School Committee: April 12, 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.

0:47 okay we’re just waiting to let emily go live on youtube

0:54 so for those who are live streaming or would like to um our system has changed now the youtube channel is located under the school committee section of the new website but under agendas materials and minutes and the channel link is there so if people want to spread that information okay

1:21 does if you were looking for it the day after would it still be under sarah’s youtube yeah so now that link to go to all the old videos and everything is on the website under agendas okay and we’re in the process of changing that from your youtube page to a school committee youtube page okay correct so it’s under my school committee email address because it has to be linked to a school to an email address and so i need to work with steven how we change my to change it to a different email address that’s generic so that it doesn’t live with me it lives with the committee

2:03 all right we up and running all right great so i will call us to order at 702 any commendations tonight

2:17 this is more of a town wide combination but i know our custodians had a lot of extra todd’s team had a lot extra on their plate in the last 24 to 48 hours but um you know getting we had yesterday off but getting everyone back today and getting our sites cleaned up and ready to go was a big effort and um i know there’s two schools i went to this morning looked really good when we got there especially when you when you look at what came through the town yesterday so i just wanted to commend todd and the whole custodial staff for for getting all that done yeah absolutely thanks sarah and i will i will push that out town wide because you know if it hadn’t been for the electric company working and the and the tree uh the tree department working you know we

3:03 may not have been able there were still some towns that were closed today because they couldn’t get debris moved from there from their street so you know i feel like maybe my pocket of marblehead was one of the last ones to regain power last night around 11 but as i was going to bed they pulled up and i was just really grateful for for all the work because i figured that they had gone to bed which is what they absolutely deserved to do but nope they were still out there so much appreciated megan did i see your hand go up

3:36 yeah um so i just wanted to give a big thank you to the brown school pto for putting on the monster mash last friday it was um hey it was nice to have it at the new school i thought that space was amazing um every year that event gets bigger and bigger um so it was great to see it for you know the brown school combining um belle and you know officially in one spot bell and the coffin and gary school so i thought it was very well run i thought you know it was great events i know it was a ton of work for the pto to get that up and running at the new school right after it opened um it’s just a great event so just thanks

4:20 all right anybody else okay so um that will actually move us along to public comment this evening our student representative is not going to join us this evening he will be back with us with a big update on our at our next meeting on november 18th uh anyone who wants to make public comment can use the racehand function and um we will limit people to three minutes and please remember to state your name and address for the record all right i’m actually not seeing anybody wanting to make public comment so that will move us into our consent action and agenda items first up we have minutes um those were on for our last week’s meeting but they had gone in the dropbox pretty late so we pushed them to this week um

5:05 week um week um i had asked lisa to uh there was a statement that i had made on the 15th so that is in there um any other additions that that people wanted to make this evening

5:21 all right then can i get a motion to accept the minutes for april 15 2021 and april 29 2021 so moved megan moved

5:38 second emily second all right um i will call sarah gold yes megan taylor yes david harris yes sarah fox yes and emily baron yes all right thank you everyone that was past five to zero next stop is if i’m just gonna mute you because we are might pick each other up uh okay so next up is the approval to declare the high school visual arts furniture as surplus so we had a memo in there there was quite a few pictures of everything that the visual arts department is asking us to declare as surplus john did you have anything sorry catching you mid-sip um did you have anything to add with that

6:27 no i think the memo covers it if people have questions we’re certainly amenable to answering them but pretty straightforward great so ask for a motion first and then we can take any questions or discussion can i get a motion to declare the items um on that list as surplus goods

6:45 seconded megan moved sarah second all right any questions megan an old paper cutter made me nostalgic [Laughter] i’m just going to ask if any of that stuff more of a request if anything can be donated or recycled if we can please just make that you know our first step before we just dispose of that especially some of those things i mean i’m sure there’s some programs that could use um some of those items so we could do that first great great i couldn’t tell though were some of those drafting tables they i mean they weren’t called drafting tables but they looked like they might have been if they are uh like a poor college student would in a program that has to hand draft

7:31 would take those in a second i know i would have

7:37 all right great so i will ask for a roll call vote then sarah gold yes megan taylor yes david harris yes yes uh yes and emily baron yes okay that passes five to zero

8:01 all right john that moves us on to the superintendent’s report i will turn it over to you thank you we have our somebody isn’t muted okay there we go we have our dei team that has been doing a tremendous amount of really good work on behalf of the district and so they have a presentation uh to give to the committee and then we’ll open it up for your feedback and lots of representatives so i don’t know who is up first so i will turn it over to emily barron who is on that group to kick off the presentation

8:38 nan i believe you can share your screen right now does anybody else need to share their screen

8:46 we will need i think it’s maggie dobin that we’re going to ask if you if she could share her screen

8:53 we’re passing the torch um i can share my screen but actually emily i thought you were going to where julia was going to but i haven’t ready if you would like that someone just has to i can do it great okay i’m happy

9:30 presentation presentation oh no yeah this is actually the pdf is this okay everyone yes just bring us to the first slide i’m like there we go yep okay so okay so hi we’re back or i’m back and now i have the whole team with us today so last week [Music] i read the mission statement that our group has been working on and today we have our entire team here to talk about the process of um well i guess what we’ve been doing the past year and how we came up with the mission statement how we rolled it out to faculty and staff and what

10:15 um our plans are moving forward so our team consists of an amazing group of administration faculty students um all within our school district and i was saying to megan earlier i’m honored to be on this group or in this group with everybody because it’s such an amazing group of people um so first we have d’andra williams um my name emily emily dean julia ferreira lindsey page maggie dobin meredith wishart nan and three of our high school students um so our team started like i said last year when we were awarded the opportunity to present in the rides program which

11:01 was sponsored through metco and we attend these meetings regularly throughout this past year and then into this coming year and we also have been working outside of our meetings to come up with our mission statement and talking as the slide said i should stop moving it with um leadership and stakeholders um to figure out what we are going to do within the district so next up it to talk about the process for the development of the statement is lindsay page

11:51 so as i was talking a little bit about uh who we are and how we came together we can you see me can you hear me

12:07 okay great so we worked last year with rides on on a personal personal and team equity cycle which is where we choose goals and look at how we can accomplish those goals moving forward with dei work in our district so after working with rides and coming together as a ddi team we really started talking about how it was needed to have a proactive statement about dei in the work that we’re doing in the schools and in the community so we did a lot of research with other schools and districts across the country both public and private to look at different elements that we felt connected to and that we felt represented our district as well so kind of taking pieces from other districts and

