School Committee: August 26, 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.

0:02 appreciate it appreciate it have a good meeting

2:14 okay we’ll give sarah just another minute

2:42 we’re just waiting for one more member to join us

3:50 did you guys see you saw her come in okay um all right i will hopefully she’ll join us soon it is 702 and i will call us to order the members present are sarah gold megan taylor emily barron and david harris hopefully sarah fox will join us soon mhtv is recording this meeting and it is being live streamed on youtube all right great sarah is here now sarah fox is joining us welcome sarah um all right um we will jump right into public comment um i will ask again that people keep their public comment to three minutes or less as stipulated in

4:35 our public comment policy this will allow us to hear from everyone who wants to comment but we’ll also keep our meeting on schedule as we work to ever understand everything in our district emily will again be helping keep track of the time for public comment um and again in the fashion of gary spies we will ask that if someone has made the point that you wanted to make know that you can simply take your hand down or state that you agree with the points made by so-and-so without having to make them again i will ask that people use the raise hand function and i will call on them and then please state your full name and your address for the record all right uh becky i’m sorry i’m going to mess that one up you can go

5:20 okay sorry about that no worries uh and uh becky suchu and also my husband representing my husband as well bogdan tsuchu we are at 38 lafayette street i’m actually going to read the letter that was sent to dr bucky mrs murphy and members of the school committee just for the record we just wanted to have that read as parents um and many parents signed on to this i didn’t get the final total but i i will read it as quickly as i can to stay within three minutes and i also want to say that there were some changes after this was written so if there are things in here that were already changed that that’s why as parents of students in kindergarten through grade three parents of students who will be matriculating to kindergarten in 2022 and other concerned

6:06 parents educators and members of the marblehead community we are writing to you to express our deep concern and disappointment with the decision to eliminate morning recess and i know that that’s been brought back and reduced the frequency of allied arts for our youngest learners we request that you immediately withdraw the plan as it currently stands reinstate the morning recess and snack period as well as the former allied arts schedule and undertake a fulsome transparent community process including public forums for feedback from parents and educators to evaluate the use of the win program in the marblehead public schools if after the process is concluded marblehead public schools determines that the win program would be beneficial we request that its adoption does not result in a loss of the second recess or the allied arts periods you have likely heard from numerous parents

6:52 in recent days with a range of concerns some of the most common concerns and comments regarding the proposed schedule include unstructured outdoor play is necessary to allow our youngest learners to develop socially and emotionally time outdoors during recess allows our students to be prepared to return successfully when in the classroom recess has been shown to improve memory attention and concentration and help students stay on task in the classroom especially during a pandemic children need additional time outdoors for mass breaks children especially children this young should not be having a working snack we should be cultivating a time for socialization and mindful eating even if it is only a brief snack break many of us do not allow our children to eat while simultaneously doing something else at home especially not screening related we don’t want that happening at school either

7:37 as described in the wind program we’ll heavily re rely heavily on ipads we do not support the use of screens for a prescribed block of time for our students many of our children spent countless hours this year in front of a screen with headphones on now that they have the opportunity to be in school full time we want them to we want that time to be spent learning from their skilled teachers and interacting with their classmates not spending more time in front of a screen additionally it is deeply troubling to allow for this period of secondary screen time as described in the communication from mrs murphy to k-3 parents our children are losing much-needed recess and allied arts periods in addition we would like to publicly express our heartfelt appreciation to the numerous marblehead educators who have privately conveyed the concerns about the changes announced by the

8:23 department of teaching and learning we are deeply saddened that so many feel that there is a culture in our school department of retaliation and anger when educators advocate for our children and their students it is unacceptable to us as parents and taxpayers that this is the culture of marblehead public schools and it must not be allowed to continue and we call on the school committee to identify outside resources needed to remedy the situation and the best children it’s done all right that’s it thank you thank you very much becky uh blair nelson you’re next hey sarah thank you very much uh for this um look it seems like we’ve been moving at warp speed for the last couple of weeks and i just wanted to take a moment and roll back uh two weeks and

9:09 acknowledge and publicly thank andrew petty and the board of health on their recommendation and vote on school masking it would have been really easy to follow the surrounding districts districts and simply mandate masks but they didn’t they instead chose to create an a thoughtful approach reflecting our local conditions that started to lead us out of this pandemic in a safe and measured way this was hopeful and inspiring um while we’ve been overtaken by events i think it’s important to recognize this courageous leadership lastly a psa on the masturbate given the guidance we’re operating under now there is good news that all of us can follow when the time comes if you have the option if you want to have the option of having your child mast in schools unmasked in schools get them vaccinated if you’re worried about your child’s

9:56 safety in school get them vaccinated we truly are all in this together so thank you oh and please support the bike tracks our kids and me need some fresh air on adventure thank you thank you blair uh ali taylor you’re up hi uh ali taylor for orange street i have a rising second grader at brown um i think a couple of things my my main point that i really wanted to talk about is to request and i know time is of the essence but some sort of open forum i think the i understand the rules and the laws and all of that and i’m not trying to go against it but i feel like three minutes is not a lot of at the beginning of a meeting is not a lot of time for parents to

10:42 take in everything particularly a meeting like we had on tuesday and i respect everybody’s time and wanting to keep to those limits but if there could be some type of open forum or discussion where parents could feel perhaps more comfortable or more open to sharing then something like this can be a little intimidating um in these kinds of meetings um and i think that that is something or i hope that that’s something that the committee will consider considering there are so many big ticket items that have kind of caused some kerfuffle if you will um amongst parents understandably myself included i think the biggest thing is recess becky addressed that well and i think that letter was very well written

11:29 thank you becky and i think the other concern is the win um with the having the electronics and having that be at the end of the day i know i’m very strict with my child about screen time and i know not everybody is we all have to do what works for us um but there’s definitely concern of having uh for the last 25 minutes of the day having my child in front of a screen i also have some concerns on how that will be staffed um you know depending on what our child needs i know in other districts has worked wonderfully with a lot of planning and we might get there but i’m just wondering knowing how understaffed we are how we’ll get to that point here where they can be properly staffed to do what you know the the actual intent of the win program um i also want to mirror the working

12:15 snack concern considering that second graders are going to have an 11 a.m lunch they start school at 8 15 that’s not even three hours to lunch there’s a snack in the middle uh just it just seems like a super early time again these are just all big ticket items that i’m trying to just get on record here um and i think also on record should be something about um the nurse situation i know a lot of us were very sad to lose um amanda who was you know such an integral part of a lot of our children’s time here so far part of the community etc obviously qualified and i do think that it was disappointing that she was not um invited to at all you know be a part of the two additional positions that were

13:02 made available or not um invited to to interview for those i think that’s i think that was a disappointment amongst the people ten seconds left yeah no that’s it thanks your time thank you ellie uh catherine martin good evening katherine martin 29 west shore drive um so i don’t have a k through 3 student but i have kind of been following the changes that are being made at the elementary level and i tonight i think you will probably be speaking to that but i want to understand how this fits into the five-year strategic plan and the fact that we’re all anticipating that we’re going to be seeing that plan very soon probably hopefully as we come into budget season and it just seems kind of odd to me that

13:51 we would take our elementary education and our schedule and our frequency of allied arts in a very different direction prior to releasing a plan that’s really going to be the directive for the education of our students in this town i asked last year for a look ahead for us as parents so we can understand when we are going to see this strategic plan so we can understand um how we can understand the plan itself understand the budget drivers that are going to have to go along with it so you know when you have this when we have the discussion tonight can you also kind of talk about it holistically and how it fits into the big picture planning of the district because you know if it is part of these changes are part of the

14:38 strategic plan it would be really great to understand the the staffing that’s going to go along with it the budget driver that will go along with it um professional development training um all of those things that really make new programs work um so kind of just wanting to know how this fits into the big picture planning thank you thank you catherine uh becca wyden hi hi great thank you uh it’s becca whidden addresses 150 atlantic avenue um i i’m actually echoing a little bit some of catherine’s um comment i was interested

15:24 sorry becca i muted you on accident as i was trying to let someone in from the waiting room you can go ahead and unmute yourself again i apologize that’s fine i don’t know how much there you go i won’t love anybody else and someone else will that’s fine i just wanted to um ask the school committee to think about how you are budgeting uh when you come to prepare your next budget my understanding is that the you know you’ve um walked back the the removal of the second recess and i should say that’s the administration not the school committee um addressing the schedule changes or development but my understanding is that you were able to do that but you were not able to return the additional allied arts um course that was was taken out of the schedule this year uh from a budget perspective right it’s not because of a pedagogical perspective that you wanted

16:10 students to have fewer of those minutes you know per week and it’s not necessarily because um the win program was something that you had to do that it sounds like the win program something that you implemented because you did not because of budget have um that additional allied arts piece so i i would ask that as you think about the budget for the next year um you you do think about that and i think catherine’s comment about a five-year plan how that fits in holistically is great um it’s more uh broad reaching than my my comment was going to be which was just for next year but um i would ask that you think about it from that perspective um uh did i have anything else oh yeah actually i had one other thing um additionally for from a budget perspective i would ask that you uh think carefully about how you are going to maintain and potentially even sort of

16:56 furnish and fit out the new building we know it’s a large building we know that you’re moving students into the brown school from buildings that have for many years uh been fairly under you know sort of maintained or cared for right we had gary that closed uh coffin has been in okay condition but not not perfect um and then obviously the bell schools are both uh now rubble but um i think taking care of a building that is as high-tech and as new shiny and new as the brown school will cost money um operationally in terms of materials in terms of staff and i would ask that you really carefully put that money aside as opposed to returning money to back to the town year after year when we still need it in this school and that’s it thank you becca uh lori

17:55 there you go it’s the nerves that’s the nerve sarah okay my name is lori whalen i’m from over on vine street i have a child entering the public school system next week and i am very concerned about the mass mandate put forth by the dese my concerns surround the ever-increasing evidence that masking and community settings does not work and that the requirement to mask our children is potentially detrimental to their well-being i have eight studies which i’ve shared with sarah if anyone wants them they’re more than welcome to him but i want to stay in three minutes our very own cdc admits they do not have any randomized controlled studies that support the use of masks in community settings to reduce the spread of transmission an article in the american journal of medicine from july 2021 reveals forcing children to wear masks lead to adverse

18:41 health effects a study completed in germany february 2021 found that masts are harming school children physically psychologically and behaviorally revealing 24 distinct health issues associated with wearing masks also lest we forget children still have one of the lowest rates for transmission of covid illness hospitalization or death i am concerned these knee-jerk reactions to controlling the spread of covid have been politicized and are overshadowing actual scientific data and studies our society will never be at a zero point game when dealing with any respiratory illness or virus how much damage are we doing to some of the most vulnerable in our community by endlessly masking them when the data seems to bear out it is not effective please remember there was a time in our history when doctors were

