School Committee: May 1, 2025

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 Um, okay. Let us start. Uh, welcome everyone here in person and online. Uh, let’s start tonight with the Pledge of Allegiance. Brian, do you mind leading us?

0:11 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for. Thank you. Somebody commented online that there’s no sound. I know That’s what, um, Frank we’re hearing. There’s no sound online. He doesn’t have the bar set up yet. Yeah. Let me answer Chris. So if I turn my audio on my laptop, will they hear me? It’ll pick you up, yes. Okay. So Chris, Chris Brule, you should be able to hear me on my laptop while we’re getting the mic going. Okay. Thanks Chris. Appreciate that. Thanks for letting us know Feedback and from over there. Yeah. Give us one second. Okay.

0:59 Um, moving on to commendations. Does anyone have any commendations? Okay. Um, moving on to pub. Can I, oh, sorry, go ahead. I Was just, pause it. Um, I just wanna make a commend to, um, our custodial and maintenance staff. Again, the outside of the buildings, I don’t know if people have noticed have been cleaned up in the last week or so. Um, and they, for the spring, it looks quite nice. Um, and they did, they did a good job. When you approach the buildings, it’s, it’s a welcome, um, you know, update. So I just wanted to thank them for doing that. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Okay, uh, let’s move on to public comment. We have a signup sheet up front if anyone would like to come up and speak. Uh, please do, if you don’t mind giving your name

1:46 and address, come on up. Welcome. And per our, our, um, policy, we ask that you to keep it to three minutes. And we normally try to keep this to a total of 15 minutes solution Back There. So, yeah, we still having some Frank’s hooking it up. Yeah. So, and I, um, I keep looking to connect him, but the MHTV Mike’s are live, so it will be part of that recording. Okay. Um, I’d like to make four points regarding your proposed flag and PO banner policy and process. It’s Ms. Clark, right? I just wanna make sure we, oh, Sorry. Margaret Clark. That’s okay. Thank you. Uh, 29 Bamford Street. Um, one, the difference between trusted implementation and control.

2:31 Two, the town council’s role. Three, political versus controversial banner, uh, flags and banners that would not be confused at all with government speech. And four, not everyone needs to see themselves in every flag or banner. So, number one, your requirement that the superintendent come back to you for approval is like telling your child, make your own decision. But then saying, but don’t do it until I tell you. So, um, that is not trust. That is control. Trust our superintendent for the educational professional that he is. Two, you have suggested that town council has directed you to use the language you have included in the policy that is concerning on many levels. They may be able to tell you what not to say,

3:16 but not what to say. You are the policymakers. Take responsibility for your actions. Don’t blame the lawyer.

3:25 Three, you’ve mentioned that you don’t want political flags or banners affixed to school property or things that might be confused as government speech. When have you seen people out waving pride and Black Lives Matter flags trying to gain public office? They haven’t. Those flags may be controversial in your eyes, but they are not political. When has anyone confused them with government speech? They simply haven’t. Conversely, our current national administration totally politicized the American flag during the recent election. If you let no other flags or banners hang in our schools, you are politicizing our schools supporting that national administration and supporting its erasure policies. Four, not everyone needs to see themselves in every flag

4:13 or a banner, for example, with the atrocities that are being committed nationally in the name of our American flag. And for what it stands, many students don’t currently see themselves in the American flag.

4:26 For other students, the prisoner of war flag might be a painful reminder of a loved one who is lost. Yet for others it may mean hope that they could return. The student that plays sports is gonna see themselves in a sports banner, but the student that doesn’t, will not. Some students don’t see themselves when looking at the pride or Black Lives Matter flags, but many do. We can’t expect every student to see themselves in every flag or banner affixed to the walls of our schools. But we can expect every student to understand that someone else sees themselves in that flag or banner. And every one of those flags and banners is an educational opportunity, even if it’s just to understand the diversity of students and staff in that school.

5:12 Set an example as our school committee leaders that truly all are welcome here. Stand up for others and do not censor the flags and banners within our school buildings. Thank you. Thank You Ms. Clark. Um, Chris Brule online did have his hand up earlier. Chris, I don’t see your hand, but I did promote you to speak. Can you, did you wanna speak?

5:37 Was he just answering Your question? No, he didn’t. Um, it looks like, oh, it’s the sound. Your sound’s off and the bar’s not on yet. Oh. So, all right. Hang on one second. Chris, we’re not hearing you. So, okay. If I, are we, you know what, Chris, if you don’t mind, ‘cause we’re having a little trouble with the audio here, so we can’t hear you. If you don’t mind, if you wouldn’t mind waiting, I think we’ve got a one or two other people here. I’ll let them go and then we’ll come back to you. I apologize. I just wanna make sure people can hear you, which they can’t right now.

6:06 Um, oh, lemme grab.

6:12 Oh, thanks.

6:20 Um, Jen, if I may, can I just ask how long it will be till the bar’s up and running? Sure. Frank. No, I’m not pressuring or rushing, but do you know how long it will be till you have the bar up and running? Is it still a tech issue?

6:34 Okay. Okay. ‘cause I’m just wonder if it’s only three minutes. Do you mind if we pause until, until we have audio? No. Okay. Well, So folks online can hear these folks. Okay. I believe they can, right? Yes. Okay. Alright. I just wanna make sure we can’t hear in the room the folks that are online. That’s why I asked Chris. I just wanted to make sure they could still hear. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. So I have, uh, Margaret, we had Margaret, um, uh, Angus McQuilkin.

7:05 Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to be heard. Welcome, uh, Angus McQuilkin, 39 Ty Lane. Um, yeah, I think what this committee’s experienced over the past 18 months is a good lesson in what happens when you try to take on the authority upon yourself to censor the speech and thoughts of others in a free society. Two things invariably happen. One is that you amplify the voices of the people you’re attempting to censor so that their message becomes even louder. The other is you discover that censorship is very complicated. And I think the increasing complexity of the policy, I’ve seen the latest draft, which is increasingly complex each time it’s redrafted, reflects that fact. It’s complicated to try to censor free expression by others,

7:51 particularly when you hit the point where you’re now at, where you’re saying, but we don’t mean this and we don’t mean that, and we’re gonna exempt this and we’re gonna exempt that. So I think that the voters will have their say in about five weeks as to whether this committee’s role should be to engage in censorship of free speech for residents of marblehead. And we’ll see what the voters have to say about that. It continues to be my view that we don’t need a policy. We never did. We didn’t need a policy 18 months ago. We don’t need a policy now. There is no law requiring us to have one. Uh, and it is creating a lot more complication than is needed. It has created more friction than is needed and is gonna create more risk to our school district. Um, and all of that is unnecessary. But to the extent you intend to move forward

8:38 with the policy, which I hope you will not, there are important things to point out about how, why the draft that’s before you tonight is fundamentally flawed and needs to be fixed if you’re gonna move forward with a policy. First off, why only these heritage months you have designated six heritage months? What about Greek American heritage month in the month of March? What about Jewish American heritage month in the month of May? What about Arab American Heritage Month in the month of April? Are we going to have a policy for our school district that elevates certain ethnicities over others? And do you think for a second that that is gonna stand up to constitutional scrutiny?

9:25 Why are we not recognizing second issue federal holidays? We’re gonna recognize heritage months. What about Juneteenth? Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States of America to recognize the end of slavery, and there is a flag associated with it. Why does this policy not recognize federal holidays? This policy speaks to exempting things that students may wanna bring to school. I certainly wanna see students maintain the right to free expression. You know, who else has a right to free expression? Teachers and staff? This policy doesn’t say a word about the right of teachers and staff to bring things to school that express their viewpoint, express their point of view. They have rights to. Lastly, who decides

10:14 who decides what flags and banners are affiliated with a political or activist organization? What does that mean? How is that to be defined? What constitutes such affiliation? Seems to me, Mr. Mc, it is in the eye of the beholder, which is the reason why the founders of this nation determined that it is not the role of government officials to censor the speech of citizens in a free society. Thank you very much. Thank you.

10:49 Um, so I’m, are we up on the, um, audio? He, He just needs to be co-host. Okay. Hang ons. Okay. So who are you? Hang on. The One that says Frank Perez needs to be Co-host go. And This, I’m making the school committee one, um, A panelist, co-panelists. Okay, great. So you’ll do the Co-host one. So I did co-host, I turned my audio off, right, right. Yes. My audio off. Okay. Audio in progress. And I think we’re good.

11:32 Okay. Yes. Okay, great. I’m gonna go back to Chris Bruhl ‘cause I, he very kindly Thank you. Waited. Hi Chris. Welcome. All Good. Thank you. I appreciate it. Um, as I started to say, um, I was not able to make the last meeting, but I want to refer back to, uh, comments that were made a couple meetings ago, uh, by a committee member who talked about, um, how she was offended, uh, based upon some of the comments that were made, uh, by a committee made her member related to, uh, religious traditional family values. Um, my wife and I are both cisgendered, heterosexual, we’re married. Uh, we both were offended by that statement as well. And I wanna make it clear that I’ve had conversations

12:18 with other folks in the community who are also cisgendered, heterosexual offended by that statement. Specifically. It’s not just queer folks who are affected by this flag policy. It’s not just queer families who are affected by your interpretation of traditional reli or religious traditional family values. According to my religion and according to traditions in my family, our values are that we accept people for who they are. Our values and our traditions in our family teach us that we shouldn’t disagree with people because of who they are and try to force them to be others. But instead, we should vigorously support them and welcome them for who they are. Thank you.

13:08 Thank you. Thanks, Ms. Rule. Um, I’m gonna, I’m gonna flip flop back and forth. So, Cindy, I see your hands up. I’m gonna go to the next one here, and then I’ll come back to you. Um, oh, not clear. Oh, hang on. Uh, Renee, welcome. Oh, it’s still not clear. All right. So they’re not hearing us well, Frank.

13:42 One second, Renee. Sorry. Yeah, who needs to mute? Sorry. They are okay. So we should, they should mute. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Sorry for that. Okay. Welcome. No, no problem. I, I empathize with any tech issues. I, good evening. Thank you. Um, Renee, do You mind speaking up just a little? There’s a fan over here, so it’s a little hard. I’m sorry. I just wanna make sure I Hear you. No, no. Um, thank you. Good evening. Um, and, uh, I, I did, uh, want to ask a point of clarification when you get to it, um, about the flag policy. I was wondering, uh, what the definition of viewpoint, uh, neutral position is, how you would clarify that.

14:30 Um, for example, um, when Mr. Uh, ODA expressed concern that some individuals might be morally offended by a pride flag because it didn’t represent their family values, is that judgment considered a neutral viewpoint? Does view, uh, viewpoint neutral mean making a decision that no one can take offense at? And is that possible today, if the Black Lives Matter banner were to instead add or say Black Lives Matter the same as White Lives, would that make it an affirmative statement? So it’s no longer seen as a political organization, which some found offensive.

15:19 Black students, however, might find that offensive or laughable because it’s a white school with no clue twisting itself so as to sanitize their ambivalent welcome to black students. That could be the way it was seen.

15:36 Now that you have taken on for yourselves in this policy to be the sole arbiters of approved thought, and we, we may have moved closer to group think in sort of an anti-education environment. I believe you’ve politicized the school committee. Every voter now needs to make sure they understand the political bias of every candidate to the school committee to ensure that they can be neutral in their viewpoint. We have to ask, how will each candidate interpret the mission, vision, and values of the schools? Before this, I don’t think we really thought about it

16:24 because we trusted you to hire, evaluate, and fire staff, faculty and superintendents, and they determined what was appropriate. No one gave it another thought. But going forward, I think we have to really delve into what we’re signing up to with school committee candidates because the superintendents, they’re trained and faculty and and principals that they’re the trained professionals that you hired. You trust their judgment and we trusted you to make those judgements. So I been three minutes. I think this is a dangerous road we’re going down. And lastly, I think I would really like to see us

17:13 make it part of our mission, vision, values that students come out of here, learning critical thinking, you know, and being able to appreciate and understand, you know, various, uh, diverse view, uh, viewpoints in, uh, and graduate, you know, um, to live in the, in the very diverse world that we’re living in. So, thank you. Thank you, Ms. King. Point of Clarification, I think, um, we only hire fire and evaluate the superintendent faculty. Yeah, I’m sorry. Our policy is the same as the select board, So I guess I that Would be plus size too. I, I just meant by chain of committee. You have nothing to do with anything else, but I have one hand raised and it’s six 20.

17:58 Do you want me to go? What is the will of the committee to move forward? Yep. How many people? I have one hand raised. Are there more? Oh, and that was the last on the list, unless, oh,

18:13 and then I have two more people. Yeah, It’s just three. It’s fine. Nine minutes folks. Oh, sorry. My vote. Yeah, move forward. Yeah, keep letting them speak. Three people. Go ahead. All right. So anybody signed up at this point? I think we, yeah, we will honor. Okay, great. Um, Cindy Tower Lowen, you should be able to, She was having trouble hearing, so hopefully she Oh, she can hear. Can you? So can you hear me now? We can Hear you. Cindy, can you hear us okay? I can. Okay. So I was, so in terms of anybody that’s speaking, that’s there outside of the school committee is where the issue is in terms of the hearing, so I don’t know. Um, it’s muffled, it’s not clear.

18:59 So I don’t know if anything can be done going forward. That’d be great. Anyway. Thank you. Um, Cindy Tower Lowen. I am 12 Trinity Road. I am a long time resident, um, an active person and many of you know who I am. Um, so I’m not always at the meetings or I don’t always speak at the meetings like I had in the past. But, um, I have some concerns regarding the policy as I read it. Um, in terms of the most recent one, and I know that you can’t answer or you choose not to answer some of the questions,

19:44 but I do want this committee to think about these things. Okay. Um, during your process of, um, this policy work, did anybody on the, um, subcommittee or the other members of the school committee reach out and have a conversation with the METCO headquarters, CEO, um, as well as the Boston students and their families in terms of asking them about the policy, um, and in particular, how would they feel if the Black Lives Matter banner was permanently removed from the high school cafeteria wall? I think that is something that specifically needed to, um,

20:31 be, um, checked into because this impacts the families and students from Boston. And I don’t know if you ever even reached out to Millie. The next part is, um, and it ties into Meco in terms of a district, did you investigate the policies, the flags with the other meco districts? There were 33 districts and, um, Marblehead won. So did, was there a reach out at all for any of those districts, um, including school committee members, administration host families, anyone, medical directors,

21:17 et cetera, from the other districts? And if so, what kind of policies, um, or did they have and how does that, um, how is that reflective to the current policy that, um, you guys ha have on, um, the agenda tonight? The other thing is, the other thing is I wanted to, um, one of the things here is you want to promote a welcoming environment for students, um, permanently removing a Black Lives Matter banner, because I think that’s the gist of some of this policy here without actually coming out and saying it.

22:04 Um, is that really welcoming to the student? And we have over 50 students, um, from Boston and, you know, their viewpoint matters and how they feel and whether or not they will feel welcomed if this is permanently removed. Cindy, That’s been three minutes, just so you know. Pardon? How much that’s been? Three minutes. Three 30 minutes. Okay. Alright. Um, the legal status, okay. In terms of the, uh, flags that are allowed, okay. So legal status today in this country can be changed tomorrow. And that’s scary in itself. Okay. And so I like to know what legal status,

22:51 how you define legal status here, because to me, um, there’s a lot of things going on in this country and it’s actually scary. Just like the American flag. Some of some people find the American flag today as an unwelcoming environment. And so where do we go from here? I mean, I actually think that you, um, it would behoove the school committee to do more homework on this. Have those conversations with the meco districts, with the, um, current CEO and further investigate, um, how those towns are versus relying on other towns that have nothing to do

23:36 with the metco, um, piece. And I could say a lot more, but, um, I know my time limit is up. So I will, um, thank you for your time and I appreciate it. Thanks, Cindy. Cindy, um, thank you. I have, um, Mary McCarrison

23:59 welcome.

24:03 Mary McCarrison, Pinecliff Drive. First of all, I’d like to give kudos to Mrs. Bella and Mr. Heller’s team. They did an amazing job and the kids were just right on point on their passion projects. I’d like to thank John and Julia for coming because wasn’t it amazing what these kids did was truly amazing. I wanna thank Al and Allison for the coffee time down at, on the Muffin. One good thing I didn’t get Gaveled, so I got to, you know, talk with somebody else, you know, for two hours without getting it Gaveled. Um, you still didn’t get really the answers you wanted to know. So I’m gonna bring these up

24:49 and I know I can’t get the answers, but I’d like to know what is your stance about the policy of, um, books? And Allison said that you guys were looking it over now. From what I’ve made some No, that’s literally not what I said. Please do not put words in My mouth what you said that they Were gonna be discussing it. What I said, what I said was Mary, and I’m sorry guys. That’s okay. I’m not allowing this. What I said was, we absolutely have no purview in banning books that that is monitored by our policy, which is already in place, which was put into place when Todd Mathers and Sarah Gold were the policy committee. My first year on this committee, we all agreed, well, not all, because not everyone was here. Sarah and I were on the committee and we agreed to the six to seven page procedure to, to,

25:37 for a parent, not for us, but for a parent to be able to ask for a resource to be reviewed. We all agreed on that at that committee. Yes. That’s literally what I said, Mary. I understand that. And then what I shared, also what I shared also was that part of what our goals are, are to review the policies. This year when we set our goals as a school committee, were to review our policies and make sure that they matched with MASC. The MASC policy for resource review is a paragraph long. It provides no detail, really no anything on how to do, how to manage any of that. And we had created that policy. And what Jen and I agreed to in our policy meeting that happened the day before we had coffee, was to keep hours to not update it to the MASC policy,

26:23 which is just a simple paragraph. But to maintain our six to seven page procedure, if a parent wants to have a resource reviewed, there is no purview of anyone sitting at this committee to be able to remove a book ever unless they’re Parent. You didn’t go into that detail because I Called lost. I absolutely al you were there. Did I go into that detail? You did not get into that detail. Okay, Allison, let’s just, Let’s finish ‘cause we do need to move on meeting. Okay. Need get into that detail. You said that, Lee, you were there as well. You could speak up. All right. So I called Boston. You know, you had said that it was just a small, um, few sentences from, um, compared to what is in place in Marble Head. My question is, are you gonna change that at all because I No, We’re not. And I shared that

27:08 with you yesterday. No, You didn’t. You did not. Al you did Not. Could you please chime in Here? Al she was saying okay, that you’re gonna end up over looking it over and that was it. Then I also brought up recess asking, where are you gonna get that time? Are you gonna be taking it out of the wind block? And we didn’t, we didn’t get an answer. You didn’t ask that question and never, okay, so did, was recess being removed from the wind block? Mary? No, I asked where are you gonna get the time? Is the time gonna come from the wind block? Ms. Mcg Garrison, I’m gonna ask that we stop this as a dialogue. I Told you this would happen if It was, you can make your statement. We, I stop. I’m stopping in every time Allison talks. So we’re, you’re about a minute, almost a minute and a half into this. Um, if you could finish and then I think this is probably

27:54 something we could have discussion offline so that you can get your answer to, to your Question. Alright, so I wanna know, is there gonna be any changes to the policy? And from what I heard, my phone calls I made, it’s very comprehensive and that at, um, and I believe that has been used as an example in some other communities. Another thing with the recess, because that’s what you ran on and where is that extra time gonna come from? Because we did discuss, um, the wind block in detail because I feel as though it helps the older kids. Mm-hmm. Then we also discussed briefly about the, um, grading system. So I call some, you know, like the report cards and that kind of stuff. So I called some communities today and they have changed it.

28:40 So like from first grade to third grade, it’s kind of like what we have that goes up to the SI sixth grade, they go back to A, B, C, D, F in the fifth and sixth grade, no, fourth, fifth, and sixth. And any parent that I’ve spoke to, they don’t like the, the grading system. Why don’t we look in maybe putting it back to A B D’s, A, B, C, D, F or whatever. And those were, you know, because you already know my stance on the flag. Okay, it’s not gonna change. And you know what, you know that this, it’s gonna go in court. You end up taking the flags down, you have glad you have the naacp, you know, that will get right on it.

29:29 So again, I wanna thank the teachers ‘cause they do amazing job and it was really nice to see somebody. And you know what, maybe somebody from the school committee could maybe, maybe show up at some of these, um, projects that they put out. Um, the kids put out. Thank you. I think we’d love to if we were invited, that would be great. Mm-hmm. Thank you. You have a couple more seconds, but thank you. Thank you Mary. Um, we had one other name. I think it was Jeanie. Jeanie, yeah. Jeanie Napkin. Welcome.

30:03 I’m not doing any of these unless they’re recorded again. Is that ridiculous? I Understand. So Welcome. Should I touch this or don’t touch it? Don’t Touch it, don’t touch anything.

