School Committee: June 23, 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.

0:35 sarah can you hear us all right great all right um i will call the meeting to order at 7 p.m first up is committee reorganization and election of officers for the chairman so i would like to make a motion to have sarah fox be the chairperson for this coming school year thank you bye megan um um thank you i i am honored by the nomination thank you very much um procedurally do we have because we don’t have a chair until after the vote do we have um dr bucky

1:23 facilitate this roll call i i think um um yeah so i’ll do the roll call vote um i will just say you know good luck um and have fun and um but you know the best part about being chair is definitely handing out the diplomas so um enjoy that because that is that is a it’s a it’s by far the best part so all right um roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes allison taylor yes and sarah fox yes all right step here

2:04 thank you very much and i actually um sarah will reach out because i could you know i’d like to know the protocols that you’ve been using to make the agendas and um with dr bucky and lisa and i’m sure you have a lot of good information that you can can share so i will definitely reach out for that um the next agenda item is the election of the vice chair i’m not sure if anybody has a nomination i’m going to nominate emily barron for vice chair a little second now okay roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor oh i didn’t i couldn’t hear you i’m sure

2:50 assuming that was a yes um emily barron yes and allison taylor yes sarah fox is a yes and then to for the secretary i’m gonna nominate alison taylor

3:19 lisa is amazing and does most of the heavy lifting so um so i will do a roll call vote for that sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily barron yes allison taylor and sarah fox yes i would also say um emily may have some tips on that as well she’s from she’s done a lot of work since i was the secretary in converting the technology piece of that because i am very poor at technology so you might want to connect with her and see what tech pieces she’s done and and coordinate that um so the next item on the agenda is accommodations does anybody have any accommodations um i will make a commendation

4:05 to all of our staff congratulations on finishing a really hard school year you know last year was a tough one and i think you know from someone who is actually in the school uh this year was tougher so i really commend all of our staff um and the students as well but you know it’s it was a long year and they all got through it and and did a great job so thank you yeah thank you for sure i mean our staff and our students really have shown through this past year despite its difficulties so well done and i’m sure they’re going to enjoy their summer break well-deserved i want to wait a second that um and also add

4:52 add add i’m going to commend our leadership team teacher staff and most importantly our students for another great year and i would also like to apologize because once again you have to go into the next school year without adequate supports materials professional development curriculum and extra staff and all the resources that you asked for and you needed that the override would have provided and i am truly sorry because it is you our teachers and our students who will suffer and i want you to know that you are appreciated by us as a committee and you deserve better and i’m sorry um i just wanted to take a moment to

5:38 give commendations some to all of our staff that will be departing um for various reasons we here in the marblehead public schools are grateful for your presence and for your contributions and i just wanted to take a moment uh congratulate people on the retirements in and um anybody who’s moving on to the next stage whatever that stage may be or however you got there just to wish you well um if there’s no are there any further accommodations i don’t think so um i will move us on to public comment um i see some hands up in the zoom and if sarah if you can just tell me has anybody signed up for in person com um

6:25 so we’ve got two hands up in per person for three hands um for in-person public comments okay that’s wonderful um i will go back and forth um i believe that is that cindy lowen yes cindy having her hand you don’t want to be serious does anybody want to be first um all right kate thompson said she will be first

6:51 and just make sure you state your name and address for the record i’m like looking right at yourself when you’re thinking um [Music] so i’m here tonight commenting in order to call attention to a letter that’s in correspondence um materials packet for this meeting signed by 32 members of our community and i’m not going to read it aloud i’m just going to make a couple notes so we started by congratulating both sarah and allison on their election um and we also wanted to raise concerns about the ways in which bree sawberry and her family were targeted over the course of the last several months we know that local politics

7:37 can get messy but this spring things went way beyond the pale sorry sorry so um moment of levity last week i made a mistake of letting my eight-year-old listen to this meeting and boy was that apparent in error we needed a parental advisory for a couple of moments there and um it’s too simple it’s way too small um so anyway with similar sensitivity i’m not going to read this letter because um the details on which of the ways in which jesus family were targeted are not kid friendly and they’re not even adult friendly and it’s in the letter so i encourage people to read it please

8:23 at village we ask students to keep each other well and at brown and be brave be kind be safe and be ready to learn and as parents community members and school community members each of us bears responsibility to mitigate their hurt and the harm in our actions and our words online enough this is a small town for neighbors and we’re friends and we’re co-workers and coaches and family members but our most important role might be models of behavior we have to stand up to bullies we have to call out lies and being scared of the new year would not allow this sort of thing to happen in our school buildings and so we should not allow it in our community this is a new term and as we’ve seen already tonight it represents a fresh

9:09 start so as a community we have an opportunity to move forward in a positive direction with renewed commitment to fairness and kindness i will read the three things we’re given that we asked of this totally number one we ask you to please commit upholding anti-bullying standards on blind and off in your own behavior and those around you this is not to suggest that any sitting member participated in or had even knowledge of what happened to race but we expect each of you to identify and stand up for this behavior as you see fit number two that the school committee publicly reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining strict confidentiality such as required in their goals in doing so maintaining a building community trust

9:54 community trust community trust and that no number three no school committee member participates in or continues to serve as an administrator on any local school social media site or participate in school-related discussions on local sites we suggest that while they can frequent these sites they should not it is simply too difficult to avoid a conflict of interest and to navigate community discord as an elected official you can never take off your school committee

10:28 and you cannot moderate community discord as an elected official appropriating appropriately separating facts from fiction and choosing when to correct inaccuracies and when to love mistakes i’m wrapping it up the last few weeks in particular were upsetting for all of us i’m guessing across campaigns and our hope is that we can move away from all this and into fairness and kindness um in the ways in which we use spoken business and just in our general relationships

