School Committee: September 19, 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.

0:00 All right. Welcome. Welcome, everyone. Thank you. Welcome to the school committee meeting. Thank you for your patience while we were in executive session. Um, going to open us to our public portion at seven 18. Um, our first item on the agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance. So do I have to do this? Yeah. The flag’s over here, folks. Um, I pledge allegiance to the flag Of the United States of America And to the Republic for which it stands, One nation under God with liberty And justice for all. Okay. Thank you. I love that issue. Um, yeah, that was for request of Superintendent ou. Thank you. I’m gonna move on to commendations.

0:45 Anyone have any commendations this week? I do, but Go ahead. Okay. Um, so a couple commendations. I think, uh, we talked to, uh, Kent Wheeler, our ad, and I just wanna share some, um, accomplishments for our, of our, uh, fall sport. So, girls volleyball is five and two. Best record in, uh, NEC, which is awesome. Boys soccer team has also started strong at five and two boys. Cross country is undefeated at three. And oh, um, the golf team is seven two. They came back strong after two early losses. Um, so it’s, it’s still early, but we’re we’re, um, going really strongly. Um, we also, uh, Mr. Wheel also wanted me to, uh, re remind everybody that our first home game on the new, uh, newly, um, uh,

1:31 turf field is, uh, is all set to go for on Friday. So that’s awesome. And then he also kind of followed up with 12 captains are attending the NEC Leadership Conference on Monday at SGAs High School, which is really neat. So. Great. Uh, congratulations to our sports team so far. Um, and then I have another accommodation. Real quickly, I’ll, I’m gonna talk about a little bit in my update, but I just wanted to share, um, Adam Angelopoulos and Stephanie Trainor, who was a great grade six team over at Village, uh, affectionately know his ATM. I just wanted to, um, give them a shout out and you’ll know why in a little bit. Oh, okay. I Do have, I do have one that you made me think of. I just want to commend everybody that had anything to do with that new turf. My son plays flag football for the town, and they had their first round of games they play at the high school, um, in the fall,

2:18 and he played on Sunday. And it is Chef’s kiss. It is phenomenal. That’s a chef. So thank you to everybody that had any, there’s too many to list, uh, everybody that had a part in that. It’s just honestly gorgeous. It’s Gorgeous. Okay. Anyone else? Okay, I’m gonna move on to public comment. I, there’s one. I think we’ve got one fo person signed up. Welcome. You still, oh,

2:47 Sally Shery, 80 80 Garfield Street. I’d like to take a moment to honor Catherine Martin for her dedicated service to our schools. Her commitment in to public education has made a lasting impact and is essential for us as educators to appreciate those who tireless support, tirelessly support our noble cause. At the same time, we remember the profound loss of our Glover community, faced with the passing of Brook Yano in 2022. For over 15 years, Brooke was a tireless advocate for her students, an integral part of our school community, and a truly outstanding educator. Her absence is deeply felt, and she is irreplaceable in our hearts. In our efforts to honor Brook’s legacy,

3:33 we requested the school committee consider memorials, such as a library, a plaque, or a bench. Unfortunately, we learned that such memorials are currently in violation of school committee policies. This news was disheartening for all of us who wish to pay tribute to an extraordinary educator who de, who dedicated her life to our students and her own life was tragically cut short. There’s a broader struggle within our district. Educators across the board are experienced at pervasive sense of dismissal and double standards. This raises important questions about the adherence to policies that should serve us all. If the committee wishes to honor contributions

4:20 to those like Catherine Martin or Ano, I urge you to reconsider revising policies to allow for memorials. It’s disappointing to see heartfelt requests denied while discussions occur that may contradict established guidelines. Let us recognize that abiding by school policies is essential, not only for structure, but also equity. If these policies change to allow such memorials, I assure you the Glover teachers would enthusiastically resubmit our requests to honor Brooke, as I’m sure that Catherine Martin’s name will also be resubmitted for recognition. Let us work collaboratively to amend these guidelines, making it possible to honor remarkable contributions

5:09 of two extraordinary community members. Thank You. Thank you. Thank you. Um, no, ‘cause we have it on our agenda, so I can Okay. I just wanted to give them a copy. She has it. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Um, okay. Um, anybody else here? Public comment. Okay. And I don’t see anyone’s hand raised as any.

5:33 Sure. I don’t see anybody else. Okay. I’m gonna move on to our student representative, Ella Benedetto. Welcome. Wanna give us an update? Thanks. Hello. Today I have a few updates, achievements, and concerns from the high school. To start off, here’s some updates. We’ve been off to a very good first few weeks of school. The open house last night went very well. I want to give a special thank you to our teachers for staying late and to our National Honor Society volunteers for helping to show people around. Also, as Mr. Du said, fall sports are in full, full swing. The boys soccer team beat Sau August yesterday, 3.0, and the first home football game is tomorrow night. Additionally, the Marlet acapella groups released an EP called Glitz and Glimmer that is available to stream and contains the songs light on by Maggie Rogers. And everybody talks by Neon Trees.

6:18 Next, I have two concerns from the student body. The first is from the senior class. This year’s senior class is of unprecedented size with 242 students. As of recently, the senior parking lot has been filling up as early as 7:35 AM causing many students to not have a place to park and having to find parking on the street. This wouldn’t be an issue, but many students end up being late because of the traffic and lack of parking, causing them to miss educational time. Also, most of the time, the entire teacher lot isn’t filled. So the senior class thinks that we should look into a re-designation of some parking spots in order to accommodate such a large senior class. Lastly, as I’ve heard from many students, the entire student body is very concerned about the contracting issues with the teachers. With teachers working without a contract, without a contract, and talk about them going on strike. Many students feel like they’re in constant danger

7:04 of missing out on essential educational time. This is an issue that needs to be remedied as soon as possible. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Um, great. I’m gonna do district updates. Uh, superintendent John. Thank you. Um, so I’m just gonna go through some district updates. Um, there’s many, many, and I’ll just kind of try to hit the highlights. So thanks all. Thank you. Um, as Ella mentioned, it’s been a busy first few weeks of school, but I think, uh, things are settling in and folks are starting to hit their stride, which is great. Um, just a few highlights. Composting at all the schools in partnership with the town and the Sustainable Marble Head is in place. I want to thank the administrators for getting this program up and running so quickly, and for the teachers and students for their green efforts as well. Some issues with containers

7:50 and understanding whose responsibility it is to remove composting materials have arisen, but we are working through those issues and is going well, um, at the schools that have embraced it. So I’m really happy about that. Uh, good collaborative effort. Um, so that’s awesome. My son, just To comment, my son participates in that at Village, and he thinks it’s the best thing. Yeah, it’s awesome that students are involved every day. Yeah, it’s really cool. And like I said, there’s some, some logistics we’re gonna figure out. Sure. Um, but I think we’re moving, moving in full, full implementation. So very excited. Um, I do wanna recognize that transportation was a bit bumpy during the first two weeks, so I thank parents, caregivers and students for their patients. As things seem to be going more smoothly now. Lisa Manning and Todd Bloodgood have worked hard to make adjustments, so I appreciate their efforts,

8:35 and I just wanted to recognize that. ‘cause I know I did get a few, um, correspondence about the transportation. I think we’re in better stead now, so thank you. Uh, Wayfinder. Our new SEL curriculum was presented at the last meeting by assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning. Julia Ferrera. Uh, the program actually kicked off officially yesterday, and we are excited to see how all of our students and staff will benefit from the program throughout this year and beyond. Just a reminder, the wayfinders are well vetted and used by many districts in the Commonwealth. Um, I’m just gonna read a few of the, the, um, schools that do use it. ‘cause I think there was some questions about that. Uh, Cambridge Public Schools, Burlington, Revere, Everett, Brookline, Malden, Lawrence Redding, Canton Somerset, Berkeley Regional Gloucester, Boston Public Schools, Natick Amesbury, greater New Bedford Regional Vote Tech, um, pirate, uh, pine Arts Magnet School, Bancroft School,

9:23 beaver Country Day, John Elliot, K to eight Innovation School, and many more. I just thought it’s important to kind of share that. Um, it’s very well vetted and used by, um, by many districts across the comma. So thank you again to Julia and Angie Graziano, um, and the rest of the dedicated team, um, that took time, took the time to determine that this is the program that will best meet our needs, uh, for of our students and staff here on Marblehead. Student safety has been a part of many discussions as of late. The Wayfinder program will assist some of the social emotional issues that students experience training provided through the district, uh, previously, and being re-instituted now through QBS, which stands for Quality Behavioral Solutions, will truly help staff assist students more effectively when they may be experiencing frustration and exhibiting challenging behaviors. The dialogue about our schools being globally unsafe, um,

10:11 I feel isn’t quite accurate though. Um, but we, as in most, uh, schools in every town, every district in every state have students that do become dysregulated. And I wanna, uh, run and recognize that, um, that are due to factors beyond the control and can potentially cause some safety concerns at times. Um, this doesn’t mean, however, that our schools are unsafe. What it does mean is that, that we need to continually assess how we are working with students so that they can be successful. And we’ve talked a lot about how we’re, you know, the trainings we’re putting in place and, you know, wayfinder and some other, um, things to put in place to kind of address some of those things. So I’m very confident, and I know at Marie’s gonna talk about some of the things in her department that I think will also contribute to that, um, student safety. I Have one comment there too. Yeah. One other thing that, you know, just kind of swirling that we had heard about Wayfinder.

10:56 Um, we had asked last, at our last meeting about communications that will be, I know Julie’s not here tonight, but we had asked that our last meeting. I had asked about communications that would be sent home and shared with the parents. So the parents are aware of the curriculum and what’s being taught to their student. Mm-Hmm. There is that portion of it, um, that definitely will be utilized. Julia shared that last at our last meeting, so I just wanna make sure to share that again so that folks watching in the community, uh, can be aware of that. Yeah. Thank you. And I appreciate that. Um, yeah, Julia did such a nice job of, uh, really going through the program last time. Yep. And, uh, I think that’s, that’s Great. And presentation is available. It’s, it’s up there in the packet from our last meeting, so if anybody wanted to see it. Um, it is important that I acknowledge that there’s still some open positions throughout the district, which can be tricky, A bit tricky to fill after the start of the school year.

11:41 But we are making some headway, uh, with the 18 position, uh, posted positions that have been identified as needing to be filled. So there’s 18 open positions that are, that are posted at the moment. Um, what I can tell you is that just this past week, I have four staff out of those 18 that are on the landing pad, um, already for coming in, just doing, um, onboarding, you know, waiting on fingerprints and things like that. Um, so hopefully that will kind of help to backfill some of the open positions. And we’re gonna, and continually, um, going through those, uh, positions in the principals and, um, student services and everything are, are, are working hard to fill those. And I’m confident that we’ll, we’ll, we’ll get there shortly. Um, it’s not where I like to be at this time of the year, but I think we’re making headway. Um, at the last meeting, I proposed the committee, the idea, starting the meetings earlier.

12:26 I sent out the anonymous survey regarding the proposed change in the school committee start time to 6, 6 30, or keep it at seven. I also added a no preference to that survey. Uh, and the result was followed. I shut it off at about five o’clock this evening, 561 respondents. So I thought that was pretty, pretty cool. Um, 188 respondents, um, voted in favor of six o’clock 60 respondents at 6 30, 1 61. And, um, 157 responses said they had no preference. So, um, by a decent margin. The six o’clock timeframe seemed to be the preference for, um, those that were surveyed. So I sent that out to staff and, uh, parents of Marblehead public school students. And we had talked about it, and it was, it was in public, um, um, you know, public discussions and everything. So, uh, so we’ll be talking about

13:13 that later on, I believe as well. Uh, two more things, and I’ll, and I’ll stop talking. John Caswell from Marblehead TV came and interviewed me on Tuesday. And I just wanna thank John for giving me some airtime and allowing me to share my happiness at being here in Marblehead and working with such great administrators, educators, uh, parents, caregivers, students, and the support from the committee has truly been a great first couple of months. And then finally, I love, love, love that students, um, within the ATM team at Village, um, who I mentioned earlier, Adam Angelopoulos and Stephanie Trainer, the teachers, um, of that team, uh, sent me a pile of warm welcome messages. They have been mounted on my office door, but I wanted to share them live as there. Uh, there is some, clearly some great modeling of kindness taking place by our awesome educators. Please know that they, these make me smile

13:58 and remind me of why do what I do. So I just wanna show them. So I have all sorts of really cool letters and cards thanking me, um, for coming to Marblehead. I don’t know where the best place to show them is, but these have all been mounted on my door. Um, they’re gonna go back up there tomorrow. It’s really cool. Welcome, superintendent. ou Welcome. There’s some really, I, I love this. You know, it’s, it’s really neat. And then the, the black and black and red m So thank you again to the students for taking the time. Thank you for the teachers, um, for having the students make those. I think it’s, you know, it’s, um, again, it’s why we do what we do. So I just wanna share that. Thank you. Wonderful modeling. That’s, thank you. Our PDIS program and our keeping each other well modeled. Yep. And kindness.

