School Committee: April 8, 2021

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

1:28 all right we are again i think

1:40 on this end it’s okay sarah i don’t hear any like feedback or anything okay all right great all right so we are live on youtube and i will call us to order at 601 p.m thank you for joining us everyone um we have public comments first up on the agenda so if anyone wants to make public comment that’s better now um you can go ahead and raise your hand and i will call on you if you can please remember to state your full name and address for the record that would be wonderful

2:33 all right um i don’t have anybody raising their hand for public comment so i will take us into our next order of business which is the budget vote for fy22 and i will open it straight up and ask for a motion to approve fiscal year 22 operating budget in the amount of 41 million 839 543

3:06 second emily second all right um i think it was a really great discussion and public hearing on this last week uh so if does anybody have anything further to say before i call for a vote sarah so for the first time i think in history i actually have prepared thoughts on a piece of paper um as you all know i do much better off the cuff but i know we’re short on time tonight so i wanted to make sure i got clear and concise

3:38 as a school committee member i believe one of my most important duties is to advocate for a budget that meets the needs of our students and staff and that sets our district up for educational and financial success i cannot support this budget as i feel it relies on one-time revenues to fund recurring costs i believe this to be a fundamental flaw in any budget plan it is not sustainable and only sets us up for continued financial shortfalls in the ever-present reliance on free cash which we all know is terrible financial management over four hundred thousand dollars of reoccurring costs are being funded by one-time revenues in the proposed budget that means we start out fy 23 planning

4:26 process already at a 400 000 deficit since we used the level funded plus contractual obligations formula to determine our target number additionally this budget does not fund eight items that were identified by our administration as fy22 budget priorities and does not even come close to funding the items we all know have been reduced from our budgets for the last several years to get us by i do not feel this budget funds the promises made to our community when we sought approval for funding the new brown elementary school we promised the end of transient staff we all sat through a very moving speech by our past superintendent phil davao who explained in detail how transient

5:12 staff causes a lack of parity and results in educational deficits dr satterfield spoke very eloquently of the challenges presented by managing staff shared by multiple buildings

5:28 and how whenever you need someone for an unanticipated incident they are undoubtedly in the opposite building we listen to these valued educators and agreed that we needed to sacrifice the benefits of neighborhood schools to provide the educational benefits that come with having all staff be 100 building base yet we are not funding this on day one of the new building one of the biggest areas of pushback while marketing the new school was the constant chorus of lack of maintaining what we have we were commended by our opm and the msba for providing one of the most one of the best maintenance plans for the proposed new building that either party had ever seen

6:15 and achieved an unheard of two points of reimbursement money because this plan ensured we would be maintaining the inside and outside of the building on day one the proposed budget eliminates the addition additional custodian that our director facilities spoke very astutely to us all about needing to ensure we don’t revisit the mistakes of the past and now we may be unable to maintain all the modern day elements of the brown school mr bloodgood spoke of the need for groundskeeper to maintain our new and existing buildings we have found funded an irrigation system at the new school that will need to be maintained properly as well as advanced drainage systems as we have heard from dr benedetto a

7:01 dedicated bus was promised for the north end of town when the brown school was proposed no such bus is in this budget but for me the most troubling thing is the reduction in staff at the brown school we built the school to accommodate five classrooms at each grade level and the proposed budget only provides funding for four classes at the k first and second grade levels we will have empty classrooms on day one of the 54 million dollar school we’ve heard many times this year how despite the many many hardships brought on by hybrid learning that one of the few benefits was the ability of teachers to focus on small class sizes we were told what a teacher can do with fewer students is amazing and the

7:49 benefit benefits our children schools across the country are scrambling for extra space to allow for fewer fewer students per room we have been gifted the space and we and if we budget for it we can provide reduced class sizes for next year which will undoubtedly help tremendously to close any gaps of learning loss created by the pandemic i urge you all to advocate for keeping those teaching positions to set our students up for the greatest success and to help make up for learning loss created by covet 19. i would strongly argue that this is the exact use that covert relief funding was created for i would argue that staffing classrooms that in any other year could be combined

