School Committee: March 17, 2022

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

1:05 hey can everyone hear me sarah can you give me a thumbs up if you can hear us all right great all right um for just stephen is working with dan on a little bit of tech stuff so bear with us a little bit but i think we can get moving along with the meeting so i will call us to order at 701 pm um officially uh first up is commendations i have a combination that i will start with um i want to commend samuel burginski and his mom angela greisman and teachers alicia dolan and jen billings of mhs gives back for organizing the donation drive for ukraine um i’m unsure of how much that was collected but in my conversations with angela it was

1:51 far exceeding what they had ever anticipated and so i want to thank the marblehead community for their generosity and support um many marblehead families are directly impacted by this war in ukraine and um the show of support is really heartening and in addition jack and haley i didn’t get a chance to get their last names from principal bauer but they also did a fundraiser for monetary donations for the ukraine branch of the red cross at the high school or through the high school and i’d like to recognize them as well so thank you to all of those efforts any other commendations

2:33 what’s that all right um jason i know you are wanting to move along to the senior show so have that welcome thank you um i’d like to start by giving uh congratulations to jeffrey letterman and grace mcqueen our valedictorian and salutatorian i know they worked very hard for it congratulations to them um on february 18th the chorus had a workshop with umass lowe i was in attendance it was super cool to see music at the college level and what that looked like so great experience and on march 2nd four mhs students also participated in the allstate course and that is a great achievement so congrats to them on march 3rd was eighth grade curriculum night at the high school

3:19 on march 7th and march 8th to our honors societies the national school societies and triumph held fundraisers at meeto’s and spitfire tacos on march 11th the sophomore semi-formal happened at endicott college i talked to a bunch of sophomores everyone seemed really happy with the event and it’s great that they were able to have a dance just one year after a great night um the weekend of march 12th the mhs chapter of deca which is like our business club competed in state and we have six students moving on to the international competition so that’s super exciting um last week grades 9 through 11 had readings about the new schedule with the permanent magic block and the college and career block horizon seniors

4:05 this information was like i said just given out and mr bauer will elaborate more about these specifics like sarah mentioned there were some fundraising efforts for ukraine happening in the past couple weeks um jewish boston teens also a general student-led fundraiser and mhs student sam raginski all helped contribute it’s a great effort and it’s nice that we’re able to do so much for the people of ukraine uh on march 16th uh grades 9-11 also had meetings about course selections for next year um our national green school society and best buddies are also holding the batman tournament this saturday so that’s that’s pretty exciting maybe i’ll be in attendance um

4:53 and grade 10 will have mcas next week on march 22 march 23rd and delayed start for a grade it’s not third so yeah 9 11 12. um as far as some general class news the freshman class had a very successful valentine’s day fundraiser the class raised thirteen hundred dollars and they would like to thank the dewitt family at stowaway suites for their generous support uh as far as the junior class we are currently reaching to local businesses for donations and sponsorships for the class auction that’s what happened all right wonderful thank you so much there’s not much going on is there

5:29 it’s good to have you and you know feel free to head on over to the senior show and have fun thank you so much we’ll see you in two weeks or three weeks actually all right that moves us along to public comment uh for anyone who would like to make public comment um we don’t have we have our one member okay our one live audience member is not going to make public comments if anyone in the zoom audience would like to make a public comment please use the raise hand function and we will be able to call on you uh if you do we will ask that you keep your comments to three minutes and that you state your name and address for the record ally taylor

6:23 kelly i think you’re unmuted or i think you’re muted sorry better much better thank you okay sorry guys um ali taylor for orange street so thank you for the opportunity to comment um i would like to preface well i might cry just that’s me i would like to preface uh what i’m about to say with the fact that there is no question that our teachers are asked to do an ungodly amount of work with an ungodly lack of resources and i appreciate all that they do during this time of uncertainty it’s even more insane and as we now lack consistent elementary school leadership throughout since the pandemic uh at the schools due to the previous year and a half of remote learning as well as specialized needs i know that there are students that need additional assistance to get

7:10 them up to grade level and i fully agree and support wholeheartedly that those services should be in place to cater to all of those needs it’s important to hear that from my voice uh there is however the other side of the curve also for which i feel extremely passionate that is the side with students who are performing above their grade level students who against all pandemic odds manage to thrive academically since march of 2020. i would attribute much of that to their amazing teachers i want to share a personal experience on that which sets the stage for what can be accomplished when you allow for that opportunity to our first grade teacher last year originally at glover and now at brown mrs o’flynn there are no words to describe how phenomenal you were and how you continuously even today since you’re brown with them again serve as a trusted face

7:57 for a very impressionable young child my son and two other children also performing above their grade level in his class last year or on a daily basis provided different reading and different math materials they were brought together as a breakout group and rather than making them sit through math that they fully understood they were allowed to work on advanced math strategies rather than sounding out words or reading a book with their larger class they were provided chapter books for their just right reading at times mrs o’flynn would sometimes even have to purchase them herself because there weren’t enough copies of the same book and she had to go to the middle school to get them the opportunity she provided for these children was in fact the definition of exceptional mrs o’flynn not only raised the bar but she emboldened these young boys to become leaders and mentors to their classmates

8:42 now that we’re back in person the idea of providing students with the level materials that they need seems to not always be the case i don’t understand why the methods of past cannot be continued each room is large enough to hold separate groups and at brown they have those tables and chairs outside it could be used for breakout rooms to congregate or work on additional materials constantly repeating that you’re giving our children an exemplary education does not magically make it true i’m more than aware that in most cases our main classroom teachers in no way are equipped to lead this effort alone i fully believe that but they can make an assessment and it’s your job to find the resources you’re doing a grave disservice by leaving these children behind to not be challenged and provided what they need and deserve this is how you lose children who otherwise love to learn

9:28 this is what causes my numbing boredom this is why students stop paying attention this is why you manifest what might otherwise be considered bad behavior this is where you are most assuredly not giving what they need or providing them with an exemplary education and that is a shame because our children deserve better thank you ali cindy

9:59 sorry just trying to do my thing here um ali i just want to thank you for what you’ve said because obviously it’s um

10:18 from your heart so um me going forward has nothing to do with what you just shared and so i just want to put that out there that um it’s important to acknowledge um your emotions and your pain at this point so um so i’m here for a couple things one is on a as i said a totally different note um i want to thank um dr bucky even though we haven’t had the event yet but um next wednesday um this is just a kind reminder that um we as the mark in terms of the marblehead racial justice team is having a presentation on march 23rd

11:04 at 10 a.m at the lucretia and joseph brown elementary school and i i’m hoping i know that i’ve already extended this out to the school committee but i am hoping that there are members of the school committee present at that presentation and it’s about a 30-minute presentation and i’m sure john can share more etc but um i want to thank john for saying yes to what we are presenting which are two portraits one being harriet tubman and the other one is john lewis and in terms of the opportunity for myself and another member of the marblehood racial justice team to be working

11:49 working working with the principal and some of the staff there and the students will be participating so um thank you john and um i would love to know who’s coming from the school committee because i am putting together a list for the school so if the school committee could get back to me that would be great and then the other thing which is a totally different conversation and obviously it’s impacts some of the stuff that i’m involved with but my concern in terms of the mecco program in terms of the actual number of students um that we have today and how

12:35 the change and um and the inconsistency of having a director um not here that long um impacts the kids and i just want to put that out there because i am extremely concerned regarding what we do in marblehead in terms of support in terms of

13:04 how we set it up it seems to me that we need to set up our mecco program for success and that is um

13:17 i’m just concerned and you know many of you know where my passion and my heart is and i um you know i consider myself an activist um i obviously work on not just racial justice but you know other inequities um including cpac and i just you know i’m just concerned and i would i don’t expect answers today by any means but um i think that we as a district really need to look hard at what we do when it comes to the medco program and also as a community so that is it um

14:03 i hope to see some of you next week and i thank you for your time thank you cindy cindy what was the date and time again the 23rd and march 23rd next wednesday 10 a.m it’s going to be a 30 minute presentation because you know they are young students and so we want to make sure that it is something that is interactive powerful and um that we have their attention as well so um i can only say that the the members of my team that have been working on it and also in terms of the staff at the school

14:48 i think we’re all excited about it um you know it’s just a wonderful wonderful opportunity and

14:58 just so that you guys know just in case it’s a reminder is that the following next year it would be presented to another school so that these portraits are um housed um in the school for a year and the idea is to go through the marblehead public school districts schools so anyway thank you cindy monique l hello everyone how are you have a good evening um i first want to say congratulations and um to linda lindsey page um on her new endeavors um that’s from the mecco program my name is monique lloyd i am a parent of a marblehead high school student i’m also the president of the marblehead

15:44 marblehead marblehead medco pco um i just wanted to also say i’m kind of saddened to hear that mr andre is leaving the high school the students have expressed um their heartfelt sympathy that he’s leaving so that’s one thing on the other thing of the medical director thank you cindy for bringing that to this meeting it’s disheartening to know that we’re now on our fifth medco director in four and a half years we really must find out why marblehead isn’t retaining a medical director after mr philza may these students are very fragile at this point seeing

16:31 what’s going on in the world with their with their nationality them being black african-american boys and girls and now seeing that we lost another medical director and we have to go through a process again to get the right medical director um i don’t know why these medical directors are leaving some of them have expressed concern with um faculty in schools and that really made me cry over the last couple of years of hearing basically the same attitude i think right now to hear that miss deandra williams has resigned as of last friday and this friday is her last day

17:16 day day the students and the parents have been sending me overwhelming texts emails and phone calls asking what is going on at this point um a lot of them are just very upset um my son has even talked to me and it’s you know he’s even saying why is this happening why can’t we hold a medical director why can’t we have someone who we can relate to and here we go again that’s basically what the census is across the board with the marblehead excuse me with the medco parents i’m hoping that john nan i and whoever else is going to sit on the next interview committee