11:04 i do want to just say one quick thing uh obviously most folks know i was an administrator uh and two months ago when i pulled papers i made it clear that i was stepping back from those duties as soon as the final numbers were listed i was removed i even removed myself from the children’s closet uh so that i am no longer just so there’s no concern about that i certainly understand and recognize that as someone whose son has been bullied at brown both physically and emotionally i get it and i i respect that absolutely yeah okay so i’m gonna do a back and forth here a little bit from in person to um to online so just bear with me um i believe kim day had her hand up

11:50 hi hi kim day 18 liberty road um i just wanted to um i guess reiterate that i really hope that this is a fresh start with this new committee and this new team that’s being assembled and i think a lot of people what i’ve heard over the last few days about the you know the override specifically for question number two for the schools is that it’s been really tough this past year and the dysfunction of the school committee has been really hard to watch and i think that if you guys can come together and be singularly focused on what the goal is and to come back next year

12:36 and to go for the override and to get our students and our faculty what they need that needs to be our priority i know there’s a lot of history between you guys but i really i i just i hope that you can hear what the community is asking for and that they’re they hope that you can move beyond whatever the history has been set the tone for how you treat each other and respect each other and even though somebody may not agree with another member of the committee or with a member of the community just because somebody disagrees with you it’s not a personal attack um and i really hope that we can come back next year and we can get this override for the kids and for the faculty because they certainly deserve it

13:23 it’s going to be a long process you know we’ve done these overrides before for the for the new buildings we can’t take that for granted we have got to start early we have got to educate people we have to be out there talking with them i think one of the you know the nicest things that i saw during this past election because there was a lot of bad um was when i was holding signs at abbott hall and i down the street from me there was a gentleman holding a vote no sign talking with a gentleman who was holding a vote yes sign there was no fighting there was no like shouting they literally stood there and they talked for 45 minutes and i wish i could have been a fly on the wall right because i’m sure that they learned a lot from each other on both sides of the table so i hope that there’s a lot more of those conversations that happen this

14:08 year and that we come back stronger than ever and we get this pass for our schools so that’s all i have to say thank you very much kim for your public comment um um for if the next person um in person can can come up to the mic i think cindy if you’re prepared now um i’ll divert to you we’ll go one side to the other

14:56 you’re gonna hit that so i sent a letter to the school committee i cc john and i did not include allison because they did not have her email address so i’m asking for that letter to go to ellison as well as to have it on the record in terms of correspondence i am not going to read the bulk of the letter i am just going to say a few things um first of all i want to express my gratitude for what kate just shared and said um with emotions

15:42 um second i’d like to say that allison you mentioned that you know your child has been bullied and so what i have seen and specifically in terms of um social media is bullying taking place and i do not think that it belongs um in our school community and i hope that as new members um both members a change of the gavel etc that you guys will come together work together and do what needs to be done as opposed to some of the stuff that i see on social media and um there’s no place for it and i honestly feel that

16:29 feel that feel that what i saw last night in terms of asking for school committee and um and john as well to have sarah fox as the chair on social media is unacceptable um i think it is the role of the school committee to decide who is and not to be pressured by anyone saying whatever they want to say on social media i felt that it was a witch hunt against sarah gold and i think i even use insurrection in my letter and you know what those those terms are not positive terms

17:17 um so i employed this committee the new chair the new vice chair allison being a new member to actually work together and i also want the um five members to commit to the funding for the schools

17:37 it’s unfortunate that it did not pass because as emily said it is the students it’s the teachers it’s the schools that suffer and unfortunately um this town wanted no on the vote and that’s what we’re looking at and so for the next year i ask every single one of you to do what you can to get it passed because we have been working like this underfunded for years and you know what we can do better in terms of hybrids you can better influence our schools and that’s it thank you very much allison i welcome you

18:23 sarah fox i welcome you as the chair emily vice chair and i can only say that it’s a thankless job for all of you but i actually do believe that um anybody that puts their foot in to this role is committed to the schools thank you cindy for your thank you thank you cindy for your comment um i will move on to jen jackson please jackson jackson 23 i come to the school committee tonight as co-chair of the marblehead cpac i wanted to let everyone know that we delivered our certificates this morning to the schools to the principals for all the folks that were nominated along with our

19:09 our our booklet that we prepared um with all the domini’s and the stories that were in here and we had 40 individuals nominated across all five schools and we even had one crossing guard the crossing guard over on west shore drive by a tower was nominated and some folks were nominated multiple times so i just wanted to congratulate everyone that received their unsung hero awards this morning and were so lucky to have such wonderful educators in our district thank you so much jen is there an electronic copy of that because i would love to have that put up on our district

19:56 website all of those people that are celebrated through the unsung heroes award deserve all the recognition plus more and i’d love if we could do a link to that sure so i’ll put together um a pdf that has everyone’s names i don’t want to publish the booklet because there are um some specific stories about folks kids and so for confidentiality reasons i don’t want to like totally broadcast it but be happy to do a pdf that at least highlights the names of the folks that were nominated and we’re hoping next year we’re back and we can do back in person event and have a big celebration that’s wonderful thank you welcome

20:39 was there someone else in the audience um that wanted to speak i believe there was going to be three members and we’ve heard from two nicole cohen is here nicole cohen please please state your name and address for the record nicole phone 40 clifton avenue um i would like to speak to this school committee um

21:06 hearing the word foe is quite funny um when you guys first started off i guess you would everyone wanted to go into this with positive feelings in a new direction but emily when you spoke you started off and you immediately set the tone with your negative comments blaming others and i want people to know that talking to people in the community it’s not that we don’t recognize that our schools are not funded but that we don’t trust you and that we don’t trust you because we have watched your behavior all of you over the past year we have watched only others we have lost we create