19:26 used to advertise cigarettes and thalidomide was supposed to be the great drugs for pregnant women to curb nausea i hope years from now we do not have studies noting the damage done to children during the pandemic of 2020 2021 in the same vein as the items i just mentioned in closing i also urge the discontinuation of using the frayed phrase doing what’s right which was used repeatedly on tuesday night somehow insinuating that having questions about the school’s measures or heavens offend not fully agreeing with them is somehow doing the wrong thing in the time of contradictory and confusing information i am doing what’s right for my family and my children i’m doing my due diligence researching studies and finding data to guide my decisions and i ask are you or are you all fine with accepting

20:13 whatever you are told by the dece with little or no regard for beyond that thank you for listening i appreciate it thank you lori

20:25 all right um that will end oh i nope uh yes aaron noonan i have one more hand up thank you erin noonan from um 15 beverly ave i just wanted to acknowledge um an outstanding professional in our student services uh department meredith weishart who if you know you are lucky enough to have um you know have her you know that she is um absolutely like the hardest working um fiercest advocate and consummate professional um for kids on ieps in our brown school and so you know i was like everybody really concerned

21:12 initially about around the schedule change and i did you know did reach out with her to her and with you know underst she was able to really communicate the intent and spirit behind the schedule change to me in a way that i completely had a change of heart around um you know what like the purpose and intent of it and what the wind block is and why it is um going why it is more inclusive for our students in special education and what the vision for it is and so i just wanted to acknowledge her for that because there was you know a lot of misinformation and i um also just hope that uh other parents can

21:57 really put down their preconceptions about the schedule and try to like listen and um really uh listen and to um the update from nan uh later on in the in the schedule because there is a lot of misinformation around what it is and i’m i’m just hoping people really give give it give it a a fair a fair shake so to say so um that’s all i wanted to say thank you so much thank you aaron and you’re absolutely right meredith is a huge asset to our district um i’ve got one more hand that just came up kevin hayden hi thank you so much uh my name is kevin

22:43 hayden at three merrell road and i have two students at the glover school uh erin thank you so much for bringing up the special education and students with special needs i would love to see more documentation and a plan and strategy for how we’re going to be supporting kids on ieps and with special needs with this new testing protocol and schedule change especially with the lack of a true leader in the district around special education so that is my concern thank you

23:15 thank you kevin emily dewitt

23:24 hi can you hear me we can hi thank you all um thank you for this time allotment on public comment um i just wanted to speak to those kids who are on ieps my daughter has a language-based learning disability um language based and being in a mask is going to be exceptionally difficult for our children in that situation it was difficult enough for her last year being fully remote mostly and this year i’m hoping she’s able to catch up academically but

24:10 she is going to have a major um hindrance if she is masked i understand there are medical exemptions which i will pursue but in which case if we have such a large percentage of our students who are on i ep plans who are medically exempt from being masked how does that work for all of those people who are

24:43 that that masks are necessary in other words when you’ve got a large portion of our kids unmasked and then you’re forcing other kids to be masked it kind of negates the whole purpose of the mask when there’s so many people unmasked and so i just beg that you look at the logic or illogic behind that um because i’m also worried about the peer pressure for the kids who are not wearing masks and the um inability to be able to explain why without outing themselves as having a quote disability that’s going to be super awkward for a lot of our younger learners especially

25:29 learners especially learners especially um and i don’t i haven’t heard yet about the mental health aspect of how to help those kids dealing with um that situation so i’m hoping somebody can speak to that thank you

25:53 hello um kazzykindle jersey street although i no longer have children in marblehead public school districts i’m speaking on behalf of someone who does dr jessica benedetto last year jess put a huge amount of her own time and effort into facilitating audits of safe routes to our schools for children who have to walk or ride bikes we understand now that although we have seats only eight of them available on buses available to people who are first come first served we have not prioritized children who do not have a safe route to school

26:39 we find this absolutely staggering that someone who happens to be online first and happens to shoot off an email first to reserve a space on a school bus is prioritized against sorry is priority prioritized over a child who literally takes their lives in their hands to walk down a road with incredibly heavy traffic no sidewalks and that has been documented by not only safe routes but also our past police chief piccarello who said this is a dangerous road

27:26 we are asking for some common sense here prioritize the children whose lives are in danger over those whose parents happen to be able to shoot an email off first not only is it the right thing to do it’s the legal thing to do the law says that the schools must provide must provide

27:55 the schools must provide routes of buses to school for kids who do not have a safe walk-in route they must do this it is the law we ask that the schools obey the law and provide buses for children who cannot walk safely to school thank you

28:22 all right uh that will bring us to the end of public comment i don’t have any other hands raised so we will move on to the approval of the bus fees um we had this in our sorry working to lower hand we had this in our packet the other night we talked about the um the fees piece of it that’s the only thing that tonight that we are required to take action on um i know sarah foxy had raised some of the concerns that ms kindle just raised and hopefully we were able to talk with michelle about that a little bit offline and i think you know it seems as though we can be hopeful that we’re going to continue to work for towards a resolution on that

29:09 um actually um actually my understanding was we they were going to look at it and come back with some more information on if that was possible tonight so i i don’t know between you know 7 30 tonight and when this goes live at 9 00 am tomorrow morning what resolutions gonna be made because if we give out those eight seats and then decide that you know there is validity to what the point i made in in the one that kazakh kindle just made we’ve given those eight seats away already so i actually was hoping that we had some resolution on that tonight but i mean were you able to circle with michelle at all um i’ve actually spoken with michelle but not not on this topic i thought i mean this isn’t it’s something on an agenda so it should be done in our in our meeting

30:00 um michelle were you able to um [Music] to have any other thoughts on this i spoke to dr bucky about this um i do understand the particular situation that we were talking about with um dr benedetto’s um situation however this particular situation has been documented as an unsafe route but there’s no way to quantify other unsafe locations as well and that’s where our struggle really comes is how would we we would need a procedure in terms of being able to

30:41 you know document what is truly unsafe and what versus what is safe so i don’t i don’t see that there’s a fair way that we could prioritize that so i recommend we just default to the school committee policy where the superintendent would be allowed to declare a hazardous situation and you know provide transportation for those situations if he should choose so otherwise i don’t think the the per the optional paying route necessarily should be prioritized for those situations um we are actually not going live tomorrow because we have not had a chance to send out the email we want to make sure the entire district has the option and and awareness for when this is going live so we’re going to send the email

31:27 out tomorrow and anticipate the registration goes live on tuesday and the families will have an answer by the end of the day on tuesday we want to make sure we give everyone a fair chance to try to get on that and like i said before if we have more than eight seats and we only have you know 15 kids that are interested and we can fit those 15 kids we will absolutely fit those 15 students into our bus routes we just can’t say that for sure right now

31:53 sarah you have your hand up um so i i guess i would make it into a motion that we if someone provides documentation from either a safe routes audit and or the marblehead police department stating that it that the the route is an unsafe route that that child would be given priority as seats open up i mean we can’t make a seat like say someone comes in on october 1st without those letters we can’t make a seat if it doesn’t exist but if that documentation’s on file the next seat that opens i i think should go to the child where we have documentation from i mean safe routes is a state program that it’s not just you know it’s it’s a there’s a lot of parameters around it so if they were to have a safe routes audit or our our police

32:39 department were to put in writing something i think that that would be a reason to give them priority i think we could certainly take that on a case-by-case basis and you know see what we have in front of us absolutely i don’t think we’re going to be unreasonable for for this whole process

33:02 um so sarah sayers made a motion um does anybody want to second it no you’re muted david sorry but i think the the discussion at hand was the approval of bus fees and i think sarah is also making a a separate motion as well so we still have to vote on the bus fees so that sarah’s making him have we made that motion yet david i don’t think a motion was made for the best fees yet no but that was the discussion that’s the item on the agenda so i didn’t know if the two were tied but so if you have a motion can you just clarify what you’d like to motion and i make a motion that if a student’s family provides documentation

33:48 from either safe routes and or the marblehead police department stating that their route to school is in fact unsafe that they will be given priority on the next open seat that becomes available

34:15 i would just say that policy e-e-a-a is a student transportation policy and it only applies k-6 so if you’re making this motion that if somebody provides documentation you’ll want to be clear that it is applying k-6 only or if you want to amend a school committee policy to include students 7-12 i think given the situation sorry the situation that we have with our bus drivers or lack thereof i don’t know how we extend this to middle school and high school yet um i absolutely think that that can be a conversation further down the road um but where it’s not a part of our policy and we don’t have spaces

35:01 spaces spaces i think i would prioritize the k-6 so i guess i i don’t i agree that we should prioritize students where you know we know that there’s a documented need for safety i guess my question to the committee is we’ve got a policy that puts that decision in the superintendent’s seat because it’s operational so i guess my question is is it you know i think dr bucky will do what he deems appropriate um i don’t know that that’s our place to i guess my question is is it our place to um vote on that so according to massachusetts state law and statute

35:48 regarding bus transportation in schools it actually is the purview of the school committee we have given it to dr bucky through our individual policy but according to massachusetts state statute these things come before the school committee and are decided decided by the school committee i would think we would want to run that through legal counsel to be sure yeah i would agree with that piece

36:28 so so my concern is that i think if we’re going to do something like this we have to be very clear about what the documentation is and is that going to go in this email so that everyone can get this done by tuesday so that they because not everybody knows that this is an option maybe they don’t know that they live in an unsafe spot so to make it in the to make it fair for everybody everyone needs to know that you can get a letter from the police by tuesday that seems like really difficult to do to get it documented to get yourself priority i just think we have to be fair if we’re going to go down that route how we’re going to really implement that um

37:13 so that’s my concern for those people who are like wait i didn’t get it because i didn’t know and so that so that’s my concern about putting

37:30 thanks emily david did you have something

37:37 yeah i i agree being in transportation as a career uh we want to make sure that um we’re providing safe safe service for people people that need it within the limitations of what we have i think we’ve identified that we do have a challenge right now staffing wise and so to uh mandate this if we want to call it a mandate and then uh you know would we be able to contract out the service and what would the cost be there’s a lot of unknowns right now but but i think the other piece is you know how i’ve been in this town for 20 years and every year we hear about shoveling sidewalks and plowing sidewalks and um so there could be periods of time in

38:23 january february march when every street is unsafe and we hear that year over and i’m not saying it’s the right thing or the wrong thing but we depending on the winter last winter we didn’t have as many challenges because we didn’t have snow banks in town but if we have a winter like we had in 2015 or like we did in 2018 um all of a sudden um there there’s unsafe routes and challenges um all over the town for people to safely walk to school so um i want to address um you know the safe routes concern that’s been brought forward and i think that now that um i know michelle and todd we’ve invested

39:08 in some new software to maximize the efficiency of our routes i think i also heard uh two nights ago that while we have uh was the number somewhere around 250 eligible students that michelle is putting out a new form to ask people to enroll because we also want to do some things related to covid to know who’s on the bus and when they’re riding the bus and so we may you know we may have some additional capacity within just what our regular guidelines are and who subscribes to transit which would then in turn allow the superintendent you know lack of let’s say only 180

39:54 people subscribe to bus service and we have capacity for for 240 or 250 based on the routes that we’re running is consider these um these individual requests that maybe have already been documented so i i think there is definitely some flexibility sarah within this and um i think it’s great that people have brought it forward um and we i think it’s duly noted and uh with with nan and todd and dr bucky you know reviewing that i i feel confident that if we have the capacity to address this issue we can and

