School Committee: June 3, 2021

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

0:45 no no please thank you

1:08 all right sarah fox you’re here correct yep i see you all right um i will call this meeting to order at 701 all members are present and mhtv is recording and we are live on youtube so first off this evening we have commendations and uh principal sean satterfield is here with us to talk about the coffin school thank you sarah i’m going to make it brief tonight there’s just a couple accommodations i want to make tonight the first one goes to the bell cop and neville with pto last week they ran the fun run at butthorn and also at evolut school and they did a fantastic job they raised over eighteen thousand dollars and had the children run around

1:54 the loop i don’t know if you saw the marblehead reporter article that came out just the other day but it was a fantastic opportunity a little warm but the children loved it and it was it was a fantastic event at both buildings and i really especially want to thank abby lewis and marina gamble for their work as co-presidents this year with the pto they’ve done a fantastic job and we’re raising the money for some allied arts equipment at the brown school specifically a climbing wall which i know this is mcgrath our pe teacher will be excited to have in place so i want to thank them and i also want to thank the parent volunteers that showed up on kind of a warm day it was it was kind of funny because some of the same pair of volunteers that were there watching their children helping out we’re also helping out at lunch and i think it was around 90 degrees that day so we appreciate all the parrots and of

2:40 course the pto and then i also would like to thank todd bloodgood and the custodians at coffin school but also around the district they’ve done a phenomenal job this year we were able to have with only a few exceptions i think large outside every day that we’ve been in school full days this year’s and having the tents in place and having the custodians out there helping us set up and break down has been fantastic so i just want to give them a quick shout out they were also able to repair one of the playground structures um just the other day a coffin there’s a bridge in one of the structures and it broke and they got out there within a week or so and repaired it so the children were happy they were able to get right back on that that structure so i’d just like to thank todd

3:25 as well as all the custodial crew that helped out on that

3:31 wonderful thank you so much sean um absolutely all those people are deserving of commendations for sure all right does anybody else have any commendations this evening

3:48 sarah so this being our last school committee meeting before the official end of the school year i just wanted to take the opportunity to thank all the members of our community from you know teachers tutors custodians nurses administrators um support all of our forms of support staff guidance just every piece there is no way possible that we would have gotten through this year without such a willing team to change sometimes you know direction on a daily day-to-day basis um and always come in and present a positive attitude to our students no matter what their stress level was um to the parents that you know muddled

4:34 through limping right to the end i think some of us um and most importantly to our students who you know are have done what kids do um you know they they show they showed up they it was hard at times but i am so impressed with

4:55 you know seeing our students not just what they produced how they’ve learned to advocate for themselves we’ve heard from many students this year more than we’ve ever heard from in the past at our school committee meetings and i just think that shows such tremendous personal strength to advocate for oneself and one’s need that i just i wanted to commend our whole community for getting through this year um and we’re almost there thank you sarah absolutely onward and upward for next year all right nobody else okay um i am actually going under commendations i’m going to read dan howell’s uh notes that he sent to me he is participating in senior week at this point

5:43 so i will read out all the great things that he wants to share that are going on in this district this week or at least at the high school this week um so he says this week is senior week last night the senior class had a very successful prom and despite it being in the high school parking lot all students seemed to have a great time thank you to all the parents and school faculty who helped make this night possible tonight is the senior show which is where principal bower is seniors get one last chance to show off their talents in front of their peers and tomorrow is of course graduation let’s hope the weather cooperates for that the freshman class will be having their biology mcas next monday and tuesday class officer elections for the 2021

6:31 2022 school year will be held tomorrow the june 17th school committee meeting will be dan’s last meeting he will do his end of the year report as well as introduce the student who will be taking his place so that is that for this evening i’m glad you clarified that he would be here for that meeting because i was just thinking like we have to be able to say good you know a proper goodbye to him so i’m glad we’ll we’ll see him one more time and you know anxiously awaiting to see who his replacement will be not anyone can step into dan’s shoes because he’s been amazing um you know as our student rep and sad to see him go but i know he’ll do great things yep absolutely he will um and yes he i asked him to make sure that he was okay to come back after graduation and he said absolutely he

7:16 wouldn’t miss it so we’ll look forward to one last wrap up and we’ll send him along that brings us to public comment if anyone would like to participate in public comment this evening please use the raise hand function and i will call on you if you are doing public comment just remember to state your full name and address for the record all right i don’t see anybody raising their hand at this point uh so that will lead us on to the superintendent report and we have a very exciting up hold on two seconds um cindy tower lowen actually uh raised her hand so i will if i had not officially gotten us into the next thing cindy go ahead and don’t forget to unmute yourself

8:06 you’re still muted cindy okay sorry there you go i couldn’t get in time to raise my hand so i’m going to just say two things one is that um

8:21 i’m speaking because nobody else stepped up to speak because you know sometimes having one comment is all you need

8:33 so my comment is i want to thank dr bucky for

8:42 coming here and making a difference in terms of what i’m seeing in terms of the um social racial justice front and um and embracing it and um we have not had that before and so i just want to um give a shout out to dr bucky because um it means a lot to many of us in the community and and i know the school committee is behind it and so it’s twofold but um for him to even take the stand and make a statement it’s a huge thing a huge place to be

9:28 and i just want to thank you um and i appreciate everything that you’ve done and i know it’s not been an easy year by any means for anybody taking on the role of being a superintendent let alone a new superintendent so i appreciate that and i appreciate the work that the school committee has done to make this happen as well and that is it thank you thanks cindy can you just give me your address really quickly just for record 12 trinity road thank you very much thank you all right i also have paul baker’s hand up

10:06 yeah hi sarah um paul baker 79 overlook road i just wanted to say thank you to the entire school committee you guys um never signed up for clover19 you signed up to be school committee members and i think the way you’ve handled this year has been amazing i mean you’ve put up with them okay okay you’ve all um stood firm in the face of all of that you’ve conducted yourselves really well um i just thank you for doing that and the fact that one of you is stepping up again for election and a former uh committee member is also stepping up to get back on that after what you’ve all dealt with is is extremely impressive and i just thank you all for volunteering your time over

10:52 this past year two years three years how long you’ve been on here and um i know you’ve been supporting dr bucky in his new position and what a what a year for him as well but um i think you’ve done really well and i appreciate all your efforts so that’s it thanks very much thank you paul all right so now can you let gina hart in because oh great uh that will lead us to our social emotional learning presentation under the superintendent’s report so john i will hand it over to you i’m very excited for uh this presentation because it’s really the culmination of a lot of hard work and you’ll hear student voice uh loud and clear but before you do i want to turn it over to uh gina hart and jamie slavitz uh and

11:39 the support uh staff the high school who will give a brief intro into what you’re about to see thank you thank you and thanks to the school committee and dr bucky for having us here to talk about the nhs social emotional learning survey this survey was part of a larger scl initiative involving dozens of students teachers clinical staff administrators and community members who came together to work on classroom-based sel activities to pilot new sel supports for students collect sel data and try to get the word out in the community about sel and mental health resources at nhs so thank you to all of the students and adults who worked on this initiative gina hart is going to introduce the

12:24 amazing work of her senior project students tess keaney and chloe pickering on the sel survey we also wanted to thank dr scott solberg and his grad student i am kim from bu and from merrimack college dr april bowling and her student maggie hickenbach take it away gina

12:46 thank you thanks for having us and i won’t i won’t say too much jamie really covered the larger sel initiative which has been going on and um i’ve been really lucky to kind of get involved and just like he said oversee the data collection i i was really lucky enough to have a relationship already with chloe pickering and tess keaney who had asked to do their senior project with me we did a lot of great things throughout their senior project learning about mental health meeting with different professionals they had the opportunity to present to our central admin about the analysis of risk behavior data relating to use we did a lot of great stuff but a large portion of what they focused on was collecting data around social emotional learning what they did was they looked at a survey that was sent out earlier in

13:32 the year that collected some great data and they updated it they changed the questions to be more from a student lens and they really took this into their own hands and said like this is how students are gonna really answer this they made it anonymous they made a lot of great changes to the questions and we got a really great response we got almost 500 responses and really where we are going to see in the presentation is how they interpreted the data and they’re really really impressive and so again just really lucky to have worked with them and we hope you enjoy this and also um it’s really important that we use this data to inform you know programming moving forward it’s important that data just doesn’t just sit we we have now

14:18 this information about where our students are at so that we can create a culture um for our students to feel comfortable and to support them in the best way so that’s that’s my overview and we hope you get something out of the presentation thank you just a quick question for both of you do you want me to play the presentation or would one of you like to play it and i can allow you to share your screen oh you can play it if that’s all right i’ll try hopefully my sound will work i’m a little nervous about that but i will do my best

15:18 all right thank you everyone for being here i’m tess keaney and i’m chloe pickering and we are here to talk to you today about the marbled high school social emotional learning survey results so going into this survey we had several questions that were on our minds that we wanted to be answered we wanted to know how going back to school has impacted the mental health of our students we wanted to see if there are any patterns that could be drawn from the data we wanted to see if one grade was struggling more than the others we wanted to see if students weren’t saying that they were struggling but their answers reflected signs of struggle and we also wanted to see if this data could represent our school well yep so for sample size so this is really important in representing our school well um we had a lot of responses um for a sample size we

16:04 distributed our survey out via email through our principal mr bauer um to all of our students at marbled high school so we were hoping for a lot of responses and we did get quite a few um so obviously overwhelmingly we got a lot of answers from the sophomores which is 184. um not so overwhelmingly we only got 53 answers from the seniors um we’re going to blame that on senior slide but so we took their answers with a grain of salt but for the freshmen sophomores and juniors we felt that those numbers could accurately represent them so our first question we asked our questions basically on a scale of one to four whether the students strongly disagreed with the statement they agreed with the statement or they strongly agreed with the statement so our first question is i am feeling confident in my

16:49 ability to successfully manage my classwork and homework so we wanted to see how students comfort levels were with their workload and if you look at the data the graph we are seeing that um students are feeling relatively uh confident in their ability to successfully manage their classwork and homework you’ll see that as the grades get higher they are feeling less confident this could be due to um more rigorous courses more workload you know they’re closer to graduating college so they have a lot of other things going on so that uh that kind of makes sense and this is just a data another form

17:25 and then for question two so it was i have an adult in my life that i can talk to about school my emotional and mental health um so we thought this was a very important question obviously for students who do struggle or even students who don’t it is really important to have a support system especially an adult you trust and can talk to um so if you look at the next slide you can see in the data pretty overwhelmingly a lot of our students felt that they did have someone that they could talk to but there was still a pretty good percentage of students who didn’t um so i think our most important thing is making sure that we can reach all of our students through our teachers our staff and just really get at them for support so not only is it important to have an adult that you can uh trust and talk to but it is important to have that peer connection so our third question was i have peers in my life that i can talk to

18:10 and trust so if you look at the next slide you will see that overwhelmingly students feel they they do have peers and friends that they can talk to and trust which is very important

18:23 yep and then so question four um the pandemic has impacted my ability to connect with teachers in a meaningful way so again this kind of plays into having adults in your life who support you um so obviously to have a good learning environment it’s very important that you have connections with your teachers um if you go to the next slide you can see the pandemic has definitely influenced our students and how they’re feeling towards their teachers um if you look here as the grades get older particularly the seniors they had a really hard time connecting with their teachers so obviously again in the pandemic we were remote online so it was really hard for students to make that connection but as we returned we could see that the numbers were still pretty high so i think for next year if we can use this data for anything it would be to make sure that teachers and students are getting that connection that they really need so the next question is i have personal

