School Committee: September 7, 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.

0:02 you know it’s very general but we had our first day of school yesterday so i just want to congratulate all the staff and administration for getting the schools ready to go for all of our students and to um you know also thank the students and the families for kicking off a great school year so congratulations everyone we’re off to the races for this year that’s perfect um and then i wanted to make a commendation um for many it was a wonderful start but also i want to recognize that for some kids the start of the school year is hard for some staff the start of the school year can be hard and i want to recognize those people and thank them for for doing what they did to show up anyway and to get through the day and

0:47 come back today because new beginnings aren’t are easy for everybody and so i just wanted to acknowledge that um so if i don’t see any more hands which i don’t recommendations i’m going to move to public comment if you would like to make a public comment i ask that you raise your hand and when you’re called on that you state your name and address for the record we generally ask everybody to keep their public comments to three minutes um and as always if someone has made the comment that you were going to make anybody’s willing able to raise their hand and speak but um like gary spice used to say everything needs to be said but not necessarily by everyone um so i’ll look for hands if anybody wants to make a public comment

1:39 i see i see one hand um shannon borthwick and i apologize if i butchered anything nope that’s good hi i’m shannon borthwick i live at 12 gilbert heights road um and i have a child in a fourth grader at village and a second grader at brown um and i just wanted to make a comment about the schedule for the school year um because i know that there are some people who may have logged in and and don’t want to speak um and i’ve talked to a number of parents who are concerned about the fact that recess has been cut from two recesses to one at brown um and that some the principle has been contacted and is sending kind of a

2:25 canned response um that i frankly find kind of condescending about um them kind of knowing what’s best for my kid when they’ve never met my kid until you know yesterday um and when i spoke to my child’s teacher um you know i kind of it seems like they’re expecting teachers to use their discretion to build in time for recess and from what i understand from my daughter’s teacher there really isn’t time in the schedule to just add recess um and that she’s even struggling to include snack and that it may end up being a working snack and i have serious issues with um you know the lack of mindful eating and the health and mindfulness implications to that but my primary concern was just the loss of recess i think it’s um really doing a

3:13 disservice to our kids i think that multiple studies have shown the importance of physical activity to product productivity and learning and social emotional learning gives that unstructured play time gives kids the chance to um i mean take a mental break from the structure of the classroom as well as um as well as i’m keeping input impulses under control hi can you just give me one second please um and um so i just i wanted to raise that as a concern i’m really disappointed one of the reasons that we moved to marblehead three years ago um was because of a lack of sufficient unstructured play time in the winthrop public schools

3:59 where my oldest child was attending when we moved so that’s it um thank you and i hope that you will make a change i’m gonna get this

4:11 thank you very much shannon um and if there’s any more public comment just um again raise your hand and i can call on you shannon i don’t know if you want to lower your hand there’s probably a way for me to do that but i don’t know how um okay so i don’t see any more other hands so we will move on to our consent and action agenda items um we had minutes in the dropbox from 6 8 6 13 and 6 16. so i have a motion to approve the minutes from 6 8 22 6 13 22 and 6 16 22. who moved who moved moved by sarah gold

4:57 all second all second seconded by megan taylor i will do a roll call vote emily barron

5:09 sarah gold sarah gold yes allison taylor i’ve seen yeah i was not part of the school committee then megan taylor yes and then sarah fox’s yes um then the motion carries four um zero to one with an abstention we’re going to table the next agenda item of appointment of school nurses the high school is still currently interviewing for that position so when they have filled that we will um we’ll be asked to vote for that approval moving on to the superintendent’s report i will ask dr bucky to take this

5:57 thank you sarah if somebody could make me a co-host i’ll share a couple things but while that’s happening it has been a really remarkable opening of school this year we moved from two professional development days to three um feedback from staff was that they very much appreciated it we included our tutors and our paraprofessionals this year which we have not done in the past the staff professional development days excluded them and we really wanted to bring everyone together in the academic convocation on tuesday to build community to come together as a marblehead public schools team and so a lot of positive feedback from staff one teacher said it’s the best opening of school she’s

6:45 had in the 20 years that she’s been in the district i think the convocation was well received one of the things that we did was really capitalize on our internal talent and had teachers teaching teachers uh principals and administrators and directors leading many workshops across the district we had our hr director uh going into schools you know and i think the prevailing comment from a lot of people was it was a nice balance of have to do there’s a number of things whenever you’re opening the district with mandatory trainings uh for staff and personal time to connect with colleagues to meet with their teams uh to get together in their grade level to review ieps

7:31 ieps ieps and so i think that added day this year was well received we also asked for feedback on how we can improve that moving forward but the new teachers arrived on monday had a good orientation program and then all staff were in tuesday wednesday and thursday if i’m able to share my screen just share a couple snippets of no i can’t share that so um just some staff comments i will put it in the dropbox for the next meeting uh of staff feedback on the professional development days and what they took away from that time and i’m happy to answer any questions about the opening of school

8:25 um um so john you gave us a staffing report and staffing update last week and we had um a couple positions that we still had open um are there any is there been any movement on the staffing either in a positive or negative variance as far as the amount of staff we have that you can report sure um we were able to hire an english teacher uh at the high school i think in special services dr don lee has done some movement of staff to cover vacancies that existed we have some open positions including the open or the nursing position at the high school but i just want for all our listeners to know there is a nurse at the high school but there are

9:13 normally 1.8 nurses and so that 0.8 position moved over to veterans to be their full-time nurse and so dan is continuing to look for a school nurse

9:23 and at our last meeting um dr bucky you had noted there was two possibilities um hinging on the busing uh for possible bus drivers and i know that that’s an uh topic that we’ve had a lot of community outreach at did we get confirmation do we have those additional bus drivers or no they will not be on board until early october but they are still in the queue if you remember last year we were onboarding a bus driver that disappeared that we were in process with and he just stopped communicating with the district and so the positive this year are the people that uh the drivers that we are on boarding are continuing in the process that is good news thank you does anybody else have any questions

10:14 a couple comments um i’m i also talked to a teacher over the weekend who said that the pd was really great um so that was that was nice feedback to hear as well i’m glad that that was the general feedback that you got dr bucky um and also just as another like i’m really glad to hear that that the district didn’t lose one of the nurses at the high school because they’re both fantastic so i’m glad that you know one transitioned um over to vets and that uh that we’re you know just still looking to add in that that we didn’t lose anybody

10:48 that’s it sarah i don’t want to touch on it now but maybe is it possible to get an update on the bus program in our next um in our next meeting yes yes we definitely can thank you and hopefully as we get closer to that that period that would be on the onboarding in october two weeks from now hopefully we have a a better idea of if we’ve still got those bus drivers to come along with us because really what’s been driving our busing program or the inability to grow it is the lack of labor we have the physical buses um what we don’t have is drivers so it really is going to hinge correctly if i’m wrong dr bucky it really hinges on if we can onboard those employees or not but because without that confirmation we can’t expect extend anything

11:34 there was just something that came across the listserv today where a district is announcing they have to stagger their start times because they normally run seven buses and they have three operational right now and so they have changed their start times across the district to accommodate two to three additional runs for families which result in some students being on the bus for well over an hour

12:02 okay does anybody else have any questions about about that portion emily or allison okay then i will ask dr bucky to introduce to us the new director of the macbook program who we’re very excited to get to see or talk to tonight keisha and i had an opportunity to meet this morning and set our standing weekly meeting um what she has been able to accomplish in just a couple days in the district is really really impressive and i say that because she’s prioritizing relationships and visibility and connecting with staff and students and not jumping into the administration of the work what is the nrt bus schedule and not that that isn’t

12:47 important and not that that hasn’t already gone sideways but she is focused on connecting with students talking to students finding out what they need being seen in each of the building so that the students in those schools know her so i’m very excited to introduce her and allow her to tell you a little bit about herself and maybe a couple of her initial impressions of the marblehead public schools

13:13 thank you so much dr bucky um can everyone hear me all right headsets working i’ll have to thank steven for that um so i just wanted to take a moment to thank the school committee for all that you do for marblehead um for our students our community our staff um and just to introduce myself my name’s keisha johnson and i have an educational background of a bachelor’s degree in psychology my master’s degree is in education i was chairing the beverly human rights committee for several years on their racial equity task force i ran their civil rights review board

13:58 really committed and passionate about this work my initial impression of marblehead public schools has been absolutely amazing um the warm welcome i already feel this really strong commitment to the students for everyone all of our staff you know from welcoming students outside i’m seeing staff throughout the hallways constantly asking students what do you need how can i help and also staff asking me how can they help me and what do i need um and uh thank you so much for that uh dr bucky and for all of the staff in the community that’s on here um so initially uh my plan um as dr bucky

14:44 was saying thank you is really to get to know our students to be visible in the community and within all of our schools i really believe that building a rapport with the students is going to be a priority in being a resource and being able to provide resources and to be of a support getting to know the families getting to know the parents and initially that’s that’s my plan um i hope to to be at more school committee meetings um i have heard that they’ve been hosted at the mecco headquarters in the past um that is my dream i would love to to be a part of that um i also would like to see a collaboration between uh

15:33 the metco pco and the the district pcos um it sounds like uh there’s room for that folks are open to that i’d like to see how i can support that initiative how i can support getting some more tutors if necessary maybe an intern i have all ideas i could talk about this for a very long time um i love students um and i love this work that we’re all doing that we’re all extremely committed to so thank you so much for having me here tonight thank you thank you and if anyone has any questions um i just want to let you know that if at any point during the year there’s there’s important things metco that you

16:18 want us to share through the school committee um please feel free at any time to let us know um and we we would happily partner on that yeah absolutely thank you um i did not see the order in which people raised their hands so i will just go in order of where you show up on my screen um emily if you want to go ahead i was the last person to raise my hand but that’s okay i’ll go first um hi acasia it’s great to meet you i’m emily i’m actually the metco liaison for the school committee so once you’re settled in we should make a time to meet and we can talk about everything marblehead and metco

17:04 so we’re so happy that you’re here yeah thank you so much emily um i did uh read a little bit uh and i did see that you were the liaison so i look forward to emailing you and connecting with you great i can’t wait wonderful um allison you’re nuts oh yeah hi keisha welcome i just wanted to i’m allison taylor i just started on the school committee this past june so we can be newbies together um i just wanted to say your your passion is clearly infectious and i think it’s just what we need and we thrive on here in our community and i’m very very excited to get to know you better and welcome thank you so much allison megan

17:49 good evening welcome um we’re so happy to have you join the marblehead school district um i think there’s a real opportunity in this role um you know you mentioned collaboration and engagement and those are two areas i’m really looking forward to you diving into and helping us improve and improving those relationships with our boston families i’m interested to learn from you once you’ve kind of got your feet on the ground on what we can be doing as a school committee to support that work so hopefully you can come back to us and we can talk about ways that we can improve as we move forward so thank you and good luck thank you so much and sarah hi kaja welcome um thanks for coming tonight introducing yourself and talking to us a little bit um i completely agree

18:35 i hope that we do go back to mecco headquarters for a meeting um that was one of the best experiences that i’ve had on school community um dr bucky and i rode the bus with the kids that afternoon um which was fantastic it was the best when we clearly sat in someone’s seat and they were being so nice and not kicking us out but it was very clear when someone launched into a different language of like these people need to get out of our seats so it was it was a great experience and i it’s so you know i always knew that that would be a huge commitment for these kids but wow like that that is a long bus drive and i it’s so impressive that these families have made the commitment to come up to marblehead um and you know i would love to see the whole program grow and and the

19:21 relationships improve um even more and so you know hopefully hopefully the work that you’ll be able to do will will do just that and i know um you know emily can fill you in on this because it was actually her idea but last yeah at the end of last year we had hoped to add a parent rep a non-voting member to the of the metco parents to the school committee um and so we do have interest in that um it seemed as though it was a a bit of a large ask for the parents who are involved right now but just know that you know if anyone ever expressed any interest in that that the committee you know has has looked into that before and you know we can work on the policy for that and and kind of help to move it along um if there ever is any interest from the parent’s side on that so welcome

20:07 thank you i i did um talk to a parent who um had thought that it was something that uh they could commit to but but couldn’t but uh does it mean that we don’t stop trying right and so we’ll continue to encourage and um and and really looking forward to making this a remarkable magical mecco program even hearing um community members ask about host families and how families can be yours of support and so looking forward to to really engaging in the entire exchange not just student-to-student but parent-to-parent and family to family um as we become one community thank you so much and please don’t

20:52 hesitate to reach out at any point um that brings us to the um kindergarten through third grade scheduling update dr bucky i don’t know if you want to make introductions for that or if you want to just open it up to hope and marry sure i’ll make a few comments um there have been a few questions about the 1-3 schedule and the elementary school schedules uh in general and so i thought it was best to have our two elementary school principals come and clarify what the schedule will be for the year and how sort of that decision making uh happen so hope and marry thank you thank you

