vote of the committee

2:30:56 okay okay because i think that as it stands in robert’s rules right now anyway so if we just clear make that clear there okay

2:31:16 all right so that’s a change in number eight and then um the change in numbers is everybody okay with the change that i suggested in number six as well yes i’m sorry i’m just noting what the changes that we made so i can go back and i guess i don’t know if it makes sense to put it in the policy but i think one of the things is if there’s themes or actions to come out of it just that we kind of identify that like okay yes you know and i don’t know that we’ve had an example in recent

2:32:02 you know in recent public comment but just thinking kind of you know in my time on the committee over the past three years sometimes you do want to take an action out of it right so you want to be like okay john can you follow up with you know person a on that piece so just you know sometimes there does need to be an action that comes out of it or um you know we get themes on a topic and yes we don’t want to get into a dialogue with every person and maybe five people will say the same thing but we can say okay we’re kind of something that this is a theme and whatever we’re gonna do with it we’re gonna address it tonight we’re gonna follow up you know i don’t know i just feel like that i don’t know how we add that in here but that’s just one thing i think maybe how we handle those clarifying how we handle those i think in some ways that falls under

2:32:48 just the way we kind of operate in govern and do our job because i’ll give the example of if we have 10 public comments that say something like um [Music] i don’t know i’d like the calendar revisited then it’s become it on us as school community members in the body of the meeting not to address you know john smith and betty sue who made those comments but to say we’ve heard from our community this is an important topic and i would motion that we set up a subcommittee you know what i mean so it’s becoming on us to address their issues not directly to them but in the ways we govern yeah i’m just looking for too many pieces of paper that i write things down on because i know there was a piece that dorothy and i talked about

2:33:35 similar to being able to address a question where you know it we’re we’re not we’re not inhibited from saying you know something similar to that of like okay you know let’s that sounds like a matter that john you know that that is under the superintendent’s purview you know john can you can you you know go back to that we can add it as an agenda item at a different meeting um so i i think you know whereas it seemed in the past that it’s very much just yes ma’am thank you you know next that that there is that small amount of wiggle to address and kind of say okay thank you you know we’ve heard that um we can’t address it at this time but um you know let’s let’s email offline or you know let’s let’s look at this on an agenda at

2:34:22 a separate meeting and and bring it you know calendar even sarah the calendar comment um so that we can look at it and take action as a school committee yeah i think for me thinking about if i put my you know thinking about what i did sit in the audience it is kind of awkward sometimes and it’s awkward for us too right because someone says yes thank you very much like that that’s awkward yeah so i think if we can add some flexibility for us um so that we can take action if we need to but also so the community feels like they’re actually heard not you know just that we hear what they’re saying but they’re heard and we’re going to do something um so yeah i think adding these you know clarifying those bits yeah we um just add

2:35:07 just add just add however the committees ask questions in comments as they’ve seen as they deem appropriate by the chair and by or by a majority vote just to add that you know that way we can address a group of comments how about we put instead of comments how about themes would that work yeah and i don’t know that we need to worksmith it here but i just think you know you guys meet again and we tweak it a little bit we’re going to slow um the problem no i think you know i understand the process this is our second reading emily and i did the read and now we’re back you know we’re presenting it to the full committee for the first read and then the full committee can kind of weigh in

2:35:53 which is what we’re doing now and then next meeting this will come back for the vote assuming that there aren’t any other massive changes or or you know um issues with it i i worry that with some of this wordsmithing that’s going on right now that we’re actually getting away from policy which this is a policy and policies what we do and getting more on you know what’s good practice of you know any elected official so i just want to be clear that like we keep the policy the policy and then you know that might be operating protocols or things like that but that there’s clearly a dealing nation and i worry we’re getting a little into the weeds with this right now

2:36:34 but we’ve given you our comments and you guys can adjust as you feel necessary all right but i’m glad we’re addressing it yes absolutely yep all right so i’ll make those changes and get back to and i may reach out to dorothy another time just to sort of run some of these changes capture and end the conversations all right thanks everyone um so that leads us to subcommittee and liaison updates um well we just did policy so um and we have budget already uh facilities so we’re we’re waiting with baited breath i i would think that timeline wise it should be in within a week or so um and then as soon as we have it in

2:37:20 hand we’re ready to to schedule a meeting um and start digging in but we we really just need that assessment so um i guess i just have a little bit of a concern with facilities at this point because we’ve had some massive facilities stuff go on in the past month um and it’s ongoing and so i just have some concerns that um facilities isn’t meeting what massive facilities things have we had um we moved to um with a lot of desks and and moving classrooms and so that’s not that’s not actually like what the we don’t actually get into that at the facilities it’s more like operating systems um like structure of a building like that’s more like furnishings and equipment and