19:08 goals and doing well in school will help me achieve these goals so personal goals or lack of definitely show signs of depression if students are reporting they don’t have goals if they aren’t looking forward to things that is a clear indicator that they are struggling with their mental health so the percentages are definitely higher in the later grades because the end goals are clear if they have college so they have their plans in the future it’s a little bit closer for them to see so um yeah this this uh this graph shows it in another way as well yep and then question six this one was pretty straightforward just i enjoy school um so if you go to the next slide you’ll see some pretty 50 50 numbers um it is very concerning that a lot of our students don’t like school albeit it’s pretty normal um a lot of students

19:54 struggle it’s a stressful environment but if you go to the next slide you’ll see that the only grade that was over 50 for enjoying school and agreeing with that statement was the freshman um so it’s definitely concerning that our juniors seniors and sophomores are under the 50 mark for enjoying school um so definitely something we should work on so again we asked i look forward to resuming in-person school activities that haven’t been possible during the pandemic we wanted to make sure with students returning to school that they were seeing the light at the time at the end of the tunnel they were looking forward to these in-person activities returning to life before covid so if you look at the data it shows that many students are looking forward to resuming their in-person school activities that weren’t possible during the pandemic

20:41 yep and then for question eight another pretty straightforward question i’ve been struggling with my mental health um so if you go to the next slide you’ll see that a lot of students did report that they’ve been struggling with their mental health and i think something important is the fact that students can acknowledge this one thing that we really were interested in was to see if students like showed signs of struggle but wouldn’t necessarily say that they were struggling which we think is a big problem in high school so if you look as the grade gets goes on um students have been struggling more and more so i think that again kind of plays into the fact that junior and senior year can be a lot more stressful you have college applications going on etc maybe more rigorous classes but sats yeah it’s definitely concerning that almost over 50 of our students at all times are dealing with mental health issues and i feel that that’s something

21:27 that should be addressed and you know just make sure our students have the support that they need so question nine was i look forward to my future plans and goals we wanted to make sure that students were thinking about life after covid with the vaccine coming out with um restrictions being lifted we want to make sure that their excitement maybe that happened before coped was also happening after coba that the pandemic did not diminish these schools and these thoughts and these future plans so um as the data shows overwhelmingly students are looking forward to their future plans and goals which is a good indicator of yeah and then so question 10 my motivation and work ethic has declined over the course of the pandemic so you know starting off the school year remote i think a lot of students got a little lazy remote work was obviously just not

22:12 as rigorous as regular school is you don’t have tests it’s mostly just busy work online and it’s really hard to learn over a computer so if you go to the next slide you will see that a lot of students agreed that they felt that their work ethic has declined um so then if you go to the next slide you can see that as again as the grades go up um students feel that even more their work ethic has declined again i want to blame the 87 on the seniors to senior slide but um even the 11th grade up at 72 if 72 of our students the majority are feeling that are losing their work ethic that is a large number and definitely going to be a hard adjustment when students come back hopefully to all in person school next year so our last question was i feel safe returning to in-person learning with combined cohorts so this survey was sent

22:58 out uh sometime in april when we were rolling out the plan of both cohorts returning so we wanted to test uh students comfort levels with this so if you go on to the next slide you will see that uh majority of students did feel comfortable returning to in-person learning with combined cohorts but that does not mean we can’t take into account the 30 of 10th graders who didn’t feel comfortable um the 32 percent of 12th graders who didn’t feel comfortable we need uh school to be a place where everyone feels comfortable because how are students supposed to be the good learners that they are if they are feeling constantly uncomfortable worried nervous about the pandemic yeah and then so at the end we compared our question are you struggling with your mental health we looked at all the questions on our survey and we found the

23:43 significant predictors of struggling with mental health um so these are the questions that we pulled out for students who did report that they were struggling with their mental health how they answered the other questions so the first one was they don’t enjoy school so for the students that reported that they don’t enjoy school they’re 2.6 times more likely to be struggling with their mental health which is obviously a concern since we saw that almost over 50 in every single grade reported that they don’t enjoy school um the next question we found significant was decreased connection with teachers you were 3.5 times more likely to struggle with your mental health so i think this just goes to show like truly how amazing a student teacher connection can be and i think it’s just important that although we struggled with the pandemic we really get back into that you know having a student teacher connection and

24:29 making sure that all students feel safe and supported in the school the third question we found to be a significant indicator was the decline in motivation um so students who felt that their work ethic had declined were 4.1 times more likely to be struggling with their mental health um so obviously as we discussed earlier these things kind of go hand in hand you can start slipping in school with your grades and then over time you may just become less interested in things that you once loved or you can really be struggling with your mental health and that affects how well you do in school so i think that’s something really important to see and then lastly and this was a big one um for students who had no adult to talk to about school and their mental health they were 13.2 times more likely to be struggling with mental health so as you guys know as administrators as some of you are parents um

25:15 we have an opportunity here to reach out to students to get them that support that they need as an adult um so if we can get every student in our school to have an adult that they can talk to that they would be 13.2 times less likely to be struggling with their mental health and that’s amazing all right um and then so some things that just go into mental health these are kind of what we centered our questions around so academic self-efficacy decreases so that’s kind of like loss of motivation etc that can make a decrease in your mental health um if you’re struggling in school and you’re super overwhelmed um that will definitely reflect in your mental health another thing future orientation so that was our questions about are you looking forward to your future plans you know um do you know that school can help you get

26:00 there if students aren’t focused on their future and they don’t really see the light at the end of the tunnel it’s going to be really hard for them to get things done and to you know go about their daily lives and then academic stress increases so school can be stressful some of it’s healthy stress but especially with pandemic when it gets to an unhealthy level of stress where students are constantly feeling anxious and just like they’re drowning in school work that’s definitely going to have a negative effect on their mental health and then lastly social connections and support so you know losing an adult in your life not having peers to talk to if you don’t have that that’s definitely going to affect your mental health because it can lead to just bottling it all up or you know finding unhealthy ways to cope which is not what we want for any of our students so with the data that we collected we wanted to get some feedback so we

26:46 designed a focus group and we conducted that focus group with mr bordeaux’s math class so his math classes mostly consist of freshmen and juniors but there are a handful of sophomores and seniors so we sent out a series of questions via google form at the beginning of his classes um i think he gave probably five to ten minutes for his students to fill all uh the questions thoughtfully so out of these uh questions we had 70 responses and it was mostly qualitative data so we could hear uh direct quotes and feedback from these students although there was one quantitative data question so although this is not entirely representative of the entire school because it is in uh mostly two grades and only 70 responses it still is a good indicator of students

27:31 overall feelings and emotions right now yeah so as you guys saw we asked students if they had been struggling with their mental health and we got a lot of you know strongly agrees and agrees um so we ask students what specifically has been impacting you and how has this impacted your ability to do work so you can see one student said my motivation has decreased significantly i started to feel very anxious and more often another student said adhd and anxiety and they’ve impacted me because my adhd makes it hard to do work but then my anxiety comes in because i can’t do the work and i stress out a ton so they’re obviously struggling with several mental health issues and maybe having that support could help take a load off uh another student said no i’ve been regulating my mental health in fact i’ve grown tougher mentally because of all the hardships i face so that’s obviously on the more positive side um so again there’s a wide variety but it’s nice to

28:17 see these responses so another question we asked this is the quantitative one we um said many students responded that they do have an adult to talk to in their life so we wanted to know if these students have an adult actually at the school that they can talk to so while 78.6 of students did respond yes they do have an adult at the school they can talk to 21.4 reported no so while there is an overwhelming amount that do we still need to accommodate the 21.4 percent we need to make sure that every single student at the high school is accounted for and they do have a teacher a coach um a guidance counselor or clinical staff member to talk to yeah and i also think it’s important to note that mr bordeaux actually sends out weekly forms to his students and he’s the one that sent this out and he gives

29:03 them the space to talk about you know how they’re feeling how they’re doing with their mental health so this could be very skewed data because he might be the person that they’re saying yes to um so then the next question so as you guys saw we asked if students enjoyed school um so we asked students if they answered no does this reflect your general opinion of school or is it just due to the pandemic um so we got a wide variety of answers again one student said i think mostly because of the pandemic it has taken a lot of the fun elements out of the school year which we obviously felt as seniors who lost a lot last year lost the beginning of this year and it is hard um another student said i’ve always hated school the pandemic has made me hate it more so that’s obviously a concerning answer we want all of our students very honest yeah um how can you learn effectively if you’re not enjoying the place that you’re in um and then that’s been said

29:49 this is due mostly the pandemic in my opinion school is much more enjoyable when there aren’t so many restrictions when we have more free time and freedom to take a break or see friends so hopefully returning to in-person school allowed them to see more friends but there’s not much we can do about the restrictions but hopefully we can make school a little bit more enjoyable as time goes on so the last question or this is the last question another question we asked is if the uh pandemic has negatively affected their work ethic and students responded that it had so if students found this true we wanted to know if their grades reflected this decline in their work ethic so one person said yes i am now a professional procrastinator and it has negat it has reflected negatively on my grades particularly my test grades because i put off studying until the last minute another student said no for me

30:36 personally i was able to complete all my work because there was more time another student said the pandemic has positively affected my work ethic i went from c’s and b’s and ace to a straight a student so clearly there is a wide variety and a very big spectrum of responses yep and then the last question we asked was in regards to if students felt safe returning in person school as we’re now back in school fully um so we asked if students were concerned um and so one student said i did not feel concerned i’m returning to school i wanted to see friends that were in the other cohort so that’s kind of one side of things you know not too worried and just one ready and eager to get back in school another person said my concerns have less incense returning i feel safe and comfortable and as more people are getting vaccinated my comfort level is continuously increasing so this is one we obviously love to hear obviously the school has been very accommodating of

31:22 everyone’s needs and according to this person is doing a great job another person said my concerns have not lessened due the amount of staff and students i see incorrectly wearing their masks or seeing them outside with large groups so this is actually we got this overwhelmingly that students weren’t wearing masks properly and the staff not wearing masks properly is obviously a concern as well so that can there can definitely be something done about that yeah so thank you guys so much for listening to our presentation um if you have any follow-up questions you can email heart.gina at marbleheadschools.org um thank you so much and yeah have an awesome night

32:05 all right um unfortunately those two seniors are not with us this evening um to ask questions of them directly but um john did you want to say a few things before i turn it over to questions from the committee yes absolutely we should rightfully be wowed by that i have done a lot of educational conferences where presenters present doctoral level research much less eloquently than that from their presentation to the research that they did to the analysis that they did of their research we’re rightfully very very proud of both of those young women yeah absolutely that was that was better than the psychology research i presented

32:50 my senior year of college so all right um i will open that up to the committee now sarah i see your hand raised go ahead and gina and miss heart and dr slavitt are here to to speak to any questions um i i was very impressed this is their senior project i believe um that you know they were deeply invested in this you can tell and presented very well so i think both of those young women should be very proud of themselves um one one thing that i found very concerning was that more than one in five of our students say that they don’t feel they have an adult they can speak to at school that’s significant to me more than one in five that’s i i don’t know if that’s a typical