30:14 Just space. Kind Of excited to come after that. Um, I’ll pre quilt. I’m gonna say and mention that I discovered that National civility month is in August. Thank you. I think we should make a town commitment so we all get there. Um, so my name is Jeannie Lampkin. I’m from, uh, I live on Devereux Street. And I wanted to hit on a couple of different topics and I will try to get quickly into it. Um, because the three minutes I respect where this needs to go. One, when I, um, I had a chance to see the latest iteration of the policy, and maybe I’m just a writing nerd. What struck me as really odd when I first read it is that it’s sort of like reads, like things get on, get affixed to the walls magically.

31:01 And that the school committee is going to determine that flags aff, fixed, reflects our values. And so just as a nerd writer, if you’re gonna have a policy like action words and own it and say the school committee approves what goes on the walls, I know you’re very concerned that we didn’t understand what a fix meant and we’ll all get there, but it was sort of in past tense and passive voice and it sounded like we’ll just come in and look and opine. And I later on some things get more interesting. But, um, I would just ask after all this time, like, be out loud and proud with whatever it is that you are saying so that we don’t skirmish around with like, well, how’d it get up there? And like, do we, do we like it up there? So minor but important. Um, people have talked about the positive affirmation, um,

31:48 is welcome versus the, um, act political activism, et cetera. And I wanted to just call attention to, um, a couple of weeks ago, I think it was Mary McCarrison, and I apologize if it was, it gave a gift of a welcome mat, which I think was warmly received and, um, has been displayed. And in fact I stepped over it because Renee Cheekily said, you shouldn’t really dirty that up because it’s lovely, it has nice symbols on it. But if you look closely at those symbols, they are all politically active, motivated. There’s a symbol that really reflects, and I support this, don’t get this wrong. There’s they’re shades of brown. Which if you look in other imagery, that imagery is used to speak about the, the skin tone of black and brown people

32:37 and how much that matters. There’s a trans heart there, there’s a pride heart there. There’s an earth heart there that I fairly well would interpret as being in favor of Mother Earth and taking care of it. And there’s an American flag there. So I offer that as an exhibit into what are we doing with that if in our, in our deeds, we accepted it and we saw that as affirmative. And it was spoken of at the last meeting by some of you all in, in a very welcome, warm way. And if I take gravity as being some form of, uh, universal, a adherent, it is a fix to the building ‘cause it’s laying out there on the floor. So if you cast your eyes on that, is it in or is it out? Are those things in the activist political realm

33:24 or are they affirmative? And it can stay. And if a trans flag and a heart on the floor can stay, can we put one on the wall without a lot of chaos? So I’m concerned about that. Um, it was already mentioned that in this writeup there is thoughtful and caring views of all the ways students wanna carry. Where rep their things. Where the teachers, where the staff who gets to say things. And in shortage of time, I’m gonna try to get two things and I’ll leave this as a gift for you. Um, I couldn’t even get through everything, but when I saw there were six days, the old internet served up 40 other months that we could equally value, right? And some of them are just very anodyne. There is, uh, autism month and mental health month

34:12 and bullying prevention month and National Disability Employment Month, and developmental Disabilities awareness. So I am going to share this with you and not read it because wow, they all matter. And I cannot sit here as the daughter of Irish immigrants married to a Greek American and say March has a lot going on ‘cause it’s Irish American Heritage Month and Greek American Heritage month. And I have both of those flags and I hang them out my house and my commercial for myself. The last two things that I saw that the Marblehead Housing Authority passed a flag policy last year. And I thought that might be something. And I know Jen, you’re close to that in it and I you can reread it yourself. You drew a big bright line between the flag poles we’re saying it’s this.

34:59 And then you said everything else inside the building is on you. And we’re just gonna tell you the maximum size of what you can stick in the window. Can you not see this building as a place of tenancy and say you do you in your building, we’ll talk about the flagpoles. ‘cause the flagpoles are an obvious thing. And that was that supreme court thing anyway. And then because it’s flagpoles, and I actually saw this the last time we were here, I don’t mean this to be petty, it’s gonna sound petty no matter what. But after all this time, that poor flag, which has been sort of the subject of everything and ignored brutally. If you look up the flag code, which is an etiquette code, it’s not a legal code item. K says, do not hang your flags when they are in disarray

35:47 and they are shambles. That flag is shamble. Yes it is. And please, if we’re going to do this, can we agree? Mm-hmm. Yep. Absolutely. That a flag should for all irony is dead here tonight for all. We have talked for two years. The only saving grace is the trees have come out to hug that poor thing. ‘cause you can’t see the death. And my pet peeve for a long time is all I Tried. So I would ask, and I saw it is a tradition in this country that people use flag day as a day to retire. Flags that need to be sent to the beyond. You can bring ‘em to the VFW, you can bring ‘em to the veterans. Could you make a motion tonight to in a positive? I am sure there will be no one here to argue. Can you Flag Six flag To get replaced? Thank you. Thank you, Jeannie. Thank you.

36:33 And your point is well taken. ‘cause that has been an issue With me. These And that list, Jeannie, it came from originally we Had, I was all over the internet with All these things. Originally we had said federally recognized and then we decided we wanted to take off the federally. That’s why we kept those. Oh, okay. No, I’m just saying that’s where we weren’t picking and choosing the six. And then There’s, and other people mentioned, I also gave you all the holidays and I gave you the legal ones and I gave You holidays. Do you mind sending that electronically too? I would, that’d be great. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay, great. We’re gonna move on to our student representative.

37:07 Um, no, ‘cause we, it was the will of the committee to Promise Be 30 seconds. Yep. Go ahead. Will of well, no, actually it’s the will of the committee. He said no, we, we had said we were gonna cut it at the people that were on the list. Unfortunate That working parents. She wants Come on guys, across 30 seconds. She works. I work too. I get how hard it is. Come on. I’m fine. Go ahead. I’m fine. Welcome. I promise I’ll Be 30 seconds. Great. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. I’m Melissa Kalu. Oh, um, I live, oh, sorry. I live on Camille Terrace and I’m here. She and I, um, on behalf of all of the, um, collective PCO presidents, um, with permission from all of the PCO presidents, the PCO presidents would like to acknowledge the passing of a former PCO President

37:53 who was a president of the Glover School. Mira Kki suddenly passed away unexpectedly. Mira spent countless hours as president, sole president of the Glover School at the time. She was responsible for bringing in lots of, um, enrichment to the Glover School and enriching the Glover school community. I know she was valued by the staff and the students at the time, and we just felt it was really important that we acknowledge her passing. Thank you very much. I’ll follow up with you afterwards if we we’ll send a letter. Thank you. Can we have a moment of silence for Her? Uh, sure. We’ll have a mo uh, Ms. Ka, which we’ll have a moment of silence for or everybody. We’ll have a moment of silence for her now.

38:44 Thank you. Um, appreciate that. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. Um, student rep Ella, welcome. Thank you. Um, I got it. Second to last. Hi everybody. I just have a few updates about the Marblehead High School tonight. So, Marblehead High School held a chopped style cooking competition on April 11th, led by the culinary teacher, Ms. Delaney. 15 teams competed to make dishes with mystery ingredients in 30 minutes and explained their choices to a panel of judges. An article about the competition can be found in the current fall. Cheerleading tryouts will be June 9th, 11th, and 12th from five to seven 30. Senior college signing day will be Thursday, May 29th. So be sure to show up to show support to our student athletes who are committed to college.

39:30 You can find the spring sports game schedules on the athletic website, the Marblehead High School acapella groups, the jewel tones, luminescence, and the Grizzlies are having their spring concert. Acap Pza next Friday, May 9th at the Marblehead Veterans Middle School pack at 7:00 PM Junior Prom is coming up. It will be held Friday, May 16th. Senior lawn signs are available, parents can order them through the Google form in the weekly update sent out by Dr. Carlson and AP exams are coming up. Good luck to everyone taking them starting next week. Thank you. Thank You, Ella. Good question for you. Um, you may or may not have the answer to this. If Melissa’s here, she may be the one that has the answer to it. Um, for the student lawn signs. Yeah. Um, when, when, when parent, is there a fee to that? And if there is a fee to that, if someone for whatever reason can’t cover that, is do we make,

40:18 I guess my question is, do we make sure that those are available to everyone? They 25 per, um, sign? If families cannot

40:30 Okay. I just wanna make sure that we’re being inclusive and that everybody has a chance. Anything You want, We, we’ll definitely Take it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jared. Thank you. Um, all set. Is it? Is it? Yeah. Okay. Ism gonna move on to district updates for, um, from superintendent John ou. Thank you. Mad chairwoman. Um, so I’ll be quick tonight. We have a lot of stuff on the agenda. So, uh, today’s National School Principals Day, and I want to, I don’t have a banner for that, but I’m just gonna mention it. Um, sorry. Couldn’t help it. And I wanna, I want take a moment to thank and recognize each of our principals. They work hard tirelessly to make sure our staff and students are supported and educated within safe and inclusive learning environments. Our team works well together and I feel so lucky to be superintendent in a district with such a great group of administrators making them like,

41:17 I’m all mushy. Well, it’s 16 hours in. I get a little. Sorry. Anyway, uh, thank you all. I just wanna thank all our administrators. We got a great team here. Um, we had two international trips recently. One Thailand went to Greece. That purported went really well. Um, I love these types of experiential learning, um, opportunities they can, um, when they can transpire. And I was glad to hear that. Um, everything went overall in a positive way. Um, as I mentioned at last meeting, earth Day was April 22nd, among other district wide activities. Um, I wanted to point out that Glover and Brown students did mul mulching and planting for Earth Day, which is a great hands-on learning for our students while teaching the importance of taking care of our natural resources. Um, which is really good stuff. So I just wanted to share that. Julia and I went to Village Thursday as Na Mac had mentioned to view, uh, grade six, uh, students’.

42:02 Passion book, project Gallery in Mr. Hell and Mr. Bli, Ms. Blis classes. Uh, we were very impressed with the level of knowledge from the students, um, regarding the books that they read. And especially with their projects. They had to create projects that, um, like represented parts of the books or themes or characters. And there was some really cool, um, projects that were just really impressive. Um, so I just wanna say thank you to the teachers and thank you to the students for their hard work. It was really a highlight of my week. Um, I can definitely say, uh, today Vets are town moderator, Jack Ridge moderated a mock, uh, town meeting, which is great ‘cause we’re not gonna get enough of that next week. We figured we’d get a little preview. Um, our students debated one of the actual articles on the warrant. It was really neat, um, to see that the students did a fantastic job sharing. Which one Did they, Uh, the one about The what? Sustainability.

42:49 The sustainability. Sustainability. 34. I I’ve heard the argument for the last four days. That’s the only reason why I know. Yeah. So, so yeah, it was kind of cool. Is the sustainability one. Um, I, yeah. Anyway, uh, they did a great job sharing their views, both pros and cons. Uh, they finished up by voting on their article. So I think, um, it would be very happy if the students voted because how did they vote? They voted. They voted to keep it. Yeah, it was great. It was, it was awesome. Um, it was great display of how time government works. Um, Julia worked together in place last year. It’s a great way for the town to collaborate, um, with the schools and provide experiential learning, um, um, for, for our staff and our students. Um, so thank you Mr. Ridge and our teachers. Noah, um, PACA and Bill Shaw who brought Learning to Life today. It was really, really cool to see. Uh, culture Feast will be held on May 30th,

43:34 beginning at five here at the high school Celebration is one that embraces the different cultures represented by our students. And in this way, a great way for students and our educational community to come together. I did send the flyer out to all you guys. You should have gotten that. Mm-hmm. Um, stay tuned to the new newsletters and correspondence from the principals as we have a very busy spring ahead and activities and events are coming fast and furious. I won’t, um, share all the stuff that, uh, Ella so eloquently shared, so I don’t have to be repetitive. But that’s all I have. Thank Ms. Oh, Chair. Thank you. Um, okay. Um, moving on to schedule of bills. Um, I am looking for a motion to approve the schedule of bills for $595,088 and 79 cents. So moved. Second. So moved by Sarah, second by Allison. Any questions? Discussion? Okay, I’ll do a roll call.

44:22 L Williams. In favor. Brian. Oda in favor. Sarah Fox. In favor, Alison, in chapter in favor. Five to zero. Thank you. Uh, meeting minutes. I want to, um, uh, mention to the, to the community and to the board, um, the situation with the meeting minutes. We had someone who was doing our meeting minutes who left the district, and we have been able to secure someone in district who will be doing these going forward. So I was trying to get them do a couple of of them myself. And I had after 16 hours of school committee stuff this weekend, I, and this week I couldn’t, I couldn’t get to it in a meaningful way. So between myself and Caitlin, we will, um, start working for the, I’m assuming for the next meeting to get a batch of them out and get them on. Another option we could do, if it’s the will

45:08 of the committee, is if they’re, we can get them drafted. I can post draft minutes, um, at least to get them out there. And then we would approve them at the, I don’t Have a problem with a watermark drafted version going on as long as it’s watermark draft. Yeah. I think that in the spirit of giving people information quicker, that’s fine. Okay. Um, Al is secretary, can you help get some of the minutes done as well? Yeah, sure. If that’s, I’ll work with, I can just, I, I’ll work in with Caitlin. I think we Responsibilities have been among the executive Correct. And those are all Current. Those are all current. You’ve been really, yes, you’ve been very good. But if there’s a way I can help in this. Yeah, no, I’m just gonna, between Caitlyn and I, we we’re gonna just get them banged out. But if that’s okay, then at least I can get them posted as draft, which doesn’t mean, you know, there may be tweaks, but we’ll approve it at a future meeting. But least we’ll get ‘em out there. Understood.

45:54 Alright, so I’ll do that. Um, John, before I forget, just attach to your district update about the mock town meeting. Um, you, if you May Want to coordinate with Robin Micho or our, um, town clerk. My understanding is that seventh grade class that did the mock trial is being encouraged to attend town meeting. Oh, I, yeah, I neglect to say that that’s, They May wanna add some seats on the, ‘cause they have to sit on stage, so I just don’t want there to be a scramble. So if you can just, if we wind up with a few students there, I wanna make sure there’s room for them. Yeah, that’s one of their homework assignments is to go or watch It. So I would, um, just send an email to uh, both Jack and Robin because That’s another a hundred people to accommo many and the stage.

46:40 Yep. Thanks. 170. Um, school Spotlight. We now have Marblehead High School Welcome students.

46:53 Oh my gosh. Look, we’ve got, we’ve got a lot. They want them to sit, we don’t have enough chairs. So What’s worked with the other spotlights is we’ve kind of shared the wealth with the end of the table here. Yeah. And Um, is They’re gonna do it one at a time anyway. Right. I was gonna say, how is the, are they speaking individ? You speaking individually? Yeah. Yeah. So maybe, yeah, if, um, line up and then sit. Sit and either stand or speak in front of that microphone. ‘cause that’s the key mic right there. So the folks online can hear you. Alright, So I’m gonna be really, really quick because she’s gonna go Babysitting. Okay. Oh my gosh. Go do that. Um, so this is the spotlight. We’re, um, spotlighting senior project. These are eight seniors that are participating in senior projects. So they’re gonna sort of introduce themselves.

47:38 Talk briefly about it.

47:42 Yes, go ahead. I don’t wanna take any time. That’s sacred time. I’m not Welcome. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me here. My name is Ava Salem and for my senior project I am working with the Essex Pediatric Neuropsychology in Marblehead. Their mission is to provide high quality assessments in a welcoming and inclusive environment. These assessments are developmentally and culturally informed and bridge the gap between assessment and intervention planning to help your child thrive day to day I work at home curating social media posts for their Instagram page. But currently I am working on an ins, uh, template for gus.org, which is a website that communicates the school’s commitment

48:27 for a child-centered education. I find the topic of neuropsychology fascinating and it is a field of which I wish to pursue in the future. As I’ve been working on this project, I’ve learned many things such as stigmas around neurodevelopmental disorders and ways to help children thrive in their educational careers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Charleston, do you mind, I wonder if it might be helpful to get a quick just blurb of what senior project is. I mean, not everybody may know that. Sure. Just kind of Yep. Sorry. Quick. That’s okay. No, I just wanna get her out the door to go babysit. Is she all set? Yeah. Tremendous respect for people on the other end of the babysitter.

49:13 So senior project, um, Is, uh, Yeah, that would be helpful so the folks at home can hear. So senior project is, um, offered to seniors in the fourth quarter of high school and it’s um, an opportunity for seniors to either find an internship opportunity for themselves or they could work on some sort of a project or a service project. So they really develop their project or their internship around what their interests are. And you’ll see there’s a wide variety of things that, that the kids are doing. We have about 165 seniors out on senior project right now. Are there prerequisites to participate? There are, yes. So they have to have a minimum GPA, they have to have, uh, not no discipline issues. Um, they have to have good attendance, uh,

49:59 ‘cause we need to make sure that they’re going to their internships. Um, and they need to have a mentor and a supervisor. They do weekly check-ins and they write some reflection papers and then it will come culminate. I can’t even speak tonight. Um, on May 30th we will do, um, kind of like a little gallery walk here where the, they’ll all have tables and present their senior projects and, uh, we welcome anybody to come in and view that. Thank you. Just for quick Question on that. Mm-hmm. Um, my understanding, I believe it was Yasin who had shared this with us a few years back, is I just don’t want people to think, oh, if you’re not doing a se senior project, you may be a would have one of these. It disqualifies if some, for some students who are taking multiple aps. It also just is not something

50:45 that works, is my understanding. Correct. That’s why it’s optional. Some kids really have a, a pretty hard course load or high and they’re still preparing for AP tests that are starting next week and go for two weeks. And some of them opt not to do it. Thank you. ‘cause it is a lot. Thank you Dr. You’re welcome. All right. Welcome. Hi. Hi. How are you? Thank you so much for your time tonight. Thank you. My name is Jacob Hirschfield. Um, and my senior project is I am doing professional golf management at Kerrwood Country Club. My plans are to attend Methodist University to do golf management and marketing. So golf management can come in different aspects. You can either go into the golf maintenance on course maintenance and kind

51:30 of keeping the course in a perfect shape, whether the greens and fairways. And then there’s also an aspect which I’m going into is becoming like a golf teaching professional. So there are only 16 schools in the country that, um, have the golf management as a major. And my goal is to take those four years to become a teaching professional. And what I’m doing right now up at Kirkwood on a day-to-day basis is the pros are showing me certain things around the course that I can do. Last Friday there was a company tailor made, which is types of clubs, brands. They came in, there was a couple of guys who did fittings for a bunch of people. And what I did is I would help people who were getting new clubs kind of look at what they were trying to improve in their golf game, whether

52:18 that’s their driving distance or their accuracy. And based on the new technology coming out, we would fit them on the best, you know, shafts or clubs that would fit best for their game. And then I work with other people up in the clubhouse. Um, we make sure that the golf course is in top shape. There’s a big tournament coming up this Monday for qualifying for the, uh, US open and I’m going up at 6:00 AM and we are gonna roll the greens and spray them and make sure everything’s in top shape. And then I’m actually cadding for my stepbrother later in the day. And it’s a good experience for me to kind of get going on the golf management. My passion is golf and it’s a good idea that I get to know what these professionals and these golf coaches are doing when people come in and they email ‘em and they need lessons.

53:04 So I’m, I’m very grateful I got to do the senior project and I got to learn a lot and it’ll be a good experience for me in college in my future. Thanks for you Very much. Nice job.

53:19 Hi, my name’s Shi Capic. I’m another senior out on senior project for my senior project. I’m, uh, working for boat detailing company. So I’m doing a lot of commercial boat detailing, working with a lot of local boatyards, so anywhere from Marble to Boston to Manchester. Uh, my day to day is different every day. Some days I’m out, like physically on the job site. Other days I’m making work orders, doing estimates, um, uh, being right there next to guys actually detailing boats, supplies and inventory, ordering supplies. Um, so, um, boats have always been an interest of mine and I’ve learned, you know, a lot throughout my life on boats and I’m learning more in each marina that I step foot in. So it’s a fun senior project. You do your family’s boat. Jerry, Jerry, Do you do your family’s boat? Mm-hmm. I am. Yeah. For free. Yeah, for free.

54:08 Good evening everyone. My name’s Jeremy Sorkin. I’m also on senior project, um, for my senior project. I’m interning at Metro Credit Union. Um, we have 18 branches in Massachusetts. Um, and I always, finance was always a passion of mine. Um, throughout high school I kind of found a knack for it. Um, and so I was chosen to be the only high school intern that they’ve had ever in the company. So, um, really excited about that. Um, my day to day also changes, um, but I, I’m on the teller line most of the time, doing anywhere from, uh, basic withdrawals, uh, and deposits to loan payments, to car payments, um, and anything that arises, um, within the financial world. Um, and I think my project is really beneficial for me, um, moving out of high school and into a college, uh, level.

54:54 Um, because, um, it’s gonna really help me in, in college, especially in the business skills I’ve learned. I’ve had to work with the, uh, financial, uh, financial and crime teams. A lot of the times there’s, there’s fraud and I get to learn with back office and have conversations with people and kind of see the, um, sort of the networking that goes along. Um, there’s a lot more than just the retail side of things that goes a lot deeper, um, especially in financial institutions. So that’s what I’ve been doing, uh, for my senior project and I think it’s gonna be really beneficial for me as I go to college. Thank you. Excellent.