2:38:08 that that’s not something like we we don’t get into that piece um um i that’s operational for our administrators to be to be um when we’re talking about you know purchasing desks and new equipment or people like there’s budget implications with that and there’s you know we’re talking about additional ppe for older students and for teachers um i don’t know i mean you know obviously budget has heard a lot of coveted stuff um policy has done some coveted policies so i like i just i mean i’m happy to talk about it it’s just not something

2:38:53 that facilities has ever actually um done well we’ve never been through a pandemic i think i think this year is a different year because there are such major shifts happening that i would think as you know because we had facilities as part of the reopening right you know we had a facilities subcommittee as part of the or i don’t know if subcommittee is the right word but sub group as part of reopening and i just feel like especially now that we’re making kind of a big shift to getting our kids back in school which is something that we’ve been working on all year that there is kind of a facilities piece of that that is above and beyond normal operating procedure you know normal operating process no i’m i’m happy to to talk about i’m going to

2:39:39 want to run this reach out i’ll reach out to dorothy tomorrow because this feels more operational which is not the purview of the school committee but um i’m i’m perfectly happy to talk about it um it’s just not something that you know i i don’t know that we should be micromanaging john and and todd on their team on you know purchasing desks if they need it but if they want us to to discuss it prior to that happening then that’s absolutely fine i guess i just see it i don’t see it as a micromanaging thing i guess i see it as an understanding piece of you know you know where what’s going on you know what can be reported back um you know some of this comes up in reopening but um i i guess i just feel like there’s quite

2:40:25 a bit of facility stuff here yeah and i guess we have varying views of what would would come under facilities management well todd gives us an update every meeting on you know how many more filters we have or how many he has to get and yeah and that’s that’s like our um those are our operational systems like apc and exactly right but i think that’s what sarah’s getting at like the over could you know yeah what’s happening as in our facilities under like i think that’s what she’s asking as a result of our reopening plan yeah yeah okay no i mean if this is a direction you’d like us to take that’s that’s absolutely fine yeah i just think i think you know it’s

2:41:12 just kind of school committee eyes and you know oversight

2:41:21 um okay so i think there’s a metpel update um we have a lot of metco updates um the first one is that i think we talked about this before but our high school students have been going full day for a while now but this was the first week that k-8 has started um going for the whole day which has been um i think successful and has really helped them because they are a group of our students who have really struggled during the last year and the pandemic and everything and it’s been um our medical director heidi was just saying to me how difficult it’s been for them but having them back in the building and here in district um for the full day

2:42:06 has been such a positive for them so i just wanted to tell everyone about that and the next thing is that we are starting a friends of the metco program and we’re going to kick it off next week where we support um it’s going to be funds that we will raise to support the tyrone bumper scholarship which we have at the high school that um gives a scholarship to a metco student and a marvel coach student they write an essay and it gets chosen um so we do have money in the funds but it gets spent every year so we’re just going to try to um you know create money to fund that scholarship every year plus any other metro initiatives that we have at the district so that’s

2:42:52 um really exciting so that’ll kick off i think we have our first real meeting about that next week the other big um thing that’s happening is through myco inc we applied to be a part of the rides program which when we stayed at the high school um sent his application and we got accepted and the bride’s program it stands for reimagining integration diverse and equitable schools so we’ve created this equity team that will follow the ride cycle to figure out as a district what we want to do create a plan in regards to equity and inclusion and

2:43:38 take us through the cycle to get the plan established and how we’re going to actually implement the plan so it’s really exciting it goes through november we meet many many hours as a group to actually get to know each other but then get to know what the district needs in this work and it’s really great and the team is nan is on the team lindsey paige emily dean julia ferreira and heidi harris and i just want to thank them for participating in this and wanting to do this work um for our district because it’s a huge amount of time and it’s amazing and it’s an amazing group of people so thank you to all of you for

2:44:29 you know great at some point to get you know maybe a little bit more and probably have to get into it a little bit but um you know presentation from that to the school committee at some point and i think so the timeline is good um with it coming to fruition in the fall because that can tie very nicely into strategic planning budgeting so that it’s you know we can fund any pieces of it that we need to as well so yeah i’d love to hear more about it but i’m glad that let everybody know that we can um can you talk to me a little bit or toss about the friends of them how is that structured um it was very in the works

2:45:15 it was an idea that we came up with um when we were talking about the cultural fair in may um and then what else can we do and we need a way to get you know because this scholarship has been around for a while and we want to keep doing it and so how do we keep funding the scholarship um and i think to forget how them like how the money’s been i think maybe they’ve fundraised for it before i’m not exactly sure but this is what we came up with as a way to keep finding it asking people to donate and i don’t know what we decide how we’re going to go about that um what what’s the date against the cultural class uh can you email it to us yeah

