School Committee: March 7, 2024

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

0:01 Um, all right. I’m gonna call us back into session at 7 0 4,

0:08 um, and open it for accommodations.

0:14 Uh, I have a couple. I am already getting emotional. Um, I wanna say fun things first. Um, the Village School is going to have their production, actually, they already are doing one production of Peter Pan right now, so we wanna make sure we, which cast a, um, great luck and great success on their performance tonight. Uh, cast b, which some of us have students in, um, will be tomorrow night. So the performance is, uh, tonight at six, tomorrow at six, Saturday at two and Saturday at six. And we super encourage everybody to go. It’s going to be a wonderful performance that children have worked so incredibly hard, and it’s always adorable and,

0:59 and just a bright spot, which I think we all could also use. Um, I want to commend the boys hockey team for their great success. Um, lately they’ve just really crushed it with kind of a, a push here at the end. Um, and I believe they’re going to the final four, if I have that right. I’m sure I don’t wanna steal cat’s thunder, love sharing that. Um, and also our track star cat, I think everybody should be proud of her. Um, and I also just as a mom, um, as a person, as a, as a citizen, and even as a school committee member for me, I want to let the teachers know that I stand with you. Um, and I commend you all, every single one of you, for the hard work that you do every single day

1:45 with minimal resources, um, and the way you just power through all of the time. Um, I want you to know from me how much it means, and I want to know it’s not lost on so, so many of us. And just thank you for everything you do. Everything you do trickles down to our students to provide them with a better experience at their schools, to provide them with a better education. And I just can’t support you enough. So thank you. You, um, anybody Else? I have a commendation. I want to thank, uh, Dr. McGinnis. I attended her safety committee meeting today, and they’re running like clockwork now. I’ve never seen as much preparation for these as I have in the past, but there’s minutes, there’s action items, so everything is getting documented now.

2:30 I also want to thank all the principals for all the hard work they’re doing to make sure their buildings are safe, which are reported to Safe Committee meeting along as the fire and the police department. People from Tower and Charter are there. It’s a great meeting, and we’re getting a lot of work done this year. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Magda. Any other commendations? Uh, yeah, I’ll just, um, reiterate, um, Allison’s commendation. I won’t belabor it, but I thank you, Allison, for making that statement. And I, I do stand by all our teachers and thank you everyone for coming tonight. Sorry, I can’t be there with you. All right. Um, I’m gonna take one item out of order. I know we have a lot of people signed up for public comment. I just wanna let Kat go first with her student update so that she can leave and get back to her studies

3:16 and other items. So, Kat, if you can give us your update. Thank You. On Friday, March 1st, the MHS Theater Arts performed the life of the Phoenix at the Veterans Middle School with free admission. The casting crew has worked hard to perfect this play, written by students Brady Weed and Luke Menage. They have advanced onto semifinals in the Massachusetts Drama Festival, which will be held in Framingham this Saturday, March 9th. On Tuesday, March 5th, the lead teachers at the high school held curriculum night for incoming freshmen. The Knight highlighted the schedule, course registration, and tours of the high school. Today, 30 students in DECA are competing at the state championship, and hopefully we will see some of them advancing to internationals. The National Honor Society is holding their annual blood drive in the gym on March 14th, from 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM

4:04 The Trium Honor Society held a coffee house in the MHS cafeteria this past Monday at 6:30 PM It showcased individual and group performances by the choir and jazz band. The honors Spanish five class is hosting a dodgeball tournament as a fundraiser for Feeding America, which is, which is a non-profit organization that supports communities through soup, kitchens, shelters, and food pantries. Marblehead got Talent will be hosting its semifinals on Wednesday, March 13th at the high school finals will take place on Thursday, March 27th at the Cabot Theater in Beverly, the junior class of 2025 held a fundraiser at Chipotle this past Tuesday in order to collect more money for their grade. The junior auction has been open since March 1st, and the class is encouraging everyone to bid until the auction closes on Sunday, March 10th. Sophomores have been handing in their permission slips

4:52 and tickets for the annual semi-formal, which will take place on Friday, March 15th. Seniors were given a presentation on upcoming scholarship opportunities this past week, and scholarships will be awarded for a great number of academic and athletic achievements. Several track athletes will compete at New Balance Nationals held in Boston this weekend, featuring runners in the hurdles 55 meter sprint and two mile spring. Sports have started holding meetings and captives practices this week, and the official start of the season is Monday, March 18th. Thank you very much again. Have a nice note. Enjoy your banquet. Thank you. Is there a sheet back there with the sign in for, um, public comment? Would you like me to get it, sir? Yeah, I think Jonathan’s gonna grab it. Great. Even better.

5:43 Thank you, Jonathan. Thanks. Um, Jonathan Heller,

5:55 just, um, many of you already know, but if you can just state your name and address for the record.

6:03 Sally CH 80 Garfield Street, Jonathan Hillard, 26 Rough Road.

6:11 The safety of students and staff remains a top concern of the Marblehead Education Association. Educators and staff have been injured. Students are at risk, and learning is routine, routinely disrupted. Too often our educators and staff are asked to bring student behavior under control without the needed support. At present, our resources are inadequate, and safety protocols have remained the same since the change in student services leadership in January. Currently, our schools lack sufficient staffing and best practices as they apply to current safety procedures. Our colleagues at Glover remain on paid administrative leave due to the administration’s failed practices around student safety protocols, the MEA will continue

6:59 to fight for our educators and for safe working and learning environments for all staff and students. We are demanding that administrators follow the school committee’s safety policies. There are many disturbing facts about the injustice at Glover. Four of the main ones being one. Our Glover colleagues were placed on paid administrative leave without just cause, and they were not allowed to answer or ask questions regarding the incident. In question number two, our Glover colleagues were not allowed to review the video of the incident in question until after they were placed on paid administrative leave. Number three, despite multiple camera angles, only one view of the incident was used to determine the placement

7:47 of our Glover colleagues on paid administrative leave. Our Glover colleagues had been asking for a plan to support a student, but their multiple requests were ignored by administration. We all have a stake in making Marblehead public schools excellent places to learn and to work. Educators must have an authentic voice in the decisions affecting our work sites and educators deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and educates, sorry. And we should be the ones recommending which of our members serve on the committees. Looking into these problems in our workplaces, the MEA wants educators to be real partners with the school committee and administration in solving the

8:34 problems in our schools. Educators bring in expertise and a perspective to the conversation that cannot and should not be ignored. Marvel Head Public Schools needs to be more open with all school staff and the community when creating policies and protocols to make our school safe, places to work, and to learn. At present, educators feel left out of important decisions and discussions regarding safety. The school committee must go back to the town and advocate to fully fund the FY 25 budget. With the current budget cuts, we are projected to lose about 15% of our total staff over the past 12 months, going back to last year and potentially this year. And our elementary enrollment based on projections is set to increase by 13% over the next 10 years.

9:22 Yes, some of those positions were vacant, but not because there was no need. But because MPS cannot attract or retain staff due to its salary scale compared to other surrounding districts, MPS will not need to worry about reducing staff. Staff will leave MPS and look for positions elsewhere. The MEA will fight to protect the quality of education provided to the children of Marblehead. Student needs continue to rise, and it’s unconscionable to consider deep cuts to our school staff and programs, budgets and moral documents, and it’s time to invest in our children and see where Marblehead stands when it comes to public education. Thank you. Thank You. Thank you.

10:08 Hall. Kristen Zaro. Thank you. Thank you.

10:20 Kristen Zaro, 16 Merrill Road. My name is Kristen Zaro, and I’m an educator at the Glover School. I stand with my colleagues at Glover School who are being unjustly disciplined for the failed safety policies and protocols of the Marblehead Public Schools.

10:39 Thank You. Thank you. Kristen. Hannah Ika. Ika. I apologize.

10:49 Hannah Partica at Glover School. My name is Hannah Partica, and I’m an educator at the Glover School, and I stand with my colleagues at Glover who are being unjustly disciplined for the failed safety policies and protocols of the Marblehead public schools.

11:06 Thank you, Annie. Diane Gora.

11:19 Diane Gora, 24 Nicholson Street. My name is Diane Gora, and I am an educator at Glover School. I stand with my colleagues at Glover School who are being unjustly disciplined for the failed safety policies and protocols of the Marblehead Public Schools.

11:39 Thank you. Diane.

11:43 Lauren Catalano.

11:50 Lauren Catalano Glover School. My name is Lauren Catano, and I’m an educator at Glover School. I stand with my colleagues at Glover School who are being unjustly disciplined for the failed safety policies and protocols of marble HUD public schools. Thank you. Linda Bruce.

12:22 Linda Bruce, 25 Hawthorne Road. Laura Wes, 39 Maple Street. We, the pre-K at Glover

12:31 stand with our colleagues at Glover School who are being unjustly disciplined for the failed safety policies and protocols of the Marblehead public schools. Thank you. Sarah Cullen. Isabel Menee.

12:58 Sarah Colleen Glover School, Isabelle Nee Glover School.

13:03 Our names are Isabelle, Sarah, Mary, Beth, Tammy, and Caitlyn. And we are educators at the Glover School. We stand with our colleagues at Glover School who are being unjustly disciplined for the failed safety policies and protocols of the Marblehead Public Schools.

13:22 Kaitlyn King and Tammy Misha, We just, Oh, I’m sorry. Laura Clark.

13:44 Hello, my name is Laura Clark. I’m Dana Trudeau. I’m Lindsay Bark. I’m Eliza Denim. I’m John and Diana. We are educators at the Village School, and we stand with our colleagues at the Glover School who are being unjustly disciplined for the failed safety policies and protocols of the Marblehead Public Schools. Thank you.

14:12 Carrie Bergon, Emily Perez, Angie Graziano, and Carrie Colleen.

14:20 My name is Emily Perez. Carrie Bergon, 1 0 8 Jersey Street. Carrie Clean, four Captains Walk Lane. Angie Ano one, Columbia Road, Beverly, uh, three Willard Lane and Glover School. Glover School. Glover School Village and Pets. We are educators, and we stand with our Glover school colleagues who are being unjustly disciplined for the failed safety policies and protocols of the Marblehead Public Schools.

14:53 Megan Bruit, Holly Landry,

15:07 Megan Bruit, Holly Landry. We are, we’re educators at the Brown School. We stand with our colleagues at the Glover School who are being unjustly disciplined for the failed safety policies and protocols of the Marblehead Public Schools. Okay.

15:36 Was that was, did I miss a sheet?

15:41 Um, if there’s anybody online that wants to speak as well, please raise your hand and I will call on you. And if there’s anybody else in the audience that wants to speak, um, please feel free to come up and speak.

15:59 Thank you all very much for coming and speaking. Um,

16:07 That brings us to our next agenda item, which is district updates. Dr. Theresa McGinnis. Thank you. Well, I appreciate and understand you all, um, and I appreciate the care in your messaging this evening. Um, undeniably to my school committee, we are experiencing challenging and frankly, um, sad times. And it is tough. Um, as I shared with individuals today and in an email last night to our staff, to the public, um, that our focus, um, during this time, even though it’s difficult, is to continue to stay centered on supporting our students and each other.

16:54 Um, as we move through these very challenging times and forward, um, folks have been awaiting the word of the ongoing investigation that began last December. I did notify staff and families of the receipt of the reports from both the independent investigators, CIC, and the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families last evening, next week. Um, we will distribute a plan to staff that we are developing with additional measures to retrain all employees in the district, on the school committee policy, and on the regulations for the respect to restraints, along with, uh, providing them the legally redacted CIC report.

17:40 Um, I would like to be able to present that information at the next school committee meeting as well, of the changes that we’re going to make in the trainings.

17:54 I’m gonna open it up to the committee on this topic.

18:01 I, I already said what I said, I will a thousand percent say it again, um, that I stand with you all as teachers. Um, and it’s soul crushing, um, to again, have to sit here and, and hear these things. It is soul crushing. And I’m just, my words mean nothing. It does nothing for you. It doesn’t change your situation. But I have to say them for me. Um, and hopefully you can. Um, I dunno. I, my concern, we are never gonna get anybody to want to be a safety advocate and take these classes literally ever again. We are in a position now, if I were a teacher, there is, you could not pay me enough to want

18:48 to do this, literally, ever. I don’t care what training you give me. I don’t care what you do. They’re not gonna wanna do it. I don’t want them to do it. I don’t want more teachers in the position that the four teachers are in now, that the rest of the teachers at Glover are in now, because those four teachers have been absent, that the rest of the schools here in Marblehead are in. Because they’re all now thinking, well, gosh, what if the same thing happens to me? I, I don’t have an answer of how to fix it besides clearly more proper training from properly trained people. My opinion is that people were not trained. Right? It is no fault of a human if they were not trained, right? I, that’s me, Alison Taylor School individual school committee members speaking.

19:33 I just wanna make that clear. I, I am inc. I am so incensed by this because simply it, it defies logic. You have people that were doing nothing but the best for them, for the student at hand, for any student at hand, for the rest of the students that were watching, that we’re seeing this happen, that know this happens, that saw it repeatedly happen. And yet here we are blaming the people who are only seemingly blaming the people, allegedly, whatever the right word I’m supposed to use is, I don’t know. And I, at this point, I don’t care. The people that were really trying their hardest to do the most they could with the littlest resources, because we can’t get anybody to fund them. And here we are again, just kind of doubling down on that.