18:04 will get the right med co-director um but i posed to the school committee to keep this at the forefront of marblehead and the forefront of you all’s meetings about what is going on and why we can’t retain a medical director for more than a year or half a year i believe that they need more than just one person up there doing that job they need a part-time echo director and a full-time medical director um the paraprofessional we’ve asked several times to have a meeting with them just to so that they could meet the parents that has never came to fruition um and that’s very sad that things that parents are saying

18:50 they feel that they’re not being heard i know that there are two other parents from medco on this call and i hope that they speak up thank you for your time i greatly appreciate it thank you monique kim day hi can you hear me yeah kim day 18 liberty road um i actually i don’t i was a little bit late so i may have missed if you brought this up at the beginning of the meeting but i just wanted to acknowledge and thank you guys for um making these back on zoom um and if you’re wondering the experience so far seems to be a good one in terms of being able to see and hear what’s going on but um sorry something in my throat i just wanted to say thank you because public

19:36 participation is really important and i’m just hoping people continue to attend these um and you continue to take public comment and do it in this forum so thank you

19:50 all right i don’t see any other hands raised thank you to everyone who has made public comment this evening um that will move us to the next section um action and agenda items we had four sets of minutes um so can i have a motion to accept the minutes from 11 18 20 21 12 16 20 21 1 6 20 22 and 120 2022 megan moved

20:21 any additions or concerns with any of those

20:27 all right uh roll call vote sarah gold yes david harris yes megan taylor yes emily barron yes and sarah fox yes all right that passes five to zero lisa thank you for your continued work i think emily you’ve been busy with those as well um i will turn it over to michelle we have a statement of interest submission for the massachusetts school build school building authority thank you so the msba or mass school building authority has just opened their window for statements of interests we have been talking about this for a little bit now not publicly during a school committee meeting but within the

21:12 administration and since we are seeking funding or are in need of repair of the high school roof in addition to the veteran school d-wing roof we have decided to go forward with submitting a statement of interest at this time the submission of a statement of interest is not necessarily an application or any guarantee for funding basically we are just raising our hand to say yes we are interested in possibly being invited into an accelerated repair program which could fund um roughly 30 to 35 36 of a project the unfortunate part is it’s not a very speedy process so the due date to have a submission statement of interest is

21:58 next friday they are due last evening the board of selectmen did vote in favor of allowing superintendent to submit such a statement to the msba currently we are like i mentioned we’re looking at the high school roof and the veterans middle school roof the high school roof has approximate price tag of 3.9 million the veteran school roof has a much smaller price tag of 170 000 but you know 30 35 36 of that is substantial dollars and certainly if we don’t raise our hands and state that hey we’re out here we have this need um there would be no potential for receiving any funding from the state so we are using this as a potential opportunity to receive some funding um

22:43 certainly there’s no guarantee as i said the next step would be we would submit this they would then review all their statements of interest they will then invite certain certain entities to then apply apply to their program and we have 90 days at that point to provide additional information and documentation um and then that is when they start actually reviewing the applications so it like as i said it’s not a speedy process this could take anywhere from 12 to 24 months possibly even longer to actually receive um approval if we are to continue down this road um but we thought that it is not a bad idea to at least submit the interest see where it goes from here um certainly the

23:29 need for our roof is not going anywhere they’re not going away i know the town is entertaining the thoughts of putting forward a project this year for multiple town roofs um even with an msba project if we were to be approved we still need to vote the entire amount or the town would have to vote the entire project so certainly we could be included in that town discussion on that town project and you know as long as we do not start the actual um project or the funding of the project actually the work on the project we could always get that msba funding if it comes along as long as the project is not actually physically started so we’re just asking for permission with a very lengthy motion and a very lengthy vote to um

24:16 provide the superintendent authorization to submit the statement of interest on behalf of the marblehead public schools

24:26 all right thank you michelle um i will read the motion and it is lengthy so bear with me and then we can have questions so can i please get a motion to authorize the superintendent to submit to the massachusetts school building authority a statement of interest form dated march 16 2022 for the marblehead high school and veterans middle school located at 2 humphrey street marblehead mass and 217 pleasant street marblehead mass respectively which describes and explains the following deficiencies and the priority category for which an application may be submitted to the massachusetts school building authority in the future description of priority priority category number five replacement renovation or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs windows boilers heating and ventilation

25:14 systems to increase energy conservation and decrease energy related costs in a school facility description of deficiency the high school roof dates back to the initial construction which occurred in 2001. the entire roof has multiple leaks which have penetrated the building the district has continually patched this roof to extend its useful life it is a common occurrence for water to drip in through the ceiling during heavy rain storms the veterans middle school was most recently renovated in 2004 and previous to that in 1986 during the 2004 renovation all portions of the roof were replaced with the exception of the d-wing area and the auditorium area these two areas are now failing and are in dire need of replacement and hereby further specifically acknowledges that by submitting the statement of interest form the massachusetts school building

25:59 authority in no way guarantees the acceptance or the approval of an application the awarding of a grant or any other funding commitment from the massachusetts school building authority or commits the town to filing an application for funding with the massachusetts school building authority

26:18 megan moved megan moved second sarah second alright questions on that no i think i think it’s very prudent for us to take this step um and to allow us this option as we move forward but i also i know that i’ve had conversations um with michelle and john um as well as you know some some other people that have good knowledge of this process through the msba and i think it’s important for us to remember that this could take anywhere from 18 months to um up to three years is what i’m being told to get this so we need i think we need to to start this process and keep this process you know in

27:06 as an option but also be aware that um it’s that going through the msba process will because of some of the pieces we have to do we’ll raise the price slightly and but then we’ll also get that reimbursement which is important but if we put this off from today’s dollars as we’ve seen from two years ago till now with current escalation costs being what they are in construction which for anybody that that isn’t aware is it’s astronomically higher than anything we’ve ever seen we could actually be increasing our out-of-pocket costs even with the msba money depending on how long we wait so i think we should do this but also be very cognizant of of looking at those trends as we move forward so that we get the

27:52 most impact of today’s dollars and also that we’re not perpetuating further repairs letting this go since water is coming in that will have other mitigation pieces to repair any of that damage yeah i agree with with what you’ve seen i think my biggest i you know i i absolutely think we should move forward with it with this and that’s it it’s you know a great thing to pursue and my concern is that if we if it takes sort of that three-year timeline i you know we’ve got a leaking roof and it’s been leaking for years you know we’ve heard about it so you know whether or not we can actually wait that long um it is my question what what i’m hoping is you know you know a few months in six months and say we’ll have an indication if we are

28:37 invited to apply and we’ll have an application hopefully we’ll receive some feedback and see if our application actually meets the criteria because i know msba continually looks at their criteria and um hopefully you know we will have a little more information to move forward because certainly we don’t want to delay this i mean this particular project for the high school and the initial cost three years ago was eight hundred thousand now we’re looking at three point nine million so clearly it has escalated to an astronomical figure yes sir yes we just wanna raising our

29:27 the the report that you have from from us roofing i think that’d be helpful to submit that attachment we will be submitting everything from left field from the assessment the building assessment all of that right okay great great that’s good all right uh i have a roll call vote sarah gold yes david harris uh yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes and sarah fox yes right thank you everyone that passes five zero and thank you michelle and todd um and i believe with it yes thanks to todd and lisa who have have initially put the applications together and we will just be um tweaking some of the items as as i do when i actually

30:13 mentioned we initially included um boilers into the request we did not bring that forward because we realized that we cannot wait two years for boilers at this point so

30:27 um yeah i know i was over at widget on friday when they were working on totally so we’re working on it and they were just covered in things like that yes i think they’re in a better spot than that they had been in the day before so i know this has been a lot of work so i appreciate that all right uh john that leads us to the superintendent’s report and principal bower welcome um we’re hopeful that principal bauer will be able to be seen and not only just heard this week so stephen is hard at work ironing out some of our wrinkles

31:31 there’s no sound guys i can’t hear anything that’s happening

32:12 no sound no sound ditto i came here oh no no that was me so it looks like he still can’t be heard

32:35 is it just us two that can’t hear him no okay i can’t hear them at all which technically i’m i i have to hear fields i’m not that you guys shouldn’t be able to but i have to be able to hear um i can’t hear him but he might be able to call in and use both devices did someone ask him to

33:22 um sarah gold we couldn’t hear anything that was happening in the room we couldn’t hear you either here we go i can hear you sarah can you hear me i can hear you through their microphone which is great okay are we good let’s do it that way okay and then dan you can still share your screen all right we’ll take two okay all right is that better you hear me now sarah awesome great well just uh thank you for having me back as i started to say we had informational sessions starting with our junior class a week ago in an assembly during a magic block just to go through the details of

34:08 the schedule just as we’ve heard um you know through our sac the feedback the seniors worried about the senior privilege and how will things look will they be able to have enough credits and so we addressed all those questions in our presentation then we followed up with a pco presentation monday evening here and then tuesday morning we had our principal’s coffee and was well attended um in the main office conference room so we went through the schedules there as well i offered up other sessions throughout lunch and before and after school for students who wanted to come in and then on wednesday we had presentations for grades 9-11 students for the scheduled schedule process and within that presentation we discussed the schedule for next year so the juniors were great

34:54 with it because they’ve heard it before sophomores it was a little bit for them they heard a lot of rumors and so we worked through questions i offered to come back after school we had two come back to see me so i mean i think that’s a good sign and then our freshman class we presented as well so um it’s been certainly a process well over a year that we’ve worked on this so i’ll jump into the presentation hopefully i’ll be able to there we go so just as as noted this has been almost a year in preparation um making the move for eliminating study halls and looking for the needs of the high school so our committee was brought well represented throughout the school we looked to have members of each department as part of our committee and there were a few others that worked halfway through it was a

35:40 large commitment they put a lot of time into where we’ve landed so in terms of the piece why change the schedule so just to be very clear in terms of meeting destiny requirements with time on learning or 990 hours the directed study that we currently have is not truly a directed study it’s not with the student’s true teacher of their core classes or elective classes we randomly assign them so that piece of it is not being met so part of our issue is how do we do this to meet the timeline learning requirements but the solution is really to create a model that meets the needs of our students and also at the same time meets the timeline learning requirements so that was a big charge of our research