33:38 statistic but i i just was wondering if you know there’s going to be some work in trying to um improve that over you know in future planning i’ll uh jump on that one sarah that’s okay yeah i think that um the whole sel initiative that we spoke about earlier came out of um you know folks in this meeting and other places who clearly didn’t feel supported didn’t feel like they had someone to talk to we have some great resources available at the high school and in the community as well but part of our challenge is getting the word out getting people to be comfortable using the resources that we have available so

34:24 yeah that work is definitely happening now and will continue to happen in the future

34:35 megan so that was something that stuck out to me too um you know just thinking about students who don’t feel like they have someone to talk to you know is really hard to to hear so i know the surveys were anonymous so it’s just you know making sure that we can identify those at our students and you know get to them i think especially with summer coming on that i think is one thing that is just in the back of my mind how do we make sure that we’re not going into summer and leaving kids unsupported um but aside from that piece um amazing job by these students um i have to echo what dr bucky said because it’s not just the data collection but the analysis and

35:21 understanding the impact of that data and the critical thinking that goes you know into that is really what we hope to you know those are the skill sets that we want to see our students leaving the district with so i think amazing jobs supporting them an amazing job by those students also

35:39 i guess my question is it sounds like this has done a good job of highlighting the issues or maybe the areas that we want to focus in on so i’m just curious what those next you know are there kind of are we at the place where we have next steps identified or is that the work that still needs to be done

36:03 i think i think the answer is both that um we’re looking at the data as a faculty dan has sent out um the data to all all the staff members and teachers here at the high school and we will be having further discussions about how to um you know continue to meet student needs

36:25 thank you thank you uh emily go ahead

36:33 um so i also was concerned about the um same statistic of so many students not having an adult to talk to but also another big one for me was the student teacher connection that the girls talked about because i believe that’s so important um i don’t know how we can work on that but i think it’s another one from that study that to really focus on would be that to really make sure our teachers are connecting because that can have such a positive impact on our students and again i know the girls aren’t here but they did such a wonderful job i told chloe when i saw her the other day how wonderful she did in the last presentation so when i see her again i’ll tell her but

37:19 it’s really impressive to see what they did and um great job thank you can i just go back to one thing that megan brought up in her comment so we did do sel surveys in the fall at the high school and bats and we asked some pretty similar questions and that survey was not anonymous and and the purpose of that was to reach out to students who endorsed items like they don’t have someone to talk to at school and other items that were of concern so we did do a non-anonymous survey in the fall but uh chloe and tess were pretty adamant that they would that we would get better data if we did an anonymous survey and just focused on that and i definitely

38:06 think they were right yeah i know i i agree with that point and that’s good to know so thank you and i think that’s one of the things i wrote down in my notes too is that it will be interesting to see if we can repeat the survey in the fall how that data changes so if we can continue to kind of follow this process through and see how things change as the school routine gets hopefully you know into a more normal normal circumstances in the fall so i’m just definitely interested to hear what comes next sarah did you have something else that you wanted to say yes i’m wondering if anyone can speak to if there has been any professional development planned and funding allocated to specifically

38:52 deal with um the idea that there is a decreased student to teacher connection which obviously leads into the fact that more than one in five feel they don’t have an adult to talk to so um at the school so i’m wondering this is an area i would think professional development is needed um and i want to make sure we’re we’re allocating funding to that and then i would hope that this survey or a very close version of it would kind of be re-implemented maybe at a various points next year so we can show data points that we are improving in these areas that we we know we need to improve yes we’re planning to do through the chair sorry

39:37 we are planning to do a summer survey before we leave for the year for parents to get a sense of where they feel their students are and to also make resources available over the summer to parents who might be concerned about where their student is i do think there is a piece to any survey about timing and so that connection piece i would venture to say was impacted by covid so you were separated from your teacher and the people that you were connected to for a long time and so as you’re coming back getting this survey saying do you feel connected covid may have impacted the results of those but i agree that continuing to use

40:23 surveys like this to track data will inform things like professional development if you give it again in the fall and there is a dramatic increase because summer’s been normal and people are coming back to normal school and they’re feeling good and feeling connected then that would make determinations about what professional development offerings you would you would pursue the other thing is um what we did and jamie can certainly speak more to this as well is it it the data really showed you know like what program do we need to look at obviously we’re talking about that connection piece what’s great is that we we have been focusing on that a bit this year and it i think it shows that we need to expand we did social emotional learning pods that um dr slavitt kind of oversaw we had clinical staff and support staff

41:09 kind of meeting with all like groups of teachers throughout like i think it was a four-month period we met five or six times and it really focused on the student teacher connection and skill building around that and we got a lot of good feedback around that we got some um constructive criticism about how to make it better and i think this survey just informs the fact that we need to like expand upon those as we move forward yeah i think it’s really telling that you know i’ve you know obviously i’ve worked with both of you professionally and so i know firsthand how much support that there is at the high school and how and how high caliber it is and so i think you know we i believe we have the the bones well in place for this and so some of this may be simply um you

41:54 know reaching out to students and and letting them know how to access these resources that we have already in the school um so that they can do so and and really take advantage of that because i think from what i heard from the data it’s that they didn’t feel that they had someone um not that there was a maybe i missed it but not that there was a decrease in that feeling um so i think it’s important to just sort of you know target what we need to target and i’m really glad to hear that we’re going to be able to put that survey out to parents because i think this came up in reopening um last week when it was discussed about the need to really be able to um not only hear what students are reporting but then take into account and to affect um what parents are seeing at

42:41 home as well because sometimes we know that that can that there can be differences in what is being reported from one group to another sarah did you need to say just just to clarify one point so dr buck your answer is pd as the pertains to this has not been planned for and funded for next year but it could possibly you’re willing to look at it depending on a round of surveys in the fall but at current it is not planned for and funded um not at the specific high school level but i know that nan was working with sean satterfield on some stuff for the brown school in the fall i think that she was talking with mandy murphy for village i can get you an overview of pd offerings for the next meeting if you

43:27 like that would be great and then when we do these surveys i just want to make sure we stay as closely aligned to what we did here because if we keep changing the format i.e um anonymous non-anonymous and the questions they’re not valid data points like you you need continuity to form obviously the valid data points so you know the hope is that this work these girls did which was one absolutely wonderful can affect change and you know and can get get us highlight the areas we need to improve thanks everyone deandra i see you have your hand up but if you could wait for your comment till public comment um just because with the agenda we tend to stick to the professionals that we’ve got sort

44:12 of within that group um i’m sorry i hate having to do that but um just to sort of stay on on the agenda but we do have another public comment at the end of the meeting too

44:25 all right anybody else um with any questions emily did i see you had your hand up again okay all right well thank you so much um jamie and gina this was wonderful and thank the students again as well you know i know that they’re having fun as rightfully they deserve to with their senior week but we’re really grateful for all the work that you guys have done and all the work i know you also presented to the mental health task force from the board of health that’s you know working on a bigger community aspect to this so it’s really great information that’s going out all over the community um and and i’m we’re you know we’re all really grateful for it so thank you thank you all right john would you like to

45:12 continue yes um i’d like to thank megan for the next part of our agenda i was going to say for keeping me honest but it might be more holding my feet to the fire um whenever she comes in to meet with me there’s this running record of things that have been discussed at meetings and trying to touch base on where they are so that they don’t fall off the radar so when sarah and i were making the agenda i said why don’t we address each of these things that have come up in previous meetings just to update the community on some of these important initiatives and so first it is introducing our new metco director uh deandra williams um she has joined the district i think she is in week two but i think already done a month’s worth of

45:58 work but i just wanted to dish to deandra to say hi and give a brief introduction of herself

46:09 hi everyone good evening um first and foremost thank you for [Music] having me here and having this opportunity to um just connect and think about this work as we think about how do we create spaces that support all marblehead students and to really just be in this field um to be in this field and in this space um so i’m very excited and yes this is week two and it has been um very a mix of emotions right like in the sense of like it has been a mix of um exciting to learn about some of the different things that different schools are doing and how they are thinking about um inclusive spaces and settings to support um students and just also to you know some of their goals and to be

46:55 able to be in a position to support them with that work so i am excited it does kind of feel like um a lot of work that’s being done but at the same time it’s it’s all good stuff so i’m excited about this work and just to be in a position to do this um just very brief uh background about me but i’ve worked for i worked in admin for over 10 years in terms of school work and had the privilege and um pleasure to work in the greater boston area both for boston public schools um and with cambridge public schools and to do some work around that collection and implementing systems to improve student achievement so i’m excited about this part

47:35 thank you deandra and welcome uh to the marblehead public schools family and to your first but not last school committee meeting do you do you mind if i just pop in sorry so um d’andra welcome really nice to see you at our school committee meeting um just so the rest of the committee knows dandra did um attend our reopening our last reopening meeting and she’s adding value from you know day one with suggestions on how we can look at things maybe a little bit differently so it’s great to have you on board not only to support our mecco students and with some consistency they’re moving forward but also to help the district with inclusion equality and all the work that we really you know are looking forward to to doing so welcome it’s nice to see you in

48:21 person and you know lots to do you got a lot on your plate girl so so uh the next thing on the agenda is a bus uh transportation update i know that just benedetto dr benedetto had come and given uh an overview of some proposals and those are still uh very much being considered but um stephen quiatek and michelle cresta and todd bloodgood

48:53 adopted a software program which will really kind of revolutionize what was just kind of random busing in the district and look at where people live who’s eligible for busing and so i asked stephen to be here and if i can share my screen he’s going to give you just a one to two minute overview of the program that has been adopted and what it will be able to do so if you can see my screen i’ll have steven take it away thank you dr bucky we looked into several pieces of software and we knew we wanted to have a hosted system we ended up choosing school bus manager and one of the processes that we do yearly

49:40 is to do a distance from school from each student’s house to the front door of the school so this software will provide us that distance from school without having to really do that manual process that the district’s been doing for so many years now it also allows us the ability to create zones throughout the town and be able to choose how we want the buses to be able to travel so you know if we’re in the old part of town and the big buses can’t get that way we can use software and tell it which buses or which vehicles we have that can make it to certain areas are best to use for those travel another great piece of it is a field

50:27 trip tool which allows our staff to enter in on through a website a field trip request which can then be planned out and tracked through our through todd’s office um and then it came down to price too uh there are so many different softwares that we looked at out there a lot of them are just kind of too much money for what they offer and so this school bus manager ended up giving us a really good price and the price will uh even go down next year as of uh having to pay for the startup cost

51:10 future options that we have for the school bus manager will give us if we decide to add options in that is gps tracking for our buses they offer a bus tablet for trips so the tablet would actually be on the bus and provide information to the driver as well as information back to the district and uh it also offers up a parent app so without if you know kids are out on a bus trip to a field trip you need to know when the bus was going to ride back you’d be able to log in and get that information so it does offer a lot of extra added options that we can add in the future if needed so thank you stephen and i think that he

51:57 doesn’t give himself enough credit because michelle cresta said that his negotiation skills for choosing this program were an extreme value add to the district so in terms of uh busing it is a bit of a chicken or an egg we’re going to input all the information into the system and we could send a survey out to eligible families to find out how many eligible families would want to take advantage of bus transportation or we could send a general survey out to everyone in the district and determine how much interest there is again with many things it comes down to a capacity issue