20:20 And I, again, don’t have an answer, and I don’t know how we fix it besides making sure we get them trained by the highest possible trained professional, and hope that we have someone that still wants to do that. I don’t know how, I don’t know how anyone is ever going to step up to be in these positions. Again, I don’t blame them. And I feel we’re at a, like, I, we’re such at a loss. And I, I, I don’t know. And I feel like we need to go to other districts that certainly deal with these types of situations, probably more than we do in Marblehead. How do they do it? How do they have professionals that, how did they get trained properly? And what do we need to do to make sure that we get trained properly as a school committee member, as someone that sit in the policy committee, I can assure you that we will look, or Jen

21:08 and I will look into what else we can do from that perspective. It doesn’t help you right now, and I know that, and it’s soul crushing. But we will do whatever we can from that perspective to make sure that our policies are up to date to make sure that the requirements are all there. And I, I just, I don’t even have words.

21:31 Can I see another hand up? Jen Schaffner

21:39 just gonna unmute yourself. Jen. I asked, I I gave it permission to ask you to unmute. Okay. Thanks. Can you hear me now? Yes. Yeah. I wasn’t allowing me to mute, unmute, so thank you. Um, Allison, thank you for your statement. And I concur with what you were saying. I think, um, and I, I won’t belabor the point, but from, from my perspective, you know, I read the report that everyone else has read, um, clearly, um, the result of the professional organization that came in, um, what I read very clearly to me is that this was, um, a failure at the administrative level as well, whether it was the building administration as well as administrators and central administration.

22:25 And that is, um, clear in, in this report. And that, to your point, Allison, is what certainly needs to be dealt with in terms of who we are hiring to replace the folks in those positions, both at the building level and in central administration. Um, you know, I know nobody wants to hear this, but you know, this is, um, the reality of the, you know, the Education Reform Act of 93. This process is not easy. School committee members do not have purview in this area in, in regards to personnel. But we do have responsibility for policy, as Allison stated, we have responsibility for the budget and how we fund that, and how we attempt to go after revenue sources to fund ourselves, our school district pro properly.

23:10 Um, and we’re doing what we can, uh, to try to

23:18 rectify the situation. And I, I thank all of the staff are coming out tonight,

23:26 Right? As members of the school committee, we have very limited amount of information about what actually happened. We aren’t allowed to see the videos. We can only get snippets of what happened based on what the superintendent’s allowed to tell us. So one of the things I, I must stress, everyone knows how invested I am at Clever, haven’t been there for many years, but at the same time, I know the superintendent and she has done the right kind of work. She has consulted with Department of Children and Families who looked at everything. The information was given to the CLC, the company that investigates these kind of charges. So I have to trust in the process. And the process is to wait until the superintendent makes a decision based on the information she was given from both those companies.

24:12 And I really believe this teachers did their best. I don’t know what will come out of that. And I, I’m in the same position you are. I’m waiting to hear the final decision. But, um, you know, she really did spend a lot of time, the superintendent really did spend a lot of time investigating this. And I know that in my conversations with her, that she wanted to make sure she got all the information before she made her final decision. So I hope it’s a good one.

24:42 Yeah. I’ll, I’ll be short, um, since a lot of good things have already been said, but I was a public school teacher, right? So I think to a small degree, I can understand how important and difficult teaching can be. Um, and I think it’s even more important that teachers are supported, uh, and then they have our support. And so I look forward to what the administration will offer around improving safety. And I think we need to take to heart involving educators as we improve things going forward. Mm-Hmm. So,

25:17 to me, this is very multilevel. I’m gonna be honest, I was very surprised to read a press release stating what it stated. Um, I was, I was very surprised at, at the information that, in the statements that were made in a person, ongoing personnel matter. Um, that being said, we don’t own that. And I respect that. We own budget, the responsibility of everybody sitting on this committee to advocate for a budget that meets the needs of our students and therefore our staff. We own policy. It is the responsibility of all of us

26:02 to make sure all policies are in place to,

26:07 to provide what our students and our staff need. Coming outta the CIC recommendations, to me, the meet was in the policy and procedure recommendations, because that is what our duty is as a committee. Um, one of the things I found

26:30 concerning was, well, it, it, it, it notes. We had all of the proper policies in place regarding restraints. There’s a recommendation that we create a policy that makes sure everybody knows what our policies are.

26:48 Um, I, I view that as, yes, we can do that. Um, I view that as why the roles of our administration, our student services director, our superintendent, um, our past. I, I I, I wanna be clear this, this, this did not happen, you know, on November 1st, on December 1st. This is, we, we need to make sure that everybody is aware of our policies. Um, and that’s really important. One thing that was very impactful for me were two statements in particular. Um, in her CIC interview, a safety care instructor was not aware of whether such

27:36 policies even existed regarding physical and mechanical restraints.

27:46 The familiar speech therapy didn’t do me as good, much good as it does our kids these days. The familiarization of the Code of Massachusetts regulations and Marblehead policy may have prevented mistakes made during the incident. That’s really impactful. So it is, I’m going to continue to look to our leaders to make sure that in these trainings, that information is being shared.

28:16 And the most impactful, the most important thing to me was when I look back on the December 21st meeting, when so many of you plus more were here, we consistently heard staff advocating for, for common themes. One of the things we kept hearing the staff advocate for was, um, debriefs after these events and how impactful those can be and how that wasn’t happening in this situation. And one of the three main recommendations was for the debriefs in this case,

29:01 although there were personnel who were concerned for student A, which no one doubts I had, I have no doubts about every employee from our cafeteria workers through our teachers, all the way through every level of our administration. I truly don’t that they care about kids. I really, truly believe no one’s here for the money, clearly, that everyone truly does care about our kids. Um, so that’s not what it is in this case, although there were personnel who were concerned for the student, no one had individual responsibility for him.

29:39 It appeared to lack sufficient planning and support due to the fact that they were not on an ED plan. Moving forward, Marblehead Public Schools should ensure the proper debriefing, planning, and support is given to students with repeated restraints, regardless if it, they’re on an IEP. This is, we owe this to our students. Debriefing should include all individuals involved in a restraint in a multidisciplinary chain. The assertion is if these debriefs were happening from step one, from the first get go, it didn’t need to get to this point. We’re not serving students, right. We’re not so many staff, right? That that is a policy we will have to create.

30:25 It was, um, you know, it, it quite frankly should have been best practice, but it will be memorialized in a policy. Um, and, and that’s what my colleagues and I can do. We can advocate for budget and we can advocate for policy, um,

30:46 and hope that that is enough. ‘cause that’s where our power, you know, ends with the recommendations. So, thank you. Um, I have to get back to my, so is, if there’s no more questions or comments from the committee on this topic, um, I will ask for a budget status update. We’re starting with the athletic fee proposal. Thank you all. Um, chair. I’m chair. Can I do the other superintendent update? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Um, so for the FY 25 preliminary budget in the school of committee memorandum, I included the slide deck, um,

31:33 for you all from last, um, what was the 28th? February 28th. But tonight we’re joined by Emma Plessi, who is our assistant business manager. And Mary Deli is on Zoom with us tonight. And she’s our contracted director of finance and Operations. And shortly, Emma and Greg, our athletic director, is also on Zoom there. Um, they’ll be joining us to review a few, a few slides to illustrate the three options that we have devised largely under, um, some very good direction of modeling that we’re going to show you in just a moment of the athletic fee structure. Uh, so that’s going to be a presentation in just a moment. I asked to unmute Mary. Oh, okay. I gave her permission to unmute, just

32:19 so you know it when you need her to jump in. Great. Great. Great. Thank you. Hi, Mary. Um, a special education audit update. Um, Mr. Oda had asked me about this earlier today. We, um, we anticipate a contract to be awarded mid-May with work to commence by June 1st. The process for that is this, um, a draft request for proposals is about 50% complete right now. And our interim director of student services and director of finance and operations consultant are developing evaluation criteria to use in ranking the RFP respondents. In addition, they’re identifying a proposal evaluation team to review and rank respondents. Um, we anticipate that the RFP will be ready to advertise by the end of the month with responses due in mid-April.

33:07 Once responses are received, we will need two to three weeks to evaluate with possible interviews with the top three firms. The next update is about the roofing project, OPM bid docs that are underway. Um, we’re working on a draft of another request for proposals for an OPM services for the roof replacement project, and anticipate advertising the RFP by the end of this month with responses due in April. There’s a mandatory pre-proposal in mid-April. Again, similar process is identifying the proposal evaluation team to review and rank respondents. Once they are received. It takes two to three weeks to evaluate and possible interviews with the top firms. Um, for that one, we anticipate a contract will be

33:53 awarded by late May. Um, with the OPM assisting in procurement of the architectural and engineering services, that procurement will take about four to six weeks with an anticipated design contract to be awarded mid-July. And then subsequently, the a and e firm will need to develop a design construction documents and bid documents, which will likely take approximately two to three months. So ultimately, the phase one of the roofing project should be during the summer of 2025, so a year from this summer. The fourth update is around the air quality assessment that we had done at Marblehead High School in February. I linked the report there, um, back on January 23rd, I

34:38 provided you with an update of our response to the roof leak at Marblehead High School and suspected mold in a classroom at Marblehead High School. Since then, we contracted with Affirm to perform tests on the identified area, as well as various other locations within Marblehead High School. At this time, the facilities director shared that all of the recommendations are complete, with the exception of one small area of sheet rock that will be removed and patched next week. And I’ve included the list of recommendations from that report and what, what was done and when. The fifth update is some wonderful highlights from Marblehead High School Sports. Um, Kat did a wonderful job talking about all of the great things that are happening at the high school right now. But, um, the boys Varsity ice hockey, as most people know,

35:26 to the MIAA Division three Final Four, where they’ll face the, um, Shahin Tech on Saturday at four o’clock at the Stoneham Arena. The winner will advance to the state championship game. So we will, um, to be held at TD Garden on March 17th, was interesting day as well. Um, another highlight of Marblehead High School Sports is, uh, a track star there. Laia Williams. She was awarded the Northeastern Conference Athlete of the Year for Indoor Track. She’s the MVP for her individual accomplishments that determine the outcome of the track meets. Another one is, um, a senior MA Roy qualified for the all

36:11 around event in the Massachusetts individual gymnastics state championships meet. And she was advanced to compete in the National High School Championships, um, in Fort Myers, Florida on May 17th through the 20th. The Alpine skiers, Courtney Hoge and Sydney Hamilton, qualified for the Eastern States Alpine Ski Championship to be held at Miter Sill Ski Area in Franconia, New Hampshire on March 8th through 10th. Girls basketball, unfortunately lost to Westboro last week in a preliminary game. And our boys basketball had a nice win over Melrose. Um, but then fell to Leominster in the round in round 32 last week. And then finally, um, the staffing updates.

36:57 The Director of Finance and Operations and the Permanent Director Student Services and the Glover School Principal, um, are all being developed. And we wanted to ask, um, school committee members, um, who you might want to join the Glover School principal, um, search if there was one that you were interested in. Uh, both the Permanent Director of Student Services and the Glover School principals will start next week. We already have it po not the post and start next week. Excuse me. We already have it posted for the director of Finance and Operations. Haven’t had a lot of candidates yet at all. Um, but so we haven’t started that part of the interview process yet. Those are the updates, um, for this week.

37:42 Okay. Any questions? Um, just so I’m clear, it’s gonna be a whole nother year with a leaky roof. Mm-Hmm. And we’re just That’s okay. I don’t, like I said, I, it’s not my purview, so I can’t change it. Um, it seems wildly inappropriate. It also seems inappropriate that it took a year off, almost a full calendar year to even get the RFP out for this special education audit, which is beyond abundantly clear that we are desperate for. I don’t, I don’t understand why. I know things take time. I know we’ve had thing after thing

38:28 after thing after thing. It doesn’t stop moving. The bus doesn’t stop moving. And we still have to deal with all the things as they’re coming. And sometimes that means more than one thing has to be dealt with at the same time. And that’s frustrating and it takes a lot of effort. But I just, I just don’t understand.

38:48 I don’t, Well, I can speak to the roof a little bit. Um, in Massachusetts, if a public project is over a million dollars, it requires, um, a owner’s project manager. And because of the bid process, it has to go out to bid. So it, it does extend the process by quite a bit. Originally, we were told that the town was gonna come in and do their projects all at once with us. So we were doing, going to do one project manager with all the projects. I think what finally split it was the town realized all of their roofs as individual units were under the threshold. So they could do their side without an OPM

39:33 versus the high school roof. Um, I wanna say, doing this off the top of my head, I wanna say it was around the $3 million mark so we could, yeah. So they separated ourselves. And that separation was in the last month, I believe. And at that point, we started to do the RFP on our own. Yeah, I mean, we’ve, we’ve, that’s been shared the last two meetings. So I, our students, our educators and administrators at the high school are still gonna have to deal with a leaky roof for another year. They’re, that’s the, they are patching it along. It’s not, not doing anything. But the large project that we need Yeah. To correct is Mm-Hmm. Any more questions on the update? Let’s see. Jen’s hand. Alright. Um, that brings us to the FY budget status update,

40:21 um, athletic fee proposal. And I’ll, I will give Greg the ability to, um, unmute himself as well.