36:25 through our review committee and a big piece is what do our students need that was always at the forefront in addition we were running from currently the magic pilot block which we did a lot of work with our advisory committee lindsey donaldson alicia dolan led a committee several years ago that investigated the schools primarily winchester high school in terms of their advisory program so it all kind of came together to be honest with you because the bottom line is how do we keep consistency and familiarity meet requirements and do what’s best for our students and for our staff so we did some studies in the fall and it was very clear in our studies with the students that they need the time during study hall they were using the time effectively and this was also reflected mirrored with our teachers they used the time for homeworks and

37:13 projects uh most responded they used over 40 minutes plus in a 56 minute period and they said more than two hours a night of homework per student i know we talked under sec they said maybe more than that and we want our students to be involved they’re involved in many extracurriculars so there’s a lot of things involved with that and again this teachers mirrored the use of the study hall so we found up front we need to find something that could provide relief during the day but also meet the requirements so the solution was to utilize the magic block would we use the magic block to ensure that students can meet with their teachers at a set period of time can that replace study hall and also the schedule how can we adjust the schedule without completely bringing it to a major change the schedule that we

37:59 currently have i believe is over 16 years old it’s unique in a lot of ways but it serves a lot it’s utilitarian as i understand it and we’ve talked about and also the graduation requirements we researched our research shows that our graduation requirements are certainly in line um and our four-year requirements and our core subjects are very high four years not all schools have that so we felt to leave the graduation requirements alone because we want our students to have voice and choice within electives and be able to explore and that’s important also we heard loud and clear that our seniors wanted an opportunity because they were packed in the fall with college essays college preparation and everything that a senior goes through so we looked at a way how can we make this work

38:45 and give them what they need but fall in alignment so we developed a college and career block that seniors can opt for if there’s room in their schedule so the college and career block just very simply is an opportunity for seniors to work on essays they can even prepare their senior project even later in the year work on scholarship applications things that they need time for or any other post-secondary needs they would have access to school counseling which is huge they have a home base uh and again we have college reps that visit us in the fall so if it nears the time they have a college or career block they don’t have to miss class but again this goes for students that are good standing so they academically they’re in the place their conduct and attendance because if they utilize this time and they need to be on their own

39:32 they can certainly use it as a senior privilege if it meets the beginning or the end of the day those are the things that we’re working through and i feel that when we presented to our juniors that they were relieved and i feel very good that we’re able to provide services that they might not ordinarily get so i will jump into schedule examples so bear with me um i tried to make this as simplistic as possible uh as you look our current grid is this right so you look at this you see letters everywhere we’re four day rotation six blocks a day um and out of that piece we have two classes that fall off the bottom line this is our grid so if you were to take a look at most of our students we did an analysis a high percentage of our students have at least one study hall per semester so

40:19 for a sake of argument we plot the study hall in here so that would be what a schedule look like with the study hall so the real piece now comes into the simplicity so if we look to make an adjustment at study hall go to the next example so if you substitute study hall with magic block and keep the same grid we can make this work and the beauty of the magic block which i’ll discuss later is that we have found that students benefit from the ability to be with their teacher anytime they wish as well as anything they’d like to do so it meets the social emotional it meets the academic needs our teachers like it because they can do extra help review sessions and the whole school at one time a magic block is available

41:05 available available with the current study model they are not available so if you have a study hall in g block in our current model your physics teacher may be teaching so there’s no way you can receive extra help or your chemistry teacher what have you so having the school at the same time be available is an added benefit for athletes or musicians and actors and actresses and all that that are busy it’s difficult for them to come back to school for extra help so there is an opportunity here if they can do this they could even do a quiet study for the 135 days it needs so it really checks all the boxes for the simplicity so here are the big examples for the seniors so as a requirement they need their english math science

41:51 social studies they have the p and health for the semester and elective and they also have a world language or another elective for the full year or semester based and then if you add in their college and career block they can opt for or if they choose to take an elective a lot are doubling up if they have music if they have art studio and very important classes or doubling up in a foreign language science or math they can do this and then the eighth would be the magic wand so it works so here would be a traditional schedule for a senior i just put in classes i just took some samples i went through aspen and in this example a senior has two study halls right so we know that in the first study hall at the beginning if they qualify for senior privilege they could take it then they have one g block where they have to stay in the building

42:37 it’s during the day so now if i move forward the new example this possibly could happen right and this this is an actual schedule where g block would be the consistent magic block and if you worked on their schedule where the college of career block is last blocked perfect so the college of career block floats just like a study hall would so we have space available whether it be the library we have tall tops and again if you’re in good standing it’s the beginning or end of day we utilize it as senior privilege too so this is an example with the college of peer in the middle of the day that can happen too but again notice the g block is the magic block and then when you analyze a high performing student that may have five ap classes advanced placement classes

43:23 it works as well so with that being said it matches all the needs of our students for seniors then i broke it down further excuse me one second

43:38 for our grades 9-11 a typical schedule would look the same except um they will have that seventh that elected they will have which is a year long or two semesters they could double up and the eighth class would be the magic block which is really the same as this year the majority of our students are at 35 credits and that’s what this is so again just being simplistic is the junior schedule right here if they had a study hall moving on to the next example make the change magic block it’s the same schedule exact same schedule okay and then if somebody has curriculum support that fits in if there was a student with lots of ap classes it works for for case of a junior let’s move to grade 10 i went through this so at least each student can see

44:24 this i know i’m kind of being a little repetitive you know the two ap classes the eighth year euro they could take as a sophomore which they can this year um and moving on to grade nine so we feel that the pros of this schedule will be familiarity it’s a little change it’s the same schedule so the structure is there students are used to it coming out of code but i think it’s important we know the ins and outs of the schedule the magic block i think is key because that allows students to have access to their teachers same time during that g block three out of the four days just like the study hall would be so senior project that was a question there’s no change also we have a growing after dark program we have 17 that have applied

45:11 which students can leave at 11 o’clock to go to as expect for vocational training so this schedule by keeping it the same allows that down the road if we have internship opportunities that allows for that too and we also have some traveling teachers so the alignment would stay consistent where it is now with vets in terms of our music teachers so that’s those are pluses our committee landed on and i think the magic block advantages are very clear the seo the students get a break right the student support is available now student support can actually run groups whatever support group it’s hard now throughout the day it’s a break in the day the adult connection is huge at some point i know that gina hart will present our yrbs our youth risk behavior survey

45:57 and it very strongly shows that our connection when that survey was administered was 64 the students felt they had adult connection i think that’s too low but that was administered i believe in october if we administer it now i bet it would be higher with the magic block and the magic block allows that allows student choice and it’s a consistent time out of the schedule where again teachers are available at the same time there’s extra help available and i think that will help our students that are very packed with what they do extracurricular-wise and our teachers like the magic block and our student survey we’re developing one as well and just some items that are happening now and the area that we haven’t finished yet is we haven’t finished the full

46:43 development of those magic blocks because right now i think people think of the magic block once a week where they can do an activity we’ll still have activities but we’ll break it down into a broader piece for that three days and we didn’t want to present that part because we’re not quite there yet we’re doing the research to speak but right now we do have academic support groups it can be a quiet study you sign up with your teacher you go to where you want to go low stress activities hands-on activities special interests physical activities we had a sophomore ask can i shoot hoops every day i’m like hopefully you’re in good standing academically can do that but sure psychological support meetings uh guest speakers and then principal’s corner where i sit in the caf and it’s been well attended with nobody’s shown

47:30 up yet but i get it nobody wants to be with the principal so with that being said i know that’s a lot but i think the key takeaways is number one we’re able to provide the time the students need and want in their schedule with the magic block number two we’re able to provide familiarity and functioning with the current schedule and we’ve done our research in terms of where students are credit wise and we know there’s a few exceptions out there that we will have and we have answers for because it’s important for our students right now i think there’s a little piece where they feel like you’re only will the seven classes magic block that’s not true they have seven available the seven blocks just happens to be a magic block will be they really have the opportunity to take

48:17 seven cool classes so that’s it in a large nutshell but i’m happy to answer any questions all right thank you dan um i’ll have you stop sharing your screen just so that you can get everybody back on on a video okay um but i appreciate it and i also appreciate um all the work that’s gone into this and and when there was some pretty negative feedback a couple weeks ago you know you and and christine and um michelle really taking it and and figuring out how to message it correctly so that all this good work can was able to be demonstrated and moved forward um so you know i think i think the magic block you know i think you’ve done a great job getting the students to understand it as well because there was a lot of misinformation within the

49:05 student body too um and that magic block you know i i think it’s been really useful and i think it from the perspective of a parent of someone at the high school i think having it not take not be the shortened classes on from on the wednesdays that it’s been and having it be a permanent piece in their schedule um is is going to allow kids to really um kind of really sink their teeth into it and and take advantage of it for everything that it’s worth i appreciate that and also and i understand you know it’s been a long process for us um but i also understand where we start the land if we did a major revision of the schedule in a complete overhaul it would have been a much more expensive process we found we can land

49:51 and we did a lot of research in terms of aspen works the functioning where the students are credit-wise to land on this piece so again i have to credit the team uh certainly was a lot of work by our committee but also as you mentioned um the support that we had and again just like anything that’s new it’s just getting that piece and seeing it working through when i’ve had discussions people okay well that makes sense so i think once they go through and also our students will meet with every every student will meet with their guidance counselor school counselor before they actually finish the scheduling so we’ll be able to sit down and i think as we get through more and more of this there’ll be a better understanding i think one of the pieces for me too again with my parent hat on is that it takes it it removes the piece where

50:36 kids can have two studies one semester and then no studies in the next semester because that’s a huge difference and like you you said with all of the research that you’ve done that they use these studies and so to go from two to zero is it is a major shift in sort of how they have to organize organize themselves and and figure out how they’re you know doing their extracurriculars and then all of the homework with the additional classes and no time in school so i like the fact that this targets that piece too it should definitely help our electives because what we wound up doing and christine in our school counseling department they had to drink some relief for those that not a study in that second semester so when you start moving it around we build the schedule based off of our student interest so we create sections based on what they need and what they want so