12:53 throwing putting together what what words we felt connected to we worked on a jam board to narrow down basically our essential statements so we put words and phrases and just kind of had a a dumping ground for all everything that we really felt was important and then utilizing that jam board we started to put together a statement to make it concise and powerful we pulled all the important elements that we felt really represented how we felt about dei kind of what our why was and why we’re doing this work and why we want to do this work in the community so after we started to put together some of our phrases and statements we worked with our consultant eden lee who we’ve been doing a lot of work with over the summer and this year dr bucky

13:39 dr bucky dr bucky and we met to finalize the official speech um something that we didn’t take lightly so the purpose of publishing our statement was really to ground us in this work to set the foundation like i mentioned to kind of push us forward with the community and create a concrete place for us to check our systems for equity and to be proactive in all the work that we’re doing

14:20 okay so uh for those of you who don’t know me i’m maggie dobin i’m this one of the second grade teachers at glover school and i’m going to talk a little bit about how we roll this out to our faculty because one of our main objectives in rolling this out to faculty was to make sure that everyone all faculty and staff had the opportunity on the same day at the same time to learn about this statement so that we could really be equitable across all buildings um we felt that that was a critical component to making this fair as we um shared it with all the faculty stakeholders so the first thing we did was we as a team created community norms that we shared across district because we wanted to ensure that

15:06 if people were talking um to other faculty members and other buildings there was sort of a rounded set of norms that we could go on that’s not to say that different buildings couldn’t add on more specific norms to their needs but we wanted to make sure that if somebody from brown was talking to someone for glover or someone from the high school was talking to someone at vets that there was a shared agreement in terms of how we were going to be talking to one another we also wanted the faculty and staff to understand the objectives in the district’s plan for success and that this was a component of that work and deandra will be speaking a little bit more about that later in the presentation and next we did an actual activity with

15:51 the faculty and staff that we did together uh with enid lee our consultant and it’s a trust building activity that also just makes people a bit vulnerable as we learn to talk about race and racism and we felt it was important to model that for our faculty and staff and also for them to see some of the work that we had put in and engaged with as a team that allowed us to have the conversations that we’ve had we also carefully selected the activity that we did because it is one that could be done with children from kindergarten through grade 12 and so not only did we want them to participate and build the trust with one another but we wanted to model an example of the kind of work that can be happening in classrooms

16:36 and then finally we looked at the statement itself and we began to unpack it together and julia’s going to speak a little bit about how we did that but we felt even though emily read it last week we’re going to read it again for the sake of this presentation and also because it’s being recorded however we wanted to make clear that when we shared this with faculty and staff we asked that they read it to themselves and it was done with intention because we wanted people to be able to read it in their own voice and hear it in their own head as part of the work that we do in in our dei team voice and student voice and faculty voice is very important and so we wanted to honor that how people interpret this

17:23 is unique even though we have shared vocabulary that how you read it to yourself and how you hear it in your mind is your own so with that said i am going to read it and also read it to yourself and i have to hide myself to see it so just give me one second marblehead public schools is committed to sustaining an inclusive environment that fosters belonging and acceptance we apply an equitable culturally relevant lens to students social emotional physical and academic development mps sees the power of diversity we support proactive allies we respect and affirm the unique identities of all people across

18:08 disability ethnicity gender identity expression language nationality sexuality socioeconomic status race and religion through holistic practices we cultivate awareness and agency to grow conscious minded empathetic citizens mps is committed to an introspective process we provide ongoing opportunities for learning reflection and sharing with all stakeholders thank you maggie hello julia ferreira the assistant consultant vets so as maggie said after staff individually read the dei statement they were able to read it through multiple times on their own and took notes on the words and phrases that stood out to them

18:55 next we asked staff to discuss our dei statement collectively using a discussion protocol and we provided prompts to help guide their conversations such as what does this statement look like in action in our classrooms in our schools which words and phrases resonated with you together our colleagues discuss their responses and after our group discussion we then move to connecting our work to our planning for success and i’m going to transition to diandra thank you

19:27 thank you julia so when we were meeting with our um staff and just also as a dei team we wanted to just make sure that there was a connection to the work that um the district is doing for planning for success and as it relates to gei work so there are three goals that are associated um i’m sorry three initiatives rather that that we’ll be working on this year so we first explained to them what were the objective so to promote equity and ensure inclusion by acknowledging and embedding all forms of diversity throughout the district two of the goals that we definitely feel will work into the workers that we’re doing the dei team and itself was analyzed cultivate and expand district wise system to ensure all students and families

20:13 especially those from groups historically marginalized access the entire scope of opportunities during and outside of the school day and then the second one is examining work with closely responsive experts to revise curriculum and assessments to provide equitable learning opportunities resources and material that reflects all students so we thought that was really important for them to understand that especially as we start to ground um some of the work within the different schools and thinking about how are we ensuring that we have a safe and welcoming school environment for all people

20:51 and and come back to emily so the action steps that we created as a group for this coming year uh is that our team will continue to do our rides program and um professional development meetings and continue to work towards achieving the planning for success objectives for this year and develop dei committees at each individual school and work to engage with community partners and families so we can take any questions or comments or anything you’d like great thank you everyone that was a very informative

21:37 very informative very informative presentation and i appreciate you know kind of the in-depth look at the overview that we were given last week does anybody have any questions i’ll ask the committee first megan

21:55 so thank you for the presentation i think it’s really good work that you all are doing i think this is a fabulous committee to pull together so i appreciate that is it possible to just get a little bit more information on the rides program so for example is it just marblehead that’s going through this or is that ride’s program um combined with other school districts and what’s the timeline around it

22:23 nan do you want to answer it or i can well i was just going to know the answer so i was just going to suggest that lindsay uh answer that because lindsay was the one that found the opportunity and met with me about it and really encouraged our district to participate

22:42 okay um so rise was a great opportunity um last year during covid um when we were remote um i attended another workshop that was sponsored by mecco and then actually in march of 2020 uh one of the mecca diversity staff members ran an implicit bias training for our teachers right at the end of the school year and then working with millie she provided us millie is the the ceo of mecco uh she provided us an opportunity where there were grants being provided for mecco districts across new england that wanted to participate in the rides program so in collaboration with mecco and harvard um and actually deep which is darnisa’s foundation