40:31 Greg, are you there visiting? He’s there, yeah, He’s there. Sure am You hear me okay? Yeah. Great. Um, so I’m gonna welcome Greg and Emma here. Greg’s gonna start, uh, talking about, um, a little bit of how we did the comparison to other districts to gather information. Um, and then Emma’s gonna take over to talk about the modeling that was designed and some of the decisions we made around it to give you three different options. So, Greg, the floor is yours. Does Frank have this lines? Oh, Frank, thank You. Yep. Thank you.

41:07 Perfect. Alright. Thank you again for, uh, allowing me to speak on, on this here. Um, the first two, the first slide, uh, two slides is what we shared, uh, last week at our, at our initial budget meeting. I just wanted to quickly review those. Um, as you can see right here, this is kind of a general overview of our athletics from this past season, or excuse me, this past year. Um, our spring numbers are a little bit down because we’re so opening with registration here for another about week. We started the 18th of March for our spring season, so it’s still a little bit low. Uh, those will go up by probably about 50 to 75 participants. Um, but right now this is a pretty good, uh, idea of what we’re working with in terms of, uh, athletics for this past, this past year. Um, that includes the amount of teams that we have, the amount of paid coaches we have on top of probably another 20 to, to 25 volunteer coaches

41:53 that work, uh, throughout the, throughout the seasons as well.

41:58 Go to the next slide, if you don’t mind. Thank you. Uh, so again, this was discussed quickly at the budget meeting last week. Um, as of right now, we pay 50% of our coach stipends through user fees. In the other 50% comes from our operating budget in athletics. Um, with a level service bun, uh, level service funding. Uh, we would hope to keep 50% of that, uh, coach stipend from user fees. And, uh, the rest come from, from the athletics budget, uh, with reduced service funding. Uh, 100% of that, uh, would come from user fees from the student participants. Um, we have some options for you that we’re gonna go through, like Dr. McGinnis discussed. Um, we’re gonna compare some local districts, um, both in the Cape A League, which is a very similar league to ours, as well as the Northeastern Conference, which is the conference we participate in.

42:44 Uh, if you can go to the next slide, we can look at those.

42:49 So I know it’s, it’s small, uh, but I tried to get as much info as I could on, on one slide here so you can kind of compare, uh, both the KPN league on the left and the Northeastern Conference on the right. Um, this, this includes their athletic fee structure, whether they’re, um, you know, pay by sport if they’re like us currently where you pay a base fee to play one, two, or three sports. Um, some have family caps, some do not. Uh, as you can see in the conference, on the right side, uh, four of the, of the schools do not have, uh, family maximum. So there, there, there’s no, uh, cap on that. Whereas we do, uh, at 800. Um, and we’ll get into that in a few minutes as well. But this gives you kind of an idea of other structures around, uh, the North Shore, uh, of, of like schools like ours that we participate against.

43:35 And with, Uh, this was also discussed, uh, at meeting last week. Just kind of a, a general overview of what our user fee structure is currently for this year. Uh, 4 95 for the high school will get you one, two, or three seasons of athletics. Uh, no matter what the sport is, uh, $140 will get you high school, club sport high school clubs, uh, and $66 will get you, uh, year flag football, which is also known as power pop for our senior girls. And now for our middle school, it’s, uh, two 20 to play in Scholastic sports in the fall, winter and spring. And then 140 for intramural sports that they offer. This is just kind of another look at what the family Max is for those schools that do have a family max. Um, as you can see, our current structure right now is on the lower end at 800.

44:21 Um, whereas, you know, a school like Swamp Scott or, or Triton, uh, is up in the 18 hundreds. So it’s, there’s quite a big, um, quite a big gap between the, the high and, and the low. Um, PVDs is extremely low, but that’s just how they, uh, operate there. So, um, I will turn it over to Emma for her, uh, kind of analysis of what, uh, we look through for the three options. And I’ll take questions afterwards with Emma. Thank you very much, Greg. Um, hello. Thank you. So we reviewed and discussed the several different possibilities. As you saw on the previous slide, there are three standard models that districts, um, around us use to set their athletic fees. Either a flat fee for unlimited participation,

45:10 a per season fee with a varied fee for the first season you participated in the second, and then the third, or a per sport fee. So we have, um, available to present to you today an option under each one of those methodologies. Each of the proposed models do have, uh, do generate roughly the same revenue. Um, so they are comparable in that regard. Our first option that you see in front of you is a flat user fee. This is the same structure that we currently offer. Um, this under this fee, our high school unlimited fee would raise to $1,340. And the middle school unlimited athletic fee would raise to $590, um, under each one of our models as well.

45:55 Our family cap is based on two students participating in three seasons of sports, um, at the high school level. So under this model, it would be two times the unlimited fee, ‘cause that would get you three, um, three seasons of sports. Um, and that methodology was followed through in the establishing of the family cap under each. It, um, in reviewing our comparable districts on the slide of before, uh, that is around where other districts fees tend to be set a little bit less than two or so. Um, and this then sort of gave us a, a sort of an even playing field. Mm-Hmm. Uh,

46:42 under the section second option. This is a season based fee structure. Um, this one would result in students paying the highest fee in their first season, a reduced fee in their second season, and a further reduced fee in their third season. You can be the, see the fee structure ahead of you. Um, we ha more than half of our student athletes are one season athletes. This model brings us, excuse me, uh, closest in line with what our current families are paying at 495. So currently families are paying $495 for unlimited athletics. So if you participate in one season of sport, you’re paying $495 already. This fee structure brings you closest to that.

47:27 Um, so hopefully the smallest impact on the majority of our student athletes and their families.

47:37 And then under the third option, the fee structure is based on a, depending on what the sport is, sports with higher associated fees have more coaches, higher equipment costs, facility rental charges, um, result in a higher fee. So hockey and football have, um, significantly higher fees. And then sports like tennis or cross country have much lower fees.

48:06 Um, oh, um, open up two questions in the committee.

48:13 I’ve got some. All right. Um, so I just crunched some numbers. Mm-Hmm. Swamps got’s the highest. Fa I, I’m focusing kind of on the family cap because I think a lot of families rely on that, um, to keep equity in their own family, but also, um, ‘cause you know, public schools become very expensive in Marblehead. Um, you pay in the beginning when they start kindergarten and you pay when they get older and they wanna be active in their community. And I know we have to do this. I know we’re at a breaking point in our budget and we’re literally choosing between cutting off arms and legs and we have to prioritize, you know, getting educators in front of kids. I, I get how we got here.

48:59 I also am really having a hard time, ‘cause we’ve talked about academics and extracurriculars, how that gets some kids in the door. It’s not always chemistry class, it’s not always the librarian. Some kids, we get them in the door because they’re excited about what happens at the end of their day and, and that gives them access to the stuff that happens during the day. So I wanna be very cognizant of that

49:24 when I look at these. And then also, you know, uh, these kids have to be, you know, perfect in every way to get into the college of their choice and have to be well-rounded and on this team and do this. We ask so much of our kids and then we’re, we’re putting this burden on families that families almost have to now say, we can afford you, but not this. So when I look at the family cap, the first option’s, 43% above the highest in the entire area, swamp got, it’s a 235% increase from what parents are paying now. The second option’s, 59% higher than Swamp Scott, 273% increase of what we’re getting now.

50:11 And this third option that makes me like, You know, think about my own family planning, um, is 101% higher than Swamp Scott, and 371% increase for families.

50:32 I don’t know what to do because I, it, I’ve said all along, I’m not gonna cut educators in, in front of kids. I, I, I’m not for, you know, for, for sports. But, but sports and activities get kids in the door and they’re so important and they open opportunities for kids. And I really worry about, we talk about the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And this is putting a gigantic equity barrier on families. I know there’s, um, scholarship funds and things like that, but it’s hard, it’s hard for parents sometimes to even disclose to their kids. You know, we’re in that field. Um, and it will make a difference. It will put up a barrier.

51:17 It will create inequity for our students for, to be able to all access this. I don’t know what the answer is. I know we have to do this financially. Um, it really just hammers home. We have to fund our schools. We are running a public education facility. The pay to learn, the pay to play, the pay to have access to things in a public setting needs to end. We need to pay as a town to fund this stuff. So I, that’s kind of where I am. It’s less of a question and more of like a manifesto, I guess. I don’t, I don’t know. I see Jen’s hand up.

52:00 Go ahead, Jen. Oh, I got, I think I have to ask you to unmute.

52:09 Yeah. I don’t know how we can fix that. Um, I think it’s a security setting. Well, maybe you can make me a co-host or something, but, uh, whatever. Um, so I just wanna understand, um, Dr. McGinnis that you are recommending the second option. Is that correct? The, um, Yes. Season based fee. Yeah. Because we looked at, half of the students are a little more than half of the students, um, playing one sport. So that one was the most in line with what parents are paying right now.

52:44 Okay. None Of it, believe me. I mean, again, Jen, just to be clear, you know, Oh, none. We understand. And as we were doing this and we went through lots of iterations of this, um, none of it feels good, um, or feels right. Um, but based with 2.3 million and trying to steer clear away from our fourth tier, as I described in the budget meeting fees were an area that, um, the town administrator asked us to look at across all departments in the town. And this was the biggest one. So I I I, it’s not a proud moment, it’s just a No, I know how we got here. I I don’t begrudge anybody at this table. I begrudge the people that put us in this situation.

53:31 Okay. Um, okay. So, um, so I just wanted to understand that. And I think that, um, just, you know, we’re, we’re obviously, I don’t think we’re making this decision tonight, Sarah, that I don’t believe this is For vote, it’s vote Tonight. No. And, uh, yep. And, um, I think that at the budget hearing, uh, later this month, there’ll be an opportunity if Yeah. That’ll really be the next, the opportunity for people to be able to, I think it’s just speak, I think it’s important for us to be able to hear from parents, um, in regards to this, to this change,

54:06 This question, it may be for Greg, but it may be for the principals, because it, it’s not just sports. Mm-Hmm. So sorry guys.

54:15 So in theory, we, it used to be one flat activities fee. Um, you could wind up, you know, at the middle school running track in the fall, and that’s $275. And if you wanna be on the yearbook club, you have to pay $290 to be on the yearbook club. Correct. Yeah. Or like, to be in the math team, the math meet, we have to pay for our kids to meet, compete in the math, meet the 299. I’m seeing heads. Okay. Um, Can you put this slide back up again, Greg? Someone, the first slide, I just want to say something.

55:05 Do you have a sense, um, I think Greg spoke really well about what people are doing at the high school, but Matt and Mandy, if you guys can speak to what, how your kids are signing up for things. Is it one off here or there? Are you seeing a lot of mix of involved year round?

55:22 I, I think, uh, we catch, you know, um, a good number of students in our field hockey program to start the year, which is our second largest program. And then we might catch them again in track, which is our largest program. Um, however, unlike the track program at the high school where, you know, you’re limited the number of students that actually can compete at the meet because it’s a little bit more, well, it’s, it’s a little bit more competitive. Everybody on our track team runs at every meet, you know, so I mean, we run 20 heats of the a hundred meter dash, we, you know, we just keep pushing students through these, these meets. So, you know, I think when it comes down to it, yeah, parents are gonna have to make some decisions.

56:08 Families are gonna have to make some decisions. I hate user fees as parents, uh, as an administrator, as a teacher, as a former high school coach. Um, I hate user fees. Um, but we were just in a room with 75 teachers, and without taking a look at this, again, we have to pick the ones that aren’t gonna be here next year. And that’s where I’m sort of at, you know, as a principal, it’s like, I hate these Mm-Hmm. But that’s where we’re at. And it’s, it’s, it’s a simple scale to, to weigh out where we can save money without losing people. So, So just, can I ask a question of somebody, maybe Emma? Um, the, the, the, the slide that I was looking

56:54 for was actually the PowerPoint slide. I think that Emma, you had at the beginning. It shows at 50% and at a hundred percent. Does that ring a bell with you? It was that first slide. Yeah. Nope. Nope. Third, third, number three. Oh, AL’S got us at number three, right? So if you go back to the very beginning of that first slide Mm-Hmm. That one. And this is so right there. So at the bottom it says, the athletic and the central offices collaborated on a user free structure to help close the gap of 170, approximately $170,000. So at $170,000. And we have, we have approximately 1200 athletes,

57:37 I believe, unless I’m wrong on that. We Have approximately, um, somewhere to the tune of 850 individuals. Um, the number that is on the slide that showed by each season counts students more than once if they participate in more than one sport, Greg, one sport. So, so, so what are the 200? So the 200 is actual two, I’m, I’m just trying to do the math. I’m doing 170,000 divided by, um, divided by, and maybe that’s wrong, divided by 1200 is $141. All question, Jen. I can probably speak to that a little bit better. Sorry, I was, I couldn’t unmute myself for a second there. Um, okay. So the, the 12, the 1200 number

58:23 that you’re looking at is, that’s if, if you are a student that plays three sports accounter three times. So you wanna take into consideration if we’re gonna, if we’re gonna go through a structure where you’re gonna pay, you know, a per season fee, we wanted to look at that. Um, if you’re looking for numbers of actual individuals. Yeah. Um, in the year 21, 22, we had 642 individual athletes. In 2223, we had 683 individual athletes. Okay. And as of about a week and change ago, um, this year we have 706 individual athletes, which will probably go up to close to 800 with the, with the amount of spring athletes that will sign up in the next 810 to 12 days. Okay. All right. So let’s just take 8 0 6. I just, I mean now 7 0 6, I just took, um, sure.