8:34 will provide for remediation of learning loss as well as greater distancing for our student population that will be the last to receive vaccines we have the opportunity to fund through covert relief money these additional classrooms to respond to a situation that was created by the pandemic we need to advocate for all of our needs to be met we need to do everything in our power and make no mistake the budget is one of our biggest pieces of power to help our students and i do not believe this budget does everything that it could to accomplish this thank you for listening anyone else like to say anything yeah

9:19 i i do wanna wanna comment on that um because i just wanna make sure that we’re all on the same page with what this budget doesn’t does not cover um because i think from a maintenance perspective you know one of the things we talked about was five custodians right now glover has four this budget up allows for four and a half custodians without having to even add to staff so you know i actually think that we are in a good place and todd has been involved in those conversations to make sure that we can properly maintain our new school in addition in our conversations with the town the groundskeeper has come up repeatedly and we have an mou with the park and rec and i think we should continue to work collaboratively with other

10:05 departments in in town and i think park and rec is one of those so when we think about groundskeeping and maintaining the exterior of our buildings we should be working collaboratively whenever possible um on the bus piece you know john correct me if i’m wrong because i did follow up after that you know after that meeting to make sure that we were covered for our buses we can bus as we um as is required for the new brown school um we’ve got three new buses in i think since i’ve been on the school committee so my understanding is that we do have the buses and the capacity to bus as we need to for next year also in um just thinking about the reduction of staff at the new school

10:50 those reduction of staff there’s two two reasons one is because we are consolidating three schools so we don’t need two principles we don’t need however many you know like we don’t need all those staff because of the consolidation that’s a natural process of merging multiple buildings in terms of enrollment where you are seeing reduction in the staffing at the classroom level that is driven by enrollment so right now looking at john’s slides if you have 70 students and four teachers four sections of that grade we’re still at 17.5 ratio which is a very small classroom in

11:37 comparison to other districts that is a good ratio so those reductions are all based on the data that we have available to us um and i think those are all the points that i wanted to make just so that we’re all on the same page like there’s no reductions in this budget we have added we’ve added you know pretty much what you know all of the top and high and medium priorities that came out of our budget discussions so there’s no cuts they are all additions to our budget and to the services we provide our students thank you megan um anybody else david

12:22 am i unmuted i i just want to start by i want to thank um as we reach this point dr bucky congratulations on you know getting to this point with your uh with your first budget as superintendent and also uh you know michelle crosta you know with her her first full year but second year at this and and you know i know you’re out there michelle and you know outstanding work on providing the committee uh the subcommittees um the town everybody the information that they need it’s it’s just been incredibly transparent it’s been very informative and i think our budgets are more aligned with the proper expense

13:09 codes that they need to be in um you know the steps that we’ve taken to adjust um with the circuit breaker monies and not having to in the middle of the year say time out you know we’re not going to get the second month circuit breaker money that we that we thought we were going to get um and just you know fine-tuning everything to do with this budget so thanks for that and also you know thanks to to jason silva and the town for for working collaboratively to to get us to this point um along with the finance committee so i think it’s so you know it’s really exciting to be at this point you know the one comment i’ll just make um as chairman of the of the brown school

13:55 and um having been in this process for five years i’ll also say i mean we’re gonna open one of the flagship schools in the district if not you know on the north shore in the state it’s going to be a school that has all of the essential needs for a modern day education and when we went into the design with with gene raymond and we got to the point of educational design and functionality extended classrooms 25 touch screens that our new technology director came up with a recommendation um i think there’s going to be something like 500

14:40 ipads that that are going to be ordered uh along with some chromebooks for for other students um we’re going to have a very functional community space for uh youth groups to use when when school’s not in session um it will have the the second largest uh athletic area next to the village school um that we’re in making a significant investment in for the town so i i am fully confident you know having seen the process that’s in place and that you know this school will provide a really excellent opportunity for you said megan when you know we’re finally going to bring together three schools three neighborhoods

15:26 third graders for the last couple of years have had to be at village and coffin and bell and down at evoluth it’s just going to be a real exciting opportunity to uh to open that school and i think i think that speaks well and this budget also let’s not forget michelle accounted for some of the additional costs related to utilities you know just it’s a natural thing when you have modern ventilation systems of which this school will be fully air conditioned as the only air-conditioned school in the district it will allow eric and i’m sure some of the summer programs that we have that will provide a nice space for some of the summer educational programs that that may come up and that we normally have so it overall i’m just really excited about it so i