51:23 when you start taking students out it really plays havoc with that so this will eliminate that piece and i think as we found in covet too you know there were times in the hybrid i don’t want to go backwards but you know students would be sitting in two studies in a row the time in school is precious we have so many great opportunities here and so it’s important that we’re able to utilize that great um any other questions for dan

51:51 sarah go ahead um thank you dan so one so everyone will take a magic block one of my questions is how do i understand why study hall didn’t count um for hours on learning but how are we sure that magic black does because where some of those if they’re going in with their math teacher and getting direct you know help on that makes sense but if they’re playing dungeons and dragons or um doing quiet study how is that any different and how does that count as time on learning i think the big point sarah is that they have access to their teacher directly so the students that take the quiet study will go to one of their core teachers so whether in that court that study they’re utilizing the time to interact with the teacher or not

52:37 they still have the option the current system that we have they do not have that option they’re assigned a random teacher that whatever is available in addition with it being expanded over three out of the four days it’s much different than once a week where it hits where it flows because students currently have studies in addition to a magic one magic block once a week with the new setup it’ll just be that magic block spread throughout so we haven’t fully landed how that would be over that period of time but i think the key is that the students will have a home base and then and i the biggest piece is they have accessibility to their teacher and multiple teachers because this year we’re just limiting one spot where they can go to we’re examining maybe they can get to two spots in one day where they get to a math and a science feature if

53:23 they need it which is superior to what they have right now so that one that one piece to me and the feedback from the students and from the teacher and being able to see it firsthand where i’ve seen teachers running a review session some students working quietly on one side um and honestly having it over a broader period that that’s our further research and i’m happy to bring that back once we’ve landed as i told the fact in the students okay and then i just want to make sure to um definitely adding on to some some comments we heard earlier earlier during public comment you know were you experiencing and seeing that at any time we had students that actually didn’t enroll in this study and instead chose eight classes

54:09 and if if you did us changing the dynamic to this is that going to take away from students who really would choose to take an academic class the whole day so we found when we looked through we broke it down by each class and breaking down credits i was a it’s not a very big percentage that had been at the 40. it’s primarily at 35 as is where a lot were particularly younger and right now our threshold our current program of studies list 30 which is six classes so we have some ways that we can make it work so we we haven’t used it much with covid and such but we have been able to utilize an independent study to work through wellness if necessary to provide

54:54 a full block of an elective class if we get into those scenarios so we’re looking at how that works so we believe that we can make it work and i think that’s the biggest piece is having that ability to do that and make it work because i i don’t want a student not have to make a choice where do i take this extra elective or ban i want them to be able to do both if they can but even with the current schedule we had not everything was 100 for all students there was some give and take as well um and we have some solutions to make that work okay so if we have a student who really wants to try to go for that 40 credits forever for whatever reason and do that you have a way to work with them and find a way to do that you’re saying okay i’m happy yes okay um and then

55:42 you on your slide there talked about um college and career career block that you could double up does that mean if you were a senior you possibly could take that at the beginning of your day and the end of the day oh good good point sarah thanks for pointing that out actually the way it works you would only be able to take one college and career block just because you will have to take a magic block okay well the second study in theory would be the college and career you wouldn’t have multiple because you have to be fully scheduled with that piece so that’s an important point and again that’s how it falls we cannot guarantee that a student will have that based upon where they are because if if they’re in a situation where there’s conflicts with the schedule in addition you know they may need an extra credit um and we can’t control where

56:29 that would go in the schedule because we have one constraint and we minimize that so all the classes will fall in line okay um and that that was all my questions thank you dan thank you sir i don’t necessarily have a question but just as you’re talking about this i realized there’s so much that goes into the schedule it’s like making my head stick but i do want to thank you for all the work you put into this and you know the rest of the team i’m glad that we’ve gotten the student feedback i think that’s a really important piece of this and they’ve taken into consideration and made adjustments you know um because i think they’re the ones that are living it every day so i appreciate the fact that that you did this and i really like the magic block idea um

57:15 because i think it does give flexibility you may need help in a class right now but you know the next week maybe a different scenario so i do like that setup so i’m looking forward to hearing the feedback as we get into it next year um but thanks for all the time thank you anybody else anybody else all right thank you very much dan thank you very much have a nice night i’ll try [Laughter]

57:53 all right john that leads us to district updates so in the share drive for the committee there were six things for superintendent updates uh most important is the glover school principal announcement uh we have extended uh contract offered to pope durant and she has committed and signed her contract and so hope is coming from the georgetown public schools she’s currently the assistant principal at the pembroke brook middle or elementary school she’s been there since 2014 as an assistant principal she was an interim principal with the wilmington schools at the north intermediate school she is also she was an assistant principal in

58:39 wilmington also a sixth grade science teacher um she has a bachelor of education from framingham state masters in special education and the certificate of advanced graduate study in school administration from american international um she was very well received in her parent form in her faculty forum and we’re excited that she’ll be joining public schools as the principal of glover elementary school

59:08 which takes us into the uh ground principle search also in the shared uh was the document that outlines a very similar process for the brown elementary school principal the search committee will be certainly myself as the superintendent nan as the assistant superintendent for teaching and learning matt fox will be the building level administrator will need to determine a school committee representative jennifer jackson will be with cpac metco will also be represented with a representative to be determined uh sarah heller blair nelson and bernadette peebles will be the parent

59:53 representatives we have 12 or 11. so 11 parents that put in and we did a random lottery and those were the three parents that were selected i was very impressed by the parent

1:00:07 applications for applications for the extent to which they expressed interest in serving on this group and then mea conducted uh an election for faculty rep and that’s megan brewett uh allison eaton and cara elmer and there’s a tentative outline uh for the process uh with our first meeting uh being march 22nd all right and then you all i think later in the meeting we’ll have a discussion there’s a couple of search committees that we’ll need to uh designate people for um so we will tackle that later and then uh just instructional walkthroughs continue to be uh very beneficial particularly now that we have

1:00:52 gone to ask optional to see how that has played out the middle school today and village school returned to normal cafeteria operations i think much to the delight of mandy at the village school and giving students the opportunity to go back to normal cafeterias then just the safety committee continues to meet the wellness committee continues to meet and we will have our superintendent coffee on the 24th and as dan indicated in his presentation gina hart we’ll be talking about the youth risk behavior survey um the state survey that we did and then the local marblehead version of that survey that gina developed last year that she presented to the committee so

1:01:38 at the coffee she’ll present that and i would like to get her back in front of the school committee to share those results with you so that’s my update great any questions from anyone another meeting another meeting all right thank you john um that will lead us into finance and organizational support so first up on that is the fy 23 budget update um i know that there was a budget liaison meeting with the town last late last week and then just any other updates that occurred since since then

1:02:23 handed over to both john and michelle at this point um conversations are ongoing um i have made recommendations to the school committee for the fy 23 budget and what our priorities are there have been continuing conversations with town uh met with john and steven today to talk about capital and about operating and i’m not sure that much has changed about where we are where they are and uh if there are things uh that are not in the budget that the school company would like to add um i’m certainly open to that conversation with michelle looking at different ways for special education and technology but the ask is what it is

1:03:09 and where where are they at at this point i do not believe they’re in a position to go uh for a town override and so if uh if our ask i don’t believe they’re in a position to fund the ass that we currently have and so we need to make a decision about what we’re going to do so we’re still working on that they just need a better understanding of how we arrived at our number um and they they did ask if there are other contractual obligations within our

1:03:54 budget lines um for example one thing that we can speak to them about is the contractual obligations right now is strictly the steps in cola for the existing staff that or the positions that we had you know in our in our previous purview as of november um that’s the point in time we took to to allocate that 1.3 million dollar number which is our contractual obligations however we had an additional 65 000 that was added to our budget ask to represent the stipends um so that actually will be a contractual obligation um so you know we can argue that that needs to be included in that 1.3 million number um we haven’t got to that that nitty-gritty level of detail but i i think that’s

1:04:40 minor in the grand scheme of things when we’re looking at such a large budget ass um it’s really dependent on are we going forward with an override or questionnaire is that something that’s going to be up that’s a thousand percent it should be yes yeah steve and i are going to work on that early next week determining that exact agreed-upon figure but it i expect it will be pretty close to and i think it’s consistent with what you’ve been what we’ve been saying all along also michelle is that you know we we’ve identified the ask and now we present that to the town and for them to give us feedback on how it’s going to be fun so

1:05:26 so so i am a little concerned at this stage that you know we haven’t reached agreement on contractual obligations but um i’m confident that you know john’s getting settled in his position that being john mccain and steve’s working with you and it’s just a matter of making sure that you know they have those numbers but um we’ve been talking about the funding of the special ed so you know just to frame it in in a way if if special ed moved over to the reserve fund our override ask would be less because the way i heard it at our last meeting was that there are monies

1:06:13 right now to fund the 250 000 which has been the historical number for for special ed but we need to wait to hear from the town what other monies are still available from free cash and existing funds if we move that money out of out of our ass into a reserve is that is that the right way of positioning that yes i mean certainly there are limited funds on the town side i think the um the out of district tuition number is understood on both sides um we have a pretty good clear understanding what we have talked about today earlier was putting a portion of that into reserve and funding a portion of that within the operating budget because clearly we do not have a contingency of eight hundred thousand dollars built into the operating budget a lot of those

1:06:59 are factual known placements that have already been committed for next year um with that being said if we went into our operating budget and we began our year with 800 000 not in our operating budget you know a couple days into the fiscal year i will be asking to tap into that reserve fund which really is not the worst fiscal management of the funds you’re you’re not budgeting something that you know is is an actual cost right so we’re we’re trying to work on um coming up with an allocation that will allow us to put a little bit more into the reserve or or a certain figure into that reserve in addition to the 250 000 that we normally put and maybe a little bit less to our operating budget with the understanding that yes we will be using that for