2:46:01 yeah yeah i know it’s in may may 4th 14th i believe all right put that in my calendar i know i mentioned it keep

2:46:24 um i should have a cpac update i will have one for our next package sounds good they are doing good work i know that right yeah all right that leads us to the building project update um i know before the meeting david had texted me saying

2:46:45 um that everything is on schedule and on budget um and that the big news is that the marble head electric flight finished their underground power for the school this week so that’s great news sarah did you have anything that you wanted to add um we voted to approve the mural um i know it was featured in an article and it’s also been out there on social media so that was very exciting um and then we also voted to approve the landscape budget which included um you know we we did we did go into our contingency because we were over budget on that but we’re still within our mainframe of a budget um and we were able to by going into the contingency for that we were able to really secure our scope and keep that the same and that was our

2:47:32 goal for all that um so we’re in a good spot great it’s exciting yeah the mural is really beautiful i know a lot of work went into that and it’s it’s gorgeous i am so excited to see it when it’s finished all right um that takes us to new business any new business

2:47:52 um all right there are two pieces of correspondence that were put in um i apologize for how if you were put in um just to note them um the committee had received the um um it’s been a blanco uh the the petition um a couple weeks back what sarah firm support our students were you looking for the name of it yes the yeah this is the petition from support our students um so that’s in there for the official record and then uh kate thompson had written us an email uh with a letter or she wrote it to me and asked it to be put in correspondence so it’s in there just regarding um you know the work that it was done with communications and really in support of that communications position uh that’s

2:48:38 that’s in the priorities this year so just want to note those um that brings us to the second round of public comment um i’ve got two hands raised so aaron

2:48:52 thank you sarah just i just i just actually just want to thank you guys for splitting comment i think it’s so great to be able to respond to like all the lively discussions that go on during the meeting um but also provide an opportunity for people that um you know don’t i can’t can’t hang on as long to you know make their comment so um and i and i just i appreciate that there’s active efforts to address the school committee response to comments issues and i certainly can appreciate that it’s complicated it’s a complicated thing in terms of how you respond to that um and maybe you know uh what you were discussing about like how you’re addressing that would be um information that um could be important in terms of like that like an faq or info

2:49:37 info info output like um megan was talking about around the budget like maybe that becomes like a semi-annual kind of like communication of like hot topics at the school committee or something um but my real my real comment was um you know i was just kind of like taking down some notes but i would just like to see on the agenda soon like a public conversation around the general trends from our mid-year and ongoing um assessments and whether they’re aims at the elementary schools or teacher assessments about our learning loss and and also about the social emotional needs is this something that you know we’re even able to capture at this point um you know and this kind of blurred into

2:50:23 the mcas discussion right like i agree so much with um you know with nan that this is that the data collection that we get from the mcas is really um is actually is really important and i i totally respect that um as somebody who completely values like every single day at this point that my kids can attend school you know i don’t want to lose sight of like with all the modifications that they’ve made with the mcas this year i think that there’s i think that first of all the high school students who i think would feel you know the most stressed around testing at this point i think that they’re sophisticated enough to appreciate that mcas are

2:51:10 really not about them but the district that’s just we maybe you could like do a survey around that or like or whatever but that’s my understanding i know that it’s not contingent this year upon like or the graduation isn’t contingent on the mcas this year i would hate for us to lose out on that data um because it is just aside from and you have to have a really good strong like sense of um from the principles that our teachers are able to kind of be able to capture this data um you know i think that also we people are able to act out maybe that’s a communications thing like if you want to opt out you can and um

2:51:56 um um you know i just think it’s a really important tool to be able to tell generally where we have had gaps you know i know that the principals have said and you know that we are like that we are on target you know in terms of where we were last year but let’s all be honest about the fact that we’ve modified the the state has modified um the curriculum frameworks and so i just so one of the things i want to say is the agenda item that i would like to see on there is just in the coming future is about learning loss and um pandemic related educational needs

2:52:42 and because the reason that i’d like to see it as an agenda topic is because it would i seem it seems to be that it would um inform how we would spend our upcoming um esser grant money you know and i appreciate that we’ve held over some money but are we going to have some um summer learning opportunities for students who fell behind this year um you know i just think without the data i think it said so i’d like to see it as an agenda topic judge generally as a district and then in regards to the mcas and data collecting in general around this issue i think it’s very important and i recognize

2:53:28 that you know we have limited time now in person learning but i think the long-term gains from this data especially where they’ve modified this could be like a one-day maybe like half a day type of assessment tool um i would i i listening to nan i i feel find myself very much agreeing that it’s very important to have this this data um [Music] and just looking through my node center i’m sorry um um and then just in terms of how it informs how we’re going to spend our upcoming re like our relief money you know um so i i think