40:35 as we as we move forward if if it creates uh more demand than we than we have buses for then that’s going to need to be considered um next year as well but i i definitely appreciate the motion but i think right now we should let things play out let people enroll in the buses let’s determine who we have capacity for to get people to school that you know we need to get to school then review safe routes and also explore this this optional uh fee for service uh bus pilot that that we’re trying to work out and see see how that might go and i think um i mean i’ll ask you a question when we get to the fees about about the eight but um i’ll hold off because i had a

41:21 couple of questions there but that’s that’s just my thoughts on the overall motion of prioritizing it because because i think i think we can and i think we will if we have the capacity

41:35 um megan did you want to say something sarah raised her hand okay all right i just wanted to clarify because where david brings up the idea of you know at different points in the year whether permitting that things or rather decided i guess things can become unsafe that that is why this would be declared my motion states it would be a documented

41:59 statement from either state route or smart routes which is the state program state audit program or um our police department because i can’t imagine our police department’s going to just start writing notes or safe routes that you know because of snowballing like that that’s not how any of these programs work um but um um the other thing is i guess while we’re looking someone asked dr bucky to touch base with legal one question would be if we have a family that’s documented that their child from these agencies which are you know municipal and state agencies that are accredited with keeping people safe that we are not doing that and we have voted down

42:45 voted down voted down in fact giving those people priority i have to assume there’s a pretty good liability on us for that so i mean if someone is giving us documentation we need to in my mindset give them priority to getting a safe route or or there could i that’s just my point so um so um i think dr benedetto has done a tremendous amount of work here and there is documentation from safe routes but the policy puts that case by case um consideration in the superintendents

43:31 you know as a to the superintendent and i think we should let dr bucky and dr benedetto work that out and i believe that you know i have confidence in that i do think that we should just like i said in our um in our retreat that i do think we need to kind of take a step back and as we’re thinking about making changes especially policy changes if that’s what we in fact you know sarah’s um recommending here that we do that in a very thoughtful and deliberate manner not kind of on the spot so i think in this case we can work out what you need to with the you know on a case-by-case basis at this point um and i you know i will have confidence that that will happen

44:22 um sarah can you clarify for me um that your motion is addressing the eight open thoughts or if there’s more whether it be eight now or as more open like it’s not a mandate for us to create new spots it’s that as we receive a letter that becomes the priority to being assigned to any open spots so if we have letters now they become the priority for the eight if after those eight are handed out another letter comes in we’re not going to bump someone but the letter that comes in with proper documentation then becomes the next c say if if you know someone drops out of the

45:07 program or whatever so it’s just it just becomes a priority to the next open seat it’s not mandating us to hire a third bus it’s not mandating anything it is giving priority to people with documented safety hazards for the next open spot okay thank you emily you’ve got your hand up so my concern again is that if we’re going to put priority on people who are documented do they have enough time to get documented by tuesday because there are people with unsafe routes who don’t know that getting documented is an option to get them priority who need the bus ride so so out of being fair to everybody we have to make sure that that’s very clear that that’s an option and how they do that

45:54 and what if they don’t get it till wednesday and then they miss the spot so and they’re unsafe and then they don’t get the bus so if we’re going to put something a priority on there we have to make it very clear for everybody how to get the documentation if they think they need it and give them time to do it and give them time yeah because i’m sure this doesn’t just happen in one day that they’ll come out and give you documentation so that’s my one issue okay okay so we’ve i don’t think anybody has anything else to say on it uh so i will call for a real call vote uh sarah gold yes megan taylor

46:44 i would like the superintendent to be able to sort this out in in all honesty on a case-by-case basis as necessary and you know i have confidence in our superintendent to do that so for that reason and for what emily mentioned in terms of giving people the information that they need in order to do something in a timely manner you know to be fair for everyone i’m gonna have to say no at this time emily baron no no david harris no no and sarah fox yes okay so that fails two to three um can i get a motion to approve the bus fee for the optional student transportation program in the amount of

47:32 250 per student for the 2021 2022 school year so i moved megan moved a second a second david i know you mentioned that you have a question on this one so go ahead

47:53 uh thanks so much just wanted to ask so the the cdl so we have some of the the smaller vans is the seating capacity in those maxed out at eight or because we we could handle up to 15 without requiring a cdl um there is various um licensing if it’s not a big bus for the cdl then it’s a 7d license that’s required on the smaller vehicles and they hold different um seating capacity depending on if they are a wheelchair van or not and right um so we have we have a couple different models at this time but most of those are used for special ed students for student services

48:49 okay um i will call a roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes david harris yes and sarah yes all right that passes five to zero thank you everyone and uh thank you michelle and todd for your work on this as well as dr benedetto

49:12 all right um that takes us to the bike more pump track discussion um and the green street piece with it as well so last spring at some point the bike more group from marblehead approached us regarding two of our properties and tonight we have a an agreement on one of them and that is the green street property at the corner of green and beacon this has been a lengthy process and town council has given everybody a right of entry agreement release and indemnification so i will at this point ask oh there’s one piece that’s not filled out in here that we need to discuss and i will

49:59 will will um i will give a suggestion that i’ve thought of um the number eight on page two uh this agreement shall be valid through that x date uh so we should probably put a date in there before we ask for a motion um my suggestion would be that we put either today or because we’re so close to september 1st um september 1st makes it makes a sense in my head or august 31st 31 days in august i think so um so i take thoughts on that

50:35 sarah do you have your hand up or yeah no i was just getting ready to unmute if we needed to make a motion sorry so you’re saying one year from august 31st correct well or from today so it’d be one year and a handful of days yeah i think because there is a spot there that’s empty right now so i do think right put an end date yeah august 31st i mean whatever makes sense uh-huh august 31st 2022 any problems with that are these typically one year leases are a longer term like a three or five do you know the answer to that john i have absolutely no idea i would like

51:22 to get it in process and then if there could be a rolling provision to it that it rolls forward we could ask town council to weigh in on that but to for the process this evening to provide the first year rather than locking into two or three years whether we’re able to do that or not okay i think especially given that we’re having a larger conversation with the town on land use yeah and our properties and what we intend to do with them and the need for them um and this is this that piece to this i just want to make it clear to everyone has been discussed um you know in any kind of meeting that i’ve been privy to regarding this this topic um so town town is aware of it um from the selectmen has been involved in

52:07 this um you know when there was an issue at this property last spring um jackie was there to check it out as well as jason so you know town town has worked really close with with everybody on this too so the you know if this were something that we this were a property that we handed back over to the town um i do think you know i do think the town would absolutely um memorialize this as well and work to to continue this forward because it was an important piece for them as well

52:43 all right so we’ve got october 31st 2022 on this agreement so i will ask for a motion to approve the right of entry agreement release and indemnification as written by town council so moved megan moved

53:02 second i’m only second all right any further questions on this just confirming it’s august you said october just then oh i’m sorry it’s august 31st i have it written on this so just a question not necessarily about the motion but currently there are signs up on that so once we vote this then those signs can come down yes that is correct okay

53:33 any other questions this has been a lengthy process um and really truly a labor of love for pat milner um and she and her group have worked incredibly hard when there was some issues with conservancy and um kids had built some ramps that weren’t approved on wetlands and everything pat and her group really stepped up um because this was such an important piece to them and this property was so um so important for them to to be able to make it into a safe place for kids to use their bikes and have fun they stepped up and they cleared and worked with conservancy and just did an amazing job uh fixing the things that had that

54:18 had been destroyed and making the making the property um even more beautiful place than it has ever been so um i’m really excited tonight to be able to finally do this for the bike more group with pat at their home so with that um as long as there are no more questions or comments i will call a roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily barron yes david harris yes and sarah fox yes all right pat that passes five to zero pat thank you so much for all you’ve done on this and the bike more group i think it’s going to be a great space for everyone in the community to use so i’m really excited about it thank you same thank you pat and and to the entire

55:04 group can i just say one word um thank you and uh dr bucky and all the town stakeholders that have supported us because um you know we still got a lot to do we can’t just take the signs down and um and go for it there’s gonna be a lot of stuff to do so um you know this is just the beginning but we super appreciate everybody um and their support um jackie balthbacho jason silva all of you guys on the committee so thank you so much and we’re excited to um

55:42 and if you can let us know when you need volunteers and what type of work needs to be done i’m sure there’s lots of people that want to help so absolutely thank you great yeah we’d be happy to put that up on our website sarah did you have something i just also wanted to commend there there is a lot of you know students and and younger people that have really advocated for themselves through this process and i think you know learned that learned about advocating for themselves and speaking up which is such a important lesson um and have done done really well in doing that um to to have a healthy positive activity to do and i’ve been really impressed with

56:27 with with you know the the student age um group here in what they’ve been willing to do to kind of fight for something that they really want and believe in and i think that’s really impressive to see well congratulations pat and bike more and um we are just please this punch to be a part of this looking forward to it maybe we can get some kind of bike cam footage uh after it’s all built i expect to see you on the course

57:02 all right um so that will take us forward into our superintendent report and um one of the things that most people have probably been waiting for the kindergarten to third grade schedule so john i will turn it over to you sure first i have to own the bad launch of the schedule it was poorly communicated and the gaps in communication created a space to be filled with information where people were left to guess the resulting angst anxiety frustration and downright anger could have been and should have been avoided with a better communication and for that i’m sorry sometimes being in the work over a period of months and knowing all the process elements and the people that have been involved you make assumptions about what people not involved in the process know

57:49 this was a mistake marblehead has a rich history of neighborhood schools with their individual identities ways of doing things innovation and deeply held practices and beliefs i have heard so many stories about gary bell upper and lower coffin evoluth village and their unique traditions as a result of these neighborhood identities i think we have a system of schools here this idea has come up in our planning for success process former inter superintendent bill mccaldiff agreed and said he would take it a step further and say mps has a has schools that are islands in the stream

58:35 loosely connected by those rickety rope bridges where the steps fall away and keep them unconnected through those gaps last year when people were concerned about time on learning as various schedules cohort models hybrid remote were implemented this was across massachusetts and not just in marblehead but people were deeply troubled about time on learning this committee received significant feedback on the issue of learning time as such deci requested an audit of each district’s structured learning time when we asked for the schedules at various buildings at the elementary

59:22 level we received individual classroom teacher schedules when we inquired about the building schedule we might then get a grade level teams schedule but it was different from the same grade level at another school it was clear that there was not a school schedule that structured the learning time across our elementaries as such some of the schools were meeting structured learning time and others were not understandably this raised deeply troubling concerns about equity a student’s grade level experience kindergarten first second or third should not be predicated on where he or she lives in the district

1:00:08 people would support that we need an equitable school system in theory but if that means a change from the school in the system we get some of the concerns that are currently being raised to meet the structured learning time last spring a very similar schedule was implemented at the coffin school understandably there were concerns about a new schedule but once implemented there was positive feedback the state has always had a time on learning requirement granted 2019-2020 in the pandemic made it impossible to meet the standard but to hear that we might not have been meeting the requirement for years and no one addressed it