23:28 foundation foundation they created the mecco grant for all of us schools so in addition to marblehead in in the training in the workshops are other mecco districts um across massachusetts

23:47 um so it’s been a great opportunity for all of us [Music]

24:00 we enjoy the visitors lindsay it’s great um how long does it go for we actually have um we actually have only one more session next week

24:15 so it’s it’s coming to a close it’s been a year-long process and that’s concluding i think it concludes in january i think we have one more session with them next week and then um and then we finish out our p-tech cycle after that

24:39 the other question i had is around i mean i know you talked a little bit about next steps but other tangible next steps especially first you know we could identify now around what the students might expect to see in the classroom or follow-ups with teachers for example it sounds like a really great workshop that you went through i’m just wondering if there’s a follow-up for staff from that so i can i can speak to that we have a very um targeted plan and we have three more professional development days across the district that are allocated to this district-wide professional development so through those opportunities and conversations with staff we’ll start thinking about what’s developmentally appropriate how what are the next steps how do we get this to students

25:25 students students we will certainly provide them with a variety of different activities at different grade levels that they’ll be able to use so that um no one is cut depending on how familiar you are or comfortable you are with the content you might not have something you’re at your fingertips so we will we’ll work to create all of that and present it to staff and then um encourage them to do it in in a certain amount of time we’ll have a time frame that’s just one way that we’re going to connect with students but in other actions we’re talking about having a community forum of some sort where we can engage our community partners and our families and in the conversation and do some of the exp some of the trainings and workshops

26:12 that we’re doing with our teachers do with families and parents and community partners um as well as like d’andra had mentioned developing school-based dei teams so that we have a central team for the district and then we have shared leadership in buildings um continuing to keep the conversation alive

26:36 okay i think the the family engagement would be important too so i’m glad that’s on your radar and then in two seconds um maggie did you want to it looked like you went i was just going to add to be specific also about what this is going to look like for students we are working on developmentally appropriate ways to share the statement with with students from our kindergartner all the way through 12th grade and we’re looking at teams in our different school buildings to look at how we’re going to do that in appropriate ways additionally a number of years ago i received a grant through friends of marblehead public schools to bring diverse libraries to our classrooms and that those libraries have now been extended to brown school and will also be associated with professional development

27:22 and so brown school will be getting those books as soon as i can finish sorting the hundreds of books that we have ordered for them and getting them to each of their brand new classrooms

27:36 that’s great maggie that’s awesome um my last question is around the action steps that you identified on that slide is that are those actions that we plan to get done this year is that kind of our agenda for the school year that’s the plan yeah all right and then further action steps will be connected to our plan for success okay this is awesome i think it’s great work it’s really fabulous thank you for all the work you’ve already put in over the past year and then hopefully you know can we get this on the agenda maybe towards the end of the year just to see how it’s been going i’d be happy to do that emily just uh

28:21 you know keep it on my radar as the as the year progresses uh sarah fox i saw your hand up yes um so can you just give us a brief picture of what the the feedback um has been from the staff who have gone through the the initial steps of this and are you feeling that there’s a lot of excitement and buy-in around this that they’re really embracing you know moving forward through it or or what’s the feedback then so maggie and julia do you want to talk about that at the elementary and then at the secondary level sure i i think um at the elementary level

29:07 a lot of dei work has been happening for some time now so it was not an altogether new topic we’ve talked a lot about in our team about everyone is sort of on a continuum of their own learning some people are at the very first rung of a ladder and some people have traveled much further along and i think at the elementary level people have been working on this for quite some time so there was really extreme amount of positive feedback from faculty and staff i mean i’ve been getting emails thank you notes from people accolades from um faculty members that i have rare interaction with were 81 faculty and staff at glover school so you can imagine on a daily basis i may not interact with all of them and people are have been coming up to me

29:53 throughout the week to say how much they appreciate the work and how much they’re excited to engage in it together this year so very positive yeah and like maggie said at the middle school very positive feedback one thing that really was i joined a lot of the groups for the discussion portion but at one point i stood back and it was just awesome to see our staff engaging in those conversations and really connecting with one another so it was a really i was very proud of the work that we’re doing in that moment i also have a lot of staff that have reached out they want to be part of our vets dei team so they’re ready to go and they’re like when are we going to do it i’m like okay we’re going we’re going to do this so there’s a lot of excitement so i’m assuming that when we look in the spring at school improvement plans that there will be a dei section on every school improvement plan

30:45 i saw a lot of faces go no i i you know i think that building leaders would look to build to create their school improvement plans around the um plan for success and where it’s such a prominent place in that plan i’m i feel confident that school improvement plans will include um this this work if i can just add to um even part of some of the initiatives that are rolling out for plan for success in regards to dei will be presented later so a big part of that too is having conversations with school leaders about what does that look like and feel like um so even with some of the things with that like you know i’m already developing designing surveys and already had some conversations of principles

31:31 about like how do we think about different ways that we can engage families and communities um as well as just different ways of just measuring that overall so um we definitely look forward to sharing more towards the end of spring and talk about what that progress is and going back to like our mission statement this is an introspective um process so our goal ultimately to figure out what work what isn’t working and then what are the areas that we can improve so all students can feel like they belong and they’re accepted on all the levels that we have addressed any regular questions sarah were you done okay um okay um one question that i had i was just

32:18 wondering how you all got connected with enid and what that what did she come through the rides program or was that outside of rides um i will answer that i actually met enid over 20 years ago in my career when i was working at a school in cambridge massachusetts where she was part of a two-year initiative at that school

32:43 massive diversity within the population that we were working and she was there to help us along our journeys and she single-handedly had the greatest impact on me as an educator of pretty much anybody i’ve worked in through grad school and in my 24 years in education and i suggested her to the team and everyone sort of vetted and researched her you can find her online edly consultants she’s done national and international work in the field has an absolutely phenomenal reputation and the team agreed that given our needs and her capacity to cater to our specific needs so she speaks with us beforehand she builds the agenda with us based on where we are and

33:29 and and moves us along um and she’s been really helpful to us in having hard conversations and learning to be proactive which is one of our huge goals and one of the reasons we really wanted to have the mission statement because as we all know planning proactively is much better than being reactive and enid has been instrumental in helping us to prepare for that