59:10 The gap of a hundred, the gap of 170,000 by, uh, 706 athletes is $240. So the, is it the gap is the total budget. That’s what I’m questioning. It’s the, it’s the family cap. Jen, that’s where the, the meat is. ‘cause that went, the cap was 800 and most families were hitting a cap. So their second, their second child, they were paying full price for the first a, you know, a discount on the second, and the third was free. But even so, even if you didn’t, even if you like, in other words, even if it was literally 800 and or 706 athletes, everybody paying, that’s another $240 per athlete. It’s not this Then I guess, I guess I’m not,

59:56 I know what you’re saying, Jen. So if it, if $170,000 is the gap, that means 300, No, that’s the total, that’s the total number we need to hit. Allison 170 is the total, is the gap? No, that’s, it would be 340 as the total, correct. Roughly, Yes. So Jen, Jen, right now, half of our user fee, I’m sorry, half of our coach stipends comes from user fees. The other half comes from my actual budget. But when we’re looking at paying for a hundred percent of the coach stipends, we need to increase the number, the amount of user fees in order to pay the coach. But 270,000. But even if you, I guess that’s what I’m trying, here’s what I, here’s what I’m getting at. So let’s say, so 170 times two is 340,000. I, you can keep saying family cap. I still need to ask my question and understand it logically. If it’s 340,000, so let’s say it’s 400,000, really

1:00:43 because of whatever, it’s just estimating, make it easier math. If there are 700, if you have $400,000 as the total budget you need to make, right? And you have seven money that you need to, to make in order to fund all of these coaches, and you have 700 students. If I think what, Jen, what you’re saying is if you do 400,000 divided by 700, you’re gonna get, I don’t know, 550. Yep. I got like four 60, but five, I Wasn’t getting 400,000. You get five. If you do 400,000, that’s, that’s using 400,000 instead of three 40. If you do 400,000 divided by 700, you’re gonna get 571. So that would mean each student would need to pay 500 and each athlete would need to pay $571,

1:01:30 like total for the year. So I think that that is the question Jen is asking. And the disconnect. So the part is where the family cap does come into play in this is that if you have students that span across multiple, um, grade levels or, right. So Dis Removing that though across the schools. So what happens though is when you meet the family cap and you have students at the middle school or at the village school who are participating in a, uh, club, that stipend is not getting contributed to, right? Because you’ve already met at the family cap. Right. So the 170 that’s reflected is the additional funding for the athletic stipends. Mm-Hmm. Not including the additional 102,000 that needs to be funded to raise the, um,

1:02:17 extracurricular advisor stipends. Okay. So if we do 340,000 plus 102 would make it, So it would be 204 because 102 additional. So Okay. All In, so would be 6 3 40 plus 204 is 500, 500 something. So 500. And so if I do 500 altogether, 550,000 divided by 700 students, just taking the low average, that’s $785 each. Yes. That though the models do take into consideration that with the rising costs, we will see participant drop off. Right. To Sarah’s point, finances could be

1:03:02 A barrier. Listen, I have a student athlete. I fully understand. Yes. IIII know that and it crushes my soul too because my son live lives and dies for football. So, um, that I, I, I get that. I’m just, I think that’s where Jen was going with her question and trying to understand. Do I, am I reading your, reading your room, Jen? Yeah. I think, I mean, we don’t need to sort of belabor this here. Um, maybe I can work offline with Emma and just get a better clarification of this. ‘cause it doesn’t, it’s not, And I understand the family cap. I understand the benefit it brings people as well, because if you have six kids and they’re all in high school at the same time and they all play sports, that’s a boat ton of money. Yes. So I get that. Oh, Absolutely. But we don’t know how many of those families there are. No. And and I think that would be a good stat to have. What is,

1:03:49 And, and by the way, the 700 students that Greg’s referring to are athletes. So Emma, you’re adding, you’re throwing in the expense of the other activities. But I don’t, Not the people, Not the revenue. ‘cause we don’t know how many Students, people that just do the math club, people that just do the year, But we’re only defining it by athletes. Not like, I think Mm-Hmm. I don’t, I think I need a big, a little bit of a deeper dive on the analysis. Absolutely. And not all of our athletes pay as well. Anybody who, um, meets certain qualifications doesn’t pay at all. Um, so I think, I think there’s some explanation people are looking for, for deeper. Thank you. Thank you guys for deeper explanation. Thank On the dollar figure figures,

1:04:31 as we work through the, the budget process and we have our public hearing, it will be really important to hear from the public, what do they want an education in Marblehead to look like? Do they want all of the cuts we proposed the other day? Do they want, well, Sarah, before we jump down down this road, we need to make sure we’ve got the numbers right. So, Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of additional Questions. Let’s just do that Before we Start. I mean, I think we need to get that clarified before the budget hearing. Okay. This is our last meeting before the budget hearing. So I, I understand. Yeah. I encourage you guys, um, to reach out offline to Mary Delly, um, Emma, or Dr. McGinnis and get those answers.

1:05:17 Um, and you know, so we can, you know, if people in the public have questions as well, they can reach out. Um, anybody else have any further questions? I just have one. What happens if we don’t get enough students signing up for support to support the coach? What happens? Does it come out of our budget then? Is that what the plan is that I think we had all, if we don’t have enough students to support a program, that program, for example, I used girls basketball last year. They had three teams this year. Didn’t have the numbers. We only had two teams. We just wouldn’t, we wouldn’t field that specific team for that specific program

1:06:02 In option one and two. That, that is more feasible in option three, where it’s pay to play per sport, say soccer or field hockey at five 50. If, um, we know you need so many players to fund those stipends and because of the fee, we don’t get enough people to sign up for field hockey. Where does that delta come from? I think, right, Brian? Yes.

1:06:31 You wouldn’t, would you run the program still? Or would I think what you said is you wouldn’t run the program if you didn’t have enough students to, We probably wouldn’t be able to operate the program is probably what would happen. It’s unfortunate, but that’s, that would be the unfortunate reality. Yeah.

1:06:47 Um, other questions on this agenda item?

1:06:54 Um, the next item, the staffing accountability report. If you just wanna speak to that. Yeah, sure. So I, um, notified you guys today, our interim director of student services is working, um, on two major things in the week and a half that she has been in the permanent position. And one of them was the staffing is the staffing accountability report. Um, the other is supporting Glover. So those were her two, those are her two focus areas right now. Um, with regard to the staffing report, what she found is the data, as we were reviewing it a day and a half ago, um, that she extracted from Aspen, um, wasn’t accurate in some places. And so what we determined is we have to go back.

1:07:41 She was reading individual IEPs as well, but there was some discrepancy. So while the IEPs are correct, and while the teachers are doing all that this year, in order to plan for next year and give you that data, we have to make some fixes. So she has scheduled some appointments next week with special educators, um, and team chairs who will help identify that data more. So we will present that, um, by the end of next week is the goal to you guys.

1:08:10 I’ll open that up to the committee. Um, so I Had an email I was gonna send out to, to Dr. McGinnis. So I mean, we have, we have been asking for this for a while. Uh, it, you know, it is what it is. We were supposed to have had it for our budget workshop last week. Um, and then we were supposed to have it tonight. Um, the challenge is, um, it’s getting very close to our budget hearing and I will speak for myself. I, I need that report. I need to be able to get it. I digest it and ask questions, um, before the budget hearing. You know, what I think would be helpful, um, also is if Matt, would you mind, I’m gonna, coming up to the, um, ‘cause he’s been a, a good part of this discussion as well

1:08:55 to talk about, Jen, you’re gonna have a name tag next week. Particularly how principals working with team chairs and others, um, determine their staffing needs at the school. Do you wanna just talk a little bit about how you do that every year with Ashley? Yeah. So Ashley Le and I have been working together for a few years and, um, have come up with a pretty good approach to how we determine, um, how we staff our special education department in our building. Um, it’s nothing unique. I’m pretty sure it’s, uh, also mirrored at the village with students rising up and at the high school with stu with them rising from us. Um, but the very first step we do is we communicate is actually communicates with the chair at the sending school. So in this case be village and they’re sixth grade. And we take a look at what’s coming up, um,

1:09:41 what are the student needs coming up, um, what will be the first impact on our programs, um, for us at the, at the middle school, um, you saw some of our staffing numbers, uh, at the last meeting. Uh, so you saw inclusion is pretty consistent for us. The way we do inclusion at our schools. We, we have two teachers per grade, um, to divide all the inclusion students under two case managers. Um, you know, that really hasn’t changed much in my 13 years here. For a period of three years, we had five instead of four for the building. ‘cause we had a big jump, uh, both in class size and size of inclusion students for whatever reason. So we made that adjustment. So first we take a look at inclusion and we see what kind of supports and needs we have.

1:10:27 And like I said, traditionally, historically, we fall under the two case managers. Um, if a student is inclusion primarily, um, what other supports they receive, um, are smaller in number. So whether it be consults, whether it be time with a, with one of our school counselors or psychologists, whether it be reading supports. Um, you know, these types of supports typically fall under an easy staffing of what we have within our building. It’s the program, um, that we take a look at. If you remember, we, we walk you through the diff three different types of, of programs that we have. Um, and so what we do there, uh, truly honestly is, is really delve in a little bit deeper. First, we take a look at it at a 10,000 foot level.

1:11:14 Um, do we have enough staff, uh, to address the basic needs? For example, uh, if we’re talking language based students, do we have enough teachers to put in front of that number of students? We started just a big, the big bite first. Um, for example, uh, this year I didn’t, uh, so with my rising seventh grade, we added, we brought up from village, um, a language based teaching position from village. So zero sum game in the budget, but we needed another language based teacher for our, our students this year. So at that 10,000 foot level, we caught that first. Um, and then we can start the sort of drill downs. And those drill downs are what help develop both the budget asks that we have. And then even the furthest drill down is the schedule needs. So the budget asks typically fall under teachers first,

1:12:02 the 10 foot thousand, 10,000 foot level, and then the support personnel. What do we need for tutors within our building? Um, do we have enough tutor support to provide the services that these students need and the supports that these students need. Um, and again, that’s weighing, uh, the types of services they have, uh, at a slightly different model than ours at Village, coming into a secondary model here at our school of vets. Um, and then weighing the people that we already have in our building too. So that is the second level. So coming down from teachers, we go to tutors to see if we have enough personnel, and those would be consistent personnel to support our students on a daily basis. Typically, um, on a period, period by period basis. Now we go into the, the, the smallest levels.

1:12:49 We take a look at services that students receive that are a little bit more specialized with, with possibly people that, well, with people that we share outside the district. Uh, whether it be OTPT, which in the secondary level tends to decrease, um, or with speech and language, which in the secondary level tends to shift a little bit. You know, we, we don’t have typically when you’re going into, to the middle school to high school, like services like Arctic, you know, for, for speech and language articulation services. You know, at that point students tend to age out of articulation support. So what we do is with speech and language, it’s not only do they do the speech and language portion, um, but they also do a lot of our social group, uh, dynamics

1:13:35 and, and working with students, with students communicating with other, with communicative disorders. So we have one SLP that we’re, we’re fudging together right now with the, with the high school’s going back and forth between our building and the high school. Um, and so that’s the sort of drill down alert, you know, all the way down to the level for services. And so we typically, as we go through the budget season, we go through teachers tutors first. Um, and then as we get to the service level, because service level, um, is a little bit more, there’s moving pieces on where everybody is every year as far as PT and ot. You know, we, we have a, a PT OT space, but we have nobody like centered in our building.