1:00:54 is worthy of our review as a former principal i had to submit my time on learning verification every year to meet the hours for the state to hear questions about where the five hour a day requirement comes from raises concerns about who was overseeing this previously 180 days at five hours gets us to the 900 requirement for our elementary schools which is the state minimum we cannot get around this the new schedule brings equity and addresses concerns about ensuring that the curriculum is being taught in all subject areas with fidelity we have heard that subject areas are not

1:01:39 taught or that programs are not taught as designed because quote there is no time science social studies health and wellness should not be overlooked in the curriculum because of a lack of time in opening the brown school the new schedule aligns brown and glover and moves us to a school system versus versus a system of schools i reviewed the the schedule with bill mccalduff and he said it makes all the sense in the world and this is what marblehead should have been doing aligning systems and implementing structures is hard work and it is messy the work was made messier and harder because i launched it so poorly and

1:02:26 again i own that finally the schedule is a framework not a box teachers have the autonomy to use the framework to provide time to teach each content area while having the flexibility to do what they have always done read the classroom and know when to press forward or when to pause i believe in teacher autonomy they know their learners best no one expects the framework to be times of rigidly held minutes where students sit at their desk and are expected to listen or work differentiation is a big part of successful elementary school classrooms and our teachers are masters at this

1:03:12 i would ask that we pilot the schedule in the first trimester and put together a working group of parents teachers administrators directors and specialists to review it i will ask building principals and nan to host a forum at each school to hear feedback about the student experience during the first trimester and make any optimizations deemed necessary once we have operated in the model for several weeks nan will provide some historical information that led to this schedule the process to develop it what it is what it isn’t and how we can navigate a pilot of it nan cares deeply about this district our youngest learners and how best to meet

1:03:58 the needs of all children she is thoughtful introspective and empathetic i value her partnership and collaboration and i think you’ll find her presentation this evening very enlightening about the schedule so at this time i’ll turn it over to nan

1:04:18 thank you dr bucky um sarah if i can do i have access to share the screen yes you should have access right

1:04:35 all right families well i am going to try to piece together the rickety bridge and create a really solid transition into our exciting school year it is our first time in a while being full day in person and we are excited and as dr bucky has already spoken to it’s an opportunity for us with this new opening of the brown school to have two unified pre-k two three professional experiences personal experiences and student and family experiences so we’re really excited and this framework was developed in the spirit of doing what’s best for

1:05:23 kids and teachers so with that um i want to just let you know that this framework again to piggyback on what dr bucky has said everything around this schedule is teacher forward and requires teacher autonomy it is a frame and it’s a frame that we will use to ensure equity and access across all of our teaching and learning opportunities in our two elementary schools so with that

1:06:00 all right so why i know a lot of parents are asking why and some teachers as well and before i get a little bit into the why i do want to apologize on the behalf of the office of teaching and learning for the rollout as well i had been in a we have been in a pandemic and so our professional learning time and face-to-face opportunities with teachers has been limited and in the past this would have been more of a springtime roll out where i would have brought it to teachers at faculty meetings and because we didn’t have those opportunities uh i i apologize for that oversight to our teaching staff but why did we do it well we’re doing it

1:06:48 as we said we want to align our services to students and part of that is being really strategic about how we use our staff so our elementary teachers are fortunate to have math and reading tutors we are fortunate that we have we’re bringing on board this year three additional instructional support specialists and we have inclusion specialists that come into classrooms to support students on ieps and 504s and just all kids so when you have large blocks of time allocated by subject you are able to be strategic for where people are and when people are in certain places so our special education and our special education chairs are able to allocate their staff

1:07:35 uh our instructional support specialist the math specialist will be in math blocks the reading specialists will be in reading blocks and we’ve been able to develop am schedules for our reading tutors because that is when the extended reading blocks are now happening universally in schools as well as having our math tutoring scheduled for those afternoon blocks so we’re able to instead of hiring somebody for a certain amount of hours a week and when they’re in the buildings actually not having the content that they’re there to support happening in any of the classrooms it just didn’t make sense the way we were using our staff this makes

1:08:21 perfect sense and kids will benefit from this strategic approach we also wanted to ensure that our teachers had increased planning time so in previous schedules and by previous i mean for as far as i’m um not just last year but in years past teachers were given one block of time for prep every day but only one time during the week when their entire class was off at the same time and that was the time when they received some professional support from their instructional support specialist their principal or an outside provider so this schedule prioritizes daily interaction for collaboration so if teachers choose to get together as a

1:09:08 as a team they have um five opportunities over the course of the week rather than one consistency across the schools and content instruction so as dr bucky mentioned i think i was in the in my in my role for a couple of days before i started hearing well this happens at the glover and this happens at the evolution this happens at the coffin and this that this is happening at the village and um it came very clear to me as i as i met with teaching staff that there was really no aligned approach to how things got done in schools so um that was a priority and we designated we found as a priority designating our sel time and time for specific morning

1:09:54 morning meeting as well as time throughout the day however that is not um a block of time where that happens we as elementary experts do it all day all the time so um but we did want to make sure that we supported our health and wellness our social emotional um routines welcoming some of our students will be back for the first time in in a year almost a year and a half and we want to make sure that we’re very um specific about how we welcome them back and activities that we use to engage them back into the school setting and finally a priority for designated time for differentiated instruction to ensure equity and access for all students and i’ll get more into that that is in

1:10:40 reference to our win block and i’ll get into that in just a minute but i think it’s important as we talk about the why that we talk about the why now so um i know the there’s a conversation out there about why now coming back from a pandemic we had a disrupted year last year we haven’t been back in routines since march of 2020 why now does the routine feel like it’s changing and the answer to that is progress happens with or without us and i think our teachers are a prime example they rose to the occasion last year and they marched on they figured it out they um looked at their curriculum and they worked as teams and they used the time that was framed for them to

1:11:25 them to them to soldier on nobody waited nobody took a pause we really continued to do what was right for kids academically and social emotionally throughout the whole pandemic so we need to acknowledge that yes we are coming back from a pandemic and the pandemic is lingering but our state standards remain the same and our students need to be career and college ready at the same pace that they were last year so we need to be very focused and in fact the department of education has put out an acceleration roadmap for

1:12:13 one for school leaders and one for school teachers and it targets three priorities building communities progress monitoring and inst best instructional practices and ensuring that we have a pathway for equitable educational recovery this framework will help get us closer to that so um i also want to add to the why now in that the depart my office the office of teaching and learning has a lot of work that has been presented and um

1:13:00 last year we were able in a pandemic to adopt a new math curriculum 22 educators in k-8 came together almost weekly for months to review materials to visit online with vendors to visit online with other districts using the materials that we were considering we spent months and extended our search because we still weren’t quite ready we got there we made a decision we were in a pandemic but we made a decision and because we were able to progress through that work our students coming back k-8 will have a new math curriculum that is state of the art

1:13:46 and if we had paused and waited because we were in a pandemic they would be going into their 12th year with the math curriculum currently in place so the other thing that my office has been working on is a scope and sequence for marblehead public schools this is a curriculum map in other terms and it tells uh it shows teachers the hat the where and when content instruction should be taking place so it breaks kindergarten down by months same with first grade same with second grade all the way through grade 12. it takes you through content areas so what is kindergarten doing in math in september in ela in writing in social

1:14:33 studies and science that did not exist in marblehead i have never been in a district or a school that did not have a curriculum map scope and sequence and pacing guide that was work that we started during the pandemic because we knew it was best for teachers and ultimately best for kids so in fact today after months of meeting with principals and teachers and teachers leaders that was shared today for with teachers so that they’ll be going into this year with um the win and the where instruction should be happening and it was we also created an assessment calendar so

1:15:18 teachers know when we are going to pause instruction for progress monitoring um so there’s also no social studies curriculum in marblehead public schools so that work is ahead of us i haven’t um even started really talking about that i worked with one grade level um we worked with sixth grade last year and trying to unpack some of that and and figure out the best way forward with um con with curriculum and and doing some additional supports and in that class in those with that team they welcomed me into planning with them um but that really opened a door of of an aha for me that we do not have curriculum we still have the state

1:16:05 standards we still have what is expected students to know at the end of the school year and yet we have no curriculum for teachers to instruct that material so again we we could pause and wait um but that means teachers have to be online using various sources teacher pay teachers scholastic news there’s very approach various approaches but again your social studies experience would then be based on who your teacher was what team they had uh and what school you were in so that this framework where we have social studies and in the day and now we have a scope

1:16:50 and sequence that outlines the standards will help me find materials that support that content so teachers can teach more targeted social studies instruction there’s also when marble had no universal assessment tool so typically districts have a a district wide assessment tool that they will roll out three times or four times a year in ela and in math and it gives teachers an opportunity to take a look at how students are doing towards standards mastery and it’s calibrated to meet standard various points during the year so if you’re getting your literacy instruction

1:17:36 and being able to apply it as a second grader that will be in it that will be indicated at the first benchmark in october that you’re on track and these reports are generated and sort help help teachers sort what standards are really strong with the student population and which ones really need review and practice and it helps them make data driven decisions and that is what we do in education we look we teach we reflect on our our practice we look at how students are showing us what they know and then we find opportunities to either reteach or accelerate instruction um there was also in the

1:18:22 district no strategic plan for uh professional development so i think i shared in a previous presentation in the spring that we have outlined some professional development strategically across the district we’ll be looking at how do we support students at various levels in our classroom without additional support we have a keynote speaker in and then we have some additional support happening in pd opportunities on their wednesday afternoons after school so for the first time that that is going to be rolled out and finally we um we really have a problem with accurately being able to communicate with families on progress with the report cards that

1:19:07 are currently in place some principals have said that the the descriptors on the report card no longer match the standard or what’s happening instructionally that that needs to be remedied so that parents know based on a state standard if their student is needing it approaching or or excelling exceeding on a standard so we want we want to work on that as well so as we think about our planning for success we think about purchases in the district we think about priorities in the office of teaching and learning we think about priorities for our professional collaboration

1:19:54 there’s a lot to do and um providing this framework for teachers is just the first step in getting to a more aligned picture of where we need to focus moving forward in some of the areas we have yet to develop um so so who was part of it and again um this this is was a collaborative approach it started um last year when we started looking for these master calendars these master schedules that um that weren’t developed and so we we knew it was going to be a priority to align it was also an exciting opportunity with just having two schools to be able to align so principal oda and

1:20:40 satterfield met with me and i asked them what are some of your priorities moving forward what can i do to help you support your work with your teachers in the office of teaching and learning and uh priority for the glover school and echoed through um sean satterfield’s comments where teachers wanted allocated time to be able to meet students where they were at time in the schedule to do reteaching in small groups and to provide opportunities for students that need enrichment and brian oda told me that they’d been asking for that for six years so that was a priority in bringing that wind block forward the department the former director of

1:21:25 student services was a huge driver in this work he was a big proponent of being able to see how this supports equity and access for all students across the district emily dean supported me in looking at it through the lens of our english language learners and some of our most at risk learners so how does this look and feel for those kids um merida wishart um the elementary team teach chair also you know looking how to somebody who’s primarily responsible for for scheduling the include inclusion specialists she she thought this was a fabulous way of supporting students having larger blocks of time

