00:00:03,899	S1:
There are many pockets on zoom, but for the people in the room who wish to make a comment, I'll ask you from the podium when you offer your comment as you provide your name, and please spell your last name so that we can make sure that we get it in the minutes. We will time everyone's comments. We give you three minutes. Um, and uh, and our timer, and she'll let you know when you have about 30s left. Um, and I. What else do I need to say? Um, um, just know that this is an opportunity for us to listen and for you to be heard. Um, so it's not a dialogue or a back and forth. It's listening. Um, and so we. You ready to hear what you have to say? Um, and we'll start here in the room, and then we'll check in in a couple of minutes and see that we have anyone.

00:01:03,130	S1:
Okay.

00:01:03,929	S2:
Hi, Stacey. Better than me to take your suitcase. Um, I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate my concern about the superintendent contract being proposed tonight. According to the city and comparable school districts in the area, salary increases for superintendents are generally being kept between 2 to 3%. For example, Beverly Moscow, Manchester, Essex and Grantham, both school districts, have all maintained races within this range. We don't need to keep up with the teachers contracts. The average superintendent is approximately 177,000, with the 90th percentile reaching around 240,000. Specifically, the superintendents in mass show Beverly, Massachusetts, and Groton. Dunstable earned between 200,000 and 226,000. But for example, for Superintendent doctor Mike. Mike Harvey is making 222,832 in Pasco with a 2% raise. And he has a doctorate of education. The proposed contract is setting a concerning precedent that will lead to a domino effect across the district. If this contract is approved, the escalating costs may become unsustainable for the towns, especially as the school budget continues to grow with new contracts in place. Recent teacher contracts have already led to notable increases, with most educators receiving raises between 15 to 20% and some receiving as much as 30% when cost of living and set increases are factored in. These significant reasons carry substantial consequences, and I perceive budget overrides in our future. Although the Finance Committee can request budget cuts, it's important to recognize that they will be unable to reduce any contractual fixed costs since the district is primarily employed. LED 80 to 9% or more of the budget is comprised of fixed cost. Additional non-negotiables such as utilities, busing as a district cost further constrain the flexibility. Ultimately, this leaves only programming as areas where cuts can be potentially made. I respectfully review to consider the proposed superintendent contract to ensure it aligns with practices of comparable districts. The terms of this contract will affect future negotiations. Nonmembers with non-union members, as the VA will almost certainly reference these terms in their discussions. Furthermore, the contracts general provisions could impact non-union administrative staff such as principals and others, if they have not already done so. Thank you.

00:04:06,900	S1:
Thanks.

00:04:12,199	S1:
Are there other comments in the room?

00:04:17,269	S3:
You have nobody online.

00:04:20,699	S1:
Okay.

00:04:23,100	S2:
Um, I couldn't say any better than this. This woman has said I agree 100%, but she said. Um, in addition to that, this was getting a lot of feedback.

00:04:35,569	S1:
I think.

00:04:37,370	S4:
That's good.

00:04:39,769	S2:
Um, in addition to that, I just would like to urge the school committee to move forward with a possible plan for renovating a school. Um, that And then the public has voted to not leave the consolidated school.

00:04:56,699	S5:
I'd like to see the school committee move forward with a plan that would include a renovation of one of the schools, because we do want the children to be educated. Well, we do want the facilities to be upgraded. The the vote no was to a huge three story building and consolidating all the schools into a huge school. So we do want to have renovation. So I would urge you to do that. And thank you very much.

00:05:29,899	S6:
Thank you, Mr. Tracy. There's no one on zoom. One on zoom. Okay. Um, is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak?

00:05:41,829	S5:
Debbie Romberg. Marjorie, I just wanted to go on record as saying I don't support an increase of the proposal for the number of years. I think we need to put our emphasis on reading specialist counselors and and other positions that are directly interacting with the children. We could use more of that particularly. Um, all up and down all levels. So I don't support the proposal. Thank you.

00:06:13,430	S6:
Thank you.

00:06:15,730	S7:
Did you need to read her address? Just for the record?

00:06:18,829	S6:
Um.

00:06:19,870	S7:
Just for the minutes.

No. 00:06:21,470	S6:
It's okay. I think we got. Okay. Um, okay. Looks like I want to make sure. Is anybody else in the room? We still have a couple of minutes if people want to speak. Okay. Uh, and there's no one on zoom. Okay. Um. All right, we'll be closing. Um, citizens comments at this time. Thank you all very much for your comments. Do appreciate them. Um, next up, I'm going to ask, uh, Julia, I think, or Amy, uh, Julia, to read a portion of the school committee protocols.

00:07:00,899	S8:
As elected members of the Hamilton Windham Regional School Committee. We, including the superintendent, accept the high honor and trust that has been placed in us to ensure that the students of the district receive the best education possible. To that end, we hereby commit to the following in the conduct of our business. Uh, what is it? Protocol number three. The School committee will establish a vision, create policy, approve a budget, and assure accountability to sustain continuous improvement in teaching, learning, and facilities. Members agree to leave the day to day operations, including business transactions, to the superintendent and staff. Members of the School Committee recognized that authority rests only with the majority in its decisions.

00:07:45,129	S6:
Thank you. next up, Amy will read a portion of our mission statement. The Hamilton.

00:07:52,430	S8:
Regional School District School.

00:07:53,800	S9:
Committee's mission is to ensure our schools create graduates with a passion for lifelong learning, together with the critical skills needed to maximize their potential. The Hamilton Wenham Regional School Committee will lead and inspire a district that empowers administrators to seek innovation, responsiveness and creativity in all aspects of district operations.

00:08:16,069	S6:
Thank you. Um. Next up. Um, I'm really pleased that we have a student representative here. It feels like a little while since we've had someone here. I'm really glad to see that Anderson Craft is here to speak to us and share a little bit about what's going on in our schools.

00:08:31,029	S10:
Thank you for having me. Uh, starting off with the high school. Uh, the high school is hosting an open house for new families to the school and current eighth grade parents on Wednesday, October 22nd at 630. Their new families can meet with teachers, counselors and varsity coaches and captains of sports that are interested in playing and ask questions to them and teachers and counselors about what school is like for sports. I would like to congratulate Reid Foley for winning the Northern Sectional Mia championship for golf, and we'll be moving on now to face golfers across Massachusetts and a state championship. This past month, winter sports coaches have met in player only meetings where they've gone over schedules and future dates and about signups where signups started on October 15th. I would also like to congratulate the boys soccer team for tying Ipswich and winning the Cal, and then for clubs and yeah, for clubs. Freshman elections started in September and Decker has recently been starting up in the middle school. Many clubs have begun like art clubs, student council, jazz band and GSA. They have been meeting weekly along with fall intramurals like cross country have started up for the elementary school. On October 28th, parents will be meeting a teacher conferences across the elementary school for all parents and students will or in elementary school, students will be ending school early. And Winthrop School has had its picture day for all students on October 7th. Thank you.

00:10:00,929	S6:
Excellent. Thank you very much. Um, send me any questions for Anderson. Thanks. So. All right. Um, thank you for coming. It is really important and special that you come and not only tell us about the high school, but you do the work to find out what's going on in our other schools. And it's really important for us to hear it directly from you. So thank you.

00:10:22,230	S10:
Thank you for having me.

00:10:23,269	S6:
Um, you are invited to stay, but we also understand that you may have other things to do. Um, so if you need to depart and get to homework or whatever, you may do that. Thank you.

00:10:35,730	S11:
Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.

00:10:41,169	S6:
Okay.

00:10:45,529	S6:
All right. Um, next up is the consent agenda. Does anyone have any items that they'd like to hold from the consent agenda?

00:10:56,429	S11:
No.

00:10:57,970	S6:
Juliet. To you.

00:10:59,600	S8:
I move that we accept the consent agenda as proposed in the full agenda.

00:11:09,029	S6:
Do you have a second? Second. Second. By Amy Berger. All those in favor? And that is four and five in favor. And the motion passes.

No. 00:11:21,269	S9:
Thank you for all the donations. Look at all the kinds of the arts and family donation and stuff.

00:11:27,870	S6:
Yeah. No, that was really I just I, I would like to just say that, I mean, the friends of the Arts, the photo stuff is amazing on here. It's really exciting.

00:11:37,399	S12:
And while I don't have any kids in the district yet? I'm really excited to hear the new xylophone concert.

00:11:44,299	S6:
Yeah, I thought it was all. I mean, I like I thought it was all interesting. I loved the just the detail about the shoe. The shoe makes so much sense. Like, you need to have all those things.

00:11:55,899	S12:
As a former drama kid, you need all the costumes.

00:11:58,830	S6:
Exactly. No, it was really good stuff. So that was great to see. Um, okay. Uh, so first up on our new business, we have, um, presentations by all of our principals on the school improvement plans, and I will turn it to you. Eric, I don't know if you.