14:46 Yep. That’s all I have. Mad chairwoman. Thank you. Thank you, superintendent Robert. Okay. Um, can I, I have one question, sorry, I keep having no jump in for, with the, the open roles that we have. Is this something that you have seen in the past? Uh, because there’s a, you know, discussion about it. You know, obviously having open positions is never good at the beginning of the school year. Yep. Um, very excited to hear that there are four people on the landing pad. I also really like that term. Um, is this something that you’ve seen before? Are there other districts going through this? What, so what I can tell you is that perspective. Yeah. What I can tell you is that I think on the number of openings we had in Marblehead, I, I haven’t been here historically clearly,

15:31 but, um, clearly it was a high number. Uh, there’s no disputing that. Um, is it atypical of districts to have a, a large number of openings, um, at the end of the school year, going to the beginning of the school year? No. Um, we see that there’s a shortage of teachers and, um, people working in the schools. It’s just, it’s a different world than it was, you know, 10, 15 years ago. Um, which, you know, really speaks to, you know, when, when teachers are in the role and their dedication, you know, I have a, I have, you know, a little bit more, um, fondness for that because it is, it is difficult. It’s not, it’s not atypical. Um, I haven’t experienced this volume in my previous, um, in my previous district, uh, at, at this point of the year. So there’s sometimes when, you know, you have 20 or 30 people that leave, and there’s some years that you have five

16:18 or six, it’s just, it ebbs and flows. It’s not, it’s not, um, unique to Marblehead, although I, I do have to admit that the numbers were pretty high this year, I think, uh, comparatively so, um, I’m hoping that folks that are coming on board are working out well. Um, we continue to move forward with, um, everything that we’re, we’ve been talking about. We’re setting some, um, good expectations. And I think, you know, uh, people will find the reason I came to Mar ‘cause there was so many positive things going on amidst some, you know, some other things happening. And I’m hoping that people, uh, you know, people see the good that we do here at Marblehead. And, and I’m excited about it. I think, um, we’re, we’re heading in the right direction. So, um, yeah. Are, are you finding that the people who are choosing to leave are taking advantage of the opportunity for an exit interview?

17:03 Um, I came in at a strange time, so, uh, most of the people that left, uh, left prior to me coming. So when I walked into X amount of openings, um, um, you know, my first few weeks, I want to say I hired between 25 and 30 people. So it was like rapid fire, Mm-Hmm. Um, just, just getting people on board. And then probably another 10 or so since then. And like I said, the four that I have on a landing pad, um, hopefully wrapping up this week, um, I said between, um, so I love to do exit interviews. Typically. I, I, I kind of make that, I always try to meet with te, you know, teachers and, um, administrators. I can’t meet with like every single bargaining unit member, but I try to meet with, um, folks when they come on board so I can talk to them. Um, you know, just set expectations, find out a little bit more about people.

17:49 Um, excuse me. And I like to do the same thing on the backend. When people do decide to leave. Now people leave for different reasons. Um, they leave, uh, for family reasons, uh, being closer to home, commute time, um, money, obviously. Uh, there’s military families, there’s, uh, retirements, you know, having babies and, and our other family obligations that, um, just kind of preclude them from maybe, um, continuing with their enrollment. So there’s a lot of reasons. Okay. Um, you know, I think, you know, there’s a lot of reasons and we always, If a particular trend is popping up mm-Hmm. Um, that is something that would be under our purview, just loop us back in so that if there is a trend that’s showing, uh, an area of concern, we can make sure to address It. Yeah. I, you know, I, you know, wanna call it what is, uh,

18:35 some people even, um, based upon the salaries, probably, I, I don’t want to, you know, discard that. Um, I don’t think that’s the only reason by any means, uh, any way, shape or form. I’ve hired a lot of people, um, already, and all the people I’ve talked to that I’ve hired have been like really happy with what’s going on in Marblehead with their salaries, with they, you know, so, you know, I think that’s some of the dialogue, but I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s the full picture, but yeah, I will certainly, um, bring that up. Perfect. Thank John. Should that be at a higher level part of the HR function, regardless of what the status of our other people’s positions may be? What part of that Al I’m sorry. Uh, When any person leaves the district, right. I would expect it to be an HR policy to try to reach out to that person to find out why. Again, this is assuming that they’re willing to do that. It shouldn’t depend on, you know,

19:23 where our superintendent was or was not. Someone should have, you know, there should be a responsibility for someone to try to reach out and discuss why someone’s leaving. I, I agree. I feel like, I feel like we missed a lot of data. Right. We don’t know who may have left because of salary, who may have left for many other reasons. No, and no, totally valid point. And I think, you know, when I draw my experience, I didn’t have, I was the, I was part of the hr, so I didn’t have that. And, and so I would do all that. Um, we do have an HR department here, and I think that that’s important part of their role for sure. Um, especially, you know, towards the end of the school year, you know, you know, the spring is when people generally leave and go to, you know, for different reasons. Um, and then, you know, um, we try to always make sure that we, you know, we find out why. And sometimes it’s very evident. Sometimes it’s not evident. I mean, I’ve had veteran teachers that left

20:09 because their spouse, you know, got a different job somewhere far away and they had to move. I mean, that, that happens a lot. So it, it is good data to have out, I think, you know, that’s a fair point. Yep. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. Okay, I’m gonna move on to schedule bills. Um, you had in your, um, drive the summary of bills for the, um, past number of weeks since our last meeting. I am looking for a motion to approve the schedule bills for totaling $581,728 and 55 cents. So moved. So moved by Al seconded. Um, second, Brian Oda, I’m gonna do a roll call. Uh, Allison Taylor in favor, Sarah Fox. In favor. Brian Oda in favor. L Williams

20:57 In favor, Jen Schaffner in favor. Five to zero. Um, you also had, uh, the, uh, minutes of Thursday, June 20th school committee meeting in your drive, um, uh, for that period. And I did talk to Allison. She’s working on the other ones. ‘cause we still have, I guess, um, I guess the earlier one in September. Not me. No, the other Allison. Allison McMahon, who does our, sorry. Um, so I’m looking for a motion to approve the minutes of Thur school committee meeting of Thursday, June 20th, 2024.

21:33 Rule by Allison second.

21:37 Seconded. Second by Al. Any discussion?

21:42 Okay. I’m gonna call for a roll call vote. Allison in favor? Sarah Fox In favor? Brian ota. I’m recusing myself. I wasn’t there. Okay. Um, and, uh, Al Williams In favor, Jen Schaffner in favor. So, four to zero with one abstention. Brian ota. Okay. Um, okay. I’m gonna move on to school committee communications and discussion items. Um, the first item we have is the discussion to move the start time of the Marblehead School Committee business meetings that are normally held on the first and third Thursdays of the month, uh, to a start time of 6:00 PM We discussed this, or this was, um, presented to us by Superintendent OU at the last meeting. Um, he you did the, uh, survey Mm-Hmm. Which you reported on earlier in, um, tonight’s agenda.

22:30 So I didn’t put this down as a vote because I don’t think we necessarily need to vote it. I think this can be sort of a discussion and a consensus if we wanna move it. Although we could certainly take a vote. Does anyone have any strong feelings one way or the other? Um, if we’re going to do it, I would like to pilot it rather than make a permanent commitment. Um, maybe decide on a period that we’ll pilot it and then solicit some feedback from the community if, if this is working or not working.

23:01 Yes. We’ve already got, we’ve already got the feedback we asked. That’s what we asked last time, is to do a survey. I’m in favor of moving it to six. Okay. Anyone else? Yeah, I’m fine with that. Okay, Brian? Yeah, yeah. No, I am too. And I think to Sarah’s point, um, I don’t think we, I don’t think we necessarily need a pilot. I think our community has proven that they are happy to share their, um, feelings on, um, on things regarding the school committee. So I think if there were a concern, be if something, if if this survey for some reason was not reflective, which is hard to imagine ‘cause it was a decent response, I’m thrilled with that response. Um, yeah, I was shocked that we had over 500. I’d love to get 500 on a survey out of however, you know, 3000 students and people in the community. I’m gonna chalk it up to newbie.

23:47 I’ll take it down to newbie. Yeah. So I think we let, uh, we will plan then to move to a 6:00 PM start time. And that will be effective at our next meeting, which is another subject for discussion. But at this, the October 10th meeting, we’ll be 6:00 PM um, that, which means if we do executive session and we do it beforehand, um, we would do it earlier. Of course, the other option is we can do it later and it won’t be quite as late. So we can take that as it comes. Right. Um, I’m gonna move on to the request to name the Brown School Organic Garden, um, that had been brought forth by school committee member Sarah Fox. In your, um, drive there, I had a Lisa put in the copy of, um, policy FFA under our facilities, um, category, which is entitled Memorials, um, that would pertain to this.

24:36 So, again, I didn’t put it down as a vote, but we can, if we decide to do this, we can take a vote or if we could just come to a contestants. So I don’t know if we wanna open up for discussion. Sarah, do you have any, If I could just speak, because it was an agenda item I had requested, if I can just speak to absolutely it For a little bit. Yep. Um, first I wanna offer a clarification. This memorial’s, um, policy FFA was updated on 6 23 22. And it says, as of this date, the policy for memorials in the event of a death may be permanent in nature, but should abide by these rules. And it goes through talking about how we have reintroduced memorial memorials. And this was little over two years ago. Um, I did review the minutes and I, and I apologize, I cannot find anywhere where this came

25:23 before us, but I really strongly, strongly hope that you guys do, um, ask Jen to get on our agenda and come before us because I can say that I, I would wholeheartedly support that. It just is not a, an agenda item that had been on our agenda, um, prior. So, um, to speak about this a little bit, um, I am hoping that we can, um, name and dedicate the Brown School Organic Garden to Catherine Martin. As I had said, she had, um, designed the garden program. I think it was in 2012, 2013. At the time, we were not in compliance

26:09 with the state frameworks for, um, the science frameworks. And we weren’t for a very long time until relatively recently in the garden program where a lot of people thought it was kids digging in the dirt. It was implementing all the frameworks of the science curriculum statewide. Um, there was a committee that ran year round comprised of teachers, um, Catherine Martin, as well as Gene Scona. Um, and they would constantly refresh this, provide it, they would donate their time, they’d come in, they’d teach lessons, and we became in compliance. This was really a springboard for district wide where we see the vogue at Village. I believe Glover has one now. We now have a greenhouse here that intertwines experiential learning through science frameworks

26:55 and other, other cross sections, at least at some of our schools are, you know, teachers might be bringing kids out for a writing exercise. So it really was a springboard for learning. Um, so my request is that we dedicate it to her. Um, the language that allows for the memorial plaque here, I think is much more than I’m asking for. I don’t think that that would be Katie’s wish to have anything that’s really referencing, um, you know, it being a memorial or anything like that. I think she, there was a, a phrase she constantly used, um, with everything with the garden. It was, and it really embodies, I think the spirit of our schools. And what we’re trying to do is planting a garden is hope tomorrow. Um, and that’s what we want for our kids is hope tomorrow. So I thought, um, you know,

27:41 we had a very playful sign on all of our garden beds and they still exist. They’re floating around that a local artist did, um, out of pottery. And the kids, I think had some input. It just very playful, um, child, very childlike. And we have signs that say, you know, like celery and basil and things like that that go throughout the garden. Just a mimic of that, that just, you know, might say Katie’s garden and like a, a planting a garden is how, whatever the saying is, but planting a garden is, um, to show hope in tomorrow. Um, so that’s what I’m asking the committee. And as I had said before, there are intentions to, um, and people, several people have come forward and support of this to, um, have various fundraisers

28:28 that would not run through the school committee or schools that would then, um, set up a combination of some scholarship money for some students to, might need some special education tutoring, which was one passion of hers as well as upkeep of the garden and paying for, um, the, the, the consultants that now come in and do that curriculum. Um, so I talked to, it was funny, Mary over at Brown said to me, I just heard, and I said, no, Mary, remember we talked about in that in the spring? And she goes, oh yes, we did. But then, you know, we didn’t, we all forget, we kind of, we kept bargaining. We have workshops and things, but our normal business meeting stops. So there was nothing, no, no normal business meeting to bring this to until the fall. So we’d kind of hit pause in that.