21:37 so we’re hoping this is helpful in explaining how the schedule came to be this year um we got some feedback from teachers based on the schedule last year we understood that last year was a change in the schedule and the win block was added in for students to add in some interventions for them so we took some feedback from teachers and addressed some of their main concerns in the schedule and some of them were that wind block that intervention block was at the end of the day last year and it got cut off by dismissal time so teachers had asked to shift that block to the morning and we did that for them in the new schedule so that that block isn’t broken up they wanted to ask about a snack time and mary and i both told them they can build that into their schedule however they see fit

22:24 transition times in between classes we had to account for that when we look at how much time kids are on learning we know that it takes them a few minutes to go out to recess specifically in the winter when they get all their gear on and we know that there is going to be some time allotted for that because children take time to transition when they go to their specialist classes and recess for movement breaks you know mary and i both feel strongly that children need those movement breaks and are in agreement with that um we know that last year was really tricky coming off covet it was really difficult because we had students sitting masks sitting six feet apart and they weren’t really able to engage the way they are now and thankfully they will have more of those opportunities within the classroom as well

23:11 and can engage in learning activities and centers and games to get that social piece part two we also look developmentally at each level and tweak the schedule to what we thought when working with teachers would best meet their needs and i’ll let you talk a little bit about so yeah we absolutely looked at those developmental levels and our pre-k and k will you know they continue to have um two uh outdoor breaks that are scheduled uh during the day while our first through third grade groups um can schedule outside of the um the one scheduled recessed time they can also take the other break when they need to um however our first graders um they’re have the earliest lunch so they go to

23:59 lunch at 10 50. so we really shortened that morning so in terms of building their stamina we want to make sure that you know they can go out to racist before they come to school we have our playground is open every morning um and we have i would say about half of our kids that are that are out there like rounds not i know oh yours isn’t it i wish it was okay well ours is ours so um but we do have that that opportunity for those so we have that early um time for first grade and then they have um one class after lunch and then they have an afternoon special so they have a lot of time for movement and breaks throughout the day the second grade has actually their specials in the morning so they have a lot of activity in the morning

24:45 morning morning and then they get that that sort of motor break um the third grade they have more stamina and and actually that’s part of the goal for third grade is to to build that stamina when we look at the jump in reading um at grade three we know that building stamina is one of the the primary goals for that so we want to make sure that we’re doing that they have a longer morning um and they’re our oldest kiddos but they also have a huge block that’s open in the middle of the day so they have their specialists back to back with their lunch in recess and then they have that that afternoon time um the lunch recess has been expanded by five minutes um so it used to be 15 and it is now 20 so it is longer than it was

25:30 um last year uh we got feedback from teachers their old lunch was 25 minutes and students didn’t really need that 25 minutes they were finishing their lunch early and teachers were letting them out early for recess so we built that time into their recess time um and if students are still eating we’ll give them that time obviously we’re going to let them finish their lunch but just the first couple days of school anyway at glover students have been finishing and going right outside absolutely um the other thing that we looked at in talking with teachers is the writing and social studies science blocks are back to back which lends itself to opportunities so that you can write in those content areas and that was some positive feedback we got from teachers this schedule also allows our reading

26:17 and math tutors don’t work full days and by making these tweaks they can go into all the grade levels and they hadn’t been able to do that in the past so we were able to provide more support for students for all students where everybody used access for all students for additional support across all grade levels which is just critical that was amazing to do that and then the special ed for special education teachers we were able to waterfall our schedule so that services for students that have individual ed plans can be better met and teachers can be going into all of those classes so the reading and math schedules waterfall throughout the school and our teachers had been meeting they have an extra students have an extra special every week

27:03 so they have a specialist class art music gym every single day but then they get a sixth special during the week that used to fall in the morning and that’s a time when our teachers work together and collaborate we were able to move back to the afternoon time for students which so at the end of the day one day a week all grade levels have two specialists so one afternoon a week out of those five days students in every single grade level have an extra specialist so an extra gym an extra art class an extra library and that’s built into the schedule as well so for our first graders just to sort of play that out um every day they break at 10 50 they’ve already had a morning break for snack time which may include going outside

27:49 with their teacher taking a walk definitely a motor break and then they would go to reset uh they would go to lunch at 10 50 go to recess they would have a special and then on one day week they actually have a writing block and then another special so um it’s um there’s a lot of movement i think the other thing that i i think is um i don’t know it’s a misconception but uh maybe an understanding that we need to create about schools uh now is that we know a lot more about how to create movement breaks and motor breaks and sensory breaks for kids throughout the day certainly um even 10 years ago if a student was you know uh nuji in a class or fidgety or they certainly would not have been invited to

28:36 take a walk or take a break or use a tool a strategy but what we’ve learned is that teaching kids how to use those strategies are actually life skills right we all need to take a break sometimes and um helping them to understand how to do that and how to self-regulate and certainly meeting their needs and i have to say these teachers um as we have learned this about kids and development um we are our teachers have had tons of training on this and they’re really good at meeting the needs of the kids throughout the day so we’ve gotten much better at it and often we think of school as um as when we were in school yeah and i can say that it’s it’s very like that

29:21 if you walk into a classroom students are engaged they’re working collaboratively in groups things are hands-on so they do have those important we know they’re important social activities during the day as well including starting out the day with morning meeting which always includes an activity so i mean there was four corners going on in the classroom yesterday when i was grade so yeah okay um so i’m going to open this up um in a moment if unless there’s do you have more to add to this oh okay um one thing i’m going to just say before it’s out of my mind because that happens apparently to me a lot um when you talk about you know our staff is trained

30:07 to let kids who are having control trouble controlling their body a little or or need to take that break or take that walk they’re trained to identify that and send those kids and i will say they are trained to do that and i i’ve seen it happen firsthand i know that happening firsthand with my with my students i think they do that right away my concern is that by removing this extra period the children who may have a 504 or an iep that talks about these movement breaks will certainly still receive those because that’s that’s allowed by law um however they might not have needed as many if they had the break at recess and so my concern is that we could be really jeopardizing

30:53 some areas of inclusion by now having to move some of these kids or allow these kids to take their needed breaks when other kids are staying in the classroom where they might not have needed to take these extra breaks if they had that recess which would have been an inclusive time with everybody so i just want i’m just putting that out there as a concern because one of our planning for success main high up goals at the top is diversity equity and inclusion and i i know sometimes people don’t realize but all of our students that are in ieps all of our students that are in 504s dei absolutely um embraces them when i say people i don’t mean you know the people um that that are in the trenches of

31:38 education every day because i think we all know that but sometimes in the community we don’t um it’s not something that jumps into our mind but i want to make sure that we’re holding that important area of dei that we’ve identified as a priority for our district and we’re looking at it through this lens of will these students need to take more breaks on their own and therefore not be included in the classroom setting you know they’re walking with their aid they’re walking on their own they’re doing their movement break in the corner they’re doing whatever they need to do and yes they’re building those skills but that could break could be an inclusive break if it was during a period of um scheduled recess then they could be

32:24 they they could not be other as much because we worry about the othering of kids and i will open this up for discussion among the committee if there’s any questions or concerns i know we have all gotten a tremendous amount of outreach on this um i do want to remind everyone you know we certainly can ask questions and talk about this but there are elements of this that are certainly operational um and would fall out of our purview um but there are also items that we can ask um questions on and talk about because i think i would identify that the primary issue here is communication right now um people thinking one thing’s happening or or not thinking one thing’s happening and just needing to kind of get this out

33:10 there and talk about it in the community so if any committee members want to ask questions comments concerns if you just raise your hand we will go through everyone megan i am paying attention this time to who went first doesn’t matter thanks um so first of all um to both hope and marry welcome i think this is the first time i’ve seen you at a school committee meeting because i know i missed last week so thank you for coming to marblehead um and leading our our youngest our youngest students so i appreciate that and i think the overview that you gave and some of the rationale for the changes that have been made um are reasonable and uh you know make a lot of sense and i know they’re well thought out um

33:56 um um one of the questions i have around this and i’m not sure if it’s hope and mary or nan if it’s to you but i know when we talked about this originally there was a time on learning requirement that um you know state requirement so i’m wondering if someone can talk to those state requirements and how these schedule changes um kind of impact that requirement and then i do have another question after that but i’ll start stop there i’m happy to take that megan um as we know that was the impetus for looking at all of our schedules across the district dan bauer came and spoke to school committee last spring because the high school has been out of compliance for time on learning that was what drove the schedule change originally at the elementary school building in

34:42 another recess period puts us out of compliance for time on learning if you schedule a five minute recess they don’t count passing time that’s a high school term passing time transition time the elementary calculation so if you think there’s five minutes to go out to recess 10 minutes out to recess five minutes to transition and my elementary colleagues tell me that there is no way in february that it is a five-minute transition to or from recess when you’re putting on hats and boots and gloves so there’s 20 minutes and right now we’re right at the threshold of the minutes and if we’re losing 20 minutes a day that we cannot count over the course of a week over the course of the 180 school days we are out of compliance with

35:29 timeout right and so what’s the impact to the district of being out of compliance loss of instructional time the department we have to sign off each year there’s something called the superintendent’s checklist that we are meeting the time on learning requirement um thank you for that the other i guess it’s more of a well know what is a question so one of the things that um historically has been a concern is especially in this kind of situation where it’s and i appreciate teacher autonomy 100 but making sure that there’s equity across those different classrooms so that one teacher might be really comfortable and you know wants to take their classroom out every single day and the other teacher may you know have some

36:16 inside activities so how are we just ensuring that there’s equity across all classrooms

36:24 i think that principals need to be aware that and i think that’s an important consideration because if students are not getting the movement breaks the sensory breaks and they’re coming home and saying that that’s not being provided that’s feedback that a principal would want to hear because enforcement of things across the district can sometimes be nuanced with i think of last meeting when we met talking about dress codes and how the enforcement of dress codes uh sometimes lies at the feet of individual teachers and i’m confident that hope and mary will make the expectation that a student is not sitting down at 8 15 and not moving

37:10 until the 10 50 lunch for first graders so we’re looking for parent feedback then as we kind of move into this new schedule yes okay thank you

37:25 next i’m i’m gonna go to allison uh thanks sarah i just kind of wanna uh piggyback on what megan mentioned i think you know certainly teacher autonomy is important and each class is going to be different the individuals in each class are going to be different and and the way that they co-mingle i think we also have to take into consideration there that many of us who have been in the district for a while know that there are certain teachers that really encourage that group learning which can be considered you know sort of a movement in a social interaction and then there are other teachers that prefer a lot of desk work a lot of packet you know sitting and doing your packet work at your desk which doesn’t provide for that and i hope that that we can encourage kind of some more

38:12 um similarities across the board there and i would err on the side of the group work just as a as a parent of an eight-year-old um i i do think it’s important to note that i would have said from my last year’s experience with my son at brown is that lunch was not long enough he literally never got to eat his whole lunch ever he has extreme fomo and he would want to be on the playground before anybody else and i can’t really blame him and now knowing that he only has that one opportunity to do that you know it just provides him with an even more like he just needs to go and play football because my gosh um but i i also i so that’s one thing that i i

38:58 would say i would also encourage perhaps that we you know track that feedback somehow and and um certainly not from sharing personal information or anything such as that but just sharing the feedback and openly sharing that feedback with the community about these schedule changes i think would be really great i think one thing that megan also mentioned is just making sure that we’re communicating that i think making sure that we are communicating how it’s going listening to our children and providing that feedback to their teachers as well as to you both of you as new principals um i think that that’s important and i think another thing that would be really helpful coming from the perspective of transparency which is my favorite word um sharing uh what you spoke to dr bucky in

39:45 the hours and kind of what is expected for kind of passing time when they’re obviously it’s much more in february when they’re getting their snow pants and their boots on or off understood that’s just a debacle always but understanding having the parents understand exactly the time um that is taken for each of those things and seeing that visually might help some parents to understand the bigger picture around time on learning because a lot you know a lot of what the reach out has been and and i i can understand it is that there’s five hours five times 180 equals the 900 then we have an hour and 15 minutes or whatever it might be how come we can’t make it work um so i think understanding what those passing times and how frequently

40:31 they need to be included in the schedule when you’re considering time on learning in the hours in the day that they have would be super super helpful for them um and and again i would also just encourage as much kind of communication around this um as possible even sharing you know if if a particular class does something that’s a really wonderful idea for a break in the middle of the morning um you know broadcasting that idea or sharing that idea with the district to say hey guess what you know even if you don’t want to share the teacher’s information or the class we had a class that did abc xyz it was really great it was a really great break and the kids are still talking about it a week later um things like that that i think would encourage the community to kind of you know have