33:56 that’s it that’s wonderful um and i i i’m always a big proponent of proactive movement i don’t love the reactive stuff um and you know i think particularly in you know things that have popped up in our district over the years at least you know i think definitely predates when i was on the committee but certainly while i was have been on the committee you know um i’m i’m happy to hear that we’re attempting to do a more proactive approach um to to all these pieces um because that’s really important and i love you know i think you know we know our students are our best focus to learn when they feel they have a voice and that they’re included in their classroom and that they you know feel like like they can you know be present with who with

34:43 you know everything that they are um so i’m i’m really excited that this work is going on in the district and that it’s you know kind of casting such a wide net it’s it’s wonderful work thank you to everybody

35:00 all right thank you for having us yeah absolutely we’ll look forward to uh having you back some point in the future

35:09 all right john i will go back to you great um just a couple updates um i thought it would be helpful uh there was a pretty significant event yesterday that caused us to close the schools uh but we had uh i just wanna i think sarah fox led with this at the beginning of the meeting but just acknowledge todd and his crew i got the first call at 4 00 a.m and uh todd was shortly engaged thereafter and really kind of a community effort of working together with the dpw stephen quiatek also once again deserves an acknowledgement because there were some significant technology

35:56 issues and stephen was helping on the town side and the school side to get connectivity back up and running and certainly lisa in my office calling the televisions and radio stations not once but twice to update that so i just wanted to acknowledge there were lots of people dennis king pulled together the emergency management group into his office at eight o’clock and it was just really nice to see the unity and collaboration across town from the harbor master to the fire chief to the police chief to dpw and everyone working together to figure out uh you know how we get communication out because there was no electricity in town and then how do we get back up and

36:41 running safely so on the school side of it i just want to take you through a couple things that todd pointed out all the generators for schools that have generators engaged and started as they should so that’s positive they made sure that all of the roadways and sidewalks and the schools were cleared for any falling trees but trees are continuing to fall so when i went to the emergency meeting at eight o’clock the glover intersection was totally fine and when i came back to go to lunch a large tree uh had fallen and the same thing on tedesco road today another tree has fallen so todd and his crew have been working with dpw to make sure that all of our areas are cleared

37:27 we had a few roof leaks at the high school and todd has contacted the roofing company to come out and give us some estimate and todd as todd is has offered to do any repairs internally that he can do the sprinkler system at coffin is a pressurized system so when the power went out it could not remain pressurized the system filled with water but no sprinkler heads or pipes leaked he’s already been in touch with the sprinkler company and they’re coming out tomorrow the new fire panel that we installed at vets this year uh triggered that there had been several poles of the pole stations which at five o’clock in the morning there’s no one pulling the fire

38:15 alarm there so um he has a company coming out uh to look at that a couple polls came down behind village school with tents they were able to re-secure those todd went through each of the schools this morning before we opened up to make sure that no additional trees had had fallen but all in all it was a fairly significant event and i think the entire town is looking forward to doing kind of a post event analysis to see what worked and what we can improve upon and i’m very thankful that it was a rain issue and that was not snow for some of the glitches that occurred so i’m happy to take any questions from the committee if they have any with regard to yesterday but was pretty

39:01 impressed across the board with how it played out anybody have any questions sarah um um as always the marblehead light department got us up a lot quicker than i think anybody can could have anticipated being up um given the severity if we were if we didn’t have a town like department um that being said if this had gone longer one of the things about the new school um that we had promoted was that this would give us um a large shelter area in in an event such like this if we needed you know to bring people in for heat or you know any any other needs long a little bit more long term

39:50 do we have that plan worked out um moving forward if we do need to utilize that space how we would do that and you know who would do what i do not believe that plan is in place but i do know that todd was commenting on just how well the generator at the new school worked and specifically as i guess facilities people would notice how quiet it was so perhaps that’s something for that safety committee sarah for us to operationalize that plan that if that school needs to be used as a shelter i know in my former district the high school was the shelter and so there was a plan with the town and with the red cross as a matter of fact for when it had to be used as a shelter

40:38 that would be great thanks any other questions for john on that all right go ahead so the other thing is arpa funds i have another meeting with town tomorrow thank you to people who have reached out to me with ideas we engage the leadership team on things that they would like to see additionally i reached out to the north shore superintendents to see how other communities are partnering with the schools and so we put forward some requests certainly summer programmings come to mind after school programs i.t upgrades since broadband is one of the categories in that the town has identified

41:25 air circulation and filtration things so some hvac upgrades have been included for the middle school and village i talked about an after school program and then one community did premium pay for staff as a way to use those funds so those are some of the things that we put forward i will say being in the room yesterday for the emergency management that uh some of these priorities or some of the things that town is identifying may take precedent but i will continue to be at the table and advocate for the schools for some of these things that we’ve identified as initiatives we would like to see funded can you just share that list with the committee yes thank you

42:12 i’m glad to hear that the hvac pieces are are on there i think you know i follow i think i’ve mentioned him before but this man out of harvard who runs healthy building initiatives joseph allen and that’s really his big shtick is just how important for general safety and health um for in in any building whether it’s a work building or a school building um that just how important uh the the air circulation is to to keep everybody healthy so i think you know we’ve obviously seen that for covid um but i think you know seasonal flus and and anything to come in our future as well so i think that would be a great investment

42:55 sarah sarah yes one other thought i had is now that they’ve rolled out boosters i know that there are some plans for um the town to host a clinic for our five through 12 year olds when that’s available but is there any talk about hosting any type or providing boosters via our pro funds or asset funds whatever it may be to our our um staff so that you know they don’t have to take time off and maybe can just pop down to the nurse’s office and get those i apologize sarah you and i did have that conversation and that was included in the list that i sent to jason for vaccination clinics and i know that the board of health uh tracy and deanna are

43:41 working on as soon as the 5 to 11 uh come online for us to host a clinic here as soon as possible they have already placed an initial order

43:55 the process for that for those boosters was for myself it was very similar to my first two um vaccines where you show up and they’ve got your insurance information so possibly that could just i know this is a little off topic but possibly could just be looked at for you know a friday afternoon for staff who um who need their booster sure and uh deci did release a guidance document today in anticipation of the five to 11 and talked about how accessible the shots have become now that you can go to stop and shop or market basket or cvs walgreens and there are there’s availability that wasn’t there when the initial vaccinations were rolled out but certainly we want to host something