2:54:15 i think the mcas are important i really do i don’t unless you have a super solid confidence level in terms of you know beyond the aims assessment that our teachers and our building principles are really confident and like a general um assessment level that we could track um and collect that data so that was really what i just wanted to um express thank you aaron uh catherine martin

2:54:44 yes just quickly um i guess i’m trying to understand as we move into the budget season and the fact that one of the largest underfunded pieces of budget is actually our facilities and the lack of maintenance and the lack of planning that there seems to be kind of a misunderstanding of what a facilities committee does um they review the annual facilities plan they work on the capital outlays and they look to address long-term facilities needs and that’s exactly why you paid for that plan and i certainly hope that perhaps we get it back before the budget hearing so that could potentially be some funding of some of those needs you do not assemble a facilities

2:55:32 committee to talk about ppe and buying a few handful of extra desks it’s big picture long-term problems that you’re finding solutions to thank you thank you uh jennifer brennan hi i just wanted to first of all say sarah thank you so much for raising the issue about what’s going to happen especially at the high school level with the potential for increased quarantines um as i understand it the move to three feet raises the potential for more kids to potentially be swept up in the need to be quarantined for exposure i also i could be wrong but i guess i understood a little from you that you’re hoping to get more guidance from deste about whether

2:56:17 the distance will be reduced from six feet to three feet but even if that happens you know we’re two weeks away from these high school kids going back with no concrete plan for how to educate kids who might be having to stay home during the quarantine period and the reason i want to speak tonight you know i usually wouldn’t but at the beginning of the meeting there was lots of discussion about economic equity in the schools and i feel like this really speaks to educational equity and you know if you have kids at lower levels maybe it’s not as clear what’s going on at the higher levels but at the high school because of the contract with the teachers and the technology issues that there’s not across the board teaching of kids home and in school at the same time but what has happened is that certain teachers

2:57:04 have been willing to do this so it is conceivable that you could have i’ll just take an example a sophomore freshman i don’t know what year they take it geometry who their teacher doesn’t want to do it so they get their geometry one and a half times per week under the current plan whereas the student in the same grades teacher is willing to do that and they are getting it the maximum number of times allowed under the schedule so currently going forward in their education they will have access more of the curriculum over the course of the year now if a student is forced to go into quarantine under these the same thing is going to happen there’s a potential that students whose teachers aren’t willing to access this technology are without education for a two-week period due to no fault of their

2:57:49 own and as we spend so much time talking about the emotional health of our students across the board at the high school there’s a lot of kids who put a lot of weight on grades and stress on themselves and i think if we just think about how stressful it is to be out of school with a cold for three days imagine being a junior in high school being out of school for 14 days not accessing your classes or your education during that time so i really think some thought has to go into how we’re going to deal with this what’s going to happen you know worst case scenario you could end up with a kid who has a kid in their class who’s risky who has to quarantine multiple times you know and that would be a nightmare for some of these kids and the final thought going forward with that is you know at the high school level you have kids if you think about your juniors and seniors trying to

2:58:37 prepare for ap exams this spring missing in two weeks is a lot and if colleges aren’t taking sats or standardized tests all they have to go on is great so it just brings in a whole lot of issues that i’m glad to hear you’re beginning to think about but i wish there was more of a plan and i know my own high school student on numerous occasions has said to me i’m really glad we’re going back but there’s no plan if i you know if i’m forced into quarantine so a lot of this i’m sure will be addressed by dan it’s a school level issue but to the extent it does tie back to the teachers and the union i would hope that you or dr bucky or somebody would begin to look at this and give some more information to both parents and students thanks absolutely thank you jennifer can i just thanks jennifer can i just

2:59:23 clarify that because this did come up in our reopening meeting today um where we talked about kind of planning for that so i know dan and matt you know are working through that but the other thing that we talked about with deanna and i think and i’m sure it’s going to go out in whatever communication goes out but it was good for me to kind of understand the timeline around what that would look like to be out if there is you know if a child does need to quarantine whether they’re symptomatic or especially if they’re not symptomatic if they’re just kind of in the radius around a direct contact yeah so that timeline is like thought i think she said it so when you test it five days you’re back at eight yep assuming you have no symptoms if you’re

3:00:09 a direct contact you test it five days your you can come back on eight days with no symptoms and then you monitor yourself for the rest of that 14 days and assuming you don’t show any symptoms if you have tested positive regardless of symptoms or not you’re quarantined for 14 days right so not that we don’t have to address that gap we absolutely do right but it’s not quite as the timeline isn’t as long as even i thought it was and i think also communicating that piece to parents as well so everyone’s aware of it would be very useful sooner rather than later yeah we’ll absolutely continue to talk about this sure

3:00:55 sure sure all right thank you everyone um i will adjourn us at 1001.