52:42 capacity issue capacity issue we have a certain number of buses in the fleet and we have fewer drivers than we have buses todd is working with a couple day shift custodians and we’re willing to pay to send them for their cdl license and i think he has a couple we have had that posting for a bus driver up for the better part of a year and maybe now that kovit is loosened and that uh there could be interest but i just didn’t want people to think that there wasn’t work being done on bussing and it really is a july once routes are determined we have not done a bus registration but once we get the data back from eligible families or families

53:28 in general we may have to go to a registration and then a lottery system if there’s more interest and then you’ll have to make determinations we’ll have to make determinations on things like high school middle school eligibility for ridership and communities have different uh opinions on that do you want your first second grader on a bus with a 10th grader again most 10th graders don’t want to ride the bus but some families of 10th graders want them on the bus so there’s all the questions are not answered this evening but i just wanted to let the committee know that we have adopted the software program and we continue to make forward progress with determining busing routes in in town for next year

54:22 um well i’m very happy we have this program you know which is something you we need and will be useful i feel strongly we have made no progress dr benedetto sent an email to the school committee nine months ago it is our purview it is outlined by dessie in documents she forwarded us that as a school committee we could respond and create a policy where we could choose to bus children who don’t have safe routes in fact it is prescriptive by desi that it’s not just two miles it’s two miles of a safe route with all these stipulations nine months later we’re talking about having a survey

55:11 um and and we have no you know we have a member of our community uh you know i feel like there’s a doctor in the middle of a pandemic taking the very little free time she has doing a tremendous amount of research sending it to us and we’re saying we’ll do a survey and maybe get you an answer like this is something we should have handled months and months ago we have multiple parenting and giving us evidence via pictures and roots and safe routes has come in and done an audit that we’re not providing a safe way to school for their students and it’s been nine months this is not progress this is a slow roll to the death of a program i saw no funding allocation for additional routes in in the budget for next fall um we can and should have done better by

55:58 these students and by these families and i for one apologize because i wish you know this didn’t take us nine months to get to this this point i i think that we at this point should have looked at at least a policy and vote it you know maybe it fails maybe there’s not the will of the committee to provide this new policy but to at least voted on one looked at one developed one something um i don’t know i think we we need to do more in this area by a lot

56:32 megan so a couple things one is um i’m gonna tell you right now i’ve followed up with john on this a number of times and that’s why we’re actually talking about getting the pilot off the ground in september which i believe is what we committed to but i think sarah also like i guess i’m a little bit i don’t know what the right word is but if you felt this way then you could have had it put on the agenda or talked about dr bucky but now that we’re ready to move you know like i guess i just don’t see any other action happening until we get to the point we’re ready to move so i think john is ready to do a survey not to see like so that we can gauge capacity because we’re at a very different place now than we were back in i think it was february when dr benedetto

57:18 presented to us because now our schools are open we’ve got schools back back in as much of a normal routine as possible and that’s you know now we can kind of plan forward for september having a better idea of what school is going to look like and so my understanding and anyone correct me if i’m wrong is that we committed to getting this pilot off the ground in september and that is what john is doing we’ve got the software in place we’re looking at the routes we’re trying to determine capacity so we know exactly what students are going to ride that bus so could we have moved faster maybe maybe but at least we’re now we’re moving and the commitment was for a pilot in september which is still my understanding what we’re committing to but please someone correct me if i’m

58:03 wrong if we’re not if that’s not the case if i may i i’ve sent several emails back nine months ago and dr benedetto when dr pedro daddo um brought this to me and sadly i was told um in multiple replies that i was the only school committee member that even bothered to respond to her so this is an issue that’s long-standing this is an issue you know i talked to john on the phone about and i don’t i didn’t hear a commitment to implement a pilot or funding allocated to it i heard in commitment to do a survey and talk more about it and i think what we need to start doing is more action and less you know years of talk

58:50 i mean i don’t want to get into like a back and forth i have reached out to dr ben odeno a few times and talked to her at great length at this and that’s why i’ve continued to follow up with john on making sure that we will be in the position to offer the pilot in september which my understanding is that how that is how we left that presentation

59:19 so sustainability i have met with sustainable marblehead uh a couple times and i think they are probably the most popular group for planning for success i think three people left that meeting and immediately reached out to them some topics that we have talked about and hopefully i can clear up brown school will be the

59:42 poster child so to speak for sustainability so i know there’s concern about polystyrene across the district i share that concern but brown will have a kitchen so that you can wash cafeteria trays and cutlery and those trays have been ordered and the cutlery has been ordered and there’ll be refillable water stations there so i just want to clarify there won’t be polystyrene at brown and i’ve met with richard to talk about how that could roll out to other schools and there is a cost differential and so maybe that’s a conversation about lunch prices but i know that we’re all committed to the elimination of

1:00:28 polystyrene across the district we’re supporting their ocean week which i think we are in um composting is something that i think that there were a lot of initiatives that were set to launch in uh then covet hit and so the roll out or expansion of composting from the high school to the middle school to village um all of the principals have interest uh in composting the busing idling campaign certainly sustainable supports uh us being able to have more busing although i think they wish that they were electric buses but that could be a budget item for funding moving forward

1:01:14 talked about recycling and different trash receptacles at the schools so that when there are recyclable materials that everything’s not just going into an education campaigns and so they have been a remarkable uh partner for us and i would be surprised if in our planning for success sustainability uh is not uh something that is part of either an objective or an initiative in the near future

1:01:53 so um we had as part of um our facilities master plan discussion we had invited sustainable marblehead to the table um and they came and it was it was great they were part of the conversation at an open meeting and brought their list of requests and i have to say the vast majority of them um are extremely light lifting easily implemented things we should have been doing for years um they are and have been a great partner in saying you know is funding your problem because we can maybe help like tell us tell us what your needs are so what we came up with was there um is no reason whatsoever that we

1:02:39 should not be opening schools on day one this fall with recycling and composting at every school um not only is this you know something most of our kids are used to in our homes but it’s just a no-brainer it’s something we should have been doing for years it’s you know i it needs it needs to happen immediately um i’ve spoken you know and invited andrew petty to come to our next meeting because again if you know you have this idea but you don’t implement the buy-in from all parties it’s it’s not implementable um he he was wonderful in that they can support purchasing the receptacles for us they can pay for the service they’ll organize it um very very supportive of every all of this um i would

1:03:28 may i you know polystyrene is something i’ve heard for you know a very long time that we are gonna we’re working on we’re finding way but one thing i’ve never ever seen is the budget for it to be replaced and as we all know the only re like we are not using please in our schools because we think it’s a good idea we’re not using it in our schools because anybody is confused that it may be healthy for our students or our environment we’re using it because we don’t fund not using it and at the end of the day that’s what this is about so i would say that i would like a commitment from every member of this community committee that we will fund with a line item

1:04:14 getting rid of the polystyrene not in a year or two years because we’ve been hearing that for years it needs to happen i will make a commitment i will make a motion that we put that we fund no more polystyrene moving forward next school year so i guess i’m making the motion to eliminate polystyrene from our schools

1:04:39 on day one of the school year 21 22. sorry john sorry john did i misunderstand your update and that that was what you were aiming to do anyway yes okay so that’s what we’re doing that’s what you’re moving forward on no matter what yes okay the discussion where you have it funded we will not can you make a commitment john right now that we will have no polystyrene in our schools after the end of the after you know two weeks from now school year yes i can make the commitment but i can’t make the commitment that lunch prices will not be affected

1:05:20 so if we say there’s no polysirene which i fully support and i think richard does the funding for that may have to come through an increase in lunch prices so do you support raising lunch prices i support our town and our district doing doing this the right way i mean do like we’re gonna make parents pay to keep their kids safe and healthy i i mean why was this not this is a priority for so many years and a talking point why have we not funded this why why was this not funded what was what’s the price by the way megan because i know you did research on what this costs i don’t have it i do not have it with me i’m sure we can get that from richard because he did the due diligence you know before covet happened last year but i guess i would

1:06:06 say before we can commit to whatever you know whatever the the source is we need that you know john for you to come back with the information and then we can make that decision and it may be a number of different avenues but i think first get the information and then we’ll decide how to move forward but you know i haven’t heard anyone you know i guess what i have heard is john make that commitment what did i miss what’s unsafe about our school’s lunch program it’s unsafe yeah it leaches into into food yeah yes interesting so i have a motion on the table is anybody seconding it i guess i guess

1:06:54 it’s not that i don’t disagree with the concept i just don’t think it’s necessary for us to vote because john has already said that that is what he’s moving forward on and he will come back to us with more information so that we can make the necessary decision so i don’t know that it requires a vote from the school committee quite quite personally because until we have the discussion on that right now it’s operational right yeah i agree that it’s operational um obviously there’s a budget piece to it um but it’s at this point it is operational and i think we have all voiced support over getting rid of the polystyrene and i don’t think anybody around this table wants to see it continue um and so operationally you know

1:07:40 i think john is working on figuring that out

1:07:46 let them let the record reflect there was a motion that was not seconded emily um can you just john say again what was in the update that because i remember reading it about richard saying he wanted to or he could look into using more sustainable packaging like what he’s been using this year yeah is that what it was he was just looking into it i can’t remember exactly what it said much of his packaging this year has changed over to biodegradable or more organic they’re not serving lunch in the traditional form this year so the polystyrene trays are a bit moot at this point but the commitment is not to have them when we open schools right but there was something that we got that said that we could do that next year or

1:08:32 he was looking at ice right it was in he has done he has he has okay so it’s in process yeah to look okay

1:08:48 did you want to move on to bike more sure

1:08:53 bike moore uh was able to do the remediation work at green street and i think they have one more meeting uh on june 10th to wrap that up but they did remarkable work and the volunteers went in and they did the mitigation work around the wetlands area and the resource area and so that work has been completed town council has provided the access agreement template and a use a user agreement but uh jason would like to meet with me and pat from bike more to go over the liability piece which was a section in that agreement that town council had some question marks and

1:09:40 highlighted and then there is a use agreement fee and that will come back to the school committee if that’s something that you just want to allow access to the land but there’s a meeting next week we were hoping to have it this week so that this could be more of an update update because i know that megan’s going to ask me about it again but next week we should have an answer and hopefully the bike more folks can move forward with the use agreement with the green street property um the bike more group did an amazing job on that remediation it was i was floored with how much they were able to get through in such a quick amount of time and it looks beautiful over there so it’s really exciting to see this moving forward

1:10:27 i appreciate everyone’s hard work on it because i do think especially as we get to summer and schools out um that it’s an important piece and i would i’m excited to see it uh kind of come to fruition great

1:10:44 move on to our retirees i think so yeah thank you this is a fun part and lisa in my office has made it even more fun uh because she has asked our retirees if they would be willing to come on camera one to be recognized two to talk about something that they will miss through retirement but maybe more importantly something they’re really looking forward to being able to do in retirement and we are so so blessed by our educators here and so i will go down the list and the first one is actually uh leanne fairbanks who retired in december so she’s in the heart of enjoying her retirement uh second grade teacher at

1:11:30 coffin who i believe is a remote teacher for us she’s been with the marblehead public schools since 1998 leanne fairbanks