55:32 Hi everyone. My name is Lila McGovern. Um, for my senior project, I chose to focus on therapy dogs. I have two amazing dogs, salty who’s five and Rudder, who’s eight. I trained both of them about two years ago through an organization called Dog Bones. My mom actually introduced me to therapy dogs. She used to work with kids with special needs and would often bring them into school with her. Now she teaches at pre a preschool and still brings them in, which the kids love. Over the past two years, I’ve been bringing salty and rudder to village a few times a week. The kids there absolutely adore them. One time the school newspaper even featured them and it was the cutest thing. Soon I’ll also be visiting the Mariner a few times a week, which I’m very excited about. I’m hoping to start visiting Glover in the high school soon as well. When I go and visits, I usually sit with the dogs and wait for kids or adults to come over and pet them. It honestly makes me so happy just to see how something

56:19 so small as petting a dog can brighten someone’s entire day. That’s what makes me so passionate about this. It doesn’t matter who you are, everyone feels stressed or overwhelmed. Sometimes seeing people smile or relax just because they got to spend a few minutes with the dogs makes my day better too. This experience also has taught me a lot about responsibility. Caring for therapy dogs means staying on top of things like feeding, exercise and training. It’s a daily commitment. It’s helped me become more organized and accountable. I’ve also gained leadership and communication skills because I have to guide the dogs to and work alongside teachers, administrators, and professionals. It’s shown me how important teamwork is and help me grow in so many ways. I definitely plan on doing this in college. If you have a dog that think could be a good therapy dog, I highly recommend looking into it. It’s one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done, and it’s an amazing way to bring joy

57:05 to others while learning a lot about yourself too. Thank you. I actually got to see the dogs. Oh. I was dropping something off to at, at village one day and, and, and seeing everyone’s reaction when they came in the front door and how excited everyone gets. Our district has used therapy dogs, whether, you know, it’s, it’s for different reasons and different buildings over the years, and they, it’s really improved things for students. So thank you. I’d love to see them in all of our schools. It’s my little plug. Um, we bring by the admin building, use hospital, use hospital a lot, and they need a lot of that. They do improve outcomes, so Thank you. That’s, thank you. Awesome. Welcome. Hi. Hi. Good afternoon. Um, my name is Eva Ham and for my senior project, I’m an intern at RN Law.

57:52 Rrn Law specializes in medical malpractice, wrongful death, and personal injury. Specifically, I’m interning with the attorney, Kimberly Ridge, who is one of the few medical malpractice attorneys that hold a nursing degree in the entire country. So she’s really awesome to learn from her. Um, for my day-to-day activities, I mainly observe her in how she deals with, uh, clients and cases, um, include including deposition and mediation. Um, and this internship is really, uh, helpful for me as I’m considering maybe law as a future career. And it’s really, um, helpful to see how it can be a real world, like how it is in the real world, and how it actually looks in the hands-on experience of it. Um, I’ve learned a lot through this internship.

58:40 Um, I’ve learned a lot about how, um, to deal with clients, especially when they are sensitive, um, subjects as medical malpractice. Um, cases often are hinge on expert witnesses, and I learned their impact. Um, and I also learned how compensation is handled through non-economic and economic damages. Um, this internship has been very helpful for me as I also went to study law in college, and it’s awesome to learn from an experienced professional like Kimberly Ridge. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

59:19 Welcome. Hello. Thank You guys. Welcome, Fordham. All right. So my name is John Bender, and for my senior projects, I’m, I’m interning with the Marble Current. So, so far, so far we’ve been meeting to discuss our story ideas and how our personal stories are going. And we also planned visits. So we’re going to places like the State House to meet with representative Jenny Armini to discuss like issues like MBTA, electrification and METCO and more. Uh, we’re also seeing the Marblehead Museum to see old Marblehead political cartoons. And for my article that I’m currently working on, I’m highlighting a handful of senior projects from my grade that I found interesting. So far, I’ve been interested in journalism

1:00:05 since before starting. Uh, I had my first interview today and with one of my story highlighted students, and it went amazingly. Uh, journalism is a combination of many of my own interests, like writing, photography, uh, and my own curiosity about things. Um, I’ve been interested in journalism since middle school, and I want to improve my skills with writing in general. However, I’m approaching my project with a returning and interest in journalism. So it’s a way to explore the field again, if I want to pursue journalism in my future. And so far, I’ve learned about how to frame and interview how journalists conduct their professions and what the field is all about outside and inside the story writing slice of the field. Thank you. Thank You.

1:00:54 Thanks, everybody. That’s is every one more? Oh, I’m sorry. I apologize. You were done. My fault. My bad. Welcome. Hi. Hi. My name is Aria Hoover from my senior project, I’m working with the Shavan McDonald and helping her with three dementia programs, which are correct memory care facilities and community centers. So the three types of programs are the Memory Cafe, opening Minds Through Art, which is also known as OMA and Arts and Culture. So I’m just gonna provide a brief description of what each program is. So the first program I wanna highlight is the memory cafe. Both the caregiver and the individual with dementia attend this program for an hour, which allows for a positive disruption in their schedule.

1:01:40 There, the individuals do fun activities that range from painting to making an edible flower bouquet. I will be able to attend some of these programs in the next, the second program is Oma. Oma is an art program solely for the individual with dementia. The individual with dementia gets to complete art projects following a set of instructions for the intended project that day with the aid of a volunteer. And then they would get to create a fun piece of art In this program, choice is heavily emphasized, such as being able to choose between two colors of paint, because when people are diagnosed with dementia, having agency and choice tends to be taken away. Unfortunately, I’ll not be able to attend Oma this month

1:02:27 because of conflicts with my AP courses. And, um, sorry. Um, But I hope to visit, um, one over the summer. However, I am helping out with choosing the projects and completing the art samples, which is really fun. The last program is Arts and Culture, and this is a themed interactive lecture style that combines art history with other little bits. I’m actually helping out to create one of these lectures right now on the life of Massachusetts and Biasly. I’m talking about a superior sports teams and art museums. I know that I really, that I gave a really fast rundown of the three major points in my senior project, but I briefly want to touch on why this project is so important to me. I’m attending Simmons University next year, and I’m planning on majoring in nursing.

1:03:15 I also hope to minor in art through the consortium that Simmons has with mass art. I love how this combines my love for caring for an individual with something that brings me joy with something that brings me joy, art, and I hope to be able to bring the love I have for art to my patients in the future. Thank You. Thank you.

1:03:37 Thank you. So as you can see, There’s a lot of different varieties, and there’s a lot more than this, but this is just a little, little highlighted Well we’ll look forward to is it May 30, when is the May 30th? May 30th for the showcase. Historically, you invite in the past we’ve been invited to to do it, so We’ll, we’re coming. We’ll keep an eye open. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you Dr. Carlson much. And thank you guys for I know you’re, it’s a busy time of year for you, so thanks everybody. Thank you for coming. Oh, Brian’s getting a picture. Just give us a moment. Oh, I, I should have done at the beginning, that one girl. Oh, that’s right. I thought Lee did do your thing. Melissa, do you, Melissa, do you wanna take a picture? One more? You wanna take a picture? Thank you. Did you wanna take a picture? Hold on one more guys.

1:04:22 Wait, one more. Gotta get mom, mom’s gotta get the picture

1:04:34 horizontal. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Great job. Thanks everybody. Good luck. Congratulations. Um, I’m gonna ask the committee if it, if it is the will of the committee to take one item out of order. We have a request, um, that we’re being asked to, to consider and to vote on, um, regarding the Piper field. We do have some folks here that have come in and they’ve been very patient, and I just thought maybe if you’d be willing to do it, we, no, I’d like to do that it out of order, um, because I thank you for your patience. Is that, does that work? Yeah, no problem. Okay. Uh, John, do you mind? Sure. Moving on to that, you have a write up in the, the, uh, your packet? I do. And John, will I share, I shared it, write up in the packet

1:05:20 just to kind of, um, outline. So, um, this is, this is the Piper Piper field. Um, the usage of the lights and the PA system, uh, there’s a lot of discussion about, um, how, uh, there’s a need for us in this community to one, collaborate between the schools and the community and provide, um, opportunities for our leagues in school, uh, in town and our school, um, athletics, to be able to share the fields and to utilize the fields and maximize the resources we have here in Marblehead. To that end, um, we need to seek relief from the planning board of a decision that was made in 2013 in regard to the usage of the lights here at Piper Field. Uh, that decision indicates that we have 12 nights out of the year to use the lights and that we’re allowed to use the PA system

1:06:05 for the football games here at Piper Field. We’re looking to, um, expand that so we can, um, rep one, replicate some of the, uh, light usage at the other field’s in town, um, uh, would allow us to have our sub varsity teams play here on the field, thus opening up other fields in town for a lot of the, uh, youth, youth sports leagues and other, um, men’s, uh, men’s and women’s leagues that are in town, uh, to be able to maximize the, the fields. Obviously, Piper Field, we, um, you know, it’s fully turfed new lighting. Um, and we feel that, uh, it would be great if we were able to extend the, extend the practice times and the game times at night here. Um, and, and by doing that, we would allow, uh, have the need the lights on to be, to be on a little bit later. So we’re seeking a relief from the initial decision

1:06:51 to go from 12 nights in the PAs for the football games to 12 nights, um, until 10 o’clock and nine o’clock, um, for the other nights in the, in the year. And to be able to use the PA system for all applicable, um, athletic contests here in Piper Field. By doing that, it will free up the other fields and I think, uh, meet a lot more needs. Right now. There’s, uh, there’s just, the field stays vacant after, after the lights, you know, after it’s dark. And, uh, I think it’s a, it’s a, it’s a resource that we need to maximize to the greatest extent. So with the, um, committee’s approval tonight, um, that would trigger, if the, if the committee so chooses to approve this, it would trigger an application to the planning board and that application be heard by the planning board and the decision will be made in regard to, um, relief from that 2013 decision.

1:07:38 Um, and that’s what we’re hoping to do. I think that planning board meeting is hopefully the, uh, June, June meeting, June meeting, um, if we can get this off, off the ground and, and, and in the works. So I’ve had conversations with the planning board, uh, the planner, town planner already, um, and folks from, uh, the, uh, youth athletics have been very, um, col uh, collaborative with us as well. So, anything I missed, Jen? I don’t think so. And the, our athletic directors, we’ve met with the athletic director as well as the, um, folks, I think what I’ll do, if it’s the will of the committee to ask for the motion, the second, and then we could, we can discuss, or would you prefer to wait before we make the motion? All right. So I’m gonna ask for a motion. What am I asking for? Hang on. Um, but I guess I’m asking for a motion to move forward with an application, um, for the school committee, uh, to go

1:08:25 before the planning board for relief of the use of Piper Field. So, Second, Hang on, move by Sarah, second by Allison. Okay. Discussion questions, concerns, Sarah? Um, I always have a lot of questions, so I’ll get to my questions, but I first wanna start off by saying, um, Marblehead is, is very unique and wonderful in their generosity of how our community comes together, really to support and quite frankly, funder schools and specifically, um, with the generosity around athletics and our athletic fields. So I think for me, it’s important to look at our, our outdoor space in our fields, not just as school fields. Obviously they are school fields, but as community spaces as well.

1:09:12 Um, it, it would seem hypocritical to me to say, you know, can, can we ask the community to come and fund a turf and fund life lights? But, you know, let’s stop it there. So, you know, it’s really the generosity of those community groups that, that make our students able to have the experiences they’re having. So I think in being a good partner that I, I fully support this. Um, so I think I gave away my vote a little bit there. But that being said, I, I do have some questions because pla you know, I understand very clearly the legal aspects of asking to reopen, um, an order of conditions. So I wanna make sure that when we ask them to order open the order of conditions,

1:09:57 we don’t perhaps wind up in a worse pickle. Um, you know, are we asking them to open up the order conditions just very narrowly to this area, not the entire order of conditions for the, the planning permit for the property. Um, I don’t, you know, we’re not gonna start looking at parking and other areas. I wanna make sure it’s very narrow to the use of the lights in the field. ‘cause again, we don’t wanna wind up with the butters and people coming out to oppose other areas of our, our approvals that we have no issues with. So I wanna make sure we’re making it narrow. So, so that absolutely the, it, so there’s a whole planning, um, decision that was revolving around the whole field. So, um, it would just be for the lights and the use of the PA as I indicated.

1:10:44 Okay. Um, and the other thing I, I failed to mention through the generosity of the, the field getting, you know, uh, the lights and everything getting remade, um, the LED lights that are out there now are vastly different than the lights that were there when the field was first, you know, the last set of lights that were put in there. So, as my understanding is the spray of the lights is nowhere near as intrusive as the spray that was there before. Um, so the impact to, um, you know, light pollution, so to speak, would be very minimal. Um, so I, I think that it’s time, I mean, 2013, we’re in 2025. It’s time to take a look at it and to maximize our resources for all the, all the reasons I’ve mentioned and that you’ve reiterated Sarah around. You know, this is a community and we need to collaborate and, um, cooperate with one, one another for the betterments

1:11:29 of the youth fields, the, the students, um, the adult, um, leagues that play on the fields as well. Okay. And then my next question is, and, and this may be a question you’ve already discussed with these folks and, and gotten feedback, um, I will not even pretend to be an athletic family. So this is not necessarily my wheelhouse, but I, I completely understand the lights and I really don’t know that we’ll get a lot of pushback from a butters in the lights. I am concerned some of the pushback could come with the AV ‘cause that ‘cause of our position up on a hill, how far it carries. I can tell you, you know, you can hear what music they’re practicing to over in Gulf Weight and on Beach Street clearly enough to sing along with it. So I, I just, if that’s the field we wind up potentially having to die on, has there been a discussion

1:12:15 that the lights is really the important part? And if we have to have a discussion about scaling back, potentially the av I’m looking to for like nodding heads, if there’s a potential, if we’re, if we’re starting to feel like there could be more abutter objection because of the av, is that something that’s, pardon the pun, not a field we wanna die on and maybe just fight for the lights. So I think, I think that’s part of the discussion that will come out of the application process in the, in the planning discussion, depending upon what, what, um, what may have concerns with. Okay. Uh, I think the lights force and foremost, I I, okay. In my humble opinion, I think I, uh, uh, speak for the group, um, would be the more important piece. Uh, yeah, that’s what I, that that’s what allows the field to be used. The pa it just seems very, um, you know,

1:13:01 there’s four games that it’s used for. We have a whole PA system that we don’t use for that. And I think Graduate No, I, I hear you. I also think you’ve got a Title IX issue. I was just gonna say, it also is a clear title nine, if it says it can football only be used for football, like, to me that, that screams Title ix. And I don’t know how this actually hasn’t been an issue before. That’s exactly why I didn’t say it out loud, but thank you so Much. You know, leave it, leave it to me to introduce the issue in the room. Um, no, but rightfully so. So I wanna make sure we have equity there, but I’m just saying like, if that starts to feel like we’re getting the, where we’re getting the pushback, maybe we can do some discussion about timing and, and, but I wanna make sure if that is the area pushback we pull away from any Title ix. It’s, it’s, there’s equity there in the use. You got it. For sure. Yep. That’s the end of my questions. Anybody else? Shockingly, any other concerns? Right.

1:13:49 I’m gonna call for a vote. Al Williams in favor. Byta in favor? Sarah Fox in favor. Will we see the application before it’s submitted? Uh, yes. I can share that. Um, I’ve already worked with, I have worked with, um, legal a little bit just around, I’ve spoken to the planner to get a draft of kind of, uh, what the language will look like. I’ll work with the planning board to Valerio application. Do this up, Uh, right now. Someone from, well, Yeah, we’ll follow up with that afterwards. We’re gonna, we’ll follow it up with it afterwards. I’m gonna finish the vote. Allison Taylor in favor? Jen Schaffner in favor? Five to zero. Awesome. Great. Thank you. And can we just talk about that piece? ‘cause I wanna make sure there’s no conflicts offline. Yeah, for sure. Um, okay. Thank you. Thank you for the and thanks folks for, for coming. Appreciate it. We’ll see you on the flip side, so thanks. Thanks, UFF. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:14:36 You think Dennis was here? Did Dennis? Dennis was here. Oh, there he, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you guys. Thank you. Do you wanna do the other school playgrounds first? Um, I was gonna ask about the school playgrounds, but I think it was really Sally and Frank. Do you want me to take the playground out of order or are you guys here for a while?

1:14:53 Frank is a whole other presentation. Yeah. We’ll do the school improvement and then we’ll just, I think we’re okay. As long as you’re not have school improvements, you’re not trying to get outta here. Okay. Um, okay. So we will go back to our, um, agenda, school improvement plans. Do we wanna do the high school first, or, it doesn’t matter to me, it’s listed as high school. I wanna do high school first and then Glover.

1:15:19 Hi. Welcome Dr. Carlson. So we’re here to hear the school improvement plan, which I believe is a requirement. Yes. So for all schools. Um, just, just by way of discussion, um, yes. Every, every school, every year has to us to create a, a school improvement plan that’s developed in conjunction with the, you know, school council, the, the, um, folks. SAC. Yeah, SAC, um, in, in each of the schools. So what I, I’m gonna preface the conversation by saying that all the school improvement plans the committee is gonna see this year are in alignment with our current, um, plan for district’s plan for success, which is something that we’re re we’re in the process of revamping into a, a much more comprehensive district improvement plan as indicated by one of my, one of my evaluation goals. So when, um, when we have those discussions, you’ll see

1:16:05 how much, um, broader the, um, conversations are. So right now, um, you’ll hear from Dr. Carlson and, and, um, Mr. Kowski this evening about their school improvement plans. And it, and it’s aligned with our current, um, student plans for, I mean, school plans for success. So I think, um, I just wanna make that up, you know, that announcement because it’s gonna look vastly different as we move forward. So Thank you. Welcome. Take it away. Thanks. So this is, um, pretty much what we, the same format we’ve done in the past several years when we had Planning for Success, which is the last year as, um, do We know, did we, does Frank have this or no? We doing it up on the street. It’s, it’s in the, it’s in the box. It was, it was shared. So, alright. I think we’re, I think we’re Sorry. Um, so I have four school improvement plan goals for Marblehead High School. The first one is that we, I’ll just read it.

1:16:52 Marblehead High School will prepare for the NEAS collaborative visit. Marblehead High School will create a team consisting of educators and administrators who will oversee the process of fulfilling the requirements for continued NEASC accreditation. We originally were supposed to have our NEASC visit this spring right now. Um, but, um, with the amount of time that we lost in the fall, um, we lost professional development days that were going to be dedicated to writing, um, a report that had to go to neasc and it has to be created by faculty. It can’t be something that I just write. It has to be agreed upon and, and written by them. Um, so I spoke with NE Ask and they pushed us off till next year. Oh, good. So, which is great. So we have been working on that,

1:17:37 and we still have some more to work to do on that. Um, but this goal addresses that, uh, report that will be due to ne ask, um, for their visit. And we have a few, um, other things we need to do and create committees for their visit as well in the, I don’t have the dates yet. I will get those probably, um, September, October next year for when they’ll actually be out. Um, the second school, BA school-based goal is that we’ll create and update a written curriculum document for all courses that will include scope and sequence. We have some of this done already. We need to do some work on those curriculum documents. We have, um, scope and sequence done, um, and we need to sort of add to it and make sure that we have it for all of our courses.

1:18:24 This is another thing that NE A will be looking at, and it is one of the elements that they will rate us on, which is a simple, do you have it or don’t you have it? Um, but if we’re progressing towards it in three years, when they come out for the decennial visit, this will definitely be something that they’ll be looking for to be completed. So we’ll be working on this starting next year to get it in great shape for when they come out in another three years. Um, the next school-based goal is that we will offer professional learning opportunities to support educator development, promote the implementation of best instructional practices, and include training in social emotional learning strategies. So this is aligning with some of the things we started this year and continuing with them, including Wayfinder for this,

1:19:11 for the SEL support, we did roll it out this year, but we are going to be incorporating it into more and more of the courses and, um, the magic blocks next year as well. Um, so it sort of, um, speaks to the training that we need to do for staff around that as, as well as other training that the staff could use to support instructional practices for students. Um, and then the final, um, school-based goal is to increase opportunities for student voice at Marblehead High School to strengthen students’ sense of belonging. Again, we’ve done a couple things this year with that. This is looking to really expand it, um, starting off with kind of a student survey. Um, and then, you know, I do some of this now. I want to expand it, celebrating

1:19:57 and highlight contributions that students do at Marblehead High School. Um, and then creating more and more opportunities for students to come together, um, and create opportunities for students to be able to meet with faculty administration, listening sessions, and really, um, partake in some of the, um, decisions that are made in the high school if, if we need to look at change. So, um, that is my four goals. I’m happy to answer any questions. Um, I just wanna, as far as the ne a ASK certification goes, um, I should have done this through a con accommodation at some point throughout this process. I know there’s many, many people working on this. The person who happens to reach out

1:20:43 to us when they need questions answered, I think I got a couple emails about facilities things. Um, Mike Lavender, he, his attention to detail has been great. His, his work that we, he’s brought, you know, to bounce off us for our parts has been wonderful. And like I said, I know there’s many, many people, many staff working on this. Um, so I don’t mean to say he’s, you know, but he just happens to be the one we’re having the experience I’ve had the experience with and it’s been, he’s been great. So, um, I know there’s a lot of hard work going into this, so thank you. And thank you, please. Thank you. Any questions for Dr. Carlson? Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have to Vote this? No. Yes. Yes. Oh, we do. Okay. Um, so we want, we’ll do ‘em both. Maybe we’ll do ‘em Both at the end. Yeah. As long as you, as long as you name ‘em both separately when you do the vote. Yeah.