29:14 And here I’m bringing it in front of everybody now. So, so you had spoken to Mary about it? I had spoken to Mary in the spring. Okay. Um, and then she stopped me actually in the hallway when I was picking up a child the other day. And, and then when I said, remember we talked about it in the spring, she said, oh yeah, we did. Um, I, I need to make a correction though. The Village Organic Garden started long before this one. It had every element you’ve already spoken about. We had lessons planned, math, science, we had parents come in. We had all of these things done before the Brown School. And I’m not integrating Brown School or the Bell School, but Yeah, I mean, you, you were saying that the Brown School led the way and all of these things, whereas Village did this four or five years before Brown was even, oh, I completely apologize. As I lived through it, I know, um, maybe there was a lack

30:00 of involvement, but they had come back to us at the Brown and asked, um, if we could help get that started again. So I apologize, I didn’t realize that it had started. Oh yeah, we did that. We had over over $20,000 worth of donations as well as the 15,000 from the friends of Mar brother public school. So it was a big deal and involved half the town. That’s awesome. I mean, people really came in with their tractors and their excavators and the Explorers sounds very similar. Did one of their Yeah, the Village Garden is amazing and they donate a ton of food to The food pantries. Food Pantries. We actually used it in the Gardens was used in the, um, kitchen for salad bars, and we got the town to Okay that as an organic garden so they could actually serve that in our food. So, and that improved our salad intake by the kids by a lot

30:46 because they knew what they grew up there. Oh, that’s wonderful. Was in the garden, in the salad bar. I think, if I’m not mistaken, the Village Organic Garden also started as a, an Eagle Scout project. As a what? As an Eagle Scout project. They, construction came, when we started building it, they asked if they could be part of the deacon and they were the ones that tore down the junk that was in there and cleared the place for the garden itself. That’s wonderful. And that’s a good point that Brian just made. Um, I know Village is still currently, I know Brown is, I have to assume all of our organic Gar Gardens are regularly donating to the Marblehead Food Pantry. That’s great. James Sen just posted the other day, I think he brought 50 some odd pounds of tomatoes from Brown over to the food pantry. So it’s, it’s a great way for our kids to kind of understand the sense of community as well as the science

31:33 and where their food comes from. Great. Um, I, I looked at, ‘cause this was revised, um, our memorial was revised like a minute before I was elected and before my first meeting and voted, I guess before my first meeting, there has to be three readings of, of a new policy, which means it had to have happened right around the time that Ms. Ano passed. I could not, I too went through minutes. Me too. Watched meetings to try and find anything. Brian, I think you were principal then. Assistant Assistant? No, no, no, no. At Glover You were principal at Glover. At Glover, yeah. Right. Sorry. Uh, I For Brooke. For Brooke or Ms. Ano.

32:19 When, when Miss. Yes, when Miss Ano, um, when you wanted to, when the teachers wanted to have, We were told at the time that, uh, memorials like this weren’t allowed. So it died on the volume. And what, what was, what was, yeah, I’m just cur because Sarah was the only one on the committee. Then came to The committee though It was probably nixed by the superintendent because it, the policy that he claimed said we don’t do Memorials, but the policy was updated to allow memorials. Yeah, but That’s years specific memorials years later. No, no, it was, no, it shortly After was the policy was updated. What I can think, I don’t know. So it was only on the committee. So I don’t know if she has any more details. 22 years ago, But the policy was revised and voted for its third reading on June 23rd, which is a week before.

33:05 And it was in connection to the Forever Fan section and, um, Memorial to James Ante. Okay. Right. But it was also directly after Brooke Yano. So I, I ab I’m, I’m disappointed beyond Yeah. All reproach. That, that was not, that, that somehow, um, got stopped. And I absolutely encourage you to please bring that forward. Does, does, doesn’t fully support that, does the Policy? What what’s the trajectory for the I don’t have it in front of me. So it, does it go to the principal then the superintendent? It goes to the administrator of the building. Yeah. It goes to the principal and principal superintendent then submits it to the superintendent. Yeah. Okay. So in this case it was a little bit, um, No, I am not questioning that. I’m just, I’m thinking we heard from the teachers before.

33:50 I would think, you know, it sounds like, um, if we’re gonna look at this Yep. So just go through the right channels and then we’ll get it before the school committee. Yep. Yeah, Absolutely. So please do that and we can get that. Um, and I’m not sure what the request originally was anyway. I don’t Know. Find, I couldn’t find, find that specific Multiple went through Brian and then, and that was turned down parents as well. And that was turned down again. Get past hope. Okay. To be clear, Brian didn’t turn it, I don’t think Brian actually removed. Brian was encouraging it, it was the next level. Yep. So I guess what we’re saying is please do follow through and, um, if there was any, you know, if it was ever conveyed to you that this, that we as a body had said no, there’s no documentation case, no recollection. No, no agenda items to, to support. We were aware.

34:40 Yeah. I will say, ‘cause I was on the committee under the former, um, policy, which was, um, it was pretty cl it, it wasn’t completely clear, but it like gave a very, it basically said there are no memorials and the, and the school committee can approve one. It, it was pretty clear, um, that you couldn’t, this policy not looking to make more work for us. There’s a couple of contradictory things here. ‘cause it says, you know, no plaques, you know, can be permanent and then nothing should be permanent. So I think we might wanna also maybe just massage this one a little bit. I think so too. I feel like there’s some contradictions in this one. Well, I also, don won’t stop anything in regards to Ms. Yano or hopefully, or, or Katie Martin. But, um, I also, you should clean, I don’t, don’t really understand why a shrub is discouraged. Yeah.

35:25 I, Or a stone like I don’t And other permanent memorials, whereas above it says they may be permanent. There’s that, that’s the direct disconnect. That is something that could not, not, like if you plant ahr, it could, it could die. That’s, yeah. Yeah. That’s fair. But that would all be, I think up to, to the administrator and the superintendent to make sure that, So I would think where are, are we now? And how do we move forward, get the, get the requests through the proper channels. I’ll get it to the school committee. I sounds to me like people are willing to have the conversation and there’s some things in the policy that might be a little contradictory, but that’s part of the, that’s part of the approval at the end. Yep. So I think we can work through those things. So I would encourage, Please do. So it sounds like there’s general consensus to support the Garden For Katie Martin,

36:11 I’d be really honored to make a motion to, um, name and dedicate the organic, the Brown Organic Garden to Catherine Martin. I will second that motion. I’m gonna call for a vote. Allison Taylor In favor? Um, Sarah Fox. In favor? Brian OTA in favor. L Williams. In favor, Jen Schaffner in favor. Five to zero. Great, great news. Hey Tru, thank you for bringing that Forward, um, through the chair. If you don’t mind, I know this would normally be your job, but if I can reach out to her family and Of course, of course. What Exactly are you planning on doing? Um, reaching out to her family, just letting them know. No, I mean, as the memorial, what is it going to be? It’s Gonna be plaque or, um, yes. I had said before they’re, um, I can get an image

36:57 of the signs they currently have. They’re kind of made out of pottery. They’re just very playful kid signs just to match the signs that are already on the garden, rather than do maybe to avoid having something that feels a little heavier and, You know, which have her name on it or stay in The spirit of The garden. And that’ll be under John and, um, Mary to Okay. That Yeah. We can present. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. It doesn’t need to come back to the committee, but I Guys do that. And then as long as the wish, the wish to the family and make sure it’s in line with what you’re saying. Yeah. Be yes. Yep. I’ll support that. Great. Thank you. Okay, I’m gonna move on to Lisa Marie Elito, our assistant superintendent of, uh, student services to talk about our tiered focused monitoring corrective action plan.

37:43 Wonderful. Thank You. Welcome, Lisa Marie. Thank you for having me. Um, Victoria as well as Victoria. Ryan’s the assistant assistant director join, sit over here. That would be great. She, whatever, wherever you Yeah, Yeah. On the camera. Do we have, does, does Frank have the thing or No? Yes, he does. We talked about it earlier. Great. So, uh, thank you for having us here tonight. Um, we’ve had, uh, a wild time since we’ve started here, um, in Marble high public schools, but it’s been great. We’re enjoying ourselves thoroughly and meeting, uh, so many families. And, um, hopefully we’re gonna meet more and more students and the staff is absolutely lovely and hardworking. So, um, we wanted to start with that.

38:29 And we also wanted to, um, bring notice to our team chairs. We are fully hired now. We have a team chair within each building. So I would like to thank Susie Allen from the high school, Ashley Liebman from, uh, veterans, uh, Sabrina Marie, uh, Sabrina Marie Wadman from, uh, the Village, Carol Donley at Glover. And, um, no, at Brown. I always confuse Brown and Glover. I don’t know, it’s my own dyslexia. Um, and Lauren Skelton, um, over at Glover. Um, let’s see. And also all of our case managers and related service providers, um, because we have had to begin our year with all new systems and everyone, um,

39:15 who we’ve encountered basically said to us, bring it on. We’re ready. We want to, uh, do this because it’s best for our students. So it all that, I’m gonna briefly, this, that system you implemented, I’ve got a tremendous amount of positive feedback in the community about the communication right from the get go at the beginning of the year. So thank you. Oh yeah. A lot of positive feedback from parents. Yes. A lot of work from a lot of people. So thank you for that. We love to have a positive too. So tonight I’m here just to, um, give an update around our tiered focus monitoring, um, and the findings and what has happened since we’ve received, um, the findings. And so is there a place, I’m sorry, is there a place I should be looking to know which slide is up?

40:01 Oh, do we have them up? Here you go. Here you go. Okay. So you could probably right here, look at either John’s. Look right here. It’s all good. That’s why, that’s why I gave everybody a nice, this is the same thing that’s in the packet. It’s just paper copy. Okay. Excellent. Um, and do I change the slides or No, Frank will do that if you just say next slide or next Slide. Okay, great. Um, so this slide demonstrates the four areas of compliance. Um, and I just wanted to talk about, this is not just a Marblehead Public Schools, um, actionable item. This is applied to all public schools. Um, well, I can, I’ll only talk about, uh, in the state of Massachusetts. So all 351 districts, um, fall under the purview,

40:48 um, of these guidelines, um, and policies and laws for, um, IDA. So there are four areas of criteria. And the areas in yellow are highlighted from Marblehead public schools, um, under implemented. We at this time were found to have implemented 28 out of the 34, um, standards. And that basically means that they saw a consistency around the implementation of the different policies and regulations. And then in six out of the 34, we were, um, partially, um, they were partially implemented. And we’re gonna go over those, um, tonight and what’s being done? Next slide please. And so this is just another way

41:35 of looking at it. So anytime you see an SE that what that means is special education. Um, and sometimes you’ll see a cr and that’s a curriculum. So when assistant superintendent fear was here and she was presenting about the EL LTFM, a lot of hers said CR or el. ‘cause that would fail under curriculum. So just trying to lay the groundwork there. Okay. Next slide. Can I ask a question? Are these weighted somehow though you’ve got 28 out of 34. I mean, are those 28 important things? 28? Well, we’re gonna talk about them in detail. Okay. Yes. Great. Thank you. So I I you’re very welcome. And so I wanna just start with some positive of the ones that were implemented. Um, and I’m not gonna go over all 28 that were implemented,

42:20 just highlighting a few. And so, um, what happens in how they decide these rating scales as they pull, um, a significant amount of files? Um, they typically start with 25 files and they randomly pull and they look at what, um, the timeline was, a timeline followed of appropriate documents in there where they written appropriately, uh, where parents communicated with. Um, there’s many, many, many layers and we are still going through that process now, and I’ll talk about that more like at the end. But the areas when, um, what they found was more consistent through their polls of our files from last year. So these polls were all done last year, was we did a great job when students turned 14 years old.

43:06 And, um, starting to have them attend meetings and those transitional services. Um, we were, um, considering doing a great job giving the least restrictive environment to our students. Um, obtaining parental Cass consent, um, our team composition and attendance, meaning that, um, our case managers and, um, our team chairs did a nice job of tracking the attendance and also signing off the forms. Sometimes if a staff member needs to leave a meeting, they require the parent, um, has to sign off that that’s okay, that that’s staff member. Um, is, is leaving. Um, the meeting also, we got, um, uh, great grades on writing progress notes, communication to our families, not only in English, but also our English language learners.