41:16 faith and this have more faith in this plan um and really be able to stand behind you on it because i think you’ll find that folks want to do that they just they just want to have that um that transparency and that communication to them on what’s happening and thank you thank you austin um just because it’s come up twice i i wonder if we have and you can probably answer this nan or john or or even hope or mary have we gone to and pushed back with dusty a little bit i understand the passing periods are more formalized at the high school period but particularly at the elementary period where they’re not as formula formalized and also we have multiple children in every grade who have iep goals in ot and

42:02 pt that include dawn and dossing coats and other outerwear their shoes and that is learning time these are iep goals we have a peer model um we’re trying to have inclusion in a pure model uh set up here so i think that there’s some room with dusty to go back and say these periods are learning periods these are helping our children when they’re donning adopting things when they’re when they’re working on their goals and their iep is it for the ot and the pt and their peer models are helping to to show them how this can be done more effectively so i do wonder if there is some availability to get some of that that time on learning to count during those transition periods particularly at the elementary level where it is not the formalized bell ringing system

43:00 it looks like hope’s having a little bit of tech like thumbs up you’re trying to unmute no okay all right um sorry about that um sarah gold i’m gonna move on to you thanks um hope and mary you know i haven’t married i was part of the the search crew so i’ve kind of met you but i’m sorry that i’ve met you at all hope um hopefully i will remedy that soon um for both because i’m very excited that you’re both here and that you both joined us and clearly you guys have jumped right in and and really you know kind of head first gotten to know the teachers um you know and and sort of you know really just taken on this this situation um and i i find this whole thing to be to be

43:47 just so unfortunate um because i hate the fact that we’re talking about time on learning versus recess and so you know this will come as no surprise to um dr bucky and nan uh i apologize that i haven’t given you guys a heads up yet but you know i think the the way out of this is that we need to talk about a longer school day in the end um that you know that we might think like well that’s kind of counterintuitive because then kids are just in a building longer but at the same time they we need these we need them to learn what they what they’re required to learn and how many hours they’re required to be in that time and learning sarah i think it’s a really interesting um idea that you just put forward and you know maybe that we could recoup a little bit of

44:34 that time on learning but at the same time i still think you know it would be great to to be able to let our kids get outside you know they are only young once and and i think you know we see this just kind of this dearth of of free outdoor play whether it’s talking about in school or out of school i read an email or an article this summer talking about districts that are completely doing away with recess all together for younger kids and that to me is just like catastrophically bad um and and you know and i actually i work in a school so i know how the classrooms run and you know it’s a little different because i’m in a private school but it you know i know that kids are not seated

45:19 at desks just sitting there you know you know with their pen and paper um you know more similar to how it was when when we were in first and second third grade um but you know i think i i would love to see us have both in the end you know and i know we can’t do anything about that right now but i will just kind of put that out there um as a hope for the future with this district um that i think you know and you know to megan’s point um and allison i jumped on that too like that that equity across classrooms you know that is something there’s so much of the information that’s been presented tonight and the conversation here that’s been such so many points that have been worked on over the past few years and improvements that have been made to the district and i think you know if i sort of look at this from a 10 000 foot view

46:05 foot view foot view it you can i can kind of see how far we’ve come and then also see sort of how far we still have to go um so i just you know i i’m really grateful for everyone’s hard work on this change is never easy you know the communication aspect we just can you know i know we’re working on that too nan and i are going to present a little idea later on in the meeting tonight to sort of help maybe with that um but i think that there are many ways in which we can continue forward on that and i know that you know everybody um here agrees with that and you know i think i think we can just you know there’s such an opportunity for to to continue to grow here um so you know thank you for the work and um you know i appreciate it um and hopefully we

46:50 can just continue to support our kids better and better as we as we move through this thank you sarah i’ll move on to emily

47:01 so i’m glad sarah gold just went before me because this happened last year when we talked about the schedule um the new schedule and sarah went first and said we need to extend the school day to make recess happen and i seconded her and i’m going to do it again now that to make us have a recess block the way to do it is to extend the school day but to extend the school day we need to negotiate with our teachers to work longer because also they’re only allowed to teach for a certain amount of time so that also conflicts with our schedule and wanting to add more um no never mind but anyway so we need to negotiate with

47:48 no emily you haven’t made a point yeah you have a very good point thank you for bringing that up because we have contractual obligations on the maximum number of direct instruction hours per day and per week that can happen in increments but also consecutively and um thank you emily for bringing that up can we i’m i know it’s not fair i’m not going to ask for the report today at our next meeting can someone give me that information of what those hours are because if we’re extending the direct instruction time to for these students that means it’s uh it’s we’re pushing up against those contractual obligations so thank you emily for bringing that up and i’ll i’ll pass back to you okay um

48:33 so in order to extend the school day we have to extend their contractual hours to be able to teach and or just to be in the school and in order to do that we need more money to fund having the teachers there for a longer day so i think this is just a conversation that we need to keep having if extending the school day is something we really want to do in this district which i am such a proponent for because i think recess you have to have that morning recess um scheduled but i know right now it’s not going to happen and i think as long as we can trust our teachers to take the time for our kids when they know that they’re ready to go outside to take them outside i think that’s great but let’s keep bringing this up as budget season rolls around that

49:18 this is something parents want because they want to fix this problem and i don’t know if they know that this is a solution but it’s something we can do to really look at and we should look at other districts and how long their school day is and how they do have their recess blocks and i don’t know i think it’s something we should research and really um think about in the next few months thank you emily and dr bucky if you can um start talking with the union about this is a constant theme that it hasn’t just been the last year that it’s come up on and off about extending our school day if you can kind of set up times to talk with the union um about that and it’s not a quick process i don’t want anybody to think it is it’s it is going to be a large discussion um

50:06 but it’s one we need to have i i would venture it’s one everybody is at the table is willing to have um and so if you can start setting those talks up and then just being in touch so that we can coordinate schedules or do whatever needs to be done um emily is your hand up again okay um i just want to say you know we we did go through this last year a lot of the concerns we’re hearing are the same concerns i think this speaks to the communication piece um we really we we made a commitment to the community that um we were going to improve two-way communication and i and i want to make sure that we continue to work towards that um i think part of this is people are upset about the recess i mean people

50:52 want the second recess um we’re hearing from students they want it we’re hearing from parents we’re hearing from some teachers but i think more so people want to be part of the conversation they want to be part of the communication we have a great community we have a i’m sure hope and mary are realizing quite quickly we have a very involved parent community here in marblehead and that comes with a ton of blessings um and i wanna i want us to keep finding ways to harness um that excitement in the community to to have you know these conversations and they’re not always going to be comfortable but to have these conversations and and to have this communication so that you know

51:37 people won’t always get the answer they want but they’ll see it coming they’ll know why it happened and so on and so forth so it’s it’s something we as a school committee are working on it’s something dr bucky talks about a lot um it’s a it’s a process for all of us so that’s all i will say on that and allison your hand is back up yeah i i just wanted to kind of um double down on that so i i would say that i think it’s okay to hold ourselves accountable my other favorite word um that we are back here again with the same frustrations and the same

52:20 frustrating situation with the lack of recess after after last year after the committee after saying we wouldn’t we won’t do this again and and now here we are back again i think that’s part of what when the community says they want more of that communication more of that accountability they they don’t want to see the same things happen over and over and over again um and i you know nobody’s perfect everybody makes mistakes and i think it’s okay to say you know to hold ourselves accountable and and just do better next time

52:53 so let me speak to that so that we can quantify uh information we came last year talking about recess and we agreed to pilot it for the first trimester last year including the second recess back in while a parent group reviewed the schedule looked at options it became clear that that group could not come to consensus so we were going to be onboarding two new principles which are on screen this evening and allow them to work with their faculties to make this decision we met with hope and mary at the retreat they clearly saw through the interview process the passion around recess in the

53:38 district there they went into this eyes wide open they worked with their faculties and as they will tell you their faculties are not shy if there’s something that is of concern to them no one on their teaching staff has come to them to raise the issue of the schedule that is why they were comfortable moving forward in making this decision nan and i told them you can go slow to go fast this is a third rail if you want to take a year put together your own exploratory committees do that their faculty they took their input work with them and that’s the schedule we you have before you this evening and that’s why it’s being implemented so john i i do just want to push back a little because

54:24 little because little because i was part of that committee i was only allowed to attend uh able to attend the last of the three because they were in person and and due to my personal health issues um was on wasn’t able to attend until we had switched them to zoom but i was there for the wrap-up meeting the third meeting and there was a consensus and my takeaway was every parent the administrators and all the staff with the exception of nan the consensus was the second recess was to the benefit of the children and and the community members that were on that communicated that back out to the community has heard from their reps that that’s what happened and the reason why this became such an

55:10 explosive issue last week was this this wasn’t put out in the community other than teachers were given this schedule and then teachers reached out they live in our community they work in our community they have kids in our community and they raise the flag in fairness to marian hope they very well may not have raised the flag to marry and hope but they certainly raised it in the community and that’s where this community pushback came back and that in and of itself is something that we probably need to address but i do want to in fairness to the situation say to say every single staff supports this and that every that that there wasn’t a consensus i have i i just from my point of view there was a consensus

56:01 sarah gold sarah gold so i guess the question that lingers for me you know i like i said we i think we’ve made huge strides in our communication over the past few years um and i think we still have a long way to go and we continually trip up um so i’m right there you know i don’t i don’t disagree with much of anything on the communication piece of how what’s been said tonight i always come back and i came back with this with the high school as well where one of my kids is at like if we’re not meeting the desi requirements like our hands are tied we you know that’s one of the pieces for our administration and our in this and as a school committee that that has to happen and so again that’s why to me this like

56:46 this like this like we’re in between a rock and a hard place like if a second recess can’t can’t come in because they’re because there’s no time in the day then the only thing to do is to increase the time in the day because we can’t not be educating our kids to what the state requirement is you know if we were to be fully audited or anything like that would be a huge problem and you know as the leaders in the district school committee wise like that would be a big problem for us it would be a big problem for dr bucky and and nan and it certainly would be a problem for the principals there as well so i think you know again like i i wish we could have three or four recesses quite frankly i think you know having kids be able to take breaks is a great thing i also think they get plenty of

57:33 built-in pieces with their um specials and everything as well and that they’re not sitting at a desk for long periods of time very often um i think you know that is as as hope and mary mentioned that is just a reality of how education functions at this point um but you know i don’t i don’t know what else we’re supposed to do other than take out the recess you know we could take out a special as well and and put a recess in you know i’m not i’m not a fan of that either um but you know the whole conversation is just really unfortunate i think that was the word i used when i first spoke earlier like this is this these are not the conversations that i would like to be having i would like to you know be saying how great it is that that you

58:19 know everybody’s happy um you know that’s the that’s the goal um and so clearly right now we know that we’ve got work to do um you know obviously that’s what i said earlier i hope we can see it done over the next few years um you know hopefully less than a few and but you know i don’t i don’t see how we work around the the time on learning piece

58:44 okay um again i if i’m not going in the order that you raised your hand i do apologize i believe allison went up next i think meg i bet that’s fine i’ll i’m not trying to cut you megan um i

59:02 i agree that specials are i grew up doing theaters here so i i fully believe in specials and i think that that’s important so i would hate to see that lost either sarah um i i fully subscribe to that i just want to express that i think having a movement break and going from his classroom on the second floor to the library downstairs to art or wherever it might be is not the same as going outside to play tag with his friends or to play football it’s simply not the same thing it’s not the same expansion of energy um getting the let out as i always call it with him he sleeps with my my son in particular which i know is not who matters here everybody does but there are a lot of children that need to get that energy out and

59:48 it helps him to be able to go back and focus better um and i think that is my one concern but i i also really liked something that you had mentioned sarah fox in regards to you know being able to put on your clothes being able to take off you know your your outerwear your boots changing it back into your sneakers hanging stuff back up where it’s supposed to be to dry understanding that whole process could i mean my son does not have an iep but it could still be considered part of his learning process he still needs to learn how to do that he still has you know rules about doing that at home when we’re playing in the snow and i think that that is another great thing to consider um when we’re talking about that but i just want

1:00:33 to circle back to one thing that i said previously i think seeing the outline of like visually being able to see the outline of the schedule and how long and and i know it’s you know moderately different for different classes but seeing that and seeing the time on learning for each of the spaces seeing what that adds up to seeing what time is left over if there is any passing time or getting you know getting dressed getting undressed um time that needs to be considered there i think visually seeing that at least for me as a parent and i’m talking with my parent hat about it would be helpful because i think that that again it’s it’s sharing that information um similar to what you both shared today which i’m very grateful for i know mary you and i had spoken before

1:01:19 about it um it’s very helpful to understand that you’ve thought about you know what time of day each group should go to lunch in order to facilitate that movement and that you know burst of energy out um and when specials will be et cetera and i think that that’s such an important thing to share i think that the unfortunate part is that it’s coming after things were were leaked um and if we can get to a place where we can start sharing that in advance of a teacher sharing or a parent finding out or whatever it might be we would be in a much better place um yeah thank you