44:40 here and i have reached out to the pharmacy that has done clinics here for us to see if they would be interested in doing something for staff and students

44:52 and that’s my update all right wonderful any other questions for john okay so um we actually don’t have any schedules this week we will have some at our next meeting as i signed a bunch today so that moves us along to the school committee communication and discussion items uh first up we have a review of policies two of these policies so make sure yep two of the policies were in there last week um and they were dropped really late as well um and that work is work that emily and i with have done with dr bucky and just you know as we’ve been going over various uh policies in our policy manual um one had some significant changes i think the other was relatively simple um any question i’ll ask any questions on those first

45:38 those first those first sarah um um my question is on the face covering one yeah so i’ll i’ll get to that one um i figured that’s a link probably a lengthy discussion so i just wanted to ask about the others quickly

46:00 all right sounds like oh yeah meg just for process just so i’m clear is this considered like we’re not voting on this one right this is for information for questions and then we vote on it next time or we voting tonight so yeah so this could be this we could do it either way because technically they were there last time um but we can easily push these you know there’s no at least for the i j n d d and i j o c there’s you know no rush on those two so we can we can leave those and discuss them later okay so harris ij i’m assuming all these have been through legal right um no probably not okay because my concern with i j n d d

46:51 social media one i’m getting yep um is that some of that may i just want legal signed off on it i i know that this is gets really sticky with where does it start to impede first amendment um and so i’d like to i just want their stamp of approval really before we have a discussion too much on it where that sure i see that being the the trickiest one and that was the one that we changed um significantly so yeah we can run that through for next time or the 18th absolutely so um that brings there’s one more under school volunteers where it says um uh uh

47:37 do we do first of all it says quarry but we do cory and sorry right

47:44 that’s the story is the fingerprints no sorius um

47:54 okay okay is that required of our volunteers i don’t believe it is and should it be so that’s a question for legal that we can present i know other schools it typically is so you might want to look at that one and then um my other one was it on that it said

48:20 no no time will volunteer engage in any form of discipline now my question about this is not that i mean i get that to a certain extent but i’ve also also know that at one time we had a very hard time getting volunteers not that we’re looking to have them disciplined but kids used to say you’re not my teacher i don’t have to listen to you i i can’t tell you the number of times when i was volunteering to cover a class at lunch or something that a child said that’s me i don’t have to listen to you not my not my teacher so just as long as that doesn’t preclude someone from setting them down to the office or or to see someone who does have authority because i i think we do have to empower somewhat um our volunteers to kind of get you know some reason yeah i think i think a general level of respect absolutely i think it just is is making

49:07 it so that they don’t ever get put in a role of disciplinarian and feel like they have to do that okay no exactly i just want to make sure we could still say like go see dr satterfield or whoever yes yes

49:24 all right um so the evcfa face coverings so i dropped this emily and i met uh this morning with dr bucky and we added a piece to the face coverings uh um policy so i will read that i have it on a different sheet but i’ll pull it up on this one so we added the section regarding um getting to the 80 percent of vaccinated students because we know that we’re working on that and this seemed to make a lot of sense um you know we know that duffy has has this piece with the 80 percent remaining in place through at least january 15th they’ve made that announcement this week but that you know

50:10 two of our schools uh you know we do believe that they can show the 80 so we added if a school building demonstrates a vaccination rate of 80 or more of all students and staff in the school through an attestation form submitted to the massachusetts department of elementary and secondary education then vaccinated individuals in that school would no longer be subject to the state mass requirement so so the you know the thought tonight is that basically if we approve this change to the policy that when we are able at our at the vets in the high school and you know if we at whatever time other schools are capable of doing it as well before

50:56 anything on january 15th that it would allow dr bucky to send the attestation form to deci for you know to be able to allow our students in that school building or those school buildings to have the option of unasking

51:20 so if i understood um the deci rule correctly it was that you had to have 80 percent and a couple other factors um it had to do with your rate in town and things like that if i if i it wasn’t just 80 boom you’re done it was 80 and a couple other things so i just wanna i just don’t want to set the public up for um any disappointment that we we have to still meet their minimum requirements which was i believe the 80 percent and i can’t remember exactly but it had to be your positivity rate or something like that like your case counts had to be below a certain threshold in town um and then

52:05 so so if we could clarify with that but then the additional piece would be and that deci approves our request um because that’s a big one it’s not just like that we can hit 80 we have to hit 80 hit this other thing and get approval from dusty so i just i want to make sure the public understands that john do you want to i know you’ve got a little bit of information on that yep through the chair i would no i’m um 80 is the threshold to apply for the waiver i have both of those waivers sitting on my desk as soon as we have the 80 to submit to desi on the conference call with the commissioner this week he indicated that only about 20 schools have applied for the waiver and not all of them have been approved and i’m not

52:53 sure he did not go into detail on those that hadn’t been approved and why but i would imagine that it looks at the holistic your community case account and that but for us to apply for the waiver it just has to be that 80 threshold

53:09 and i did reach out to i don’t know if you want me to keep going but i can i did reach out to hopkinton who is the kind of test balloon that they applied for the waiver and were approved and the process that they have undertaken their school committee did say that during the trial phase if case counts started to go up and i think the principal said the school committee said it at like five that if there were five they would immediately go back to masking so they also did two special school committee meetings once they had been approved by desi to hear from the community and he said that was a very interesting meeting because clearly there are people on both sides of this

53:56 and so the school committee listened their vote was a 3-2 he said he felt the weight of the world was on the committee member that was the deciding vote which you can imagine and then he outlined the process that they’ve gone through now that they’re going to do this three-week period for making sure that they have clearly the information they need from families that it’s okay for their child that is vaccinated to go unmask and then to communicate to staff those who have not provided that information and i will say there are as we look at our rate of return on getting to the 80 percent there are people with vaccinated students

54:42 who are saying i’m not going to share the vaccination information because i don’t want the schools to unmask and so i don’t know what percentage that is but we we have lagging participation in this um and even hopkinton that’s going to go to that he has significant lagging for the people to confirm that it’s okay to be masked and to share their vaccination information so that’s kind of where we are and some of the outreach that i’ve done as we consider this for our schools sarah and we do have deanna here um in order to ask her questions too if anybody wants okay i have a couple questions um do we have a sense of what percentage we’re at