43:53 Um, and and part of that was supported by, or I’m sure ‘cause it was last year, right? I’m thinking this year, last year I’m sure I was supported by assistant superintendent Fiera. Um, as she works with the, um, l families and our assistive assistive tech that we provide, we actually contract in this district with, um, a provider who comes in once a week to consult with, um, teachers and, um, students around their assistive technology. The areas that, um, were deemed as partially implemented, um, you can see on the screen, um, SE three, um, determining specific learning disabilities, otherwise known as s um, SLD. Uh, s se seven is age of majority, which is different from the age 14.

44:39 So age of majority is basically when a child is in their 17th year and you’re writing an IEP that their 18th birthday will occur within that year’s time that you have to have documentation of basically they’re turning into an adult. And so what’s going to happen? Are they going to oversee their own care? Are they, uh, are they’re signing it over that their parents can still participate? Um, and so we didn’t necessarily have that consistently. Um, for our high school students, our frequency for reevaluations, those happen every three years. Um, timelines were missed on that. Uh, SE 14, same sort of thing in terms of annual reviews. And then what does the revision of the IEP look like?

45:25 Um, and so, um, when Mrs. Ryan and I were going through IEPs ourselves, trying to like really be tangible about it, we noticed, um, and this is not the fault of anybody ‘cause there’ve been so many people and they have different perspectives of how this is supposed to look. But they would go into a team meeting and then they would change all the dates on the IEP when that would then shift the IEP date. That would extend it beyond a three, the three years. So that’s something that we’re currently working on, um, the IEP implementation and availability. Um, and also, um, the service delivery times are when parents would leave a team meeting. Um, it was documented that parents were interviewed and it was stated that they wouldn’t necessarily receive any documentation at the end of a meeting.

46:11 Next slide please. So the next slides are the actual documentation that was submitted to Desi to our, uh, liaison, um, on basically they said, how are you gonna fix this? What are you going to do? And so, um, this is particularly on special education, uh, indicator number three and by tomorrow, September 20th. So you’ll see that date over and over again. Uh, Marblehead Public Schools will develop and submit procedures for specific learning disabilities determinations. The procedures will include in an internal tracking and monitoring system. And that will be maintained not just now, but well into the future. It is going to be our best practices

46:57 and it will also have administrative oversight. So there’s a, a lot of onus on responsibility of on our team chairs, but particularly on Mrs. Ryan and, and myself. Um, and then by September 20th, we will conduct training of all special education staff, including related services on, um, what does it mean to have a, um, specific learning disability and what does that, um, timeline and paper, uh, documentation look like. And then our charge is to then submit the agenda for those meetings that we’ve had, the actual presentations that we’ve done. Um, and signed time sheets, as you all did tonight. You signed a little, uh, a little attendance, not time. I’m not paying you. We actually gonna get a, we should,

47:42 I know time sheets, but we don’t attendance sheets. Thank you. Um, and it says here now that by October 18th, so you’re going to see October 18th a lot. In talking with our liaison, she feels like we’re doing such great work. I’m happy to say that she’s extended that date to November. She’s given us till November. Um, and so what is PSM, just so I know, what is Oh, progress, uh, system monitoring. Okay. Yeah, so it’s similar to, it’s, there’s cycle A and there’s cycle B. So this just happens to be one of those two cycles. Um, and subsequent to all corrective actions conduct of follow reviews. So basically what that means when you’re going to see that same lineup basically at the be bottom of each slide is that our liaison will either come into district

48:31 or she will ask me to pull certain files. And so what needed to happen is, um, and I just submitted this to her yesterday, is I need to submit the names and timeline of every student in the district who is on an IEP. Um, and so then she takes that, she looks at the timelines and she’s basically going to sort out the students from July one until whatever day she, she picks like, could be November 1st. I’m thinking it’s gonna be more October. And any student in that timeframe who’s gone through the IEP process and she’s going to ask me to pull those files and send them to her, and then she’s going to basically look with a very fine tooth comb to see are these practices that we are saying are happening actually happening?

49:19 And the answer yes, the answer is a hundred percent yes. Um, it should be happening ‘cause everyone’s working super hard and you’ll hear about all the different systems we have, um, in place. Um, did you wanna say anything else about that? Msre? Okay, great. Next slide, please. Do you want questions per slide or wait till the end? No, we wait till the end. Absolutely. I work better like at the end. Absolutely. Got. Alright, thank you. Um, on SE seven, um, basically, and I’m not gonna read the whole slide, you’ve, you’ve had it, but I’m just gonna give an overview again, a lot of the action steps are that we need to do teacher training and then we need to submit that training, um, and attendance sheets, um, to dsi, um,

50:06 and the agendas for those meetings. So we have done the meetings with not only here tonight with the school committee and the public, but we have, um, done the training with our administrative team. Um, during the summer, actually, uh, the first day of school, um, superintendent robo was gracious enough and the staff, the special ed staff and the union were gracious enough to give me an hour. Um, and so we kept the entire, um, special education team, um, in the auditorium. And Mrs. Ryan and I did a presentation, an overview presentation, basically along the lines of this presentation to the staff to let them know what was coming. The difference was we had all the little details in their, um, presentation. And then, uh, what is occurring now is every Tuesday

50:52 and Thursday, depending on the school for a half hour right after school, they’re having a special ed meeting with the, um, team chairs. And, um, what that does is it provides consistent, um, information to our special education staff. And you may ask, well, how has it become consistent? It’s because, um, Mrs. Ryan and I, we meet with our team chairs every single Friday from eight to 10 30. We do a training with them. So last week was about the new IEP, but how to write the vision. Um, tomorrow is about, um, especially, um, specific learning disabilities and all of those systems. While they have those systems, we’d, we wanna make sure we’re digging into the weeds

51:38 of the understanding of the why, um, of all these pieces. Um, we’ve also done, this would be our third one. We did the goal, present the, yes, the goal presentation. Thank you. So, um, and so we’re actually providing the presentation to our team chairs so that they can then present it to the rest, um, of the department. Um, and we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback, um, about that. The teachers really like the two half hours a week to be able to ask their questions and have those answered. Um, okay. Next slide. Um, on SE 12, um, it really discusses about our three year reevaluations, which I talked about a little bit already. And again, we’re providing all of those materials, um,

52:24 and so on our, what we call our master tracker, and each building has their own master tracker. It lists the student’s demographic information. Then the next column is the actual timeline for every single student in that building. When, when is their next annual review? When is their next, uh, three year al supposed to be. Um, and then in the next column, um, we made these dropdowns. So all you do is click, um, or an initial eval. Um, any students, um, receiving initial evaluation, their name will be added, um, to the tracker. And then as the team chair goes across with our wonderful, um, special education clerks, um, Maureen Larco, Peggy East Laie, and Leah Bartlett. Amazing. They’ve really, um, taken to our systems

53:12 and really supported us. Um, they then put who is the liaison and then who’s doing the actual testing So, for example, if a child needs, um, obviously Ed A and B would be the classroom teacher. And let’s say they need speech. So maybe they’re putting Crosby for Caroline Crosby, who happens to be one of our SLPs and they’re putting like literally the last name. We’re tagging people, like who are the people part of this team? And that information is available, um, if needed also to the parents. And then as you go across the tracker, the deadline’s there, what is 30 days? What is 45 days? And I said it jokingly, but they knew I was dead serious about this. There’s a column that says if you’ve gone beyond the 45 days, you need to tell me what the date is

53:57 and why we missed the, the guideline in red. Um, but, and I begged them, I’m like, please don’t make me have to see rad. Because part of the guidelines of this tiered focus monitoring is that I would then need to do a root cause analysis of why did that occur. Um, but everyone’s so invested. I’m not anticipating things do happen ‘cause this is life. But I’m hoping those are very far. Um, and few between. Next slide please.

54:30 Okay. And SE 14, um, this talks about, um, outta district placements as well are, are part of this and that we are, um, internally tracking the timeline for all students. Um, and to make sure that there is, um, that compliance. Um, and like I said, the, the tracker, I mean, it basically does that for us. And so Mrs. Ryan and I, um, weekly go through the tracker and if the team chair or the clerk, there’s a lot of kids on there, if they’ve missed something, then we highlight it in red, meaning it’s coming like pay attention. Or if it’s blue, it’s on fire. Like this needs to happen this afternoon. So by the way, I kind of, the, the visual

55:18 that I’ve given is the real hot color of fire is blue, not red. So if we’re hitting blue, we’re on fire. So let’s get that, that task taken care of, um, a little levity in our tracking system. Um, okay. Next slide please.

55:38 Okay. So, um, SE 18 B, ‘cause there’s an A, but A is, um, English language learners, um, and B is for special education. And so, um, it’s written as at the end of a team meeting, a parent should receive two copies of the proposed IEP. That’s not really accurate. The parents are required to either have a draft copy of the IEP or very comprehensive meeting notes. And so, uh, what we’ve devised is we have a document that every single team chair fills out for the end of the meeting that captures the goals, um, that were developed during the meeting, the service delivery grid, any additional information like all the parts required

56:23 by law that parents need to walk out of that meeting to have in hand in, um, when they leave. Um, so we’ve received, um, feedback about that because beyond this compliance report, we’ve also put in other systems, including at the end of every team meeting, parents receive a link to give, um, Mrs. Ryan and I feedback about their team meeting. Like whatever they wanna tell us, it’s just let us know that’s, we’re not gonna get better if we don’t know what’s happening. And while we would love to attend every team meeting that would, we can’t. Although each month, um, and this is one of those examples, um, twice a month, um, Mrs. Ryan and I, we go and we observe a team meeting

57:08 and then we write up notes to that staff member. And it’s not evaluative, but it needs to be re reported to dsi. Like, what are we seeing? Are we follow the timelines? Where’s an area of improvement for that particular, um, team meeting

57:24 and 22? Yes. Um, this is about missed services. Um, and so that was, um,

57:39 a big a, a big action step in the past in this district. And we’re hoping that it’ll be limited going into the future. And so what we have for our special education staff is if they miss a service of a student, there’s a Google form that they will fill out. It will automatically populate into a spreadsheet that we will see, and it will be by student’s name, so that if a parent has a question, we should be able to open a sheet. The case manager opens the sheet to say that’s accurate, or that’s not what we have here. Or is it specifically, you know, this specific related service or what have you. That way we can ensure, uh, to parents that, that we are on top of this and that kids are receiving the services, um, that are required by their IEP.

58:26 If we do get to a place where, um, a student, um, has missed, um, services to warrant make up services, there’s a letter that has my name on the bottom but is sent by the team chairs that spells out the exact dates why it was missed, and how are we going to make up those compensatory services. Um, and that’s just another example of how we’re trying to build trust with our parent community. Um, um, I’ve said from the beginning, and Mrs. Ryan and I, um, are are such a team. Like we are very transparent. We’re very black and white, you know, um, and, and we just want to do right by the students here, um, in Marblehead. So, um, I think, and thank you. Um,

59:12 Can I just chime in for a second please? Um, so as a formal former special ed director and, um, a lot of my background is special ed, I can tell you that, um, we are super lucky to have both Lisa Marie and Victoria and all the team chairs and the special educators here that are working together. Um, I can say that, uh, I only wish I had them in my previous district to, to do the hard work they’ve been doing because it’s already reaping benefits and I’ve said it over and over again. They’re working tirelessly to really get systems, um, the way they need to be as, as, as was explained today. But also, um, just really making sure that students are getting what they need and the staff are getting the resources that they need to be able to provide the services to students.

59:59 It doesn’t happen all, all at once. And you know, I think people understand that there’s a little bit of time that needs to get some systems put in place, but I’m hugely impressed at where we were when I walked in the door, July one, and where we are September 19th. And I have to thank both of these, uh, fine people for the hard work they do. And Kathleen Guen Mm-Hmm. In your office who just manages all the paperwork flow. Um, it’s, it’s an inordinate amount of work. Um, and I just wanna say thank you to both of you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. I have a couple a question. The school committee had asked for an independent audit on special education over a year ago, and I understand it’s not coming out until June apparently. Does that

1:00:47 Sound No, It’s coming out sooner than that. Sooner. Much sooner than that. So, um, the district, the school committee had contracted last year with academic discoveries and um, July one they basically reached out and said, oh, we have some work to do together an internal audit, um, which I’m happy to support. Um, I did come to, um, the superintendent to say as we started going that the amount of, um, information that they needed in terms of paperwork was just, for lack of better words, extremely overwhelming compared to all the other requests of me personally as the assistant superintendent prior to Ms. Ryan coming on.