21:55 faith we watch you just constantly this is known throughout the community the community so if you want to blame people for an override or not passing i honestly suggest that you take a step back reflect upon your own behavior and ask would you trust somebody that acted the way that you guys have acted and the community knows this do you know the word mandate means a mandate means that the voters have overwhelmingly placed their trust in allison and sarah fox and that is what they wanted the community to head in that direction i hope that you guys can learn get over to bullying targeting others

22:42 listen to the community we did not listen to the community people overwhelmingly voted for because they know that she’s out there listening to them and addressing their concerns not what they want for the not what sarah wants but what the community wants what are the needs of the community there are people and teachers leaving the school system in droves here it is not a happy school system and we need to address that and make it a better work environment and yes maybe we can work together and find a way to fund our schools but again with maybe people should just get off facebook i’m not on it i’m a happy

23:29 person i suggest others get off of it um but claim is right

23:41 take a step back know that the community has watched you listen to you and has given a mandate against you so please go forward with a positive attitude and finally when you start off when you guys come to here and you start off with something like that blaming the community take a step back and say this is probably not a good idea okay thank you can i just correct something i wasn’t blaming anybody i was apologizing to the teachers because they were looking forward to what we had asked them and they feel that the town is just don’t think that they deserve what they ask and what they need i’m not blaming anybody it is a collective community we all should step

24:27 back and look at our behavior i was bullied i’ve been bullied through this whole process so don’t accuse me of bullying okay you’re setting a negative tone by coming and approaching us and saying we are the bullies and we need to step back all these people are coming to say we need to work together and make a new direction you need to do that too

24:50 i’m gonna i’m gonna ask everybody i think that your behavior right there is actually what the problem is there i’m not the host can you make me a co-host yes please thank you um i’m gonna i have given some levity with with the the public comment and i promise i know there’s more people i will get to you um because i do feel that there’s very strong feelings right now on on both sides and i do feel that every the common theme work we’re hearing across the side every side is that we need to move forward we need to start from a new place we need to

25:37 come together as a community and just find a better path through this and i think that we we just that we will do that but i think we have to be open even in public comment to hearing each other’s ideas even the ones that are uncomfortable to either person um but we also have to be you know respectful to everybody so i’m i will continue um and like i said i’ve let public comment go longer and i’ve let it go because i think we do need this this fresh start and we need to people need to be heard but i hope that we can work through this

26:23 and then reset um the next up was amanda rivers hi um hi um i just felt the need to say something at listening to some of these comments at the beginning i feel like we have a new member on the school committee and that was going to happen regardless it was either going to be reese or allison i think a letter and a lot of these comments are already kind of painting the picture that you have her pegged without her even being through one full meeting and seeing her ideas and seeing what she brings to the table and it would just be really nice even if your candidate isn’t the one that won that we can support who we do have and give her a chance to show herself and to

27:09 show who she is as a person and what she’s going to bring to this school committee um so i would just hope that you know people on here listening to this meeting aren’t taking um what they’re hearing about stuff online seriously because knowing her personally for like seven years now i can say allison is probably one of the most um genuine people i know with such integrity and we are lucky for her to have run for her to have been on the board

27:45 thank you amanda um the next person with their hand up was katherine martin 29 west shore drive first of all sarah congratulations on the chair uh you it’s deserved um i wrote a letter to the school committee that is in the packet and some of the things you’ve done over the last few years have really shaped our district whether it’s the facilities master plan or the big one was pre-paying the out-of-district tuition as we went into the pandemic years as a way to buffer our budget was simply brilliant and i was on the meeting when you came up with that and it speaks to good planning and i hate the term i’m going to echo but i am going to echo kim jay’s sentiment today is a new day we need funding and we need a plan for

28:32 funding and we all have to come together collectively and coalesce around this idea and when we look at the priorities for the district you as a committee and our administration really needs to look at the priorities the community wants student facing

28:51 all students needs special education students but also our gifted students you know we forget about them as well we all want to look at these curriculum coaches that we’ve heard some of our best administrators bring to the table multiple times we want to address learning loss and regression and move forward with these items whether it’s the uh social studies curriculum that we’ve been lacking for so many years yes we do need new textbooks yes that curriculum needs to come together steam is fantastic but we need a plan behind it how does it work is it cross-curricular um how are we funding it is it you know again not a teacher but these are things

29:37 we want but we want to see the plan behind it and it may not take one year to roll out it may not take two it may take three four five six um again inclusion is a big piece it was really hard for me to support the last override knowing that special education inclusion the co-taught model that we’ve all wanted all of these us special education parents have waited for to not be included let’s include that give everyone the documentation that they want it may seem fruitless to print out a 2 000 page binder of line item items but people want them it’s a public document give it to them we can make pdfs we can do the work

30:24 but it is a new day we had an election and for a lot of people it didn’t go the way they wanted and for a lot of people it did and you know we really do need this money we really do need a plan i really do urge you to do the the typical five-year strategic plan with timelines goals budget drivers i know i sound like a broken record i said it every meeting last fall but we need that because that’s what makes up the sausage and that’s how you sell the sausage is with the plan the back up the data and i said it last year if you do the plan i will be the first foot soldier out there selling it but you need to do the plan congratulations sarah congratulations

31:09 emily congratulations allison let’s all come together and let’s get it done thank you katie um i see john prinderville’s hand is in the air

31:24 hi sarah can you hear me yes i can awesome congratulations first of all sarah that was amazing i’m really proud of you you had an amazing election and congratulations again to allison for for winning her seat that’s great uh when i was at the meeting when they were actually presenting the override one of the questions i asked was if this override does not pass will the administrator dr bucky reach out to the um the select board and access the arpa funds for the security cameras that we were requesting for the technology build for the first year of the override now that the override hasn’t passed yet is there is there a kind of consensus around the school committee that this is something that they would like to pursue in order to pay for the 880 000 worth of security upgrades to the schools