16:13 think that you know i don’t really want to say there’s any deficiencies and since we’re talking about budgets you know we’re going to deliver this school on budget on budget and and on schedule and probably it’ll it’ll come in under budget so i’m really excited about that so i’m i don’t think we have anything that’s deficient at all to do with the brown school and look forward to next year sorry i can just add one other thing go ahead and you know i think i think constructive criticism is always important because i do think that’s how we get to a better end result but i guess i’m a little frustrated at this point when we’re here to vote on the budget we have been talking about this since like well for me all year but

16:59 like in earnest you know with priorities since the middle of february so i guess i’m frustrated that we’re here to vote and you know sarah i’m all for your feedback i think that’s great but like in the 11th hour i don’t think it’s productive and you know emily asked last when we met last time like if this isn’t the budget that you want what’s your suggestion because we’re yet to hear that and so i actually think this budget delivery can i finish what i’m saying and then you can have your turn so i think this budget delivers you know almost all of the priorities definitely the high and medium priorities that we’d expect and that’s part of the normal budgeting process like you know in any budget not specific to marblehead you

17:44 don’t get every single thing that is on the list so and that is normal so again i think this budget delivers what we set out to deliver we’ve done a good job collaborating with the town in very tough times in a global pandemic so if there are suggestions it would have been great to hear that well before we come to vote so um that’s a great point megan and it was a great point when emily said it last week this all was actually a very bulleted list um of what i think we should have been doing and i’ve i’ve touched on all of these i think um extensively over the last few weeks one thing i would plead with you know dr bucky and nan and michelle to look

18:30 further into is i really really do think that it would be very justifiable under the covet funding to fund those extra teaching positions because those are teaching positions that we don’t if cova didn’t exist we would not need those because enrollment is down we could we could have those you know higher ratios than if we had those five five classrooms but i really think those five classrooms give us um a unique opportunity during covid from smaller classes um and we could you know to to create parity they could even you know offer to glovers families if you want to take an elective transfer over this is this is an option so we’re offering that parity and it would be up to them to choose um

19:15 um um but because then in those small class sizes in those foundational years we could make tremendous strides in any type of mitigation in that learning loss um with the reading and writing and those very foundational blocks and where that that is not part of the number we would take from the town because that would be through you know the coven money because it’s a situation created by kovid it might be a really great opportunity to use some of those funds and to also um provide you know those that that mitigation of any potential learning loss and at the same time you know i have to assume it looks better for the

20:00 msba for us to be using every classroom on day one than than not um but that’s that’s just an aside um but i do really truly believe that this falls under mitigation practices for any learning loss if if we can look into that more so so you just want to push back on that one a little bit because it’s not like we can’t have class sizes of 14 in one building and class sizes of 20 and 22 in other buildings and it’s not just entry it’s across the whole district so i think if we want you know if as a district we decide we want class sizes of whatever the number is 15 20 whatever it is then we should do that as part of our strategic plan and but make sure it’s consistent

20:46 across the board we can’t do it at one building that’s not equitable no no i agree that’s why you said make it available to all the elementary schools if there needs to be some movement um and it would go along the lines of bringing back our k one and two students earlier as you had suggested megan that those younger learners have a different set of needs as you spoke to in the beginning of the year and i think it would um speak to the very exact same need that you spoke to at the beginning of the year of treating those students different bringing them back sooner yes but i just think that has like if that is what we want to do as a district and that’s a decision that we make as part of our strategic plan and then we plan for it and fund for it as a district initiative not as a one-off building initiative i just don’t i personally and

21:32 i you know just my opinion i don’t think that’s the best way to go about it especially given that you know even with the budget that we’re presenting we have low student to teacher ratios they’re in a very good spot we are not overcrowding our schools 70 to 4 is a good ratio it’s a great ratio i mean it’s a really good spot to be in yeah i don’t understand the suggestion that we would ask one school student in in an attempt to help them be in smaller classrooms uproot themselves from their current building um and that that would in any