1:01:33 Um, so we did push the timeline a little bit, um, but we are still moving forward. Um, part of the situation was they were looking for certain documents that were not readily available that are no longer being used in the district, partly because we are already going through this tiered focus monitoring and we are updating and revising those documents. So, um, with the approval of, um, the chair and the assistant, uh, the superintendent, I see I made you, I made you do big call west. Um, uh, we ask that they evaluate the new processes and procedures ‘cause we would really like that, that honest feedback of our new internal processes to make sure we’re on track.

1:02:21 And at the same time, we kept on track in terms of interviews. So they’re currently doing interviews with, um, they gave me different categories of staff members. Um, so they’re doing those now. Coming up shortly. We’ll be, um, focus groups where we’ll be inviting people in the community and parents as well as school committee members and other staff to come. Um, as well as, um, focus groups as surveys. They’re also, they would be also putting out several surveys. The timeline right now, um, they’re coming to do an update rather soon. We have to just establish that date, but the end result should be prepared by February. And, and I think some of the, it was always December, I Think. Yeah. And I think, you know, when, when,

1:03:07 when Lisa Marie came to me in regard to this, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. ‘cause really a lot of the documents she was trying to pull together weren’t, like she said, not readily, she’s being kind, not readily available. They were like, not basically non-existent and, and, and buried in in everywhere else. But anyway, um, I think what the, the meta message is, is why would we pay for someone to look at stuff that we already knew was, was not where needed to be. And so that’s why they’re doing this portion of it, the infa to face to face and having that input. And then the really looking at the systems piece, which would be hugely helpful to Lisa, Marie and Victoria to say, all these systems we put in place, how are we doing? And do they look fine? And we’ll get much better inform it’d be much better bang for our buck. One that gives much better information. Two, and I think three, um, when that gets presented

1:03:55 to the school committee and to the general public, it’s gonna be a meaningful document. If we had pushed it through the way it was gonna go, it, it really wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on, to be honest with you. So I’m, I’m actually happy that we, we did it this way. So the original audit we asked for is gonna be complimentary to this report. Is that basic what you’re saying In instead? Yeah. They’ve changed it. No, Everything. In other words, Anything that was previously asked for is happening. It’s just originally it was due December to be presented in full and it’s now going to be February presented in full By the time in February when we get this final report, it will actually give us a complete picture Yes. Of where we are today and where our deficits are still. Yes. Great. Thank you. You Will probably have already made some other additional improvements and growth Mm-Hmm. As

1:04:40 Well, I would expect. Yes. Well, Hopefully they’re also gonna look at what you have implemented and maybe they’ve, you know, have some tweaks or, And they’re interviewing literally at central office, like everyone from HR through to the business office, the superintendent. Um, eventually they’re gonna talk to me and, but I have, I meet with them biweekly. So I also wanna state that biweekly, maybe every three weeks. Um, we’re, we’re just the start of the school year now, so Sarah, so while I can absolutely appreciate why, you know, we, we are making so many proactive, positive changes that we wanna look at. Are we going in the right direction rather than getting a report that we may have all already fixed. I, that makes a lot of sense to me.

1:05:27 At the same time, I, um, would like to see, ‘cause we, that was, that was a, an audit that the school committee ordered and approved. So, and based on, um, a scope that was presented to us. So I would like to just be presented with what changed in scope so that we can make sure that what we voted to approve and allocate funds to is, is what we thought we were allocating funds to. And I say that mainly because this, this audit was twofold. It was a response to, I’m gonna use the word crisis. Um, a crisis that we were experiencing in our, our special education department, um, last, you know,

1:06:13 prior to your arrival. So it was a partial response to that as well as, um, some serious financial concerns we were seeing about a sharp increase in our outer districts. So a part of the scope of this was to evaluate and do an audit of the programs and to hopefully receive a list of areas of improvement that can help us, help our students to stay where they, they really wanna be, where they belong with their peers, with their family, with their friends here, as well as helping to, helping to relieve some of the pressure financially on our budget. So I just, if we can assure that all of those things are still happening, um, and see that new scope, that would be great. So the scope has not changed. Okay. Okay.

1:07:00 I did not change the scope. Okay. I just changed the timeline. Okay. Between Perfect. If I’m just being, I’m very transparent black way. Okay. Between all the PRS complaints, uh, the internal audit, this cap, all these things came to me July one. Okay. Um, I, I do not do anything halfway. I either do it to perfection or I don’t do it at all. And I, as the superintendent said so eloquently, I said, I can write the report for you. We need to do everything and let’s save the school committee in this district. A lot of money. Perfect. Yeah. Appreciate You haven’t quite, you know, touched that programing piece. Next step. So They still have a very accurate picture since it is only September 19 today. Yeah. Um, and they’re doing all these interviews and things like that now.

1:07:46 So I do think that it will still be very accurate to what you had wanted. Um, perfect. Great. Perfect. Then I don’t wanna jump in if other people have other questions, I I am happy to let them go first, but I did jot down some questions as we went through the presentation, so you can go first wanna go. Um, are you sure? Yeah. Um, so first as I throw a pencil at you, I’m so sorry. It’s okay. Um, thank you guys so much because, uh, I, I have seen with my own eyes, um, how late you guys have been working and how much you’ve been doing. And I’ve been hearing in the community how happy people are with some of the systems you’ve implemented, uh, the letter home to people that really just said who you, who’s doing what, who do you contact? That was great. That that’s, you know, it was wonderful to see that, um, when we look at this

1:08:31 and we see we got no commendable, is that typical? Um, and I wanna be clear, I, I know us at the table know this, but for anybody watching, this is not an evaluation of the work that you two are doing. This is looking back on, you know, the what was or may not have been happening in our special ed department up through when this review was done in February. So, um, but we got no commendable. Is that typical in, in these reviews? It, it can be. Okay. It’s, it’s challenging to like, give a straightforward answer to that. It depends on, for example, who do they particularly interview for that, for this, um, tiered focus monitoring, which files do they actually pull? Like some staff, um, when we’re discussing it, we’ll say, well, why didn’t they ask me for files?

1:09:16 I could have given them great files. And I’m like, sure, you could have, we could have, we could have given ‘em all the best files, but that isn’t, um, what they’re looking for. They’re looking to just be extremely random and, you know, as a little something to do with that. So. Okay. And then I see here, when we look at each of these things, it says the procedure will include, that’s the work you did. Mm-Hmm. That’s the answer. Yes. You gave to the problem they’ve identified. Okay. Yes. Mm-Hmm. Um, and then, okay, so you talk about this internal tracking and monitoring system, which was sounds great and very, you know, efficient. Was there any internal tracking occurring when this audit was done that you can identify?

1:10:02 None. Okay. Um, these are just questions no one’s been able to answer and I know we’re a little late finally getting, I’m so happy you guys are finally able to give an answer. But these are questions that were arising in our community really strongly in December, January, February. And we were asking, but no one, we, I’m so grateful you guys are able to give us an answer. And I think that, oh, sorry. I Was just gonna jump in real quick. So when you asked about commendable, um, the bigger thing is that we didn’t get any not implemented because that’s generally where you see it. Like I, I’ve done, I’ve been through three or four tier focused monitorings, commendable is a very few and far between, not implemented are more than norm than not. And the fact that even though we’ve recognized the, the deficits, the fact that we didn’t have any not implemented mm-hmm. Is actually shocking to me. One and two, thank

1:10:50 You for random. No, seriously. No, I mean, it’s shocking. Um, so, you know, having implemented as many as when you say 20 out of 34 is, is actually pretty solid. And I can guarantee you the next time they come around it’s gonna, it all be up towards the top for sure. Okay. Yep. Um, And the only other thing I, I wanted, I’m sorry. Um, no, go, go for it. It some, when I say when you asked me about the systems, there were were pockets. They were like pockets. But was there a consistent no? Yeah. So what we’ve often heard, I think this goes back to Bill McCall that used to say it a lot, that what he found when he came here was, um, a system of schools, not a school system. And I think for special education, we, we’ve made some, some ground on that and I think John’s making a lot and Julia’s doing it. But I see you two doing that tremendously in our special education department.

1:11:37 So thank you. Um, on SE 14, you talk about tracking timelines for outta districts, is this a tool that will be able to help us better target our budget projections as well? ‘cause going back prior, we had implemented at one point a tracking system that shows kind of potential things we wanna be looking at and carrying potentially in a budget. And then that way of doing things was moved away from, but it had been very helpful in, in giving some accurate budgeting. So I was just wondering will this bring us back to that It is going to support our budgeting for sure. Perfect. Mm-Hmm. I do have a question about that. At some point in time, can you do a presentation to us on

1:12:25 what we’re looking at as far as outplacement and what we can bring back in house to sort of cut sending kids out at big expense Mm-Hmm. Versus doing it in-house? I do think there’s, in the calendar of the calendar, there is a special education update usually during the, during the school year. So that, I don’t remember Typically haven’t done here more, but, but typically we would do that and then you’ll ask, ask us somebody in Victoria to come in and just be like, here’s our state of the state kind of thing. Um, yes, it’s hard because we need to be very cautious of, uh, identifying confidentiality. But, um, yeah, there’s, there’s some areas of out out placements that we’re really looking at. Um, and the timeline, um, chart will help that because I think, um, I’m just gonna say it out loud ‘cause I think there’s a lot of things that, um, since they weren’t tracked properly, um, contracts

1:13:11 for out district students rolled over without any conversations. So we, we owned a lot of, um, extra, um, things that we maybe would’ve had different levels of conversation had they been tracked Properly. And it will be a little bit harder to bring maybe some students back, um, since some of those legal deadlines were missed. Um, so we’re working to really tighten everything up. Lisa Marie and I have been combing over that. Um, and I’m, we’re starting meetings very shortly. Some Very good litigators ourselves. Yes. And I think what what we will hope to see is, um, less specifics and much trends, you know, that we’re having a lot of out placements in this area, which would then streamline why I am asking for a shift in programming Mm-Hmm. Or whatever, what your recommendations are. Exactly. So while we, you know,

1:13:58 have discussed we can’t do everything at one time, our hope is come midyear to start the programs conversation, um, and have some, uh, real deep discussions about what our programs are going to look like. And then hence that leads to budgetary as well as, you know, supporting students that come back into their home school environment. Okay. Okay. One last question. Okay. Um, and then this 18 b, the, the people le uh, parents leaving with information, was this not happening at all? Um, it was not consistent. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. I have question, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Um,

1:14:48 for I mine’s on 22. Is there a timeline for when, um, I, I love that your updated procedures will include how parents will be notified of delayed services and how the compensatory will be provided. Is there a timeline on how quickly that turnaround, how quickly they’ll be notified and from that turnaround time? I think for the hard thing about compensatory services, and I actually had a long conversation with the state about this because it depends on where you’ve been, what the hard and fast rule is. ‘cause there is no hard and fast rule, right? And so what we’re looking to do is as they come in, we’re checking them weekly and what is the trend we’re seeing? Like, what is our threshold? You know, is there a specific student who’s missing, for example, like five speech services, right? That’s considerable. Right? Right.

1:15:35 And why are they missing it? Mm-Hmm. Um, and so we would want to see that turnaround happen quickly of those compensatory services. Even just the notification to the parents. Mm-Hmm. I think is a big step into Sarah’s point, asking about the tracking and how we weren’t doing it before. Mm-Hmm. I feel like that wasn’t maybe spotlighted enough that we were literally not tracking when people did not receive Mm-Hmm. When children did not receive their services. We are now amazing team. I love that more than anything. I love the communications and the, the turnaround time I think would just be, I think parents would just, and I know you’re working through the process and I am confident that you’ve already thought this through. There may not be an answer quite yet. I know you’ll get there. Um, I just, I want to call that out

1:16:24 as being a wonderful thing also. So, to my two biggest takeaways from this, first of all, it’s a wonderful presentation Thank you. Is that, you know, we were not tracking loss of service before. I can’t say that loud enough for the people in the back. This is a huge, huge thing that you have identified and fixed in a very short amount of time. And you both should be commended and your whole team that you work with should be commended for that. In addition, then providing that subsequent communication Mm-Hmm. To the parents, because that was something that we heard routinely is that unless the parent asked their 5-year-old, did you talk to your speech therapist today? Right. They may not have known and five year olds did I, I don’t know. Maybe I saw her in the hall. You’re five, right? Mm-Hmm. Um, and sometimes if you’re 15, you may not remember

1:17:11 because you’ve had a long day. And I think that’s fair. So I think both of those things, I just want to call those out for the community or anybody writing an article about this that I think those are two really big holes that I think probably some of us knew we had and Have film. Wonderful. Lisa Marie and Victoria are being a little humble. Um, I’m sure. No, they’re, they’re being humble and I’m gonna call ‘em out on it because I think pretty much all these areas that the state saw as deficits, they had already identified Right. Like the very shortly after they walked in the door. So, you know, um, they were already starting to remedy some of these things before the state said, oh, these are some of the things we noticed. You know what I mean? So, um, I just wanna recognize that ‘cause uh, that’s, that’s important information for folks to have.