1:22:11 allocated to literacy writing math helps her ensure that all of the ieps that have inclusion support written in those content areas are met and that students have the best experience possible with their support staff rebecca brand our district instructional specialist just another phenomenal colleague looking at it making sure that best practice in literacy we really need to there’s a lot of minutes that need to be allocated to our literacy and at these early ages and ensuring that we were spending that time correctly so she was another great support system and finally our um mea team leadership now they’re elected to

1:22:58 represent their teachers and they vetted it they asked questions about it they proposed changes which i made um we talked about some of the um barriers and we came to consensus that that this was um going to be a framework that that would that would work moving forward so so um

1:23:29 questions and wonders has the time of the day changed the answer to that is no the schedule that was shared um was shared with teachers and the teaching schedule starts did you just uh skip over i did you please not meet your unmute yourself um ms murphy is talking so the the schedule that was changed i’m sorry that was shared publicly was actually shared with teachers and so that schedule outlined and framed their academic day with students starts at 8 15. had it been a parent schedule it would have been communicated with the 805 to 8 15

1:24:16 bus and car arrival so i think that’s where a lot of the confusion came but yet it it there was a plan to roll it out for parents um i’ve never again shared from the district level a master schedule that always came in back to school information from school principals so um i’m sure once the schedule is released and shared with the parent population that information will be on there so there’s no changes in minutes time or um my understanding any time changes from the from the glover to the coffin school to the brown school now of course changes i want to note here if you have a child going to the evoluth or the village school

1:25:02 you will have a change and that will be communicated to you by your school principal questions around recess so recess was eliminated be in the morning block um be because the thinking um was that 40 minutes which was the standard time from what i was understanding was allocated to recess and then somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes for lunch seemed in excess so because early elementary education is so developmentally engaging

1:25:48 and inquiry-centered and hands-on we have what we call a 30-minute rule where a student isn’t doing something longer than 30 minutes before we change it up for them k through 3. so we are very intentional as educators in making sure kids are actively engaged that there are movement breaks that there are students that are asked to turn and talk that they’re asked to act things out play math games use manipulatives draw your thinking sketch your thinking work in small groups teams so the misconception that students are sitting in desks because recess was

1:26:35 removed is a misconception it is not how we teach at the elementary level and um so i i want to let parents know that that with or without recess kids are engaged and moving and i see teachers with all kinds of seating they have some kiddos are sitting on yoga balls some kids are rolling on you yoga balls as they’re reading you can walk down the hallway at the glover school and see groups of students laying out on the on the floor reading books together there’s all kinds of teaching environments that are consistently engaging and providing movement for students

1:27:17 so we heard you we put the recess block back in in the morning um the intention was for teacher autonomy for them to decide where and when breaks from the academic component of the morning fit but now it’s back in the schedule so teachers have that as part of their scheduled day it comes with a couple of um bumps in that now our targeted planning for support is going to be disrupted in in some cases so if you had a teacher available to support a classroom for literacy from 10 to 11 and students break

1:28:02 have an official break at 10 15 for recess that really poses a challenge for an instructional specialist or a literacy tutor to provide some services so the intent was never to remove the autonomy from a teacher i had a jar on my desk a compliment jar and once the compliment jar got filled we took the kids out for recess in third grade for an extra recess so there’s all different kinds of ways to to make your classroom your own and certainly that that wasn’t the intention so um that that is the case there with recess so hopefully that’s been clarified and the time of

1:28:50 day being exactly the same is helpful um [Music] so what is the wind block um we all are amazed that there’s this digital program out there called win none of us had even heard of it so that’s that’s been very interesting to us the win block is um just a time of time of day where students get what they need so the language here is ensures that there is a dedicated time in the schedule during which students are flexibly grouped to receive remediation or enrichment and have access to materials at their instructional level so this is a time where you if you as a teacher you you all day long are trying to fill gaps as you’re as you’re doing your core instruction sometimes you need to pull a group of

1:29:36 learners together and really reteach something because you see a group of kids that are kind of off then there’s times when you see kids that are really getting it and not not as incur as engaged as you’d hope so you would plan an enrichment activity so if you’re working on in science on engineering that 25 minutes would be for a group of kids that to apply that learning so maybe they’d be constructing a bridge out of marshmallows maybe and toothpicks um maybe there’d be other opportunities so um who staffs it uh teachers primarily i’ve always ran my own wind blocks and differentiated but but we’re lucky in that we were again very strategic in how

1:30:23 we developed this schedule so our special educators will be present we have our allied arts team all off at that same time to support students so they can maybe run some enrichment and some groups based on what our student needs are showing us that they that they would benefit from we have our school counselors that will be able to do some fun sel work maybe run some social skills groups maybe do some other activities that might um teams of kids might be interested in it’s also our one opportunity during the day where we could do some cross grade level or we can even do some vertical uh horizontal grade level teaming so if i have a struggling student struggling with a standard and

1:31:08 somebody else has a student struggling we might um invite i might invite them into my group and and somebody else might invite a group so it’s an opportunity for students to work with kids that are in different classrooms but in their grade level there is absolutely no intention and it would be extremely discouraged for additional technology during this block we are in full agreement technology has run as much of a course as it as it can um it provided us wonderful opportunities but now we want to get back to the heart of teaching and hands-on education and person-to-person communication there will be times when there’s blended learning opportunities we have some phenomenal resources that have been purchased for kids that are

1:31:54 technology based every classroom at the brown and glover has an interactive whiteboard i see that being used by groups of students there are tools that we’re going to be using to assess students and so they may take in a 15 minute assessment during that block of time there’s all kinds of things and the blended learning refers to the in person the teacher person-to-person humanities piece also reinforced with some really engaging opportunities through technology our new math programs have some phenomenal components for kids that are technically based and once teachers unpack those and

1:32:39 understand where those fit kids will most definitely enjoy that part of the day um so it’s for all learners it doesn’t matter if you’re below meeting or exceeding classroom content there’s going to be something for you to do and it will be engaging and it will be student-facing and hopefully meet the needs of our the expectation that we are constantly progress monitoring and constantly working to close our achievement gaps

1:33:15 so another wonder is around the allied arts schedule this is not a change in terms of five days a week students having access to allied arts that remains the same the misconception that students only have allied arts one day a week again if they are looking at the teaching schedule it’s probably hard to understand but students have allied arts every day of the week they have a 55 minute block as opposed to a 40-minute block in the past and the reason that we don’t have the additional music and pe experience for students one day a week some teachers some classes got it some classes didn’t

1:34:02 some kids got library double time it kind of varied but the reason for that was just to be able to cover the teachers planning times that one day of week for teachers to collaborate we’ve been able through thoughtful planning to do that five days a week our teachers get 55 minutes together our students get 15 55 minutes in allied arts it is a long time for kindergarten to be in allied arts it’s a long time for anybody to be in a core content area but i assure you this is what they do they they are magic these teachers they will have different opportunities for

1:34:47 kids so that 55 minutes they’ll be begging for more um that’s what they do so well if kid they read the room if kids are off the rails in library and no longer able to engage in the activity i trust the teacher to be able to shift gears and make something else happen that that students will that will redirect the energy and excitement a consistent daily schedule for students is imperative if you are running a socially emotional and trauma forwards school system students is particularly at the elementary level they thrive in predictability and we have an increase in anxiety among students of all ages

1:35:32 and predictability is one of the reassuring factors for kids that are coming into school anxious they need to know when things are happening and this schedule provides that for them we have your students will have one day a week they will have pe music library art and and health and wellness the health and wellness block will be taught by our allied arts teams who are all certified um educators and they are excited um i have already met with one of the lead teachers who’s already met with the team and they have vetted a number of different opportunities and they want to meet with me to talk about it and to see where it fits and what kinds of resources maybe our my

1:36:20 office can support um in in getting that program up and running so um they’re they seemingly are very excited about that so and then the final point there i’ve already discussed no longer need a double block to cover teacher planning that we’ve we’ve been able to do that so that’s our allied arts and here’s what the schedule looks like this is what teacher schedules um i’m sorry parent schedules will look like you um will get a schedule like this for your own grade level most likely from your principal or your teacher sue very soon and this is what your child’s day will look like there will be literacy blocks there will be social studies blocks math blogs special blocks and science blocks and

1:37:05 in kindergarten you’ll see we have core instruction which is our core content areas reading math writing social studies and science the direct instruction will happen in the morning and the application of the instruction will happen in the afternoon so last year i think the number was seven we had seven students that attended half day kindergarten so they would not miss any direct instruction they um recess is not allocated on that because again best practice teachers know what these kids need um recessed and outdoor play is highly encouraged all throughout the day so so they will work together as teams to decide when in the morning they want to take kids outside um

1:37:50 um um so with that um i will leave this up for teachers for parents that are maybe um wanting to just take another look but i am at this time open to questions from the committee if there are any thank you nan uh that was incredibly informative and i hope uh that everyone on this call uh was able to really listen and and take in all of that um because there was a lot there um but that was that was great um so left committee um questions comments sarah go ahead

1:38:36 so i i have um you know several of both first of all this was very helpful i think this really answered a lot of the concerns and questions that might be out there um i don’t want to minimize the questions and concerns because i’m sure there still are some um but but hopefully this hit on you know all the the mean areas um one a few things that popped into my mind i just want to clarify during that wind block there will be no gridded services being given to children ieps um so this is for you know new like you know what i need as in like i didn’t i’m not quite getting what’s happening

1:39:21 in this period of time right now in math so i’m going to be in a group that is working on that right now not what i need as in um i’m gridded to have this service on my iep so that’s going to be possibly get like given at this time i want to just clarify that during the wind block there will be no services given to children and ieps that are outlined on their iep grid so that would be a specific question for meredith but in my past practice as a school leader and a principal because i know the misnomer out there misinformed that i’ve never been a school principal when in fact i’m an urban turnaround principal so i have a tremendous amount of experience and especially with um win blocks that that

1:40:19 we did not use that time for um prescribed services this the special education that’s what’s so genius about this is that the team will still be there they’ll still be there and ready to scoop up kids that need um help and enrichment so um i think that’s that’s really important for special education parents to hear um because there’s there’s always a concern that um their child will miss out on some of these extra pieces possibly if if that’s a great time for them so that was that was definitely one um and then i think that this is also a presents a really great opportunity for uh all levels of our school system to really embrace and encourage and do

1:41:04 everything we can to um to facilitate all all the options we have for experiential learning you know our new building has some some great pieces to it outdoor classrooms and organic gardens which really are curricular based they’re not i know some people who haven’t experienced it think it’s you know cute the kids are planting flowers but it really is deeply deeply it was developed to be have a strong connection to the curriculum and really get kids doing hands-on learning and and i think that this is great ways to that a great opportunity for there to be support you know at the very top of our district all the way down

1:41:49 to maximizing those those experiential learning pieces because you know studies have shown that’s really where kids get the most is getting up hands-on you know digging in don’t i don’t mean any pun there because i just get given the organic garden but that you know it’s not this idea that kids will be sitting at a desk that we we really this is a great way for across the board horizontal vertical alignment everything for us to be maximizing those potentials for our kids um i know i have more questions but i’m going to let everybody else go and then you know if they don’t hit on some of mine i’ll we’ll so i’ll circle back certainly sounds good sarah thanks um emily see your hand up