00:12:19,269	S4:
Sure. We we, um, annually, we do school improvement plans and principals after working through the district budgets and having the, excuse me, the district goals and having the district goals approved, each of the principals then works with people in their building and members of their school councils to determine school school improvement planning for the current school year. These plans are always aligned with district goals. They're also aligned with principal goals for their their own evaluation observations. So we're going to take it out of order this year. Second year in a row. We're going to start with the best at the middle school doctor best.

00:12:58,600	S13:
All right. Hi. Good evening everybody. Thank you for having us tonight and giving us a chance to share with you some of the work that we're going to be doing this year. Um, we have four goals at the middle school, so we'll kind of go through those one by one. Um, our first goal is, is really, um, it's an ongoing goal related to, um, EMTs practices. Um, it's connected to that that district goal that's been around for a number of years as well. For the past couple of years at the middle school, our focus has really been on ensuring we've got our tier two support in place and our practices, our are working for kids there, so we're going to keep focusing on that. But we didn't want to lose sight of tier one. That's the instruction that everybody receives specifically making sure that that instruction is supporting all of our learners. And at the middle school and throughout the district, we know that oftentimes it's our students with disabilities that are needing some additional support to, you know, oftentimes get caught up. So that is an area of focus. So, um, just just a few of these bullet points. We're going to continue with our screeners. We do provide math and literacy screeners throughout the year. That is really helpful for teachers to be able to understand where students are experiencing success and where there might be some challenges, and it also helps. It's a big piece of the puzzle as we create our intervention groups. That's a big part of the conversation. Uh, in the last few years, we've been able to arrange our schedules so that all students have access or ability to be part of those intervention groups as needed, and we're able to be flexible with those. So we spend a lot of time with teachers identifying students who might need support. And sometimes students get that support and they're able to move out. Or sometimes student who starts the year strong might find that midway through they need a little extra support. So we've been able to create a schedule that allows for some of that flexibility as we're thinking about our tier one supports. We've got some work on curriculum that we're doing right now. We're piloting two different science curriculum. Um, one is lab aids and one is open science, open side. Um, our teachers are committing to doing two units each. From both of those, we really want to make the best decision when we adopt a new science curriculum. It's been fun watching the students use a lot of the materials, a lot of getting outside hands on activities. I was outside the other day. Students were taking temperatures over a period of time with different lenses, And these are six graders, and we're right at the end of B season. So you can imagine how that kind of went. But they got it. They got it back together. And it was fun to watch them crunch that that data back in class. We're going to continue to develop our our data meeting structure. We want to make sure that the instructional decisions that we're making are based in data, and that we're really attentive to those students who might have a learning gap that we need to be able to attend to. Uh, last year, we adopted a new English language arts curriculum, and our teachers have committed to increasing the number of units from that curriculum. One of the nice things about Hmm is it pulls so many resources together. Um, it really saves teachers some some time and puts a lot of high quality materials right at their fingertips. And throughout each lesson that is provided, there are multiple points where students can get some additional support. So a multiple language learner can get supports in that curriculum has resources for those students. We're going to document a supports that are available at Miles River. We're starting a mtss handbook. And so we want to make sure that those things that we have available are appropriately documented. And where there's opportunities to introduce additional supports, we can recognize and put those in there. And one that didn't make this list is that Mrs. Gerstein, the assistant principal, and I are committing to increasing our visits in classroom. I think, you know, time and classroom as time will spend. It's easy for the day to get away from you. We're accustomed to being in classrooms, but we're really going to focus on providing feedback more frequently, not just through the formal evaluation process, but through the day to day visits that we already have in place.

00:17:19,329	S13:
Our second goal is regarding the portrait of a learner. The high school has really done a lot of work on getting that up and going. And you know, we're looking to capitalize on some of their work and bring that down into the middle school. We're looking to integrate that really into our day to day work at the middle school. So we've started at our first couple of staff meetings with an activity to identify things that we're already doing, and then our aspirations. What are some components of portrait of a learner that we are aspiring to? And so I'm hoping to pull a committee of teachers and staff members together to really create a vision of how we can embrace it and, and really make that part of our day to day and really articulate a plan. And as we're making that plan, go ahead and start implementing some of those things that we have identified. I also think it's really important to have student input, even at the middle school level. We've got a building full of really smart kids, and I want to make sure that they are part of this process as well. So we're going to capitalize on our student council as we continue this conversation.

00:18:26,500	S13:
Last year. So for goal three, this is really a continuation of some work we did last year. We spent a good chunk of the year really looking at our grading practices. Grading for teachers is a very personal thing. A lot of folks have very strong, you know, thoughts and how to to move forward on that. But one thing we were able to agree on is that that our grades should be a reflection of student learning, and that in some way they should be a communication device for parents and other stakeholders. So we put together some practices that we think are going to help us do that, and we want to make sure that that does not get, um, get that work that we did last year doesn't get lost in some of the other good work that we're doing this year. Um, one of the things that we've talked about is the importance of a progression. So when students come to us in sixth grade, they have they've never seen a numerical grade before. If they've gone through the Hamilton Wyndham system and then when we send them to high school, it's the thing. It's what's asked for by colleges and things like that. So really the the progression from six to eighth grade to make sure that we are introducing the, our grading practices in a way that is appropriate and helpful and supportive, and also that as we're sending our students on to the high school grades, that that they are accustomed to that process and that that grade is something that carries some meaning. Um, you know, certainly the last thing we want to do is you make somebody uncomfortable, upset, you know, it can be tough that first time you see a, A grade that's lower than you expected. But we also owe it to our students and our families to make sure that we are communicating our students learning progress as accurately as possible. So we've shared those practices with families. We want to use some of our common planning time at different checkpoints throughout the year to look at that. We also want to run some some analysis. In situations where we have screener data and common assessment data and state testing data. You know, take a look at that and see how it's lining up. You know state testing isn't the end all and be all. But it is a nice data point. And it would behoove us to make sure that there is some alignment with those. And finally, our fourth goal this this came out of our building leadership team. We were discussing this towards the end of the year last year. We have historically had, um, some, you know, values posted around the school. Those have over the years kind of come down and they're not part of our day to day operations. And so we want to be able to really identify a framework that anchors our building wide, um, behavior expectations for students. I think there's a value in being able to anchor conversations around a common set of expectations. And when we have those, anyone in the building can support a student if the if they're struggling. So this is another area we want to create a working group. We want to look at what's out there, reviewing frameworks that might be in place at the elementary school, in the high school, use some district wide documents so that we're not doing this in isolation. You know, how does our portrait of a learner feed into this? What about our district goals, our mission, our core values? These are already out there, and we think we can capitalize on those to build a framework for ourselves. And here again, we want to make sure to gather student input. And by the end of the year, we'd like to to have a draft that we present to staff that we can get some feedback on. I think that's it. Happy to answer any questions.

Yes. 00:22:01,930	S11:
Phone number three. Are teachers also looking at Bloom's Taxonomy and making sure that they're asking questions at different levels of difficulty that will absolutely affect how they work.

00:22:14,500	S13:
Wow. That's a big question. Um, yeah, I think they always are, you know, whether it's formal or informal. It's funny you mentioned questioning. We were in a curriculum meeting, curriculum leader meeting today, and we were talking about the importance of question in planning. Um, that's not necessarily part of the goal, but I agree. I think that that there's certainly an overlap there. So yes, it's not necessarily an action step here though.

Yeah. 00:22:42,470	S7:
I have a question.

00:22:44,029	S8:
I know we've instituted the the phone.

00:22:46,470	S7:
Band at the high school. Is that in place at the middle school also?

00:22:50,569	S13:
So we work on a powered off from beginning of day to end of day, and it works for us. I can't say that there's not a student that might have found a way to, you know, sneak off to the restroom and answer a quick text. Um, but if you were to walk through the the lunchroom, the hallways, the classrooms, you would not see students on phones. So that's how we're able to manage that. I can probably count on one hand, right now, the number of phones that we've had to take up and reach out to parents.

00:23:22,130	S11:
Okay.

00:23:23,130	S7:
That's something I'm just really passionate about.

00:23:26,200	S13:
We are too. It's so much easier to learn when you don't have a device distracting you. Right? Right in front.

00:23:33,299	S11:
Right. Thank you. My other concern with that is that they can have their phones in middle school, but then they get into high school, or they should have more responsibility and we're taking them away.

00:23:47,799	S6:
Other people have questions.

00:23:49,099	S14:
I don't have questions.