1:17:56 Absolutely. Thank you. And I don’t doubt that our audit results would’ve been dramatically different if you both hadn’t been on the team. So thank you. Thank you so much. I Just wanna thank you and commend you too for changing what feels like a culture around this a lot. Um, even, I don’t know if, if everybody realizes this, but they hold office hours, which a person was like, how are you doing this? Um, but it, I, there was a culture perhaps of not come talk to us how we’re on the same team, how can we help you? Um, and and I, you know, have heard feedback and excitement about that, that people do feel that there’s been a significant culture shift. And it was, it was really needed. It was needed for students, for our staff, for our parents.

1:18:42 I mean, it was a, it was a hard, very hard year. And, um, thank you for that. And thank you for the continued work you’re doing to give support to our, like I said, our staff, our students, and our community to kind of get, get where we, we where a lot of them said we needed to be and they just needed, you know, support from, from you guys as well. Thank You. Thank you so much.

1:19:07 Sorry. Um, I’m gonna ask for a five minute recess, or I need to take a five minute recess sugar free by any chance. Um, no they’re not. So do we need a motion or wait for a five minutes? You could to do it on your own. Yeah. We’re just gonna take a five minute recess. Alright. Okay.

1:19:28 Ready? Call us back to order. Oh yeah.

1:19:37 Um, So Frank, do you have the presentation up on the screen? I can have it, bring it up on the screen please.

1:19:52 And maybe I might well That screen back so Our our guys can see it too. Oh yeah, that’s a good idea. Well, we want that. See here we go because it’s on the left. Okay, great. Thank you. All right everyone. That’s great. Can you see it thera that, um, yeah, I Dunno if you wants to associate More comfortable chair. Okay. Welcome back everyone. Thank you for your, um, indulgence there. Uh, so the next item on our agenda is an update, um, of our contract negotiations with the Marblehead Education Association. Um, Sarah Fox and I are, uh, members with Thatcher Keer, a town administrator of the bargaining subcommittee to the school committee. So we are here as a subcommittee bargaining subcommittee

1:20:39 presenting this update to the school committee and to the public. Um, as it were, this is, um, a document that will be made available to, to the public, and we will be updating this as we go through our continued negotiations. Next slide. Um, please. Thank, thank you. Okay, so a few questions that are in the community that we’re hoping to answer, uh, tonight and as we go through this. The first is, how did we get here? Uh, why don’t we have new contracts yet? Where are we in negotiations with the Marblehead Education Association and the units within it? And where do we go from here? Next slide, Frank. Thank you. So how did we get here? Um, so how did we get here Last year?

1:21:26 Um, as we knew we were heading into negotiations, um, in December, we, I, I had put a share in writing to the MEA, um, requesting and initiating bargaining that was, um, mid-December. So at that point, the MEA, um, was not ready to start negotiating right away in December. Um, so in mid-February, the MEA let us know that they would be willing to commence bargaining on March 14th. Um, so when we started bargaining the, um, school committee, uh, the sub, I’m sorry, the subcommittee had put forth a large amount of dates. We had seen kind of the climate with bargaining

1:22:12 that’s been around us. And, um, we wanted to make sure we hit a lot of dates on the books, that we had a lot of availability. And the goal was to get contracts in place. The original goal was before town meeting. Um, and it, it became apparent pretty quickly that that wasn’t gonna be achievable. And then it was before the next goal was before they expired. Um, for the first few months, the MEA and the MTA reps were, um, hit availability roughly once a month. Um, so the MEA had presented its wage goals. They called them goals to us in June, but, um, did not confirm to us that the goal was actually their wage proposal until September 10th, our last meeting.

1:22:59 So since then we’ve been able, now that we, it’s been articulated that the goal is in fact their wage proposal, we’ve been able to put together some of this packet. Um, and to give to you guys, I just wanna take the opportunity to thank, um, Mike Ping who worked with us a lot. These, these numbers, Jen and I don’t run the math for, we don’t compile them. Um, Mike Ping compiles a lot of them, Thatcher and Alicia gave us some, but we’ve had, um, subject matter experts running these numbers for us. Thank you. Next slide, Frank. And just to be clear, this is a presentation from the subcommittee to everybody, not from the full committee? That’s correct. Just to reiterate Yes. What, um, what Allison Taylor said is this is the subcommittee bargaining subcommittee committee. Myself, Sarah Fox

1:23:44 and Town Administrator Thatcher Keys are presenting this to the school committee, um, and, and to the public. Uh, so, um, sort of piggybacking off Sarah’s last comment around, um, our clarification we just got about a week ago that the goals that were presented to us by the Marblehead Education Association is in fact their wage proposal. So we now have a proposal by them and we can, we’re moving forward. So, um, why don’t we have a new contract yet? Um, so Thea’s wage proposals, um, that were given to us, we are, we feel strongly, which we’ll paint this picture in a moment, are unaffordable and unsustainable and will result in layoffs of employees and negatively will impact our students. The proposal from the MEA for Unit A,

1:24:31 which includes teachers and nurses, and that’s our largest bargaining unit with the most number of members, is looking at the proposal, is a 39.5% increase over three year period or over the next three years. The cost estimate for that by our, um, finance, uh, assistant superintendent of finance and operations is $9,207,499 by the end of year three. So that’s how much we will need to have additionally in our, in our budget specifically for this teacher portion of the contract. The proposal also from the MEA is for 67% increase for our custodian staff, which also consists of, um, maintenance workers, custodians, and our various bus

1:25:16 and van drivers, um, over three year period. The cost associated with this would be $1.265 million, again, by the end of year three. The proposals for the tutors, uh, we haven’t costed those numbers yet again because we’ve only had this for about a week or so to run the numbers, but is between, uh, 28.8% and 41% is what they’re requesting for our tutors. Um, for year one, the proposed increase, um, proposal increase for the paraprofessionals is between 113% and 171% for year one, just year one. And the MEA proposal for permanent substitute increases are between 31.6 and 41.8 for year one. Um, the MEA also proposed increases for a new annual longevity benefit.

1:26:03 Now we do have, as part of our contract for some of our staff, um, a, a longevity bonus if you will, which is a cash, a cash payment each year. Um, once, uh, certain staff members reach a certain amount of time that they have worked for us. So it’s a benefit for long-term service to us, which is great. Um, their proposal is to increase the amount of the longevity payment as well as having it start earlier. So again, we’ll need to run those numbers for what that will, um, pertain to in our budget. Um, the next slide, please, Frank.

1:26:46 So where are we in negotiations? We just want to make this, you know, known to to folks in the community and also folks in the member members of the union is, um, not everyone in the union necessarily comes to the meetings in, um, may or may not not know what has been in the proposals. Um, as far as the custodian’s unit is concerned, um, we had negotiated that contract, um, uh, early on in our process because that particular contract expired June 30th of this year. The other, um, contracts, the other four contracts expired August 31st. So we’d gone back and forth several times and really felt that we were at a, what’s called an impasse, meaning we have weren’t able to find common ground. So we, um, went forward with requesting help from the State Department of Labor

1:27:34 and requested for a mediator to come help us. We were hoping the MEA would join us in that request. They, they have not, they don’t agree with going forward with that, but that’s where we are. Um, so we’re waiting to hear back from the state on whether, um, or when they will be moving forward with that. They have to do an investigation, which is in the process of doing, and then, um, may likely assign us a mediator. Um, the other units we have ongoing negotiations going forward. Next slide, Frank. Some of the other issues that, um, have come up during negotiations, um, the, some of the things that we’re hearing a lot in the media and um, in various press releases are parental leave, safety meetings, elementary recess, athletic fees.

1:28:20 So we just wanted to speak to these a little bit and let, um, the committee and the community know where we are in those proposals. So as far as parental leave goes, the committee is currently offering 10 calendar days, paid leave. This is in addition to the employee’s ability to use their personal, um, time for the remainder up to 12 weeks. This really, and that would require no documentation by a physician. Currently, anything beyond eight weeks would require, um, documentation. So that that’s most certainly an increase in the parental leave from what they have now. Safety meetings, the committee has offered to establish a safety advisory committee to discuss safety issues to get a lot of positive feedback.

1:29:07 But, um, regarding a, um, the professional development advisory committee that’s currently embedded in the contract and the way that’s working. So because of that positive feedback, we modeled a lot of the language on that and we had made that proposal a couple meetings ago. Um, elementary student lunch and recess. The school committee is obligated to ensure that the statutory required 900 hours of student learning time during the course of the year is met. Lunch and reser recess do not count towards this required 19 hours. So we’re, we are obligated to, um, adhere to state law, uh, athletic fee fees. These fees are determined by the committee each year

1:29:52 and are not subject to negotiations with the union. You’ll see a little bit more about this on the breakdown of what our funding mechanisms are. A couple, just a couple of, um, comments out. It’s the subcommittee that’s offering, um, but also not the full committee. And also for elementary student lunch and recess, the 900 hours. Um, there are a lot of other things that can count towards time on learning, um, for all levels that the previous administration chose to not count as time on learning, which is why we lost our second recess. It’s not lost on me that it’s been two years since I won and that has not been put back. Um, and it is a hill that I will die on getting that back on.

1:30:37 So, um, I just wanna make sure, um, to call that out as well. Well, I understand lunch and recess. There are a lot of other things that administratively could count towards it per my discussions with, uh, dei. Great. Uh, next slide please. Thanks Frank. Um, okay, so we’re gonna talk for a few minutes just about, um, the taxation side. Um, which were numbers that we were, um, given from our town administrator, Thatcher Keer. Uh, ‘cause it’s important for us to understand as a town where our resources come from and, and the li frankly the limitations to them. So we looked at several other towns that are included in, um, a comparison process that the state, um, department of um, education goes through.

1:31:23 And we looked at, uh, the towns of Wayland, Andover, Hingham Swamp, Scott and Marblehead. And if you look at the total tax levy, which is the bar chart on the left, and by the way, um, the colors that we used on this were the town to sports team colors. So that was the reason for that. Um, but you can see the tax levy, um, is higher in most of these other towns with, with similar demographics, similar populations, similar enrollment numbers, um, in the school, Andover is a bit of an outlier. They think they have a pretty big industrial and commercial base, um, that we don’t have, um, for taxation. But even for instance, swamps, Scott has a, has a lower tax levy. They collect less in taxes in swamps Scott than we do in Marblehead. But if you look at the pyramid on the right, um, of this slide, this is how much we each

1:32:09 of these towns collects in taxes per president. So Wayland is at the top. They collect $6,030 per person in taxes. You see Andover, then Hingham Swamp, Scott actually with a le lower tax levy. Total taxes collected, collects more per person than we do in Marblehead. Marblehead iss at the lowest, at $3,494 per person. And keep in mind, our student per pupil expenditure is approximately $21,000 as of FY 23

1:32:42 Sarah. So, um, the new growth comparison, again, this was some great information that Thatcher worked with us to give us. Um, the, you see a quote here that says Marble head’s anemic. New growth is its greatest financial challenge. Thatcher talks about our anemic new growth and it’s really important ‘cause in the formula, which you’ll see later of how we are able to fund everything is with proposition two and a half, you have your availability for the levee to grow, then you have your new growth. And then if that’s not meeting your needs, there’s an option to request an override, which we all know goes through town meeting and then a vote. So there’s very limited ways to grow here. And the reliance on bringing in

1:33:31 new funding for these budgets really relies heavily on new growth. And as you can see, Marblehead is anemic, as Thatcher keeps saying. Um, what’s particularly interesting to me is when you look back at the tax levy comparison, these other towns are already spending exponentially more per ca or bringing in more per capita in taxes and their growth is also growing at a quicker rate. So they’re outpacing us as far as what they’re able to fund. And that’s, um, really what we’re gonna run into. And we’ll talk more about that in later slides. Um, the next slide is how do we balance the budget? So on one side we have salary increases and expense increases. And on the other side we just talked about,