1:21:30 Um, Frank, welcome. Oh, no, no, not you, Frank. The other Frank, Frank will be presenting in your, your place. Are we having technical difficulties? Just I think setting while we’re waiting, Frank, someone was singing your praises, a former administrator who worked with you, um, somewhere else. I’ll give you the details later, but just so hap they live in town. So happy that you’re now a permanent member of our administration at the principal level and just singing your praises. I just wanted to let you know How good does it feel not to be interim. Good. Alright.

1:22:10 Subtlety is not your thing. Come on. You know, I just, I have to lighten the mood sometimes. You’re As subtle as I am. And that says a lost, What’s that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:22:26 Oh, actually, did she recess this? ‘cause I’ll use The restroom. No, she just, no, She’s just, we’re just waiting for that. She’s gonna use the restroom, but if I leave we don’t have a quorum. So I guess

1:22:42 Speak again.

1:22:48 Go ahead, Frank.

1:22:55 Welcome and thank you for, um, having me, uh, thank you to the committee superintendent, robo, assistant superintendent, Ferrera, superintendent assistant. Mr. Piffling, thank you for all your support and help. Thank you to all the Glover teachers for watching on Zoom tonight. And for Sally and Diane for being here this evening.

1:23:14 Uh, and Lila and the service dogs will be coming to Glover. I love it. So we kind of talked about that tonight. Did I mention, I think they should be at all of our schools. Yes. Yeah. My son is obsessed with Salty. Did I mention admin building? Yes. So, um, I’ll present the plan. I wanna thank, um, Brian for of, uh, his input, uh, for the plan and for, uh, the whole, the whole, uh, excuse me, the whole year. Um, Brian and I start talking in July. So he, uh, very helpful to me and the members of the community that, uh, were part of the plan. So similar to what Michelle did, I’m gonna, I broke mine to three, three areas. Um, and again, I’ll go through my three areas and then if you have any questions at the end, uh, feel free to answer, ask any questions. So, teaching and learning, um, the Glover schools,

1:23:59 uh, to increase overall student achievement, develop student accountability and, and acceptance to increase the value of school’s importance and the value of being part of a school community. I’ve always thought that, you know, when you tell students that school’s important and we say it enough that it’s, it starts to resonate and that a young age, I think it’s really important to really put that with our students. That coming to school is important.

1:24:23 We like to arrange for more common planning time, um, for teachers to accommodate our MTSS work when needed. For example, our data meetings, uh, central focus on tier one instruction. I, we, we wanted to have a real focus on a foundational approach. Um, back to the groundwork of where schools be. Schools begin, right? We want teach teachers how to teach all students in tier one instruction. Uh, we wanna implement best practices, classroom components to rethink a foundation approach and collaborate on celebrate, celebrate inclusive model again, for tier one instruction. And we also talked about developing a, a do now a school-wide do now approach, which might incorporate silent reading, uh, for the whole entire school population.

1:25:08 For the course of the school day. Same time every day. Students can bring in a book from home that they, they interest them and teachers as well, we’ll all read together at the same time every single day. Um, that will definitely be a, a process that we’ll try to get rolling sometime in the fall.

1:25:27 Professional culture, which is very important to me, uh, throughout my career. The Glover staff will engage in multiple opportunities throughout the year to develop and strengthen a positive, engaging, unified professional culture where staff members feel a sense of belonging and they thrive. Educators. Uh, we wanna develop a, a, uh, celebrate Toury staff and achievements we wanna celebrate. And we also wanna have shared accountability for all the staff. And we want to increase Club Fridays. Sometimes they get lost on the shelf because it, it is a lot of work, a lot of work to have a community day on Fridays. But we’d like to try to come up with some way where we can celebrate, uh, together as a school.

1:26:11 And another thing that’s very important to Austin Glover is diversity equity inclusion. Uh, the Glover staff members will work to ensure an inclusive environment as it relates to all students with an added focus on our meco community, develop a plan to collaborate to ensure we offer inclusive practices throughout the school. Develop a plan to meet with the Meco director biweekly to ensure, uh, shared alignment. And like everything else, we wanna continue to collaborate and ensure we offering inclusive practice throughout the school. Um, you know, we really believe in that as a, as a school community. Questions. I do have one question. I meant to ask it earlier, but I’m just in your very first bullet under improvement

1:26:58 strategies you had down right after school meeting times. What’s that mean? Uh, well, that, that’d be optional. We try to find teachers that wanna meet after school to kind of, kind of collaborate on, on the day. Like I, I’m a big person that believes in reflection, right? So we have things going on the course of the day that might have a few people ask questions about it. We’ll gather people before three o’clock to maybe reflect on that as a group.

1:27:23 Okay, thank you. I Just, having lived through the last year, we lived through, I just feel the need overwhelming. You need to say this. You had said we’re asking teachers to volunteer that we’re, they’re not, that’s not uncompensated. That would be illegal. Oh, for sure. Um, any, yeah, I just, I that was hammered into our heads a little bit. I wanna make sure we’re making it clear to the community. We’re compensating our, our staff if, if they’re working. Um, one quick question I had, and I only think of this ‘cause I happen to be, um, at the SAC meeting at Brown, I know we do a lot of parody and, and there is a lot of parity in spoiler alert in this, which is nice. But one thing I had, um, brought up yesterday on this for this arranging common planning time for a resource needed, um, because I’m a big believer, if it’s not documented,

1:28:09 it’s easy to forget we need this thing. Coverage isn’t resource that we need if we’re looking for extra this. Um, so, you know, looking forward the budget’s set for this year, but when we start planning budgets moving on, if you’re finding through your year that coverage isn’t given, you don’t maybe have the coverage you need documenting that in some way so that there’s, we know, you know, it just makes it easier when we have the data trails. That’s a great question. And one thing we, when you talk about professional culture in a school, we also have a help each other out culture. And we also know what’s important. So sometimes we have in all our instructional assistants a very qualified, so by have having them fill in for a teacher for a 20 minute, half hour meeting,

1:28:56 I think it’s very doable. And I think they’ve been very open to that idea. So I think if we can increase that and increase the, the, the, the data meetings, um, to find ways to meet more often, I think it helps more kids. Thank you. Thank you very much. And this is Frank’s first year doing one of these, so I Thank you. Nice job. Thank you. That’s very thorough. Appreciate It. Thank you. Great. Anyone else? Alright. Thank you. Thank you Frank. Um, okay, so I’m going to, um, ask for a motion to approve the school improvement plan for Marwood High School and the school improvement plan for the Glover School. So Moved. Second, Sarah, second Allison. Um, discussion. Um, I think these are great. I think they’re aligned with the current plan we have, which is

1:29:41 what you’re supposed to do. I think when we move towards our new plan, we’ll see some shifts. One shift I would like to see, and again, not in this one because it’s appropriate for what we have, something we used to do going back, you know, six, seven years, is there would be a, a facilities component of a school improvement plan too. We talk about capital planning, we we’re talking about these big ticket items, you know, Whether it’s a roof or, um, the painting at the pack, those bigger ticket items. But there’s also some medium level that need to happen in each school. I know Mike has been doing an excellent job. He did a walkthrough, um, and made, we saw at the facilities meeting yesterday, lists and lists and lists that he, he he got and we’re working on that. But I think, you know, those medium level,

1:30:27 I’ll give an example that goes to a building that doesn’t even exist way back in the day when we, one of our, uh, facilities goals for a school improvement plan at the Bell School was new library, car carpet. It didn’t rise to a capital, but it was bigger than just patching a hole. You know, that we’re looking at those when we’re moving forward. Again, not this year, but when we talk about where we’re going in The future. Yeah. So I think when you see, when you see the, uh, as, as the di the district improvement plan unfolds, you’ll see a lot of those things woven in. There’s a lot. I, um, I intend to have a lot more categories, uh, okay. The financial, uh, all those things. And the other thing that Mike and I have started to talk about, we haven’t gotten too far down the road, just a little bit busy lately, but, um, creating like a, like a, I know we have like a 10 year plan in district. I think like a, like a five year capital

1:31:12 improvement plan is really helpful. So it hones those, um, conversations in, so we can see the, you know, the ongoing things that need to be done, the immediate things that need to be done, the, you know, one to three and, you know, five to eight years timeframe. It gives us a little bit more, uh, flexibility to address those capital things as we go along. So that would be maybe separate from, but integrated into. Okay. Perfect. I love it. Awesome. All right. I’m gonna call for vote l Williams. In favor. Brian OTA in favor, Sarah Fox. In favor, Alison Taylor in favor, Jen Schaffner in favor. So five to zero. Thanks everyone. Thank, thank you principals. Um, there are we, I think we’re on the playground. We’re, uh, request for the, so now we’ll move on to the request for the naming of the Glover School. Yes. Playground. Um, so there was a request, um, that was put

1:31:59 before, um, uh, principal Kowalski. And then to me as is the, as is the, uh, the chain of events that’s supposed to happen. Um, so there’s a request to, uh, name a playground structure at Glover School, uh, for Brook Yano in her memory. And, uh, so right now the structure, they’re looking at the, the, what the structure will be, how much the structure will cost. Um, there’s some donations from PTO money, uh, that may be part of that. So, um, we don’t have all those specifics yet. So I, I asked that we brought, um, this request forward to the committee to vote and approve so that they can continue to do the work that they need to do. And then once they determine the structure of the cost, uh, plaque or whatever that’s gonna go with it, they’ll, um,

1:32:44 the, the school will bring that back to the committee for their approval. Like similar to what we do with the, um, Mr. Kovich sign. So we know what the, how big it is, what it looks like, what it costs, um, who’s donated what. And we, we see the donation, you know, as we would with anything else from the school committee and what the plaque would look like, et cetera. So I think this would be the initial step. So hopefully the, the, um, committee will agree to vote, um, that, you know, in memory of ano, um, to name a playground structure at Glover. Uh, the playground itself is already named. So, uh, that, that was the, the second the thought that we would do a structure of sorts. Um, there, you know, so we’re, we’re gonna go there. And I think once we determine that, uh, there are some thoughts, I’ve seen some, some ideas, but, you know, until it solidifies we’re, we’re at that, that’s where we are in the process. Um, Sally, do you want say some words

1:33:30 or We wanna wait until, I mean, we’ll wait, We have Okay. Again, we we’re really in the preliminary stages. Okay. And I don’t wanna over overstep and then not be able to deliver, but we have some pretty good ideas. Okay. Um, I gotta work with Mike and figure out costs and everything else. Okay. Um, I just wanna mention just for everyone’s edification that, that Ms. Yana was a, a beloved kindergarten teacher at, I know her at Everly. I don’t know whether she had also moved to Glover Glover, um, till 20 and one or 22. Right. And she 15, But I’m not quite sure. Um, no, she was earlier still 20, right? Yeah, no, she was much 15 years. No, she was much earlier. She was my, no, I Thought, I thought You were safe. And she was much beloved and she, and she passed away, which was very, very tragic.

1:34:15 So this is, and this has been a long time coming, um, but I’m just putting it in, you know, sort of into perspective. So we’ll hear more and we’ll hear more about Brooke. Um, I think when maybe when that time comes. And That’s actually what I was gonna ask, and it’s, I don’t wanna put you on the spot. I it’s totally fair that you want a little more prep time, but one of the great things about when we went through, um, the naming of the athletic facility was hearing how much Alex impacted and, and, and so if, and again, I won’t put you on the spot right now, but if we could, so the community knows, um, the legacy and that there be some type of, Um, yeah. And I, and I think that’s, that’s, I think that’s, that’s what you’ll do the plan, you know, so it’ll be like a little bit more fanfare for, for that fanfare. Maybe not the right one, but you know what I mean. Um, when we get to that point. ‘cause I think it’ll be more impactful. Yep. Impactful is probably the

1:35:00 right word. Um, you know, when we see the Structure, but just so folks know and the press knows everything, just a little, little sort of little background on it because She was an employee right up until her, her past. Mm-hmm. Ryan could speak quite, quite a bit. Uh, Yeah. Well, hopefully he will. Yeah. But I don’t, there’s no one here that’s opposing this is There. No, no, no, no. Which I just wanted No, no, no. I was just trying to, just for the, for the community to put a little bit of context knowing that it will, it will, It’s nice to, to honor who these folks by, by talking more about their impact that they done. I think right now We’re at the stage where we’re sort of, we wanna move forward, but we can’t move forward unless we know that it’s gonna be Yeah. Got it. We’re in a sort of caught space right now that in order to raise the funds and to do The seat, We wanna make Sure we can. So I’ll make a motion to, at the main playground, right?

1:35:48 What? Yes, the main, um, I’ll make a motion to, uh, name a play. I keep looking to tell me if I’m doing it wrong. Play a play name, A play structure at the Glover main playground after, um, Brook, I don’t in the name of, in the name of Brook. So moved. So moved by Allison second. You were saying that you’re only gonna name a piece of equipment after her. The whole playground, The playground’s named after this Is gonna be a good, huh? Yes. And when we, we’ll share more about that structure because The actual playground already is correct. So it can’t be, what’s the Playground named after I was there? It, Robin no one told me that had name Billy Robins. It was actually the old Glover. Yes, it was.

1:36:33 Oh, the old building before they tour the old. Yes. And So it moved out. I think they’re gonna, the idea is they’re gonna work together to make sure that it feels impactful. Yep. So, um, I have a motion and I have a, a first from Allison. Do I have a second? I made, she was the motion. I Was second. Oh, I’m sorry. You say I should have said second. Second, sorry. Um, okay. So I’m gonna call for a vote. Sure. Mike. Sure. Mike, go ahead. I Just wanna let you know that I’ve had discussions with Principal Kowalski, there’s some staff at Lover. We also know that there’s been some funds allocated for New Surface, and we’re asking for some funds at town meeting for some playground structures also. So I think we’re meeting as a group, bringing the community together, the staff, the students, the, um, administration to kind of plan a, an entire playground. And not this will be part of that, I believe.

1:37:20 So it’s, it’s a, it’s a bigger process and I don’t believe we’re just picking out one structure and naming it. I think we’re picking a bunch of structures or multiple structures. I don’t wanna say a bunch, but a multiple structures and Yes. And potentially one of them would be named after a, I think the intention of saying it that way to still honor the previous individual as well. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Great. I’m gonna call for the vote then. L Williams in favor. Iota in favor. Sarah Fox In favor. Allison Taylor in favor. John Schaffner in favor. So, great. Five great, great news. Thank you everybody. Um, okay. I am looking for, Can I, uh, I guess we’ll wait to the financial update, but it’s all connected. Okay. Um, financial update from Mike Pip, assistant Superintendent of business and Operations. Hi, good evening, finance And operations. Um,

1:38:06 two quick updates before I get to that. The first one is, I understand the flag out front is being replaced as we speak. Yeah, I saw that On my Trip to the, we’re on it. Um, the second thing is, uh, Frank, Mr. Do you need to Hear that? Well, it also, it might have, but I, I think it’s the one up above, which is a little more to it than that. That’s the one that, oh, The one up top. You need people with special riggings, I think. Yeah. Both. Both of ‘em need to be replaced. I think so. I told him the one out front, but, okay. Um, the other thing is, before we get into letting people volunteer with an open checkbook, all things need to be approved and we need to find budget funds before we say that we pay for volunteer. Well, Yeah, that was, I had a little question about that too and I was gonna follow up offline. Thank you. So, okay. It was just, we were told really not to use the word volunteer because that is a big problem.

1:38:55 I understand that. Yeah. I just wanna say that it’s not an open checkbook and that we need to identify budget funds and set understood, set set hours and, and budget money. I just don’t want there to be an understanding that we expect people to volunteer.

1:39:07 I think when people volunteer, they don’t get paid. When we ask them to do work, they do Get paid. Right. So I think we need to, we, we Need to, we’re not allowed to Have volunteers. The administration will clarify that. The Volunteers all day long in our buildings with community members who come in, we’ll have conversation offline and supervise our cafeterias Folks. We will have this discussion with the administration and the set administrators offline. That’s an operational issue. So we point well taken. Thank you. Uh, so the financial update, uh, as of yesterday afternoon, we had expended 31.8 million of our budget with 12.5 million encumbered, leaving a current balance of 2.46 million, uh, in comparison to last month. At this time, that’s $253,000 less than what we had available at the end of last month.

1:39:54 So again, we’re, we’re in really good position right now. I think it’s time for us to start looking at projects that we wanna look at. Um, allocating money towards prepaying tuitions, uh, for special education tuitions. Um, similar to what we do at the end of every year. Um, our projections are holding kind of where we’ve been all for the last four months. Uh, salaries are still encumbered at a very nice pace. And, um, just on the budget, as you know, school committee voted unanimously on, on our budget. Uh, the finance committee on March 31st voted unanimously on our budget on the superintendent’s proposed budget. And, um, we will be headed to town meeting on May 5th for what’s hopefully town approval.

1:40:44 We’re sixth or seventh, But, so hopefully Our budget’s on the fifth. I, I am gonna announce the elephant in the room, quite frankly. Um, on Monday night, 5 30, 6 o’clock at night, we were notified that the projections for free cash were reduced by about $2.5 million. To my knowledge, free cash has still not been certified? No, it has been. It has been. Okay. ‘cause I was gonna say the last I checked in on this has been about 24 hours. It did get certification. And was the certification at the 2.5 million less? Mike, do you know where it was CER certified? Uh, I do not. I last I had heard it, they were still waiting when I talked to Alicia earlier today, so, Okay. So we don’t Oh, I could be wrong. Actually. I, no, No. It was earlier this morning. They were,

1:41:29 they were expecting it yesterday afternoon. Yeah. Yeah. I, so, so it may or may not. But anyway, they were, my understanding was the way that they were going to do it is 1.5 million was gonna be reduced kind of through different mechanisms on the townside that wouldn’t directly affect us. And then a million of it was going to be not in our operating budget, but was going to be reduced through capital asks across different departments, not just us, the details of which had not been worked out yet. We, we talked about this at the facilities meeting ‘cause we talk about capital asks of the facilities committee meeting. Um, I’m not gonna put you on a spot for the answer yet because this is a moving target. We don’t know what the final number is yet from town meeting. I know FinCon has booked 6:00 PM meeting

1:42:14 to literally vote on the floor prior to town meeting on what the recommendation for capital asks are. We’re in the context of we’re close enough to the end of the year to know any potential surplus. And again, surpluses in a $46 million budget are the norm. Um, if you’re coming in on a $46 million budget with with not a dollar, you know, extra, you are not budgeting properly. So us having a surplus is, is ex in the financial world what you would you would expect. My question is we will, we would normally do some prepayments of special education to stabilize that area because um, that is our most volatile area.

1:43:00 In addition to that, I would like to look at any potential reductions to our capital asks on the school side, whatever me, because there are mechanisms available to us for one-time fees prior to that and or prepaying more intuitions and then do the offset later on. My point being, if there’s the availability to make the school capital asks whole, if you will, um, through the offset of any, any surplus at the end of the year, which wouldn’t cost taxpayers more money. Um, I would like to make us whole. That’s just me. One person will have to, you know, discuss that as a a committee. Um, I don’t anticipate there being

1:43:45 pushback from the town on that. Again, like these are funds that have been allocated for use by the school. We have the legal mechanism to to use them. Mike, you’re great at working out all those details. Um, but I, I understand

1:44:01 why they have, they have to make those cups ‘cause we legally have to come in balanced. But if we have available funding to make the schools whole still, I would like to do that. One of the items, you know, we talk about is the playground structure. That there were some playground funds. There were some HVAC funds at Glover. There was the um, pac, if we can make ourselves whole, I I think that it is our duty as a committee to, you know, work to do that. So I think that’s, Shouldn’t we be doing those items regardless? It sounds like, you know, we’re trying to make ourselves full. That’s what I’m saying. Yes, but we’re, but we’re grabbing funds that we should be, we should be, if there’s HVAC funds that we don’t think are going to be spent on that, on our available for something else.