22:18 way then provide any kind of equity um you know you’re you’re given a rotten choice there um and it’s completely unfair i would be livid as a parent in the glover system to to have to make that kind of a choice and then know that other students in other areas of the district had incredibly low ratios because because we chose to fund some teachers that we knew when we were pitching the brown school we’re not going to be needed so um um we pitched that school with five teachers per grade level never never for always well i don’t want to call it a pitch i mean we we worked extensively with the msba on enrollment that was probably a six-month process

23:05 six-month process six-month process i don’t think the msba anticipated a global pandemic in which we had a marble head and an out like an outside scoring of three or 300 people leaving to private schools you know that because we’re a district where we’re many more families than a district such as lynn can afford to take a private school option yeah so um i thank you megan for writing that the record and david as well um because i just i i find it very slanted how we started this and i’m very frustrated because we have been working on this for a very long time and i’m wondering sarah if you have sat down and talked with any

23:52 of the administrators at all outside of a meeting to to work through any of these suggestions that you’ve had or if they’ve just kind of been tossed out there and then then just let to hang because everybody has been working on this very very hard and then coming to meetings and presenting the work that’s been done and it i i agree with megan i i don’t understand the idea of putting it out there of like i can’t support this budget tonight at the 11th hour um you know that’s not the job that we were elected to do i i don’t think that anybody that’s listened to anything has thought that i’ve supported this budget from day day one i have continually said that i worry it’s not meeting our needs and to say this this is the first time i’ve made

24:37 this announcement at the 11th hour is troublesome that no one’s heard anything i’ve i’ve said that you know i’ve even been quoted in the paper that i felt like we weren’t meeting our needs so this is not this is my vote in my vote field is is one way and i respect that you guys feel the in opposition and will vote the the other way and that’s that is 100 your duty in your right but we are all given a vote and i’m and i and i’m wanted to explain my vote and there’s that is that and and i think that’s fair you’re right you can vote however you want and you’re right you have expressed concerns i guess my frustration is that you haven’t offered any suggestions on how to get to where you want to

25:24 so that makes it hard to come to another solution and i guess yeah that’s that’s my frustration in this so if there are other suggestions it would have been great to have heard those at any point during this process emily did you have anything that you wanted to add um no i think everything was covered and i’m ready to move forward right um we have a motion and it has been seconded um so i will take a roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes david harris yes emily baron yes sarah fox no all right that motion passes four to one

26:09 thank you everyone john thank you um and michelle thank you and all of our administrators and our uh principals out there uh for all of the hard work that has gone into this um and you know we we look forward to next year and and doing it all over again maybe those are strong words can’t wait no dilly no i think i left the administrators out of that comment as well but i i think that’s been a really good process that’s moving forward in the district as well with the level of uh involvement so thank you for that i think there’s a lot of really great things going on in the district right now and that are our processes as we move into the future and really growing our district are are just going to kind of

26:55 continue to pick up speed so it’s exciting time john did you want to say something i thought of something i just wanted to do a positive so in this budget and the priorities we did fund multiple things that teachers principals have been asking for for years so that to me is a great thing so i’m going to end it there absolutely absolutely matt fox got his reading teacher and i’m very excited for that um john our in-person learning update yes there’s lots to celebrate about in-person learning and so i shared a presentation with the school committee which is available on the school committee website right now i’ll share my screen so that the viewing audience at home can

27:41 see can you see that right now okay so each principal provided a slide as an update for what’s happening i’ll just remind people that this was our plan to return the elementary school on march 15th for half days we can check that off they returned full in person this monday and at reopening this morning they shared some insights as to how that’s going and i think it’s safe to say it’s going well very very well across the district the kasich’s return to full days some lessons learned for sure but even more exciting for me your secondary education guy is the return of seven to twelve in their half days and uh you see that checked off on the slide um i think

28:26 that we’re taking the right approach here with bringing them back half days because we’ve already had um a first positive coveted case which i’ll talk about uh in more detail in in a minute but having that occur in the half-day structure i think is helpful for learning how to navigate that so um i’m not going to take you through each of the slides you can see that um each of the principles has provided some narrative and then some great pictures of things happening outside which we’re really utilizing our rich resources of outdoor learning spaces you see at the glover school you have some outdoor music classes happening