1:34:17 we have the levy growth is capped at two and a half percent. We have the new growth, which ours is more limited than other municipalities, I would say significantly. Um, and then there’s always an override potential by law. I’m not saying for anybody getting worried right now that every year we’re looking for an override, but by, uh, by law it’s your other option if these two aren’t meeting. So then we see here the funding sources for our budget. The red is our town meeting appropriations. That’s, you know, we vote that early in town meeting. What is our budget gonna be? Then we rely on grants for another small chunk, which is the black section. And then our fees and donations. The donations, you know, we rely heavily on our pcos,

1:35:02 our boosters, friends, the Marblehead public schools. We live in a very magic cat, a magic hat. Um, we are very, very fortunate to live in a town with such generous people who work hard and donate. Um, so that’s a lot of money that comes in, but we’re really relying on those fees too. So when we see earlier on that, that is a request to the union. Um, it’s not that we disagree, but we currently have one of the lowest user fees on the entire North Shore. We’ve been doing a lot of analysis in this over the last year. And, um, but they do, they are significant in offsetting our budget. It saved multiple areas that were gonna be potential cuts last year by, um,

1:35:47 by keeping those in the budget, we, um, I think you did it to the part. Yeah. Okay. So then we on, on the next side, um, the formula for funding, the agreement it all, it’s all working together here. It’s, uh, there’s clearly relationships. We have the number of staff, our staff wages multiplied by the staff. Wages is really where we come up with our salary budget. Um, right now our salaries account for about 80% of 80% of the total budget. We focus on staff every year at budget season because the expenses, those are really fixed. Those are out of district placements, those are utilities. Our licensure for, um,

1:36:33 various curriculums or software programs and things like that. Those are, are really non variables. Um, and you know, so that bulk is in the staffing lines. We go to the next slide. Um, this is a really powerful reality and this is really, we, we’ve been hearing often in bargaining the question, um, from the MEA and the MTA, why can’t you say yes? Why can’t you just say yes? And this really is the answer to why we can’t say yes. It is not that we don’t value our staff. It is not that we don’t want, um, to be able to, you know, come closer to meeting requests. It really is a math equation. And what it comes up down

1:37:19 to is Thea’s wage proposal increases that range from 40% to 170% over the three years would require a 14% tax override. And if that were not to be achieved, it would then, um, trigger the laying off of 42% of our staff. Um, so that’s, that is really what we battle with every time we’re in bargaining is that knowledge that, um, we just, that’s not, that’s a big number. Jen, Next slide, Frank, please. Thank you. So in summary, the, the bargaining subcommittee will continue to ask ourselves the same questions. How will any proposal received or counter proposal provided?

1:38:07 Um, you know, between us and the other party, the, um, the union impact the education of the students of the Marblehead public schools, and is any proposal or counter proposal affordable and sustainable? Next slide. And then where do we go from here? So the bargaining subcommittee will continue to bargain in good faith with each of the MEA units, including Unit A, again, which is our teachers and our, our, our nurses, tutors, paraprofessionals, and permanent substitutes. We have requested the assistance of a state mediator to help resolve the impasse regarding the custodian’s unit. And we’re waiting for the results of the investigation to see if there will be a mediator assigned to us. If not, we may be asked to go back and continue to bargain. We’ll wait to hear from the state. Um, we had hoped that the MEA would’ve, um, joined us in that request, but they have objected to the mediation.

1:38:54 So, we’ll, we’re, we’re waiting on that. That’s pending. We will continue to bargain in good faith throughout the mediation process as well. And we’re committed to bargaining a contract that meets the needs of Marblehead students, the staff and the community. And that is what we’re looking forward to do doing. Um, as we move forward in our, our proposals. Our next, um, scheduled bargaining session is, um, Monday the 23rd at 7:00 PM It’s important to note that we will continue to update and, and expand upon these presentations. We’ll continue to make them at public meetings as well as put them out on our website. Um, and you know, I don’t know if that covers It. No, I dunno if that shared anything you wanted to add or you feel? Well, I’ll just emphasize some

1:39:40 of the earliest slides on our capacity. Um, the communities that were listed on there were based on some communities that were identified in the discussions as, um, you know, comparing to, um, some of the communities have made recent agreements, uh, in contracts. So one example, Andover, um, it is a bigger community, um, population 35,000. So it’s about a third bigger, um, their tax levy, um, is 171 million compared to marblehead, 71 million. So their tax base is a hundred million dollars more and it’s growing at 1.8 in addition to prop two and a half.

1:40:27 The new growth is growing at over 1.8 million in fiscal 24, whereas ours is about 400, little over 450,000. So again, it’s all about capacity. The other one was Wayland, a smaller community, um, in population size. Um, 13,000, um, its levy was I think around 80, 84 million compared to our 71. And its new growth, uh, was increasing at $808,000. So it’s just comparisons of a bigger community that, that that’s, uh, done some agreements, smaller communities. But the point being is, um, we need to have the capacity to fund whatever agreement it is.

1:41:14 Um, and the only option it pushes to is, is an override or layoffs as as that other slide. So that’s why I keep emphasizing it’s, it’s about our capacity as to what we can try to do in these agreements. And one thing we didn’t actually, and we can add this later on, is, um, is with the new growth, it is, that’s town wide, right? So not all of that new growth goes to the school. So some of that is on the, on the town side as well. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s important to note that. So thank you. Thank you. That, um, okay. Um, any questions or any comments? I’m just, um, just trying to think, you know, a little bit of the future. You talked about where do we go from here? So it sounds like the, the mediator is a possibility.

1:42:00 We still don’t know for sure for the custodian. For the custodian. For for the custodian, yeah. Um, I, I know we’ve discussed as a committee potentially whether other options could be like open to negotiations, uh, and things like that. So, um, I’m asking the subcommittee what their, what their thoughts are around that or, or if, you know, that’s something we should discuss more as a possibility, you know, given that, um, it doesn’t look like there’s a real good path forward to be quite honest at this point. So I’m just trying to think about other possibilities and alternatives that we should be discussing. Yeah, so I think that, um, and that has been brought up before. Um, so we do have on our team, we have Thatcher, we have John, our superintendent, we also have Liz Valerio,

1:42:46 who’s our attorney representing us. She’s not here, um, tonight. Um, I think that, you know, it is worth putting this on on an, on an agenda even for our next school committee meeting as something to discuss, um, by the greater committee. ‘cause I think that’s important to get the input. I would like to ask the committee to, you know, I’d like to welcome Liz to that and hear from the professionals, um, who have, have, who are advising us. And um, in case of Thatcher on our sitting on our committee, um, to share their thoughts as well with the committee and the public. Um, and then we can certainly have that discussion and potentially con you know, consider that. Um, because I think that’s important and, and I can say thus far that our, the professionals have suggest, have strongly encouraged us not not to do this in public.

1:43:31 Um, and there’s a bunch of reasons I don’t, it’s not necessarily the time to talk about it, but I think we should, we should have that conversation. Yeah, I fully, um, agree and I would like to have that conversation in public in an open, um, At the next meeting with her Meeting. A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean I all due respect to the, to the professionals. Um, I definitely think we should have that discussion and, and openly share our opinions on that. I’ve been clear on mine. So Brian, did you have any comments? No. Good. Okay. All right. Um, great. So anything else? We’ll put that on for the agenda for the next meeting.

1:44:13 Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you Thatcher for joining us. Thanks. Um, I’m gonna move on. We have a couple items left. School committee and liaison, I’m sorry, subcommittee and liaison updates. Any subcommittees have updates? I attended the John’s District Safety committee meeting was very good. All the principals have done at least one fire drill. They’re working on the ALICE plans, uh, and now they’re going to do it. And uh, it was very good start for the year with the principals. They’re all focused on safety, so I think that’s clear. Yeah. And then Al and I met last Thursday as the, um, communications subcommittee and we actually got a tutorial on how to edit the webpage, which is gonna be a challenge.

1:44:59 Um, and then we’ve also started updating the fact page. There’s one on the existing subcommittee, um, school committee page. We’re gonna merge that into the one that we started last year and that, and then we plan on coming back hopefully next week, next school committee meeting with more concrete plans that we’d like you to think about and move forward with the communications. ‘cause I think it’s very important. We both feel it’s very important to get communications right up to the front of our, uh, deliverables this year. Great. And Will, will we, do we need to vote on what you put on or We will be, We Oh yeah, no, whatever we plan on, we’re gonna propose Okay. Things that we think would be helpful and then the school committee will discuss it and then if Awesome. If we approve it, then we’ll go forward with that plan. Great.

1:45:44 Okay. Perfect. So, um, do you have a rough timeline do you think of when you might we, you might be showing us the updated FAQ, do you think? You know, maybe before the Well I’ll, we’ll have that done before in the next quick Timeline. Oh, okay. Perfect. Wasn’t that when we discussed it one time already? Right. Yeah, that’s, I mean The results from the survey, I think that the, the team at that time had put together a new FAQ document. Oh perfect. And now all we’re gonna do is merge the old with the new. All right. Sounds great. I look forward to seeing it. I think one thing that’s a little bit of a interesting to me, you know, it’s a good question, Allison, around how do we get things on there and, and you know, the approval, I think that makes sense. But for, for example, no one noticed that our homepage wasn’t going to the right page. It was going to the agenda page. Yeah. And so we were with Steven at the time, he made the change,

1:46:31 you know, who’s our secretary? Our chair is all outdated on the website. So, you know, I think that’s something, if you’re open to it, you know, I think that maybe there might be a threshold around what we should have approved and not. And, and so we have to think about that and make sure we’re, we all agree upon that’s the right way to go forward. Absolutely. I agree. ‘cause I think that the role of a, like in my, my idea of the role of the communication subcommittee in regards to the webpage is to, you know, sort of take our ideas and then actually execute on it. Yeah. Hoping we don’t need to approve every, you know, change For sure. No, I would think just like, like for things like the things like the FAQ, if it’s an FAQ from the school committee, I think we should all say yes, we’re in agreement that these are facts and not opinions. It’s a broken link or it’s a, I Mean just fix it. Yeah, that better.

1:47:18 Okay. Great. Operational versus

1:47:22 I, Um, any other subcommittees have any other subcommittees, Matt? Think so. Um, we are currently, um, throwing dates around for both facilities and, um, finance. And I’m confident that sometime in the next three weeks we’ll be holding like a kickoff meeting to kind of lay out a timeline for the year. Um, and so people can kind of wrap their heads around if I’m really interested in this area, you know, this is one I should chime in. Um, so that will be coming attractions. Okay. Um, any liaison updates. Okay. Um, okay. The only thing I Can I, can I ask one question? Yep. Were you able to get, um, in touch with Keisha for, um, METCO and No, I have not. I still need to do that. Thank you.

1:48:07 Okay. Alright. ‘cause they, I think meet monthly. Jen and I attended a meeting and I thought it was very powerful. There was a lot of positive feedback, um, going to the PCO meeting, I, I really enjoyed. So No, thank you for that reminder. Which one was that? Um, the METCO liaison. Jen and I had attended one of their PCO meetings last year. Oh, I thought you meant recently. I’ve been working with like Weekly. I was year and it was really wonderful ‘cause we got to hear, I, I think that the parents, we able to, to feel heard and engaged with in, in a meaningful way. It Was great. Um, so I I just can I just, if I could just for the me, um, while, while it was brought up. So I met with, uh, Kaia and Millie Millie’s, you know, um, at,

1:48:53 at hq Exactly the direction. Yep. Um, so we met the other day. We had a lot of, a lot of discussions and, um, one thing that was um, put out there was maybe Millie can come to a school committee meeting here and just kind of really talk about where we are with Meco. ‘cause there’s metco and then we’re, uh, working towards Meco 2.0, which is still kind of, so I’ve been having a lot of conversations. Uh, there’s some, uh, there’s a thing at Foxborough, uh, stadium, I think in, uh, the fourth October 4th that, um, I’m gonna go to. And it’s, it’s, um, uh, a bigger conversation about That. We just cut your commute down by like Yeah. That’s like, yeah. You Get there and back That’s awesome. I’m like, okay. Um, so we’re gonna do that. And, and there’s a lot of other like, METCO things going on. Um, and I mentioned at the beginning, we all, you know, the principals and myself and everyone went to, uh, headquarters, um, met the families

1:49:42 and stuff, but I am really trying to kind of bolster, um, what’s happening with Meco. So who’s the liaison on that? Al Okay. So Al maybe you and I can chat too, just to kind of Yeah, that’d be great. I can connect a little bit. Maybe you can jump in on some of the meetings I, I have too, just to kind of, yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Um, we also talked about liaison roles, and I believe, John, you were gonna reach out maybe to some of the, the principals just to ensure that, or get a feel for how our participation may or may not be helpful. I’m just curious if there’s have one of any of the meetings been set up yet. And then two, is there any input around that? Um, yes. Uh, I got, I got direct info from all the principals about, uh, the school committee on the sas, is that what you’re saying? Yes.