1:11:41 hey can you hear me okay good all right i panicked a little bit earlier because i realized at the end of um zooming you know this year my audio wasn’t working well on my computer so well thanks so much for inviting me here tonight it it means so much to be recognized for something i think so many of us pour our hearts and souls into um so thank you for the past 23 years 23 years or so i’ve worked with so many amazing people in this district i remember telling dr bucky um at the very beginning of his time with us that we have so many bright uh creative dedicated fun teachers who are doing incredible things in their

1:12:26 classrooms and i’ve always been inspired and proud to be part of such a wonderful group as you know i retired from teaching in december of 2020 and when asked what i miss about teaching i always say it’s the kids i miss seeing when non-readers all of a sudden become readers all the aha moments that you get in in first grade which is what i taught for most of my time nurturing their thirst for knowledge and giving them experiences that allow them to grow and appreciate all that’s around them um i miss listening to uh i really actually what i really miss as well is laughing with them we laughed a lot in class and and that i do miss i’m just sharing the outdoors with students um i

1:13:12 miss listening to kids as they turn over stones and branches uh to see what’s underneath i miss hearing a student say miss fairbanks i can hear the wind in the trees i’m just sitting under the trees is it sprinkling and seeing the joy on the children’s faces because they aren’t getting wet i miss doing yoga and mindfulness outside with the children this is always a very special time for me i miss reading their writing and i i miss listening uh to them read i miss a lot i have to say on this a lot but what i miss most is hearing their thoughts about anything and everything it’s the simple little things with kids that um can spark such meaningful conversations

1:13:58 and conversations where i learned so much and for which i’m so grateful um and as i said that is what i miss most about not being with the students i’d like to add though past students have gotten in touch with me over the years and just yesterday in fact i had coffee with the past first grade student who is going to be 30 oh a few months so how lucky am i uh to still be hearing what my students are thinking and wondering as adults what will i do now i’m going to continue to follow my heart when i put in for early retirement three years ago it wasn’t because wasn’t because

1:14:43 sorry it wasn’t because i was done with teaching it wasn’t because i was unhappy it wasn’t because i didn’t still love what i did it was done with a desire to reinvent one more time i remember talking with donna zasky at that time about what i’d like to explore when i’m done teaching at the end of 2020 and i’m now excited and happy to be exploring these things in more depth time will tell where i end up or what i’ll be doing but as my colleagues know one thing i will be doing for sure is taking a trip to the nordics to see the northern whites which have been planned for february this year actually and there is of course friends to visit books to read time to be spent on the water

1:15:29 walks to be taken with my dogs and just being present and enjoying every single minute so thank you so much for inviting me here tonight congratulations leanne thank you thank you so much can i jump in really fast sure leanne had both of my boys um and so i just want i don’t know all of the teachers on here tonight but i definitely know leanne and i just want to congratulate you on your retirement and leanne is absolutely a teacher’s teacher she just is a phenomenal resource of knowledge and the way she works with kids and the the progress she gets them to make was it was always mind-blowing to me um so enjoy your retirement um i hope to see you around town um you know you’re just

1:16:15 you’ve been a blessing and uh and have fun moving on thank you so much thank you and definitely please let us know about the nordic lights the the northern lights that’s always been on my bucket list so my students have heard about them for years and years so a dream come true for me that’s great and i just want to tell leanne she is missed by many include by our family definitely thanks sarah thanks so much our next retiree also uh retired recently in march of 21 lynn hollian the library media specialist um lynn what will you miss about teaching and being the library media specialist and what are you looking forward to in retirement

1:17:02 well i’ve already started mine so but um i worked in the marblehead public schools i started 18 years ago and i worked there for four years so i’ve been around for a while but um i was supposed to be the storyteller and what i miss most is the stories that the kids told me um they always would point out the things that we tend to overlook as adults um and they constantly were reminding me of what was important um so right now i’m teaching some of my friends and their children how to sew and knit and play the ukulele i’m having the ukulele club and i’m also working with the revere historical society and we’re trying to document the last 50 years of history there true storytelling

1:17:49 so i’m still doing the same thing just on a little smaller scale and most importantly i am trying to apply the lessons that the kids taught me which is to stop and smell those roses growing out in my front yard and take things a day at a time so that’s where i’m at thank you congratulations lynn congratulations not joining us this evening but retiring from the veterans middle school as a technology education teacher is dale nick nicholson she has taught for over 25 years in the north shore region but has been with the marblehead public schools since 2015. so we wish dale nick nicholson a wonderful retirement lisa quillen

1:18:34 lisa quillen lisa quillen is a glover first grade teacher has been with marblehead public schools since 1989. so lisa quillin good evening good evening you asked me what i will miss about the teaching experience i guess i will miss the spontaneity the innocence the sheer joy and the humor that children reveal to me on a daily basis as our link letter has said kids say the darndest things some days i’ve had to refrain from laughing out loud over the years of teaching i’ve recorded some of their witticisms which are truly

1:19:20 priceless so tonight i’d like to share some with you my class went over definitions of discrimination racism equality and justice one student raised his hand and asked mrs quillin when it’s hot out how come men can take their shirts off and women can’t

1:19:43 one of my first graders told her mom mrs quillen kissed a man at school today first i thought he was an astronaut but then i realized it was definitely her boyfriend maybe her astronaut boyfriend to be clear my husband came to my classroom at lunchtime holding his vespa helmet yes i kissed his cheek i had just come back to the classroom after having eye surgery when i took the students on a ponding field trip i asked a parent for assistance descending some steps explaining that i had trouble with depth perception one boy asked his partner what that meant

1:20:29 right on cue his response was she can’t hear either eating has always been my passion and i’m so glad that i did what i loved to do for over 30 years i have no idea what the next chapter of my life will be but i am ready for some new adventures awesome thank you thanks for sharing those our next uh retiree is meredith reardon who is a vets guidance counselor she has been here for over 10 years 13 years and she is not able to join us but she sent along the following i will miss the day-to-day interactions with the

1:21:14 marblehead public schools children and their families as well as the fabulous faculty and staff i’ve worked with at both mhs and mvms over the past 13 years i plan to travel hike kayak play the guitar join a choir garden and volunteer at the boys and girls club of america so congratulations on your retirement meredith the other recently retired staff who will not be joining us this evening but i do want to recognize our barbara helena a glover school principal in marblehead public schools since 1998 she retired in march of this year peter lawton a village school custodian

1:22:00 in marblehead since 2011 retired in april lee webster a glover tutor in marblehead since 2003 retired in december and i certainly would be remiss not to recognize principal donozzaski who will retire at the end of the year and i did not check with donna to see if she were going to be with us this evening so i don’t want to plow forward and not give her an opportunity to say what she will miss and what she is looking forward to in her retirement donna

1:22:39 i’m trying to unmute hi everybody um i’ve been so lucky to be here these last 10 years um i’ve had wonderful relationships and support from families and definitely my teaching staff the kids definitely give me motivation every single day to come to work being an administrator is kind of like living on the edge there is no doubt this year we’ve all been living on the edge but i’m up for new exciting adventures sorry i didn’t have my screen on and you know can’t wait just can’t wait well very much congratulations donna and each of our retirees from the

1:23:25 central office will be getting this marblehead public schools crystal apple and so congratulations to each of our retirees if i could also uh just uh donna i just wanted to thank you for your the last five years of service to the building committee and brown school project um hopeful that you know you’ll be there on the first day when the students go in the door and you and sean and the educators have played a significant role in the educational design of the school and um i guess if you’ve been here 10 years that occupied half of your career here at marblehead as well so thank you for all that you’ve done you know on that side to bring um the new school to the district

1:24:12 thank you david i appreciate that and thank you as well donna donna had both my boys as the principal at bell um i think you may have talked to one of them a couple of times um and you have you know you are always on the lookout for their safety and their well-being and you know sort of guiding that school so you will also be missed donna and thank you that concludes the superintendent’s update all right thank you john um and best of luck to everybody that moves us on to the schedule of bills uh let me pull that up so can i please get emotion let me scroll down please uh

1:24:58 to approve the identified schedule of bills totaling three million nine hundred and forty two thousand three hundred and thirty four dollars and twenty cents so moved megan moved

1:25:15 second emily second did anybody have any questions on any of the pieces in that one all right um i will roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes sarah fox yes emily baron yes and david harris yes all right that motion passes five to zero thank you everyone all right so that moves us along to the superintendent evaluation summative report um so everyone um got their reports in later last week and lisa and i have spent quite a bit of time um putting the evaluations together and um i am

1:26:01 just going to go through and try to highlight a little bit of it um talk about our process a little bit and how we came to the um the ratings that we came to um and then i will open it up to the committee for discussion so i will start with the step one um access progress for assess progress towards uh goals and the first goal is the professional practice goal so part of that there were two parts to that and john’s um goals and one was the new superintendent induction program um two of us said that he had made significant progress uh two said he met that goal and one said that he exceeded so lisa and i took that and met in the middle and said that he met that professional

1:26:46 part of that professional practice goal the second part of that was the budget and um one member said that he did not meet it three said that he made some progress towards it and one said that he exceeded that um so that led lisa and i to rate it as some so you will see that since he since it’s got one was met and one had some progress we went in the middle of that that he made significant progress towards that goal the next on that list is the student learning goal and that is the john perform school visits and educator evaluations and two of us said that he had made some progress two of us said he made significant progress and one said he met so we chose

1:27:32 the significant progress and the last on that list is the district improvement goals first within that is the leadership team development two of us said that he made some progress two significant progress one met and so we chose significant progress and then under the supporting the needs of students and families in an increasingly diverse system three said some progress one said significant progress one said met and so there was a significant progress and some progress this one was a tricky one so we broke it down a little bit further five people within that within the two things of that within the district improvement goal five people had said some progress three said significant progress and two said met

1:28:19 so we did go in the middle and show significant progress for that as well

1:28:25 um the comments that we sort of put together underneath that section were that um generally the committee felt that the fact that cobid had impacted basically everything about dr bucky’s first year and it was evident throughout all the summary comments um it was reflected in some of the ratings uh by some members it was also noted that it shouldn’t be a reflection on dr bucky’s commitment to these objectives um simply progress towards them uh it was noted that he prioritized reopening became a member of the building committee participated in the new superintendent’s product induction program and created his entry plan and while there is continued room for growth uh dr bucky was given a rating of proficient by the committee so

1:29:12 that’ll move us next into the standards so for standard one which is uh instructional leadership there was one goal underneath this one chosen and that was evaluation which ensures effective and timely supervision and evaluation of all staff in alignment with the state regulations and contract provisions all five of us rated dr bucky proficient in this writing and basically to sum up those comments the adoption of teachpoint which is a standardized evaluation tool that will be used across the district was consistently noted as a positive improvement and moving forward a focus on mentorship was desired as as to as to kind of what dr bucky could

1:29:59 focus on next year standard two is the management and operations and there were two pieces that we looked at underneath that first was environment and it which is develops and executes effective plans procedures routines and operational systems to address a full range of safety health emotional and social needs three of the committee members rated dr bucky proficient on this two and two exemplary uh the second piece in standard two was fiscal systems and it was developed a budget that supports the district’s vision mission and goals allocation manages expenditures consistent with district and school level goals and available resources