29:13 village uh doing some outdoor learning with some special desks that i think that their pto uh got for the students matt has given some information students back in science labs the high school they had a nice welcome back on monday uh with uh the music teachers providing some music for them student services uh provided an update they have been back more full-time in person uh but uh dr oxford talked about that transition today heidi provided an update update for how our metgo students who have also been back uh full time a little bit longer how that has gone for them and then i just wanted to make sure that

29:59 um information about what happens at the seven to twelve level because we are still six foot distance at pre-k to six and so 7 to 12 there is extensive work that has gone into preparing faculty and staff and deanna and dan did a really nice job this morning at reopening walking us through that process the case that happened here dan actually has a binder of seating charts in his office that he maintains and he and deanna are able to contact those classrooms where there was a positive case for the new moa classroom teachers are notified that there was a positive case in their

30:47 classroom they’re able to do the contact tracing we have standard notification letters that go out to faculty my letter that i’ve been sending out all year goes out for the general knowledge to all 3 800 people that emails from dr bucky go to and then the classroom level notifications from dan and deanna to those families and i just want to say that we continue to be all in this together and so families doing the right thing and um you know it was an emotional morning at reopening this morning i think that uh megan and sarah would both agree that the last thing deanna wants to do

31:34 two days in is to call a family and say there was a positive case in your child’s class you have been identified as a close contact and you know i think i would be remiss not to say that we continue to work with the board of health and follow cdc and mass department of public health guidelines for all of this work and share information and so it’s it’s a very highly structured process and it worked as we wanted it to this week and so i want to clarify that you know there are seating charts in each class mr power has an actual binder of them and so what will happen when we go to fuller

32:21 days it won’t be as easy as it is right now we’re when we’re in the half day structure but that’s why i think our approach to this was the right way to ease into because we’ve now had a positive case we’re able to deal with it and also to communicate out to the public that we have this so if there are questions from the committee i’m happy uh to answer those um no yeah um i think you know speaking from the the reopening piece this morning you know definitely was a an emotional meeting um it’s this is hard you know these kids just went back um and many of them or most of them i would have to assume um are are really excited to be there and so now it’s sort

33:08 of they you know some kids have to be home again um you know if i put myself in that position with my eighth grader that would be an incredibly difficult call to get um and if i put myself in that position as in in my school counselor role that would be an incredibly hard call to make so it’s you know it’s no one’s no one wins in these situations um but it you know we knew this going in um and and my hope is that you know we can we can see as a community just how important it is that we’re keeping each other safe and that you know when we’re masking outside of school it’s for the betterment of of everybody in the safety of everybody um and that you know our goal is to get our

33:56 community as well as as possible um you know as we all sort of await vaccination for all age groups um so you know these are it’s it’s a tough thing um and it’s going to you know i think we will get to a point you know as deanna mentioned this morning that we will you know someone will test positive and that news will come during the school day and then kids will have to leave school um and that is going to be even more difficult i’ve you know i’ve i’ve spent my days and nights reading about covid at this point and i’ve read stories about that and just how you know kids read that and everything and so i do think you know it’s something you know that we’ll end up looking into as we as we proceed forward um but you know i just again want to put in

34:43 another plug for everybody to really be masking um inside school and outside school whenever they’re you know in groups you have teed me up nicely not to cut you off megan but pool testing is that is another part of mitigation strategy that is very helpful to us and the more students that we can get participating in that the better information that we have and so if families have not signed up for pool testing the state is now covering the cost of it through the end of the academic year so i think the more students particularly at 7 to 12 our middle school and high school students and staff to get engaged in that program particularly

35:29 particularly particularly because the state is going to cover the cost for that i just think that it’s a win-win and so i know deanna is looking to work with matt and dan for ways that do not interrupt the academic day but that we can get more students and staff participating in that so that each week we have a representative sample that gives us the information that we need i think that’s a good point john especially as we move into full days for those upper grades coming off of april vacation i think that you know if we could get more participation that would definitely help us through that process um the one thing i just wanted to add on from sarah from this morning is