1:42:37 thank you um man that was a great presentation there’s so much really great information um that you presented so thank you um i just had one question about when you were talking about the recess block that’s in i don’t like in math and you said that the specialist teacher could come in but if you have recess they won’t be able to be there at that time so can they just go to recess at a different time was that accurate or well that that would have been the plan prior to putting the recess back in the schedule so what happened so what’s this is there a solution can they just just shift it

1:43:25 i was asked to put recess back in the schedule it’s back right so but recess can’t be like not not at this point we i feel like we have put it back in the schedule kids will look and see i taught third grade i started losing kids 10 minutes before recess they knew it was at 10 o’clock and there was no stopping them from getting um up and out of their seats or right at 10. so i think at this point that might be something that the working group that that john is tasking the schools to develop would be able to talk about and say we’d rather not have recess on the schedule and be able to purposefully plan for some more outside instruction where kids are still engaged um yet

1:44:12 outside and and moving around and um and that would be um a great opportunity if if teachers decide that’s the right way to go right i just don’t want them to lose out on having someone come into the class for that extra help for that for that yeah i mean that’s that’s kind of what i was sad about as well okay that this schedule was very student-facing and very facing okay and um and we can only do what we can do right right time so if you have a literacy expert that you’ve hired to work and coach with teachers and their literacy block is 15 minutes

1:44:58 and then a 15-minute recess and then a 40-minute block it’s disjointed and it makes a cohesive coaching cycle difficult we’re going to do it we’re going to figure it out yeah yeah no i know figure it out rebecca brand is phenomenal we’ll figure it out um but it comes with challenges right okay thank you megan megan um man yes thank you for this very detailed walkthrough i think explaining the why for everyone the committee you know in the community was really important to do it really highlights some of the issues that as a district we need to address because they affect student achievement and student wellness so

1:45:43 so so i think kind of framing it in that way and walking through that was really helpful i think also you know addressing some of the concerns that parents have raised um so you know i’m happy to see that you’ve you’re really listening to parent feedback and i’m sure that you’ll continue to do that as you evaluate these changes um one thing you mentioned with the kindergarten schedule is you really talked about encouraging the outdoor time but i just want to maybe confirm that we’re also encouraging that as much outdoor time as possible for you know all the all the grades as well you know especially as sarah mentioned once we move into the brown school and all the amazing opportunities there are there but encouraging that throughout the day for all our students yes absolutely okay

1:46:29 dr bucky and i talked with principals about that at leadership the last few times we’ve met prioritizing the outside experience for students and really using our spaces that we’ve developed over the course of the pandemic some really amazing things have been purchased to support being outside the village has some super cool outdoor seating outdoor tables that they use these are great things to be using to get us outside in and not in a pandemic okay okay and then you also mentioned i think one of you that this is going to be a pilot right so we’re going to run it for the first semester am i understanding that correctly so i guess my question is and you don’t need to

1:47:16 answer right now on the spot but if you could at least come back to us with what that evaluation team is going to look like what the metrics are to determine what does success look like and the timeline around that and also how we plan to communicate that out to both the committee and to parents so just you know if we could get some information on that so everyone’s aware of what the plan is and what it’s going to look like and those metrics i think are important so everybody knows like what does success look like how do we know if we’re successful um and the other piece i just wanted to mention and you’ve you’ve both already touched on it so i’m not trying to like you know keep hammering in but this is something that came up at our school committee retreat too is thinking about process and communication and so i think

1:48:03 you know this is an opportunity for us to really look at how do we manage change in this district and making sure that we’ve got a process in place for how we’re going to handle that how we’re going to communicate and make sure that we get feedback and then implement so i you know again i just encourage us all to really be deliberate in how we go through that so that everyone’s on board before we get to the point of implementation and rollout

1:48:37 that’s it that’s it for now okay david did you have anything you wanted to say right now

1:48:49 no i just want to thank um dr bucky and nan for clearly you know the work the work that was done and but also for you know hearing hearing the community hearing the parents and asking for for more information and so i appreciate you doing that taking the time to make this presentation tonight and i think in advance of tonight’s meeting there was additional communication that went out through the principles to provide further clarity and and you know certainly not not blaming covid by any means but i think we all recognize that kovid created some situations where as nan said there might have been um more people getting together in person

1:49:36 uh more collective work on these kinds of things and um and also i think you know just as we know this is a really where the district wants to go with learning and education um you know time on learning we heard so much about that last year so um i’m glad we’re having an opportunity to sort of take a step back revisit it be flexible and work to move the plan forward so thank you for that flexibility and giving everybody the opportunity to zoom in tonight and ask questions and also hear hear more about it um um so nan again thank you um [Music] there’s

1:50:22 there’s there’s you know some of the things that you talked about at the very beginning you know in my comings and going at widger um over the past year or so since you guys have been here i’ve you know kind of some of them have come into my periphery but to hear them all laid out as to sort of kind of how deep of a hole we sort of find ourselves in um that sounds a little dark maybe a little darker than i want to paint it but um sort of the words that are coming to my head right now um it’s pretty staggering um you know part of me understands that experience as a parent and then you know how it sort of plays out in that you know i think that this is sort of the gap where we’re at of being the school system the great school system that we

1:51:08 are and then really taking it to that next level um and so and you know to hear that bill mccaldiff really wholeheartedly agrees with these approaches um you know it sort of on one hand deepens my concerns um and then on the other says like yes you know we’re we’re on it we’re on a good path here um and it’s you know gonna come with some bumps and hurdles and obviously we’ve hit a few this past week um but i think as i’ve tried to process through some of this and the communication gaps and everything i think that sort of you know that combined with covet is kind of where my head has come out um and so for me you know as i think about this and the recess piece there is i just want to really say that for me as a

1:51:53 committee member the recess piece is a priority um you know i think recess is well documented um and you know an unstructured recess you know i’m all for and super um supportive of the classes going outside as well not only just for covid concerns and mask breaks and everything but for um the you know just kids learning in different environments and getting up and moving around but recess is different and so i would love to see us as a district actually add more recess in um you know i would love to have us take three recesses um but i think and this is part of the piece where i think school committee comes in here um that’s obviously we can’t do that there’s only so many hours in the day that we’ve got and so and we have all of these pieces that we want to fit in and so at some

1:52:39 point the schedule is going to have to be looked at and and i just kind of want to go on record that you know whichever group whatever group gets put together um i assume there’d be a committee member on there but that i would like for school committee to really sort of one of our pieces look at the school day which comes with contract issues and and collective bargaining and budget pieces as well so that for me is really important um because i obviously don’t like to hear that we’re putting a recess back in at the expense of something else you know i kind of i see this and i’m like well let’s just figure out a way to have it all um and so i hope you know i think we’ll probably have to give a little bit at some point um but i i would like to see us look at that piece as well um and

1:53:24 really kind of think outside of the of the box here um so can you tell me the increased planning time that the teachers get um that to me sounds like that’s going to really allow for special education to have more inclusion is that a correct assumption from me

1:53:45 so the are you’re talking about the planning blocks when teachers are together to collaborate yeah yep so our teams that have special educators would be in those planning blocks so it’s sort of a way that we can make those make our classrooms more inclusive of of all students well they’re planning together well yes and our our students will be in specials so my class for example would be in in pe while i’m meeting with my team talking about um how we’re and looking at student work and and kind of assessing where we are so the special educator is part of the team and then a critical part of that team so they would be part of that collaboration great um and then how did the health and wellness

1:54:31 wellness wellness um block or or just the idea of health and wellness is something we’ve never had before where did that come from i’m all for it i would i would love to see you know a comprehensive um pre-k to 12 um health and wellness education system or curriculum here um but where did you know where did that come from at this point a great question sarah it comes from the resounding concern both in our community across the commonwealth and across the nation of having time for students to uh address some of the concerns that they may be having or or have developed coping strategies have time during the day where they’re building teams with their peers

1:55:17 so uh there’s a lot of concern from pa on the behalf of parents of students being on all different kinds of spectrums of anxiety and worry and trauma there’s been a lot of loss of speaking personally i’ve had a tremendous amount of loss in my last year and to know there was a block of time when i was going to sit and and be with partners and have some fun might help me become more engaged and learn some strategies and build some relationships so that when i’m at lunch i have um peers that i know a little bit better because there’s been strategic conversations designed to help me get to know other students and to have

1:56:04 conversations that elevate certain concerns in a really supportive compassionate way thanks dan john did you want to say something there too i i did i think that sarah fox and megan can certainly attest to this as participating in the planning for success effort but that was one of the things through the community forums and the feedback is that marblehead public schools does not have a comprehensive health curriculum and so when we’re talking diversity equity inclusion social emotional learning that was something that people were saying it would be nice if we had a k-12 scope and sequence for health and wellness thanks john um that’s great i’m thrilled that we’re that we’re working to add that in and that it’s it’s got a great

1:56:49 plan it sounds like um that’s it’s really huge um i’ll tonight now and i just want to add to that sarah that this was a very thoughtful this was something dr bucky and i talked about we we talked about with our colleagues what other kinds of how are you addressing your social emotional concerns and worries and what is your health um picture-like in your district and how do you get kids where they need to be and um this was not something like oh let’s just pick health and wellness this was a very thoughtful approach and our allied arts team seems to be on board and excited about the opportunity uh and reaching out even for resources and um they’re excited to share some of the opport the things that they’re

1:57:36 already working to create and design great it’s that’s exciting because i know our our like up like i think it was at village i’m not sure which grade but kind of through the middle school and the high school a few years back implemented a a curriculum something out of michigan i believe and so i i think that this probably sets a nice stage for all of the hard work in health and wellness that’s been done at the upper grades as well so um it’s really exciting work um sarah i’ll circle back to you okay so for this um health and wellness block i will say and i had a chance to talk to nana a little bit about this this is one of the pieces that’s a little bit harder for me to wrap my head around i think it’s deeply needed i think it’s deeply valuable

1:58:21 deeply valuable deeply valuable i do think that particularly coming post-pandemic having that led by our specialists our art teachers our music teachers our gym teachers might be taking kind of a bigger burden um because we are coming from a harder a stronger social emotional deficit for a lot of these kids that that it may be a big ask for for um people that although all elementary school teachers have the basic training in this i i do think that that lock being run by mental health professionals would be um more

1:59:08 more productive um and also i you know i want to make sure we’re setting all of our educators up for success um i just worry that coming out of the pandemic this might that lock if we’re putting too much expectation it might be a relatively big ass for people who who really are not mental health professionals so that piece is a concern for me i would also you know love some exploration of that black becoming a steam block you know we’ve we’ve talked about the need to move into say current with education um it’s really something all districts are doing during our planning for success um you know steven talked a lot about you know different steam things that could