32:14 um um later on in our agenda i’m sure you’ll get some information that pertains to your comments um but as is typical we don’t per se answer comments but we’ll try to address them at the appropriate agenda item um julie duggan i hear see your hand up in the air julie it looks like you are unmuted but i can’t hear you okay

32:57 i’ll tell you what though if you if you work it out we will come back at the end of the meeting and i’ll do a second round of public comment um i do not see anybody else’s hand raised in nor do i see anyone in the audience that looks um fidgety like they want to go to the mic um so i will move us along to our consent action and agenda items our minutes were in the dropbox um we have

33:27 the minutes from 3 28 22 5 19 22 6 2 22 i will ask for a motion to approve these

33:42 moved by sarah gold seconded by megan taylor i just want to note um that allison will ups need to abstain from these as she was not on the um on the committee during these meetings so as they as the meetings roll on that she’s present for um you can approve those minutes i’ll do a roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor emily barron yes sarah fox yes um moving along to finance and organizational we have a schedule of bills also in the dropbox i’d like to it does anybody have a motion to approve the schedule bills totaling 4379.25

34:33 moved by megan seconded by sarah gold roll call vote sarah gold megan taylor yes emily baron yes allison taylor yes sarah fox yes that moves that motion along um also in the dropbox is a memo from michelle cresta i don’t know if michelle wants to speak to this sure so we had received some bids yesterday for our service and maintenance contracts it’s that time of year we typically we look at awarding them for the upcoming year um many of our contracts are joint with the town and two of these contracts we are ready to

35:19 recommend they recommend the award this evening um both contracts are joint with the town so it will also require select board action at their next meeting in july i’ve been in touch with them regarding that agenda item so the low bid for our elevator maintenance was received from embry elevator or embryon white inc doing business as embry elevator of woburn this is our second actually third year with embry elevator um and the low bid came in at 69 800 this is the combined cost for our estimated cost for town and school and will be billed appropriately to each portion to the town and the school so i would like to request recommendation or award of that contract and the second bid that

36:04 we are prepared to award is our on-call plumbing contract um the low bid was received from e amonti and sons of salem and the amount of 57 820 this is also a joint town and school contract this contractor had not previously held our on-call plumbing contract in the recent years that i can find any history on but they are the um contractor that worked on the lucretia and joseph brown school and i actually do have experience with them in a previous district as well and they come with great recommendations as well so we will be in good hands so i recommend that we award that a second contract to them as well is there any questions

36:49 some of the um bids i just want to add that we did not receive any responses so we will put them back up to bid and most likely at our summer retreat there will be some more um contracts to award but really the elevator and the plumbing are two of them more timely contracts to award now michelle do you have any concerns that we’ve gotten no response to the bids no they were smaller um smaller contracts and the roofing bid we actually received i want to say five or six responses and we’re trying to vet them because a lot of the companies we weren’t familiar with okay thank you very much michelle um so i’m going to ask for a motion to award a one-year contract for elevator maintenance to embry and white incorporated doing business as embry

37:36 elevator and the amount of sixty nine thousand eight hundred dollars and to authorize the chair to sign the contract on behalf of the committee so moved moved by sarah gold a second decade by megan taylor roll paul vote sarah gold yes megan taylor emily baron emily baron yes and allison taylor yes sarah fox yes the motion carries um i’ll ask for a second motion to award a one-year contract for all on call plumbing services to e amonte and sons incorporated in the amount of 57 820 and to authorize the chair to sign the contract on behalf of the committee

38:25 megan taylor megan taylor the other taylor i’m sorry i am going to have a really with the two sarahs and the two tailors it’s gonna be it’s gonna i’m gonna screw up um so roll call vote is sarah gold yes megan taylor yes um emily baron yes allison taylor yes and sarah fox is a yes thank you very much um this brings us to your committee discussion items in the dropbox we had policy ffa memorials one question i had was we had talked about adding the line um that

39:11 all memorials would require a vote of the school committee and i didn’t see that in the drop box yeah so i apologize i didn’t get that to lisa in time so i actually sent it really late just before the meeting i think lisa actually dropped it into the folder but it’s in your email as well with the changes of taking out the cd-roms and then the um the approval hold on i have it um the any addition or removal of a permanent memorial shall require a vote by the school committee okay um i have not gotten a chance to i didn’t see that last um revision in there but i’m happy if everyone else did have a chance to look at that i’m happy to move that along and just obscene um if we have a because we have read that policy um

39:57 and this would be the third reading um so if if there’s a motion that you want to approve that we can do that tonight otherwise we can put it on for our next meeting i mean if everyone else is fine to vote on it i say just vote on it so we’re not holding up anything with what the young boosters are doing okay that sounds perfect sarah gold would you mind reading the policy again you want me to read the entire thing um we do it we have to do one more reading of it yeah so we we don’t actually have to read it aloud like the reading is sort of having it at the meeting and talking about it and making sure that um you know that we’re all on board with it okay so um megan did you want to make the motion to approve policy ffa for memorials did i just say so moved

40:45 the second the second i’ll second it seconded by sarah gold roll cobalt sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily barron yes allison taylor yes sarah fox yes oh sarah fox obscene sorry um that moves us along to summer school committee summer retreat date and discussion so i what i would like to do if no one is opposed um use one of the apps or the emails that go out that people can kind of plug in their dates that work for them and just whatever date it regurgitates back to us that is a common date we’ll we’ll book it on on that but if there’s any specific times people want to avoid