1:44:50 Yeah, I think, I think the point is is that the HV funds that we asked for potentially could be now cut. So we may not be getting the HVH funds, but I thought you were saying so we might be cut from the, we might be asked to make some reductions. We have been the town we have been And you’re saying We can make ourselves whole. So We’re, we will do that, but we will get, you know, so let’s say we, we give a $50,000 reduction to the town, but you wanna try and find that $50,000 elsewhere. Is that what you mean by making this whole Our Yes. In our budget. In the budget. ‘cause we will have a Sur in our budget this year Budget. So we have a surplus this year. Why don’t let John ex Explain. So I was just gonna say, so typically what would happen in, at the end, regardless of whether the town comes back and says, Hey, we need you to reduce something, right. Going into town meeting, um,

1:45:36 they have asked us to reduce our capital. So Mike and I would talk about that. We’ve talked a little bit about it. Um, what’s the number they’re asked us to reduce? Um, what can we reasonably do? We have to prioritize and reprioritize, which we do all the time anyway. Mm-hmm. We would always look at, hey, we have this set, this money that we feel that it’s gonna end going back to the town because it’s a, you know, surplus so to speak. Um, instead of turning back to the town, do we use that to offset the, you know, what they’ve asked us to redo. Mm-hmm. So by matter of course we would do that anyway. So I appreciate Sarah like saying that out loud because it’s something that I think as we move forward and we can say, Hey, the town asked us to take, cut this much money out of the capital ass. And we say Sure, we’ll do that. Mm-hmm. And these are the things we could still reasonably

1:46:21 do that we asked for. Like the painting of the pack was in the repulsing of the seats. Uh, special ed van, um, Glover Playground, et cetera. All the HVAC system. We have to look at the, so we’re looking at all that and we’re saying what can we reasonably still do and make sure that we balance our budget and make sure the town we reduce, you know, what we need to for the town side. So, um, it’s a numbers game right now, but I think, uh, that’s always how we would, that’s how I’ve always operated. Just, you know, um, if there’s that money there, then we would typically turn back. We use that to offset so that we don’t have to just add it to, um, a capital, uh, improvement plan next year and just kick the can down the road. So We would have to vote that now. Yeah. We would have to be the ones to, Yeah. Again, I, I’m not being eloquent enough. I just wanna make sure, like, so we were gonna have,

1:47:06 you know, these funds, you know, we had these funds to paint something. Mm-hmm. Right. But wait a minute. Now we may not have those funds. We don’t have them. Right. We don’t. Right, right. So, alright, but somehow we paint the building anyway. Mm-hmm. Right. Making us whole, where did that money come from? Right. So that’s, that’s what Sarah talked about. Any potential surplus we would have at the end of the, So, so from our operating budget, we’re expecting sur Okay. So it’ll come from Yes. Surplus year. This Year’s sur year 25 this. So what I’m asking is FY 26 capital just got cut. Mm-hmm. At the end of FY 25 we hand back surplus. I can only speak for myself. I do not support handing back any FY 25 surplus until we have been made whole on the cuts on FY 26.

1:47:51 If, if there’s enough money to do that. If, Yeah. Yes. I mean you can’t get blood from a sur. Correct. I was just saying, I just wanna make sure that people, you know, And, and that’s why I say handing back surplus, like if once the surplus is gone, it’s gone. Right. You know, that is what it’s, goes Back into free cash, but Yeah. Yeah. So that would, it would be taken out of this year’s budget. Okay. And we do that through PO that would, I mean Mike does make sure that he does that, um, in the way that we’re allowed to, which is to take this year’s budget to a next year site. Alright, thank you. Yeah. I mean the one thing is I will say, and then I have a question for, uh, John and Mike is the idea of the pack. I understand it’s coming out of the, in this case, may come out of the school budget. You know, we, it’s really a town asset because a lot of that, you know, usage is not school. But on the other hand, it is rented out and we do get the rental income.

1:48:37 So I mean, it’s, I get, so Those are things we’re looking at for sure. Yeah. Um, and, and maybe be able to make that whole, um, based upon what we’ve just found out. So I have a question, and this is also for you and but for the committee to consider. So right now we voted a capital, um, a list of capital items that we were, that was going to go to go to town meeting on the, on the warrant to request town meeting approval. That appears to have been changed, or may is or will be changed on. We’ve been asked to reduce that capital Asked by that by the finance committee. Yes. We’ve been asked to reduce it, that they’re gonna go to town meeting with a different number than what we voted. So what I’m unsure of is, do we need to vote a different number or if we don’t, it will just, unless us

1:49:23 or somebody else holds it, it’ll go based on the finances Committee recommendation. I think it’s my understanding that we stay pat with what we asked, um, because it could change. We don’t, there’s so many variables right now. I would hate to say they’ve asked us to reduce by x amount of number. We know we, we kind of have an idea what that number is, but I would say we’ve, we, we went to the town and said, we need this money extra to do the things we need to do in our capital. I would say un until, or unless, um, we know that that number hasn’t changed. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t we’ll leave it. I would leave it alone. So when I asked Thatcher yesterday, um, just from a procedural point of view, it sounds like, and I, I would agree, I don’t think we, until we know what the numbers, we don’t know what the number is. Um, that Monday night, just from a procedural point of view, we may need to vote to amend our original motion

1:50:11 of the original amount to the new amount that the town’s saying that they can fund. It’s just, it’s literally just procedural minutiae. I don’t even know why we would have to, if nobody’s gonna argue with it, finance committee will go to town and be, because They have to vote on the number we sent them. I don’t know that to be still, according to what You mean, That concur. So, point being just let’s to move this on, move this forward. Um, I have, uh, posted us for, um, 6:00 PM No, You haven’t. I just checked it. Checked it 6 45. Oh, I forwarded and I got a, I got a confirmation that they did it As of the agenda that I checked 20 seconds about 6 45. She definitely approved, she definitely sent me back. Okay. Alright. Well I guess I have not forget it. It’s too late now. So we’re, We’re posted for 6 45 and 6 45. Yeah, we can do a quick motion. Yep.

1:50:57 Okay. I had sent her one to post for six o’clock and for Tuesday and Wednesday. Um, atory I will follow up with the clerk because if she actually happened to hang in Ebo Hall, it may still work. So I’ll check with her. Um, so we are, so we, we will convene as a committee at town meetings so we can, we can vote or, and if we need to vote, we’ll okay. And we’ll have, we’ll have a plan ready to go. Okay. Great. Mike, anything else? Plan? I think I’m complete. All set. Thank you. Alright. Um, okay, moving on to the flag and banner policy third reading. Bear with me a moment. Um,

1:51:44 ironically The plant sales are on the clerk’s Page. For What agenda? What is it? The plant sales coming up. Oh, the garden club sales. Interesting. Bear with me a moment folks. I have no Where this is. Mike, would you mind just, I mean, I, I keep on top of it too, but if you hear they certified first, will you just let me know? Of course. I’m kind of stalking them to find out. Check right now. Here we go. Thank you. Okay, I appreciate That. Um, I will read this into the record, uh, the Marblehead I policy IMDB policy regarding display of flags and banners. Marblehead school committee has the governing and policy making body of the marble Public schools has the sole authority to determine that flags and banners are fixed on school district property, reflect the mission, vision, and values of the school district

1:52:30 and constitute the school district’s government speech. This policy does not apply to athletic team banners, student artwork, locker decorations, notebook covers, or any personal items students may bring to class or use during transportation to or from school or school events. Additionally, the policy allows the display of positive affirmations such as encouraging school values, promoting a welcoming environment for students or recognizing school community members. Provided they’re not affiliated with or attributed to a political a or activist organization. The Marwood school Committee affirm that all government speech expressed through flags and banners on school property shall be presented in a viewpoint neutral manner. The district shall not use such displays to promote, endorse, or oppose any particular political, religious, ideological, or partisan viewpoint. All such speech shall be limited to content that is directly related to the district’s educational mission.

1:53:15 Public service announcements or messages of general civic unity that do not favor one viewpoint over another. The committee has therefore adopted this policy, which is subject to the following rules. One flags that have official legal status, the US flag, the Massachusetts flag, and the P-O-W-M-I-A flag shall be displayed on school district property. Two in addition flags and banners that reflect the school district’s mission, vision and values shall be displayed at such times and locations on school district property as determined by the school committee, the superintendent acting in their sole discretion and pursuant to their responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the district. And its schools may recommend to the committee that it adopt a flag or banner as the school district’s government speech three, the Marblehead schools had, has determined that the mission, vision and values in the school district are reflected

1:54:01 by flags representing the following six heritage months and may be displayed during this and may be displayed during the specified month. African American history month, February, women’s history month, March Asian Pacific American history month, may pride month, June Hispanic heritage month, mid-September to mid-October, and Native American Heritage month, November four. The school committee will not accept any third party requests. So that was the change based on the last meeting that we had and the discussion we had.

1:54:32 So I will open this up for discussion. I’m not gonna call for the vote because I think we should discuss it before. Go ahead. L No, sorry, I had a hand up. That’s fine. Alright. First, um, I’d like to acknowledge all those who have helped to make this draft much more palatable than the original version was. And I think it’s mostly, for me at least, because this version allows students to participate in the process and we trust our administration to manage it appropriately. Um, second, I think there’s been ample evidence that flags and symbols can enhance inclusivity for some students. And I think to take that away from them is unreasonable. Um, and I, and I think third, we have to realize that there is no solution that will satisfy everyone. Restricting most flags and symbols is the perceived easy

1:55:18 black and white solution. But I think we, we all realize we live in a gray world and students who know how to live and help us manage this will be better because of that. So, to the bottom line for me, um, all the input I’ve heard to date has not moved me from questioning whether we need this policy to begin with. In fact, I think this policy creation creates more questions and legal uncertainty. Uh, so for example, um, I don’t want to go against our general counsel. I know many of us, you know, have talked about that, but we’ve heard different opinions from d different legal entities and there’s enough that makes me a little uncertain about any, you know, I don’t know if I trust any of any of those recommendations to be quite honest.

1:56:04 I’m skeptical of any policy that prohibits a portion of our community from petitioning something from a publicly elected board. Um, I think there’s still a lot of confusion around this policy. You know, what is a policy versus a procedure? We talked a lot about government speech versus free speech. Um, I think we’ve had difficulty deciding what’s more strategic that should be in a policy and what’s more operational and shouldn’t be. Um, and you know, we’ve talked about heritage months and you know, adding, you know why I agree. That makes sense. I think managing that is a little more complex than we might have envisioned. Right. Um, I think when you have a policy that has, you know, needs to maintain, allow and deny list, you have a pretty unmanageable solution.

1:56:51 Um, I’m also, I, I know other people have asked this, but I, how do we manage anyone who violates this policy? What happens? Is it a fireable uh, offense? Is a, you know, can a student be suspended because of something like this? I think these are questions that should be answered before a policy like this is enacted. So for all these reasons, I will not vote for this policy is written because again, I don’t believe that, um, we need one, I still firmly support the flags and symbols should be allowed and that the process for selection should be managed by the administration with the involvement of students and faculty. And what’s interesting, I’d like to point out that that’s kind of current state. Many of the flags that we’ve all mentioned are hanging right now in this building. Right. And I don’t think I’ve heard a lot

1:57:37 of issues this school year as a result of that. So I’m not exactly sure what we’re fixing. And then I’d like to just continue the managing it as we are without a formal policy. Makes sense to me. And of course this could be amended if situation, you know, something changes. Thank you. Thank you. So it’s against general counsel, so you are voting against what our general counsel says? Yeah. I dunno if it’s ruling against, so I don’t have a hundred percent certainty behind what I’m, what we’re being told. I think that’s a better way to, did you see The draft they issued us? Mm-hmm. That we were given about reached About out. Yeah. And I felt I needed to be a lawyer to fully understand it, to be quite honest. Um, but there’s been other, you know,

1:58:25 and again, I didn’t go out and check the veracity of all these things, but there’s been attorneys sitting in that chair there arguing against the findings of our general counsel. And to me, when that happens enough, it just raises a certain level of uncertainty with it in my mind. That’s what I’m saying. Did you Reach out to our counsel to Talk to ‘em about that? I did not. I did I reach out to them directly? No. Okay. Slightly off topic, but I just wanna clarify what you just said. So that right, I, I I am, I wanna make sure that I am giving you an opportunity to, um, to, to that we’re respecting your full ability to weigh in on this topic. So are, if you’re, if what you’re, so if what you’re saying is you’re really unsure

1:59:11 of our general counsel, are you saying that like on a future agenda you’d like to revisit? I’m bid Your general counsel to someone? No, sorry. I think it’s one of many factors that Okay. That I believe that, that makes this creation, this policy worrisome. Okay. It’s not the, I just wanted to make sure it No, if it was the factor, I would’ve reached out directly to legal and Okay. And done that. Okay. Um, so this has not been an easy policy. And I’m like, and we’ve only really lived through the, the teeth of it for like, the last, you know, month or two. So I, I do appreciate, you know, you guys having gone through this for the last 18 months because it has not been, um, easy. I’m sure, um, for me particularly having,

2:00:00 you know, been the chair last year and having received the phone calls from administration, then having to, to go through, um, the pieces. When you say it hasn’t been a problem. I, I can’t remember the exact figure, but I’m pretty sure we just spent $38,000 on an investigation that was launched simply because of the discussion on the flag. $38,000, just for context, would’ve fund more than funded in an entire tutor for a full year. So to me that is significant that if we’re in a position of, of, um, going through a six month investigation and, and putting out that much money simply that was launched because of a conflict of what flags should be here and should not be here.

2:00:46 Mm-hmm. So I don’t wanna minimize that, that that is, that, that I think would be, um, inappropriate. But since we’re going person to person here, you know, how many of the original folks involved in that are still around, including our superintendent, some of the people involved, things have changed. Right. If we wanna look back and freeze time 18 months ago about what happened, I, I think your, your logic makes more sense, but that’s not, I don’t believe that’s the case. Okay. I will, let me just make one comment ‘cause I was gonna wait till the end. But just to, to, to what you’re talking about and to your comment earlier, we actually have had requests recently, I had a member of the community, um, bring a flag to the central office to address to me, um, ostensibly I think to hang it.

2:01:32 Um, and it was a, um, flag for a country. So it’s, you know, that’s a request mm-hmm. To come to the school committee and I, you know, or to the school committee chair. Um, so, you know, we Don’t say something else. I Have the meeting. They come with the, um, the flag and ask it to be, Um, it was the come back up. It was the Israeli flag something else. It was the Israeli flag. And so it, it is Ms. McCarson, I’m gonna ask you to please quietly, we’ve had our public comment and we are deliberating here that, so my point is that it is still going on. We have a, I have a request, but I would not aware of that. I’m speaking from my own personal understanding, I did not know that something was sent to you, you know? Yeah. It

2:02:17 Was, was at the last school committee, but, so Well, I, I, Ms. McCarrison. Right? Right. Well, Jen, why didn’t he know about it? Why Didn’t it said to the school committee chair, I believe No, The whole list On the School committee. I didn’t, She’s talking a package that was delivered. Yeah, no, I saw the package. Was it all the names? I thought it was to the chair. Right? I thought you knew it was to the chair. There Was a whole list. So I am, I was incorrect. I’m sorry. You know what, You people let Him, okay, Ms. Mc Garrison, you know what? Thank you. Thank you. Me as much as you want. Let him have his said. He doesn’t, Ms. Mcg Garrison, I’m gonna ask you to please sit down. You know what? Thank you. Honest to God. So I just wanted to let you know that Al No, It’s, I appreciate that.

2:03:03 But I, but when I was speaking about it, I didn’t know that. Yeah. And I believe there’ve been a understand number of flags that have been delivered to the SW superintendent here. No direction. Um, without, I don’t think that request, theres requests. One, I received flags, but there was no, no note, no Nothing. What were they? And there was no note on this flag either, just so you know. There was no note. It was just, They just arrived at my office. I just put ‘em on the shelf. There was no, please hang these, nothing just arrived anonymously. So, All right. So, um, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt you. Were you? No, I, I was finished while, A little while ago. Yes. Um, so you know that I just wanted to, that’s how we got here. I don’t want anybody to think we just, one morning woke up and, and Thought let’s do this. No. And, and should be fine. No, no, sorry.

2:03:48 And I don’t, I didn’t mean any of my comments to be judgmental on others that this, these are my opinions and that, and that’s it. That are mine. That’s Jim gonna Okay. Kind of hold firm that this is my time. Um, so, and again, the shirt lift case is a very important case. It’s very clear, it is crystal clear about government speech versus first amendment. If it’s first amendment all means all. And the issue with that, and the issue I’ve had continually with hearing from people is that for some reason, people, and, and it’s good, people assume the best of our community. I hear people saying, yeah, all me is all of them. Put everybody’s up. Who’s gonna ask you to put something up that’s offensive? And, and to a certain extent, it is really great

2:04:34 that people are assuming that there are not members of our community that will ask us if we go all means all to put up a flag. Um, that would be really, really hard for some groups. Just, just for the simple point of proving a point. I have been doing this long enough that I don’t have that naivety. I do believe if we go the all means all way, we will. That’s why I, I, I got sidetracked and asked John, what, what flags are being sent to you? I think we could find ourselves, you know, I’ll go to the extreme. I think if we go, all means all, we could wind up in a situation where someone sends something like a Nazi flag or something and asks us to hang it. And I, and I do think that, and I say that

2:05:21 because I do think, unfortunately, there are people in the community that are looking to make a point at any expense. And my concern is, if we go all means all, we legally don’t have a right to turn that down. I don’t think you would find any person who would be okay with that flag going up. And I use that as the most extremes case, and I understand that. But that is my concern. If we go, all means all, we could wind up in a very precarious situation. That is why I had recommended putting, um, the superintendent in here as our agent. Because again, I agree. He’s the, he is the head of the educational, um, operational portion of our, of our system.

2:06:08 Um, the recomme, he should be making recommendations by saying he’s the one that makes the recommendations. And we vote it, that, that puts us in line with shirt lift, but also hands it off in many, many, many ways. To John by, I I would assume that, um, if our superintendent comes to us with a recommendation, I can speak for myself, I would have a hard time if a superintendent presents to me, this is important for our to hang in our building. These are the reasons why. Just like with the budget, when I ask, I ask a lot of cla clarifying questions. But with the exception of defunding freshman sports, I have never voted against a, a recommendation because calendar school

2:06:55 calendar calendar, we did both of us. Yeah, no, I did. I hear, there you go. I voted against it school calendar with pride. Um, but you, I would, um,

2:07:07 asking me to unmute, sorry. It’s just a tech error. Um, so that’s, to me, that addition of putting the superintendent in the role, one of his goals is student voice. I, everything he’s talked about is student voice. I, I would assume he’s using student voice and staff voice. Um, I do wanna potentially look at if there is a legal way to limit this to students and staff making these appeals. I’m not sure that random members of the community should be able, if it would be appropriate. I think students and staff are attending school here. Are are, um, this is their, I think if there’s a legal way to limit them as the individuals making the appeals versus, you know,

2:07:53 I think that’s what no third Joe Smo that may live in Springfield. You know what I mean? Like, I, I, I think that to a certain extent, and I think that’s probably what was no third Party, I think, um, yeah. No, well, no, no third party can make them directly to us. Yes. But any third party can make them to, to John. Okay. So, and the reason, but Legal didn’t originally say that. Sarah Did not say what In the original, their original policy did not say anything about using John as an agent. They Proved this is okay Because we asked, we brought it up in a meeting and said, can John, I think it was me who said, can John be our agent? Right. And if we hadn’t pushed back. So I’m just saying that just because legal say something doesn’t mean it’s sacro sac. And that’s a good example. This, him having our interim superintendent as an agent has made this palatable.

2:08:40 But it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t have pushed back on legal’s original policy on this. Yeah. So again, I just wanna make sure, sure. That Make one comment about that. I wouldn’t call it pushback. I think what happened just in my working with council is we go to council and say, this goes the genesis of this was how many months ago, you know, we have this situation. We need, we, we are being asked to develop a policy, which we were asked to develop a policy in 2023. Mm-hmm. And then we were given a recommendation. And then as this has evolved, which is the case in many times with policies, and we say, well, our community or you know, our community or our staff, our our students are, are looking for their, you know, a way for the policy to be, um, compliant,

2:09:27 but with other iterations. And that’s, so I wouldn’t necessarily say it was, you know, pushback. I was asking the legal to say, can you word this in a way that will meet these needs? And that was what I, that was my request to them. Um, so if I’m just gonna continue, um,

2:09:46 I agree with In terms of putting language in there for students and staff, because the current policy that you Have, yeah, that’s great. Doesn’t mention staff at all. Mm-hmm. Not one time is that listed in there. So if you, if you’re going to include the students, then you need to include the staff is wrong in closet. So that was my ad. And to be fair, agreed. I didn’t mean it. I was talking about anybody that walks in the building can walk in with whatever, wearing whatever they want. I think that was just a, a, a miss, if that’s the word that I used, I did actually mean anybody I that I agree with that. Jonathan. What I also was told, and we can go back, is that within the contract you have language too. We do. That covers that. We do. I mean, you’re right, it is in the contract,

2:10:31 but if you’re going, it’s to be consistent policy to explicitly state that in there as well. Yep. I think to make it clear, I think is really important. Yeah. So that we could, um, potentially add staff. We could do that. We could, we could certainly talk to legal about that. Just to Get the wording correct in line with, we don’t wanna counteract the CBA. Sure. Correct. Which is pretty broad and clear. Agreed. I mean, at least to, to work with your attorneys to look at the CBA, look at the language in here, which I mean obviously that supersedes some things anyways. But I mean, to do not include the staff in that policy because we are, I mean, it is, it’s students and staff. That’s what makes up our schools. Yep. And those are the voices along with our administration that,

2:11:19 you know, really should govern, you know, what we’re going to do in the schools on a daily basis. Thank you. Um, thank you, John. But again, like I keep saying that we went, we go back to John because student, particularly staff should not be coming to, to us that would be a violation of a lot of different elements. So that’s why John’s in that role. And as far as what would be, you know, we, we hear theoretically, would this one get fired? Would this one get suspended? Any policy in our policy book, nothing breaking any of those policies does not come back to us. And it, and it wouldn’t in this either. It would be the same way. Mass general law is explicitly clear through the Ed reform act of cha in chapter 70 of what is operational is under John.