1:30:45 two said needs improvement three said and three said proficient for fiscal systems so we ended up meeting on the proficient for each one of those some basic comments to sum that up was that safety health and social emotional needs were recognized as clear priorities of dr bucky’s this year and it was noted that it would have been a difficult year for even a seasoned superintendent within the fiscal systems piece it was noted that although the budget priorities were that were identified by district administrators were almost all funded members felt that the budget generally does not meet the needs and the vision of the district there were noted reasons for this but the hope is that the planning for success initiative will lead to a deeper understanding and more advocacy for the

1:31:31 full needs of the district moving forward standard three which is family and community engagement also had two pieces that we looked at the first was sharing responsibility which contains the information on continuously collaborating with families and community stakeholders to support student learning and development at home school and in the community and all five of us rated dr bucky as proficient under that standard the second one within that is communication which says engages in regular two-way culturally proficient communication with families and community stakeholders about student learning and performance one of us rated dr bucky as needs improvement one is proficient and three is exemplary

1:32:17 and we went lisa and i went with the exemplary there with an average rating um within that standard for uh proficient some of the comments to highlight was dr bucky’s cons dr bucky consistently utilized the eagerness and expertise of the community stakeholders throughout the year in many ways he prioritized communication in things like the back together mhd site twitter buyer side chats weekly updates and many other examples and that dr bucky empowered the administrative team to have ownership of their own domain it was noted that continued expansion of public forums with two-way discussions that address comments questions and concerns would be a good move to go forward and lastly standard four the first piece to that one was a

1:33:02 commitment to high standards which means it fosters a shared commitment to high standards of service teaching and learning with high expectations for achievement for all um one member noted that he needed improvement and four said he was proficient so we went with proficient and then shared vision which is successfully and continuously engages all stakeholders in the creation of a shared educational vision in which every student is prepared to succeed in post-secondary education and become a responsible citizen and global contributor one member said needs improvement one said proficient and three said exemplary some of the highlights on those comments were that john sets high expectations for himself and his staff he values collaboration and strong positive

1:33:49 working relationships he offers as noted by one committee member uh the foundation for leading the district out of the pandemic and back to building a culture of high standards continued work supporting a budget that will achieve those high standards and shift the focus to student achievement will be a good next step so obviously there are a lot of other comments within each one of those sections but i went through and just tried to highlight some of the thinking i wanted to make sure that everybody knew how lisa and i had gotten to the um the for back of a better word the x marks on each of those boxes um so i will turn it over to the committee um for any questions comments and thoughts sarah

1:34:35 so i so i have some concerns about the summative um evaluation i i feel that you know any evaluation that you know i would assume we’ve all had and i would hope we’ve all been in a role to give before um should have clear very clear areas um that identify obviously strengths but very clear areas where we want growth that we want improvement um because this is an evaluation of this year but it also can work should work as a framework for goals moving forward i don’t feel there is that clear delineation of areas of um

1:35:20 of needed improvement i do feel it was outlined in individual reports by some people but i didn’t i felt it was missing from the hole and then my my other concern is we have um in the summative report given dr bucky exemplary in two areas i think as an entry level superintendent i’m very hard-pressed to give anyone exemplary the idea of exemplary means that this is the level to which others should strive to achieve um it means we’re not looking for further growth that he has mastered the skill um i don’t even think this is particular bucky i think any person and the first year in their new role to say

1:36:08 that it’s exemplary um i’m very very hard-pressed to to give that beyond that when you look at um the individual reports um i don’t think the numbers add up to that i think that you know proficient would have been more appropriate um just you know and and that is by no means a knock on dr bucky it’s just if we’re not clear on areas that need improvement then we’re not setting him or our district up for success and to say that a standard is exemplary having never done a job before nine months in is really saying you know that the seasoned superintendent should be looking at the way this is done in doing

1:36:54 it versus you know you’ve done good in these areas and let’s have further growth also um so i i think that we have to be more cognizant of identifying areas of growth um because you know that’s what is going to serve dr bucky the best and our district the best um and i and i feel like that was somewhat lacking in the summative report and i and again i don’t feel that the summative report was as in line with the compilation of individual reports

1:37:33 um so lisa and i had outlined uh how we were going to do this moving forward last week and so we had said that you know we’d look at how many where the you know majority had fallen and stick with that so we we wanted to stay true to that and not sort of insert our own judgments on that um and then also as far as the summative uh of you know the the comments go um most of what was in there were various quotes from everyone’s everyone’s individual reports um you know we again did not want to insert our own thoughts other than you know my thoughts that i took from my own report um and so we tried to be very careful for that of that um so you know

1:38:19 if people want to add things that’s absolutely fine i just wanted to kind of you know sort of recognize the process that lisa and i tried to use um in an attempt to really let all voices be heard and not put our own stamp on this so so and we we did talk about the process and i do agree where exemplary would be a standard i would um i would suggest that the standard used is exemplary i would think really would would need a super majority to kind of i mean exemplary is as as we it is the definition of the word um and i just think you know with someone with someone who is

1:39:04 you know entering this field it’s you know it’s a hard thing to say that was achieved that’s that i can take that point uh david did you have some comments yeah i’d just like to um you know start off by thanking all the work that you did to uh pull this together of course all the members for submitting um the the report it’s it’s uh it’s in-depth it’s it’s comprehensive and in addition to that all of us received um dr bucky’s summative report thank you very much dr bucky as many of us are not education professionals um while we get reports throughout the year

1:39:49 and during the year and um we hear from different groups and we hear from different principals and teachers in this presentations to get an idea of where we’re going in certain areas it was very helpful because dr bucky’s summative evaluation was was very honest thorough he identified areas that he wanted to continue forward with goals for next year and i think um certainly when we have our summer retreat and we start working through the goals i’m sure dr bucky will be well prepared to um you know work with us on developing those goals i just wanted to say one thing you know i’ll use a little bit of a sports analogy here and excuse me if people don’t know but you know um fred lynn came into the american league baseball in 1975

1:40:35 in 1975 in 1975 and he was the first person to win rookie of the year and mvp of the american league so yes it is possible to be exemplary in your first year dr bucky so um i was one my my summary is um

1:41:14 we can’t hear david oh no sorry you can’t hear me now yes yeah so um the whole couldn’t hear me the whole time just just about the last just about something else’s mic turned on it became an echo so it was hard to differentiate okay right and so that was just where i wanted to put that in so i think it’s um you know there’s a lot of information here a lot of work went into pulling this together and it’s it’s available for you know anyone who’s interested in it but i think it also creates an excellent baseline for moving forward uh next year and i know dr bucky also had some uh 360 feedback that came from his staff where he you know he was able

1:42:01 to get information and i’m sure he’ll be using those those things to develop his goals going forward so um i thought it was a really um thorough process overall

1:42:17 so i want to thank sarah and lisa for spending the hours they did compiling all this i know it was not an easy task and also like david said dr bucky for sending us your evaluation that was super helpful for just like all the data points that they kept talking about i do agree with sarah though i was surprised that there was exemplary selected not that you don’t deserve it i haven’t seen what everyone else put yet um but i was under the impression that that was kind of first season superintendent like it’s the ultimate goal but if i do believe if other people put it on there and it was the majority then that’s what stands but i just

1:43:05 um wanted to say that one thing and um i also agree that there could have been more um information about improvement on what happened this year although again this year was you know difficult but just using this as a tool to move forward um i think that could have been helpful i don’t know if we need to do any changes but just thinking about next year when we do it again um we’ll obviously have done it once maybe it’ll work out differently i don’t know but so that’s just my two cents about it and that’s it megan did you want to have anything um yeah i mean i’ll repeat what everyone else has said like thank you for putting you and lisa

1:43:50 for putting all the hours of work into this i um at first pass it didn’t seem like that big of a job but once you you know once you kind of write everything down and then you’re like now you have to compile basically five documents of you know making sure that everyone’s kind of not only heard but that you’ve incorporated everything that is you know a big chunk of work so thank you for that and john um your self-evaluation was helpful especially the slide deck that you prepared and it was kind of nice to have that look back over over the year because a lot has happened um i think i do agree with sarah and emily on having very significant they’re not significant but specific um i don’t know if it’s steps or items but specific things we really want to see

1:44:37 going forward especially where goals weren’t met so the goal wasn’t met so what do we need to do for next year and i think it is embedded in the document as you go through but you know i think for next year just adding that into the summary would be helpful i think it’s there i think it would just make it a little bit easier if it was in that summary piece um and that said you know i mentioned it in my individual assessment is that there were goals that weren’t met and again i think you quoted mine when he said it wasn’t for lack of commitment just you know the situation that we were in but we do have to just be clear that they weren’t met so now you know making sure that we follow through on those items um i will say that i did give um

1:45:23 dr buckley exemplary on the communication piece and the reason i did that was because i think from day one he came in and made significant improvements to the amount of information that was available to the community at large and if we’re going to compare him to seasoned superintendents he’s gone above and beyond the season superintendents that we had in this district previously so with the back together website with his fireside chats with his weekly updates ensuring that his staff does that as well and with their regular communication out to the community he’s done town hall style meetings so i really think he did go above and beyond that it doesn’t mean that there isn’t

1:46:08 room to continue to grow in that area but i think he really added significant value in that area to our district um but that said i didn’t you know i i think i was fair in the ratings where the goals weren’t met and why they weren’t met and what we need to do to meet them going forward so i did just want to highlight that exemplary one because i get it you know i had a hard time giving that marking too but if you look at what the goal we set him and if you look at what the rubric says in um you know the deci template i think he did meet those um so you know i guess i tried to be as fair as possible with what our role as school committee members was and that was these are the objectives that were set and did he meet those did he

1:46:55 deliver on those objectives and in some case yes and in some case part way and in some cases not quite um so i think this is a fair assessment um and i’ll stop there i think i’ve said everything i need to say well and so part of this process if anybody wants to add any pieces you know that i’m not opposed to that you know this is what lisa and i came up with um in really looking at everything and so if someone feels that they’re that something within their voice because obviously we didn’t get to add in every comment um so that some piece of of what they wanted to say is not in there and they know where they want to put that in um you know that’s absolutely fine

1:47:45 um where this isn’t due for a bit of time still and we in we do have another meeting before it’s due i would suggest that we not vote to approve it yet but where three members have said that they would feel more comfortable if there is a clear goal or not goals areas of growth or areas of that we’d like to see work done however we want to phrase it i think that would be very helpful um for maximizing the impact of this document to um to clearly outline those if if you will um and then you know also if if i don’t think it’s you know i always say i don’t think it’s right for us to be wordsmithing in the middle of the

1:48:31 meeting if we want to um take this time to email sarah and say this section i felt this was really important that this statement was here could you include it um and obviously not an email to everybody but if we can send you our areas of concern and then come back and take a second peek at this to vote it at our next meeting since we have the time that’s i would recommend that all of the rest of the committee weigh in obviously i put this together so it kind of means where i’m at so but if you know whatever anybody else wants everybody else wants to do if i could i i would like to make a recommendation that we we accept the summative evaluation report as presented by the school committee tonight i mean there’s a lot here that there’s there’s absolutely no disagreement with and that

1:49:19 we allow we allow for just as we might do with minutes um or recommendations that we allow for committee members to submit any changes and at a future meeting we could just go through go through the changes and add them to the record of of the existing document i agree with sarah not to word smith tonight prove the document as is and allow for uh an update to be presented or an edited um summative evaluation to be presented at a later date with with a discussion potentially on just what’s been edited or it could be highlighted that’s why i personally am not ready to approve this document it is it is different than