1:01:58 megan megan so like i feel like we’re all saying the same thing and we’re all in agreement right like yes we all want to have an additional recess but from what i’m hearing from the experts that we’ve hired to do this job which quite honestly we have to have some faith and trust in their experience and their knowledge is that we have a problem right now and that problem is that we’re not meeting the state requirement for time on learning so what i’ve heard presented in this meeting from hope and mary is that right now we have to be creative in how we address that problem and that’s what they’ve done while we

1:02:44 while we while we then work out a longer term solution which we’ve all said here is exploring the possibility of expanding the school day and what that would look like for our district and our community so yes is this where we all want to be no i think the good thing is that we seem to be on the same page um in terms of how we continue the conversation and move forward um the one thing though that i do just like i might be being inappropriate here but i don’t think it’s fair to point the finger at nancer i really don’t she’s doing her job and her job is to make sure that this district meets our state requirements um so i think we have to have a little

1:03:30 bit of respect for the job that she’s doing i will pause you please um thank you i i in no way shape or form um meant to disrespect nan um nor john but i i simply was clarifying what came out of those meetings as a member of those meetings from my perspective that in no way shape or form was a disrespect to dan she put a lot of work into those meetings she puts a lot of work in every day i am simply saying the consensus that came out from my perspective from those meetings was that everyone was exceedingly vocal parents teachers and at the time current administrators and that is what they were vocal from if anybody in those meetings recalls differently then then i could be

1:04:16 incorrect but i i don’t want nan to leave this thinking i disrespected her and at the end of the day this is an operational choice if just so everybody understands clearly in the community up until us creating a policy by the school dis committee that we are establishing you know movement breaks or recess breaks and i know some districts have it i’m not suggesting we do but unless this becomes a policy issue and we create a policy for recesses this is an operational discussion we can ask questions we can ask for reports we can go on and on but we cannot as a school committee overrule this this decision um

1:05:02 um um i mean quite frankly if if anybody uh in the district wanted to remove recess altogether they do not need our approval um i’m not saying they’re going to or that they would want to so when that gets quoted i want to make clear that it’s i’m just pointing out that this is operational um i think we all care deeply about our kids john nan hope mary all of our staff um us the school committee members and the parents that are on here advocating um but i i was making a clarifying point i no disrespect was intended nor stated um so emily i will move on to you okay so i’m not

1:05:49 i just want to have one clarifying thing because i’m not i don’t have an elementary school student right now so there was an email with a video that went out explaining the schedule correct that marian hope sent out and that was a couple weeks before school started um um explaining the schedule right is that accurate so if the inf i know there’s a lot with communication but we have to say that our principals tried they went out they made a video they told parents weeks in advance of school and if our teachers are getting a schedule and sharing it with the public i feel like

1:06:34 everyone’s kind of being set up to fail in this situation right now so i think we have to i don’t know cut everybody a little bit of slack right we do need to work on communication it was put out there if i’m not mistaken and let’s just this is how it is we have solutions and let’s just move forward thank you emily and i do want to reiterate that um people i i don’t want hope and mary to think that the community is exceptionally happy about about you being here about the work you’re doing um i got to witness mary and her bell yesterday i hope i don’t know if you have a bell but you might want to get one um

1:07:20 because it was like it it resonated with the crowd i have to say the kids cheered so we are excited but in it we’re a community of involved parents and that serves us well at times you know it’s difficult conversations but we are a strong community because we have strong community members and the day that they stop getting involved i will become very worried um because when you need people to chip in and and run your um lunches you know during covid so that we can get things done the community came and did it so i just want to be clear that we have respect for all parties involved and you know as dr bucky has said before we

1:08:09 want to perceive positive intentions and and use this as a growing piece that you can never over communicate to our our people um if we see a change coming you know hindsight being what it is maybe you know two months ago we could have put if we do this again you know put put that message out there but just it’s ever involving you know we keep working on communication that’s you know as a spoiler one of the things that dr bucky’s going to talk about later in subcommittees but it’s something we want to keep continuing to improve on and unless someone has something to add to that i will move us along to um school committee discussion items

1:08:56 we have the review and vote for policies and procedures we’re required to do three readings of these and i use the term reading loosely they’re read at the policy subcommittee for the first official reading they’ve been made available online at each of our consecutive meetings that count as the three readings and tonight will be countess the third and we will vote on them tonight so sarah gold a share of policy do you have anything to add above and beyond kind of what we’ve talked about the last two nope um i don’t think there were any changes that really needed to be made um so i think we’re just uh ready for a vote okay um and just to confirm did we talk

1:09:43 to the attorney about having a male and a female for the title ix is that a requirement oh sorry through the chair yeah go go um yes dr donnelly reached out to council and he said it is not a statutory requirement to have a male and a female okay and it wasn’t something that was embedded in anything directed to us specifically from previous ocr i’ll ask doctor donnelly to take that okay she’s on screen uh i apologize i just kind of predate both of you i’m looking at sarah gold okay because she may remember some things too um so not to your knowledge okay and if that’s my knowledge and yeah and when i

1:10:28 asked um attorney brent about this like she was clear that the new policy would supersede any pre you know pre-existing policy okay and that there is no requirement for there to be mixed gender coordinators okay perfect in in if if something comes back differently that’s very easily we certainly employ enough people that we can we can find someone um okay so i will ask for a motion to approve the revisions to policy ac non-discrimination as presented by our legal department by sarah gold second allison yeah okay um seconded by allison taylor now do you roll call vote emily baron

1:11:14 baron baron yes sarah gold yes allison taylor yes megan taylor yes sarah fox yes motion carries five two zero um i’m going to ask for a motion to rescind policies a c a non-discrimination on the basis of sex a c a b sexual harassment a c non-discrimination and harassment as recommended by our legal counsel so moved moved by sarah gold second second seconded by allison taylor roll call emily barron yes

1:12:00 sarah gold yes allison taylor yes megan taylor yes sarah fox yes i’ll ask for a motion to adopt the grievance procedure for both title ix and civil rights as presented by our legal counsel go moved moved by sarah gold second by emily barron roll call emily barron yes sarah gold yes allison taylor yes megan taylor yes and sarah fox yes motion carries five to zero i will ask for a motion to adopt the procedure for the right consideration of instructional resources

1:12:47 uh so moved sorry sarah gold second seconded by megan taylor whirlpool emily barron yes sarah gold yes allison taylor yes megan taylor yes sarah fox yes motion carries five to zero

1:13:10 dr bucky i’m sorry if your hand was up before i was just reading my motions it wasn’t and it’s out of order but i do want to commend our librarians who have been working a decade on trying to get the reconsideration of instructional resources procedure in they did a tremendous amount of work this summer and i really think it supports families who have questions about instructional resources or library materials being used in the district so just kudos to our libraries thank you dr bucky and sarah i’ll go to you for one second i just want to clarify too for the public that this was adopt adopting a procedure the policy has always existed however there is really never a clear procedure for people to go to and say how do i go about enacting this policy so all the librarians have done is they

1:13:56 worked really hard to give a clear procedure so people can really follow that flow chart on how to go about the process um so sarah gold yeah you’re absolutely right sarah and i had started working with the librarians when they reached out to me last spring um and so i’m really grateful to all the hard work that’s gone into this and you know you’re exactly right as you just stated sarah um we’ve got this policy that is a pretty boilerplate policy um kind of that hand that goes along with the masc recommendations and the policy is a good one and it didn’t need to be changed but it does reference these these types of procedures and forms and philosophies that just were non-existent so that dr bucky is absolutely right this is a this is wonderful work that

1:14:43 is you know is only going to serve to help families um and for families that do have questions and concerns it’s going to allow the district to respond quickly instead of you know being on our heels so i’m really really grateful the librarian we have such amazing librarians in this district they have such passion for what they do um and so it was a pleasure to work with them and thank you you know thank you to the committee for you know looking at this and taking the time to review it and passing it through i appreciate it and to dr bucky um you know for allowing them to come and as other administrations have not so very much appreciative to everybody’s hard work thank you um that brings us up to school committee protocols review we had put in our dropbox our current protocols and also

1:15:30 the masc standard recommendations for protocols this is something we typically do at our retreat however due to the scheduling of our retreat and the and how how schedules have worked out since then this has really been the first time that we could put it on so i do apologize for that um i will if anybody has any questions or comments about where our protocols are right now versus you know that the masc ones i know there was some concern at one point our discussion that ours had become pretty lengthy they they’re at several pages at this point um i’m happy to open that up to discussion if you just want to raise your hand and then we’ll we’ll move forward megan

1:16:16 megan megan just a little kind of background information on this because two i think it was two years ago maybe yeah two years ago it was right when emily came on board we reviewed the our protocols um and so we put a lot of work into the protocols that exist and what we did there was we took the standard masc protocols and then we reviewed with other superintendents in other districts school committee members in other districts previous school committee members in marblehead previous superintendents in marblehead including bill mccaldiff and came up with the current set of protocols so they are comprehensive in terms of

1:17:03 making sure that we kind of cover all our bases um and that they are also workable and ensure that we have effective processes in place to make sure that we kind of are staying within our purview and working effectively with our superintendent and administrative team

1:17:33 sir did you call me sorry you were muted okay just want to make sure um so i guess the question that i have you know i was i went through all of this um and i was you know as megan said um there was a process i think i think megan and emily or emily and dr bucky worked more on that at the time um and i i i’m really encouraged by these you know i’ve always liked the ones that we have at this point um and i think that they they are lengthy but you know sometimes that’s not a bad thing although i tend to be rather verbose especially when i write um so maybe others disagree um i guess the question that i have um is what happens like how how do we hold each other

1:18:20 accountable to these um and what’s the process you know i think they were put in place um in the in the heat of cobin and and i think that they again i think they’re good i just think that we’ve lacked you know i lack the ability lacked the mental compat like the mental bandwidth um to really to really kind of come back to them with any kind of regularity so i i just am wondering um i guess i’m just wondering how how we really follow through with these with fidelity and hold each other accountable but thoughts on that so one of the things when i when i look at this some of the ones that i think may be somewhat unnecessary are like the

1:19:05 suggestions on what are the limits of our authority um mass general law sets that and that trumps anything we say or do so we are governed by mass general law our authority is governed by mass general law in conjunction with the ed reform act um i i trust we all know those limits of the law very well um and so that section i find somewhat redundant just because the law is you know designed in all its imperfections to give us these limits on our authority um and so so i i more so wanted to boil not boil them down but like for instance we’re governed already by something and if we

1:19:51 can take that out my concern is when something gets too large sometimes you know with the commute community we want to familiarize themselves with this as well i don’t want people to go to this and see you know that it’s become you know four pages or whatever if there’s areas that are redundant and are already governed by actual law that is enforceable because the bottom line is legally none of these are enforceable policies are enforceable mass general law is enforceable ed reform act is enforceable these these are good with um we should be respecting each other we should be respecting um all of these things just as matter of professionalism um so i think they’re good reminders to have

1:20:38 and good things to familiarize ourselves with but i also where that particular section to me it’s we we have authority and it’s granted to us by the legislature of massachusetts um

1:20:54 so that was that was one thing and then you know another thing i wanted to take out that all requests for information from town officials would be channeled through um the school committee chairperson or the superintendent i think at this point we we’ve you know for instance if give an example if someone is on i’ll use the building committee because it’s almost over thank god um you know if if someone needed some information on something for that that pertains to really only something they’re doing i think that they should just you know

1:21:42 get that information loop dr bucky in um and so on and so forth and i think there’s a certain amount of trust we need to have in each other that we all are conducting ourselves with as professionals um dr bucky is extremely responsive when you pick up the phone when you call him when you text him when you email him um so i think if if a member of this committee has a question for him they can reach out and if it’s information that we all should have i think he’s pretty good at then boarding it out to the community committee um but that’s just my take on it i also i know at one point and emily correct me if i’m wrong i don’t mean to put you on the spot but i thought at one point if you during the retreat you had talked about

1:22:28 maybe the fact that these have gotten pretty long in looking back at the mafc general protocols am i making that up

1:22:39 um no i think we talked about it okay um but i did go back and i looked at the msa msac ones that’s not right but and ours to compare them yeah um i feel like theirs are too limited for what we need and ours yes they’re very long and some of the stuff i don’t think we need everything that’s in there also um so like i don’t know i’m kind of like maybe there’s a middle ground exactly we need something in the middle okay um you know are are there specific things like i made the note of what are the limits of our authority i i feel like that’s redundant and could be an easy

1:23:24 point of simplification because we are governed by that um but it at the same time if it’s the will of this committee that we feel very strongly that the way they are is fine i’m absolutely happy to move along on that as well