2:12:06 And all of those questions in minutiae is clear as day is operational. If, if someone, if an employee, if a student breaks a policy that’s operational, that doesn’t come back to us. Nope. So I, I do have trouble with when you say, well, what would be those steps? And, because we have to remember when we talk about concerns about this policy, I know this one feels very strong. It’s right in front of us right now. But that’s throwing shade on every policy we have in our policy manual. And I want to be crystal clear, if people are breaking a policy that doesn’t come to the school committee, that’s operational, that’s, you know, there’s a hierarchy. It goes to a principal, it goes to a director, it goes to John. But the school committee is not,

2:12:54 we are not operationalizing. Um, so documenting problems, the, The, the perfect example of that is one of the questions that was asked. Hopefully you’ll remember this part of, in our, Oh, come on. In our, in our meeting. Come on. Meeting on, that’s, that’s low. Allison Low was not sticking up for me. Um, you were, you were there. So I was following the rules. Right. I had nothing to do about who I was supporting, who I was not supporting. Right. That was public comment. It’s Not, it’s not a rule. Just something that people don’t like. So When We sat down, the question was asked. Someone actually walked in, they didn’t, I, I don’t know what their name was. So I, I can’t give them credit or attribute it to them.

2:13:39 They walked in and asked what happened to the person that took down the flat. And I specifically pointed them to Michelle Carlson. ‘cause that was not something that came back to the committee. That’s not something that would ever come back to the committee or be our purview. Um, and so that, that’s a perfect example Of, and, and I Was, whatever did happen is not our purview to decide or address. Yeah. And I would give an a clear example that, you know, we have a policy against, um, substance use in our schools. We, every school in every place in the world probably comes up against that policy at some time being broken. We don’t know when that’s broken, nor should we, we don’t know who broke it. We don’t weigh in on what their ramifications are.

2:14:27 Our, our, our administrators do that. This, this would be no different. And to imply it would be, IIII just think it’s a slippery slope because Lee, Lee, we’re still deliberating here. So, um, so press question. You know, the, we every reform act, they have operational power. We don’t period there. There’s no ambiguity. Like it just the end. Right. John, you have operational power. Correct. So we set policies that he then operationalizes, um, will give, you know, the library policy, ‘cause I was gonna get to this anyway, just for context.

2:15:13 When we set that library review policy, the school committee didn’t write it. The, the librarians that work hard in our district went to the administration and said, this limited policy we have, that’s one sentence isn’t good enough. ‘cause we’re, we are getting, you know, there’s, this is something that’s a hot topic in our country right now. Can we draft our librarians? I don’t know if this is well known, drafted. Our librarians actually are the ones that drafted. They worked for quite some time on this. Drafted the library materials and resource reviewers. Yeah. I’m not gonna get the name right. But the, the review policy, because they were worried in their subject matter expertise, what they were seeing as a trend across the country. And they wanted to make sure we were prepared and weren’t in the situation we’re in right now. Folks where we’re, someone came to us

2:15:59 and said, I need the policy. Where is it on X, Y, Z? Oh shoot. You don’t have one. Give me one. Thank you to the librarians who proactively said, we are up against this issue. Let’s be proactive. And that’s why ours is so long, because our subject matter experts did it ahead of time. So I just, I unfortunately need this. I think Brian, Well I, to go back to how this all began, somebody removed the flag from the cafeteria. They said, what do we do about that? And there’s no policy to the govern. It, that’s actually not, that’s how this came up. Mm-hmm. The principal asked us, I understand we were asked. Yeah. But are you all saying if we’re asked for a policy, we have to make a policy? Well, if it does, that’s, That’s my only point. I understand. We were asked, I

2:16:45 didn’t know. I didn’t know. That’s One thing. No one, it’s my understanding that there, that someone asked if there was a policy not to create a policy. That’s a very big distinc. Who is your policy? Um, I’m gonna correct you. ‘cause that’s the person who was asked the acting superintendent at the time, got on the phone with me as the chair and said, I just got a phone call from the high school principal asking what the, the policy was. I called legal. Their recommendation is, if you don’t have one, and you were asked is it’s to make it, I’m, I’m Just, I never wanted to be in this position. I just, I need to, since the high school principal is still here. Yeah. When I spoke to the high school principal, so the superintendent that was here isn’t here. This Yeah. High school principal’s here. And what I was told was she asked if there was a policy ‘cause she wasn’t sure what to refer to. She did, she told me straight out

2:17:30 that she did not, and not ask for a policy, Which she as is appropriate. She goes to the superintendent. The superintendent comes to the, like the, the Chain Of command. Yeah. I just wanna be clear. That is the chain of command. Yep. So Go ahead, Brian. Well, all I’m saying is it started off with an innocent question and it became, we became embroiled in 18 months worth of discussions. And the reason why it’s taking so long is every time we try to fix one part of the policy we’re trying to create, it creates a whole slew of other problems. Like we added this paragraph three with all these national holidays and everything. Well, to be fair, we also took a a, a short re recess from it when they were doing bargaining. ‘cause they were bargaining constantly. And there wasn’t time to do that. So that, that, that is part of the delay as well. Yeah.

2:18:16 But what I’m saying is every time we try to address something, it ends up creating more problems, which is why we’re not getting anywhere with this. So I don’t know what the right answer is. I mean, I’d, I’d be just as happy to, to go back to no policy if that, no matter what we throw out, it’s just continuous to create more controversy instead of resolving the problem. It’s just exasperating It is, it’s taking 18 months to get us here and we’re still stuck. I don’t know what else to say. I mean, I I I do think I, and I, I appreciate that and I appreciate al what you’re saying. I I do. I feel having gone through this, um, on the policy subcommittee and, and, and the foreigns and all that, that it, it’s a bit of the toothpastes out of the tube at this point in that if we were to go forward without a policy

2:19:03 or to not go forward with a policy that has its own inherent risk, Hmm, absolutely. Because there are going to be requests that are gonna be made. And then we don’t have a policy that also puts us without a doubt in at legal risk. Which is why when the request was made, the counsel counsel devised to have a policy. Again, in this case we could our have this discussion. But in the case of our counsel, their advice was within the, you know, the guidelines that they gave us that would protect us and, and, and keep us adhering to the law, which we have a responsibility to do. Um, so I, it is a little bit concerning at this point with where we are in this.

2:19:48 Um, if we were to not go forward with policy or, you know, um, we’re putting, I poten we are putting ourselves at the same risk that we are. If we have a policy, which there’s risks in both, I, I gotta tell you, I don’t think that there’s any, the, the word potential should be The, the, I cannot emphasize enough how clear it was in all means all without a policy. It’s free speech. If there’s not a policy declaring that it’s government speech. Well, I think I’m gonna interrupt there for a second. If without a policy, there’s no policy, so it would therefore deflect to administration to decide what to do. So the administration could choose to have nothing. They could choose to have, they could make their choice. And that in and of itself is potential risk Without a doubt.

2:20:34 If he puts up my understanding, if you, if unless it’s the only loophole here is government speech, the only government speech is through a vote of this body. If we say we’re abdicating that, That we’re not doing this government Speech, that we’re not doing it, yeah. It’s not government speech. If John’s the yay and a, if we stand the way we are every single flag, I’m almost scared to ask what they are that was mailed anonymously. Give that in mind to him in sitting in his office. If it doesn’t go up Well Tomorrow, next week, what’s, What’s still a institution to me, Sarah? So if a district doesn’t have a flag policy, you say that they’re in violation, he start Saying No, no, it would, it’s only what’s potential. That’s what I hear you saying. And No, I, because if he’s asking me what I’m saying, can I,

2:21:20 with all due respect to be the one to answer it, my understanding on this is crystal clear. The shirt lift wasn’t a problem for the first 281 requests. ‘cause the answer was yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. The first no became the problem. So my understanding is it’s not a problem. So someone brings you to court. Correct. If no one brings you to court, nothing’s a problem. If someone’s driving down the street recklessly and they’re not caught, it’s, it’s not legal. It’s a problem. But it’s not legally it’s not, it’s not until they’re charged, it doesn’t become a legal entity. So that’s what I’m saying is when you’re, when it gets into the court is when the courts decide, before you quote me on that, I see you Lee, Lee. I’m not saying driving recklessly is not a problem, I don’t think.

2:22:05 Um, so so my point is, if someone makes a request for any fla, anything, and John says no, they have case law, very strong Supreme Court case law, agree with the court’s decisions of the last five years or not anybody driving past my lawn probably knows where I stand. But, but, um, the court, the case law is the case law. If someone applies for a flag and is told no, and it’s not through a vote of the governing body as government speech, and they choose to sue, they have very strong case law that we shut down their first amendment Right.

2:22:52 That we now own. And that is not, that is not di minimis in any way, shape or form. I would quite honestly, as an individual, loved, I’m not gonna be interrupted. Again, I Sarah, I’m Gonna ask you to wrap it up just so we can let other Folks speak. But I, I would love to avoid this flag policy. I would love to advocate abdicate our, our need to deal with this situation. ‘cause quite frankly, I have lot of issues. But part of sitting at this table and being, and serving this role is, is doing what we need to, to, to do, to protect the legal standing even when it puts us in the line of fire. Go ahead Al. Go

2:23:38 Ahead. So if there’s no policy, and the interim superintendent doesn’t want a particular flag flown and he comes to us as a school committee and we agree and vote no, are we okay from a legal perspective? I don’t believe that first of all, the school, the superintendent wouldn’t do that. ‘cause it’s not part of, it’s not, it’s not a policy. It’s not, it not we’re, it’s not our purview. It’s Racially something then That wouldn’t be our purview Unless it’s a policy. Unless it’s a policy If you wanna own this out. Which Is why it didn’t happen in the past. It never did come to the school committee. It was at the, at the building level. It’s, it, it’s a quami. So We Wagner, I mean we could argue whether it’s within purview or not, but it could that happen. Like, so if the interim superintendent said, listen,

2:24:24 I can’t make this decision on my own. His escalation point is the school committee. It’s, it’s, it’s, we always talk, It’s all government speech or it’s all free. No, No, no. But it wouldn’t be appropriate for the superintendent to come and ask the school committee to make a decision on the operation of the school. If it’s not, if it’s not a policy. You oversee the policy. Yeah. Even we’re so far in the, it’s not government speech. Unless it’s all government speech. You can’t, my favorite saying you can’t ride up the two horses with one rear end. Like either, either. I write that down, you go for it. Yes, please. It was the most censored, either the, either the flags headline or government speech, or they’re not headline. If he starts saying, well all these are free speech, but this one I don’t feel good about is government speech. That in and of itself is the censoring of free speech.

2:25:10 I also just wanna say, you, you mentioned the swastika and you know, swastika flag. And unfortunately we have had a number of cases where swastikas were, you know, we Talk about that as being a spray painted on buildings. We, we talk about that being, you know, an outlier. And unfortunately we have had a number of cases where they were found, you know, in school or on school buildings. So my, my fear is that’s not as much of a, you know, I wish we lived in a world where we didn’t have to worry about that as we think. Go ahead, Ms. Johnson. No, I, I just wanted to make sure to point that out because we had, you know, I get what you’re saying from an, you know, extreme case perspective. But we have had a lot of that here with SWA stick as being drawn on buildings, desks, wherever it may be.

2:25:55 It doesn’t matter where it is, it shouldn’t happen. But that means someone could just want that flack. I guess that’s, that’s where I really, um, get concerned With that particular specific instance. Nevermind, yes, this is what the lawyers say. Yes. If we don’t have a policy, we should have a policy. Because that is the only way in this instance that we could support the superintendent if he ever did have an operational question. If we don’t have a policy, he, the buck stops there. No offense. But we couldn’t help him because it’s operational. But if there’s a policy and he has a question or concern or anything, um, then he could bring it to us.

2:26:41 That’s not a chain of operational stuff. Doesn’t become a chain of command thing. It’s policy. ‘cause it’s in a policy. It’s a policy. Right. Policy. I think the other thing to note too is that this is happening throughout municipalities everywhere. You know, not everyone has it, but many do. Our town does. Our housing authority does in many towns. Do in fact many towns, no, not many. I should probably quantify that. Some municipalities in the commonwealth that have taken this on have included the schools. Our towns specifically excluded the schools. So, but Have the same pause. But Can we, can we Say that again by the way? Louder? I mean, well I think I made the point. But they excluded us. They excluded us. This Could have explicitly been null and void. If when the town passed their flag policy that not one person wrote a letter to the editor

2:27:26 or made a public comment about if they hadn’t had the line in there that excluded the schools, it would’ve automatically included us. This whole thing would’ve been avoided. And their policy is the same as ours with, with, with Thatcher. People going to Thatcher and then Thatcher goes Yeah, to the select board. No Thatcher’s the designate he But does that, the town administrators the designate. But does He have to bring it to select Board? My understanding is no, he’s the decision maker. But that’s, it’s different. Either it’s the same Thing. It’s, It’s, I think we can all agree that it’s a different situ, it’s just a different situation given the, the cohort and the constituency. You know, it, people feel very strongly and passionate about it. Which I, I I respect, I I I totally respect that. And through this 18 months, not one person has a, well,

2:28:12 the select board pastors less than 18 months ago, say, I don’t know, we’re gonna pick a number. 10 months. Don’t quote. It was like a year ago. A year ago. Not one person in all of this debate has petitioned the select board to amend their policy and remove the line that excludes the schools. That, that I also don’t understand that that is could Have been done. Yeah. I don’t know what their reasoning was for doing that. I don’t think they talked, I think They had like a 45 second conversation about it. It wasn’t, there wasn’t even this much conversation No. About it. Um, and I don’t Think they were doing, I wanna be clear, I don’t think they were doing anything nefarious. Their counsel came to them and said, sure, this is the new case law. We think you should do that sounds great. We’ll listen to legal counsel done. For some reason it went sideways here.

2:28:57 And so again, as I say, the toothpaste is outta the tomb. So it doesn’t, if we pass this or a policy, um, that we are still potentially at risk that, you know, someone could come forward. Um, but at that point we have a policy, which is part of the case law, is you need to have a policy. And then obviously there could be arguments that the, our policy is not within whatever, whatever the case law describes and our counsel has indicated it does. So that’s, that’s where we are right now. Um, so I’m gonna ask to call a vote. I think unless people wanna continue to discuss this, you, I Don’t have a motion yet. I know. Ryan, did you have anything else? The only thing I wanna ask the committee and else, or is do we want to add something about staff? Yes.

2:29:45 I would make a motion to add staff wi uh, a joint paragraph. It says and students, Students and staff one to three, Because I think it’s the staff and students that should be making these appeals. Not, like I said, you know, anybo any, Oh, Well the law Randomly in The community. I’m talking about adding to Jonathan’s point. And I think Angus maybe you mentioned it as well, it explicitly says on line six in the first paragraph, students, it wasn’t meant when I suggested it was meant to mean students and staff. So changing that to students and staff. Okay. The only other issue is it’s got student artwork, locker decorations. I mean, is there an inherent There is, except that we heard a lot of put the reason Well Do we wanna add that staff students and staff artwork as it may be staff? Yes. So then, um, We’re not Or we could just leave

2:30:31 It As No, I think that’s fine. Do And staff, because again, they’re, they’re also covered by the, by the, uh, CBA, which is pretty broad in terms of

2:30:45 I can’t, Right. Yep, that’s a good point. Yep. Yep. Can we, can we just write references policy, the, the CBA make paper? But we can, We can just change that. Alright. Do we wanna add Students? Are you okay, Jonathan, if we change that, that line in that first paragraph, I think that that’s what you were referencing. It says any personal items, students? Can it say any personal items, students or staff? I’m not, I’m not legal. I mean, I dunno. I mean, I just Right Said earlier too, it didn’t include staff doesn’t might bring in the classroom. Yeah. So I think Yep. I think just changing that transportation. I’m just happy we’re working together. Yeah, it’s great. Um, so why don’t we add that I will, if we, if it is such that we pass this tonight, I will. So I know everybody’s gonna hate me.

2:31:31 I did just wanna mention one other thing. Don’t hate you that No, it, it’s okay. ‘cause it’s been a long time and it’s, but I don’t, and so first of all, when I was talking about bargaining, I was talking about since April, you guys were, you had been bargaining with the union very consistently since April. And so there were some things just kind of, you know, from a priority perspective, had to take a backseat, um, from the delay perspective. That’s why I mean months. Um, the, my other, so when I went to, uh, when we went to, with Ms. Regan to Woburn High School, um, they had in their cafeteria the small flags that that can be strung. You know, it was like from one part of the ceiling to the other with the smaller flags on it.

2:32:16 Um, there were, I don’t know, maybe 65, 70 flags. They weren’t all, so the kids were like, oh, what are these flags? What do they represent? Because you could tell it wasn’t all of the countries in the world. Um, and what they shared. So I went to investigate to find out, and what they shared is that they were the flags. Uh, so they had obviously the American flag and the, the state flag palma. They had all six of the armed forces flags hanging in their foyer, which were beautiful. Um, and in the cafeteria, those flags all represent the home country of anybody that attended that school. So I know I’m opening a can of worms by mentioning haw. You absolutely are. Um, but the can of worms is open. I don’t, I don’t, you know, um, that was just something

2:33:06 because we were just there for the chorus concert. Um, that I thought was really a beautiful tribute also. And certainly from a welcoming perspective Before we, and I have no problem with that. What I’m saying is the, the more layers we put this, I know, I would think that’s something John would bring to us and say, I make this recommendation. And we would say we approve that. Like if we start making, if we start making this yada yada yada, these lists, I understand we’re actually taking his approval process away. And you, you’re gonna ultimately exclude someone. ‘cause I think someone made the point about what, you know, heritage month, you, oh, you’re always gonna miss someone. Like, oh, why didn’t you celebrate epilepsy awareness month when you talked about autism month? You’re always gonna miss something. Um, my question is, if we do something similar to what you just mentioned, Allison, isn’t there,

2:33:53 and I don’t have the policy front, but isn’t there something in the policy that states No. Uh, other, like, That’s mass general law. I didn’t there Anymore. That was Not in the policy. No, Because that’s, you know, because I, you know, I I feel Strongly there is a state law that you have to deal with. No, the state law says you cannot fly the flag in another nation outside your property. So that’s okay. So may I was just confused on that. ‘cause I think there’s, there’s, you know, opportunity for like, in this, in the social studies classrooms, you know, that that’s currently in place across The district. Your recommendations, bring ‘em on. Like we, When we Started, I make sure I’m Recommending something. You had a motion to add Staff. Staff. But I, I also, I I think that the request should be coming from students and staff. I don’t think that that we, I wanna get back to community members things.

2:34:39 Okay. So can we add Students and can we add staff to the students and staff? And then I’m gonna ask for a motion. Where are you adding it? Because to It’s, it’s not, it’s in the pre any personal items? No, No, that’s not what she’s talking about. That’s what I’m talking about. I want, you can go To John And request something that Is gonna be up to John to decide. Okay. So that, wait, again, the official legal status, it says the flags that have officially the status of the United States flag, Massachusetts state flag. I was talking about Provision two Shall be displayed on school profit. That’s the, that’s the one I was talking about. Yep. But that doesn’t preclude me from recommending other What I said. No, because this is that we must fly the US one. Okay. I just, I just wanna be clear before like we, even this gets voted in. I wanna make sure I know. I would hope that you will, my assumption in the way this is written is

2:35:24 that when people are, Uh, Asking you To Fly a flag, you are are hearing those from staff and students, not just Right. People that don’t spend their day within our walls. Right. That will be up to the superintendent to decide. So if we add staff and to any personal item, staff or students. Yep. Okay. I’m gonna add and then reference the c Do you wanna reference what Jonathan said is I don’t think we need to reference the c collective bargaining agreement. I don’t think that’s, you wouldn’t normally reference that in a policy. No. I just wanna make sure we weren’t going against, I don’t, You know, I’m gonna run this by the attorney after, even if we approve this, there’s an issue. I’ll come back. Um, so can I have a motion

2:36:11 to approve draft policy IMDB?