1:07:46 special education purposes and not using it to supplement our our operating budget in other areas of need and i certainly understand that concern on the towns but it’s a concern on any town so it’s not unique to marblehead um and we want to be able to give that commitment that you know if our budget is raised by the 800 000 for special education services that is what we commit to use those funds on so we’re we’re in discussions about that and i think that’s not a contentious discussion whatsoever pretty much

1:08:21 right and i appreciate that too but also it’s good that it’s not contentious but it gets us to a level of down the road when we are with fincom or at our budget hearing if if we’re going forward with an override it will change that number absolutely right absolutely yes okay so i guess i’m a little confused and frustrated at this point as to why we’ve had our stuff together our books have been out since december and why do we not have a number from the town at this point is there is there any thinking around that not really they are just behind in the process with the departure of the town

1:09:07 administrator it certainly sent their budget process for a loop um certainly an unexpected you know prolonging of the process um just this week they had asked for documentation based on the contractual obligations so we shared that on monday um we met about it to discuss briefly today and then steve and i were not able to to understand exactly what what which what each other was trying to discuss today so we’re going to spend a little more time diving into it just one-on-one um early next week so i guess my frustration increases around that around the ground not not with you um no sorry certainly we’ve known what our budget ask is quite a while now and the town has already voted all of the other

1:09:55 town budgets and we presented ours first and we’re the largest and we employ the most people and and so i guess i j there’s a huge disconnect for me right now why we still are without a number from the other side that that we’re sort of we’ve been saying for months and months saying like hey here’s here’s what we’re coming to the table here’s what we’re asking for here’s what we are going to need and it’s like well and so and so i’m aggravated i certainly understand that i think it’s a matter of what comes first the chicken or the egg and really they’re looking for guidance from us are you going forward with the override or not because certainly they cannot afford our ass if if we’re going forward with the override and

1:10:42 they’re not prepared at this point from my understanding i certainly don’t want to speak for the town yeah um but that they’re not in a place where where they have their house in as good of order as we do at this point you know as you said we’ve had our budget documents in places before the holidays um certainly it was a little bit of a push to do that because they had moved up the timeline we were able to comply with comply with that it made my budget season a little bit um earlier but a little bit easier in the end but now we are months into it still don’t have an answer and really i think they’re looking for an answer from us if we are going to proceed with the large budget ask for them i just think it’s hard at this point kind of the answers to these questions it has an impact on our next you know on

1:11:28 what our plan is going to be so absolutely in terms of the special ed piece like is there a date that youtube agreed on that that is going to get that loop designer um i expect it would be probably next week um certainly we just had that discussion late this morning so i have not had time to to work with um dr donnelly to find out what is an actual committed known placement at this point because we had a lot of those placements on there back in november and that’s when this this figure was determined and we’ve gone nowhere but up at this point so

1:12:10 if i may um what what i’m hearing essentially is they’re they’ll give us a number once we decide like they’re not what they can afford is not changing so if they’re saying we could we won’t give you a number till we know if you’re going for an override that feels very punitive to be perfectly honest as if you’re gonna go for an override we’re gonna offer you less but if you agree not to go for an override we’ll maybe give you a little bit more over level funded that’s kind of how i’m reading this and my concern is where special education is at play here there’s a few pieces i feel very strongly that we should not place any known out of district placement

1:12:56 with a reliance on our reserve fund that is exceedingly poor fiscal management to take a known quantity and automatically budget it out of a reserve fund which is essentially a rainy day fund for unknowns at this time we have historically never ever ever had a single year where we did not increase our out-of-district placements from what we knew what going into a fiscal year so that is what that fund is for that is what we told the town it was for and to plan have planned reliance on that fund i feel like is is poor fiscal management we may need that and we need to budget an operating budget for what it costs to educate all of our students

1:13:43 appropriately and our out-of-district students are our students um so my concern is that if the numbers are at play here essentially

1:13:58 what correct me if i’m wrong john and or john and michelle i’m sorry um am i correct in my understanding that if we decide to go for an override they want the full portion of those out of district placements in the override number and not in our over uh not in our operational budget the operational budget is the opposite of the override yeah no but but our what uh when i say operational i i mean um what the town will give us they want that that additional number in the override portion not the the number that they vote through that first article am i correct in that understanding i do not think that’s necessarily correct because they they truly understand this this piece of the budget

1:14:43 they really seem to um and whether we add it to the operating or add it to reserve um we just need to find that allocation to make sure that we’re not putting known commitments into the regular fund to like clarify on that one piece is that this has been a conversation we’ve had all year and even previous years on how do you sustainably fund special education given the variability in that cost or that expense and so it always has a hit on operating budget so is there a way to structure it so that our operating budget isn’t kind of in jeopardy and i’m not in jeopardy that’s the wrong word but you know that very take that variability out of our operating budget right so i think that’s

1:15:29 where this conversation was born from but we have to do it in a way that is like i said um sustainable going forward absolutely i mean just today we were talking obviously we weren’t talking about putting new fiscal policy in place but talking about possibly creating a process where if there’s any excess turnbacks from our special education tuition costs we put them into a reserve store you know at the end of the year so therefore we will be building reserve right building a cushion for the the unknowns um and you know in the case of a year where our tuitions are over budget which i mean this year for example they are they’re slightly over budget um they’re

1:16:15 not at a level where i’m concerned that we’re not going to be able to close our budget gap without going into the reserve fund um but honestly if they doubled then yes i would be concerned at that point and we would have to absolutely access the reserve fund but the more we can build the reserve fund but without taking from the town’s pooled cash or free cash um and build that reserve and reduce some of the fluctuations from year to year because it is a number that tends to fluctuate and it this year necessarily the tuitions are increasing somewhat but also our funding sources are decreasing our circuit breakers going down a little bit our out of district tuition in from other

1:17:01 communities is going down so those two reduction in revenues is causing our appropriation needs to increase um so not necessarily the the actual cost isn’t skyrocketing by 800 000 it’s only going up by a few hundred thousand but our funding sources are decreasing in the other bonds so but we want to try to level that off as much as possible and you know prevent these spikes it seems like the decision in front of us right now is we’re in a conundrum the town isn’t ready to go in for an override we have our our books in order we are ready um we have to decide we’re going to take that list of priorities and say we’re

1:17:47 going to we’re willing to start paring this down to get closer to what the town can afford but i don’t think any of us are under false assumptions that without a town override that they can come up with money to fund that list so at this time i am not prepared to pair that list down at all um and i would i would like i’m going to make a motion for us to affirm our commitment to that list of priorities and to bringing forward and over the placeholder override just a second but just need a second second um yeah i think so what you’re asking we’re

1:18:32 not voting the final number right now sarah just an affirmative so we’re saying we’re not coming down from where we are in any way that would make this number fundable other than through using this placeholder we’re making an affirmation that we are going to go forward with funding our priority list and we’re supporting what the superintendent and the administrators have asked and yeah and i think like i this was i didn’t get to finish this early but this is part of my frustration too is that like i don’t feel as though our conversation around this has changed at all since we heard it and you know there’s been a little bit of conversation here around where we move things and and when we’ve moved things but you know this ask started

1:19:17 very close to where it’s at at this point and so that is my that is feeding my frustration too of like okay we haven’t we haven’t made any indication that we’re going to be pairing this list down so i i i’m frustrated with the fact that the question keeps coming like is this your final number is this your phone number so i’m i’m i would have asked for that motion quite frankly if sarah hadn’t made it so and if anything sarah i would say as we go through this process and we’ve now committed to this we may say we’re doing this are there other things that are appropriate at this time to put in there so this needle may move but it’s not moving drastically down well well

1:20:04 right and and what i what i’m frustrated about is the what we’re talking about here and and i don’t i don’t think sarah i think there’s just some uncertainty where they need to decide what their revenue estimates are going to be for instance for um excise tax or they’re trying to and i think john mcginn is just trying to work with steve and review everything based on his experiences so uh so i certainly get that i mean we all went through having an interim superintendent and having to ramp up and even while john spent 17 years in this town we haven’t all have a lot of respect for john and you know so john’s first work if you will was to get the

1:20:50 selectmen’s budgets taken care of and now you know and he’s also been juggling working with steve and what our ask is so i think but but it is frustrating for me because we do let’s say you know we have the ask in front of us and the tracking sheet the other piece is we are the smart screens you know moving those over over to the lease article so you know there’s a lease article um i had it pulled up article let’s get to it real quickly just for as another example clarification so um purchase of equipment article 10 to see if the town will vote pursuant to gl 44 21c authorize the board to enter into least purchase agreements for the lease and

1:21:36 purchase of vehicles in certain capital for a period of time not to not in excessive useful life so we could take a certain portion of the of the smart boards and move it to that article and this board needs to make that decision if we want to do that but i’ll go back to what i just said 15 minutes ago what you’ve been saying all along we want the recommendation from the town the town should be saying to us look you can pull the smart boards they have a useful life of 10 years move them into this article we can here’s the number that we’re going to do for the reserve fund based based on special education so to our point the numbers not going down but the mo the monies will move into different

1:22:21 areas of the town warrant for for funding requests right that’s my feeling there and i i do have something so if we want to move this and vote it i do have something that i want to talk to the committee about about adding to the budget okay i just add on to this though and i don’t maybe i’m saying the same thing as you but i think i’ve said all along that i’m gonna advocate for what john and the leadership team have said that they need for four years to get to the point where we can identify our needs clearly articulate what they are and what they’re going to cost and we’re there and so 100 support that work that’s been done and we’ll advocate for that

1:23:08 that said i want to make sure that we continue having the collaborative conversations with the town in terms of how do we fund that and i think there is still work to be done there so i just think that’s an important piece to know that yes this is our these are our needs and we need to figure out how we’re going to fund them and you know that will change over the next few weeks how we get there