1:14:20 So some years we might be up because a student has different needs and some years we might be down. Um, and even both those services, um, SLP for us stays fairly consistent because like I said, there’s a, there’s a shift from the types of services that they’re always delivering to, you know, from what you see in early elementary SLP versus an upper, you know, middle school to high school SLP supports. So that’s the sort of approach that we take that drill down. So we’re big picture to small picture and then, then it’s trying to put it all together to make a schedule. And that I won’t bore you with and really has no impact on the budget. So thank you for that. Very much. So what happened in the many meetings that we had coming up to the budget meeting is that the principals sat together,

1:15:06 did first their teachers met together to do those transitions, which was critical, gave that information to them. And then we made charts around the room and of what the needs are based on that. So I, I want you to rest assured, when they were making decisions on who they needed at their school, and then the worst decisions on how do we cut this money, that they looked at all of that going forward. The other part of this that’s just not a, a puzzle that’s easy to put together is many meetings are in the springtime. And so, you know, there’s shifts, uh, especially when you go from one school level to the next level of what the IEP needs are. So it’s not at all an exact science. That’s why what you were saying is a good example is, you know, having been a principal for 13 years, you know, sometimes you have a little bit more SLP you need,

1:15:54 um, than other years. But all by and large, he would need his, uh, eight, two, uh, inclusion specialists at each grade level, et cetera. So, and, but what happens is he might say, Mandy might say, oh, I have three kids that had this certain service that are going up, so they switch off. That’s how they by based on the student need. And so it’s not a perfect science. And so when we’re, it’s just harder to get this information in the, in the, um, but we’re, and there’re students, There’s Students that go Teresa, um, I have a question. Yep. Um, so the narrative that you just gave us, Matt, great. Really appreciate that. Um, but what, what I’ve been asking for, um, with the staff accountability report is the data behind this. So what Matt, you just described appears to be data driven

1:16:40 that you’re, you’re basing this on students, the con the contractual obligations. We have to provide special education services to the IEPs. Um, and there’s obviously regular education scheduling that’s required. So, and I’ve been asking for this, that this information must exist Yeah. Somewhere in some form. Sure, it does. And it does on a student’s IEP and that’s what they exactly use. What we have discovered, Jen, is that in Aspen, it’s not as accurately noted. Um, and two parts of that, and we didn’t have an interim, uh, excuse me, we didn’t have a student service directors for months. So in terms of this work, she started full-time a week and a half ago. So Yeah. But we had one before and we’ve had one for years. Oh, I,

1:17:25 And I agree with that. I’m just saying, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna curb my frustration, but yeah. You know, this is the data I’ve been asking for since June. I feel like it sounds like been years since November. I get that. But that’s what I’ve been asking for and have been told time and time again, doesn’t exist. Right. So I’ve been, uh, Jen was on the committee before me, took a break and came back for some reason. Um, glutton for punishment, Jen, um, I, this is my second year. I was on last year. I asked last year countless times and was told that there’s absolutely no data like that that exists from what Principal Fox is telling us. I feel like for his students at least. And I don’t, I don’t want names. I’m not looking for names. I’m not looking. Well, see,

1:18:12 That’s the problem. And I, I’m, I don’t mean to interrupt and it, it’s not that I’m not here to, to go back and forth, but it, I love spreadsheets. Okay. Julie’s been in the building with me. Mm-Hmm. I love spreadsheets. Uh, I was working today with Ashley Lieman on some spreadsheets for this project. Um, the challenge is students aren’t spreadsheets to us. And I, and I don’t, we don’t put them in spreadsheets to start accounting for their services. I don’t, you know, we, we, I’ll, I’ll speak for myself. I hand schedule every single student that receives services in our building. I hand, I’ll repeat that. I hand schedule every single student, student who receives services in our building from EL services through IEP services to anything else we need.

1:18:57 So it’s not like I’m just taking data and chunking them in. So I don’t have this in a nice, neat spreadsheet. I love nice, neat spreadsheets. That’s how I live a chunk of what I do. Yep. Okay. You guys have seen a little bit of my data analysis with MCAS. I love this stuff, but these don’t always fit as nice little neat spreadsheet. And even if I did, and we are trying, Ashley and I were today trying to put these in a spreadsheet. It’s, it’s, students are not spreadsheets. I don’t, I don’t think. And so, and, and so even if I build the spreadsheet, That’s not what we’re saying, Matt, you know? Alright. I’m going to, I’m starting to get a little frustrated here because we are asked to meet a budget that the town has said needs to be level funded, which

1:19:43 with a little bit more because of the growth. We have very difficult choices to make. We saw this 10 minutes ago with incredible increases to our athletic, to our user fees, to our, to the residents of our town. We ha I we can’t make the decisions and we can’t make the, the, the, the argument to the town if we don’t have the data. That’s all I’m saying. Okay. And I’m not suggesting a student is a spreadsheet or a number in a spreadsheet at all. I wouldn’t want my son to be considered that I’m not, this isn’t, that wasn’t a position statement. I, and I hope I I didn’t come across that way. Mm-Hmm. Um, but this is what you, you, you pay us to do, right? Is is to just, is to, is to provide the services of the,

1:20:30 to the students as well as we can. And I don’t have ex I don’t, I don’t have like, you know, extra staff floating in my building. I’m, I’m cutting a reading teacher that I fought for for 10 years. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. 10 years. I asked for a reading teacher that I’m now putting up to cut. Mm-Hmm. And, and it’s, I, you know, I had to fight. I don’t know if, you know, I had to fight for four years to get an assistant principal. Mm-Hmm. You shared that. And, And, and so I, I guess, and, and again, I I I’m sorry. I’m, I’m echoing your frustration a little bit. Uh, um, and, and it’s just, I, I am, I can walk you through our process. We’re, we’re trying to put this into a spreadsheet. I started working on this a little bit today with Ashley, as I said. Um, but it’s, it’s not the way we typically work.

1:21:17 We look at our programs, we look at the groups of students, we look at needs of students. We staff our, we staff with what we can. And we are always, I want, I wanna sort of say this, we’re always trying to cover a six foot man with a five foot blanket. Mm-Hmm. When it comes to our supports for our students. Mm-Hmm. I, I don’t have a wealth of positions. I mean, I mean, I don’t, I mean, I, when the scariest part of our schedule is when I get to turn to Ashley and say, okay, make the tutors work, and, and then she has to do all the coverage with our tutors once I put the students in the schedule. And then she has to sit there and adjust all the tutors in their schedules to cover all the supports that the students need while they’re in the classes.

1:22:03 This inclusion model that we’re talking about that we, we wholeheartedly believe in. Mm-Hmm. Because I’m, I’m tight every single year. Mm-Hmm. And, and so yeah, I think it’s unfortunate. Provide this Information to the town. I think it’s unfortunate. That’s all I’m saying. Uh, I feel, and I don’t know where that’s coming from. Um, but the comment feels very divisive to agree that as if that is what we as a school committee would ever ask for. And that’s, it’s not the comment that you made. Um, so, uh, it feels very divisive to say that we’re looking, we don’t trust in our administrators that, and I’m not, I know you’re not saying, and it wasn’t you that said it. So it’s not, that’s not at you just in general.

1:22:49 That’s a very divisive way of thinking. And I don’t want that to be the, you can make faces all you want it. It is to think that that’s what we’re saying. No, we are asked to provide a budget. We are told what we have to do from the town. We have a community and parents and members, senior members of our community that wanna know, tell me why. Tell me why. Tell me why. Because they’re, they’re, they want to know that next level, which is why we are asking for us for it. It has, at least for me, I don’t wanna speak for Jen or anybody else. It has nothing to do with thinking you have anybody extra with thinking you have even one extra period or room for one extra student with your tutors. That’s not for me personally, ever

1:23:37 the intention with the ask. It’s just, it’s just, I’ll be honest, it’s just difficult to boil down hundreds of man hours, women hours into a spread, into a spreadsheet. I’ll be honest. ‘cause it’s not, it’s not, it’s not something I’ve ever done before. Mm-Hmm. Now I’m just gonna throw it out there. You know, I’ve been administrator for 21 years. It’s not something I’ve ever done before to go down to a student level of an IEP to pull out minutes. ‘cause that’s what, that’s the spreadsheet I was working on today, right? Mm-Hmm. Was minutes 15 here, 30 there, 60 here. Right. That’s nothing I’ve ever done before. Mm-Hmm. So, yeah, it, it’s brand new to me. And it’s, it’s difficult. I’m not gonna lie. It’s difficult. And so it’s, it’s trying to take all that work and effort

1:24:24 and communication and meetings and, and take those, those literal hundreds of hours and put it onto a spreadsheet’s difficult. And so to, to drill down to each individual student’s, IEP to pull out minutes. I mean, just, just the number of clicks it takes to go through our system takes some time. And, and again, I I, I’m just getting involved with this like literally today. Okay. So it’s like, I’m not saying I’ve done this a long time. Um, but it’s, it’s a lot. It, it’s, it’s a lot. Well, I I’m gonna make two comments. One, to, to Theresa that we had this conversation during the budget subcommittee, and I suggested whether you needed resources, whether you needed to hire temps, whatever you needed to do that, that that should have been something to maybe

1:25:09 to have considered in terms of help with that. But I’d like to hear from Brian, because you know, Brian, you put out, um, a basically a paper, um, a few, several weeks ago, basically outlining what you were looking for in terms of reporting that, that I thought was, you know, coming from a, from a former administrator principal, um, I thought really sort of summarized it pretty, pretty, um, succinctly that what we’d be looking for. So I don’t know if you have any thoughts about that or, you know, where that might fit into this. No, I understand what Matt’s saying though. You can’t compare one IEP against another one. Say, okay, we need one special ed teacher for these two, because one IEP could have tons of hours of service,

1:25:56 and the other one has speech and language on it. So trying to compare those apples to oranges makes it difficult. Is that what, who Yeah. And, and, and there’s a, you know, as, as Dr. McGinnis mentioned, there’s an error check process through to this. ‘cause this is new to us. Um, I was just looking through some OTPT numbers today and helping Ashley work with some spreadsheets, spreadsheets on them. And I paused. I’m like, wait, this one’s gotta be wrong. And it, it took the fact that Ashley knew the student from another grade level, not in my building, to say, no, that’s not wrong. That’s not an error I would’ve identified as an error. ‘cause I thought a zero was added to it because it was the amount of service the student needed. And she’s like, no, I know that’s student.

1:26:41 This is the service that he or she needs. So it’s like, even in an error check situation, you know, temps wouldn’t help because it takes somebody who physically knows the student to say, this is truly the IEP that they need. Or this is truly the support that they, that they need the number of minutes. ‘cause I thought a mistake had been made on the number of minutes for that student. So it just took, like, that’s just one little example of some of the little hiccups that we can, that we go into where, you know, I, it’s a, it’s a new thing. It’s a new exercise. I was, I was just exposed to today and I, I was like, this is, this is interesting. So Dr. McGinnis, you’re gonna have this for us. When do you think it will be reasonable? ‘cause we do have the budget hearing two weeks from tonight. I’m happy to book an extra meeting if, um,

1:27:29 committee members need that to, to, to be able to see your presentation. I think it would be helpful to see that presentation prior to the budget hearing. Um, what, yeah, I, I’m, to be quite honest with you, we looked at some of the data at a larger scale Mm-Hmm. With, um, with Ms. Bell. And I said, that’s why it’s in your hands today. We, this doesn’t make sense. 2,300 hours and 55 teachers. And like you described all of the different needs. I, so I’m, we’re trying to put together something that we don’t have a template for. There’s not an exemplar out there to look at. I’m trying to gather stuff from IEPs with a person

1:28:14 who started a week and a half ago that temps couldn’t do because the intricacies of the students that the teachers know, um, you know, so we’re still trying to figure out exactly what we’re gonna be showing you next week. Okay. Um, but does it affect the staffing in his school? Us doing this? Is that what you’re,

1:28:35 You know, We have the discussions of the needs of the students as they come up and transitionally as students come from village to vets. So do their services. Mm-Hmm. So if that, if that means a shift of people, a shift of services has to happen, typically it, at, at the budget level, it’s a, it’s a zero sum game. Right? Because we’re, we’re moving with a student or cohort of students or a larger class or a, a, you know, whatever reason for class. So typically the transitions into my building aren’t fully budget impacting because that those services already

1:29:21 exist in the previous year. You know, things change. Spring brings about a, a whole nother i’ll, I’m gonna schedule in April, hold my breath and see what happens in May and June because it, it’ll mean some fine tuning of what we did. But the services are coming up with the students. So it it, for me, I’m a, I’m a two year school. So we make our evaluation over two years of what students need at the secondary level. ‘cause it is different type of education. It’s an increased level of independence. It’s students are getting older and being asked to do more doesn’t mean they get more services. It’s not built like that. It’s, it’s, we, we need to meet students where they’re at.

1:30:08 So by the time they leave, yes, the services are gonna be different. Most likely, not more, not less, but different. But what we have in place in the eighth grade, if it’s not attached to my building, are gonna follow them to the high school. So I think a part of this study’s actually been presented to us already through the workshop. We talked about how the granular level of information that was part of the presentation was really great. And when we talked about class sizes, that was, I I wanna be very clear, I don’t think this was ever about just special education. And I worry in our community and in every community, quite frankly, how we talk about, and I don’t, I don’t think anybody in this room has been trying to do that. Um, but that this isn’t just about special education.

1:30:53 I think, um, you know, it’s, it’s hard as we’ve been talking about the budget for the last few years. ‘cause there’s a cur there’s constant ing frames of, you know, and dsi it says your student to teacher ratios 10 to one. I think everybody’s in agreement. There’s no, you don’t walk into a classroom and see 10 teacher or 10 students with one teacher. And I think, um, part of the precipitous is this for this is to give the data of what, what is our, what do our classrooms look like? What do, um, you know, why, what’s driving that 10 to one ratio? Because it’s not, it’s not what we are all seeing every day. How does Jesse create that number? Is it that we’re counting literally every human, even if they’re not, you know?