00:23:50,299	S6:
I don't know that it's really a question. It's something I just wanted to. I really appreciated what you said about the goal number three, about the grading. I really appreciated that acknowledgement about, you know, that they're going from exiting elementary school where they really haven't experienced that to a real. I liked I really liked that acknowledgement of a real world expectation that when they're in high school, this is real. It's, you know. External forces are colleges and other institutions are going to be looking for. I really appreciated that. Like that's a big part of middle school is. And so I was wondering when you were speaking about the behavioral expectations, like, I guess what I'm just hoping for is that it will be a similar kind of a mindset around, like, you know, when you're creating the behavioral expectations that you know, that, like, they're coming out of the elementary school where there's sort of one world that they're living in and they're going to be entering into another world in the high school. So that was really just feedback that I really appreciated the thoughtfulness and hope that that would be a similar thought process for the behavioral expectations too.

00:24:58,430	S13:
So yeah, 100% agree. And I think what we're really trying it's you know, we're not um, I hope the skull doesn't suggest you that we're sort of the Wild West and haven't thought of, you know, sort of any sort of guidelines. Well, and we do. And you're right, when I meet with the eighth graders, my conversations are very different than when I meet with the sixth graders, but I think having sort of a written, agreed upon umbrella of a framework that helps you develop within that umbrella great appropriate expectations, just really sort of, um, underscores that everybody's on the same page, and that's just something that we're seeking to do. So thank you for that feedback.

00:25:39,170	S6:
Okay.

00:25:39,529	S8:
Thank you.

00:25:39,970	S13:
All right. Thank you very much.

00:25:42,630	S4:
All right. We have a little switcheroo tonight for the high school. I'm gonna go anyways unable to be here. So sister Principal Jeff Becker is here to take over Mr.

Becker. 00:25:53,470	S13:
Thank you very much. Thanks so much for having me here tonight. This is my fourth year in the district and first time at a meeting. Um, and it's, uh. Yeah, I look.

00:26:02,329	S15:
Forward to coming again. Um, our, uh, four goals that we're going to talk about as a school, the first two, um, are going to sound a little bit repetitive as we are a district with, you know, certain focus points. Our first two goals are very similar to the middle school's first two goals. We start off with our focus on the portrait of a learner. I always one of the things I first learned about this district was the existence of a portrait of a learner, and how it was not a portrait of a graduate by design. It was something that we wanted students to be and teachers to be thinking about from, from as a K through 12 experience and something that everyone is able to work on together on. This is why you see it as a middle school goal as well as well as a high school goal. We have spent a lot of time over the years getting our teachers to really understand how this can be incorporated into their classes, and now I would say our focus this year is really bringing the students into that conversation in a number of different ways. So through the portrait of a learner, our students are going to be having quarterly reflection periods. And now we have a new aspect to our schedule this year, which is a community block that meets on Wednesdays. We're going to be using that community block at at least four times this year, as an opportunity for students to start reflecting on work that they've done and how it falls in line with the portrait of a learner. Um, and there's some, you know, open ended aspects to that in terms of which aspect of the portrait of a learner some of their work could fall into, but it's really about reflecting and growing as they move through their high school experience. Um, this is also, you'll see one of the notes we make is about the mastery learning record. This is being piloted in connection with the portrait of a learner as a document, or a collection of documents that students will be able to put together and reflect upon and show as evidence that they are sort of meeting that portrait of a learner that they that they've painted their portrait of themselves in a number of different ways. Um, and so that's, that's the work that we're doing this year, bringing our students into that, allowing them to better understand what it means to fulfill that portrait of a learner. So that's those are the primary focal points for our first goal of the year. Uh, our second goal is related to tier one education. We're talking about our multi-tiered systems of supports and that tier one, what's happening for all students all of the time, with a particular focus on making sure that we are working towards each of our lessons, engaging all of our students. Um, and one of the ways that we want to support that is to create an understandable Instructional framework that we're going to be able to focus on when we go in for not just observations, but also conversations with teachers about what we've been seeing. Um, the instructional framework will really come from a lot of documents that we already have, whether it be things from skillful teacher that all of our trainings that our teachers go through, the rubric that we use as part of supervision and evaluation and sort of narrow down our, our focus into what are those key elements that we're looking to see in each of the classes. Um, as Doctor Bess mentioned before, we are working on being in classes with much greater frequency than we've been in the past. Um, so this is not about having the the same sort of observations, just more of them. It's it's about enhancing those observations, giving, being in rooms more frequently, maybe for a smaller amount of time than we've been used to in the past, but still providing feedback and having conversations with teachers about what we're seeing in the classroom. Um, being in more classrooms more frequently allows us to better see what's going on across departments and across grade levels. And we sort of design those observations where in a single day we're seeing things that have certain similarities, where maybe we're trying to get into a number of ninth grade classes during the same day, get that experience of what a ninth graders day is, is like, maybe we're focusing on a department and seeing a number of math classes and how math is sort of unified from one level to another, and having conversations around that and then sharing those ideas of what's working great here and how it could potentially work great. You know, in this other area as well. Um, so that is let me make sure I didn't miss a part of that goal here.

Um. 00:31:04,130	S15:
Oh. The other major part of this is through our common planning time. So we also want to make sure that at the high school, we've always had common planning time. We've enhanced. I believe we enhanced it a little bit this year, um, through the scheduling portion of it where we instead of just having the two people who happen to teach geometry being together, we've been trying to put more math teachers together at the same time. Not just math, but but all departments having more of them have that same common planning time. It could be that the two geometry teachers are still meeting, but then they have the opportunity to meet with others. Very few of our teachers are really teaching just one area, so this allows them to meet with different people within their discipline I think a little bit more effectively, but we're also really looking at how we are having those meetings and what the focus is. Um, our sort of shift this year is for that common planning time to really be about the effectiveness of of instruction, not just what we're doing, but how we're doing it and how we can keep it in line with things like the portrait of a learner. So I think that's everything from goal to, um, moving on to goal three, um, this is directly connected to a district goal. Um, you know, as soon as we heard that the district wanted to be working towards, um, policies and procedures around AI, it was something that we felt immediately that the high school really needed to be involved in. I think for a lot of educators, you know, a few years ago or a little bit longer than that AI came out, I was like, oh no, this is just cheating. And now it's now we're learning about how this can be a tool. How should it be utilized in schools? It's an evolution. Um, it's happening quickly. Um, and I really appreciate that the district is taking a role in this, and I feel like the high school really needs to be a part of that as well. So that's why we've incorporated that as one of our goals for the year as well. Um, and finally, our fourth goal is a continuation of a previous goal where we're really trying to increase experiential learning, and we're really trying to increase opportunities that students can have outside the walls of our building. Getting out our internship program has been a strong one for many seniors. We don't have all of our seniors participate. We don't have it as a requirement for everybody but the students who participate, and it get a lot out of that experience. We want to continue to make sure that experiences that students want and are going to help them move forward, we're able to help find those for them. So we really want to continue to grow in that area. The other thing we've seen a lot of growth in is the opportunities for dual enrollment programs. This is another way for students to get out and have some curriculum coming from other places. Most all of our dual enrollment, um, courses that are taught in the high school are taught by our staff, their internal classes, but they partner with, um, you know, other institutions. And this allows a student not just to potentially go to a college with here's my AP score. Gosh, I hope you accept that credit. But it's coming with an actual transcript. Um, you know, from a college saying, I've, I've earned credit in this class and we've been expanding those opportunities for students. We've, uh, this year, we added in a marketing, um, class that is being run as a full dual enrollment being taught by our business teacher. And we're looking to at continued opportunities at where this could potentially continue to grow, um, for next year. But looking to grow it this year to prepare kids to be able to in course selection to take things that are dual enrollment. So those are our four goals.

00:35:02,730	S6:
Thank you.

00:35:03,900	S15:
Of course.

00:35:05,199	S6:
Jen.

00:35:06,099	S11:
I'm concerned that there's not a goal, particularly with the rise in anti-Semitism that we've seen in the high school just these last couple of weeks.

00:35:13,530	S15:
Um.

00:35:15,800	S11:
I really think that needs to be a focus.

00:35:18,469	S15:
Um, one thing that I can say is that the the goals that any school puts puts out or of course not. The only things that that a school or a district are working on, we all know that there's, you know, a lot of other things that that are worked on and that are a focus. Um, and it is unquestionably a focus. Um, you know, of ours this year? Um, Brian has already been. I'm sorry. It's the same people's name. Brian Mengoni, our principal, um, has already been in communication with a number of people from the community that have reached out, uh, which? Which has been great. And providing connections not just to individuals, but to organizations that are going to be able to come in again. We anticipate the use of our community block as a way to continue education for students.

00:36:07,000	S4:
Can I jump on that one too? Of course. I just happened to talk to Principal Madigan today about it. We were trying to figure out, um, what his direction was. Um, he's reached out to both the Lappin Foundation and the ADL. The ADL is has already given him a ton of, um, things that he can use either within the school or bring into the middle and high school. Um, and then the kids are going to meet with representatives from the Lapin Foundation for student level trainings and then kind of teach, you know, the the team model of bringing it back. Uh, we want to do that for both the high school and the middle school. You know, it's it's just not an isolated incident or issue. So, um, there is a plan to continue doing that. It's just not one of the specific goals. It certainly could be because it's it's something that's of a high priority. So it's you'll see through the next few months, there'll be different levels of both involvement with kids and also with staff members.