1:50:28 Yeah. Um, there’s, there’s some, there’s some discussions about like the, the roles and how it, you know, similar to what Brian was saying, like I think a lot of people feel that with the school committee there changes the trajectory of the conversations. I had that input from the principals, but also from some community members. Um, so I just, I just put that out there. I think it’s, uh, I think we just have to be mindful of that, um, when they, when they’re holding the meetings. Um, if, if folks are still, you know, um, gung ho and being advisories to those committees, I think, I think they’ve been, it’s my understanding they’ve been scheduled. They’re being scheduled. So you should be getting that information. I let them know who all the liaisons were. Um, and It’s not a, it’s not, it’s a liaison. It’s not advisory. We’re not, You’re not on the committee or Liaison committee and they’re public meetings anyways. You could attend if you wanted to because you had a child.

1:51:14 I know they’ll eventually show public meeting on the town calendar. But I’d like to know. Sometimes You, I just, I think I, I just wanna harken back to what I said before. I totally respect what you had mentioned, Brian, the concern and the change in the trajectory and certainly what our, our principals today are saying. I, I want, I respect that and I want to see if there’s a way that we can dig into that a little bit deeper Mm-Hmm. And figure out how we start moving past that or over that, or It, and, and I think that’s, I think that’s, I think that’s viable. I think it’s just, I think I, there sense a process. I don’t, Well, I think maybe, maybe what would be helpful is what exactly is the role of the school committee in as,

1:52:02 as a, in, in the capacity that you guys are attending those meetings. So I think, I think that maybe the thought process is, oh, the school committee’s coming in as members of the committee and they’re gonna be making decisions and stuff like that. I know that’s not the case, but I think that’s part of the perception. So Literally just attending Yeah. And providing, yeah. An update. So I’ll Have those follow up conversations. Again, I think it was, you know, the initial knee jerk reaction. Um, but I just, you know, I try to be open, honest and put everything on the table. I appreciate that. So I didn’t want to say, You know, but I think, I think to what Lisa was mentioning and what Sarah mentioned about hunt, the culture that they’re creating and how much, how different it is. I think we want to continue that momentum and we want to know what else we can do to help facilitate that. Yeah. And the goal is never

1:52:47 to make anybody uncomfortable. Yeah. It’s, you know, I mean, I did again, um, I had a couple, um, conversations with community members that voiced a similar opinion. Like, well, you know, I don’t know if the community members are gonna feel comfortable. The school, they, they’re part of, they get all information. So I just, I’m sharing. I mean, I don’t know what the answer is at this point. I’ve never, this has never been part of, of anything that has been a part of where in my previous life. Um, so it’s just kind of, I need to see how it operationalizes as well. So, um, I can tell you that they’re public meetings. Yeah. And having a child, obviously we know Sarah has children there. I’ve attended in the last two years since we didn’t have liaisons. I attended them as, as a parent. Mm-Hmm. Still have my side gig as a school committee member. Yeah. Um, so it, I I just, um, I’m,

1:53:34 I’m just, and I think that’s important for everyone on those committees to remember. I think we, we, we knew it ‘cause we lived this every other Thursday night and then over the last year we got a real strong refresher that there is nothing you do while serving on a public committee that is not public. Like the idea that they don’t feel comfortable. They’re speaking in a place where minutes should be be being kept. And while there aren’t often as many eyes on those subcommittee or those, those committees as there are, and ours, they are still a public committee with everything that, that drags behind it. Um, on a more lighthearted note, you’d ask when they’re happening, two have already been posted. The beautiful thing about the, um,

1:54:21 about the SACS is the building. Um, administrative assistants are fabulous at posting them way in advance. I found Mm-Hmm. They, they are right on it. I’ve always found the sacs are posted a week or two in advance. Yeah. But I would think your principal would be extending an invitation. So, I mean, or an email. So There was one today as a matter of fact, and then one Wednesday, next Wednesday. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Today was veterans and Wednesdays is brown. Yeah. And I wasn’t able to make them. And I’m on veterans though. There we go. One, one down I and go. Um, But I would appreciate John, if there is like a more, I’d like to know sometimes more than two days or three or, or Yeah. If we get an email notification, that’s fine. Well, your principal should, The principal should have emailed. Yeah. I don’t know. I, I didn’t set as expect, I honestly didn’t set that as

1:55:07 expectations mean That’s my bad. I just, I just assumed they post them and you guys were looking for whatever Ign. So that’s Too, so they, all my experience has been, they all have like kind of a calendar for the year. Okay. Not just a, and they have like an email serve where they just type in SAC, um, and maybe if they’re just reminded to add us to that, so when emails go out with documents or emails go out with an agenda or with scheduling, we’re added to it. Yeah. I already got one from Matt Fox. So last or two I did not, I’ve gotten nothing. There’s nothing on for, um, village right now. Okay. Alright. Um, in the interest of time, I’m gonna ask if we come up. So final thing, um, under closing business, um, uh, well actually, does anyone have any new business? Sorry, I do have a question. Go ahead, John. Yes.

1:55:52 Do you think once a month you can give us an update on attendance? I know since attendance, attendance covid since Covid, chronic absenteeism has risen across the state. So I’m just curious to know how Marblehead is doing. I can do that. And if you do it by school that Way I can do that. And it’s actually funny, I have a, I have a sheet right here that, um, I was gonna bring up with the, um, uh, the admins and kind of get this out. It’s, it talks about, um, this is something I did in my last district and it talks about what chronic absenteeism equals. So just if, if you’ll indulge me for a second, I just stuck it in my folder. I just happen to have it here. Um, and it starts off for one or two days. Doesn’t seem like much, but do, do, do, if your child misses one day every two weeks, that equals 20 days per year, which is four weeks per year, over 13 years of school. And that’s nearly a year and a half. One day per week.

1:56:39 40 days, eight weeks, two and a half years, two days, 80. And, you know, you get the idea 10 minutes a day late. What does that, that doesn’t affect my child. It’s only missing 10 minutes. 10 minutes per day. That equals 50 minutes per week. Nearly one and a half weeks per year. Nearly a half a year, over 13 years. So it has a whole chart. So we did this when that chronic absenteeism was a, you know, when they really started doing this. And we put it into a, a, a visible char like this. And it’s really like, impactful when you see it that way. So this is, I just pulled this out today. It’s just funny you brought it up. I just pulled it out today. I’m gonna share it with the admins and, and, and like share it out. Um, parents too, because, you know, we’re getting the accountability data’s coming out. Um, I was on the MCAS, uh, accountability webinar this afternoon with the, with the commissioner. Um, it’s embargoed right now, but it’s coming out

1:57:26 and that’s, and all the, all the information’s gonna be in that, you know, our MCA, uh, scores, how we, how we, um, you know, measure up and part of that part of the accountability is absenteeism. So, uh, we can certainly look at that. And I think there’s may I, my, when I looked at stuff, when I came to coming, when I was coming to Marblehead, I looked at all that and we had pretty good numbers overall. I haven’t, I haven’t had a chance to marble, we’ve only been in school for a little bit, but, um Mm-hmm. Uh, but absenteeism, it wasn’t horrible. Um, but those are things that we always look at and say, how do we address those things on the, at the ground level, um, with, with parents. And I like to send these, this little chart out. So it’s very, very helpful to parents to see it that way. So, So I will say at all the open houses that have occurred so far, there’s been a slide on chronic absenteeism.

1:58:13 They only have four or five slides. One’s at every one has been donated or dedicated to chronic absenteeism, but it’s defined as 18 or more. I’ve been paying attention and, um, what percentage we were at a year ago or two years ago and what we were at the end of the year and there was about 30% growth. Yeah. And improvement, um, from year to year. And it, they, they’ve notified very clearly the parents and the students of the expectation. Frank, you’ve sat through the same two as me, um, of the expectation. And all of them have ended with, we’re here to partner with you. This is really important. You know, so We’re also, we’re also, I work with Steve K Tech, our director of technology around, um, automated notification coming up.

1:58:58 Right. It was happened in some of the schools. We’re gonna do it across all the schools, um, to just, well eventually we gotta talk to the principals. But that, you know, it, it, it kicks out a notification automatically rather than waiting for the secretary to do a lot. But it then also captures it like, whether it’s, we some, what we were capturing wasn’t, didn’t seem totally proper, you know, the way it should be. So we’re, we looked at that to make sure we’re capturing the absenteeism effectively and efficiently. Um, so all those things already happened. So yeah. Great. Thank you. Um, anything else? Do You have a new business? Yeah, um, I just wanted to ask about or ask that we put on our next agenda, um, uh, budget update so we can see, um, where we are with the year end close.

1:59:44 And it might, might not be that we’re closed, it might be that that data point is we expect to be closed by this such and such a date. But just so that we can be transparent that we are having these conversations. Um, and then, you know, what were the things, a list of what were the final things we paid down with surplus at the end of the year. We did a lot of prepayments and that was to balance our budget for this year. But if we can kind of just reinforce where that ended, um, as well as typically in the fall last year, you know, was an anomaly, but typically in the fall at this point, we like to try to see where are we with our salaries? ‘cause we, with vacancies, we have some sa savings. Um, what were we expected to spend at this point in the year? Where are we? So, so

2:00:30 It’s, I had a conversation with Mike Ping that may not be available by the next meeting. Okay. But we’ll, whatever. He can Talked, he and I talked a little bit, um, just, you know, um, about the same thing. And probably looking at those reports, kind of the second October meeting of the, of the month. Um, just, just so it’s consistent one. Um, but, and, and we wanna make sure you give accurate information. He’s, he’s doing the end of the year report still. There’s like a lot of stuff he’s catching up on that. Um, I wanna make sure we have it accurate. Um, and it may be a two minute blurb that just says, this is what was requested. You should have this at this meeting. But just so that, ‘cause as we get questions in the community, we can see that’s been addressed. Yep. Yep. Great. Sure thing. Um, and then the last thing before we adjourn, um, I forwarded to everyone in the, in the drive.

2:01:16 I, I received an email from Amy d Drinker who is chair of the town charter committee. Um, I’m not a expert on what a town charter committee does, but, um, they are reviewing, um, and possibly considering creating a town charter. Um, and in the process of doing that, they’re interviewing, um, each of the elected independently elected boards and asking some questions just in terms of how do we, how do we function and how do we deliver services to the community. Um, so they’ve asked us, um, to join them in a meeting. Um, we can do this as a committee, um, we can do it as a quorum. Whoever wants to go, I will plan to go. Um, and I don’t know, and you don’t have answer me tonight, but conflict of interest there for her. Um, I can’t for the marble editor change. I dunno.

2:02:02 Just, I dunno. Um, could be. Um, so I just want to, you don’t have to answer, gimme an answer now, but you know, maybe you could follow up by email if you’re interested in attending. I’ll attend with you. He’ll come. Okay. Allison would like to come. I would like to as well and Sarah would. Okay. So I will have to post it. If it’s a form, I’ll post it as a meeting. Um, we will need to pick one of these dates now. Two of them are school committee dates and one is a bargaining date. So we’re really down to either Tuesday, October 22nd or Tuesday, November 26th, two days before Thanksgiving. Um, I’d prefer the 22nd. Okay. Um, does that work for you, do you think, Allison, Tuesday, October 26th? You don’t have to let me know. Um, we’ll follow up by email and I will let Amy know, um, which one we can attend and I’ll post it as an open meeting. So if either of you, um, like yeah, you send it to the all of us to join, please do.

2:02:48 Um, we can provide input to them. Great. Thank you. All right. Um, I am going to ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Motion to adjourn, Sarah. A second. Second. Allison and roll. Call Allison Sarah Fox In favor. Brian Oda in favor and l Williams In favor, Jen Schaffner in favor. We are adjourned at 9 26.