41:32 um feel free to to state that or or let us know um and then we also had opened up if anybody had specific masc masc um items i know they have masc puts out a multitude of different workshops they can do if there are specific requests for for workshops we can listen to that now or if you want some time to look at them and come back um i think that you know we can decide as a group what we think those workshops would that would best serve us moving forward i just uh clarification sir is there a specific app you want us to use for that for that um i will i’m gonna i will pull

42:17 one up and then it’s an email that goes out that you just literally click on the dates when you receive it that work for you and then essentially it regurgitates back like this works for all five or not you’ll just send that out to us yeah i will coordinate with lisa to get that out to everybody and we don’t have another meeting now booked before the summer retreat so should we just send you whatever we want to see whatever masc stuff we want because we won’t have a chat unless you i didn’t know if people had some items today if not if you want to send it and if there’s a common theme then i will coordinate with dorothy to because i think what what i’m going to do is i’m going to coordinate with dorothy to see what dates she’s available and then i’ll put them out to the group and if whatever one comes out that works for everybody according to dorothy’s schedule we’ll move from there um

43:03 so if yeah if people have a common theme right now they want to put out there i’m happy to to hear that now or if you want to um i can send out the link to the different ones they have and if people want to review and then just get back to that yeah i i just i think i didn’t say it loudest i’m sorry sir i would like time to review i full disclosure have not looked at them i’ve been to the mac okay i have not looked at those so i i would love a moment more to do okay is there a frame that we’re gonna be doing the retreat like a time i would like to do it um if it works for everybody at the end of july um i think that the first two weeks of july i know at least for myself are very hectic

43:50 but i i don’t want to put it off too far because i i do feel that we may not be able to squeeze what we need to squeeze into one day depending on what comes out of that we may want to have some additional additional time over the summer um because as we’ve heard you know the need for funding has not gone away and i think the sooner we can kind of get a jump on that so i would like to have one day dedicated more to our typical retreat with our items with dorothy and things like that and then um maybe the other one a workshop on goal setting and you know setting up how we’re going to move through this process and start very early getting that done um but i was thinking

44:36 you know sometime that either third or fourth week in july if that time period if no one’s traveling i’m gone the last week of july okay that third week or all july i have four commitments monday and wednesday just as a heads up um might just narrow down the dates i’m sorry just monday and wednesday you said yeah i have to be on site monday and wednesday okay so no monday and wednesday um in no last week of july if we had to move into the first week of august are folks okay with that anybody traveling away the first two weeks of august first two weeks so it looks like we’ll be meeting

45:17 thursday or friday and the third week of july let me just talk to dorothy unless john did i just hear john unless john’s traveling then no but through the chair one option that we have is uh stoneman chandler and miller i think we have a training that they would uh be able to provide so it might be helpful to reach out to colby brunt and i’m happy to do that if you’d like for me to oh that’s okay so you and i will definitely i think have a touch base in the next few days john um and then we can we can work that out with colby as well as dorothy and figure out what what works on that tuesday thursday or friday um and we’ll we’ll come up with something um

46:03 um um so that that gets us through that item um on here it’s school committee operating protocols and procedures now that is an item that we typically review um during our retreat and and if amendments need to be made to that um we have the discussion for that and i would i’m going to carry that on to the retreat to talk about um that way allison has some time to familiarize herself with that come up with any questions or concerns um any other member can come up with any questions and concerns and we’ll definitely make that a priority item on our summer retreat there uh so you know because you’re obviously running a

46:48 meeting that i planned which is hard um so i just put that on there literally just so that i knew we would have a new member and that that new member would have our operating protocols and everything and then have it in the you know stated in the meeting and move it just just like that okay and and i know every year we’ve kind of tweaked a little bit you learn from the past you know we learned there’s things that were there that we didn’t use or or whatever so i still will make that an item on the retreat just because i think it’s good for us to review um so then we have the massachusetts association of school superintendents and school committees joint november conference we do get a discounted rate for um signing up early an early bird rate so if there’s members of our committee

47:37 that are interested in going to that um you know i i think it’s fruitful um definitely you know john i believe is definitely going to that um so we’ll reserve that but if there’s anybody else that knows for sure that they’d like to commit to that i would love to go yeah okay and i know last year sarah can talk about this um you did some did you used to go down and stay there or did you do something like a day trip yeah i’ve gone twice now um and so the with my first year on the committee i did it and then um and then i don’t think we did it because we had bill the interim um that second year and then covet hit so so this this pass like this one that we just finished was the kind of the next

48:22 one um so i’ve done two and yeah they’re really great i it’s it’s really enjoyable the first time i did the just the day trip um to hyannis and bath um and it wasn’t it wasn’t that bad but it was a lot yep and so this time i still took a lot and was able to take a few more courses so it was nice just just um

49:01 sorry someone unneeded themselves so i don’t i immediately got crushed okay um what i was saying is that in the summer there’s also like a mini conference um july 15th and 16th and i know i went to that my first year just as a way to kind of like start to get introduced to the larger masc it was a good way to network okay um you can do it you know it’s over two days but if you you know there’s just things you want to do on saturday i think it’s in framingham so it’s not quite as bad as you tried right but you might just want to have a look there might be something there that’s at least you know useful or thought-provoking um yeah sarah just so you know there’s also a top one a session there on the roll of the chair and public comment so just throwing it out there that it may be worthwhile to at least no

49:46 i was actually gonna say um i have no i will have no tiny babies at that point or um have any other reason to to need to stay so close and for work i used to do the day trip back and forth to the ferry quite often so i i think i will try to attend both those days and do some um seminars as just long day trips but um i encourage if anybody on the board um wan decides they they want to go in addition to allison and i to to reach out and we can facilitate that probably i would probably be interested in going again um for at least one of the days um so i think as i talked with lisa about this last week um i think if we purchase like for