00:37:07,099	S11:
Yeah, I just knew it was a little frustrating because I know the women's field hockey team and the women's soccer team both won cals this week, but the only one that was mentioned was the boys. Wow. Like, we need to make sure that if somebody's coming in and presenting about teams doing well, we need to be present on all the teams that are doing well. Yeah, not just boys teams.

00:37:30,369	S7:
And also not just the sports teams.

00:37:32,869	S11:
Yeah, that's that's true.

00:37:36,030	S14:
Um.

00:37:36,869	S6:
The other people have questions regarding the goals I do.

00:37:40,800	S9:
Um, so I know a few weeks ago, the state rolled out a pilot about AI. I think to like 30 school districts. It really was just a few weeks ago. So it's an it's an AI curriculum pilot, and I'm wondering if we would have the ability to sort of shadow or like get info from one of the districts. I think the closest one to us is Revere. Just to kind of see how it's going for them as we develop our own, um, curriculum about AI. I know as an educator myself, I'm scrambling for info, so I wonder if that's a possibility.

00:38:14,469	S4:
So the state's doing a number of things. They're they're doing a training. I'm signed up for training, I think in two weeks, which is the kickoff for our goal to be able to say, okay, these are all the things at the state level. I don't know if the state has a full website with lots of information. They also have now a new guidebook that just came out in the past couple of months. So all of those resources are very similar to what they're pushing down to the schools that they just grant funded a lot of the schools that were eligible. Yeah. Um, for those for those grant funds and the rest, as usual, the rest of us have to kind of find our own way. But, um, we are kicking that off. Uh, through November, you'll start to see that ramp up.

00:38:54,599	S9:
That's awesome. Yeah, just, you know.

00:38:56,300	S4:
There's a lot of there's a lot there's so much coming down the pipe right now. We're trying to stay focused with the, uh, mass Dessie, because. Yeah. Um, you can go in 400 directions and and never really come to an end. So we're trying to stay within what they've curated. Um, they've been able to connect you on staff level and administrative level, superintendent level, different trainings, um, for implementing and for working on developing a curriculum. That's awesome. Um, also bringing things back into the buildings we're fortunate to we have a number of early adopters at the high school, middle school, that are very willing to teach our teachers and share their share their knowledge. So that's kind of fun to to see what some of the early adopters already are using it for.

00:39:41,030	S9:
That's great. I hate to just start from scratch on something like that. So that's awesome. Thank you.

00:39:45,869	S15:
Yeah, I think I would just add to that as well. I think one of the things that we do well in this region is, is having those job like meetings. I know that Brian meets with, you know, the other Cal principals on a regular basis. We actually just launched this year a monthly meeting of the assistant principals in the in the Cal as well. Um, and these are the types of topics that come up. And we were able to sort of share those things. You know, we share them at staff meetings, which is great, and people will share their ideas. But to be able to share, you know, get some of that from other schools and bring it back to shares, um, you know, is an effective practice that's been, you know, been a joy to be a part of.

00:40:23,099	S9:
That's great. Thank you.

00:40:25,070	S15:
Awesome.

00:40:26,699	S6:
I had a quick question about the goal that's up here about the internships. This is something I've been stood in and I, I guess I just want clarification like it's the goal is to expand opportunities in outside of the. I think both of these action steps are terrific, but I also am wondering about. I guess my question is about the. Typically the seniors are the ones that do the internships. I don't know if you know about what percentage of seniors get to do that.

00:40:57,070	S15:
Well, I would say when you say.

00:40:58,900	S6:
Like.

00:40:59,530	S15:
They all have the.

00:41:00,300	S6:
Option to do that.

Yes. 00:41:01,469	S15:
Yes. Yeah it.

00:41:02,030	S4:
Is.

00:41:02,170	S15:
So it really does become that, that choice. And I believe, you know, over the past couple of years, the percentage of students doing has been about 10%. Um, it's been a little bit higher than that in certain years. Um, you know, some of that having to do with, um, you know, a number of different factors of what is going to encourage somebody to go out to do the internship versus versus staying. Um, I do find that, you know, there's sometimes it's a matter of there isn't something that aligns with what I'm looking to do going forward. Um, some students feel like I'm already set up for, you know, I'm into this school. I know where I'm sort of headed, you know, in life. And I'm going to have an opportunity for experiences in the future. So you get some of that, you know, some people who just don't want to be out of our building and they don't, you know, they they're excited to graduate, but they don't necessarily want it to come immediately. So there's a number of different, different factors. What I'm looking at is how can I try and form some new partnerships or relationships. That's going to then be that spark for another student or another group of students say, yes, I'm going to take advantage of that, because that's the sort of experience that I would that I would really want. And the expansion piece of it too, is, is, you know, potentially for some of our students who really do have an eye on what they're going to do and could potentially non-college bound students, um, even starting in the junior year, providing them with some opportunities to be learning outside the walls of the school could be really beneficial for them.

00:42:37,130	S6:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I just. I just think it. I think it's important for everyone to have the opportunity. And I think that, you know, you're right. Not everyone might seize that opportunity. But I just really do want to have our students. I mean, I think this is great. I just want to sort of make sure it is sort of expanding for everyone. Not not like the dual enrollment sounds great, but that's not what everybody wants. So thank you. Of course.

00:43:04,070	S14:
Other people.

00:43:07,099	S14:
Thank you.

00:43:08,070	S16:
Thank you, thank you.

00:43:12,170	S4:
All righty. Now we'll call up the elementary principals. They do their goals together generally. And we have we. Are you starting Carolyn I am. This is Sherry. I will lead off. And then I think Miss Hunt will be right behind. And then Mr. Thurston, uh, to to fold it out, it sounds like.

00:43:28,630	S17:
There we go. All right.

00:43:30,900	S18:
I'm Carolyn Chetty, I'm the principal at the Winthrop School. Um, our elementary goal one is a continuation of the Goals that we've had in the past. Um, goal one is going to focus on literacy. We are in our fourth year of LA, which is our high quality instructional material that we adopted four years ago. Um, teachers are really confident now in delivering tier one instruction. And so the shift this year is going to be on strengthening tier two and tier three, uh, interventions in reading. And we also this year are going to start looking a little deeper at writing. Um, and the focus in this goal is going to be really helping to make sure that we are accelerating growth of students with disabilities that are working below grade level. Um, and students who are not identified with disabilities but who are working below grade level. So the shift this year from tier one to tier two and three, we're looking at reading and writing interventions and ensuring that those are informed by progress monitoring data. We have a really solid progress monitoring system in place for reading. We are developing that to look at writing and how we are looking at students progression in writing. Um, and um, so some of our action steps, establishing a formal process for administering and analyzing universal screeners. We actually have a pretty good, um, system in place for that one change this year is you'll see imagine plus, that's the new name for the early bird screener, which is what we use in kindergarten. Um, the next action step, Lilo and freckle are online platforms to provide opportunities for first and second graders to do additional practice working on phonics, phonemic awareness, decoding, and coding. And they start with LA Lilo, and some kids will make their way all the way through the whole La Lilo program. And then The Freckle is an extension program for them to do if they finish the lilo. Generally, those platforms are used by students during our wind block, which is a 40 minute what I need block that's outside of tier one instruction. Some students during the wind block are going for tier two and tier three interventions, generally reading interventions. And then there are other students who are staying in the classroom. And this is an opportunity for them to have some practice there. One of the big shifts that we are making this year is some the way we are doing professional development. Um, and by that we've done PLCs and we've done district wide, um, what we call Java like trainings. And we do those on the early release Wednesdays. Those are things that we've done in the past, but we have changed it this year in that we are making sure that we are inviting and including our special education teachers and related services providers to join in those job like alike beatings and those PLCs which are professional learning communities. Those are done internally within our schools. We meet about once a month with each grade level. But by having those special educators as part of our conversations, they are helping us discuss sort of some of the struggles that classroom teachers might have as far as just differentiating and supporting students with disabilities and making sure we've got sort of the executive functioning structures in place. And we've been through our first cycle of PLCs in the district, I mean, in our schools. And we've had two job like meetings, and it has been really helpful for those special educators to be part of the conversations. Um, and then, uh, and so that goes to the next action item of the targeted professional development for assessing student writing. So that's something that we are working on. Julie Lineker, our elementary literacy um, coordinator, is helping to drive that, looking at the writing process. So we are diving deep into our curriculum to see what the writing structures are in the curriculum, and then looking for ways that we can expand those things, the ways that we can actually provide students more opportunities for writing above and beyond what's written in the curriculum. And we're doing that by really looking at the units and the lessons to find places that we do need supplemental support. Um, a couple other things that I wanted to make sure. Um, actually, I guess I've, I've covered all my little notes that I had written for myself. Um, so any questions about goal one, or do you want to wait until we've done all three goals and then we can ask questions?