1:31:38 And I think the people in this room and at this table and our, our staff knows what’s driving those numbers. We need a narrative. We need a document to be able to explain it to the community and to everyone so that they also will, ‘cause we’ve said, no, that’s not, it’s not 10 to one. And we’ve said, um, how, how it’s explained, but it’s, and they keep almost not believing us and, and saying no to the funding. And now this is okay, we really just wanna show at level services. Your first grade classes will be this, your 12th grade classes will be this. And at reduced services, they will be this and they will be this. And you know, when we talk about tutors,

1:32:26 ‘cause a lot of times we’ll see, we’ll hear people push back a para and a tutor. Why are there so many in the building? You know, because what they’re, we need even more maybe than what they’re doing. And what are each of them doing? They’re not, they’re not, it’s not that. Um, every classroom has, you know, four helper teachers that they’re assigned two students to meet this need or they’re tutoring cut to get a tier two support. I think what I, I think, and please correct me if I’m wrong to my colleagues, what is really being looked for is what is each of our staff doing so that we can continue to advocate why we need all the staff. ‘cause they’re all so vitally important. What are, you know, the 20 tutors in building X doing well,

1:33:12 they’re doing a lot and this is what they’re doing. I, that, that is more doable for sure. That’s, that’s what I think we’re looking for. I don’t wanna put words in anybody’s mouth and erase what anybody else is looking for. That’s my take on it.

1:33:27 Well, I think it’s the same thing. So maybe if it’s just a different way of reporting the data. Um, but I agree, Sarah, that would be very helpful.

1:33:38 Okay. Okay. Yeah. And again, to Sarah’s point, I think you said it well that

1:33:45 we ferociously advocate for the teachers and for the students, and that the DESI numbers are not right all of the time. It’s not in, it’s just not enough to have the community say, okay, here’s more, or have even the town say, oh, that you’re not properly funded. Um, and I think that’s where it’s coming from. And I really hope, um, it, it would be very sad to think that the ask is coming from anywhere else. Um, Matt And I, you know, I, I’ll sum up my time up here. Just two things, you know, thank you for understanding. You know, I, it’s not the frustration, it’s just, it’s new to me. So, you know, sort of like finding this data, um, and,

1:34:33 and putting this onto a sheet is, is new to us. Mm-Hmm. Um, and it’s, it’s a new ask for us. Um, the second thing is class size. Class size is, is not the student teacher ratio, you know, student teacher ratio, uh, to be honest is usually right, because they just add up teachers, right. Add up students. And It’s just teachers, right. Division. Right. It’s, it’s, it doesn’t take into account contractual obligations. Mm-Hmm. Prep time for teachers. We put teachers in front of students every single period. It’s just not the same teacher. Because teachers do have rights to have a, a couple periods off to prep, to prepare to teach. You know, a lawyer doesn’t only sit in the courtroom. You know, there are times that lawyers have

1:35:19 to prepare to be in the courtroom. And so that’s the, that’s, that’s the guise of like, well, why is it 10 to one? Because we need to put teachers in front of students every single period in my, in my schedule. But teachers also have the right to have a couple, a couple periods off to prep for their next thing. So then I need other teachers to put in those gaps and other teachers to put in their gaps and it just Sort of builds over. But I think Theresa and Matt, what the town is asking for, what the finance commission income’s asking for, totally legitimate is why are we so much lower than the state average? But that’s, that’s what we need to answer to. And that’s what this kind of a report will tell us, you know, that this is what we need to meet the needs of our students. Um, and that’s, I mean, I get it, Matt, but we we’re being asked, you know,

1:36:05 to provide this information and we’ve been asking for it. And, um, I’ve, I’ve got nothing to hide. That’s all I can do is continue. We’re all our teachers up there, You know, hope we get it. Again, I don’t think anyone is suggesting that they have anything to hide. And I’m sorry if that No, and I’m not, I’m not Being position in any That’s very, very frustrating to me. No, I’m not being positional at all. I, I, I’m here to help out. And, you know, I, I think I’ve demonstrated that this year I’m willing to help out and, and whatever we can do to make This district better, there’s no doubt in my mind. Um, so I think I’d like to hear whether Al or Brian have any, um, thought, I mean, Brian, you sent a whole page of additional questions that you wanted. I think that’s what Jen was referencing. Well, yeah. It’s easier to answer those questions in the elementary schools.

1:36:52 You know, we don’t have all of the services that are provided up a level, but we could pretty much estimate what’s going on in the element lower elementary, not upper. You’re looking at me funny Mandy, but

1:37:07 Glad you stuck around. But from my experience, it was much simpler to put my budget together and with the headcount and everything. The question I still have though, that’s always been at the back of my mind is we lost 33 positions last year. How does that fit into this year with the additional cut of $2.3 million, roughly 35 positions? Mm-Hmm. So did that take into account the loss of the 33 last year? Or is this they were just washed out and this is from scratch? Yeah. We’re, we’re starting from how this year Began. This is fresh. Yep. Nothing. Yeah, we’re not recouping. I mean that’s, I’ll Throw the Dr. McGinnis. I’m not recouping anything. I cut. I’m not getting a librarian. Yeah. Two years. Well, the librarian now. So Yeah, that was a particularly rough part of your presentation to listen to.

1:37:53 I think the number of lack of books taken out. That’s, sorry. It’s difficult Brian. That’s a really good point. Um, and I remember that when, uh, principal Murphy was doing her presentation, she was talking about health at the elementary level and their desire and edict from Desi to have a health teacher. And we don’t have that. So that’s like an example of, you know, you wanna be moving forward for students’ needs. You wanna target their instruction and have a multi-tiered system. But you need people to do the multi-tiered system. Mm-Hmm. So, you know, we’re trying to keep that intact with what we have here in this 2.3 million. But I think they made it clear that that will be chipped away. That, that we have developed over the last few years by not having, um, some of these people. Yeah. I think what I heard a little bit is it’s helpful

1:38:40 if we just not ask for the data, but we also say why we want that data. ‘cause then I think it helps what you were saying, oh, we might be able to do that quicker than this because we thought, you know, so, and I think that’s, I mean that’s a big theme of tonight, right? In every school committee, all four of them that I’ve been to, you know, a lot of this is, is unfortunately becoming a math exercise, right? We, we don’t have free kindergarten right, right. In this town. You know, we’re asking, it sounds like athletes and people who want to participate in extracurricular activities to have a significant increase in money. Um, you know, we’re not increasing our classroom teachers and other, all the important surrounding services around that. Right? So, um, I I, I think at least what I heard is that as a school committee, I want to be able to have the data

1:39:26 to say, you know, listen, town this, it’s gonna be ugly like this if we level set or, you know, we kinda level fund our budget going forward, right? So I’d love to have this data and I think what, what general and Allison were saying, it is the why this is, this is this is why you need to fund things or why we need to potentially, you know, fund things at this level. And here are the really strong implications if you don’t do that, uh, I think that’s what I’d like to use this data for. It’s not a, as Allison said, it’s not a, we’re trying, you know, we’re not asking you for this data to do your job. I I did not sign up for that. I don’t think that, uh, I do not wanna do your job. Um, so anyway, that’s just at least how I’m trying to help understand like maybe how we can better get the data and help you give us the data that we need

1:40:13 for these specific reasons So that we can fight for you even harder. Right. And if it’s ever been, that’s greatly appreciate that. Again. I know. Um, and I hope, you know, we, how much, how much we appreciate everything that you’ve done to date the budgets that you presented. Again, we’ve said it 4,000 times. I’ll say it 4,000 more. Were phenomenally more detailed than anything we have ever had before. And there is so much to that. I know it’s asking for more and it’s always more and more, more. But I, and thank you for saying that al clarifying that I think it’s important that you hear directly from us why we’re asking for these things that you hear in our voice and that you see in our faces. This is why we’re asking not to divide.

1:40:59 Not because we don’t trust you, not because we don’t know you are doing the absolute best that you can possibly do with the smallest amount of resources. And next year will be smaller if we stay this way. No one does that. I, um, can I ask a question that’s gonna hopefully not bring us down a rabbit hole, so I apologize. I know we’re not in the business of adding. I feel bad that Matt’s sitting there too. No, this is a Matt question. We’re not in the business of adding, we’ve been given a directive by the town we’re trying to follow that I personally would like to know if it’s at all possible and what the value would be of having, um, a part-time librarian at least,

1:41:44 and what that dollar amount would be.

1:41:47 Uh, dollar amount would be the, you know, 0.4. But is it even something that’s possible? Is it something you could, like I don’t, I don’t know the answer to that. It, It, it, it’s definitely, you know, just to speak about my building, um, it, it might not be the first ad I would put back. Okay. It might be number two. Okay. Um, I, I really need a part-time world language teacher. My Spanish classes are 20 fives and 20 sixes in the, in the seventh grade and 20 fours and 20 fives in the eighth grade. Well, 20 threes and 20 fours in the eighth grade. It’s difficult. Um Mm-Hmm. It’s physically difficult in one room. I have Jay’s room to just fit the number of students in there. Okay. Um, so I, I, I truly,

1:42:33 and honestly, I, I’ve had a library card since I was three. So I had to demonstrate to the librarian that I could read in the 10 p public library. Um, I, I know the value I’ve, I’ve counted on our librarian for 12 years Mm-Hmm. Um, to do so much more than what a librarian does. Um, but it might not be the first ad because the unique, Fair enough place We are at right now. Mm-Hmm. I just had it at least ask, but fair enough. Thank you. Does That went out the door with that other Latin position that, that that cut some periods of, of more language with us? It, it’d be a tight, if you gimme one. Oh, I’ll do both,

1:43:16 Matt. I wanna give it all to all of you. But So, but again, that’s me being selfish and thinking only about my building and not about the other child. No. And I know, and I don’t mean to pick and choose here, I just,

1:43:29 but still unfathomable to me that we’re in This situation. It is to me too. And I’d like to thank Tracy Meg, our permanent sub who has taken on the afterschool, uh, responsibilities of running the library. She has opened the library during homework club for three days a week this year. She’s doing it for a minuscule stipend and she’s managing the check-ins and checkouts. And also Phil Witt, who’s our other permanent sub is doing this too when he’s in there too. And managing the check-ins and checkouts. So I just wanna really wanna recognize that that’s not a librarian, but at the simple, they’re keeping the stacks accessible for our students, which is an important thing at the middle school. ‘cause there’s a lot of reading that still goes on in the middle school of, of books. Okay. So I’ll finish my piece with that. Thank you. Thank You. Thank you Matt. Thanks Matt. Um, okay.

1:44:18 So that brings us to our schedule of bills. I will ask for a motion to approve the identified schedule of bills totaling $535,668 and 10 cents. So moved. Moved by Al Williams. Seconded. Seconded by Brian Oda. Roll call vote. Brian ODA approved. Allison Taylor approved Al Williams approved. Jen Schaffner In favor. Sarah Fox in favor. Motion carries five to zero. We have no minutes. Um, in our Dropbox, um, our assistant that does those for us had been out sick for a bit. So, um, we will have those as our next meeting. We have, um, for under school committee communication discussion items in

1:45:05 interim superintendent search update in our Dropbox. There is a recommendation, um, for some wording for the advertisement. Um, what goes out, it’s, it’s the same one we, um, use back in November. Just updated any pertinent dates or demographics. Um, there’s one area we need to fill in a date, um, review. Applicants will begin on. Um, I, I think instead of a specific date, we might be wanting to write, um, something like early April. Um, but I, I didn’t know if if members of the committee had any thoughts on this, wanted

1:45:51 to make any suggestions of edits to it or if this was okay to give back to Glen so he could post the opening.

1:46:05 Um, I think it’s fine. I do think we should have some sort of a timeline, um, for this, which will help us with that date. I mean, we probably ought to be Yeah, Sort of. So Glen, I put in there, um, an email from Glen. He had talked about the date of finalized, I think it was in there. Um, the, that he recommended April 12th as the submission being due. Um, I believe that’s the last day before April break. Break. Yeah. So I don’t know if we wanna move that back a few days and have some deliberations before April break or have those do that date and give, you know, some days during the break for Glenn and his associates at MASC to do the formatting and the upload and everything like that. And start off that week right.

1:46:51 When we come back with a meeting to talk about who we want to, um, interview. The next step from that would usually within a week of deciding who you wanna interview you, you start commencing those interviews. So we would be looking at, um,

1:47:12 really that second, potentially that, um,

1:47:19 last week of April to first week of May of wanting to put some placeholders and people’s schedules to earmark probably like a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, like 7:00 PM each night for the interviews. ‘cause we would be doing those interviews in public and soliciting public feedback. Yeah. We just have to be mindful of, um, town meeting. Yes. Town meeting is the sixth, seventh, and eighth. So I think we would, so yeah, so we would wanna do the week Prior. Well, you could do, I mean, in theory you could, we could look at April 29th. Wait a minute, when is Passover? Passover is the 30th

1:48:02 Ends the 30th, the 22nd. So yeah, we probably don’t wanna mess with that. So, um, I don’t know whether we do like, we could do Wednesday the first and second get some done or I don’t know, We could start earlier. Perhaps. Does this have to be in person? Do we all have to be present? Um, you can zoom in. It will be hybrid. ‘cause we want the community to have that hybrid access as well. Okay. Um, I think if people are in town, I would prefer that they be here in person. If you have travel plans and are committed, then that’s acceptable. Yeah. That, that, that’s the issue. Yeah. Obviously if I’m here I will be present, but I, I may have some plans to be outta State. I think the earliest, um, that we really would be ready to start doing interviews is Monday the 29th,

1:48:49 Tuesday the 30th and Wednesday the first. But I think that’s still Passover. Yeah. Okay. I don’t know. I think we need to clarify that.