55:28 right now at both vets and the high school um and do we have a breakdown by students versus staff or have we even started to approach staff asking for their cards yet we have through the chair we have reached out to staff to begin collecting that i think the last i heard vets was at 59 percent with uh vaccination cards being returned and the high school i think was still below 40 percent of return on that information

56:00 so just to just to clarify i want to hop back to the one of the things that you said about the statement so it sounds like you’d like to add the language and i think that that’s correct that if a school building demonstrates a vaccination rate of 80 or more of all students and staff um through it let me pull it up on how it’s written here through an association form submitted and approved submitted to and approved by so and approved by in there okay yeah i’ll add that until we’re approved we can’t go rogue it’s just we can’t even do it um and john did they give you a sense of how they’re planning to roll this out um are they are they giving consideration to coming back from the

56:48 holidays where we saw increased positive cases last year which just makes sense that that’s when you’d see them are they doing you know uh a period after the holidays and masks um i’m just thinking like if they why reinvent the wheel if we have someone who’s kind of you know giving us a model that’s work might work or whatever that we can look at um and then also how are they going to handle the mask wearing monitoring unvaccinated students wearing masks and kind of where that might put a lot of staff in in a precarious situation of monitoring things that you know they

57:33 otherwise would not be monitoring so they’re just hoping to get to through the next three weeks so i didn’t ask him about any uh future plans and he shared there is a mix of enthusiasm it’ll be nice to see people’s faces again and anxiety what’s going to happen when the mass come off they will provide staff with a list of people who have not signed the attestation form and produced their vaccination which is different according to their legal then providing a list of people who have signed the form and given the attestation for a variety of reasons somebody might

58:20 elect as i said vaccinated people that want the schools to remain mass who are not filling out that so teachers in each classroom he said they’re hoping to have it by class so that teachers can easily look at a class list there are as a former high school principal there are a lot more moving parts you have passing time you have the cafeteria where they can be unmasked while they’re eating but maintaining that oversight it is an additional ask of staff and having that information and i think that that’s something that schools are considering and probably a piece of why only 20 schools have applied so far

59:05 megan i think you had your hand up there are a couple things one is um just to clarify too on the turnaround from jesse i mean looking on their website it says that they plan to respond within two business days of submission so it’s not like we’re waiting on a huge turnaround just more for information at least according to their website um the one thing i will say though and john you and i have talked about this is in consideration of this change i do want to know what that threshold is i personally don’t think it’s a school committee decision because it really is down to what is going to work both for the nursing staff and for school leadership in those schools um so i do think we need to know what that threshold is and make sure that this you know school leadership can you know are

59:51 in support of that and have really they’re the ones making that decision or that recommendation anyway um i do think that’s important so you know i’m gonna ask the same question that i asked with the other policies this is something we plan on voting tonight or is this something that we’re talking about now getting more information and coming back with so i can answer that one um i in my head had us voting this tonight um we don’t have another meeting until the 18th um which you know i don’t know i’m hopeful that us talking about this tonight is another way of bringing this forward much like you know we tried many ways of talking about the testing program including at our meetings um to raise awareness of it to ask people

1:00:36 to to submit um their their vaccination cards for their students um so you know i don’t know that we’ll be there by the 18th and we certainly could call another meeting to vote this um you know it can be a single um a single agenda meeting if we needed to as well so um you know in my head we were voting this tonight but it’s to the will of the committee well you know what i’m gonna say about it right i mean i’ve been saying this now for a while that i i don’t think it’s a good precedent for us to set to review a policy especially an important policy like this and vote on the spot um you know i said that during the retreat i said it in other school committee

1:01:23 meetings i understand the importance of this issue and if it’s the will of the committee to vote on it then that’s fine i just think we have some whipping questions we’re all we’re not even at half the percentage that we need to be to even apply for the waiver so it’s not like this is time sensitive in terms of us even being able to um and i think there are open questions and i think also you know we should get the community feedback and have the you know have the public comment for it so those are my juice through the chair john i just want because i have not said it publicly and maybe people know it but the commissioner has extended the mass mandate through january 15th so we are

1:02:08 not up against a november first deadline so to speak on this it is required masking unless you apply for the waiver through january 15th yes sorry that’s a good point i think we knew that the community probably didn’t so thank you sarah did you want to weigh in um where we know that jesse it takes them about two days to turn this around and we need two days to post a meeting if we hit the magic number of 80. um i think at the high school we’re pretty far away from that vets 21 we’re still significantly far away from nfs even i i would say if we hit that magic number and john’s ready to go it’s very feasible that he could submit the waiver we could call a meeting that same day

1:02:53 and we could have our meeting and give approval the same day that we’d get it from jesse with no lag time whatsoever of implementing it so i don’t see any harm of um if megan wants to to have some time um and she’s made that point and i’ve made that point in the past too you know about policy because we have a policy on creating policy that you read it twice um so i i don’t i’m not opposed to that just because i know that we can our timelines match up we can get a meeting in that that would not delay implementation if we needed to um just to say this while i’m saying talking about policies our policy book you i used to be

1:03:38 available online and i noticed when we kind of merged it no longer is and it actually used to be really easily searchable if we can just make sure that’s back up online so that it is online um um lisa did some work on the website this week oh i haven’t watched a few days so yeah it’s definitely it’s definitely up there because that’s always how i access it um when i looked last week i couldn’t find it so it’s under the school committee page if you look under our page and then we when um i was talking with stephen about the new website we patterned it after the school committee website um that we had set up last year which we now need to link directly over to the global committee page

1:04:24 i know at one time it was a quick link for um those of us that look at these things a lot i’m sure there’s probably not many of us but um if we can make it a quick link again that would be awesome okay i can talk with lisa and steven about that um david emily do you wanna do anything i’m fine with not voting it right now and it also will give us some time to see what happens at huffington if you you could contact them again to kind of keep us updated on how it’s going for them and other districts um just for if we do roll it out how to go about the whole process and um so i think it’s fine yeah david