00:48:15,329	S6:
We can. We can do that. Goal one anybody have any questions?

00:48:17,699	S14:
I don't have questions. Great. Thank you.

00:48:21,170	S11:
I have an overall question.

00:48:22,230	S14:
Okay.

Okay. 00:48:26,000	S4:
Great. Jenny hunt.

00:48:27,000	S18:
All right. Good evening everyone. I'm Jennifer Hunt, the principal at the Cutler Elementary School. And excuse my almost no voice at this point. I have a little bit of a cold, so I will do the best I can. Um, similar to the elementary goal one, um, that Carolyn just spoke about in terms of literacy, our elementary goal, too, is focused again on that ongoing mtss support system that we've put in place years ago. Um, goal two is focused on math, um, strengthening tier one instructional practices, implementing explicit and systematic based tier two in tier three instruction. Um, and again, closing that gap, looking at narrowing that gap with students with disabilities is a district focus this year in district goal. Um, we are in year two of implementing Eureka math squared. And it is a very robust math curriculum. last year. It was a lot of just learning about sort of the lesson structure, the pacing, the assessments. And teachers were really, um, attached to their, their, their, their guidebooks. But this year we are noticing that teachers are developing a much more independence in terms of structuring their lessons along what students really need, um, have a better ability to really look more in depth at the curriculum to help support students of all learning levels. Um, one thing we did do this year was launch a math screener. So we really haven't had a solid math screener or assessment that measures similarly to such, like a screener that looks at all of the different concepts, components and skills and mathematical learning. And we had it's called SA math assessment. It is a computer adapted test. By Renaissance, it's used to measure student's math skills. It tracks their growth over time. The test is very, very personalized and diagnostic as it adjusts the level of difficulty in real time based on students performance. And it provides data for universal screening, progress monitoring and instructional planning. So we've already had an opportunity to look at that data in the next couple of weeks. All three elementary schools are going to be meeting with our math data teams. So like Carolyn said, we have very robust literacy data teams and meetings. That hasn't been the past practice. We haven't put as much time into it. We haven't had as much opportunity to really look at data. So this year, with this new star math assessment, we have lots of information that we can look at. Um, another resource resource that we use to really, um, to boost our tier two and tier three intervention is the the Catalyst Math intervention extension resources. That is part of the Eureka math squared program. This is a program for students to go on and do like an online kind of assessment or online activities like Star Math is it's actually more of a a program and a structure for teachers to use when they are doing interventionist lesson planning with students who might need that tier two or tier three support. But it also has opportunities for extension lesson plans for those students who might need more enrichment opportunities. So we're trying to look at, like all learners and really focusing on making sure everyone has what they need in terms of in terms of resources and support. Um, we also are using freckle. I know Carolyn had talked about it in literacy, but we have it in math. It's also from Renaissance. Um, it's an online platform form for math and other subjects that provides adaptive, again personalized practice for students. So it is something that we would use during wind time. So that is what I need. And that is typically the time during the day that classroom teachers are able to do tier two intervention opportunities for students. It also adjusts the difficulty of problems based on the student's performance and helps ensure that they're working at like they're just right level, right, that they're getting everything they need. It is a tier two intervention at this at this point. Um, but it's been a great resource. Teachers love it. The kids love it. It's fun. And we know that learning is fun. Kids don't even realize they're learning. So it is very much a go to favorite for kids. Um, as Carolyn had mentioned that we are now incorporating more opportunities for special education in general education teachers to meet, and it has been amazing, I have to say, watching sort of just in the short amount of time how much collaboration is happening across the building. Um, so it's been great. What we've been doing is inviting them to our, our PLCs, our professional learning meetings that we have, um, once a month with every grade level. And what we're noticing is that when they join us, we can look really closely at the data. We can look really closely together at the curricula, the math or the literacy. Um, and we discuss a lot about, you know, students and what types of resources they need, what types of scaffolding they may need. There's been a lot of sharing, um, and opportunities for collaboration. And it is a goal for all of us to continue to work collaboratively together and share those resources and scaffolds so that we have that consistency and coherence across not just all three elementary schools, but all grade levels and also special education and gen Z. So there's a real big jump in that. And that is also part of our job of like meetings that we have once a month. Um, we, our Gen Ed and our specialty teachers are meeting together again, looking at our resources and sharing. There's a lot of collaboration and sharing right now. Um, and also data team meetings. We didn't typically invite, always invite our special education teachers. We were worried about time constraints and servicing kids. But now that's become more a part of sort of the fabric of all of these meetings. Um, and our data team meetings are another action or action step that it's very data driven to support tier two and tier three instruction. And we have that expertise from the special education teachers, um, being shared at those meetings. And we do have tier two intervention opportunities at all three elementary schools in the area of math, using what I had talked about previously. The difference is Bucher and Cutler, we actually have qualified for title one math tutors. So we both have that extra interventionist that we work with them to create really targeted support for high priority, high priority math topics. And this model of the title one tutor varies between a pull out model of, you know, small group instruction somewhere with really targeted instruction around, let's say like fact fluency or something like that. But also there's a push in component to it where that tutor goes into the classroom, works collaboratively with the teacher alongside them during a Eureka math lesson. And there's opportunity for that person to support students within that gen ed classroom. Um, and I think that is it for me. Do you have any questions or are we going to wait for questions?

00:56:12,570	S6:
We're good.

00:56:13,469	S18:
Okay. Thank you.

00:56:14,599	S14:
Thank you.

00:56:16,929	S4:
Mr.

Thurston. 00:56:22,429	S19:
Good evening. My name is Ben Thurston. I'm the principal here at Baker Elementary. So our goal three is really in line with a lot of what we've talked about tonight, um, around supporting students and supporting students at lots of different levels. So what we're thinking about here is strengthening our MTS behavior framework. Um, through open circle, through tier one and tier, excuse me, tier two and tier three supports um to really support all students, especially those with intensive needs. Um, this is an expansion of our MTS practices. Um, Carolyn talked a little bit about what we're doing with literacy. Jenny talked a little bit about what we're doing with math. So this is that next that next step of that. Um, when Eric talks about belonging, consistency and coherence, this is the belonging piece of that. So one of the things we'll do is develop our menu of tier two interventions. As I said, we've developed a lot with literacy over the last four years and math and really bringing this to that social emotional development piece as well, in line with our adoption of Open Circle as our tier one curriculum. We have kindergarten, first grade trained right now and will train second and third grade this year. Um, also looking to expand how we use our instructional support team, our Iste, to look at incident referrals and look for students who might need some support. Um, when we think about things that happen in the school, they happen across environments. Things could be happening in the classroom, at recess, at lunch, at specials. These are all in these are all with different adults. And so we're really trying to bring all that data together and formally have a team look at that to try to identify if there are any kids who need any additional supports. And then along with that training our IST in behavior intervention plans. Once we have identified those students who might need a little bit more, um, making sure that that team has the tools to create some really effective plans to support those kids as they navigate elementary school. Um, so all in all, we've got these systems in place for literacy and math, and now we're thinking about those soft skills. Um, kids are coming to us with way more anxiety and way more trauma than they have in the past, and we want to develop our tools to more effectively support them. Um, and building these supports for SEL is really going to impact positively all the academic areas as well.

00:58:38,530	S14:
Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right.

Questions. 00:58:43,769	S6:
I think you had a general question about.

Yeah. 00:58:45,800	S14:
Go ahead.

00:58:47,030	S11:
Why are all three goals and goals focusing on tier two and tier three? Most of our students are tier one. I really feel like by focusing on just schools with the primary focus on tier two and tier three, we're leaving those tier one students behind. Also, there's a lot more that goes on in schools that than meets.

Yes. 00:59:12,170	S19:
Yes. Um, let me think about how one will respond to that was a deep question. That's a good one.

00:59:20,300	S14:
Yeah, yeah.

00:59:21,769	S19:
Um, tier one and tier two and two. Three don't exist in separate places. They are all tied together. And we talk about kids receiving tier one. Everyone receives that tier one instruction, that tier two and tier three is flexible. And so kids will move in and out of those as, as they need to. So it really is one system that does support everybody and looks out for everybody. We also think about traditionally we think about tier the tiered system as as a triangle. Um, there's also a triangle on the other side. Sometimes it's done as a diamond where you have these tier two and tier three interventions for those kids who are really excelling as well. Um, so some of those extensions we talked about with freckle, um, on both the Ela side and the math side, like that's tier, but it's the other tier two, um, for kids who need a little bit more in that direction. Um, so it really does. It really does hit everybody. Um, as we pull kids, you know, dynamically in and out of those tiers, you appear.