1:23:35 right and maybe i know our next meeting with with fincom is two weeks from tonight correct so when we have the budget so you know we’ll have to see there is two weeks to go maybe we will need to have another liaison meeting megan you know we’ll have to check in and see we might have to touch base before that before that finn calm meeting um so we’ll continue to do that and megan and i agree and i mean you know i think we’ve both taken some heat before for for some of the statements that we’ve made about really wanting this to be a collaborative effort from from the school committee with the town and um this year i am feeling the need to say that that’s a two-way street uh i don’t disagree yeah no i know you don’t i know you completely

1:24:23 agree with me um and and i will just leave it at that that it’s a two-way street so that was i was going to say the same thing we can be collaborative but they have to be collaborative back and that’s not the message that i think we’re receiving and or it feels as though and so if it feels you know i mean feelings can be incorrect but it feels as though that’s the that’s right i thought i would like to hear that the town’s not ready for an override right publicly and we we have not heard that publicly so i mean you know right we can help them in their need for something later if they wanted to work with us and i think that’s an important thing for them to realize that

1:25:08 we need this they need this we can all come together and do it one to help the other the way we do it so and just putting that out there and i think that’s another message that needs to be yeah i think you know i’ve said many times that the schools are i in my opinion maybe other than the coastline that’s the biggest asset to marblehead um and it’s the reason it’s one of the huge reasons that people move here um and so it’s it’s important that we work as a town to make sure that everything within the schools is running and functioning and at the level that people expect it to be

1:25:55 and i know we’ve said this before but i think it’s important for anybody new that’s you know listening level funded is not the same thing as level services and for years level funding with contractual obligations does not give us level services and what we need is level services um for all students all right so we’ve got a motion i think we’ve talked about it um i will call a roll call vote sarah gold yes david harris yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes sarah fox yes all right so that motion passes five to zero all right david you um i will

1:26:40 kick it back to you because you mentioned that you have something that you want to talk about adding right so many of you who served over the years know that i i haven’t been a big fan of user fees that we charge whether it is for um athletics performing arts clubs meetings but we do exactly thanks and um and i think most people understand it it’s part of the entire student experience you know whether whether you play lacrosse or whether you’re in the performing arts or you know whether you’re in one of one of the clubs that meets weekly or a bi-weekly club um

1:27:28 it’s just it’s part of the the whole student experience that comes from winning losing how to be part of a team um diversity i mean someone has an opportunity to be on a chess club you know and still play athletics you know provides all these other opportunities that i think each of us probably experienced when we were in school and um i don’t think i mean there’s a cost related to those but i don’t think it should be borne by the individuals i mean think about the student that’s in the band the parents are already renting the instrument or there’s costs related to to being in band or maybe private lessons to to play music or

1:28:13 students that are in athletics they’re already paying for the cleats the field hockey stick the lacrosse stick you know the undergarments the additional clothing that that comes along with it and then we say okay pay another 447 to play sports well then i think also i’ve said this before there’s an inequity you can play three sports and pay 447 dollars you play one sport you pay 447. then there’s the family cap which i have always disagreed with i think it’s a gross inequity because if you have one child like myself i pay 447. people who had two kids in the program oh it just it gets capped at six hundred dollars or six hundred twenty two dollars they didn’t have to pay 800 but okay fine that’s just the way it’s

1:29:01 done so i think that sort of is is out of whack and so that’s not to say i mean we we benchmark these numbers and and this memo i’m sorry that it’s not in the box but when we voted on it in the summer and michelle got with greg and we we voted to sort of recommend the the two and a half percent increase to our to our user fees um you know and we all agreed that if we’re going to have them we do need to increase them on a regular basis so we don’t fall way behind to be able to pay for the costs of referees and officials and various other means so my pro my offer for consideration is tonight since we since we’ve gone 17 years without an override and we have had no other way to fund extracurricular activities and i um is that we

1:29:47 have a discussion and see how the committee feels about um adding this to the budget um the last piece was for people who are listening to this and hearing this for the first time it goes our fees go all the way down elementary so when you get to middle school they have interscholastic sports fees and um and an activity fee and then when you get to the elementary school there’s what’s called athletics enrichment clubs unlimited and that’s a fee of pardon me it’s in red i believe 131 dollars so this goes right from high school all the way down elementary so um with that michelle gave me a little bit

1:30:33 of historical information and data we are budgeting this year the amount of 219. 219 000 to be received from user fees across the various programs and then in fy 23 we’re budgeting 232 000 in revenue to help offset the various expenses so that’s okay no i’m not i’ll stop there that’s just my

1:31:29 the kindergarten tuition you know this this goes into a really robust student body um and and it’s what it’s what we know kids need in order to be successful as they move through their their school system right and so that i i think this makes a lot of sense right and i know that you know and there’s one last thing i want to say about i know it’s one of those things that also there’s always been if if i think there’s a um a needs-based benchmark that if um you know what’s it what’s help me what’s it going what’s the uh the the lunch big dude yeah i guess um free and reduced

1:32:16 thresholding criteria that we use but i i’ve known people that just are like you know i’m not going to ask for that you know and they they play and maybe there’s people out there that that don’t play because they don’t want to ask for it and so you might get more participation in some of these clubs and activities and get more more participation i i would potentially argue speculation on my part but i know i know a couple of individual people that have not asked for um support and they just they just pay it because they want their children to participate but they don’t they don’t want to ask you know for the 470 dollars to be provided

1:33:03 um um i i have four things i would like to consider adding in um as well um i i feel strongly about the high school curriculum coaches we’ve talked about this it was something we heard as i did you know i call it the road show when i went and met with all these different groups before planning for success every single group said they wanted that back and how important it was um i think it’s really important that we take a deep look at how we can in what we need to fully implement a co-top model k-12 um to try to get as many of these kids into you know an inclusive setting as possible as we focus on our dei work um i think we need a social studies curriculum k-6

1:33:49 curriculum k-6 curriculum k-6 and that’s we’ve heard from nan that we don’t have it and we need it um and we need a social-emotional curriculum we’ve heard also that we need that so i think these things are all very important and i know we have work to do to get those curriculums but this is what this budget is is for our next fiscal year if we know we have the money and then we really do the focus groups to to try out the you know the two or three market curriculums and get the feedback from the teachers that is data driven then we have the money to buy that you know through the year next year do the professional development during the school year with the teachers so that we open the following year ready to go with this stuff and i think you know a big piece of educating our community on a lot of the

1:34:36 the dei stuff is embedded with teaching them you know the social studies curriculum young what has happened in our world how we’ve gotten to the places we are what groups have historically you know gone through through you know world war ii i mean the fact that we’re not we we the kids don’t really learn about that until later on and i just think it’s really really important those four academically driven areas for us to look at um funding i i would i feel very very strongly i would like to see them embedded in in this um budget

1:35:16 i’ll pop in um i don’t disagree with any of those asks um i think that those are all valid asks i come back to my concern with it gets to the point of we need to be able to

1:35:37 operationalize when we ask for something and my concern is is that some of the feedback that we’ve heard from our teachers and staff is that there’s been a lot of things that have been pushed forward and a lot of new initiatives this past year and you know my assumption is that there’s a few more coming down the pipe for next year so that if we i don’t i don’t want us to bite off more than we can actually chew i want us to be able to come to our constituencies and say one year this is what we need and why and then operationalize it and then another year this is what we need and why and it’s not gonna be 17 years later and i my concern and you know and i’m not shooting it down in any way shape or

1:36:23 form i would i would actually ask that we you know put it back to our our um administrators to see what kind of what whether it’s possible to do all of that work next year in in within this ask and for the things that we’re already asking for so that as a community like with as with faith with the community that they know that when we come to them it’s because things have been well thought out and the ask is specific and timely so that it can be brought forward and operationalized um so if they can do those things fantastic i’m all behind it because i you know like i said i don’t disagree with any of the things that you’ve said sarah

1:37:13 can i just add sorry just to just to fall in from what sarah said i don’t want to take your take away from me there but i i agree with those i mean let’s take the co-top one for example there’s i mean i’ve literally been talking about this since i joined cpac when my daughter was in kindergarten she’s now in seventh grade so i get it and i’m all over making that happen but i think it’s not as easy as just adding staff there’s a lot more that goes into it than saying okay we want to be we would have hotel classrooms so we’re just going to double up stuff that’s actually not how it works and there’s a lot of work up front that has to go into that and i think there’s what we have to do and how we’re structured as well and then add that pizza so again i want

1:38:00 to see it happen i wish we’ve been able to move faster on that piece but that’s one that as strongly as i feel about making it happen we need to do it in a way that we can actually implement it so that it’s successful for our students and i guess that’s the piece that’s you know at this point where in the end of march to add it to the list now doesn’t give us the time to do that work as much as i’d like to see it happen yesterday you know what i mean yeah um so i feel strongly about the curriculum directors everybody knows that um but i did talk

1:38:45 to some people and there’s a way to do it without i think show like without this large number right i think it’s something that the district wants it’s needed our principals want it and everybody you know what’s out there so if we’re going to do this override why wouldn’t we put that in at this time and it’s something that can happen from within the school and it doesn’t have to be a full-time curriculum director that we bring in from the outside they can be someone who’s here who’s already teaching they can still teach and then do the director role as well so the cost is different as long as it doesn’t take away from the cost of anything else but you’re gonna need some extra funds to

1:39:31 make sure everything is um so they can take on that new role um so i think we also need to think outside of the box right it’s not bringing two new people we can and i know because those were for the high school and i know they want to start somewhere and if we start small we can start this program to get them in see how it works and then because they’re going to want more and everyone you know and it’s going to come down through the grades and so if we start it i think why wouldn’t we let me know that they can implement it because there are people here who are willing to do the job they just need some money to make it work so i do feel strongly that we re-look at that we look at how much it would cost

1:40:17 how we can um make it maybe talk and see who would want to do that role and how we can shuffle it out but i think it would be a good thing for us to consider again