1:59:53 be happening at that lower level you know he talked about lego programming and different things did not i didn’t understand everything that he was saying but he seemed to have a lot of great ideas and we have this new school that has a steam space in it um i’m sure we could find one at glover and i just think that you know if we could find a way to kind of add that possibly in as uh as this group working group gets together if we can look at ways to kind of explore that um that might be be good but another really big point that came out of all of this um and i applaud our current team for looking for ways to to fix this long-standing problem but it doesn’t

2:00:39 negate the fact that it’s a long-standing and current problem is we have no social science studies or science science curriculum i say that for science but we do have the spa science kit so it’s somewhat of a curriculum but and and that is because we buy found foundations for literacy we buy or we bought go math we buy the new math curriculum now for math but as we move into budget season i want everybody on this call everybody that’s writing emails you know all of our educators all of us to come together as a team and market and lobby and do everything we can to say we need we need to fund curriculum we need to fund a social studies curriculum we need to fund all these curriculums because we haven’t and it’s not for one

2:01:26 year and it’s not for two years we have not funded an elementary social studies curriculum um we’ve had great teachers that have come up with things and put them together and we we have some lead and we have leadership that you know encourages that and works with them because we haven’t funded a a curriculum per se um and we need to move to a point where we are funding these things so that we’re it makes things like this schedule easier um you know nan and meredith and everybody came up with this stuff to find common planning blocks and these teachers will come together and they will plan they will find and design their own curriculum

2:02:12 but we need to everybody come together and advocate for the funding for the curriculums we need to set all of our educators all of our students you know man the meredith and everybody up for the maximum level of success because we’re not funding it it’s not happening and that’s what that’s what’s come out of this because anybody who’s paid attention to what their kids are and are not doing in in elementary knows we don’t have those things and we haven’t had them so that’s my plug for that also i will say i’ll make a motion at the end of when our our agenda pieces are over i see multiple hands i think this is a really big ticket item that i’ll make a motion to reopen public comment for people who have comments

2:02:58 david you’ve got your hand up i i’d just like to clarify i think i’m going on my eighth year on the board and i’ve never denied a request for social studies curriculum and i don’t believe there’s ever been a request made for one that we’ve turned down i just want to clarify that thank you thanks david um megan and emily just more a suggestion because there is there was so much information shared here and obviously a number of questions clarifying questions that have come through from parents i know both principals put out an faq but can we post that somewhere on our website that’s easily accessible and then as additional questions come in continue to update that so if you know a parent asks something everybody gets the information in an easy easy to access way and as we

2:03:44 you know as you know once you come back with the information on how do we determine if this pilot’s gonna be success just update that you know update that document so everyone has easy access to the information as you know as necessary yes absolutely can i can i just take an opportunity to clarify the the health and wellness block is not therapeutic it is not um designed to address that level of need this is just like we don’t have our classroom teachers when they’re doing second step curriculum instruction or responsive classroom click curriculum instruction those are pro that’s the level of curriculum that we’re talking about it’s it we are not talking about um some of the more intense

2:04:31 opportunities that we provided our older students last year thank you nan for that clarification that was very helpful and our upper grades the those are not uh mental health specialists either that actually have a a health and wellness block have for for years um those are those are health and wellness teachers um um and yeah i advisory to support some of their um student needs and just to you know just to sort of put on that you know i before i was on school committee and could go into the schools in a different capacity um i would come in and talk with the high school students in their health classes and do lessons on depression and anxiety and recognizing it so you know the the teachers again they’re working to get these needs addressed by professionals

2:05:17 who who know what they’re doing and i know you know i used to come in for carla cephalo and she always had an amazing lineup of all kinds of professionals coming in and out of her classes when we could do that um so that kids were getting a really in-depth view of a lot of different things that impact health and wellness great um emily i think you had your hand up so my comments from a while ago in this conversation um i just want a second what sarah gold said about extending the school day to accommodate more recess because i am a huge proponent of recess also and so when we talk about budget and how we can do that i think that’ll benefit everybody to get

2:06:02 to get to get more recess time so just wanted to put that out there this year so thank you thanks emily um any other questions or comments from the committee okay thank you nan um we really appreciate it yeah i’m anticipating just one thing that i did not mention and that was about snack snack will be um enjoyed at any time during the day that the teachers decide for that to happen it does not need to be designated a working snack if we do pause it’s just time on learning that we don’t count but again if we decide to do that universally that’s awesome we can that’s up to teachers so thank you nan

2:06:48 pack those snacks man when you said time on learning that just reminded me i know we’re really tight and really close on our minutes um our hours probably down to the minute um are we covered on our half days yes okay all right so i don’t think there’s any other questions from the committee so we will move on again thank you nan um we really appreciate you coming and clarifying all of this and i think you know it provides a good framework one you sort of laid the foundation for a lot of the needs that are out there and a lot of the issues that you’re seeing um as you’ve dug deep over the past year um and so i think it’ll be easier as these things start to get addressed um more rapidly with hopefully coded moving off to the side um that will that you know

2:07:34 know know some of these things won’t be as big of a surprise at this point so we really appreciate you coming and appreciate all of the work from all the professionals in the district as well sarah just want to remind you there’s a motion on the table oh i’m sorry i didn’t realize that you had actually made that motion sarah you’re going to comment after i feel like it would be item four on the agenda after the vote on policy since we have several hands up okay so sarah has made a motion cindy what do you want to second that

2:08:15 uh any comments or anything on it before we vote

2:08:28 i i would like to just make a comment um just for people who are listening at home and um they don’t need to wait for a zoom meeting to ask a question um we all know there’s been hundreds of emails that have come in on various topics um there are the appropriate channels where you know where you start with your school principal then it gets even to dr bucky you know uh constantly uh responding to emails so i want to encourage people that if they you know miss out on a meeting or miss out on an opportunity to speak it doesn’t mean you can’t still be heard you can’t still email the building committee you can’t still email the school committee or you

2:09:13 know dr bucky and your and your principal to get your questions on in and get your questions answered it doesn’t or to be heard it doesn’t need to be on his own meeting at a school meeting so and thank you dr barkey and everybody who takes the time to respond to those inquiries thanks david thanks david all right um i will call real hall vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily barron yes david harris yes and sarah fox yes all right we will add a second public comment after we get through the face coverings policy if needed okay which then this brings us on to the legal representation next steps so at our

2:10:01 school committee retreat we decided to have dr bucky look into the legal representation and and get some information from a few different firms uh to see who’s out there and what they can do for us and just make sure that we are being best represented so dr bucky sent out a letter you want to speak you want to lay this out sure we had four firms that responded our current council plus three other firms and the next step for the committee would be to schedule to have them come in and do a presentation whether you want to have all four come in and do a presentation i think is a conversation that you’ll want to have generally you would schedule 40 minutes 20 minutes for presentation 20 minutes

2:10:46 for question answer so the next question depending on how many you elect to interview do you want to do that over one long evening or over two shorter evenings knowing that after the presentations you’ll want to deliberate uh and make a decision megan i saw your hand up um i’m going to make the recommendation that we bring all four back and that we interview them over two days so we can give them the you know our full attention um i think doing it in one day would be hard because that’s three plus hours you know three hours and then deliberation so i’m gonna suggest we bring all four back um over two days let me just bring up my calendar again i’m gonna suggest the 14th and the 15th um [Music]

2:11:31 in the evening to do that okay and then obviously and then doing our deliberation after the final interview on the 15th okay

2:11:43 anybody have conflicting or supporting thoughts with that i mean it sounds good to me as much as i would like to push it into one evening i think that you’re probably correct that you know we’d be a little fried after probably that second presentation um and it would be good to to be able to take a break and come back the next day to really make sure that we’re focusing our thoughts correctly on this issue just to confirm because that’s the week of the second or the third thursday we’re normally first and third so we’d have a meeting that week tuesday wednesday and thursday night thursday’s actually yom kippur so we’re pushed to the next thursday uh i think it’s the 23rd so we actually september we have the first thursday and the fourth thursday i believe there are five

2:12:29 thursdays in september yeah yeah i just wanted to make sure we didn’t have three in a row yeah that would be a lot even for us

2:12:40 okay so that works for everybody all right let’s do it okay i’ll reach out to the firms and have uh two scheduled for the 14th and two scheduled for the 15th okay uh what time are those going to be do you think um seven o’clock seven to nine or seven whatever yeah and can we make a point of having no other business because when we kind of start to grow these agendas it becomes yes yeah the deliberation piece um on that second night will be the only other okay and i think we’ll probably run them as workshop um workshops as well so um because it seems to be fitting for that and that deliberation piece is an executive session right no

2:13:25 was it not i thought you mentioned it would be yeah i didn’t know so okay saying no we all look over here believe that’s a reason for executive session i believe we have to deliberate that in public i can look over the um the reasons for executive session yeah and i can ask dorothy as well all right speaking of dorothy um so i will move us on to the policy eb cfa the face covering policy so um we kind of have to decide if we’re going to implement this policy the policy that i had put in everybody’s folders is the boilerplate policy straight from masc that they wrote up a couple of weeks back um so i did

2:14:12 reach out to dorothy the other day um given the commissioner’s mandate uh we talked a little bit about whether or not marvel had needed to to adopt this policy since we hadn’t talked about it beforehand so um you know it just sort of was was put upon us with the with the mandate um so we can really decide um you know she she didn’t have a strong recommendation either way she she thought there were benefits obviously to adopting the policy i tend to agree but i would love to hear what everybody else has to say about it

2:14:56 i i mean it’s redundant i have absolutely no problem adopting it it you know just solidifies it but um from a legal standpoint it’s it’s redundant we can’t legally do anything less obviously we all know we can do more you can’t do less i’m happy to do it i’m happy to not do it whatever the will of the community is but um it’s it’s really it’s ceremonial at best it’s it’s there’s we have no jurors we have no jurisdiction here

2:15:36 so so first off i mean i think um once again as a committee we’re all opening we’re we’ve all been open to listening to the community people have been um sending us emails i think for the last six weeks in anticipation of how this might go um and as blair nelson stated at the beginning of the meeting the uh the board of health um actually had a meeting and and made made a recommendation on how they thought we should proceed um had there not been a desi a deci recommendation so i so i think um you know this

2:16:22 mandate has certainly trumped any further need for um a vote or deliberation it’s a mandate i think you know i’ve read it twice there there it says um until october 1st uh you know the the exact wording i don’t know if we want to necessarily if we need to pull it up on the screen um sarah but it’s um let me just get to that i was just going back and forth from the um the deci the deci the i just wanted to point out the two requirements are it says through at least october 21st and then when it mentions october 21st uh pardon me october 1st but then it

2:17:09 also mentioned that the um after october 21st what what provisions there will be and um and then it also talks about you know leading up to that date the uh commissioner will be um you know reviewing and advising the district so it has a lot of things in there and then um when i look at our policy there there’s a few [Music] a few nuances that sort of contradict what what desi’s mandate is and so i i don’t really want to get into wordsmithing our our mask policy versus um

2:17:56 what what desi is covering i think it’s easiest just to live live with the mandate and um at such time the one question i had i i suppose um since since we’re we’re all on a mask mandate our previous policy this is another thing had allowed the superintendent to change it and that was when we were going back and forth from hybrid to remote and and mask or no mask and so if there was an emergency situation we agreed to allow the super but in this case we’re in masks so um at such time will reconvene if the policies change with deci my thought my thought