1:50:05 minutes in that it’s it’s a document that’s filed i just didn’t say it’s like minutes i was saying as an example the process um i’m just telling i’m personally i’m not ready to approve this i owe this is a document that is of such significant importance it’s one of our our most important um jobs outlined by mass general law and i i i’m not going to approve as a draft i want to approve it once and for all the final version so that’s where i am should i just be clear though i just want to be clear though we’re not suggesting that we’re changing any of the ratings or we’re not changing the content we’re just maybe moving some pieces up to the summary to make sure that those are highlighted right like

1:50:50 right like right like i’m not suggesting that we change the content i think the ratings as you’ve done it is equitable and fair and i think the process you went through is um you know was effective so i’m not suggesting that we make changes to it you know maybe it is just again like i said word smithing or moving a sentence from one of the lower sections up so i’m i’m fine either way i’m fine to vote it because i don’t think it’s going to change the content it’s not going to change the ratings um but if we want to eat either way it’s fine with me what i’m hearing is a request to make to add additional comments for members to email me and lisa to add comments and and where they want them added and then we would vote that at the

1:51:36 next meeting that’s what that’s what i’m hearing like new comments that aren’t already in the document that correct the comments that lisa and i made not may have overlapped and that’s different than what you’re saying right that is different from what i’m saying that’s different than what megan’s saying so we have two different things so you guys just let me know what because that’s what i thought i was hearing sarah say megan said taking improvements that were in the lower part of the document and moving it to the summary at the top to say you know this is the evalu like that summary and then this is where we can improve or john can improve but then i think you’re saying someone can go through their own and say i think you left out this comment can

1:52:22 you put that in in the end the whole document yeah and i guess i’m saying we’ve had this document for a few days now and i think if we had significant changes like that we should have identified them and brought them to the table so i’m not hearing anyone say that they have those types of changes what i’m you know all i’ve heard everyone say is that it would be great to you know to clearly ident more clearly identify those areas that we want to carry forward that’s what i’ve heard from the discussion

1:52:52 okay so yes we’ve you know i just want to reiterate that us you know discussing our concerns with this document could only legally happen in this meeting so there wasn’t a time you know a day five minutes before there was no other time than in this meeting to discuss our concerns about this document legally um so what i’m saying is i don’t feel that the comments in this are reflective of all the areas of like of areas of growth that were identified i would like to see each area of comments talk about take pieces from our individual reports this isn’t a second but at the apple for us to do our

1:53:38 individual reports those are done but this is i am telling you i don’t feel this document is reflective of you know where i when i what i am hearing people say that they feel there needs to be um as in as is typical in this evaluation process i outlined areas that we want to see improvement but that is missing from this a clear statement of that i would like to see that added um before i’m willing to say that this is reflective of everything

1:54:27 i i think i mean again we just posted everyone else’s stuff so i haven’t been through everyone’s individual piece but i trust that you and lisa went through this in a comprehensive way i feel like my voice is heard all i’m saying is that i you know we did identify and i made notes as you read through this we didn’t identify areas for growth so i think they’re in the document i think it’s not 100 like an easy read if you will so i feel like my voice is heard i feel like you’ve done an effective job going through and being fair um in how you’ve calculated the ratings

1:55:08 some people want to make little tweaks and sarah wants to have additional pieces in there so um we will put it on the next agenda to look at and that everyone can email myself and lisa um with any of the pieces that they would like moved around correct correct uh what what date will that be uh the 17th

1:55:44 is there is that allowed to happen like i guess can we make those changes after it’s already been compiled can we make continue making changes until it’s voted i guess i believe so okay yeah some school committees actually make the sausage in public for this they they go through and they decide what this is there are some school committees that choose not to do it by um appointed person or proxy if you will that choose to do it as a whole committee um we did not choose to do that but that does that doesn’t mean that we can’t do this it’s not fine once we approve it once we vote to approve it it’s fine right

1:56:24 okay so it’ll come back and everyone can email me lisa and myself and we will make any additions uh or changes and the understanding as far as i’m understanding it is that the is that this is all comment based right no ratings are going to change just equipment okay

1:56:52 i would like to let the record reflect that i would prefer to vote the summative evaluation as presented by the school committee and allow additions to be submitted and recommended based on our deliberation tonight but are you making a question david no i’m just wan i just want the minutes to reflect i mean because you can make a motion to vote to approve no i’m fine it seems like the majority of the committee wants to go and i want the record to reflect that i’m in favor of um approving the recommendation and i think you know this this legal idea is we weren’t saying deliberate on his evaluation if something in the evaluation when they

1:57:37 had been misquoted because i certainly know what i wrote and i know what pieces of my summary were extracted they jumped right out in fact i was quoted in one section if there was an error there i certainly could have pushed back or if there was you know i think i could have pushed back i wouldn’t i agree we wouldn’t want to we would not want to want to have deliberated the um ranking prior to this meeting but i think we could have suggested content um within guidelines but but not the rankings which which we discussed in an open meeting so yeah i just worry with that if i bring my thoughts to sarah independently just her and i and then emily brings her thoughts independently that nail falls under the

1:58:22 under the under the the qualification of of serial communication which is the equivalent of all three of us being in the room at the same time i just i i’m a stickler but is that not what we’re suggesting yeah and that’s exactly what we’re saying no because we talked about open meeting that we are not what we are not comfortable with and what we’re doing i i stated in an open meeting that i don’t feel this is reflective right but then the deliberation of changing the comments it’s the same thing all right i mean i guess i would i would obviously go along with david um i would have liked to have this wrapped up tonight but um

1:59:07 it’s the will of the committee we will put it on for next next meeting and if i if i could since we’re um are we moving on to the next agenda topic if i could make one more statement yeah related to it so i just like to read um the last couple sentences from from my summative evaluation additionally throughout the challenging year that we faced with covid19 dr bucky has maintained a sense of humor he has been active in the community remained open honest transparent in his communications and he has built relationships that have created trust in his leadership i look forward to working with you dr bucky and your leadership team and the staff in the coming year to support the educational needs of our students thank you very much

1:59:56 thanks david thanks david all right are there any subcommittee or liaison updates this evening all right go ahead emily um so i have just some metco related updates and again i’m gonna welcome deandra williams everyone stole my thunder before but no it’s okay so we’re so happy that she’s here and is working with us um and she jumped right into our equity network workshop on tuesday of this week and um was super involved and we are in this workshop with multiple different districts and she was right in there commenting and

2:00:41 sharing her opinion which was awesome because a lot of us don’t do that because it’s very intimidating so it was great to see her and um in that position and what she is capable of so our equity network we just had our last um workshop with the rides program for this school year and we’ll continue to work over the summer and then in the fall we have two more um workshops and meetings i mean this group will continue after we’re done with our program but um the cycle that we are currently doing is creating a dei mission statement for the district and we’re in the process of coming up with that

2:01:26 and we are also going the administrators on that in that group we’re going to be doing an equity-minded leadership

2:01:35 training for k-12 administrators were doing that this summer as a group and i just wanted to mention some of the initiatives that are happening in the district that are going to start over the summer and then continue into next year which is very exciting um the high school is going to have some professional development in their english department to look at the literature and try to come at it from a different lens and so they will be working with a local

2:02:08 person this summer doing that and then for the elementary schools there is a book that one of our educators partners created it’s called dots lines and curves and it’s about the power of connectedness and inclusion and the books is going to be bought i think for every classroom nan you can correct me if i’m wrong um in the elementary grades and then we are doing professional development for all the teachers to teach them how to um obviously not how to read the book but how to discuss all the topics within the book with our students and so those are the just a few things that are starting and happening and we just keep moving forward and it’s very exciting

2:02:55 very exciting very exciting thanks emily megan well it’s hard to follow that because there’s a lot of great work going on no thanks emily i mean there’s just a lot of great stuff going so um thank you for keeping us up to date on on all the initiatives there um mine’s just really quick for cpac you know i’ve talked a lot about the unsung heroes event um this time it’s virtual um and the pdfs will be available or going up distributed online um not sure what the right word is but next week so um just finishing up all the bells and whistles on it so keep your eyes out for emails and notifications on that so you can read through i think there were 40 something nominations um you know of all the great

2:03:40 work that’s going on in our schools and our community great thank you oh sarah

2:03:50 so as i mentioned we had um an extra facilities meeting this week we are making really great progress on getting a facilities um very detailed strategic plan ready which was one of our goals um we’ve had we’ve we’ve contacted partners that we want you know to have a voice in this and they’ve come to our meetings which is great um there will be more coming you know our next meeting um we have outlined um that right now just with the bare minimum of what is recommended to us um through that assessment which doesn’t include new initiatives like

2:04:37 sustainability and things like that um that we’re looking at a number that is is not at all in line with anything we’ve ever got received in the past so there was talk about that no no one wants to spring this on the town that we want to bring the ta bring jason to one of our next meetings so that he is aware that this is our facility’s plan and we’re looking at you know next year needing significant um financial support from the town in you know the in the million dollar range not in the hundred thousand dollar range so again you know the earlier we have these conversations the earlier we identify these needs the better

2:05:23 so um we’re just going to invite them to the table um and you know that is the update on that we’ll be having another meeting in less than two weeks a week and a half i believe a week from monday um and i’m excited more people have been coming to those it used to be like you know the boring meeting to go to but more people are coming which is nice great thanks sarah all right that moves us on to the building project update david i think you’ve got the ability to share right i do so uh first photo pretty straightforward people everybody see that so um just three photos so this is the work that’s going on in the um

2:06:08 in the entryway and and bus entryway and turn around you can see the you know the center work there there’s a old telephone pole that’s going to be removed and the concrete has been poured to put in place the granite curbings and you can see the translucent panels on the on the gymnasium you just stopped share is that it i know i bring up another photo i don’t have it in slide format i really like like this one this gives you an idea of the um sorry all right share again um there we go so this is the uh first section where

2:06:55 exquisite has started working on the rear playground and the areas that you see here are closest to the building and adjacent to the building so it’s going to be the hard surfaces and playground surfaces you know at the furthest end there’ll be a basketball court and as you come um closer in the picture where the bobcat is that’s where some of the port in place um playground areas will be and then right in the forefront of the photo not quite in the picture is where um the organic garden will be in some of the uh outdoor spaces so the hard spaces and then the area that you see behind um they’ve been trucking um you know we as everybody knows we did a lot of blasting and crushed a lot of our own stone on site and we’re able to reuse

2:07:40 the materials and so now they’re starting to truck off materials that aren’t needed on site and those areas that you see unfinished is where where the the grass uh playing field will be and i have one last photo it’s good it’s good everybody see that okay well i have to share i got it it’s like muting um

2:08:11 here is the much discussed uh view of a classroom and uh everyone can see the um the flooring that’s been put in place and gives you an idea of uh you know what the interior uh look will be and you can sort of see in the as well when you enter in the doorway there’s uh the wall there which is which is a pass-through shared closet space where each teacher between classrooms we’ll have a shared storage space and an additional pass-through area right there you can see some of that coming together and it’s really exciting to see the flooring go down so once they completed the mock-up which was very technical to get the circles in first and the rest of the flooring i think we’ve completed