1:23:42 megan your hands up so i guess that’s my question like what are what are we trying what problem are we trying to solve here um and what are you looking for us to do because i guess i’m not i’m not clear on that i just i this had come up because we were going to approve them and i thought in a discussion that i had heard i really thought that just in passing when we talked about it at um the retreat that i’d heard some voices of they’re awfully long you know the misc ones are one page so that i just wanted people to familiarize themselves with both and see if there was areas for simplification but at the same time i don’t think this is something we need to spend a long time on um allison

1:24:27 yeah i just wanted to add that i s a phrase that i like to use in my professional life it’s just so we’re all coming from a place of good that while we might disagree um because there’s five of us we’re never all going to agree it’s not gonna be always that way that’s okay healthy discussion is important um even disagreement is important but i think making sure that we’re we trust that each other is coming from a place of good um is important and i i think one one piece that i will say about that limits of authority section if we want this if we want the public to see this document to understand better you know what our limits are keeping that section in might help but i certainly see your point where it it can

1:25:13 be considered redundant i i think sometimes that the public is not as much as we might say the three things i i think sometimes the public still gets confused as to what we can or cannot do what we can or cannot vote on okay and i want to say i’m how happy i am that we have protocols because i sat through a town meeting where there’s an article asking every town committee to please have protocols and we’re the only one that i mean someone could correct me but i think we’re the only one that has them that talks about them that revisits them and that really was a lot of people in town were looking for that so i i’m happy about that um one thing we might want to you know in the future look at is spelling out in our protocols the just like the librarians just did

1:25:59 what what are the steps we take to do certain things mostly so the on the the public understands that when the public wants to get involved in something how how they would go about going get involved in something and so on so on and so forth so um sarah and then emily excuse me um so i i printed both of these out because i always kind of need to go back and forth on more than just a digital screen and i think some of the places where it’s in in our document it’s how we govern and then the limits of the authority actually are in that how we govern section on the on the masc document that that was in our dropbox um so i think it’s so you know again i i said it before i think i think these are

1:26:46 good um i think they also um you know they definitely came out of a time when things were really really difficult in this district um and i maybe that’s why i like them so much because i i like the specificity i like um that they kind of are are keeping the rails on um and i think i think sometimes that’s just a really good thing um so whereas sarah i totally understand your point that you know mass general law um dictates these things you know i i think sometimes just like allison said like it’s good to have them in black and white not just for us but for the community as well uh because i i think you know our our what we do is really confusing sometimes i get confused by it

1:27:33 still i’m like ah you know sometimes it feels like we can sort of lump everything in and then sometimes it feels like we don’t control much um so you know depending on the day in my mood so i think they’re good i think i i honestly think if and i say this coming up on the end of my term um you know that if we want to really hash them out i would suggest that at the end of this year that you know it’s kind of like maybe two people get assigned to it and or you know one person gets assigned to it with dr bucky or you know somebody else um and and we kind of get it gets presented at the retreat again because it to me it feels like a lot even though i you know looked

1:28:18 through this and and kind of and you know i even filled out some of the check boxes of the in that last couple of pages um it just feels like a lot to sort of go through and and start redlining things tonight you’re you’re muted sarah never gets old um so what i would suggest is that we stay with these and we put on a future agenda um maybe in in february just to revisit this and decide if throughout the year if things if we learn things that we want to tweak or even if there’s things that might be helpful to clarify for the community um that we revisit it then and that this committee whether is in

1:29:04 through a subcommittee or not make some recommendations that will then be presented at the retreat next year because i think it is hard at that retreat to start making some changes when each year we have a new committee um so if we can just learn use this learn from it this year and then revisit it and and talk about if there’s any suggestions that we can suggest emily can i just make two little suggestions to these just because i feel anything you want um okay so on here under um this is the clarifying thing what is it how we govern number 10 um

1:29:50 it talks about public input at meetings may be made on items of the agenda but i think we need to put during public comment right because uh public um or otherwise at the discretion of the chair so okay i mean i don’t know i just was reading that does work but with robert rules too at any time the chair could set could open it up right um you can open it up via two mechanisms the chair can open it up or you can open up via vote so right okay something like a roberts wilson so that’s like another thing where we’re governed by something else anyway and you know how i love robert’s rules yeah okay so okay um

1:30:37 i had one other little thing we say that we’ll maintain a district new member orientation program we have that we do so we have a checklist that you go through um i did it with allison there’s a checklist um that the chair goes through and there’s various people that are involved in it hr is involved there there’s you you go through the checklist um they because there’s cor the queries there’s fingerprinting there’s a whole thing oh that’s good okay i wasn’t sure okay yeah um and i think what we should do a better job of is maybe making sure that’s in a general file so that if chairs change year

1:31:19 i’ll make sure that um everybody has a copy of that okay great i’ll just pop in there sarah like i remember when megan and i were first elected it was carmen um who lisa who had all of that and and gave that to the new members you know obviously a lot has changed in our district since then um so i think you’re right it’d be good to go back at that and make sure that everybody’s got those and i think you know that’s a role that that of that role lisa’s role um is is a good one for okay um and megan

1:31:54 so do we need to vote these protocols i mean typically every year at the retreat we vote them especially because we’ve got we can i think it’s just um ceremonial more than anything but if there’s a motion i’m happy to do that okay i make a motion to approve these um operating protocols as they stand i’ll second i’m seconded by sarah golds um roll call emily baron yes sarah gold yes allison taylor yes megan taylor yes sarah fox yes carries 5-0 um review of subcommittee and meeting date

1:32:41 discussion so meeting dates um november our first meeting in november conflict conflicts with the masc state conference so we had agreed to move that to the night prior wednesday i believe lisa is in the process or already has updated that the other question was um the march meetings there are five thursdays in march um which always throws us for a loop i would suggest that we put placeholders in for that first third and fifth that will be right in the middle of budget season and every year i’ve been involved we wind up needing extra meetings so i think for planning purposes if we put them in our calendars and in the communities calendars right now it will serve us well if we need to plan

1:33:27 additional in it or tweak that but for now we use those as placeholders would be my suggestion unless there’s objections sarah just real quick is is the meeting schedule in the dropbox am i just missing it um lisa had sent an email memo out to everyone i’m sorry just because i’m lazy and don’t want to look at the at that memo um is the are we moving the one on the third to which date are we moving it to or are we just canceling it um do you mean november so november it was going to be the third we were moving it to the second the day before um if that if that works

1:34:14 um and then there’s a question of the third the third thursday in april as i think always happens is on our april break can we try not to have a meeting over april break i would propose that we leave the first april meeting as is and then as we get into march we should have a much clearer idea where we are with the budget hearing and the fincom in the voting because all of that is really add some extra meetings and at that point we we as soon as we have that budget calendar we readdress if we need an additional april meeting or not

1:35:00 i see sarah shaking her head yes okay so

1:35:08 um if everybody so i know from a facilities and finance standpoint that i sent emails out today i’m just asking for dr bucky’s schedule and um and what works for people in allison’s schedule and see what works so we’re hoping to get those first meetings on the books in the next two weeks and kind of just in and i’m assuming all other committees kind of are are circling around that same place so hopefully by our next meeting we’ve had those first meetings and or ironed out what that schedule will be megan so one thing that i think we’ve kind of tried to address over the years and have done so with varying degrees of success is making sure that everyone’s

1:35:53 kind of aware of when those subcommittee meetings are so not just you know scheduling them amongst the subcommittee but making sure that the community and the rest of the committee is aware of when they’re happening i know if it was last year the year before we tried to get into a consistent schedule with each one of those so i’m just asking that you know if we can find a way to do that because yes we know there’s subcommittees but sometimes it’s helpful just to listen in even as another sub you know another committee member and obviously the community also if they can kind of know when to expect that the budget meetings are going to be or the facility meetings are going to be yeah certainly and i’ve been working with lisa to actually get meetings posted in advance of the 48 hours as quickly and as early as we can and um

1:36:40 so far we’ve been pretty successful at you know exceeding that um and then also we’re working really hard to make sure those materials packets are up for the community um for the 48 hours in advance as well which i think hopefully the community will find useful to to continue their engagements with um i guess sarah what i’m asking for is a way to let everybody know when these meetings are happening without us all having to check the you know the marblehead calendar on a regular basis so if there’s a regular schedule for those meetings that makes it easy like budget meets as an example budget meets the first wednesday of every month or whatever so then we can just plan accordingly or find a way to let people

1:37:25 know when those meetings are going to be without everyone having to go and check so be a more proactive communication to our meeting schedules okay i hear that i can ask lisa when she’s booking them to to let the committee members know as well i just want to also make sure that we’re being engaged as we should be when it’s appropriate for us to kind of follow that stuff um as well um i think it was allison and sarah yeah i just i i just wanted to let you know megan it’s under the summer retreat our meeting dates it’s in the summer retreat folder thank you yeah i know it was somewhere i’m just i can’t i hate it i know thank you my ocd wouldn’t let me stop until i found it um policy will get on that we’ll pick a

1:38:11 date i know we have that i think two years ago and last year we did not do such a great job at picking sort of that regular you know once a month tuesday or whatever um and i think you know lisa does a great job of inviting i think as she’s putting it into dr bucky’s schedule of inviting using the um google calendars and so then it kind of populates in there and so you know i i don’t i don’t get my calendars to sync with each other but it’s always helpful for me to know that i can go and so i think if lisa just invites all of us and we know that like oh it’s a policy meeting i don’t actually have to show up but i can if i want to um you know that that might be a really simple um way to to just put it on everybody’s radar so that we we know and it kind of it’ll give us

1:38:58 reminders and all that good stuff too okay um and then i i just under this heading of subcommittee discussions i want to make sure that i am that the whole committee is is aware um we had a building committee meeting at six o’clock which um was why we were running a little bit late um dr bucky michelle and i were there emily was there i think allison was there as a member of the um the public but i want to make sure that everyone’s looped in because they’re i believe will be another meeting the beginning of next week and as soon as that’s scheduled we’ll let you know um what’s come up is the field at the brown school was not installed to the proper specifications and

1:39:45 has failed since then there’s a lot of i went up and walked it today there’s a lot of um sinking in different areas um on the field you can kind of if you can picture a bunch of different um met allison i’m you’re a civil engineer maybe oh you’re doing this you’re fine it’s not it would so essentially it really wouldn’t be safe for children to play on that’s you know um and um because of the sinking because of all of the rain in the spring and then the really dry summer it it’s almost just kind of a perfect storm of things that happened but it is for sure it’s open right now i i know

1:40:31 kids are playing on it i know they’re so excite i think for me it was so exciting to finally have it because last year i had to hear about how they were trying to finagle uh a basketball game and a football game on the same pad of the basketball court on brown when there’s this big giant field fenced off um i think the fact that you know 100 kids didn’t just jump that fence and go play is something to be said but um so with the with the substrate just not being up to par um potentially you know whether there it was inspected properly um caused there to be sinking and holes and divots it’s very green and pretty it is when you look at it it’s that’s a good thing like visually if you just from afar

1:41:17 afar afar there was concerns that the sod had died in a and apparently maybe it’s a it’s on its second life i don’t know it had died off and um it has come back with the watering and the rain and and various measures yeah part of the concern there though is that because it’s sod generally speaking it would take longer anybody that’s done this with their yard if you want your sod to really take you’re gonna wait seasons to allow it to truly take in versus seed which is a lot more work uh but you can you know you can utilize that a little bit faster part of the concern with removing the sod putting the sod back on is how much longer the children will

1:42:03 have to wait before they can actually use it again because they have to rip everything up they have to do all of the work to fix the um

1:42:13 to fix the subfloor and and then put the sod back down and then the sod has to rest and the sod has to be brought kind of brought back to life in that spot and then the problem there is they’re they’re saying i think catherine martin whose landscape architect could spoke to this much clearer than i could but um you know they’re saying 30 days uh which would bring us 30 days for the work 30 days for it to sit before the children could use it which would bring us to mid-november um the problem there of course is then as the seasons change as we all know if you have a i have a postage stamp yard but i still have some grass and you know what happens in the winter to your grass anyways and it could happen even more to the sod if the sod isn’t able to take properly with children even just with sneakers

1:42:58 running on it we’re not talking about cleats or anything hard like that um and then the problem is then you come to the spring where it’s kind of bringing back to life again and you want you need to breathe you need to be able to water it and take care of it and air it and manage it and mow it and all of that stuff properly to keep that sod growing and to keep it kind of you know growing into the ground so that it does not um so it’s not pull up so it doesn’t just die and we need to kind of make some decisions around whether that’s the best option um and what the true timeline will be for the children to get back on it as well i think one other thing that was brought up just um for again full transparency is um what it what if any chemicals were being used

1:43:44 um to kind of bring it back to life this this summer after the drought uh since it is very very green compared to a lot of other lawns some people were very certain that there were chemicals used it wasn’t or i should say non-organic