36:15 i think as a school committee at least i had a feel for the amount of work that went into getting our kids in person especially you know 7 through 12 with the scheduling and the logistics that go on there but this morning kind of brought it to a whole new level like dan showed us the binder that he’s got to um you know further seating charts but also in every classroom tracking movement so if you leave the classroom where are you going when do you return so that if you you know we can identify close contacts throughout their entire day um the seating you know we talked about the seating charts but i think just the amount of work that has gone into the planning and the extensive um kind of process and procedure that they

37:00 have in place um you know i was just i’m constantly impressed by our principals and our staff but this kind of brought it to a whole another level and we’re gonna have there are gonna be positive cases it is just a fact of life of where we are now um but i think they’ve done a good job putting in mitigation and tracking procedures so that when something comes up they can move quickly and efficiently which is i think what they did in this case so just big props out for everyone who’s been working on this absolutely absolutely sarah so what i thought was really great is how we could see that um teachers were utilizing that outdoor space not just

37:46 for you know the lunch and the recess but for outdoor classrooms and i think that that you know is great i mean i think it’s great even in non-cover times for the kids to get outside and to do things but it practices like that are going to go even further with the medication because the fresh air and all of that and they can space out more so it was really great to see at all different levels teachers utilizing whatever outdoor space whether it’s tinted or just open fields to kind of get those classes outside

38:22 um with the pool testing um that was my question on how that’s being kind of advertised maybe send another email to kind of push it again um because it’s been since i don’t think we’ve gotten another one since it first was um implemented so just to get more people to sign up um have people put in on every thing that they send out like at the bottom just pool test i mean there was a suggestion at the reopening committee last week regarding um a dunk tank at the vets and the high school and um you know getting a few key administrators up on there and that you get one toss you know each time you show up for your pool test um i mean i thought that was a fantastic

39:08 dr bucky asked me if it was an april fool’s prank when i relayed it to him um but i think i i would love to see that you know who should be first in that dunk tank dan circled i would not garner i would i would do it i would not garner nearly the the amount of interest though i don’t think but we are in all seriousness talking about incentivizing it for um particularly at the high school level where end of year important things are coming up like prom and graduation not that you cannot go to those things if you’re not pool tested but to to say the likelihood of those events being able to happen [Music]

39:54 [Music] [Music] is increased the better information that we have and so we’re working on making sure that people understand that this helps us to do more and particularly with end of year field day and things like that to say if you’re participating in pool testing it helps us yeah the more levels of mitigation and kind of like information that we have the more robust our programs and our extracurriculars and all the things that we can offer to our students can be i think you know that’s that anything else all right that’s the end of our agenda um

40:45 i was just saying we’ve had a hand up okay i don’t have um a second public comment since it was such a short meeting um so i would need a motion for that almost super public comment okay do i have a second a second all right all in favor uh sarah gold yes you can’t raise your hand megan taylor yes david harris you gotta turn your mic on yes uh emily baron yes in sarah fox yes all right um aaron noonan you’ve got your hand up thank you all so much i know you i know you’re our press for time um i really just wanted to uh

41:30 just acknowledge the village team and um and as a parent volunteer for lunch duty and the friday will be my third um a third time and you know it’s been it’s definitely a transition in the and trying to start the kids from um you know be getting setting the rules because these are upper elementary kids and so um i just wanted to acknowledge the fact that like on monday there were things that could have been improved and literally the next day you know steve and gallo and principal murphy had already made adjustments and tweaks and they worked beautifully um

42:16 and then you know even like literally day by day they have been able to pivot and make adjustments to the way it is flowing and going that um is is really impressive to me you know i’ve been at this stage in the game like i can’t even imagine how many um adaptations and schedule changes and logistics and things that they’ve had to respond to and it’s like day one you know it’s like okay what do we need to do and they just keep just keep raising the bar and so i just really just wanted to um to communicate that because it’s to me it’s it stood out and i and i in talking to other parent volunteers that have

43:01 been there this week um feel the same and i know that we all want to return to a normal recess and i do feel that they are on that track and they’re doing it in a thoughtful way absolutely thank you very much thank you all for the time thank you all right um i will i don’t have any other hands raised so i will adjourn us at 6 43 p.m thank you everyone