Yeah. 01:00:18,670	S18:
I also want to point out to that we've put a lot of effort over the last few years on adopting high quality instructional materials at the tier one level, and we're feeling really good about that. We've seen great results from adopting Eureka math squared last year in math. Um, based on the data that we've already looked at and teachers reactions this year to the kids who've come up to them compared to the kids they had last year. So I think for us, we feel really secure in our tier one instruction at this point, and now we need to do the same. This is a heavy lift in some places, so we really want to put a lot of focus. We're trying to create some, um, um, solid structures, data collection. And I think it was Zack that mentioned in MTS Handbook. We're doing the same thing at the elementary, so that we know of about all the resources that we have. We have three elementary schools. We try really hard to operate together and make sure there's consistency and coherence across all three schools. And this is a way for us to do that, because we're making sure that the good things that are happening in school A are also being shared at schools B and C, so that we are making sure that no matter what school kids are at, they're getting the same experiences. And the more we can fix the the gaps at the tier two level, then we can start to see those gaps going away and it's going to improve our scores across the board. So um, so that's why I think we're all on board for this focus now on tier two and tier three.

01:01:58,369	S11:
But why just MTS like you don't have a fourth goal. That's about something other than literacy, behavior or math. I know there's more than literacy behavior.

01:02:09,230	S18:
Well, that's what we that's really what we do. And I mean, our focus 90% of our day is literacy and math. And then we're dealing with behaviors, and we're dealing with classroom environments and sense of belonging and all of the things that we do to get little kids ready to go up to the middle school. So, um. Do you want to chime in? No, I just want to say to, you know, part of the focus in the district really is actually that tier one instruction. And when we talk about the collaboration between gen ed and special Ed, it is the start of those conversations. The start of those collaboration opportunities begins in tier one. And so it's really I guess I understand your your question and your point that where you are mentioning tier two and tier three a lot, because that's part of sort of the kids where we see struggling. Right? Those are the kids, whether it be literacy, math or social emotional learning. Those are sort of the kids that need that tier two and tier three. So what are we doing to bolster the tier one component of all of those? That is something we talk about with leadership team all the time. We talk about it with our elementary curriculum team. And so that really is part of the reason why our we have that collaboration opportunities with special ed and Gen Ed that had not been there before. So the idea is really thinking about like universal design for learning. What do all kids need and what can we give all kids what they need? I don't know if that helps at all.

01:03:34,730	S11:
I guess my concern is if you're spending 90% of your time on literacy and math, are you really producing real wounded, well-rounded students in the other subjects that they have to focus on? Because if they're only getting 10% of the time? Yeah. On history and science.

01:03:52,130	S18:
So part of the KLA curriculum is that it is the history, it's the social studies, it's the science. And it's really that knowledge can be the knowledge component. It is actually all embedded. It's pretty amazing if you walk into a into a first grade classroom, and they can tell you how long it takes for the human heart to pump blood around the body. Once I walked into a classroom yesterday, and apparently it's one minute I didn't know if you guys knew that. First graders. Yeah. So it's. And then the science is also built into that. And just another piece of that is the writing is also nonfiction writing. So the writing in what they're learning about in social studies, they're writing what they're learning about in math.

01:04:32,599	S11:
Yeah.

01:04:33,400	S18:
I mean, not math. Social studies in science.

Yeah. 01:04:35,699	S11:
I didn't I didn't understand.

01:04:38,400	S14:
Yeah.

Yeah. 01:04:39,130	S18:
And we should also point out that this year we have a new special. Um, first, it's a stem a stem special. So kids are also getting that additional opportunity. So yes, I should have mentioned that the knowledge building in Kayla is always science and social studies based.

Okay. 01:04:57,570	S13:
I'll just add a little.

01:04:58,469	S19:
Like broad peace around reading and how that works for kids. And the simple view of reading is around decoding and around vocabulary. So decoding is how do I turn those letters into sounds? I can do that really well, but if I come across a word I've never seen before and I decode it, I don't know what it means. So being able to decode does mean nothing if I don't have that broad based background knowledge. So half of our literacy program is decoding and the other half is just that broad based background knowledge across everything.

01:05:27,469	S9:
Yeah, that's a good point. I think when we think of literacy, like when we were in elementary school, probably literacy meant, you know, a fictional story about some cute characters. But I see the work my kids come home with that is Kayla. And it's like you said, it's about the human body. It's about the Louisiana Purchase. It's, you know, so they're learning all these things embedded within the curriculum. I love it, I think it's great. Just know. But but I think it's.

01:05:54,099	S11:
A.

01:05:54,199	S9:
Great concern. But I think it's a good point of clarification for people because our point of, you know, our memories of literacy and elementary school is very different. So I think it's great that you brought it up and that anyone's listening can understand more about it.

01:06:04,900	S11:
Absolutely.

01:06:06,400	S6:
Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all.

01:06:11,570	S4:
Thank you all for coming tonight so much. Great job. Can I just say one thing, please? I think I think it's important to note that the the goals never touch upon the work that our teachers, administrators support people do all day long. I mean, the, the the literacy curriculum alone is fascinating. It's just it's fascinating. It's not just, you know, 20 years ago, literacy. You're looking at opportunities for kids to talk about the Renaissance. You know, they're talking about the Louisiana Purchase. You know, one one lesson that blew me away was the first graders doing the the nervous system. Yeah. Um, so they do get a lot of opportunity, but then then you bring in the other pieces of the specials where we've continued to try to figure out, okay, how do we give kids kind of a dip in each of these things, like music and art and now Stem? Um, so there's a lot going on in our elementary schools, and I think it's, uh, it's a testament to the, to the arts program, this program that we've done, these put these things in place for the last four years. Remember four years ago I said, this is going to be about a seven year goal trying to grow this out. So tier two and tier three is the next iteration. Um, because that's where we're seeing our, our gap. And that's one of the things that I drive the principals crazy with. They can probably all tell you that, um, we do a lot of we do a weekly reflection together about, you know, the things that we're doing or they're doing in classrooms, visiting classrooms more often, integrating our special ed teachers, integrating even specialists into different conversations. So there is a lot going on in our schools, you know, outside of the goals, which it's I think it's hard when you say, okay, come up with 3 or 4 goals, but there's also 8 or 9 other things that you're you're working on through the through the year. So thank you to our principals.

01:07:56,630	S6:
Thank you thank you.

01:07:57,969	S16:
Thank you.

01:08:00,599	S6:
Um, okay. Um, next up is going to be right back to you, Eric. But this is just we talked about this at our last meeting. This is the, um, this is the we our last meeting. We discussed this, but it's just we hadn't received the letter from the MSBA, and this is just a statement. Um, I think we need to vote on it. You can read the letter. It's basically saying we're done. Go ahead.

Eric. 01:08:27,329	S4:
Good at the after the, uh, the ballot vote, we reached out. Actually, MSBA reached out to us the next morning, said, okay, what happened? So we sent them a letter outlining everything that happened. Part of their process is to have this, uh, form that is kind of formalized. So to formalize it, they they asked us to have myself in the chair signed a document, but I wanted to both give you an opportunity to see the the letter that they sent and then to vote on the second exhibit, which is the actual signature page that tells us, you know, that we're being we're declaring that we're we're requesting to be removed from the statement of interest process. And then I think it's on the 29th of October, the MSBA board will meet and then vote on our removal. So it's really a processing and nothing. It really ends the process. We sign it, send it to them, they vote to accept it. And then the process is is finalized.

01:09:30,500	S6:
Okay.

01:09:31,130	S5:
Um.

01:09:34,130	S7:
I can try.

01:09:34,930	S6:
A.

01:09:35,029	S7:
Motion.

01:09:35,430	S6:
Yes.

01:09:35,569	S7:
Oh, just now, I just got it.

Okay. 01:09:38,670	S8:
Um, I move that the Hamilton one m Regional School District execute and return or appoint.

01:09:47,470	S7:
Eric to.

01:09:47,899	S8:
Execute and.

01:09:48,500	S7:
Return.

01:09:49,029	S8:
The declaration of removal of a Statement of Interest form to the MSBA as confirmation of the district's decision to remove the Statement of Interest for the Cutler Elementary School from the MSBA Capital Pipeline.

01:10:03,229	S11:
Second.

01:10:04,770	S6:
All right. And a motion. And a second. Um, is there anyone who has a question about what this is?

01:10:13,699	S7:
No.

01:10:14,270	S6:
Is there any further discussion?

01:10:18,699	S7:
I don't want to, but.

01:10:20,300	S11:
Yeah.

01:10:21,100	S9:
Can we.

01:10:21,899	S7:
Do it? We don't.