50:31 three committee members i think last year i think megan was gonna come with and then couldn’t at the last minute and they were good about refunding it so i think if we get the locked in rate and then if somebody you know somebody else wants to go and or i can’t go you know it’s it’s flexible okay so that’s that’s very good to know thank you for sharing that um and i will reach out to lisa as well to take care of that um subcommittee and liaison updates so one thing i did see david harris was on here um i thought if he’s still on let me see if he’s i don’t know if he’s still on i was gonna still invite david and i’ll reach out to him to periodically give us updates on the brown school i know everyone thinks the project’s done it’s not you know we’re there’s still some

51:17 clothes out i know i saw a lot of people on site this week so if david just wants to pop on and because he still is the chair of that committee and and give us an update on the school building committee

51:33 and did julie figure out her audio connection if you want to ask yeah um well i’ll look back to that um so i don’t i think i like surprise david inviting him to do that so i will say i did see exquisite on-site they’re our landscape company i know that was one of the final punch list items um i’ve seen them several days in a row now um which is you know exciting to see that we’re getting into these very final phases in the closeout and i will work with david to see if at one of our next meetings he wants to just kind of give us a an overview of how that closeout’s going um we will once we convene at the summer retreat and assign

52:19 our our subcommittee and liaisons i think one of the things i would recommend is having a facilities meeting very quickly um some of the items in article are in question one heavily impact the schools and we’ll want to have a facilities meeting quite quickly so that now that we know we have the funding for those items we follow through on how how that is um going to be initiated and followed through on and what the timeline is so we stay on top of it um one question yes the facilities portion at brown i know we just had our first field day there we had it the tower loop it was amazing a lot of folks have asked about the

53:05 field portion of the upper playground at brown and when that can be used um and wanting just more of an understanding as to why it’s not allowed to be used it’s obviously the children want to run and play and certainly i understand it’s new but i i think the community would like probably to know that i’m curious myself we put that on hold um and i’m sure i will get a phone call later because i’m sure i’m going to butcher this a little bit the the particulars but when we decided to put god down um it really takes a specific amount of time to to take root otherwise if you just let everybody go on it right away we would have invested 70 000 and it would have died right away and part of

53:52 the new building for all of our systems including things like the landscaping we have a warranty on some of it so with that comes the care instructions and they tell you how long to let it sit to do its thing um and i know that the thought needed to knit in um and if we don’t use their care plan and again i know i’m butchering this if we don’t use that we void our warranty so i’d heard something along those lines but i didn’t want to butcher it further so i figured i would you know just i think i butchered it pretty well right there i’m sure catherine martin who’s on this building committee with us and is our resident expert on landscape is probably cringing right now but um i do

54:39 think that we are hopefully nearing the end of that and i believe when we go back in the fall there should have been enough time for that to have done what it needs to do and we will be fully happy um but i will say towers partnership with brown and letting us use that center circle was awesome that worked out really really well what a great space and it just goes to show you know how well the various commun parts of our community come together to kind of help each other and so that was that was a great um collaborative piece of that um watching community members that just live in the area as they were walking by stop and watch you know the water balloons or

55:25 have your hands full or noodle run because i was there volunteering for my son’s class so it was really it was a wonderful partnership with them for sure and it’s such a great location because it’s so public so i think a lot of folks enjoyed it thank you kids out playing together again i think that’s it was really i heard a lot of people talking about what a breath of fresh air were its normalcy we’re back to normalcy um it was really great um as far as the reassignments of some subcommittee and liaisons we’ve kind of tried out different ways of doing it in the past i would just ask that everybody come to the summer retreat with um some ideas of what what

56:10 um subcommittees you’d like to be on what sacs you might be interested in and that we just have a dialogue and kind of figure out where everybody’s best fit is and move from there and also if there’s a subcommittee that we haven’t had in the past but committee members feel really strongly has been lacking and maybe helpful in moving us forward um that might be a a great idea to bring forward as well so i just have a question on that do you want us to send you our i don’t know what the right word is requests in advance just so you can kind of like put together a uh first pass then then i think yeah i think that might be good because for instance there may be you know it may be clear-cut that there

56:57 may be one that only two people are interested in and it makes that one a little more clear-cut but i also don’t want um any of you to feel like this is a decision i’m not going to make this decision unilaterally i want us to talk about it and kind of and figure out what works for us all moving forward so definitely send those to me and i’ll compile a list um just for organization’s sake and then we’ll move forward and prior to that i will get a list out to everyone so that you know what the the various just to refresh our minds what the various subcommittees are because some of them don’t meet all the time um safety this year was a new exciting monthly one but in the past it i somewhat used to forget about it because it wasn’t one that met um so i’ll make sure to get that out to everybody

57:42 everybody everybody um yeah i actually i’ll work with you offline on this but i have been i’ve been in contact with the beverly chair um about a sub a different subcommittee that we’ve not had in the past on like um kind of a teaching and learning one and curriculum so i’ll um kind of fill you in and and we can you know hopefully you know present that at the retreat as well oh i’d love that information thank you so much sarah um so new business one of the items that i wanted to bring up under a new business was i would like and this would be another subcommittee um or actually not a subcommittee because i think actually we should have some workshops where we’re all there and do this i would like us to take we did a lot of great work on

58:30 planning for success i think it was a really productive a wonderful experience but i think one of the things that we have heard is although many many districts and many districts in the state do have moved away from a strategic plan and do do planning for success um we we tried it i think what we’ve realized is um in marblehead there’s an expectation of what is more of a of a formal strategic plan and that has been the request of the community so i think that we need to take the work we’ve done for planning for success and really flesh it out to that very tip like that that um typical you know com 50-page document um that