1:44:02 fertilizers used which was also a concern so long story short i i wanted to make sure that all members of this committee were was aware in the spirit of transparency i didn’t want anybody to have questions from the community there were several members of the community on that call there were members of the press i just didn’t want you to not know what transpired in what was going on so just in the spirit of full transparency just wanted to bring you up to date it’s a work in progress the committee i believe will be meeting again you’ll be notified when they’re meeting again um and just kind of where we are with that that piece of it um so here should we ask if there are any questions i mean any one of the committee have any questions on that or just does that caveat i don’t know if i can answer them

1:44:52 we can try um doesn’t look like there are so that brings us to forum topics and dates discussion oh i had i had popped a um thing about the subcommittee that we had talked about oh i’m so sorry yes i just want to make sure that i thought it would go under there is yes no it does it does i apologize there and actually after you i have to push to dr bucky too because he had some things too i that was great that was me my bad all right so um i wrote up a little piece about the curriculum instruction and student life subcommittee proposal uh so i had brought this to all of you i believe it was first at the retreat

1:45:38 um and i didn’t have all the information at that point but since that point i have talked with the chairperson of the beverly school committee because this is a this idea originated i don’t want to read the entire proposal to everybody again but it originated from principal bauer who said that beverly school committee has this as one of their subcommittees um so you know it was it was within that realm of the school committee looking for additional ways and to be more aware and integrated into the work that’s being done in our schools um and so principal brower appointed me that way and again i talked with the chairperson um karen robinson to better understand you know the benefits that it gives to beverly um beverly definitely structures things

1:46:24 very differently than than we do um but i really liked the idea of this i’ve met with nan a couple of times on this so the committee that this subcommittee is really run by you know it’s a subcommittee of the school committee but it is really run by the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning so in beverly um that is the person who i guess for lack of a better word kind of coordinates it although the agendas are set uh based on what’s going on in the school action items in the school committee meeting for that evening as well as sort of a look ahead at the very beginning of the school year for the committee as a whole to the subcommittee as a whole to really set

1:47:11 the things that are of interest and you know working with the assistant superintendent um to to kind of codify some of that obviously there’s flexibility as the year moves forward um so beverly with this subcommittee and i know some of our subcommittees have various people that make them up i think facilities has um some citizen representatives as well um so that in beverly this subcommittee has citizen representatives and it also has some student representatives because it’s really focused you know in many of the agendas the student representative will talk about student you know various aspects of student life um i know we have some of that within our school committee meetings as well but this was more topic focused it seemed like um and so what i would one of the big

1:47:57 takeaways that i had it after talking with the chair is that there this subcommittee was really useful in doing deeper dives into things that the school committee was about to take a vote on so i think you know because especially as i was sort of doing some of the initial research on this the program of studies was is a really excellent example so in the spring we get this program of studies from the high school and it’s you know even with myself as a with a now sophomore it’s hard to sometimes understand some of the changes that have gone in and i was on the sac for the high school for the last two years and so even though i had a little bit better understanding of it sometimes it felt as though i you know we sort of were handed this information and then to get way into the weeds of it

1:48:43 within a school committee meeting you know was part of our purview but maybe not the best time to do it and so this subcommittee really targets things like that so it it presents information in a deeper dive um the chair said that oftentimes other school committee members will attend it just to listen in and be informed as to what is then you know gonna be discussed in in a little broader detail in the school committee meeting um so they tend they meet an hour before the i’m not sure how often beverly meets but an hour before one of the school committee meetings um so for us that would be the six to seven o’clock um so it backs up nicely for everyone for school committee meeting school committee members as well as

1:49:31 administration as well as the community um again to kind of give that that deeper look at what’s going to be then presented later on um and let’s see just looking at my notes too i don’t want to leave oh the the one of the things so oftentimes teachers are invited and or can volunteer to come the last the last meeting that they have of the year i think it probably is more than an hour long before the school committee meeting but it’s a showcase of learning they call it and teachers volunteer to set up a booth and they can highlight a unit or a lesson or some type of project that they’ve had and they can bring um students that have really you know kind of grasped these topics or become super invested in it and so it’s

1:50:16 this interactive event that really highlights all of the great work that’s being done with student learning and student achievement across the district so um i will toss it over to nan because obviously she and i have chatted about this and and she’s got some thoughts on it as well so um and then i can open it up for any thoughts from the committee to see if this is something we want to move forward

1:50:43 yeah thanks sarah i think it um when you initially initiated the conversation everything about the process just made sense especially as we talked tonight extensively around communication i think part of what is missing is that opportunity for what’s happening in schools to be consistently talked about and understood by committee members so i think if we are especially as we get deeper into the work for the plan for success helping people understand how the work that we’re doing for teaching and learning is connected to each one of our district focus areas um talking about special things that maybe would be happening in special education and how that relates

1:51:28 to the teaching and learning in classrooms so i i think even just as we talk more as a district about assessments and what does data show and what do we do with the data those are all kinds of um really important conversations that were happening that are happening in schools all the time but i’m not necessarily sure that um the committees understands the extent to which all that good work is happening so i would i think that i’m full on board with um having that opportunity yeah by the end of the conversation with the chair and beverly it you know i i sort of said to her like this sounds like a really excellent way because we’re always struggling to get out of our way with communication that a really

1:52:15 excellent way to communicate things as they’re going on so you know if there’s something being worked on it you know it’s not you know it can be sort of previewed before you know and even if it’s not coming to the school committee but then once it’s on our docket to approve then it can have like sort of the full thing brought forward again and kind of recapped and everything so this really excellent way to communicate more effectively and more deeply about student achievement and the work within that that goes on in the district all the time great

1:52:49 so sarah did they talk at all about how um how it works you know some things on the agenda for the school committee say program studies and then you have your six o’clock meeting and you have your two reps there and they’re having the discussion with nan and the community members and the educators um very similar to discussions we may have had before like in an sac or something like that but if say the other two or one or three members want to come so they can kind of see that information before we vote on it in an hour or talk about in an hour they’re welcome to do that but how do they handle so i’m sure during those conversations those other members have questions that jump into their mind but we can’t ask them

1:53:35 at that meeting because we’re going to we already know we’re voting on this in an hour so if we weren’t already voting on this in an hour we could we could ask questions but it’s it’s that we’re it’s that piece of we’re vote we know we’re voting on this for an hour so how do they safeguard really having a lot of um redundancies of those conversations is so that we’re not making our educators and nan really relive all those same conversations again just an hour later have they found things at work that didn’t work nan do you want me to to say a few things on that or just want to jump in i i my initial response to that sarah is exactly what you um are thinking about is what i was thinking about what i

1:54:21 would love this committee to do and we can talk sarah about making adjustments so it works for marblehead is for this committee to serve as more of an informative process rather than a reactionary process so if there’s something on the school committee agenda or we know is coming up maybe we’re able to do it a week prior or two weeks prior so that it’s the information is still being relayed and communicated but it doesn’t feel reactionary okay and i think that’s a really great point that we’ll just want to you know take what we’ve learned about business and marblehead and and well like sarah said things happen differently and work differently to their benefit or or whatever in

1:55:08 beverly let’s just try to separate those so it’s not right right before that there is some time in between because what that will allow us to do is for those other committee members that are hearing that presentation to then have two weeks to reach out to nan and say okay these were my questions and concerns and so then nan also knows when she makes the presentation to the general committee oh i guess this might not have been clear if they have this question someone else might and i’ll make this part of my presentation so

1:55:36 it may serve um as an informative session in that sarah would report out during the subcommittee reports just like emily does with our dei work you know it’s not necessarily always a presentation that’s on the agenda but you can inform the committee and the community during that time of the work that’s currently happening in the district so it also kind of serves as a as a avenue for that kind of communication it wouldn’t necessarily always have to be connected to a committee agenda item it might just be you know a policy or a regularly scheduled subcommittee meeting that we talk about teaching and learning and then um

1:56:21 sarah can report out when appropriate and i think you know to to megan’s continual hammering point about you know presenting something and then waiting the two weeks to vote on it that that might be another way to balance that is that if we’re seeing something for the first time and then we do have the two weeks it can come on to that agenda and be and be given that deep dive and then you know a couple questions whatever can come up or if somebody wasn’t there and then again everybody can sit and think on it for those two weeks and get back to nan or whoever you know is the appropriate point person on that to ask more questions so that there’s and again like i think there’s a good way then of that deeper understanding for the committee when we’re talking to the

1:57:07 community to be able to talk more in depth on on a lot of various topics okay i’m megan so let me preface this with i love the concept i think conceptually it’s great and you know the curriculum piece while it’s not technically our purview is something that as school community members we do need to be up to speed on and be able to um discuss in an educated way i guess the my question is is this really a subcommittee so and the reason i ask that is while beverly may structure it that way it’s clear that their the way they structure their committee in general is a little bit you know different from what marblehead does and the way we use our other

1:57:55 subcommittees is to do some of that prep work and to bring recommendations and take action in our fuller subcommittee so if we think about facilities for example sarah you and emily you know initiated the facilities sub um facilities assessment you worked with the other members of that subcommittee to prioritize and figure out how we’re going to fund and then you brought that work to the full committee to then take an action on whether approve or deliberate or whatever we decide to do at that point and that’s how we use our subcommittees here that’s how we use budget facilities policy you know we talked today about the protocols having a subcommittee for that and so i just wonder if this is really a subcommittee function because the other two things that are kind of

1:58:41 bubbling up in my mind is this information especially if we’re going to have to vote on it or take action really does require the full sub the full school committee to be to have that level of information so it seems a little bit redundant to me i think maybe we need to figure out how we do that in a way that it’s not kind of eating into our eating into these meetings but do it in an effective way and also these things are informational for us for the most part um you know if we talk about the schedule it came up today those are operational decisions yes we need to be aware of them we need to be able to understand them and discuss them but they’re actually not our purview so i guess i’m just not sure that this is a subcommittee in in how we use subcommittees here in marblehead

1:59:29 so are you suggesting that we find a way to have the whole committee get these updates periodically i think it requires further discussion but yeah i guess i guess i am and um i’m not sure the most effective way to do that but i mean even just listening to the conversation i mean some of this conversation has been around um you know even though there’s a subcommittee the other members of the committee would want to listen in we need to be informed in order for us to be able to take a vote on it and one of the things we talked about in our last retreat and the retreat prior to that is slowing down the process you know in terms of our votes so we should be and sarah gold is right i am kind of a broken record on this is that something should come to the school committee we should discuss it and get the

2:00:15 information and then have you know not take the vote until especially bigger ticket items till till the next session so that we do have time to sleep on it think about it ask ask additional questions and have additional information be brought forward to the next meeting so i think that process is something that we’ve been working really hard to put in place you know especially post covid this information is useful to all of us and um like i said i don’t necessarily think that it fits with the structure of our subcommittees so maybe it’s that um you know when i have the planning meetings with emily john and i that um we luke nan in on that um not maybe not for every meeting because i i

2:01:01 think that if we put a teaching and learning robust update at every meeting our we’re again getting away from what are the ideas of you know trying to to condense down to our purview and and to make these meetings you know a little more focused but maybe it’s once a month that nan sits in and says okay so right now i’m working with my staff to implement you know if we were around the clock a year or two it would be the wind block and can i do a brief presentation on what the where those discussions are they’re ongoing and we’re working on it so it’s not a done deal or whatever but can i do a brief presentation on what what those conversations are or that we’re looking at our schedule so that

2:01:46 that that the school committee knows these things are coming we’re aware of them the community knows these things are coming does that does that seem like a more functional way to implement this is that other kind of thing megan the other thing to just i want to make sure that i cover this piece too is that one of the items that i really love about this um suggestion is the showcasing and so prior to covid we used to have a school committee meeting at every single school in our district at least once a year so that we could see what was happening in the schools and especially now that we’re not part you know we’re not officially part of the sacs having a way for the you know we’ve talked about this a number of times having a way for us as a full committee to really see what’s going on in our schools and be more connected to what the students and teachers are doing in each building

2:02:33 and so you know i i would like to see us find a way to get back to that in some fashion you know i know with the zooming piece it’s a little bit tricky to kind of have them in those buildings but you know maybe we figure out a way to kind of include those showcase pieces too um emily and allison do you guys have anything you want to any feedback you want to give on whether you see this as a subcommittee whether you see this as a way to try to include the full committee um um i’m still i’m kind of still confused so the committee the subcommittee if it the way beverly does it is they have a subcommittee with community members and students who talk about items on the agenda

2:03:19 agenda agenda and the students talk about the items i don’t think community members i mean obviously community members participate in the conversation within the subcommittee so yeah that’s right yeah yeah but but there’s no there’s no real as the way beverly does it it’s way understood it there’s no actions taken by that sub by this subcommittee um so there’s nothing you know other than maybe the kind of the conversational feedback similar i guess similar to an sac i mean i’m trying to think really quickly if i’ve taken a if i’ve been part of a vote other than minutes at the sac meetings and so sort of but that that kind of that working conversation so that things are