01:10:22,800	S11:
I mean, it's fine. Maybe get it on the record and clarify it for the community. Is that with this school voted down? Doing anything else is not going to be able to be fast. We have no money in this year's budget for substantial renovations. Um, we're going to have to figure out what renovations need to be made first. And we've got to be really careful, because if we spend too much on renovations, Then we've got to bring the whole building up to code.

01:10:51,000	S6:
Um, so I, I don't want to, but I will tell you that item, uh, d is, um, a revisit of the district goals in which my hope is that we'll have a conversation about that. So I, I'm not saying that it doesn't sort of fall under this one two, but. Yeah. Um, yeah.

01:11:14,399	S12:
But I think that's a great point, Jen, to just make sure that everybody is aware this is very much a procedural process step that we have to follow. It was a very long process to get to the vote. And now we have to end this process and start all over again on a multi-year process. Nothing will happen fast yet.

01:11:37,199	S11:
It's just not something we don't have $5 million that we can pull out to do a renovation to something at Cutler.

01:11:45,369	S12:
Correct.

01:11:47,130	S11:
That's right. And there's no way to do that for this year.

01:11:49,329	S12:
That's right. And we're starting the budget process for next year.

Yes. 01:11:54,630	S9:
Right.

01:11:55,369	S12:
We're not going to just shove that in for next year without having discussions about. So we're looking at starting these conversations this time next year for the following year and beyond.

01:12:07,069	S11:
Mhm. Absolutely.

Mhm. 01:12:11,100	S6:
All right. Um does anybody have anything else about this document.

01:12:16,770	S9:
No.

01:12:17,869	S6:
Okay. Um, all those in favor? That is unanimous. Of the five members present and the motion passes. Um, and Eric and I will sign that right after the meeting.

Um. 01:12:34,670	S6:
Okay. Um, so next up is, um, the. So we've talked about that. Um, the Mac has an annual meeting, uh, or annual conference. Um, and this year, David Frenkel is going to go to the conference. Um, each year at the conference, um, the resolutions committee puts forth some resolutions. This year, there's just one. Um, and at that conference, um, each committee gets to if they have a delegate there, which we will. David Frenkel will be there. Um, they get to vote on whether or not to put move, you know, support this resolution or not. So, um, this is a resolution you can look at. It is, um, submitted by the Grafton School Committee. It's about removing BMI testing from the schools. Um, and our my goal in putting this on here is to have us have a discussion, um, so that we can, if we choose to direct, um, our delegate on how that we, the school committee, would like him to vote on this. Um, I will tell you that, um, I read this, and I was quite mindful that, um, you know, while I may have thoughts about the BMI testing, it's certainly not an area of expertise for me. Um, so I did ask Eric. I said that I personally would be interested in what our nursing staff has to say about this. Um, so I did ask Eric if he would provide us with some information on that.

01:14:14,270	S4:
And they agree. They agree with.

01:14:17,170	S7:
What.

01:14:17,630	S4:
Happened to BMI as a measure.

01:14:19,170	S11:
Yeah. It's antiquated.

01:14:20,699	S7:
I can't even believe it. Do they still make them climb the rope up to the top? No.

01:14:25,899	S6:
It's very good at that, by the way.

01:14:27,300	S7:
Oh, I'm sure you were, Athena. No, I was.

01:14:30,529	S11:
Terrible. I'd like to continue, but I guess I really asked because.

01:14:34,300	S6:
No, um. No. Uh, thank you for that. I don't know if you had any more. Just that generally.

01:14:39,430	S4:
They know The conversation with our lead nurse was was very straightforward, she said. She said they she read through this whole thing. I asked her to read it and then just give me some feedback. And she said, we we would agree with this. We do not think it should be a measure in school. It's not enough expertise that's related. And it's an outdated, um, idea I guess from.

01:15:01,170	S6:
Right. And currently my understanding is that this is a requirement that they have to do. So it takes some time.

01:15:08,199	S4:
Does.

01:15:08,630	S6:
That they are required to do this.

01:15:11,229	S8:
And I think the other piece of it, what I read, I mean, I'm opposed to it, but it's only reporting. It's not like they're they don't do anything with the information there. We don't have the capacity to do anything with this information. The school nurses are overloaded as it is. So I thought that was really interesting. Um, so it's just reporting it and then kind of not doing anything with the data, right?

01:15:35,829	S11:
Yeah. I'd be much more interested in a measure of cardiovascular health than somebody's BMI.

01:15:40,869	S8:
Exactly.

01:15:41,600	S12:
Yeah. I will just say the only question I had was I think it's still somewhat used in like, the medical practice, unfortunately. Right. Like even.

01:15:52,399	S8:
Well, sure. Like a doctor, like at your.

01:15:54,300	S12:
Pediatrician looking at body mass index, they're looking at like, where do you fall on the scale? So. Yeah. Like so I don't know. That was just my only the only hesitation I had is that I don't 100% agree. I think it's antiquated and very outdated. However, it is still somewhat used.

01:16:11,100	S6:
I just want to share that I actually had a similar concern specifically around, um, you know, sort of somewhat of an equity issue that students who don't have as much access, you know, that that may be getting more from our nursing staff in terms of flagging areas of concern. That may not be students, that may not be brought to the doctor on a regular basis. That was one of my concerns, was like, you know, not everyone's getting the same level of medical care and that this might that was a question that I had. Like, would this be an opportunity for a student, you know, to get some information to that students, parents that there might be a concern? So that was an area of concern as part of why I said, you know, but that was my thought. But I was sort of like, well, let's ask our nursing staff because but but I shared that concern. I don't know if that was exactly your concern, but that was kind of mine. Was that like, not everyone is getting the same access to medical care.

01:17:11,670	S11:
And so I think BMI is slowly being phased out. I think it'll be gone in five years, replaced by the new measurement, the Bry Body Roundness index, which takes into more more variables into account when determining whether somebody is obese or fit. Yeah. Um, and it's just.

01:17:30,829	S12:
Yeah.

01:17:31,229	S11:
I would guess BMI has gone in five years.

01:17:33,699	S12:
Yeah, I'll just share it. share. Everybody knows I work for a company that manufactures vaccines, and eligibility of a certain vaccine was discussed for this year, and BMI was factored into that eligibility. So that's where I'm coming from, is like, I don't want to in any way prohibit people from access to lifesaving vaccines. If BMI is a measure that helps determine eligibility and if something happens in school. So that was where I was coming from.

01:18:01,829	S8:
Interesting.

01:18:04,130	S9:
It's a complex issue.

01:18:05,729	S6:
Yeah.

01:18:06,800	S8:
Do you want a motion?

01:18:07,829	S6:
Um, yeah. So, yeah. Somebody have a motion that they want to make.

01:18:10,670	S8:
I move that the Hamilton and Regional School Committee direct our MASC representative to vote yes on resolution one, removing BMI testing from schools.

01:18:22,800	S11:
Second.

01:18:24,270	S6:
Um, so I had a motion and a second. And everyone is clear that if, um, in the motion, if we voted yes, that would be supporting Removing BMI testing. So it's supporting the resolution. So it's just making sure everyone understands. Um all right everybody ready to vote or is there any more questions? Okay. All those in favor? That is unanimous. Of the five members present and the motion passes. Um, and I will make sure to let our representative know.

01:18:58,270	S11:
Is that really the only resolution?

01:19:00,630	S6:
Yeah. And if you can see the document, which I didn't put the entire document on here because it's like you can see this is page 25 of the document. And there's like there's many more pages after there are previous. If you look at the bottom, the next several pages are about previously approved resolutions. So that like they have all these old resolutions that are still kind of hanging around that like might get discussed whether they should continue if these previously Approved resolutions or not. So you can look at the whole document. But this is the only new resolution. So what happens is committees put forth resolutions. I have no idea how many were put forth, I don't know. But then the resolutions committee does some work and brings.

01:19:48,170	S11:
Do we have to vote on the old resolutions that are being brought forward, or can we just use our old votes?

01:19:55,430	S6:
They I don't I actually don't know. It's different this year and so I don't know. But my understanding is it's not that you're voting on they don't vote. They just I think they discuss on whether to continue like work. They've already been approved. And some of them they continue working on. And some of them they let that I don't know if that was 100% accurate.

01:20:17,000	S4:
That's my best I think they use a three year window.

01:20:19,100	S6:
It's a three. It is a three year window. And that's new. It didn't used to be that way. It used to be that like once they passed a resolution then it was kind of out there forever. And now that's why there's this three year Window and that they let some things go after three years, if either it's been resolved or it's just.

01:20:37,869	S9:
Supports it anymore.

01:20:38,800	S6:
Or it's just not.

01:20:40,170	S11:
Relevant.

01:20:40,699	S6:
Relevant, or I think sometimes just not going anywhere. Right. Like it?

01:20:46,069	S9:
Um, are those the same as the ones that are set to expire?

01:20:49,899	S6:
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. 01:20:51,500	S9:
So we don't have to vote on those.