59:16 the as we move forward and take you know another bite of this apple that we can really direct people to and say you know this is exactly what is happening when with who and it’s it’s just very very cleared out it’s almost like a an encyclopedia um you know what i mean so we can go to it and i and i think that the community hopefully if we do that we’ll um we’ll say you know we asked and you answered and here we are with our support name um so i i personally would like to um i would like to to see if someone would make a motion for us to commit to making working on a typical strategic plan

1:00:03 that we would present to the community with a goal t of having a draft in early december i can make that motion is there a second i’ll second it i don’t know that we necessarily need to vote on it i think this is something that we should be talking about in our retreat and figuring out because it’s hard to kind of vote on a concept and not know like what that actually means and we did so much work with ruth at jesse who has done this like 12 times successfully in 12 different districts so i think we should think through and have the conversation at the tree on how we want to approach us i don’t actually think it’s a vote that’s necessary at this point because we don’t actually know we’re voting on

1:00:49 well i i um deliberate on like what does that mean it’s not that i don’t or agree but i don’t think it’s fleshed out enough to have a vote but i’m happy to commit to talking about it and i think we should during our retreat so um well we have a second so we definitely will have a vote but um but in the discussion phase i i think that what we’re looking what people are looking for and what we heard from the community and i you know we’d be voting on committing to is a traditional strategic plan and and i i understand and i and i i was in those meetings too and saw the value of what ruth was saying has worked in other districts um

1:01:37 you know marblehead is is steeped in tradition and um we hold tight to a lot of our traditions and i do feel that in order to be successful and to make the community feel heard we need to commit to doing a a traditional five-year strategic plan that takes that two-page document and really teases out the the finite details um i would like and that is what i would like to see and um that’s why i said that we could take a vote that we will start that path that we will start that work um so

1:02:22 i don’t um i think we should take what we’ve already done so we’re not restarting exactly that’s a great starting point so i think we should take what we’ve done i think we should have ruth come back and we’ve already got initiatives assigned to every one of those themes and so now it’s just filling those out for two three four and five years right so we’ve done a lot of this work and i would hate for us to [Music] redo the what’s the word redo the wheel what’s the word

1:02:53 sorry it’s been a long week um you know i think we should take what we’ve done because we put so much work into that and there were 25 members of the community and our staff that were involved in that and sarah as you know we went out to the community and talked to like hundreds of people so we have so much data already wrapped up absolutely so i think in my mind and this is what we should be talking about is how do we take it to the next step and i personally don’t think that the typical 50-page strategic plan is the right way to go because i think that’s a lot of work that doesn’t really provide us much benefit so we should just be taking what we’ve already done which took a lot of work and effort and just taking it to the next step which is what ruth had suggested anyway so we’re just taking the next step with her so i’ll

1:03:38 i’ll pipe in here too i want to i just want to make sure that like megan just said that there it is a lot of work um and so i want to make sure that when we’re tasking our administrators and our staff with work that it really is going to be able to benefit in student achievement so i just want us to sort of you know i don’t i don’t have the answers on that i just what i needed to say i mean i would recommend having ruth come to our retreat and we can use that second day or half a day to have her walk us through taking those next steps because she’s very experienced and like i said she’s done at least 12 different districts including her own attendant and and i i understand it’s from my point of view what i’m saying is i understand it can be successful in some districts

1:04:25 what i am saying is i do not feel it is successful or will be successful in marblehead i feel for to get our voters to support this they want to see that giant body of work they want to see what you see in milton what you see in lexington they want to see that so when someone says what are we doing on year three they open it and they say on year three we are doing x y and z this is the person spearheading it this is the measurement to how we’re going to track that goal this is the expected outcome these are the associated budget drivers i think that we we tried it this way because this was in

1:05:10 fairness to you know everyone that we follow this is a movement in many districts that they are moving towards we tried it and we need and we did we went out we talked to hundreds of people we did get a lot of feedback i still have photos of all those giant post-its with all those linear items of exactly the meat that people wanted i think what we need to do is take those themes take the plan for success that is that is our guiding principle that is our opening of the document but then what we need to do is break that down into very specific paths and it is a tremendous amount of work and i understand that but it’s

1:05:55 meaningful work that i think will net us the result of funding what we need to fund um

1:06:07 this was the number one thing i think that held people up and i think that if we really want to change the trajectory and respond to the electorate with fidelity it’s my opinion we really need to commit to a traditional strategic plan it’s not i just want to be clear uh my motion was in no disrespect to what i know to be a tremendous amount of work that went into that um i’ve i’ve made these not for educational districts but in my real job my day job i should say so many times so i fully respect the amount of work i would never want to start from scratch i would never want to not i would never suggest that we don’t

1:06:52 start with that bolus of work it was tremendous i would love to have root backed i think that’s a wonderful idea to just kind of add on to us what’s the next step what can we take the next step we can take to have some benchmarks and to have some level set which shows hey community we’re listening to you right and we’re here’s what we started with we think it’s great and i think a lot of people you know i don’t want to discount the work i think a lot of people in the community loved this work as a start and i think just taking it to the next level with specific dates and specific goals for each year and having ruth there to do it i think would be a great driver yeah i agree for sure i think what i’m having a hard time committing to is committing to doing a traditional 50-page

1:07:38 strategic plan without even knowing what i mean i think we’re all saying the same thing think yeah right i think we’re all saying the same approach which is exactly why i said i don’t think we need to vote on this because i think we’re voting on something that we don’t actually know what we’re going to deliver and i think that ties us into something that we’re not sure we can commit to because what we’ve put on the table isn’t isn’t definitive and then once we voted we have to deliver it right so i think we’re all we all have the same intention but i’m not prepared to vote for this because it’s not clear enough to me okay