1:40:36 yeah i just feel strongly that as we look at new curriculums and alignment and scope and sequence that we have the people with those particular subject matter expertise on board to drive that work it’s you know i gave the the metaphor i think a couple weeks ago that when a hospital is coming up with a new heart surgery program like they bring in the cardiology people to work on that and it’s not you know what i mean like we need that we need the the math the high school math the people that know high school math curriculum inside and out to focus on what our scope and sequence is and and i know there’s one thought that we need to do all that work and then bring them in but i think it’s so important to have

1:41:22 these people doing the work to to create that um and you know that’s going that’s one of the pieces going back to making us whole we’ve had over a decade of death by a thousand cuts or reductions to to keep us level servant like not even level service to cut to maintain this level funded idea and i think you know bringing those curriculum coaches back is a step in making us whole again one thing to that in which and i agree but there’s two different people that said there’s other models of districts who’ve done it this way where you bring in someone where you take someone who’s already been here to take a moment to that next level and

1:42:08 that is the that is how they were suggested in the first place that it was going to be this model what i think you’re suggesting is like what we i think is what we had we’re like instead of doing a full-time teaching load they do like a half-time teaching load and and yeah yeah but then we have to bring someone in to backfill their teaching store to get make sure that we’re not taking away from but anyway david so this is where i sort of step off the train sorry because we haven’t even heard from the superintendent we don’t have the assistant superintendent here um my ass was not about saying we need an assistant principal somewhere we need curriculum here we need steam or we need stem um that’s why we have our paid professionals and so

1:42:53 i don’t disagree either with what you’re saying so i mean all of those things are valid programs that that exist are are could be considered exemplary that are up and coming that are that are future needs but i go and i appreciate what sarah said you know it’s like there’s only so much that an assistant superintendent can operationalize but there’s only so you know dan just talked to us about okay we say well it’s no big deal the blocks and it’s going to be realigned but now teachers are going to be having students coming into their classroom so that you know the teachers sort of have a new program going on um we you know we had sort of like the bright initiative going on is and there’s different programs that are happening you know within the schools and uh time on learning i’m sure there’s gonna be new social emotional things that have come out of the last couple of

1:43:39 years and so i have a hard time sitting here at you know advocating for something that hasn’t come directly from the administrators at the various schools and the

1:44:02 social studies curriculum and that is deeply problematic what i’m saying is if we don’t have one and it’s deeply problematic then we need to purchase one because having a k-6 formal curriculum for social studies is not exemplary it’s it’s i would argue fair minimum yeah i i just think we’re well yeah i just kind of late in the game to be putting that on the superintendent and the assistant superintendent and kind of insisting that hey we’re going to force this money down your throat and you better deliver this by come september 1st and then maybe it’s not the you know the full-fledged program and it hasn’t been well thought out and you know there’s not there’s not the time to do it i’m not saying those programs aren’t needed sarah i don’t disagree i don’t

1:44:48 i don’t i don’t disagree it’s just um all i can say is that there’s a you know there’s only so much capacity that i have in my daytime job and so you know or when you’re adding new new projects you kind of have to chip away at them and prioritize and i think that’s exactly what dr bucky did with his administrative staff at least that’s how it was presented um you know they presented their priorities and of needs for an exemplary education so i’m like i say i’m not i’m not opposed to it but i have a hard time pushing money when it’s not well defined at this late game i think it’s been it’s it’s really it’s really hard to be in a school these past few years and it’s not normal at this point and obviously we continue to move

1:45:35 closer towards normal um and and but it just i worry about the teachers within this like i totally agree that we need a social studies curriculum and it tells me that we don’t have a social studies curriculum and you know there’s a reason that we haven’t asked for everything within the facilities assessment as well because we can’t do everything in one year and so we’re going to we have this prioritized list we’re going to start to chip away at it with fidelity year after year after year so that we you know the piece like make us whole like i totally agree i want us to be whole and you know it takes a while like

1:46:22 you know if you break an arm it takes a while to fix that if you break you know two places in your arm it’s going to take longer and there’s going to be more like and this is the same thing of like i wish that we could just sort of wiggle our noses and be like we’ve got it all we’re good it’s all rolling forward our students are and our teachers are pushing it and and killing it and that’s just not the reality and again it is really really hard inside of schools right now the kids are not back to normal and and trying to move this forward i from like from a social emotional perspective i worry about that i worry about it on

1:47:07 the teachers i worry about the kids ability to do it um i just think we need to trust our professionals and again i agree with everything you’ve said sarah and i want all of those things too i just wanted to be successful when it’s implemented not even the ask to be successful i don’t i don’t want to put it out there that our teachers aren’t teaching social studies because we have an amazing group of staff and what they’re doing is they’re creating the curriculum themselves they’re going out they’re they’re writing this they’re doing it but they’re they’re doing double the work because we’re not providing them so i don’t want anybody to think our teachers aren’t doing it it’s just each teacher is is doing double the work to create the the stuff

1:47:56 well and i would i would push on that a little bit that they’ve created these things and that they that they do them and that’s part of their stuff and they obviously tweak them and everything we’ve heard that the math curriculum on top of like the other pieces that have been pushed forward that to learn the curriculum is a whole other ask of the teachers with a lot of pd involved nan has talked with us about the balancing of bringing in the pde that’s available when you buy curriculum to just allowing teachers to have time to get their hands in it and dive in and figure out how they want to put it forward to their students in the best way that their they know their students so i think you know again that’s why we want a curriculum so that it is aligned and that’s that is one of our goals but

1:48:43 at the same time from the stuff that we’ve heard and know i i you know

1:48:54 so again i guess i would ask that given the asks that we put it back to you dr bucky and your team to consider and think about what’s feasible and what makes sense and then you know as our next meeting is our hearing um but to sort of you know just take it all into consideration and and feel free to if it’s a good idea to bring it forward and you know and i i don’t mean that with any disrespect whatsoever that that it hasn’t been thought of or something or it was overlooked um but i think i think there’s i think the committee is also walking a fine line where

1:49:35 we’ve been we’ve been given asks and you know people we haven’t all been on a committee for the same amount of time you know previous committees that that there’s asks that then haven’t gotten funded and i think the message that we really want to send tonight is that you and the administrative team through and through have our support um and that what you want to ask for we see no reason to push back on um and and i think that’s really the takeaway that i would love to leave um this conversation with i just i just i agree with what you just said because what i said earlier that i will advocate

1:50:22 for what the administration has asked for it pertains to this conversation too we’ve talked about this a number of times in our school committee meetings and i’m not an educational expert none of us on this committee are educational experts that’s why we have john and the principals and michelle and man and i’m not going to second guess what they say they if they say they need i will advocate and i will do everything i can to make sure they have it but i also want to make sure that they can use it and so i’m going to advocate for what they say they need because they’re the experts in their field

1:51:08 in our our staff has been empowered right to to reach out to to the powers that be and let us know what they need um has there been a whole staff forum yes i think michelle would agree with that the principles when they met with us way back in the fall said that they empowered their faculty to put forward requests they empowered their team leaders or what i would call department heads to put forward the needs based budget that we presented and then they had that opportunity to share that with school committee in the workshop for them okay so just to reiterate what’s what sarah said you know the message is out there we are going to support what you need so if you

1:51:53 didn’t bring set forth something and you need to you have our support and we are going to bring your requests forward all right all right thank you everyone i think emily had something else i’m sorry did you know oh sorry i thought i went first and i thought you said well i was going to bring up the creativity

1:52:20 i do think that that through the chair i do think that that conversation nuanced this evening that if i’m hearing emily correctly that the curriculum coordinators are important and through your research that there is a model there are various models and i think that’s why we were holding off because finding the right model but maybe an incremental step toward that end is funding a portion of that for next year if i’m hearing you correct that’s exactly good

1:52:58 or disrespect or disrespect i just like i needed some more information that’s all we all have healthy working relationships here all right that will move us to our schedules um so those were all in the folder so i will ask for a motion to approve the identified scheduled bill bills totaling 461 629 and 53 cents

1:53:26 megan moved megan moved second dated second any questions on any of those all right sarah gold yes david harris yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes and sarah fox yes all right so that leads us on to our portion of discussion items um you all will have noticed that the coffin school use is in our folders again um there’s been a lot of conversation behind the scenes with with quite a few town departments about the viability of the coffin school to be used michelle feel free to jump in

1:54:11 here as i explain this um so we all know the state of the coffin school we all know what it’s what what’s going on with it um and the concerns around it and so other departments in town then when the library decided that that was what they wanted to use and we allowed the permission for it other departments in town started to have concerns around the maintenance and the concerns of the boiler and then there’s concerns with the electrical um the the coffin cannot sustain the air conditioning unit that would be necessary to be put into there for the library’s use and so they started to sort of think about possibly the coffin not being the best place for them to go there was a lot of accessibility issues um the

1:55:00 uh like construction pieces that would have to go on for the for the coffin to be able to be handicapped accessible and usable to the public um to all public started to really sort of set in um so the evoluth came as a discussion point and seems to be a better fit so in your folders you have a revised memorandum of understanding that has taken out all of the coffin school and replaced it with the ebola school um been also in talks with park and rec because park and rack has been using the evolut space to run some of their programming um though and they seem to be on board with the library um the you know the conversations and ironing out all of

1:55:48 those details are still ongoing um and you’ll see similar to or exact same as the old mou the dates are not put in there yet so that everything can sort of be worked out um and and that no hold up occurs from us then having to pass it sort of after those details have been worked out um so michelle did i miss anything in there i think you’ve got it all all right um yes i think it’s just as simple as switching coffin into evelyn and iron ironing out the details the boat that you’re taking is are you opposed to the library right right because our original motion yeah our original motion specifically stated coffin school so that’s why we had to bring it back to everybody um for additional approval

1:56:35 additional approval additional approval should we make the motion to reflect that we’re giving approval for that to them to work out the details to use coffin or evoluth just so if if this goes back and forth we don’t keep coming back and forth they have permission to go to either sure yeah dr bucky there is no way they’re going to cough yeah they’re not getting out of the coffin yeah i would actually suggest that you rescind the motion okay or kaufman and replace it with evolution okay that’s what your the intention of it so i will ask your emotion michelle krakis as i’m saying if it’s incorrect um i’ll ask for a motion to rescind the memory of understanding for the library to use the coffin school and