1:05:12 okay okay all right so we will um move this forward then onto the 1118 meeting or if we need to call a meeting to address it before that we can um yeah and that gives us time to you know watch our own numbers um possibly you know i think i think there’s a piece to this um and this could just be my own thoughts but i think i’ve heard it elsewhere that you know that we still have a significant portion of our population that is unable to be vaccinated and that there’s a large concern certainly exists for me and my family where you’ve got one child who would be allowed to mask unmask and what does that mean on the big question marks that hopkinton is asking um and then

1:05:58 what kind of risk does that bring into the house with unvaccinated children so i think you know there’s i think there’s a lot of concerns around it i think you know i am very appreciative to duffy of their of their 80 piece to this i think that’s meaningful um and and i i really appreciate that directive um but i think it’s i think you know i think our number is lagging to what we you know know from the board of health as as to where our our community is actually at is is indicative of of people’s concerns um and i think you know there’s a social emotional element to unmasking i think you know john as you mentioned you know it’s great to see people’s faces and you

1:06:43 know it it really is wonderful um and then you know i don’t want a mask to become a scarlet letter either um and so there’s i think there’s a lot of pieces to be to be weighed out in this um so for a future date

1:07:05 oh sorry um if i can just make a plug i know we talked about the vaccination clinic that the town will be holding they’ve secured 300 doses so that’s either um what if they give it all at once it’s one dose if they hold it um there’s two thoughts you know if they hold it so that they know that they’re covered completely for that one group that’s 150 which is about ten percent of our five through 12 population so i just i want people who anybody who thinks they want or is planning to get a vaccine the clinic will be there but don’t hold off for the clinic by all means like it’s you know back to the races if you will as far as take any option you have look at your different options i had a great conversation with andrew and he said the

1:07:50 same thing you know you should be looking to your pediatricians your pharmacies community clinics don’t just put all your eggs in this basket um for those people who choose it that’s right the correct choice for them and their family um so we hopefully by the next meeting this would be you know old news because we’re hoping in the next week or so that that’s an option for kids but um i don’t want people to think that we are that we’re going to provide vaccines for everyone so just take what you can get as any appointments come up thanks sarah emily um i was just gonna comment after you spoke some it came up um once the little kids can get vaccinated

1:08:36 that’s probably gonna change a lot of it so if we give us some time to figure everything out before we vote it i think that’s going to be helpful so i just yeah absolutely absolutely um and i wonder if there’s a way to um you know to to think about if with the lag that we’re seeing is that now we’ve got a vaccination clinic for students that’s going to be through this you know through the board of health and schools if parents want to have that information submitted and put into asthma immediately i wonder if there’s a way to do that so that there is possibly less of a lag in getting that information my understanding from just hearing the community is the people who haven’t sent it in it’s it’s very strategic that they haven’t sent it in

1:09:29 all right all right um so i have a facilities and land use memorandum of agreement um [Music] jackie belfecker and i had worked on this um we had talked about it back in our retreat about getting something like this we have one for the budget and finance piece and then you know whereas we had had that whole conversation with the electric company and we know we’ve got evolus and coffin and we’ve got these other parcels of land we’ve been working with the bike more group on pieces of our land um it just see and you know because we’ve we’ve completed these this master plan it makes sense that we start to look at what properties we have what properties

1:10:14 we want to hold on to what properties we want to turn back to the town you know i know we’re all aware of some of the various players we’re going to have the library come on our meeting at the on the 18th to do a formal presentation on their desire to use the coffin school for their interim space well they’re doing their veranos and we’ve got the town piece with the coffin and the and housing so i think you know it would be to everyone’s benefit to have a group that is going to tackle this so that they can make recommendations um and that everybody is kind of hopefully on the same page um and and working in the same direction so you guys have the memo um again we can choose to vote it tonight

1:10:59 or we can choose to punt it until the 18th um i don’t think either of them really matters and i think you know we can kind of you know we’ve got again we’ve got the library coming on the 18th so um we can take a look at this again then but i wanted to put it out to everyone and see what everybody thought if there were things that that we thought that we were missing i know jackie put it forward i don’t know if her board actually met last night um um so i know it was on their agenda i’m not sure if they actually tackled it um but you know um happy to take discussion pieces on it at this point sarah sarah they did not meet their meeting i think next tuesday instead um but

1:11:48 i i’m not ready to vote this tonight um my one one thing i i want to have make sure is happening is that we as a school committee are having a discussion about what our vision um for our buildings is and and then discussing it with the town i don’t want kind of this discussion to start at the town level of what buildings do we need or who like i want to make sure that it’s originating in the proper direction because there’s no greater premium in marblehead than land um and once you know once the schools get rid of land um we can’t create new land if we need it for a new school and i think we

1:12:33 we saw really quickly to some people’s surprise you know from where we were a year ago that brown opened with a much higher population than people thought a year ago it was going to have um so i i think that there’s always been a thought to keep ace the phrase was to keep a school in our back pocket um if you know something happens if you need an emergency if we have an increase in population so i just want to have if you will an envisioning conversation of kind of what everyone’s thoughts are at our committee level before we talk about what i mean these those are two great properties and everybody in town i think wants them

1:13:19 before we kind of start this this request if you will um for these pieces of land i think we need to be very intentional about what is best for our students um both now and in the future um for those late pieces of land

1:13:39 david david just unmute yourself i i agree with everything that you said said sarah but um this is a memorandum of agreement it doesn’t bind us to not being able to deliberate as a school committee it doesn’t say that the property we’re giving up that right and we’re giving it now to a collaborative board the memorandum of agreement in fact in the first two items says the selectmen in the school committee have a vested interest in the health and stability and item two the selectmen and the school committee understand and respect the roles and responsibilities of each body so that statement right there um [Music]

1:14:24 i think there is a very prescribed process i think in addition to this memorandum of agreement i’d like to get a clear um definition of the process when when gary’s school left the hands of of the town um i’m not really clear about that exact process i mean i know it was an article on town warren and we we basically decided that it was no longer deemed to be school property and we relinquished the school property to the town and i think that if it’s that simple and that’s what the step is then um but just a little bit of clarification

1:15:10 clarification clarification of how that goes because i i think once that happens sarah i think um you’re right now now you know we we have no opportunity to get that property back once we relinquish uh control of it but um

1:15:33 i i think it you know a memorandum of agreement you know i’m a proponent of sooner rather than later um these properties will continue to either deteriorate if they’re not being actively used they will continue to cost the district money if they’re not being used or you know if we make a decision as a board about the use of a facility we’re certainly going to need to budget for that um in the subsequent years to keep the heat on keep the light on keep the life safety systems going but with that comes um as an example sarah you remember when we were looking at potentially bud orn for