1:08:15 so so there is a motion on the table so i will call a vote for it and the motion was for us to commit to the planning process to develop a traditional strategic plan um so i will call roll call vote sarah gold

1:08:43 um so um so i i think what i’m hearing the hesitation is of course wrong is just when you say so you know that i fully support listening to the community that was my whole mantra this entire time i i’m steadfast in that i i hear what megan’s saying about what does a traditional strategic plan does that mean it has to be 50 pages if i don’t i don’t know what or can we amend can i amend my motion i love an amended emotion so let me just question [Laughter]

1:09:41 pressure and i was i would like for us to commit to bringing uh ruth my second name okay ruth back um obviously i would like to meet her and i would like to commit to bringing ruth back and talking through what exactly we can commit to at our retreat to expand upon this strategic plan because i think we probably won’t pass if we if we just go with yes we want to do a traditional strategic plan we don’t really know what that means we don’t really know what that entails so if the first step at the very least can be to committing to bringing ruth back and having a discussion and seeing where we can expand and how we can provide more detail

1:10:27 on a yearly basis with benchmarks and whether there’s money attached initiatives attached all of those different things and starting the first step to that you know towards expanding the plan that we have yeah and i’m just going to fault that that i think we all agree with it i don’t think we actually need to vote on it i think we’re ready to vote when we’re actually ready to take an action which i’m fine with i just i’m a stickler for the robert’s rule so just if you would just want to rescind it can i get a motion to rescind

1:11:04 so i will just say that to megan’s point it’s rescinded assuming we voted through but to rescind it but to do what you’ve just said allison to to bring her in and and let’s see let’s see how we can flush this out a little bit more give some more detail in it you know whatever pages that ends up amounting to kind of put forward the next steps in the process right yeah and then at our first meeting you know in the fall we can have i’m happy to do the motion that back on the table of exactly what we can commit to to provide because i do think we need to hear the community i do think we need to respond to them and i do think that we need as a community member i even want more detail i’ve asked about it before so

1:11:56 i am comfortable with that okay okay all right so i think i think what we’re here i think the message to the community is we’ve heard you and we’re we know we need to take what we have we need to flush it out more we need to give more details and we’re going to figure out the process right to do that and communicate with them and you know we’re communicating that with them ensure that they feel heard ensure that they know we’ve all just agreed we want to expand upon that i i would agree that maybe jumping in neck deep can be a little bit scary for that especially if we don’t really know if it’s neck deep or not and so i think i think it’s a i want to commend everybody here i think it’s a big giant

1:12:41 step that we all are agreeing that this is what we need and want to do and so i’m proud of everybody i think we’ll find that not that i think we’re going to find there’s not that much more to do at this point because a lot of it’s been done it’s just kind of like laying it all in on paper i think that’s probably yes you could be absolutely right because we know that with like all of man’s work on curriculum and scope and sequence and everything like i think that that’s yeah the technology you know yeah that i think you know good um because i think john has with his leadership team fleshed it out more i just don’t we have not seen that document so if john can can get that to a form where we can see that document and review it in our dropbox

1:13:27 before we we have um ruth come back then we all know our starting point so we know where we have to go with this so if um if dr bucky if you can you know take that that document you guys are working from and and get that to a point that where you can share that out with the committee that would be great um and then another item for new business i wanted to bring up is i i don’t speak so through the chair yes so i have already reached out to ruth i heard the feedback from the community and we’re bringing her in to work with the leadership team on those action planning templates which will give more meat which i think is what people are

1:14:13 asking for in terms of specific benchmarks and times and budget drivers so hopefully she can work with the leadership group we have a retreat the second third fourth of august um she’s not able to be there so she’ll come in july so hopefully i will be able to bring that to the retreat for the committee when you have your retreat okay that’s wonderful thank you so much for treating well summer so i know it’s one big long retreat um so another item i i want to bring up first for new business is um that we kind of we try i’m going to make a commitment to try to get everything in the dropbox

1:14:59 by monday prior to our meetings um i’m sure i will mess it up quite rapidly but um that during our summer retreat we talk about a cut-off point that after which at a certain point even if it’s an agenda item if it doesn’t make it to the dropbox you know we can we can talk about that at the retreat but if it’s 24 hours if it’s 48 hours that we will that agenda item will need to move um to the next meeting because it’s i think become hard at times for um for us to to have all the information and then to move forward on it and that is through no fault of anybody i mean there’s been so much on everybody’s

1:15:45 plate for the last two years catching up on on minutes and catching up on our administrators have been doing multiple extra duties because of everything of coved so a lot of times it’s hard for them to get us those reports ahead of time so there will be a learning curve and it will it will be you know we’ll get ourselves there but i think that that needs to be what we try to get to that’s going to be my goal to get to that um is there any other new business from anybody on the committee okay we had several um letters of correspondence those will all be added to them the meeting minutes um i think at last

1:16:31 count in the dropbox we were at five maybe but all that will will be added to the end of the minutes as is usual um and so if there’s no other correspondence from anybody um i will ask for a motion to adjourn the meeting at 8 16. i would just like to say thank you to everybody for making it as painless as possible it wasn’t necessarily painless i’m not gonna lie but i i feel very welcomed and i’m appreciative and grateful so from public comment you know i have said we have to ask the tough questions we have to have those discussions and you know the public can bring that too and i think that’s okay and i’m appreciative um of all of that from you guys you did great

1:17:18 great great survive first one done [Laughter] now we’ll expect your minutes by monday [Laughter] just kidding

1:17:33 so if um if i can get the motion to adjourn at 8 17 come on seconded um sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily barron yes allison taylor yes sarah fox and we have adjourned the meeting at 8 18. thank you all so much thanks everyone