2:36:16 So I have a second.

2:36:19 Second with The should. The motion would be with the edits. With the edits. With The edits, yeah. So that the edit includes, um, adding staff next students. Yep. Staff or students. Staff and students.

2:36:34 Yep. So I have a first and a second. Um, I’m gonna call for the vote L against Brian.

2:36:43 Uh, with that edit in favor, Sarah? In favor, Allison In favor. Jen Schaffner in favor for on quarter one. Okay. Um, I’m gonna move on to the count. Um, on the agenda to increase the intramural hourly rate in accordance with June 22nd stipend agreement. This was something that was presented to us during the process of finalizing the, um, unit eight contract. We discussed this in o um, in executive session. I am asking for us to codify this vote, um, in open session. And what this is, just so folks know, is we had a stip, we had an agreement with, um, the, uh, unit A teachers unit, Marblehead Education Association in June of 22 to have stipend positions automatically

2:37:31 of COLA increases in accordance with this, with the, um, contract with the teachers, we happen to have, um, some inter intramural coaches and staff who are actually hourly, not stipended. So this is sort of a technicality and that was mistakenly somehow omitted or not included. So we, um, are looking to go forward to, um, add those hourly worker, hourly staff into the stipend agreement that will give them the annual COLA increase. So I’m looking for a motion. Did I Just read this over? So moved. So moved. I second, Sarah second. And just for anybody with questions about budget and how this will affect it, just the public, I know we talked about this privately, our executive session, um, this is like two people. Like, so this is not gonna change the budget

2:38:16 to a point where it’s a hundred dollars. I mean, this is literally just Yep. It’s a, it’s Encompassing our, the intent of the original. It’s a demand amount more than two people, but it also Gets, comes out of user fees. So it’s not out of our budget. And this was the intent, original intent. We, it was, we Just making good. So I’m gonna call for the vote Al. All in favor by NoDa favor, Sarah Fox In favor? Allison Taylor in favor. 10 in favor. That’s And can you just note for the record that we did invite, um, We did invite that chair. Yes. Because Legally we have to give, um, 10 administrator vote in elected bargaining matters as well. Um, so this means this, um, is now a No. Jonathan’s shaking his head no. Well, that’s my understanding. We can talk offline, but this was the final, um, issue around the year day contract.

2:39:02 So we’ll talk offline, but hopefully that’ll be good news. Um, okay, moving on to the recess policy. Um, Allison, do you want to brief this or do you want me, we drafted this in our policy subcommittee this week, um, that Allison brought forward. And I’m gonna have her read it and then we discuss it. Discuss it. Yeah. So just to give a little backstory, We’ve always had two recesses for elementary. Here. Toss. Sorry. I didn’t Oh, I was like, wait a second, please. I was like, I literally almost had excuse myself for a minute to like cry in the hallway. I thought we were going back. That was the final that, sorry. No, I, I didn’t know what he was saying. Guys.

2:39:48 Okay. Wanna act, get it signed or no? Well, let me, we’ll do it afterwards. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Um, so just, um, so everybody understands the genesis of this. We’ve always had two, um, two recesses. A previous administration one year decided to remove one of our recesses. There was pandemonium teachers and community members, parents alike over that. Um, and it was put back. It was put back and the committee was put together. And I believe, um, Mr. Ota you were on that. It Was too. So was Sally. Yeah, I knew Sally was too. I was gonna mention her. Um, I wasn’t a hundred percent. I thought you were, but I know that Mr. OTA and Sally were, um, we May, I can call him Brian. Oh, I know. Sorry. It’s fine.

2:40:35 I’ve talked to him in his, in his, um, professional status as the principal then. Um, he was the principal of Glover then. And there was a committee put together, uh, by the previous administration to review this, give their thoughts. It was administrators, parents, and, um, teachers alike from the district. My understanding, and please, if either of you have more to add to this. ‘cause I was not on it. I was just a squawky parent in the meetings. They agreed that the second recess was, So I would go as far as to say it was u I’m gonna look at Sally. It was unanimous. I wasn’t gonna use that word. I heard That word. Parents, teachers, myself. I think I was the only school committee rep, um,

2:41:21 administrators on it. It was unanimous that a second recess benefits children. And it was talked about at nauseum, different studies and why it was important. It was unanimous. We voted to make the recommendation that it go back permanently. Um, the then assistant superintendent oversaw that committee and ultimately the recommendation of the committee was never brought back. I’m looking, did I get anything wrong? That’s correct. That was you wanted, okay. Bit Coppola, Sarah Magazine. I think those were our two parents. I don’t think there’s anybody else. Yep. Um, and so that, that’s how that committee shook out. I believe so. So it was removed And,

2:42:08 um, if it’s the last thing I do, I wanna get it put back in. Um, one of the things that, for a myriad of reasons, anybody that has children, I still let unit A contract Back works with children, um, can understand that. Um, what hand something down. I wanna read a line that, sorry. Um, so we drafted this again. It’s a draft, right? Um, yeah. First reading, just the first reading of it. In alignment with the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics, this policy affirms the district’s commitment to the physical, social and emotional wellbeing of elementary school to students. This policy establishes a minimum requirement for recess time in grades K through six, regular recess supports

2:42:54 physical activity, social development. Why am I gonna cry right now? Someone else might have to read this. Cognitive performance and emotional wellbeing contributing to a whole child approach to education supporting overall student wellness. I don’t know why I’m, I’m, no, I know why. Sorry. Effective I’m gonna try. Uh, school year 25, 26. All elementary stu students in grade K through six shall be provided with no fewer than two scheduled recess periods per school day, totaling a minimum of 35 minutes of recess time. This policy is in accordance with the CDCs strategies for recess in schools. A EP policy statement. Crucial role of recess in schools and mass school Wellness Advisory committee guidelines on physical activity and student wellness. From a scheduling perspective, recess should be scheduled in addition

2:43:40 to physical education classes and lunch periods. Recess periods will be divided into two blocks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Allowing students multiple opportunities for movement and wellness throughout the day. Duration. Uh, each recess period would be a minimum of 15 minutes with a total recess time adding up to no less than 35, uh, school may exceed this minimum. If scheduling and instruction will needs allow, the recess will take place outdoors. When weather permits outdoor recess is not possible. Indoor recess shall still provide opportunities for free play, social interaction and physical activity. All students shall have equitable access to recess and recess, shall not be withheld as a form of punishment for behavioral or academic reasons. In alignment with the best practices recommended by the CDC

2:44:25 and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Recess will be supervised by school staff to ensure a safe and inclusive environment and staff will encourage cooperative play and positive social interactions.

2:44:40 I have a question. Go ahead, Brian. The whole reason why the previous administration refused to give us back two recesses, they said time on learning from the state required every minute be spent this way. Does this at all violate John? So, Oh, go ahead. Go ahead John. Do you wanna jump on time on learning at this point? Okay. Um, so time on learning. So we have to meet 900 minutes. 900 minutes, um, at the elementary school. Um, our current recess is 20 minutes, lunch is 20 minutes. And at the lower elementary, that leaves us with, um, we can meet the 948.4 hours. We’re good right now. If we do, I’m just gonna give you a couple scenarios ‘cause we, there’s a, there’s a process that we utilize

2:45:27 to find out time on learning to meet the requirements from desi. Mm-hmm. So there’s a whole, there’s a whole way to to, to, and I’ll share this with you, but, um, project with, uh, projected with 25 minute recess and a 25 minute lunch. We just, we did that as one of the, one of the iterations that also allows us, uh, we slept 925 hours. So we’d be good there. Projected with an am recess at 15 minutes and a pm recess at 20 minutes with the minimum with a 20 minute lunch. Um, which I think is pretty much in line with Yep. When you’re talking about, um, that would not get us, uh, 900 minutes. We would be at 892.6. So we would, we would be below the required Hang, lemme, can I just go through the restroom? ‘cause it’ll be, it’ll be important to see hours. Oh, oh hours. I’m sorry. Did I, could I see minutes? Minutes? I’m sorry. Mm-hmm. You know, 900 hours.

2:46:14 I apologize. Is that what you were whispering to? Okay, sorry. Um, sorry. It’s getting, um, projected with am recess at 15 minutes and pm recess at 20 minutes, which would equal to 35 minutes. It’s looking four in the policy with a 20 minute lunch with the five minutes added that we talked about in the, in the contract, um, added to the start time. That would get us back to 900, nine hours. Sorry. And it says hours here too. Um, so we’d be okay there. Projected with two recesses at 20 minutes each with a 20 minute lunch. We’d be well below at 876.4. So we really do need to look at like five minutes. Is, is, is equals like a lot of time. So, So that’s why we contractually Added it. Right? Right. So I I, so we have a six, we will have a six hour and 20 minute school day.

2:47:01 What is the numbers? I I, you know, I know how to subtract 20 20 20. What do we use for, I’ll, I’ll share this with you. So that Passing time. So, um, obviously recess is encountered towards time on learning, passing in the hall isn’t time on learning. So how much time? I think we ca calculated six minutes. Yeah, I did, um, an estimate of six minutes to and from recess. Um, and the four minutes to and from the classes that they definitely changed, which is the allic arts. So within, I was, Yeah, hang on one second. Duncan. 10 minutes. There was an agreement. She was joint labor. Um, in order to get those five minutes, we brought it up during bargaining and it was denied. This now has to be bargained that five minutes.

2:47:48 We have very specific language around that and I can, I can read it. Um, the language, let me find that. I had the other, I had other language about recess ‘cause it’s in Article 10. Section B that’s always existed. But the five minutes was that there would be, um, a, a meeting to implement it and how it is implemented. The languages No, No meeting for joint Labor Committee discuss. It was not to be implemented. It was, we had this discussion at bargaining. We offered the five minutes for that and it was turned down by your side. That is Not our under Understanding. We had plenty of hearing there at that time. That was the truth. All right, then. I’ll need to get back because our understanding of what was according to our attorney, what we what was signed

2:48:34 Was wrong. Well, I, we Did Agree to talk about it in a joint labor committee to talk about further. So I’m more than happy to sit down and talk about it. Yeah. But my understanding is that the Joint labor committee was for the discussion for, um, of the implementation. No, no. She is wrong. Um, I I won’t, I’ll go to that before I, I don’t wanna lose this page. Our, this has always existed. This isn’t new to this bargaining piece. This piece has always existed. Article 10, section B elementary teachers at a time, they deem appropriate during the morning session, weather permitting will take their class to the school playground for a period of play and or relaxation. This activity is in lieu of multi-class morning recess. So that section has always existed. It existed when it was removed.

2:49:20 And I, I brought this up then I’ve referenced this multiple times also. I, I just wanted Yeah, that’s not what this is. This is now mandating it. I’m saying we Yes. And saying that it’s x number of minutes in order to meet the minutes. So that doesn’t pertain in any way. We’ve also had a lot of of people, committee members, parents that were members of that committee reach out to DSI themselves and with all, all the pieces. And what has come back is that this actually is, is not a minutes problem. I, I feel a, particularly at the elementary level where we, if we are counting wayfinder, we’re counting all the social emotional learning as time on learning, the time that we are teaching children

2:50:07 to be respectful in the hallway. Respectful, responsible, and safe. That’s what we say in our schools. Right? And we talk about the PBIS in all of those pieces. I would argue that, well, I mean, I’m in those schools. I would, you know, as a parent, I see teachers reminding students, Johnny is that responsible, respectful, and safe to poke Sally in front of you. And I didn’t mean to use your two names, it’s just the two names I always go to. Um, um, that I would argue, and I would hope our educators are arguing this as as well. That that is our, we’re we’re utilizing our social emotional learning during those periods. That’s not, it’s not the same as when you’re in a high school and bio ends at 10 0 5

2:50:55 and civics starts at 10 0 8. Those three minutes are unstructured. And I wouldn’t go back to that time in the hallways for all the, you know, for all the money in the world, that is clearly free time. But that time where children are still are, our elementary students are not, you know, Sally’s not saying go down to r bless you. And sending them on their own. They’re still under the supervision of, of their, the staff and the teachers. They’re still under the instruction of the teachers. They’re giving instruction. So there’s, there’s, there’s definite, there’s definite, um, reasoning there. Right. But two things, and I’ll let, and then Julie’s gonna jump in. Um, two things. One, Desi is very clear that passing time, regardless of how we, how we determine or what’s happening during the past time, is not time on learning.

2:51:40 Not that I disagree with what you’re saying and I know what uh, Allison said In that instance though. But, but, but, but wait. And then, so there’s that. And then the other piece is Desi is silent on recess to begin with silent. So we, we talk about CCDC and everything, which is great. And I, and I agree with all that. And I, and I’m, I don’t want anyone to hear that. I don’t think that movement breaks are, are accurate. I just wanna make sure that Desi is silent on recess. There’s a reason that they haven’t created, um, um, ways, ways for recess to be part of policies one, two, but they are clear on what is considered time on learning. And it’s in CC 6 0 3 CMR 27.4. It will tell you exactly what is counted and what’s not, regardless of what any of us think. It does Say passing between classes. Correct. So I just, And I, right, so when I spoke, and you can argue

2:52:26 Yeah, I’m sorry. I think I fully agree with what, what Sarah said. That’s what I have said for four years. Now, when I spoke to MASC directly about this, we talked about this particular thing. ‘cause it is, you’re right, whatever, 27 0 4 for C 6 0 3 CMR, um, for MGL, uh, Which which is what that Follows. It does, it does say passing between classes. Mm-hmm. It, and in homeroom it is clearly talking about passing between classes in like if you’re going from science to social studies, which are K through six, don’t they have connected classrooms? They go to allied arts. It doesn’t say That Allison. It says passing between classes. Correct.

2:53:11 If you call MASC, and again, it’s fine. And I just think we need to own the decision. It’s not MASC Specifically. It’s not our governing body. Yeah. They’re not. Yeah, I understand. But they specifically will say that it’s an administrative decision, but that they aren’t our governing body. I understand. They’re not. Am I allowed to? Yep. Okay. I didn’t say they were the governing body. Um, in my opinion, this is critical. So, and It’s, yeah, I just, I want don’t, I’m not disagreeing with you. I I’m not disagreeing with you that I think a second recess is important. I just want to say that in order to operationalize it, we need to consider these things that whether every single person in this room in the whole school thinks that. Right? Yeah. I mean, I guess my frustration is ultimately

2:53:58 this never should have happened in the first place. We never should been in this position because we had never ever been in trouble for it. I heard from Well, I see Diane shaking your head. I don’t mean to call you up. I just appreciate the support. Um, I heard from countless teachers way back when, when I first addressed this with the previous administration, and again, wasn’t you guys, so it’s not, not at all there. Um, it’s kind of like the flag thing now. It’s here and now you have to deal with it, right? Yeah. Um, so I, and I get that. I fully get that. Um, we never should have been in this position. We, we never had a problem with time on learning before. We had always had the same, I mean the start and end times and everything and, and our scores were better. So you can’t tell me that a a 6, 7, 8, 10-year-old kid is not going to be able to stay in class longer

2:54:44 and listen in the afternoon if they have an extra recess. Right. Or listen better in, in the morning. Um, so, So all, all I will say is I can’t speak to previous, I don’t know how they calculated the numbers. All I can say is, as superintendent, it is my ultimate role to make sure as the educational leader that we’re meeting those minutes and however we need to do that, that’s fine. And if it, if we can get the second recess in there. I think that’s great. I don’t disagree with that. I just wanna make sure we’re gonna do it in a way that is meeting it, it’s matching, it’s, it’s allowing for, it’s allowed for in the CBA and that we’re, and that we’re doing it. Um, so that we can supervise the kids. Can I make A suggestion? This is the first rating of three ratings. Perhaps we we’ll do now is we go offline. We will work with the attorney, we’ll talk to the union, we’ll get the clarification on the joint labor committee. Cool. And then we’ll, and we’ll work with the superintendent in the policy

2:55:30 subcommittee to, to plow through this and determine what our options are from the, from this day. Yeah. Um, what our options are in terms of the ones you gave us, right? It’s all one. Oh, it’s all one copy. And then we will come back for a second reading with a recommendation. Al, I just have a question. Yeah, Al. So Is there, you know, I went out to the a a P and CDC sites and it’s a lot of good stuff. Um, but their recomme, you know, so they were re their recommendations were K through 12. Is there a reason ours is just K through six? Or is it because of that takeaway? Or is there, should it be K through 12? I mean, I, I, I don’t think we have Seven through 12 doesn’t normally Have recess. Have recess though. They don’t have recess. So it doesn’t apply to seven through 12. And I was just curious why They didn’t have it before.

2:56:16 I, I’m not, so, I would never be in disagreement of giving children some unstructured time because I think it ultimately does make everything better, particularly when they get older and you’re not seeing your friends in the class and you’re only seeing them when you go out to recess because the fifth grade goes together. Um, I wouldn’t be against it for the older grades, but I think it’s just not something that they ever had. So it didn’t, well, Nor do we have the for time on learning, didn’t it? There’s greater hours for the seventh through 12th, so we’d really be up against it that way. Yeah, they have nine nine. We’d be talking about a longer school day, which is another. So next year when you did the math, Julia? Yes. Did you include the half days? I did. They’re up the top Eight half days. Okay. I think we have nine. And so we added more half days next year. And we’re short by how many hours in next year’s schedule?

2:57:03 We Only added one more half day than we had this year. And it’s on the, Well, why don’t we, so I’m gonna suggest we come back off and I’m gonna make motion to continue my thought first. Yeah. Seconded. Can I continue? Oh, um, okay. Sarah, I’m, I’m going. Yes, you can keep going. And then we’re gonna wrap this up because this is the first reading. It’s nine o’clock. And we’re, and my suggestion was that we go offline and we work with the superintendent. We get some clarification from the attorney and the, and the, um, regarding the CBA and we come back. So go ahead and then we’re gonna wrap This up. So I, if, if we’re short, you know, 12 hours, 14 hours and we have these half days, I would also like to enter into the conversation of possibly amending the calendar to allow for the hours on learning to accommodate recess.

2:57:50 ‘cause I think it, it, everything I heard from the subject matter experts that we have in house here in that committee, everything I hear from what I read, it makes a profound difference, um, on children’s ability to access the curriculum as well as self-monitor and regulate themselves.

2:58:15 And I’m prepared to do That. Okay. So, uh, we will do some work offline and we will come back for a second. Reading. Does that sound copacetic to everyone? Two point. Okay. Thank you. Okay, I’m gonna move on to, okay, so the next two, I, I’m sorry Because I think this says an eight. So can we work This offline? Offline? Um, the next two items we have, um, which are the operating protocols, code of ethics, um, is a little bit detailed. It’s nine o’clock. I am happy to go forward or would folks want to consider moving this to your Next meeting? Yeah. Um, ‘cause there’s, there’s some, a little bit of work to be done. We’re, we are, we’re, Alice and I worked on this, this is one of our school committee goals for this year was to draft the school committee, um, operating protocols. Um, I also found in my, um, hours of research that there was a school committee code of ethics out there

2:59:01 as well, um, that MASE had. So I was presenting, or we were presenting that to the school committee, but we were looking for some input, um, to try to, you know, massage this a little bit. So, you know, uh, uh, we can plow forward if you’d like or if you’d prefer we could move it to the next meeting when That’s, I think that’s gonna be a big conversation. I think we should, Thoughts Al? I, I could stay in. Yeah. I don’t have an issue staying later, but I’m fine with if we want to push it to the next meeting. Sure. I mean, I did review it. I didn’t Okay. Didn’t see anything terribly controversial about it, but maybe I just need to read it. Oh, Don’t say that. The last words wait till proper comment. I, I would like to push this off for the next meeting. Okay. Me too. Nelson Sarah. Time with the wills committee.

2:59:47 What? I’m fine with whatever the Will is. All right. So let’s move, let’s move that to the 15th and I promise we’ll make it, we’ll, we’ll get it, we’ll get it done. Uh, it also frankly will allow me, I got at the last minute, um, I had asked Alicia to review our draft and she got it back to me, um, late last night or yesterday afternoon. So this will allow me and Allison actually to combine that too. So it’ll be one less document. So I think we’ll be able to massage it a bit more. And hopefully we can bang this out at the next meeting. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Um, so the next item is the superintendent evaluation discussion schedule. I, you should have all got the email from me. We are looking at May 6th at 10:00 AM at Widge Road to be doing the compilation of the Stu Superintendent’s evaluation. You all should have received the document that Sarah had drafted in our workshop.