2:08:57 close to 12 classrooms there’s paper down on the flooring and the mill work is starting to go in in the classroom so it’s uh it’s really exciting so um then i will and in talking earlier um emily was asking you know when could potentially the committee uh get in the building and have another tour so i’ll i’ll throw out a few dates because normally you know everybody can’t make one date so i’ll work with gilbane in left field and set up a couple of dates um they usually do happen at 3 30 in the afternoon when the construction work is slowed down so i’ll throw out a couple of dates and people can just sign up for

2:09:43 some tours in the coming weeks wonderful thanks david all right that moves us into closing business uh any new business sarah so a little bit earlier in the meeting um sarah gold you referenced the reopening committee um so i have some questions um back in to my knowledge there’s been no up formal updated notes or minutes since february for that and i think that’s about the same time that we decided as a committee to add a second member um so that we could get a little more continual feedback the same way we do about our subcommittees and liaisons of what’s going on um

2:10:28 i haven’t heard those um other than you know the anecdotal pieces of oh we discussed that at reopening our oh this we got to meet this person we’re very happy to have them at the table at the list at the meeting this week so other than those tidbits i am unaware and i’m wondering what i’d like to see a clear outline of what the end game is for reopening we are reopened so the fact that we’re still meeting weekly you know what are the objectives how long will this go on for um are you discussing things for the fall or are we starting to look at you know how how things will look at the fall like what is going on why are we still meeting i guess um so if you know if we can put this on our next agenda just to have kind of a clear update of

2:11:15 what’s kind of happened since february to now we know we’ve reopened but like we already opened in april and then you’re still meeting weekly what are the topics um what’s going on what’s the feedback and what’s the end game for this committee um and then how are we planning for the fall you know our hope is that everybody will be back you know full in the way we are right now but we will still have a population of students needs who have to be met remotely and while we’re waiting for dassey to give us clear guidance on that and they most certainly are not helping us because clear guidance does not seem to be their game this year um i think that we’re getting to the point where we have to start making a plan that if guidance comes out contradictory

2:12:01 to that we can pivot but we i think we have to start making a plan for those students and what that means so absolutely sarah and i apologize that probably should have been on my radar to do a much more regular update on that um just so you know we’re not we’re not still meeting uh weekly at this point um so you know it’s um every other week maybe every third week um so and then you know if necessary there’s probably been um you know obviously closer to february we were meeting weekly but at this point like we didn’t meet today um so i can definitely give an update on that next week um and apologize for not having done so i think you know sort of as things arose it was really just a vetting piece and most of the stuff that was talked about in there

2:12:46 was brought to this meeting um when it was within school committee purview um and if you know it was operational then it went off to the principles and they carried it out and much of the stuff is you know guidance from on graduation and prom and all of that and that obviously we did regular updates as well so um you know that that’s you know that’s why it didn’t really occur to me because you know much of the stuff that was talked about in there is regularly brought to our meetings um but absolutely um i think we’re supposed to meet next thursday so i can absolutely bring a uh an update to our final meeting of the year all right any other new business

2:13:29 okay i don’t have any correspondence so that brings us to our second round of public comment if anyone would want to make public comment please raise their hand um ann i see your hand is literally up can you just state your full name and your address for the record as well hi um i’m ann simco and my address is 77 garfield street sorry my computer i have been on zoom classes this whole year but i’ve still yet to figure out how exactly to raise my hand on zoom anyways i digress basically my public comment today is going to be about sustainability since that was one of the topics during this meeting so next year i’m going to be one of the leaders of nvss along with one of your other favorite marblehead high school

2:14:14 students alexis erp and basically i know that you guys were saying that you might have trouble funding cafeteria trades that could perhaps be compostable so my idea was perhaps for mgss we could help you guys out with the funds i think that plenty of high school students would be willing to participate in a fundraiser that would fundraise for compostable cafeteria trades also another thing i noticed you guys were saying was that this year we’re not having the styrofoam lunch trays but we’re having something worse which is non-reusable plastic bags like new ones every day i sit at the compost table during lunch at the high school and

2:15:00 it’s just worse and also everything is individually packaged which creates a lot of waste so i think that that would be another thing if you guys want to continue doing the takeaway launches that you guys should work on is how to better package the go animals um also another thing i’d like to say is for the busing programs i mean personally i think it was a good idea and i’ve heard that like it’s a really good idea and i’ve heard that other people have been pushing for this for years and i’d like to thank sarah fox for just i feel like she’s been really keeping it real with us well as the few watchers because i feel like

2:15:47 you guys as the school committee have been just like making me trust you on blind faith like you guys are saying we’re trying the best we can you should just trust me but it just doesn’t feel like you’re being very transparent so i’d like to thank sarah fox for really being more transparent and i think for the busing you guys it doesn’t seem like you have made a lot of progress anyway but i’m excited for what will happen soon thank you thank you ann and congratulations on your um your leadership role along with alexis all right i have catherine martin up first

2:16:28 uh good evening katherine martin 29 west shore drive um just quick congratulations to donna zasky and liam fairbanks on their retirement both of them showed myself and both my girls such kindness when they were at bell and they were just both like phenomenal educators and i just want to congratulate them and i hope they both enjoy their retirement because i know they both have many activities they enjoy doing outside of school but last week i had given public comment and i had asked for the look ahead for the planning for success and i just wanted to come on tonight to follow up with that to see if you know we can expect that sometime soon and just to reiterate what i asked for last week is i’d really like to see a high level overview of the

2:17:14 timetable of deliverables from that committee how that translates to the beginning of the strategic plan and how we think we can start having budget tie-ins to that and apply that to a calendar graphically put on the screen so those of us in the community can start to understand how we can look forward to this funding uh we just went through the superintendent’s evaluation big things coming up in it are about the budget but the budget can’t be supposedly created until we’ve done this strategic planning initiative so kind of just building on that same you know philosophy as the last student who just spoke you know we’re kind of going on blind trust that this is going to happen

2:18:01 but you know i read the last line of your assessment for dr bucky and it says dr bucky has noted that the planning for success process will help develop a shared vision that will propel the district forward in several key areas curriculum assessment technology the budget and professional development i want to understand the timeline and benchmarks for these things and i don’t think i’m the only person who does we’ve all been waiting for this so if at the next meeting we can have this look ahead or some sort of presentation that brings us forward so we all understand this process and how we are going to create these goals how are we going to fund these goals and how we’re going to get it done prior to budget season through the summer would

2:18:46 be great and i thank you all for tonight thank you katie um i believe the full group is meeting again uh for the first time as a full group next week so um that will absolutely come on to our agenda for the 17th all right i’ve got scott silberg up next okay thank you i’m on the phone tonight so um thank you um and katherine there’s just so much great work going on with the planning for success i think there’s a lot of meetings going on in the next week to start kind of crafting that um i i just also just welcomed deandra with our metco just is so exciting and had a chance to meet with her and listen to her just very eloquent and and just ready to

2:19:33 get moving with with our whole metco process and helping all of us in marblehead around these issues and so deandre thank you um and just really excited uh obviously about superintendent evaluation i think um there’s so many things done that just been exceptional given the crisis and some leaders rise um in crises and you’ve certainly been a great voice and i think um what megan indicated you know the communication and keeping that going has been fantastic so just wanted to to echo all the great things that are going on and um really thank you so much john for being part of our our community and thank you for deandra i’m so excited to see what’s happening in the in the future

2:20:18 thank you scott uh abby brack lewis i’ve got you next

2:20:25 thanks um abby brack lewis four park lane i am a co-president of the bell cough and evolves bto i wanted to say that we were overwhelmed by the incredible support we received for this year’s fun run thank you to everyone in the marblehead school community for helping us make this event such a huge success our student runners exceeded our fundraising goal and we’re so grateful to all of the families who donated i just wanted to make a point of clarification regarding the donated funds and what they will be used for our donations will go directly towards supporting students and teachers at the new brown school during the 21-22 school year we intend to make a gift to the new brown school and we will officially vote on that gift at our uh pto meeting next

2:21:13 tuesday night june 8th at 7 pm for those interested in joining that meeting we will post our zoom details on our website bellcoffinpto.org thank you abby uh jess benedetto

2:21:35 yes hi um i just um i wanted to comment that i’m i’m very glad to hear that the school committee and the superintendent are both in support of expanding busing i have heard this numerous times um but i’d like to hear less talk and more action i’d like a motion to be made by the school committee that the district will support and fund a bus for students who do not have a safe walking route to school specifically to support and fund a bus for students who otherwise would have to walk on a primary road without any sidewalks this is defined as hazard busing as defined by deci our current busing policy states this is under the discretion of the superintendent

2:22:20 superintendent superintendent if you john won’t specifically take a stand on the safety issue then you all as the school committee should revise our current bus transportation policy this was discussed in september at the policy subcommittee with you john sarah gold and emily i have not heard of any progress being made in revising this policy and i’m really glad that we’re doing the bus pilot for this upcoming year but it’s still a little bit unclear to me exactly who is eligible for the bus and who might be eligible moving forward after this busing pilot happens for the year

2:23:06 thank you jess all right i don’t have anybody else’s hand raised um deandra i just want to make sure you had lowered your hand and that i didn’t do that okay deandra’s got her hand back up go ahead deandra i’m sorry i hadn’t thought sorry i had it down because i didn’t know if you had um recorded it or not um okay so this my question well actually my comment rather goes back to the survey so i have the uh privilege and pleasure of hearing the um young lady speak and i i myself was very blown away and as i complimented the one that they sound i’m very much so like social sciences researcher so um i’m excited about that

2:23:51 one of the things i was just thinking about in general just just about surveying it is true that when surveys are anonymous um for the most part you are guaranteed to have a higher response rate because oftentimes yeah i’m sorry you hear my daughter in the background because she know that i’m up um so um you um i’m sorry so generally like you know like when when they are anonymous right like you’re more likely to have a higher response rate just because they don’t necessarily feel that like their responses are innocence targeting them right so i mean i think it’s it’s a worthwhile um to definitely consider that moving forward when surveying students i think that that’s big if their names are going to be recorded then we make that clear in the

2:24:38 um intro like the purpose for the survey so they understand like why so we can reach out to if you would like support and so forth financing that it’s like safe and confidential like those little things make a big difference but then the other thing i want to say too is that like even if it is um anonymous one thing i i didn’t necessarily hear from since i didn’t hear where i’m stated today either was the demographics i think it’s really important to think about collecting demographics when doing these surveys um because that allow us to really think about like how can we make sure that we’re creating some spaces and opportunities for students and who are our most vulnerable population of students who are more likely not to engage right so i think that that’s very big and then just think

2:25:24 about data in general um with our survey collection then that’s how you can compare it to some of the the academic data or whatever data is that we’re looking at in the schools to determine how do we improve quality instruction so that’s just kind of my tidbit um and i’m excited about that i’m kind of a nerd anyway but yeah so thank you deandra those are all great suggestions and we really like nerds around here so you’re in good company can i can i just add something to that because d’andra that’s a really good point i’m glad you’re glad you brought it up because i think a adding the demographics is important but then also linking it back to the other data we have because if i think about that iap improvement project that we’re doing we are looking at some

2:26:10 of the academic achievement markers and that is broken down by demographics so it would be quite interesting to kind of compare the mental health survey results that we have to then those academic achievement results that we have so i think we just have to do a better job you know we’re doing things we’re doing great work but then also bringing those pieces of work together right because that will be quite telling i think great thanks megan all right i don’t have any more hands raised so i will adjourn us