1:16:18 the site of the school and it was going to be a land swap with park and rec there was some money and uh studies that were done on evoluth school property and how that could become additional recreational and green space for the town so that wouldn’t ultimately be up to us to decide but if if we don’t have a uh a use for that school it would be good to to give it up so that the town could start looking at what the uses are but i but i think um

1:16:52 i think as a board and with the director from uh you know with dr bucky looking into it i think it will be a little bit of a challenge in the short term here to to just define what what the needs are for for those properties i mean at least you know it’s nothing that can be done real quickly um or i don’t even know if it can be done you know prior to this this year’s town meeting you know we’d have to have an article on the war and then you know have some decisions made

1:17:24 megan you had your head up so um i agree with what david said at the start i don’t see anything in this memorandum of agreement that says that we’re um giving up our um you know our control for lack of a better word of that of those properties i do think there are a number of properties dotted around marblehead coffin and of lift come to mind obviously but there are others and i think this gets us into the process of itemizing those so everyone’s on the same page we know where they all are and there are a lot of potential uses for them and so it’s better i think for us to be having those conversations up front and collaboratively with the town so everybody knows where we all

1:18:09 stand and i i just think this not that we couldn’t do that anyways but this formalizes it and make sure you know really does make sure that it happens i see this more as a collaborative way to move forward with the town than than giving up anything that we’d be doing and just like the memorandum of agreement that we have with the budget it’s more just setting up the working relationship the school district still is responsible for developing and managing and maintaining their budget that didn’t change the way we go about that process but it has that collaborative piece in place and formalized so you know that’s my two cents on it sarah um i um i would also like to see us set up

1:18:54 sometimes say between now and january a forum because these are very much so community topics what happens with these buildings and although it is upon the five of us to ultimately vote i would like to hear from the community their thoughts and what they would like um some ideas they might have um much like we did we had three was it three forums where they were actually in interaction with the community not just the presentations david but i believe when we first started the facility or the feasibility study we did three forums um so i i would i would like us to to do one of those

1:19:42 megan did you have your hand up again hold on here just to be clear our responsibility is to determine if these properties are necessary for the educational purposes of our students if if we as a committee decide to turn them back to the town it’s the town’s decision how they’re going to use that property not ours so it’s our responsibility do we need them for the academic purposes of our students and staff that’s it

1:20:11 um but i think it’s important as we look at you know holding on to something for a safety because i i don’t think that there was ever a thought that we wouldn’t hold on to something as a safety um what is the town’s feeling do they feel it’s really important to have some that safety be in the north end of town so that end of the town doesn’t feel void of um any school presence whether it’s administration being there in our 18 to 22 year old program is it that they feel like this is a community decision as it pertains to what the schools will do and what the future of our schools look like so i i think that allowing them input before we give these properties up for the possible future of a school site um is very important

1:21:01 um so i think when we had originally talked about this it’s sort of been floated that the facilities subcommittee would kind of be the people just like the budget subcommittee are the people that are assigned to the um finance moa um so that’s sort of where i see that because then again you know if you’ve got that piece where you know to to megan and david’s point like we are at it at the outset of this you know looking at the facilities use working with our administrative team and as to kind of what is needed and then you know looking to the town to say like okay and then you know how do you guys see this and and you know how can we help each other because you know like david said the budworn site you know there there are other places where where we look outside the box and you know i know that i think

1:21:48 that it’s been a shell for the moment but the need to the need for the school department to move out of widget which isn’t happening but that you know in those conversations it was other places in town not just either kaufman or evilest but there were other opportunities uh you know that jason was willing to talk to us about so you know i think in that collaborative effort and just as we have you know the memorandum of agreement with or understanding i can’t remember which what it’s actually officially deemed with the park and iraq is just really memorializing these things so that we sort of know their boundaries if they need to if we need to come back and reset them we can but that everybody’s starts and and proceeds forward on the same page i just want to clarify so did you say

1:22:33 you thought this would fall under the facilities subcommittee and does that include the process like going forward with all the facilities the buildings and documenting everything so when you would when the town would meet with the schools it would that’s the committee that is in there correct it would be with the would be representatives from the board of selectmen and representatives from the school committee which makes sense to be the facility so we’re like we would become that group that does all the work to figure that out and again no subcommittee makes any decisions on policy correct or um right right so we would do like would be the representatives yeah yeah and then we would or but also like are you saying we

1:23:19 do like megan says we need to document all of our property is that something the facilities subcommittee will be in charge of to do that work and then bring it back is that really like okay with the work with the help of the administration so sarah fox and i like she said she wanted to talk to the community about it as a subcommittee we could have a forum have people come and talk to us i mean that might be a way to get the community involved that way and it’s not outlined in here for the mou but to inventory what we have i think we would need to sit down with becky as well just to get she’s going to have the most accurate list of all these little small obscure

1:24:06 pro plots we have i just wanted to know whose job it was but now we can take it and then we’ll bring back our yeah i was just going to say i think we’re getting a little bit too into detail so the question is is this something that we want to move forward with right

1:24:26 not needed or unmuted um we can put it on for the 18th and then that gives a chance to to discuss it and discuss it with john and and make sure that you know if there’s any additions or concerns that as you guys read it over uh just let um just let me know and i can absolutely take it back to jackie and work through that again her board didn’t get the chance to see it and discuss it last night but it sounds like they will next week so they may have their own pieces that will have to um kind of iron out

1:24:58 all right thank you everybody um so that leads us to closing business um any new business that anybody has all right um and i did not put one piece of correspondence but we did receive an email very short email from the marblehead task force against discrimination and on october 25th they voted they met and voted to send a statement to the school committee about the dei mission statement and they officially say that the marblehead task force against discrimination commends the marblehead public schools and its diversity equity and inclusion dei committees new mission statement we look forward to next steps toward the training capacity building and support that will move this statement toward implementation

1:25:44 implementation implementation so i can send that to the rest of the committee as well yeah and that was it for correspondence so that moves us to adjournment and i adjourn us at 8 26 thank you everyone we will see everyone again unless we need to call another meeting but our next regularly scheduled meeting is november 18th have