3:00:33 I put it into a format I didn’t, Lisa, Manny put it in a formatted form. So you should be able to mm-hmm. Go in, check it off and type in your comments. Um, I’ve asked John and he’s agreed to come forward with, um, some backup documentation, which is appropriate for him to, um, to give us in regards to those three goals, um, that we can use towards, um, making our, uh, value or filling that form out. Um, we have the survey results and that’s it. Oh, Sorry to interrupt you. No, no, no. I just wanna make sure I’m using the right, right document ‘cause I know Sarah sent one. Did you send it an amended one? Oh, I’m sorry. Based on hers? I Sure I’m using the right one. No, it should be the same form. The form that I Sarah gave. Okay. She made it fillable. I just made it fillable. Oh, okay. ‘cause you couldn’t, you had to print it manually. Got it. So now you can type in. And so that’s all, I just made it. I don’t have those text skills. Neither do I. It was Lisa Manning, uh, to make it a fillable pdf. When

3:01:20 Will we get the, the, the documentation just so we have some ample time, so we come prepared on Tuesday morning. Um, I was, yeah, I was just asking to prepare that. So I, I’m starting working on it today. I’ll try to finish up tomorrow and get it out to you. Um, thank you. Yeah, I’ll do, I’ll do my best to I’ll, I’ll scan it into like one thing and get it to you, if that makes sense. I think we had the eighth. Would it also, I thought That’s fine. I’ll get it done between, between. I’ll try to get it done tomorrow. It’s been crazy last two days. I think tomorrow I have some, I have a good chunk of time I can work on that I started working on today. Um, yeah, I, I did the narrative for the dip and I’ll attach that to dip. That was the bigger one. And then, yeah, I’ll just have to find what, what makes sense for evidence for the other two. Yep. So that would give you the weekend and Monday.

3:02:05 And then my best answer, we can still come in. I mean we’re also, the point is that we’re gonna work on this together, right? So we’re, you know, we’re gonna be, we’re doing this together. Um, and then the plan was, so that would be the sixth that we would compile the evaluation. And then at our business, next business meeting on the 15th, we would be presenting it in open session. But it would be a presentation. It wouldn’t be a, you know, the work will, the compilation will be the work on the sixth.

3:02:30 Right? Any, it’s just, okay, great. Um, alright. Subcommittee updates. Ryan and Al, do you have any updates? Well, it’s the same things we’ve done all along this. The newsletter, the, uh, the two person coffee. Coffee that went off well, I guess, huh? And then where did the two hours come from? I originally had thought we were only doing For an hour. We were there for three and a half. So we were there for three and a half. I was there for three hours. Hours. Would it be better? I was there two Hours, do hours there for the two hours. That was, but that’s what it was planned for. What do you, do you think that even the two hours is too much? Should it be less than that hour and a half hour? I think it depends on the, if there were more participants that I think maybe the two hours a minute would’ve been a little more appropriate, um,

3:03:19 I would make it a maximum of two hours then. Yeah. Yeah. Think as time goes on they’ll get shorter because the interest will have leveled off. Who Knows? Maybe it’ll get greter, maybe. You Never know. I’d be surprised if it stayed two hours. Well, I think it depends if you’re in the midst of good. So my al I would love, why don’t you go first before me about what your thoughts on the concept of coffee hours and the experience of the one we had. It wasn’t hugely attended, but they were still There. I mean, I, I think my, kind of what you just said, I think the concept is good. Um, obviously I would’ve liked more participation. Um, um, well We also was the first one. We can Advertise it better, but it’s good. I think it’s a good start. You know, I,

3:04:05 I I think it’s a good start and let’s build on it and continue to do it. And we will just edit it as we feel fit or perfect. Can I just, can I just share, there’s just, um, I think what I’ve seen in other districts too, and maybe for, for consideration is, you know, I think you did it 10 to 12. Maybe you look at different times in the day. Different venue. Okay. We talked, yeah, I think one of my frustrations that is when people leaped to, to con conclusions about why we picked that time, that was just what we said and what happened for the first one. That’s not when every single one is gonna be. And we shared that with them as well. We talked about that in our, in our last meeting about it. But we, it would be different pairings and different times of the day to be able to accommodate parents that have little kids that don’t wanna drag them along in the evening or need to put them to bed.

3:04:50 Of course parents that work, um, doing it in the evening and, um, you know, PTO and SAC meetings are all during the workday too. So, um, trying to make sure we meet all that. Yes. Are there gonna be some kind of notes from the people before you so that the next group going in the next month, we’ll have some idea. This was a hot topic that occurred in May. So when you’re doing one in June, you have an idea of what to Expect. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if we wanna consider recording it then. Oh, I’m not talking recording, but at least some kind of notes that said, you know, the common topic was recess, you know, so that we’d be prepared to have some ideas. Well, I think that’s what’s happened would happen here. ‘cause otherwise it’s an open meeting violation. So was there common topics?

3:05:36 Go ahead. I mean there, well we heard there was, um, so, or it was, it was actually a really, really, I’m super like beyond saddened and disappointed for what, um, how it, how it was expressed by someone that attended. Because I thought it was a really, really cordial,

3:06:00 communi like very open communication. There wasn’t contention, there wasn’t animosity. I didn’t feel, um, it was, I I thought both sides. Everything was really well received. We were absolutely able to provide answers for everything that was asked, um, except for the woman that came in and asked, uh, what happened to the individual who took the flag down, because that wasn’t us to answer. Um, but that is the answer. Right. Um, I think we did discuss, um, there’s a woman there who’s, who’s a cookie maker in town. And um, she used to be a teacher in a different district and she had a ton of great ideas, um, that were really, really thoughtful. I thought Al again, I don’t wanna speak for you.

3:06:47 No, I agree. Um, on how to improve some more communications through the schools and what’s happening, um, with older children. Because as, as you go from, you know, brown or Glover to village, there’s a significant drop in the amount of communication because they’re getting older and we’re expecting them to remember a little more. Right. That we need to be teaching them those things. Um, and I think maybe even a little bit more of, um, explaining the parents how to go on Google Classroom because I think there are parents that don’t necessarily know that they can go to Google Classroom and get a lot of information, um, for village anyways. And, um, we did talk about the flags. We talked about the reason why we need the flag policy. We talked about how we, or I shouldn’t say we and I apologize.

3:07:33 I don’t wanna speak for anything that Al said. I was very clear that it was disheartening to see people think that it was performative to meet with community or meet with the students regarding the flag policy. Um, I think this, this school committee over the last few years has been more transparent and more clear and more involving the community, um, than, than we have been in the past ever. And just because the, you know, the caveat there being, we can have these conversations, they’re very beneficial. It’s so important to understand different people’s lenses. That doesn’t mean we’re going to go and, and make the changes, um, or, or follow a specific set of instructions by a certain subset. Um, but it, it’s still super important to me anyways.

3:08:22 And I know to my fellow committee members to hear those differing opinions. Um, we did, it did then evolve into a question about, um, book banning. So Jen and I had met as a policy subcommittee just the day before. And, um, we had talked, we had, it just so happens that one of the policies that we had reviewed, um, is the resource review policy. And that’s what was being called the book ban. Um, that policy again was created a few years back, like Sarah said, already walked through all that, that policy was created and it’s a six or seven page procedure. It’s very, very lengthy. But even to take a step back from that, I made it very clear it is not the school committee’s purview to ban books.

3:09:08 So I’m not gonna wake up one morning and say, I don’t like this book and we’re gonna take it off the shelves. That’s not how it works. We have a policy and a procedure in place. In order to do that, it has to be apparent. It wants to come in and request that they have to fill out the form and it goes through the chain of command. It is not, it doesn’t start with us. Um, and what Jen and I had done just the day before, and Lee was at that meeting as well, we discussed that policy. She’s already gone. Um, we discussed that particular policy and how it matches up to masc MAs C’S policy on research resource review. And again, I think I have that name right. It’s instructional instruction, material review. I was close. Instructional material review is a paragraph long. It’s very broad there really, there’s not a whole lot to it.

3:09:54 Certainly not compared to our six to seven page procedure. Um, and so what I shared with the, the three, um, community members and plus Lee, so there’s four, um, I’m, I’m not sure if Lee was there to report or there as a community member also, of course. Um, so there were four people there. Um, and I made it very clear that Jen and I had just gone through the review of that I section for our policies. And that that was one of the policies that came up to review to make sure it matched with MASC. And what I shared was that Jen and I had discussed that particular policy and agreed, and again we’re gonna bring it to the full committee, agreed that we wanted to keep our longer, more detailed policy with the procedure because so much time, effort,

3:10:39 and energy had been spent on it. And it really made it clear to folks how that policy, how that procedure would work if someone wanted to question a resource. Um, I shared that then and we didn’t, we’re not getting to it now ‘cause it’s late now. I’m making us be later. But we did, we were very clear on that and I’m really proud of Jen and I for having gone through that and keeping that policy. Um, I do think it’s really important to make something like that very clear given, you know, how contentious that discussion. Um, it can be similar to flags. Um, but again, more importantly it’s not the purview of the school committee to say, I don’t want this book. I do want this book. Um, there we talked about bullying, um, which is something I think that probably will come up a little bit more. Um, and we shared some stories and some experiences there. I did talk about resets, uh,

3:11:26 and how we had, you know, just gone through a draft policy for that. ‘cause again, Jen and I had done that the day before. Um, we did talk about adding the five minutes, but that’s someone else’s discussion. I wasn’t involved in bargaining. Um, and then we talked about the wind block, um, and how it works for some folks doesn’t necessarily work for other classrooms. And what I had shared in regards to win is that I think it’s a wonderful idea. Um, you know what? I need the win block. I think where there were some missteps, again, absolutely nothing to do with this group here. Wanna make, make sure you see me when I say that, be very clear. Um, it has to be implemented properly. You can’t just simply say you have a 45 minute wind block, then walk away. And, um, not having

3:12:14 more consistency across grades on how that’s done. Um, the experience from the parents that were there, that shared, the three parents that were there that shared the, their experiences with the wind block were dramatically different. Um, and so that was again, not purview of the school committee. I summarize Well, yeah, sorry. I’m the one being accused of being a liar. I’m just, I can’t let that stand. I’m sorry. I understand. Um, so my concern is that how do we rectify this type of thing, not have my one concern for the next group of people. I loved doing it. I would do it every single time if I could. But how do we rectify what is said, who, what, why of what is said? I know we, we got an email from another parent that had attended thanking us

3:13:00 for answering all the questions. So I don’t know how we rectify that. Not running into that concern again. Or maybe no one has that concern and that’s fine too. It’s just me then. That’s okay.

3:13:12 No, I, I so Sarah, to your question, I was kind of surprised by some of the topics, right? Because they really, some are very operational and, and that’s fine. You know, we’re not trying to, you know, limit things but, um, you know, wind block we haven’t discussed a lot as a school committee ‘cause we haven’t needed to at least, you know, so when someone asks a question about that, it was good that someone is there who has, you know, I was on the committee when it was On the committee and also your experience as a parent, right? Yep, yep. Um, which I don’t have. Um, so it was kind of nice that there was that that blend now around, you know, how people walked away from that meeting and, and what their take and their perception outside

3:13:58 of like making it a formal meeting with notes or, you know, I I, that’s difficult Maybe unless maybe, and I’m, I’m just kind of thinking out loud. Maybe that’s just maybe some ground rules or we could just talk in the beginning of the meeting around our expectations. Um, and I don’t know exactly what that might look like, but you know, this is some of the risks associated with just having a more free form. You know, you really can’t prepare for a meeting. And I think that adds to the value of it too. The, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s meant to be a bit more and you’ll learn from it. Yeah. And you’ll, and you’ll learn from that and we’ll learn is it was the very first one, right. And I think, yeah, I think it was Good. Um, there’s one other, um, question here. Um, I hadn’t been paying attention. I try to pay attention to the q and a and I hadn’t been.

3:14:44 Um, there’s a couple, uh, anonymous questions, um, asking if we had asked the lawyer specific questions. So you may wanna look at that Sarah, ‘cause it just mentions your name. Um, and then, um, someone else asked, um, Ms. House asked if your transparent, why did you fire Dr. Bucky? Um, we didn’t fire Dr. Bucky. Dr. Bucky and the district separated. Um, I don’t know what SC members are continuously blowing off meetings. So again, I would rather than kind of blanket, um, I think one other thing that came up Al um, was that we need to be more transparent and I asked for specific examples and I was told that there were none. Um, I asked twice for specific examples around transparency

3:15:30 because I totally get it. And I think that this team wants to be more transparent. Correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not trying to speak for you. But if we’re not provided with a specific, like when you did this, Brian, you were not transparent or when you did this Allison, you were not transparent. So that we can learn and, and kind of explain, um, with regards to, sorry, Just, just to add on to the, the budget before we move on. Yep. Yeah, it was good to ask for examples. Right? Um, but you know, Allison then just discussed, well let you know. Here’s where I think we’ve improved our transparency and discussed specifically the budget process around that. And I think that was accepted and everyone thought that was Yeah. Was Good. Um, the, the around Dr. Barge, anything personnel happens in executive session, none

3:16:15 of that, um, can ever be discussed in open session. Um, in addition, part of that separation agreement included his, um, demand that we have, uh, a non-disparagement clause and an NDA there. So we cannot speak to any of that. That’s, that’s, that’s legal right there. And so I I it’s a point of point Of order. I appreciate what I, you have good intentions right now, um, to try to interact and answer people’s questions. And I, and I want to applaud that at the same time that I call a point of order. ‘cause we’ve gotten way off on point of orders tonight. We don’t, this is not a meeting with the public, it’s a meeting in the public. So if we keep interacting with this, it’ll Keep happening. So can we just, um, And you’re certainly entitled. Okay, so I’ll just say you’re entitled to your own opinion, Ms.

3:17:00 Housed. You should come try and come to one of the additional sessions, um, and speak to someone on the committee about it. So can I just move on from this and say that, um, do you both think that it’s a good idea to keep doing this office hours?

3:17:17 I’m sorry? You Think it’s a good idea to keep to, to continue this? Oh, Absolutely. Okay. And that’s why I thought, you know, sorry, I understand your point, but I think the conversation is helpful around, do we continue doing it? No, we Were answering Content online. Yeah. So we’re Okay. I’m sorry. The q and a. So we’re not Doing anymore. Just, Sorry. How do we wanna move forward this Reading it but not Talk, not doing. I had one thought of something to add. I thought of it today when I was at, at how’s playground? A great resource and there’s tons of young parents. I like that we did one at a coffee house. We’ll do one in the evening. I thought if we did one, you know, in the afternoon, hopefully for a nice day somewhere like that. So parents with young kids can have a chance to speak to you while their kids are amused. You know what I mean? Like, I think being creative in how we offer a multitude of options to the community and to, to, um, people would be great. Okay.

3:18:05 So who would like to do the next set of office hours? Sarah, anybody else? I’m happy to do it. Brian, do you wanna do it? Oh sure. Oh, okay. So Brian, Brian and Sarah. I’m free. Okay. So I will uh, work with you to offline on cover Of facilities. Yeah. Yeah. I can’t do it with Al or Al thinks I’m in a subcommittee with you Guys. You can, but you can’t talk about those items. Talk. It’s better. Talk about you two do it and I will, um, I’ll work with you offline to set it up and we’ll, you know, we’ll advertise it and all that. Hadactually The muffin shop. Did you ask them permission to use their place to have these views? Say you Sorry. No, I’m there. All I, I know there all the time. Yeah. Showed up. Yeah. That All so i’ll with, there’s always, there’s always different groups. I’ll work with you too to of people there every day. Thank you offline. I appreciate that. Um, so that was the, um, office hours communication. Um, uh,

3:18:54 The only other thing I want to talk about, but I don’t wanna do it tonight. Okay, Facebook. Yeah, let’s do that. You, let’s put that on the next agenda and Let’s do it as an agenda item. Why don’t we do that? Okay. Um, we, a facilities meeting yesterday, there was more information on the roof projects. I actually have to send the recording to get uploaded. Um, we then, you know, it was presented again last night at the town wide, um, capital planning committee. Same presentation or, or truncated pre presentation in the evening. Um, one thing that came outta the facilities meeting yesterday is, um, Mike as well as Todd, um, apologize if other administrators were there. And I wasn’t aware did walkthroughs of every school

3:19:40 with the building principal at that school, um, they interacted with staff I think when appropriate students going through, um, really giving them a chance to say, you know, what, do you have any needs here? Mike had pages and pages and pages that he, um, zoomed through and showed us and then sent us later a few examples. You know, a teacher may have said my door sticks or a teacher may have said, I need a a cabinet repainted. Mike made a ed list. He, I was amazed to see he’d already started checking off. A lot of those is, um, issues already. I saw the flag pull at vets getting painted. That was one of your issues. You said that was on the list. That was being okay. That was being done today.

3:20:25 So, um, so these things are, we’re, we’re, we’re reaching out directly to the staff, getting those lists and checking them off for facilities at the, the, you know, in the weeds level I would call it. I’m Just, I’m just asking the questions and making the list. The hardware’s getting done By other Yes, yes, yes, yes. Um, And explaining, explaining the process for how you, how you ask for those things. ‘cause a lot of things people we talked about a lot Yeah. They know like, how do I ask for like to get this fixed. So A lot of those things, the work’s getting done is the Point. Great. Thank you. Okay. Policy subcommittee met, we already talked about our items, um, the two policies as well as the, um, protocols and the ethics. Um, and we will come forward next time with discussion on updated policies that we need to work on.

3:21:11 So I think that’s it. Alright. Uh, new business. Quickly. Um, John is looking to put together a Yeah, the interview committee. So we’re putting together an interview committee for Matt, uh, Matt Fox’s, uh, you know, departure and uh, obviously we have a school committee member on that committee. Um, so I had individually asked folks if they were interested just to see if, you know, and the preponderance for you guys said yes, I’d love to be a part of it. So I think tonight we just need to kind of decide either amongst yourselves who, who’s gonna be in that, who would be the representative or you know, Chair who has, who has asked. So I’ve expressed interest and I would love to do it, but if if there’s other, you know, we just need one. Correct. I would put myself at the bottom of the list just ‘cause I have a lot of travel coming up and that’s not something I can zoom in on.

3:21:57 You know, we wanna do these in person. So, ‘cause there’s several, I have problem going several Meetings. So there is a, there is How many you have set up so far? We Have four set up so far. Four Set up so far. So this, this, are they all in May or do they go We’re in the next Couple weeks. We’re Moving. Okay. Well I, I sent you Yes, yes You did. But I appreciate that. I, I’m just worried if things get a little bit delayed or someone, you know, I I I’d be a little more difficult to work with schedule wise. Perfect. Over the next couple of months, Ryan, I would like to be on the committee. I believe my experience as a principal and knowing vets as well as I do that I’d be a good asset on the team. Um, I had said I’m interested, but also I got the opportunity to serve on two last year. Um, so I’m, I’m happy to Yes. See that if, if that’s, you know, yeah.

3:22:42 And Allison, Yeah, I mean I would definitely love to be honest him, but I again, I understand I’m not discounting Brian’s experience. Of course.

3:22:54 So we’re down to Brian and Allison. Are you? So either we work this out amongst ourselves. Yeah. And that’s fine. Okay. Alright. So what am I doing? Great. Thank you. Please keep asking me though. Yeah, we will. Yeah. We’ll This coincidence. Hopefully we don’t Too Many admin. Hopefully we won’t have to, but yes. Yeah. There is a new business I’d like to talk about. Sure. We broke a big protocol tonight by having a back and forth with the audience. Yep. That’s a big no-no. And I think we’re setting a precedence now that this will start to happen more often. Yep. We agree. We have to stop that. Yeah, I agree. I, I apologize. I cherish That point. This is not a public meeting. Yep. It’s a school committee meeting the public’s invited to. And the other thing is, I’d like us to go back to Robert’s rule order when somebody’s speaking, they need to have the hand raised.

3:23:40 If you want to talk chair should recognize that person. We a habit now of cutting out to each other constantly. And I can’t fall half of these conversations ‘cause the things are going back and forth left and right. We need to go back to Robert’s w of order is somebody speaking, they knit, they finish their thought. The next person who wants to speak should not criticize or ostracize, whatever that other person said. They should just state their own point of view. That’s the way a committee should work. Right. If I, as far as I’m concerned, I’d be happy to discuss that at another meeting, but I’m really beginning to get frustrated because I can’t get a word in half the time. So we need to go back to certain formats and if we don’t want to use Robert’s rules of order, fine. I’ll drop that one completely. Well, that would make sense with the protocols,

3:24:26 which we’re gonna do when we’re fresh Okay. With fresh eyes and fresh brains at our next meeting. So, um, so that we can do that on the 15th, if that makes sense. Okay. Okay. And I’m that I know you’re talking about me because I I talked back, I’m never not gonna do that. If someone is, is stating a lie about me, I’m never not gonna respond. But, but that breaks the problem. That’s, I I understand. I’m, I’m just telling you. Right. I’m never not gonna do that. So if you’re Okay with, why don’t we, it’s fine. Discuss that at our next meeting when we talk about the protocols and we will have an agreement on how we’ll go forward. Um, we are meeting the sixth to do the evaluation for the superintendent. We are meeting, I’m sorry, the fifth for town meeting this morning of the sixth of the evaluation, possibly town meeting on the night of the sixth. And the 15th is our next, um, school committee meeting.

3:25:11 Any other items? All right. I’m adjourning us at 9 28. Thank you.