2:04:05 again communicated out to various stakeholders and then moved moved forward as it makes sense so can you give me an example of something that the committee would talk about uh yes so other than like the student achievement piece uh or not the student instrument the um this program of studies so to megan’s point i mean beverly has and i would you know encourage everybody if they wanted to take a look at the agendas from beverly but they have um at the holidays they have a holiday selection from one of the music um i think they did last year it looked like it was one of the high school um either choral or band um and then you

2:04:50 know one topic is culturally responsive teaching um let’s see they have like middle school student life you know the after school activities clubs and sports um and then like the knee ask reports and mcas and and some of the mental health resources and so again bigger than you know what gets you know there’s more than just reflecting on what’s going into a school committee meeting um so like tonight would if we take our agenda for tonight you know it would be sort of that big ticket item would be the schedules and and maybe saving us some time within the conversation within the larger school committee meeting um but there certainly is more you know i’m

2:05:36 looking in one of them it’s um summer reading and so you know it just really previews and then kind of and some of them goes deeper into the again the various you know aspects of student achievement across the district so then so then the person the two school committee members in the subcommittee would report back on what was discussed correct and so um i’m trying to think similar to like the assault meetings where that would occur at a different point in our meeting usually usually under dr bucky’s um report that you know those school committee meeting members could pipe in and say yes you know this was part of the conversation and you know

2:06:21 blah this is this is just you know highlight on something that dr bucky said like another resource almost so to me this sounds a lot like the work that’s done in sacs that we were part of but we’re doing it in a monthly district-wide meeting but at the individual level it sounds like it’s the work of the sacs like one month we might be talking more about what’s going on in the high school sacs if they’re doing but the next month it might be that we’re covering bats in in brown but it sounds like essentially it’s the sac work and we’re putting it in a different format so it definitely obviously doesn’t take the part the place of sacs because no no but that we’re kind of just making a

2:07:08 district-wide discussion of that yes of kind of highlighting some of those aspects of the sac and then and then again like you know maybe it’s different in some of the others but you know the sac the sec that i’ve been involved with have never had any kind of like um you know choral selections or anything like that or or you know a teacher i’m trying to say i just wanna you know well before i speak i don’t wanna make statements that aren’t true but i don’t think there’s ever been other than you know the teacher input that’s there but a teacher coming to present how they’ve been doing things um and this you know according to that chair there are regular presentations from teachers who volunteer you know and i don’t want this to come off as like oh now we’re going to tax teachers with something else these are teachers who really would like

2:07:54 to come and showcase things and i think that’s again speaks to one of the pieces that we’ve been trying to to target in in our involvement in our depth of knowledge on the on the various happenings within the school is that then we get you know that that committee that subcommittee and it’s and you know she made very clear that that it is a broadcasted meeting as well so that it really is effectively communicating and people other people can tune in very easily um and that they’re on i think they download to youtube as well so they’re um they’re on there so people can go back and look as well so the the teacher things that teachers are doing every day are being highlighted as well one hand i very much so like the idea of

2:08:39 highlighting these things getting that information out there to the public i do think from a functional standpoint we’re going to run up against a lot of reliving these meetings a lot at the six o’clock hour and then again at the seven o’clock hour i possible open meeting things um where you know a member too many members may be there and you know in it are we deliberating am i you know are we not i have concerns about that i listen everybody knows i was a huge fan of sacs i found them incredibly meaningful to know what for all of us to know what’s going on in our meetings to see the work being done to be able to come back and report to the larger community about the good work that was

2:09:24 being done in our individual schools i don’t know if perhaps we revisit that at some point and we if we do in the future revisit that that we just get better as a school committee at relaying that information that we hear in our sacs of that good work that we’re hearing done so that there’s no surprises um i’m not saying we need to flash that out right now or even this year i’m just saying if it if we’re just really recreating that model that that might be something we want to look at again no idea what order we went in megan sorry sorry um i don’t see this as recreating the

2:10:10 sac because one of the issues that you know i always had with like i loved being part of the village sac but i only knew what’s going on in village right i didn’t really know what was going on in the other districts so i kind of see like the conversation we’re having here is understanding what’s going on across the board for the full committee um so i i think like i said conceptually i’m on board i think maybe we just need to work out the most effective way to do it um and i’ll leave it at that emily

2:10:42 um is there because see i love learning about all the different schools and what they’re doing that was like megan said that was one thing with the sacs that i didn’t like right because we there wasn’t a lot of reporting and i loved when the principles came at the beginning of our meetings i forget when that was two years ago and would give us a little update um is there a way to like pilot the subcommittee see if it works like is there an option to do that or start it as an advisory and just see if it’s successful yeah we could definitely pilot anything i i will say the law is exceptionally clear on this would be a subcommittee if we

2:11:27 are discussing something that will then later come in front of our committee it is a subcommittee and it is a public meeting so we can’t this isn’t an advisory that this would have to be a posted meeting and everything so i just want to be clear on that um but if there’s a will to pilot it we absolutely can i mean if if um you know we want to look at some other districts if all of us want to take the opportunity to go and watch beverly’s meeting if it’s broadcast or on youtube we can go back and look and see what they do and maybe come back with some suggestions on what we think would work for us and what we wouldn’t so we don’t you know flush it all out right here without having seen those meetings um maybe that’s something we want to do allison

2:12:15 that that was going to be my suggestion that maybe we could uh two things uh that maybe we could watch them if they’re on the youtube just to kind of get a better feel for it because i think we we want to make sure that we do it right if we are going to do something such a pi such as a pilot we’ll then need to you know if we’re going to have a pilot we’ll want to make sure we come up with you know kpi like items that determine its success or that we’re going to measure success off of um and one one thing i just wanted to mention that you also noted uh sarah is on kind of revisiting the sacs now that we have two new principles um i know it was shared that that they preferred us not there but it might

2:13:01 be interesting to get the the opinion of the new principles and maybe revisit that at some point

2:13:09 okay so between now and our next meeting is everybody able to kind of get themselves on youtube and if you have the link sarah yes i just found it and i’m emailing it right now okay so if we all can kind of familiarize ourselves with these and kind of see what works what doesn’t and then if you i’m sure you’ve watched them if there’s pieces of it that you said think right off the bat you would recommend we do do or don’t do if you want to share those that would be helpful too and then we can have a little bit more of a thoughtful discussion when we come back and decide if we want to pilot this and if so what the mechanism for that would be okay um okay um i just emailed it it’s a link where it’s got all of their live streams so just scroll down to the curriculum instruction area thank you sarah and thank you for

2:13:56 doing that work um dr bucky i believe you had two subcommittees you wanted to suggest um i only have the one i was looking at a communications advisory but i think it will be usurped by when i talk about thought exchange that that could supplant the the need to have any sort of a subcommittee and the other one was uh goals uh superintendent goals there are districts that have a subcommittee that works with the superintendent to develop those that bring them back to the full committee for their vote okay um and i apologize john i sk we skipped over thought exchange um that was under the opening day update so if you if i’m just going to

2:14:43 hand this off to you now if you want to present that to us sure um i think it times nicely with some of the conversation this evening and around even the subcommittee uh discussion thought exchange is kind of like crowdsourcing for getting public input and i know that um two-way communication and forums and surveys are things that come up again and again i put a memo in the school committee dropbox um i guess it’s drive now we don’t use dropbox anymore but that kind of outlines what thought exchange is and then part of that memo was three districts in massachusetts that are using it and for various things that they have used it

2:15:31 in particular strategic planning if you’re going for an override soliciting community input and that’s something that i hear again and again uh from members of the committee how do we get more public participation and you know uh the platform said one of the things that resonated with me are town halls or denominate our town halls are dominated by loud voices surveys polls and focus groups leave you buried in data this gives one question which people are like okay rather than picking five choices where really any of the five choices don’t really resonate with me and capture what i want to say it puts it out to the community it can be a student-facing platform some districts used it during covid to

2:16:17 touch base with students about where they were what their needs were and uh one district used it how should we use our esser funding so it’s a way where people can weigh in and the loudest voice in the room isn’t what captures the survey people can vote on other people’s comments and so it capture it gives an opportunity for people to provide input and feedback which i’m hearing people want to be able to do here but that people that wouldn’t stand up in a public forum people that wouldn’t complete a survey with 10 questions if they’re just asked a single question to say oh okay put their opinion it’s totally anonymous it can go in a variety of languages so spanish or russian or hebrew whatever we want to use it for

2:17:03 and the districts that are using it said public participation or participation was greatly increased over a forum or a survey and again you could use this to find out what people want in terms of a forum which which brings us back to our next topic very nicely thank you for tying that up and about um so one of the things we had i talked about with dr bucky and and this is certainly something we’ve talked about at various points over the last few years is you know looking back over um you know several last several years there was a period that we had established at the district level this idea of having three to four forums per year where there’s a two-way

2:17:51 conversation um it’s very constructive in that it’s on a topic you know i in the past had attended them on special education or budget in so it’s not a free-for-all um but you know it’s a conversation if it’s on special education about people’s thoughts people’s concerns paula would be there any applicable people would be there and it’s a really great way to hear the community to be heard by the community and to enter into a conversation because as we know we have public meetings which our meetings are in public but they’re not a meeting of the public um so one thing that we had talked about when we met to kind of go over agendas was

2:18:37 this idea of the forums and at the time john was presenting to emily and i thought exchange and emily said why don’t instead of us deciding what the forum should be on why don’t we have john and it was a great idea and john said i can do that so what i would propose is that between now and our next meeting in two weeks that john uses thought exchange to ask the community what they would like a forum on and then he presents that back to us and out of that data we can decide the topic um you know what what it will be and i think this is a really great way to show the community we’re engaging with them to increase our and encourage our community participation in a very

2:19:25 constructive collaborative way um and it’s a great way to utilize this new tool megan i see your hand up so so um again conceptually i love the idea i think any way that we can continue to get additional feedback we should do that um and we have talked about forums before and i think there is you know value in kind of having a defined topic that we talk about we’ve seen it be very successful with dr bucky’s um superintendent coffees so i’m fine with that i do want to go back to the thought exchange i don’t know if it’s an application or what we’re calling it um but can we just talk about that a little bit um

2:20:10 because it’s a do we have to pay for this is this uh is there a cost associated with this yep it is an expensive platform won’t uh skirt around that issue it’s about twenty thousand dollars um started out uh significantly higher but worked with um the vendor um that’s why we’re using esser funding uh to support it because it does fit a piece of the social emotional learning aspect of sr3 that has to be met because you can use it for polling students and staff just like we do the youth rest behavior survey this would be a singular question to provide feedback on where students and staff are in terms of mental health so while i see the value in it i guess what

2:20:57 i’m struggling with is you know we just went through a period of saying the needs and priorities we have for our financial resources um and this is a large expense that i’m having a hard time seeing how we justify making that expense over student-facing materials that we’ve just gone through a whole process of identifying a need for yeah i i guess meg and i would say it’s the chicken or the egg are we going to be able to get people to support district initiatives and funding by better engaging them and this is something that i hear over and over

2:21:44 again that people want to be included in the conversation want to have their input and this is a tool to provide that right so one of the other things we talked about was the communication advisory group which i think you said you’ll be putting together which i think is is valuable and we have so many resources i mean we saw it just you know with the passing of the of the new school with the resources that we have available in our community that are willing to help and so you know i think we should be looking at those resources first rather than using our finite resources for something like this well again i see the value in it for me i’m having a hard time with the cost

2:22:31 benefit especially given where we are with our resources that our student facing and one of the things we’ve talked about for a long time is that all our decisions should be based on what’s the impact to our students what how does this impact student achievement and so i guess that’s the piece that’s kind of you know that’s that’s the that’s the piece that i’m not 100 percent on board with yeah i think that’s good and i think also if it gets an override pass that’s the impact to student achievement that we are finally funding the district and funding the priorities and getting teachers the supplies materials resources that they need that we all know that they need i don’t think that

2:23:16 was ever in question but how do we make sure the community is involved in helping to determine how best to fund those agreed but this is a big financial bet to make on that so i just want to make a point of clarification and i for myself too because i may have misunderstood this when john presented this to emily and i are in our meeting it was my understanding when you first mentioned it to us that you had already entered into this contract and you were in it was a done deal you were letting us know that it was done but that it was done that is correct okay so i just wanted to make it clear that like this isn’t something that any school that we they really have a contract so my my opinion is

2:24:02 is is if we own this let’s maximize results from it and use it and one of the questions i had asked dr bucky when he had told us about the contract was you know is this just one user can principals use this can teachers use this can our guidance counselors use this to do emotional check-ins and kind of as a way because my understanding if i understood it correctly is it it takes this verbiage of what you’re typing in it’s not a check a scale of one to five or check this box it’s a question with open-ended answers and again this is just my interpretation when dr bucky had explained it first and then this algorithm