2:18:42 hey any other thoughts i i agree with david and sarah i think at this point it’s pretty clear what the mandate is from the state and i think you know we’ll we’ll follow that as we get closer to october 1st if things you know are going to change then we we can address it there but um i think at this point it’s all pretty straightforward you know for better or worse yeah all right then we will not move forward on a policy this evening okay so that we know but there is there is a district-wide policy as a result of the mandate from asks right so it’s this mandate from desi right yeah we are not voting right we won’t have a

2:19:29 school committee policy about masks we’re just leaving duffy to and similarly as we followed in the spring and so so with with that dr bucky will will you have an outline of how dusty’s policy transfers to a what that what that means for for parents are you gonna simplify that or are we just going to mail out the deci guidelines i think that’s a great question and i had forwarded some stuff along from a legal advisory that we received because it uh the advice is to put it into an amendment into school handbooks that now masks are required and i just think it adds a layer of protection for the

2:20:15 district and not inviting any sort of controversy but for someone who uh is refusing to wear a mask having local language about that because the desi policy doesn’t address if someone refuses to wear a mask and so that would be a local and i think that’s why masc put together the policy so that if some some districts are approaching it as ineligible to attend that we have a mask requirement in the district and so if you’re not complying you’re simply ineligible to attend others are following the masc policy which outlines following progressive discipline as outlined in

2:21:02 individual school handbooks for refusal to comply but that’s where you would have to have an amendment to the handbook because right now when we approved handbooks we didn’t include that piece so my recommendation would be to vote um a local policy so that you have that particular guidance specific to marblehead okay so john you you would it would me if we do vote this policy tonight it will make things easier for you and the building level principles then it would okay well then i’ll i’ll make a motion to approve can someone give me all the letters policy policy ebcfa face coverings so moved or if you have the motion ready sarah uh i i will just put it forward um from the top of my head so just a motion

2:21:49 to approve the policy eb cfa face coverings so moved specific need this then they need this

2:22:00 so sarah moved can i get a second yeah second megan second yeah emily’s got a question so eb that’s our policy that we wrote before right so it’s the same letters because masc put forth but what uh what deci so the current so so a few weeks back before desi weighed in masc put out a new poll and sort of they uh redid their ebcfa no no um we had rescinded our policy ebcfa at the end of last school year so we don’t have a policy ebcfa currently right so this would be

2:22:46 somewhat of a reinstatement of that policy but the language is different than what we had last oh right oh so i didn’t get that language maybe i didn’t see it okay because all i saw was our original one so it looks the same but it’s not um because i opened it this thing is slightly different it’s just slightly different so if you looked if you were to i guess because what i read on this i had issues with because i thought this was our our old one yeah i mean i could be wrong right you’re talking about the documentary so the policy that

2:23:31 i would propose that we insert with that we vote on tonight is the current masc okay ebcfa policy as state as stated they had emailed everyone a few weeks back so whether that’s so that’s not what we got tonight so whether that’s what we got tonight or not that’s what that’s where i’m confused because i wasn’t i was like this is and i thought i’d look that over carefully but maybe i missed it no that’s okay um and that’s close to what desi recommended yes

2:24:07 i think in keeping in line with megan’s uh thoughts about not making rush decisions yeah you give me the opportunity to go back and get the updated uh mask policy and some of the advisory language for you to vote at your next meeting which is just a week from now which would be the second day of school yeah i agree with that because this feels confused and it’s an important policy for the district okay thank you so we do have a motion and seconded though so we will need to either rescind that motion or take a vote essentially to vote it down what can we rescind the motion i believe we can rescind the motion i believe it has

2:24:55 to be you and sarah that do so i recently i just me because i motioned it every single motion okay and then we’ll make sure that that’s on for thursday and i apologize um i again i thought that i had uh gotten that that correct one from the the email from a few weeks ago not an issue i just

2:25:18 just to be clear to the public it does not change the fact that masks are mandated yes all right um anything else on that i don’t think so uh so that will then move us into closing business and we have added that second public comment so i’ve got a few hands that are up um aaron and just a reminder three minutes um and then please state your name and address for the record uh aaron noonan

2:25:48 oh thank you so much sarah this is erin noonan beverly ave again i’m just speaking as a parent of three kids um one in elementary now and two only just moved into the middle middle school sphere um i really didn’t want to plan to make comment tonight but this is this is just so close to my heart with three kids through the system um and after that presentation by nan i i just appreciate now even more that the spirit of this change um is really a step forward in a progressive look at the delivery of education in the school day while at the same time we are finally aligning the curriculum and the student experience within the district and

2:26:34 experiential learning i i just it is not supported by the idea of a mandatory time set of stop whatever you are doing at this time it’s 1005. our schedule is to go outside um we have a very short window of time that the kids are in school and and as was explained our time on learning needs um you know obviously need improvement and the idea that education is moving in a multi-faceted like cross-cult curricular experiential practice of moving around in a classroom with engaging activities and you know it’s social people talk about social skills it is social it should be social in the classroom and involve teamwork

2:27:21 and so the kids shouldn’t feel the loss the teachers you know should should be you know free to take their in but at the same time on the other side of that is a teacher should be able to take their kids outside at whatever time is convenient for them to like whatever write in their composition books under the trees take their kids out for the recess at the time that works for them in their classroom and you know nothing about the schedule that was initially proposed prohibited outside and if anything it was kind of designed around that idea to encourage more teacher autonomy and um you know again this idea that we have to stop whatever we’re doing at a certain

2:28:07 time i mean i think that’s an antiquated look at education and i i really actually appreciate the um the this philosophy and this sort of i’m going to say progressive thinking way of education um you know because as somebody i’m sending my my oldest to a private school and as along with many of them that emphasize outdoor learning and classroom outdoor classroom because there’s evidence-based data that shows that kids learn better through multi-sensory experiences and movement and and if you i think that the schedule 10 seconds it you know it was um the way it was rolled out was was difficult but i i think the other side of that is the accountability for teachers and i think just parents need

2:28:53 to feel that there’s accountability that teachers will have the professional development skills that they need to be able to achieve that goal so thank you so much thank you erin uh next is karen murphy hi karen murphy uh 30 commercial street my question is about um early drop-off i’m a single mom and um the drop-off time is 8 15 at everlith i have a child going into kindergarten uh david you said that you know i could email this question i’ve emailed four different people and have no response from anybody so i would like to know if anybody has addressed this situation for parents karen i’ll make sure we get you an answer first thing tomorrow morning i

2:29:39 will check with principal satterfield on that and arrange to make sure that you have that information okay thank you thank you karen and catherine martin thank you sarah catherine martin 29 west shore drive at first i’d just like to to thank nan for that presentation and as a parent kind of codifying a lot of the concerns that i’ve voiced at many of these meetings over the last few years we don’t have a comprehensive social studies program and although i love the idea of a health and wellness curriculum rolled out for our elementary students i don’t want the art teacher teaching it i you may not need to be a mental health professional but it should be somebody who has

2:30:25 more of a background than just you know whoever you can move into that space at that time so i just think that that is something to consider but i’m going to come back to as we move into budget season there were a lot of great ideas talked about tonight extending our school day so that we could potentially get more time on learning give teachers more planning time together steam programs experiential learning social studies curriculum a real science curriculum social and emotional supports we need money to fund this so when we get to budget season and we all show up for the budget subcommittee hearings you can’t turn around and say well we’re

2:31:12 collaborating with the town and it’s all great we heard it tonight we don’t have a social studies program it’s that’s a black eye people are buying 1500 square foot houses in this town for a million dollars and we don’t have a social studies program every budget meeting i’ve ever gone to and spoken up about have been about these deficiencies i’ve been in this district nine years i’ve experienced them first hand and i speak up at all of these meetings but we need all of parents to speak up and attend k through 3. we haven’t we have been level funded for 17 years and this is what happens when you level fund for 17 years you lack innovation you lack social studies you lack steam you lack experiential learning and you know man outlined

2:31:58 you know a lot of the things tonight that we’ve all been talking about that you know when we asked these questions we were given the crazy eyes for all these years like oh we have social studies but we didn’t and we’re not funding our district properly so i am really hopeful that nan’s presentation tonight is a jumping-off point for the zero-based needs budget that we need and bringing us into a budget season so we can really be the high performing district that we have the potential to be and i just want to thank man for being very clear tonight and and really just codifying a lot of the concerns as parents that we’ve all had thank you catherine uh mike

2:32:44 oh i think he just lowered his hand um so ally taylor again yay again yay um i so i have a couple things i wanted to i think what catherine said is really important i think we need to make sure when budget season happens again that we’re talking about you know funding aids properly funding nurses properly funding bus drivers or janitors maintenance for these brand new amazing technologically savvy schools properly um and of course everybody else involved um i think we really need to remember you know the socialized program as well um remember these conversations and these deficits that we have when those other conversations come up because i think sometimes it’s hard

2:33:30 to remember that but um secondly i i know that there was some mention of potentially having a working group for um to you know discuss how the schedule changes are going and that sort of thing um and i’m hopeful that some information will come out on that so that parents can get involved um obviously i would be raising my hand for that job as well um and then i think the the last thing that my or one of my last questions is you know for the win program just i really appreciated that conversation and that additional detail i think it’s certainly very helpful for us all to have that so we don’t think that our child is just going to be sitting in front of um

2:34:15 you know an ipad not that there aren’t great programs out there um and i look forward to having some more information on that for those parents that you know may not have a specialized need or an iep or 504 plan um how their children will be engaged um and working through that um and so thank you for that nan as well and thank you for allowing comment at the end i think that’s an amazing motion and i’m grateful for that

2:34:45 thank you ali um john i would assume that uh an email from you will come out about the working group absolutely yes all right great all right um i don’t have any further hands raised so anybody have any new business

2:35:06 um i on new business i would like to ask that um by the end of september we’ve solidified at least one open forum date i think that we really have seen here tonight um the benefits of how that not that tonight was an open forum but how that might have helped us if we had one and you know had the topic be our third or k through three um schedule roll out you know i think that we’ve we’ve seen tonight how that can be helpful we’ve seen how you know anybody who’s watching social media saw how important this issue was was and how strongly it was felt and you know then we had nan come in and make a

2:35:51 presentation and make a lot of clarifications um which were super helpful and i think it really brought a lot of people along that we’re feeling very nervous and uneasy about this beforehand and then we’re closing out on a better note like we just heard from ali saying she was thankful for hearing his clarification so it we’re showing that if we had a forum on these big ticket items how impactful that would be of kind of getting ahead of the fever pitch if you will so i would like to see us get at least one our first one on the books um i think that there’s a number of topics we could have it on we’ll have to decide what that topic will be i think we have to limit it to a topic we can’t just have a free-for-all forum but i think you know there’s definitely some

2:36:38 topics that are our obvious ones so i’d like that to be an agenda item that we we add sooner rather than later okay i will make note of that and i know we should keep track of that as well all right um then we had no correspondence um and so that leads us to adjournment at 9 35. thank you everyone thank you you nan yes thank you