1:57:22 approve the library mou for the tablet school yes so so second moved

1:57:36 second only second all right any so you mentioned park and rex i do understand i mean that obviously there is a flat gymnasium there and it’s indoors and there were some programs that can be held there and coffin doesn’t offer that same kind of opportunity so hopefully we we have been without pulling a rug out from underneath them but granted we’d have to have some consider but they’re good they’re good yeah the building commissioners talked with jamie from the wrecks and dr bucky and michelle been in contact with her as well

1:58:16 and so what happens now we have prolonged the existence of evelyth which i’m in favor of supporting abbott library and and here we are we don’t know what’s going to happen to cop

1:58:33 okay i mean i was kind of thinking okay maybe if the libraries were in coffin for a couple of years now we’d start talking about evoluth and you know is is there some future decisions to be made available so now now i think we have both of them in play because it’s gonna be so difficult but um uh okay i mean how can we not support the library they need a place to go and and i can certainly see you know one level floor level entry no you know limited stairs not the configuration that exists at coffin the infrastructure that goes along with it you know temporary air conditioning to maybe put in through windows and i can hear all of that right now it’d be so much of an easier structure to probably maintain

1:59:20 than it would be a coffin so i’m in favor of moving forward with that boat

1:59:31 all right uh sarah gold yes david harris yes megan taylor emily baron and sarah fox yes all right thank you everyone and i’m sure the library is grateful as well and they were a little worried that we might need to hold this off until the 7th so i appreciate everyone’s willingness to move it along all right so that moves us to the hiring search committee discussion um so wait so you don’t need that

2:00:14 so we’ve got a few different search committees that are going forward um we’ve got the brown school we’ve got the medco director and we’ve got the food service director um there i’ve talked with dr bucky um and mr bauer about the assistant principal search um there’s a little bit of mixed precedence on it i believe when the assistant principal was hired that the vets we did have someone on there um we did have a representative from the school committee but then when the assistant principal was hired at village we did not um and in thinking about it correct me if i’m wrong i think part of the reasoning around the vets representative was because

2:01:01 was because was because there had been so much change in the district and sort of an it’s more a little bit more institutionalized knowledge um because in reality we have absolutely no jurisdiction over that position um in any way shape or form um with it with assistant principle so you know i think you guys can override me absolutely but i think just in sort of choosing to be consistent one way or the other i think not not moving into assistant principal searches um is what i’m suggesting i agree um but then these other higher higher up administrative roles uh that we would have someone on there um so

2:01:48 food services brown school medco yes yep um so i know you know i know sarah you had reached out to me and expressed interest in brown um i know in previous conversations some of us have expressed a concern over conflict of interest with having kids in the school where you would be sitting on the search committee um so i’ll put that out for display i i i’m gonna pause everybody right there i don’t think we can bring familiar familiar status into this discussion at all and stay appropriate we can’t we can’t vote on someone

2:02:34 dependent on their their status as a family like with their family that you you can’t do that conflict of interest yeah the town does it all the time so i was elected as a mother of six so i this committee is saying as i have children through you know if i were to have children in all all buildings because i have so many children i would but i have a problem with where this conversation is going so i’ll just get i’ll just give one example that i hear in town all the time back in the day harry christensen as an example when his son became a police officer he you know he he recused him he recused himself and then if there were issues related to um

2:03:20 the police department harry would have to recuse himself depending on what what the situations were so that’s all that’s all i’m saying that’s i think all we’re saying is like you know you have to so there are some issues there sarah we’re not talking about so family does come into play and and when when um who was it that was on the school committee um four or five years ago um uh jackie bell uh kate kate lipsticks would recuse herself all the time about voting on invoices because there was still somebody in the district so i think that’s all we’re saying there sarah i’m not and i’ll before i i actually would am not will i’m not able to sit i think i’m not able to serve on the food service because one of my friends has applied so i think that that would be highly well no definitely if a

2:04:07 family member were applying to the position that most certainly is but having children in the district i feel like you’re discriminating against me because i have several children i’ll be honest i think it’s inappropriate and um i’m deeply troubled that this is a talking point if we were going to do the ap search i would i have a child at that school and i would be saying the same thing about myself so but you’re on the sac i’m i’ve been on this sac since 2015 right i i and i thought it i’ve you know i’ve thought it over i see the pluses and minuses and so that’s why i’m opening it up i’m not just saying like flat out no we’re not doing it not saying no either

2:04:56 i i think it’s very hard to go into that situation and not where both school committee and parent and that’s not our role in these searches right that’s why we’ve got two or three parent record representatives so same thing like looking for the village principle if i want to be honest then i put my name in as a parent because i feel strongly about being involved so that’s where i’m coming from like i do think it’s very difficult not to wear both hands and that’s all in this search our rules

2:05:51 i make a motion to appoint myself to as the rep for the uh the principal search at brown school i think we need motions around this like good grief most on the table all right it feels good to get a second so i don’t think i need motions i’m going to change the conversation sarah i think you should be on i think you should be our school committee wrap or

2:06:35 i’m happy to do whatever search i i won’t do the service search um happy to not do a search

2:06:56 i i don’t i don’t see how this wasn’t a problem when for instance when we look for someone that is a pa uh the school committee rapping’s just plugging in i’m sorry um the school committee rap for to to do the special education piece we never worried about if someone’s child reserve received special education services like so this is what i mean like this only things like this only seem to become a problem when my name is the noun okay i’m gonna ask you ridiculous yeah i’m gonna i’m done with this conversation if that’s how this is going like yeah it just means we all work way too hard to have you drag us through mud okay like i am

2:07:43 i am beyond offended by that yeah like

2:07:49 you were on sarah you were honest you just said i couldn’t conduct myself as a professional because i am a parent that’s what and that wasn’t offensive that i could not conduct myself as a professional in the realm as being a school committee member because i am a parent that is what you all collectively sat there and said and that is offensive i did not collectively say that i said there’s examples in town where people recuse themselves but you know i was talking about hiring so i guess in that it was a bad example and it was not about you it was stated about all of us that it is difficult not to put your parent hat on at the same time i find that very difficult at the sac i sometimes speak as a parent at the sac and then later on i’m upset with

2:08:37 myself because that’s not my role there my role as a school committee i should actually speak very little and i should sit and listen to what the students and the parents and the teachers are having to say because that’s my role there and you were put on the schedule committee and you showed up once like i i’m like this whole conversation is infuriating to me i cannot believe how disrespectful you have been to the rest of us to even insinuate this to lob these bombs and this is not the first time that that and we have let it fall to our own detriment in the past and i’m done yep yep

2:09:23 i agree i i think it’s pretty serious accusation to say we’re discriminating against you sarah this is no different than last year when it was stated that me and megan and emily prioritized our third graders to get them back in like it just it just happens time after time over and over and we sit there and we’re like oh we’re not going to make a fight we’re not going to cause a scene no done i will not be accused of that kind of nonsense i spend too much of my time too much of my effort too much of all of it to be to be dragged through the mud like that it is disrespectful and hurtful and completely untrue

2:10:31 okay okay so i apologize i’m a little too heated to kind of like make rational decisions at this point so so through the chair yep this is my hire and so not there are certain roles that the school committee fulfills on school nurses the director of student services the assistant superintendent searches um i’m not diminishing the role of a school committee member on this search but at the end of the day as i tell the glover school search committee i don’t often go against the recommendation of a search committee but ultimately this would be my hack i don’t know if that takes the heat off the conversation or not

2:11:24 i have to defer to the vice chair on this i really do i’m sorry i’m sorry to put you in that position okay this is we can table this as well well we can’t really because we want to get the brown surgery so this is my recommendation i recommend that sarah is our spontaneous rep on the brown principle search i recommend that sarah is our school candy rep on food service and i would recommend either emily or i on the netcode

2:12:13 um um it is the discretion of the chair to make these assignments anyway um so i think in this at this point i think it’s just best lives for those unless those three people do not want that role

2:12:31 okay i’m not hearing anything so that’s what we’re gonna do

2:12:49 um um michelle was going to get back to us when we’re ready when we have finalized numbers from the town on that so that we can move forward on that piece

2:13:02 any work done on buildings and properties no not in the last two weeks

2:13:19 any other updates uh there’ll be a building committee meeting next thursday we’ll post that it’s pretty much to um just approve some close-out invoices and give a look ahead for the final work to be done it’ll be short and sweet but it’ll be on zoom and posted next all week great um any new business i will just remind everyone that we’ve got our budget hearing in two weeks um and that it will be so that there are no hiccups with any kind of technology it will be fully on zoom not in person at all nope two two on the thirty first several

2:14:06 yep our next regular meeting is three weeks from science oh partnering okay right thirty free we um going off what mommy said in her public comment can we put the metco director as an agenda item um i think we need to look at our like i don’t know what the steps are to take but look at us as a district if figure out why this is happening i don’t know it may be half or come or happen we need some advice from people maybe have students come and talk to us just so when we go into these hirings we have more

2:14:45 just put it on so we can just talk about it and i know in talking with john um feel free to interrupt me that um millie from netco is going to help us with this next she comes and talks to us about it talks about what the role is just i think we need to do a little more than just have a higher like just hiring absolutely and i know we had talked in the past as megan has noted um about putting a non-voting matco parent um school committee right now yeah megan reminded me of that the other day and so it’s officially on my nieces okay perfect list i guess i think that’s a really good point only because you know it’s noted in cindy that there has been turnover

2:15:31 turnover turnover you know regular turnover and so i think this is an opportunity for us to look at maybe there’s some something you know we could be doing better there to make sure that they’re supported so i don’t know the best way to do it maybe john comes to us with recommendations on on how to best approach that and maybe some specific things based on you know i’m sure you’re doing outreach too on some areas that you’ve identified there and how we can move forward on that kind of come with some type of recommendation that we can discuss that would be helpful all right all right um there was no correspondence so i will adjourn us at 9 16. thank you everyone