1:49:02 Okay. So we can earmark that, but we’ll just double check that. Okay. Um, yes, I will look into that. I I won’t even pretend to have all the answers. Can Google it, right? Can I, can I google that right now? Um, okay. So I can pass over record. I think as far as the dates that Glen suggested having everything due by Thanks guys. Friday the 12th seems reasonable. Correct?

1:49:38 April 22nd to the 30th is Passover. Yeah, but I don’t know if it’s the first day of the, which days are like, if there’s one, does It go like 10? I think it goes like 10 Days. Yeah, it’s the 22nd to the 30th. I have someone telling me the first two and last two are the, sorry, the first two and last two. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So not 29th. Um, and, and it’s sundown, right? Okay. Um, so I think having them close on April 12th and letting people know we will at least be convening. Uh, so are you saying the committee should not con convene? So if if the first two, the 22nd and 23rd, we could convene on the 24th to deliberate on who we want to interview?

1:50:24 I think that’s reasonable. Is that April break or is over break the week before? No, it’s okay. Does that seem reasonable?

1:50:36 Can you say that again Sarah? I’m sorry. I’m, we Would convene on, on the 24th

1:50:44 to discuss of April Oh oh. To discuss who we are going to interview.

1:50:50 Um, yes. As again, as long we just gotta clarify. I don’t wanna have a meeting if there is a holiday going on. I was just told the first two days are I import are, are more the first two days and the last two days are where the importance lies. Okay. And that would be the third day. Okay. So just assuming that we get that confirmed, um, then Yes, that would be fine. Okay. Um, so yeah, so those are the, those are the dates I’ll fill in here. Review of applications will be, will begin on July 24th or April 20. April 24th. Um, and Then when would the interviews be? The following week? Yes. Like the 29th. We can’t be that’s the last two days, right, Jonathan?

1:51:37 Oh, so Passover is the 22nd to the 30th. Jonathan said the 22nd and the 23rd. The 29th and the 30th are the most high religious days. Wait, Okay. So we could do the first and second and then we may have to skip a week and go into the 13th, 14th. Or we could possibly do interviews at five and then again at seven. That would probably allow us, so we’ll work with that. Okay. Um, Yeah, it depends on how many candidates we have. Yeah. So the big dates for the release are, they will be due April 20 12th. And, um, we will be meeting on April 24th to deliberate on who we will be interviewing

1:52:25 and what days of the interview. I’m sorry, the first May, second days of the interview. Mm-Hmm. First and the second, the 22nd. Um, first interview. The first May 1st and May 2nd. May 2nd is a regular school committee meeting. Okay. All right. So I will get these dates to Glenn. I will get the approved, um,

1:52:49 advertisement to him. He said the job description is a, is a DEI job description and standard Desi job description. So that will be posted as well. All right. Can you, I have a question us When you send that to Glen just to Make sure. I’ll, I’ll send you all This again. Okay, good. Thank you. Sarah. I have a question about the, uh, app, the, um, posting Mm-Hmm. I think Al actually asked the same question. Experience leading to a pre-K to 12 school district in Massachusetts is a must. It’s a, it’s a requirement. Do we wanna make it that specific or do we wanna say desirable? Um, so one of my re what I had said back to Al when he had asked, ‘cause I didn’t wanna, you know, deliberate, so I only responded to him was that’s not just being, um, a superintendent of pre-K through 12.

1:53:35 You could have your experience, um, through, there’s a lot of leadership roles that have oversight. Julia has oversight over, um, those in her capacity as assistant. You mean like a principal superintendent mean, um, a principal. So, See, I, I just think this is highly limited. I For what we need, It’s an Interim for the state of the state. I don’t know how anyone can sit here and think that we don’t need to require someone to have had superintendent experience. That’s my feeling. Like that’s my hard We can say a preference. Preference would Be better. Yeah. I mean, Allison, I I agree with you ideally. Absolutely. Right. But, um, you know, if there is an assistant

1:54:23 for example, that’s been doing it for many years and might be interested, this wording might prohibit that person from expressing interest. So, And I’d rather I would Not, I don’t know that, and I’m being honest. I don’t know if how’d interesting. I I’m just being honest. I dunno if how to be inter I agree with Allison. I don’t think I would be interested in interviewing someone that hasn’t had experience. Like, I, I I feel very strongly about what we need with the whole point of having a transitional superintendent. The whole reason Glen suggested that for us, and by the way, we asked him to write that letter to be shared with the community and all of that is beyond critical. Again, that’s my opinion. We’re committee and whatever the will of the committee is is Yeah, That is. And also I agree. I guess I’m just trying to think why would we wanna limit a potential person

1:55:08 if we’re, we’re a little worried that we may not get a whole lot of candidates to begin with. Right. That’s Where, That’s where I’m coming from. I agree. Allison around. Yeah. We much, we really would prefer someone who’s had, you know, many years as a superintendent. Um, so that, that’s where I was just coming from. We could, we could add I’m okay. I’m okay leaving it as is. We can add a bullet at the end that says preferred candidate will have, and that’s honest. That is our preference. We’ll have experience leading a pre-K through 12 public school district in Massachusetts. The reality is there aren’t a lot of sitting superintendents who are looking for a job. Now, We’re not looking for just a regular, my opinion, we’re not looking

1:55:56 for just a regular superintendent that wants to live in Marblehead or wants to come back to this area or something like that. Again, my opinion, um, but it, we’re a committee and that’s, I I’m okay with whatever. I’ll go with whatever the committee says. But my, my opinion is that it’s, it’s very important. I understand what you’re saying. Logically, if we say that we may not get 15 candidates, we may not get five. I I don’t know what we’re gonna get. I don’t think any of us knows what we’re gonna get. Um, we are doing something and asking for something that’s very different from what we have asked for in the past and from a, a transitional perspective. ‘cause I think that was very prescriptive on purpose

1:56:41 for our needs right now. Um, Well in 2019 we asked for an Interim experience superintendent and that’s what we got.

1:56:53 All right. So Yeah, I think Sarah, I think your wording is, is mm-Hmm. You know, To not dis sway them, but, okay, so I’m gonna leave it as applicants must meet the following requirements. Go with the second bullet, demonstrated the third bullet, and then below that in bold, just like applicants right. Preferred candidate will have experience leading. If it could be in bold, that would be great. I can do that. Preferred candidate will have experience leading a pre-K through 12 public school district in Massachusetts.

1:57:27 Okay. Everyone’s in agreement. Does It have to say in Massachusetts? I don’t know if you It says it now. That’s how it came to us as a recommendation when, when we did the search in the fall. But I I am actually, I’m not, it doesn’t, would that limit? I mean, I don’t necessarily need it to say you don’t have to cut. I think it’s to, uh, a public school district. Yeah, I think that’s, I mean there was Another local school district that hired someone recently from Maine. Yeah. So I think it’s fine to say, uh, a public school system. Um, okay. So I will make those changes. Um, bear with me. You might not get them till a little bit later in the day tomorrow, but, um, I, I, I will update this. I will get it to Glen. I will get a copy to everybody in the committee. I, and we’ll take it from there. Awesome.

1:58:14 And then my agenda, go.

1:58:20 Just bear with me. I lost my agenda in my pile here Subcommittee. So that brings us to subcommittee in liaison updates.

1:58:34 Brian, you, I already gave mine. You gave yours for safety. Um, and we

1:58:43 Bless you. Bless you. Bless you, Um, excuse me. We are working on a date with FinCon right now to book two more liaison meetings. Um, right now our budget hearing is booked for the 21st at the, um, we wanted to make sure that we had enough room that everybody who wanted to be there, everybody that wanted to speak, will be able to. We were really hoping for the auditorium here. That seemed just the right size. Um, however, there’s some, some auditions going on there and we weren’t about to ask the kids and the students to move ‘cause that’s why we’re all here. So we’re at the pack. Um, it was between this room or the pack, and I wanna make sure everybody, it’d be great if we could fill the pack. It would be great if that many people showed up.

1:59:28 It would be wonderful. Um, I just don’t want anybody to not have space, so we’ll make sure that we’re making sure. So I want to put that out there. That’s where it will be. That’s Thursday, the 21st, seventh, 7:00 PM at the pack at the middle school. Um, we’re working on the two meetings with FinCon and right now FinCon has us penciled in for them to vote to approve our budget on April 1st. April Fools Day. Hmm. The Fools Day. Um, any other subcommittee and liaison updates? Um, we are scheduled for bargaining. I dunno if we on, oh yes. Our bargaining subcommittee is scheduled for next Thursday, the 14th for our first meeting with the MEA to, um, start our bargaining talks, which will be good.

2:00:14 Um, so I think that is everything that brings us to closing business, new business school committee announcements in requests. Um, Brian, you had reached out today. Yes. Um, you had worked on some, I’m gonna just kick it off to you to Okay. At the February 15th school committee meeting, I had stated the first priority of mine as a school committee member is to focus on improving our communications and transparency. This morning, I sent my fellow committee members a rough draft of a communication survey. I want a release of the parents’, staff and general public about the things we’re considering to do to improve our communications. We have not yet deliberated on this survey, and it will be placed on a March 21st school committee

2:01:00 agenda to formally move forward with possibly move forward with the survey. In the interim, perhaps the school committee would agree to create a subcommittee for improving our communications. This way we can hopefully post and hold a subc CTing meeting next week and proceed, uh, the review and survey and, and proceed this to review the survey and take inputs from the public. This way. The final version will be ready for approval to the March 21st meeting. And the survey can then go out to the next day. I’m gonna show you a draft of the survey. It’s a very short survey and it’s a starting point for this crucial, uh, work to begin.

2:01:43 Sarah, there’s somebody in the waiting room.

2:01:49 Um, can you, you should be able to admit them as well, Jen. I haven’t see anybody. I don’t see anybody. I did, sorry. Sorry about that. Are we okay enough? Yeah. Alright. So this is a communication survey that I put together. As you can see, I’m asking some very general questions. It’s, they get a feel for what the public and the teachers and the involved people would like to see. So I’m asking, did you attend that Zoom meeting that we had as a communications forum? And if you did, what’d you think of it? Was it good, bad, worth it or not? And then give us an answer as to if you thought it was a good process, perhaps we can continue them on a regular basis. Uh, would it be valued to have a monthly school committee newsletter? Yes. No. Maybe we’re asking to have a, we’re having a forum

2:02:36 with the leak of women voters in March. Or would this be a form of value? Would this forum be of value to you? Yes or no? Would informal coffee connections with two school committees be of value in which updates would be given? And questions could be posed by the attendees and we respond to them. And if the coffee connections are of an interest, we feel them one school every month, all public is invited regardless of whether it’s your homeschool or not. And does that sound useful? And then a long answer at the end if you have any other suggestions that would help improve our communications. Again, this is a short survey. I think if it takes you five minutes, it’s taking too long. But it’ll give us a good starting point to look at how we can improve our communications. Any questions?

2:03:23 Um, thank you For, thanks for doing that, Brian. Thanks. That’s great. Initiative and doing this, um, open it up to the committee. What’s that? I’m just gonna open it up to the committee. Any questions? Um, are we gonna, I just have a quick question. Are we gonna deliberate on the final wording flow, et cetera, on the 21st? Is that what I say? Um, yeah, if you have any suggestions that you wanna give Brian now that, that he can maybe, you know, used to, to redraft or we’re gonna, I think that would be fine. Well, who would this be going out to? The survey would be sent out to, we’ll put it in the newspapers so we can get people that are not parents and it would be put in our website, the district website, and ask the principals to put it in their, um,

2:04:10 newsletters going home. So it gets out to the widest swath of people we can get. That’s why Yes, because We de Yeah, we definitely need to, there were a lot of people there who were not necessarily, you know, parents or in the school district. So, you know, I think getting it, we should ask that question. Local media makes sense. Yeah. Because I mean, if I’m not mistaken, we’re up to 800 people that say we’re not good at communicating. So I think we need to get it out to the people who are parents in our school to get to the bottom of where all this is coming from and how to fix it. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Yeah, I mean, I I I don’t really, it’s, it’s nine o’clock. Um, I would, I can happy to send him my, my comments through email and deliberate on the 31st.