2:24:48 pulls out the theme so my question is can our counseling staff use this to send out a question like a well-being check if you will to our students that it will then kind of give back and through the algorithm that you know there’s a flag here maybe that we’re seeing a con a common theme here and it’s a concerning theme or or are there ways for us to use since we now own this platform are there ways for us to use this so it is positively um in the immediacy i think megan’s looking at how does it possibly impact today tomorrow this month is there a way for our our staff or our our individuals within the district to

2:25:36 utilize this to directly impact students now i don’t want to pretend to be a thought exchange expert but i provided several links to the committee for how people have used including testimonials from neighboring districts and it is my understanding that the scope of what you’re talking about we have the capacity to operate that was my takeaway too i just i think it’s clear at this point that technology is not um my strong suit so i did not want to be the one to make that take away allison yeah so that that was one of my points of clarification because it sounded the way you said it dr bucky is that the contract was in place so this is a product we have and i would agree that we

2:26:21 wholeheartedly need to embrace it and use it as much as possible my follow-ups on that are are there limitations in our contract as to how many of these we can do um and then no i see you shaking your head no that’s good that’s awesome um and then my one other question slash concern would be

2:26:42 anything that talks about an algorithm sometimes i get to get a little um queasy about so would we also get access and again fully anonymous i wholeheartedly subscribe to that would we get access to the raw data as well or does it just print out what its algorithm thinks are what’s needed and that’s all we get here i’m going to have to use sarah fox’s line on the depth of knowledge of technology okay and that’s totally fine yeah no i wednesday to do our first professional development on it so you can probably just relay some of our questions absolutely oh yeah i’m sure yeah um so i and um

2:27:30 just as a final thought on that i i do think that this would be a fantastic way to get the community more involved this is what they’ve asked for this is really what they’re looking for and i think by doing this we then have in our back pocket examples of when we have asked for this information from them we have asked for their involvement um for their requests on forums which you all know i’m in huge favor of so i think that that you know back and forth type forums uh which i think will be really helpful from the perspective of getting us back on the same page with the community getting us all working together for the

2:28:17 greater good of our students because that is what we ultimately need we have to find a way to come back together or or else we’re never going to get an override past you know it’s going to keep happening the same way and i think this is

2:28:34 expensive not discounting that by any stretch megan but it sounds like you have thought through the funding dr bucky which is great also or or part of the funding which i think um is great and it it is a step or an example and it might not be perfect i don’t want anyone to expect perfection but it is a step and a show that we are trying to hear the community and we are trying to do more to get them involved to hear from them and to then take action on what we hear back but certainly there are tens of thousands of other opportunities that we could use for this sense of care yes um i just want to clarify that this is grant funded through sr3 which was one

2:29:21 of the things that drew me initially was that it could be paid for grant funding it is a one-year contract so we are not bound to four or five years to have to find this money in the operating budget but some of the districts i think if you would have if you saw the testimonials one district’s been using it for a decade and so they have memorialized this into their technology budget each year

2:29:50 so um so um i want to go back to something that dr bucky you said maybe i misheard you but you said that this would take the place of a communications advisory or subcommittee it could uh but if we thought that using the data generated from thought exchange would be helpful to process through a superintendent advisory or subcommittee i would be totally open to that okay because i think

2:30:18 i think we have a big issue on how we communicate things and i don’t i don’t know how this tool is going to help getting information out that way one of the thought exchanges that we do early on should should be and could be how do you prefer how can we better communicate right exactly but then how can we and then if we need yeah so one of the features of thought exchange is that it doesn’t require somebody to then take the data to analyze the data to put together a presentation there is a mechanism within the program that does that and actually produces a report that has charts and graphs and ratings so

2:31:05 it kind of expedites that process which would be in my hope a way to get the information out people are like okay you ask us this question what are people saying to get that then back out to the community so if we may moving forward um maybe under somewhere on the district website we have an area even a quick link maybe to thought exchange and when you click on it it will have the weekly or whatever thought exchange that’s district-wide because we’ve discussed there may be ones that are more targeted in other areas but maybe we have that link so that you can click on the district-wide one but then you can look at the past reports so you can see this was the past thought exchange how did this come out so the community always is involved and always can be communicating their

2:31:51 thoughts on that given topic but they also can be seeing the transparency of oh this is the report on what happened on that one three weeks ago and i think that that’s going to be a go a long way too with helping the community feel involved and feel heard and feel like we’re being transparent because they see what the data returns are um and that may that may just be as simple as a tab for thought exchange where people can go to because i know you know we had the cova tab and i used to go to that almost daily so i can see that i would this is something that i would go to definitely weekly megan is i assumed your hand didn’t go down before but no i put it up again so i guess john you mentioned that you have the professional development next week so i

2:32:37 think you know there have been a few questions that have come up from this conversation that you know would be good to get some more information on after you have that professional development you know allison had some and then i’m curious about how do we ensure data integrity especially for you know people are entering anonymous which i see the value in but you know is there a possibility that the same person could enter 100 anonymous posts with the same thing you know like how do we ensure that the data is 100 valid and also when we go to roll this out to parents how are we communicating it to ensure that we get engagement because that’s been one of our issues like we push out surveys and we have the forums but we don’t get the level of engagement so how does this tool allow us to ensure that we get the

2:33:23 level of engagement that we are expecting that was one of the testimonials megan that the superintendent said that it was a learning curve for the community to adjust to that but i will certainly ask the vendor next week how people have successfully rolled this out and if there’s a way for you to contact that superintendent let’s learn from him what was his learning curve and what was his secret that finally got the engagement um so sarah if we can just add to a future agenda what that role is going to look like so we’re just so we’re all aware and prepared also and have the answer to some of these questions um and then again i’ll ask dr bucky as one of his first ones that he rolls out and maybe

2:34:09 this is even the trial one we roll out through the next week when they come to the professional development is what topics you know form topics maybe the question is what topics do you want to discuss with the school committee and administration and so we can pick our forum topics at least the first one get it on the books and and start that work getting done okay perfect okay perfect um and then hopefully we’ll have things to report back on our in our meeting in two weeks megan did you have another question no this time i didn’t lower my hand sorry um so

2:34:52 close uh new business one item i had after reviewing the minutes we approved tonight um the minutes of 6 16 i was reminded that i it said miss fox requested the policy subcommittee review the section of mass general law chapter 71 section 80. just reading literally from the minutes um on lunch periods and for uh formally voted that section of mass general law says a school committee can choose to give its staff 25 minutes for their lunch um i think that many school districts have done that um it’s something i at least want our policy subcommittee to look at to see if we as a school committee want to adopt that that section of the mass general law as well

2:35:38 i think um you know there’s a lot of benefit to that and i i at least want to get that on a future agenda for us to look at but i would like policy to look at it first and maybe make a recommendation before to us before we talk about um looking at that policy at the greater um community level or committee level allison yeah i um it came to my attention through a few different parents that we have some vastly different policies or procedures at each of our schools in and around gym class the requirements for

2:36:23 um changing of clothes etc and i would like to suggest to the committee that we work to create a policy to have a district or to have a district-wide policy i should should say around that um to include that the changing of clothes is is not required um however you know rubber sold i’m kind of paraphrasing here but that obviously rubber sold shoes would be required

2:36:56 sarah can you add that to yours and can you take as a the chair of that committee can you touch base with dorothy and see if this is something that exists in other districts if there’s wording if it’s something that doesn’t can you just take the helm on that yep as well as can you talk to dorothy about that uh mass general law yeah and i actually as i was reviewing some of the minutes i noticed that and i was like oh that fell off my radar need to put that back there’s a lot there was there’s been a lot in the last few months but no if you can touch base with that uh her on those and and work on those that would be great megan

2:37:32 so not to be a total pain but since it’s 9 42 and i’m tired i’m gonna be the pain so i would really like us to use new business for what it’s intended to be used for which is items that have not reasonably been anticipated 48 hours prior to this meeting and so these types of issues like according to the protocols that we just voted like just pick up the phone and say hey john here’s an issue or hey policy committee you know can we look at this hey sarah as the chair could we add this to an agenda that’s that’s how we’re supposed to work like some of this stuff doesn’t like it’s not that’s not what new business is meant to be for when there’s things that come up that worked unexpected

2:38:19 so i just think like again that’s kind of why we have these protocols is to make sure that we’re using these meetings as effectively as possible but also working with each other outside these meetings in a way that’s effective also um so megan just just for a point of clarification new business um as a structural standpoint really is to to not discuss the item and not to get in into the meat of the item as it would be on a future agenda but to discuss new business that we would like to work on on future agendas so that it’s done in a public meeting and and that it it as a look ahead like last week we we talked about how you know over the next two weeks to prepare yourself for this we’re looking

2:39:05 ahead at doing this so then people really have that that two week period or whatever to kind of look ahead at those things or if a subcommittee so that everybody knows that that subcommittee has been asked to look at these things and that is a way that many committees use that so i think that it’s it’s a it’s appropriate it also is a placeholder for you know emergency things there but you know i think both of these things are are things like i what allison just noted as it’s more of a request to be on an agenda or to be looked at in the future allison yeah i mean also the school just started so i i literally was only just contacted

2:39:51 about these it’s not even at my child’s uh this the school of concern was not even at my child’s school so it certainly wasn’t something um in advance it’s a general comment i just want us to see new business used for like what it’s supposed to be used for and to keep these meetings as effective as possible that was my only point um does anybody else have any other new business spring up all right um so we have correspondence masc there’s a couple other pieces that were brought to the attention that when people in the public had emailed us during the week had asked that it be added to formal correspondence those were in your packets they’re on the packets online um

2:40:36 unless anybody else has anything else to add in addition to that up sarah gold oh i i you know and this was an issue at the end of last year as well with correspondence and sort of what that means you know i’m not too different than the new business uh question what that means and the community’s ability to request that their that their email will be added into the record i mean their email by emailing us is a public record so it’s already in the record um and when it was mentioned at the retreat colby had said yeah we should probably talk about that so i was just wondering you know because again it happened a couple of times this week and then there was an email from august that was added in and i had

2:41:22 so i’ve got a question on that too but did did anybody follow up sir did you follow up with colby on that um so i have not had a conversation with colby in that originally the only correspondence that had been in there was the one from masc that came to mia’s um chair because when things come to me kind of at that level i think it’s really important to share with everybody and then there was um someone had reached out and said um i had requested there had been a request for things to be added and they weren’t could they please be added and then we did add those those two things so i will follow up with colby on that um i think to me the difference being um yes everything is a public record some people you know aren’t asking for it to be

2:42:08 added in there because you know for whatever reason they may not feel comfortable yes it’s a public record but really having it out there and some you know have it added because they really wanted to be on the record in a form of public comment but couldn’t be so this is their way of attending so i do see that there are pluses and minuses to that so i will try to um i think as a resource i’m gonna go to dorothy first because she’s free um and see what she recommends and then follow up with colby with much more targeted questions that i get from dorothy just because i want to be very cognizant of using that time wisely yeah no absolutely and i can give you a preview because i talked to dorothy a little bit about this at the end of last

2:42:56 year um and so she will she will express concern over it as well similar similar concern it was a very similar reaction to what colby gave at the retreat so whether dorothy’s got more insight into it that you know than the comment because we were having as a dedicated conversation kind of about putting things in at that moment um and so you know she said you know you should take a look at that so whether she’s got more thoughts on that in the on the back side of that short conversation you know absolutely reach out to her um because i i mean i just you know there was an email or yeah an email that i think was added in last minute today that i don’t think was requested to be edited by the person and so i was just wondering and last week it sort of seemed like we were adding emails but we never there was a couple of emails that came through i think one from west capiton the other from dan mcmahon at the end of last

2:43:41 school year that never were added into the record so i just i i’m and this confusion exists from like last may march and may you know like all like i’m just confused as to what correspondence is used for because historically to me and you know it certainly is my time as chair until sort of things started to unravel there towards the end correspondence was exactly that like the masc resolutions of things that have kind of come into either the chair or the superintendent that hey yeah this whole the whole committee should be made aware of this and you know so here you go it’s officially on record um but you know i may be missing something too so i just would it would be in in that kind of consistent piece of trying to look at the public comment um

2:44:27 piece and you know all of that you know i’ll make a very unpopular statement right now and i don’t want anybody to you know hang me for it but like if we’re gonna be doing emails into the record you know might we shorten our meetings by by asking people to just email us instead of doing public comment um so you know there it’s we’ve definitely not wanted to do that in the past and i think for very good reasons but i don’t know it just yeah okay no no i will talk to dorothy i will talk to um colby if dorothy doesn’t give me some clear concise answers i just want to be clear that i have no intention of doing away with public comment um i think it’s a cornerstone of our our way of

2:45:13 you know public meetings especially in marvel’s head so that’s not that is not going to happen um so i will i will do those follow-ups and then if there is nothing else to add i will adjourn us at 9 49 with an apology that is 9 49.