2:04:56 I also think we should be asking that question whether someone is, um, a parent or a community member. Oh, Good idea. That’s not here. Or a student, you know, I’m assuming we’re not limiting this. We certainly had, um, a number of students attend last, um, last, was that last week? Mm-Hmm. Last week. Yep. The only thing is if, if we’re not gonna get it out until after the 21st, the question around the League of Women Voters event. Well, I guess if we get it out shortly after, I just wouldn’t want it to be, you know, either at that or after it. That would be kind of a Question. Yeah, I guess that, that whole question, I’m not, I feel like that, you know, it it, that just speaks to whether forums in general, we had a forum last week

2:05:42 that didn’t have any moderation in barring one unforeseen catastrophe. I think it went very well. Um, it was certainly widely attended. Um, you know, I think just saying,

2:05:57 would having additional forums be of value to you? Um, we’re, that doesn’t mean we’re not doing a League of Women voters, just so we’re clear we’re doing that. It’s already scheduled. Um, but in, in the future, if, if we have more that can’t be attended by a moderator again, then, you know, we can still do them ourselves. I think we’ve proven to be able to do that. And I’m proud of this committee for, for being able to do that and for taking that on and for our community, for participating. Um, Should we have someone off committee helping us with the questions? Say that again? Should we have someone not of us five help, you know, helping to put this together? I don’t know. I ‘cause a lot of times just with, I’m sorry Brian didn’t mean to interrupt, but like,

2:06:42 you know, if you designed your own, you know, the school committee designs their own questionnaire, we could be leading people to answer the way we want them to. Right. Surveys can be very difficult, right. With doing them properly, getting them to be very nonpartisan. So I’m just curious, you know, is this, is there an opportunity just to have a person or two to just have us edit it, but then just take a look at it and say, Hey listen, you know, we might, this, there might be some value in you. Well, asking it this way or asking this additional question, I don’t think that the school committee is gonna lead anybody to a certain answer. I think it you what? I don’t think this we’re leading anybody to a certain answer. Um, but I understand what you’re saying. I just don’t know who that would be without, well, I certainly don’t want to put this on anybody on our staff.

2:07:28 They’re no clearly, um, working very hard. Theresa would, I can’t see her, but I’m assuming she’s, she wouldn’t be be in agreement on that. Maybe there’s someone in the community that has some expertise who could help us. But I mean, I don’t think we’re looking at this to, you know, this isn’t a statistically, you know, accurate Gallup poll. I think we’re just trying to get a general idea or a pulse of how people feel about it and maybe some suggestions on things we could improve. It’s a first step. You know, we need to take a first step. I think the misinformation came out about the legal women voters as a classic example. Why we need to get a communication vehicle going. I mean, I still get meal mails from people saying you have to have the legal women. We’ve already said that I many times we are having the legal

2:08:16 women voters us, but it doesn’t seem to get out to everybody. It’s getting out to a limited number Of people. I mean, they could watch Our meeting also is in, in our meeting on the Yeah, we, whenever it was the, I, Again, I just, I I don’t think we always understand is a committee what our intended, you know, you know, we, we, we, we go with a certain intention and then we fear back that we got a very different impression from that. And I just wanna make sure we don’t do that with this survey. Agree. And I do agree this is something you want to do right the first time. Right. This is not the kind of thing, oh, let’s just kind, you know, do it. Get, get some quick feedback and, you know, I think this is a, an opportunity to put together a good survey, get good data back that we then act upon moving forward with how we communicate. And I guess it wouldn’t, to me, I’m just, I’m just looking

2:09:02 for maybe one or two people to just verify that they’re reading it with the intention that, that we need it to be Yeah’s. But who would that be? Do think that’s, I dunno. Um, is there the League of Women voters? Do they have a chairperson? I mean, I, I don’t, I’m not comfortable with that. I’m, I’m brainstorming right now, Allison, just because I was asked. I don’t, yeah, I’m responding. The, the right answer is, I, I don’t know. But I’m, I’m sure there’s, there might be someone that we could hopefully, that would be willing and had maybe some expertise in this area help us out. I don’t maybe would MASC have some background in this? We can ask. We can, I, we can ask Glen if, I mean, I also feel like if we, if we are, if the goal is

2:09:48 to take control of our own response of our own communication, then we need to be in control of it. I don’t think any of these questions are leading any horse to any water. We’re asking Simple yes. No questions. Yep. And for additional information, um, I understand what you’re saying. I think people’s responses in the community can be based on the information that’s put out there. I think it would be interesting to see how many people have actually watched our meetings. Watched our first, our what, what day was that on the 19th? 29th. 29th. When did we first meet with the League of Women Voters? When we Oh, our planning session, right. The 15th Was that same It Monday was that week. It was the same week. Wasn’t it the 12th? 26th?

2:10:34 I think. I thought it was the 25th. But no, I’m in the wrong month. It was the Yeah, you’re right, Janice. The, the 26th. You know, folks had watched the meeting on the 26th. We had already agreed to do something with Ling and women voters. Um, so to get, you know, 85 emails asking us to reconsider when we had already considered and agreed to, um, you know, that’s, that didn’t come from us. So I just wanna be, if we, if this is a communication that’s coming from us as a school committee, and I’m not trying to take over your survey here, so I’m not speaking for you. I’m speaking for me, if this is a survey that’s coming from the school committee, I want it to be written by the school committee. I want it to be in our voice. One of the things that we hear from the community

2:11:20 is your communication. Previous administrations, your communications aren’t written necessarily by the administration. And we want them to be, we want to hear the voice of the people that we elected or the voice of the people that you hired. Um, I think we’ve done a much better job of that. Certainly that’s again, talking previous administration. Um, and I think we need to continue onto that. I have an idea. What would you think it might be helpful to use chat GPT or any AI to just go good questions for a school committee survey, survey, community survey, community survey to just get it works like it does, and then pick which ones are best for scary, how that works. I, um, I’m happy to continue this

2:12:05 more on the 21st. It, this is starting to feel like a more robust agenda item to me and not just new business. So I, I really, I’d like to put this on mm-Hmm. On the 21st and just give the caveat, we may be having another meeting before that. I’ll be in contact with Dr. McGinnis if she has the next level of presentation ready. I will be working with everyone to get another committee meeting in so that we can get release that information prior to the 21st meeting. So if that happens, I will absolutely put this on that agenda as well. Um, hopefully people in the community are hearing if they have some feedback, please do send it to, um, the committee or to Brian who’s working on this. And we can continue this as a full agenda item on our next agenda.

2:12:53 One thing, um, I’ve got at the beginning of the agenda, Dr. McInnis did ask us to assign people to the director of student services interview team. Um, Allison and Brian had served on the interim interview team. Um, you have not served on an interview team yet in your Nope. In you’re whopping for meetings here yet. Um, as a past educator, is that something Sure you would be able to do? Um, you did say you have some travel plans coming up next month. Is that something he could zoom in for? We’ll make it work. Okay. Mm-Hmm. Okay. So, um, that my recommendation would be that it’s al pending committee approval

2:13:37 For direct of student services. Yeah. Okay. So it was me, so that’s fine. No’s No, she’s on, She’s on finance with me. Oh. I thought you were in finance. In operations. Oh, I thought it was student. Okay. Sorry. Yes. No, I thought you were finance and operations. It’s late. Um, yeah, that’s fine. Okay. Do you also wanna do this one, Jen? I had wanted to do, no, I, I think that meeting I had said I wanted to do director of finance and I think Jen maybe just didn’t hear me and you said you were just gonna do it, which is fine. Um, so that, you know, but again, I was, I don’t, I’m happy to have finance. Oh, turn over to you Allison and No problem. I got Oh, we got a lot. I got a lot going on the other stuff, so

2:14:25 I’m fine. I shouldn’t do it again. It’s fine. Okay. It’d be great to, we haven’t started, it’d be great to have you as Well. I’m just saying like whatever We can, we can put you both on it. All right. That’s my recommendation. Finance. ‘cause it will be finance and operations. Correct. You’re on that makes sense. You’re on facility. Jen is on finance that you both will have important input to that process. So my recommendation is the director of finance and operations. It’s Allison and Jen for the Director of student services. Um, it would be Al and Brian if you would like to join him, you’re more than welcome. Sure. And, and Brian. Um, and then if you will also be needing a principal search for Glover. I didn’t know if you guys are on principal ones. We are on a principal search. I will, I’m happy to be the Glover and then we all have a job. Is um, can I just,

2:15:12 is everybody in agreement in supportive of that, those roles? Is it just one for the Glover? Is that, that’s, we’ve, We’ve had one on a principal search in the past. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Alright. That, that went on. Um, any other new business school committee announcements and requests? Yeah, I just had a statement I wanted to read. Okay. Um, I, I wanna thank all of the community members that came to our conversation with the committee last week. I think it’s been a week. Um, I think there were over, almost over 250 people altogether in attendance in person and online, which is fantastic. It felt like a really fruitful discussion because it not only created the opportunity, uh, for us to hear directly from our Marblehead community voters, but it gave the voters the opportunity to see for themselves our commitment to address the community needs

2:16:00 and see how we move through those in the coming future. Um, how we honor our strategic plan and, you know, facilitate that with our community members. Allow them to express their thoughts. Um, and our school leaders by leading by example. We all, I, I know I can speak for us when I say we appreciated the community coming together like that. The statement is just for me to be clear and we look forward to having more of these with you. Whether monitored, moderated by the league or in any of the other communication forms that Brian notes in his survey. Um, I would be remiss to not address the inappropriate actions of one community member during our forum. These are public meetings held in a school building. The meeting in particular was attended both in person and online by a number of students in our district.

2:16:48 These are meetings where we have the opportunity to emulate the behaviors that we would really like to see in our students as we see each and every student as emerging leaders. That becomes even increasingly more important. Our behavior should show, especially during disagreements because we all have them, um, respect and civility for different perspectives. The competency to manage conflict and the desire to achieve equitable outcomes without causing harm. Um, during our forum, one person chose to behave in a manner that not only reflects poorly on them as an individual, but also on the two organizations which they represent. And to date, there’s been zero outreach from the community member directly, uh, or from the Marblehead Democratic Town Committee or the Marblehead League of Women Voters. Um, I do find that to be unfortunate

2:17:34 and I think that we can all, and I would encourage us all to just do better. That’s it. Any other new business through the chair? I have, um, I’m working on the Student Opportunities Act, um, funding. And it has to, one of the steps, it’s due April 1st. One of the steps is to go through the school community, uh, committee as well. So I’m hoping we can reserve a little time on the 21st. Absolutely. Um, hopefully it shouldn’t take too much time, but just wanted to Okay. If you can just, um, shoot me the email of what the agenda items should be called. Yes. And then just send that to me. ‘cause we also are gonna be voting on an overnight trip. So there’s a few little housekeeping things that will be after we close the agenda or close the hearing. Great, thank you. So just gimme that wording. All right. Um, correspondence.

2:18:20 We did receive an email today from, um, David Harris and Drinker, Amy Drinker. Um, they had forwarded us the email that they had sent out to their database of the 780 people who signed the letter. Um, encouraging those individuals to, um, speak up with concerns regarding the way we are, the manner in which we’re approaching the superintendent search Ms Drinker and Mr. Harris stated, um, they feel by taking the path we took as doing it as a full committee, um, they were not in agreement with that choice. And, um, stated their reasons for that.

2:19:06 So, um, I do appreciate that they, you know, shared that with us in the past as other, um, admins on that database have shared out letters. Um, they have not been forthright with giving those to us and it’s coming, come to us via forwarded, um, by recipients. So, you know, it definitely is much more, more functional when you know the senders are addressing it. Um, to date. I, you know, when we entered the meeting, I don’t check my email during the meeting. We haven’t received any additional emails from anybody, um, forwarding that on. That’s not to say we won’t. Um, people are always welcome and encouraged to reach out to us at any time, share questions and concerns. Um, and you know, we, we have a,

2:19:52 a general school committee email address at school committee@marbleheadschools.org. And I encourage any and all committee, committee or community members to reach out at any time. Um, all right. So without further ado, we also updated our website right? To have all our individual email addresses just So people Know. Um, I believe so. I haven’t gone through the, I think the website to be perfect. And one more thing, sorry, Through the chair. Just one more announcement. Um, it’s coming out, uh, tomorrow we’re gonna be opening our registration for next school year on Monday kindergarten. So for kindergarten. For kindergarten, kindergarten registration, please. I am, I do not always heed my own advice. Please register early. These numbers for the registration really will drive our

2:20:38 class sizes will drive our budgets. It’s really, really important data for when we’re doing our staffing models. Um, we go to town meeting the first week of May. If we’re not having those registrations done, a lot of times we have people, um, who do it in, in August. Life is busy. I get that. Um, and you know, those, those numbers aren’t included in our staffing models and that makes it hard. An important reminder, you may be able to speak to this, I know in past years there was an always an assumption if you were registered in the pre-K program, that you automatically would be registered in the kindergarten program here and you didn’t need to do it. And we, many of us wouldn’t realize that error of our ways until the emails came out in August. Um, you have, everyone has to register, you have

2:21:24 to submit your registration, um, even if you’re already have a student registered in the Marblehead Public schools for pre-K and those numbers are really, really important every year. But this year even more so because our staffing models are going to be so tight. Um, so please Do that. So the flyers going out, um, district wide communication into the press tomorrow. Okay. Um, so, and again, we open Monday. Okay. And then just we’re, you know, Steven’s been really great about having stuff like very visible, like our budget thing. Gretchen Ton already did it for us. Perfect. Perfect. So she’s good. The flyer’s not there. We just finished that today with the information. But, um, just some information about the opening date on Monday. Okay. And I do know from, um, being a preschool parent at some of the private preschools,

2:22:10 if you give them flyers, they will put them in the backpacks to remind families to do it. So if, if we wanted, we should do that with our own too. If, if we wanna do that to our kids or put them in flyers, you know, at the various private preschools, these numbers are gonna be so important as we do our staffing. Excellent. That’s a idea. Thank you for letting me have that. Um, thank you very much. And I will adjourn us at 9 27.