01:20:53,600	S6:
Yeah, I again I don't think so, but no, it's a good question and I, we could I encourage any and all of you I did what I thought that if you want to go you can go to the MASC website and check out this document. If you think we we've still got time. So if you if you think we need to go back and look at that, you can let me know and we'll bring it back. Like I said, this document is very long. This is page 25 and I think it maybe is 60 pages long or something. And it has all kinds of other things about the MASC conference, um, in it. So but you can look it up on the website. Um. All right. I think we're still in the middle of the moment. Did we vote? No, we did vote. And I said I would. Yes. Okay. We're good. Um. All right. Are we ready to move on?

01:21:35,500	S8:
Yes.

01:21:35,699	S6:
Okay, cool. Um. All right, so next up, um, so these are our voted on an approved district goals, which are over here to be gestured at, um, and relevant to some things we already talked about today. Um, goal for B, which is an approved district goal. Um. Oh, no, I'm sorry, I'm not on the right one for a excuse me, which is an approved district goal. Um, was around the design process for the elementary school building project. It was specifically stated you can see it right there, that it's dependent upon a positive outcome at the town wide election. Um, so I guess the purpose for me of putting this on here and why I spoke to Eric about putting this on here, is that obviously this, you know, goal. It's even stated here that if a, you know, with a negative outcome that this goal is ended. Mhm. Um, but I feel I put this here. My intent here was to open a discussion here not looking for sort of any not anticipating an answer this evening but beginning a conversation um about what's next. Um, and I mean I'm going to if everyone's okay, I'm just going to sort of say a few things about what I'm hoping for in this conversation, and then you can chime right in and say if that's what you're hoping for or not. Um, I'm thinking about being really thoughtful about what is are the next steps. And that might not look like, um, you know, like, this is what I want to renovate or this is what I want to build or this is what I it might look more like. I'll tell you what it looks like for me. The question for me is, how do we, moving forward, ensure that whatever, um, proposal or whatever project we hope to pursue, look, to pursue is a project that is something that we, our I dream of filling our community with a sense of pride and ownership. Like how do we create, um.

01:24:15,100	S6:
A framework for how to how to proceed through those next steps so that. Um, and what information and what groups do we need and what how do we do that? So that we create a proposal that, for me, is something that is welcomed with pride and ownership. That's my thought.

01:24:40,529	S8:
I wish I knew the answer.

01:24:41,369	S9:
That's a great question.

01:24:42,600	S6:
Good question. But you may not be. You may not. I mean, the general question is like, okay, we're not doing this, so what are we going to do? That's the I mean, that's the but I see that as a we really need to sort of talk about what how do we get there. Not so much what the end result is.

01:25:04,270	S11:
Yeah. Well, you know, it was brought up in the chairs meeting that, um, maybe the first step is to figure out what needs to be done. Like, what's the most pressing matter At the elementary level in terms of renovation facilities.

01:25:25,600	S6:
Just.

01:25:25,899	S9:
Facility facilities.

01:25:26,770	S6:
At the.

01:25:27,100	S9:
Elementary level. I so I think one hopeful thing or positive thing is some of the work that was done towards the specific color school project I think we can sort of use as a guideline about, you know, they went through all the schools with a fine tooth comb. You know, we know what the issues are. So I wonder if we can kind of look back at some of that work and use that to answer those.

01:25:54,800	S11:
Cutler I think we can. It's the other two that they didn't go through with the fine tooth comb.

01:25:59,369	S9:
But then all the options, you know, C and W and numbers like there's there's some information there even though you know it's probably outdated already as far as total cost. But at least there's some groundwork already done a little bit with planning. Um, I don't know.

01:26:19,100	S6:
I.

Well. 01:26:23,770	S6:
Like. I agree and I think I'm trying to sort of even slow things down and sort of I guess like my starting point is when you start to think about all the groundwork that was done before. Like what? What? From that, can we take away it? One thing. I feel pretty. I feel pretty confident in saying is that, um, we got very little feedback that said, I'm not saying that there was no one, but there was not very there were very few people that said, I think the best thing to do was nothing like that was not. I'm not saying that there's not possibly someone in the community who thinks that, but that was not the general feedback that I heard. I heard in general, people saying, we want To provide safe schools and and and nice facilities for our students, and that there was a lot of disagreement about what that looked like or how that would get to be achieved. But I wasn't. And again, I fully understand that I'm not speaking for every single person in the community, but in general, I didn't hear a lot of feedback like, nope, we should do nothing. And I guess that feels hopeful to me that like, I feel like, okay, I think there's some agreement that.

01:27:49,729	S20:
I don't know.

01:27:50,569	S6:
So I guess that's backing way up from where you were, but I was sort of like, okay, well, like, where's the foundation?

01:27:56,329	S8:
I mean, your question bothers me because I really thought that's what we were doing.

01:27:59,970	S9:
I did too.

01:28:00,699	S8:
I thought that's what we were doing, that we were moving forward on a project that we could pursue, where we create a sense of pride and ownership in the community. And I think we should not. I mean, I'm not saying you're doing this, but I think we should really appreciate the work of, like, building better futures and the groups and the people and the parents and the teachers and the people that I spoke to that were committed to this project. And I just think that, um, there was a ton of support in the community for this project. So I just I think we also need to take that into account. Even though this vote didn't work. There's still a lot of like these people. I don't want to negate them. You know, they're citizens in the community. They live here, their families, they have opinions and they're really passionate about. They were and are really passionate about a project like this. So I want to be respectful of, you know, of that group as well. Like we can't just think about the people that voted no. I'm sorry. Like we have to think about the people that want the school. But I don't know the answer to your question because I legitimately thought that's what we were doing. And then when you find out that that's not what you're doing, then you say, well, okay. I really think we need some time. I know that the schools don't have the time, but another huge project like this, I don't know. I don't, so I know.

01:29:23,229	S6:
So I thank you for saying.

01:29:26,270	S8:
I think my question is I. My answer is I don't I just don't know.

01:29:29,399	S6:
I don't know either. And I want to say, I do want to respond to you because I, maybe I, I.

01:29:37,430	S6:
I don't know that we 100% agree, but I think we like in other words, I've spent some time I've spent some time really reflecting. Um, of course I feel, of course there I there were lots of people for whom this project did bring out those feelings. And the reality is that the vote did not pass and that it's I know I personally spent a lot of time thinking to myself, okay. That means that there's something that I didn't fully appreciate here. And I see it as like how the next time when we move forward with whatever it looks like, I think it's going to be important to be laying a framework to ensure that there's a different kind of.

01:30:34,100	S6:
A different kind of conversation or a different kind of.

Um. 01:30:38,800	S8:
Exactly. I guess I don't, I, I don't mind debating on issues and facts and truth, but I can't debate on misinformation, so I don't know how we go forward.

01:30:48,899	S6:
Okay.

01:30:49,170	S8:
So with, with just there's so much misinformation.

01:30:52,000	S6:
So that's a great like C that I think is a great and.

01:30:54,300	S8:
There's personal vendetta against.

01:30:55,899	S6:
You know but like how can I think that's a great beginning for a framework. Like what can we do to ensure that or to help the in Into the whole community. To have a way that.

01:31:19,470	S6:
That that information can be transmitted. That people that everyone can understand and say like, okay, this is true because I, I don't know. And I'm then I really will try to stop talking, but I.

01:31:35,369	S8:
Really know that I will elect you to like a high office.

01:31:38,369	S6:
No, I know, and I, but I what I'm trying to say is, I think that the part of the way to create that is to create some kind of a framework where there's more ownership so that people all with different opinions can, can agree. Like I said, I think you always want to start with where there's agreement. I think that there's agreement in our community that our schools are in our elementary schools, facilities are in need of attention. I think that that is something that people agree on in our community. So that's where we're starting, right?

01:32:19,699	S8:
I like that idea. Like we start from a place of agreement, but then it quickly devolves into how to pay for it, how to make it a reality.

01:32:26,399	S9:
Part of the issue is I see two main buckets of improvement needed. One is very physical and literally concrete. We can walk through the facilities, you can give a tour, you can see, you can read the State of facilities report. And it's very like concrete items, physical items that need attention. And I think that is the people that maybe voted no but are in support of improving the schools. Like that's very easy for them to see. Like we need that. The other bucket is the style of the facilities. You know, modern learning calls for different facilities than what we currently have, both in size and organization. So that piece, unless you have knowledge about modern education, that is less concrete to understand. So I think that is kind of the main push and pull of sharing information. Um, I'm not saying I know how to inform as much about that piece of it, and I think that's where I personally was very frustrated because our educators were telling us the specialists, the experts were telling us what they needed, and people I felt weren't listening or weren't believing and were just very focused on the physical stuff. But I understand that because we all have a home that we're caring for. You know, we're all familiar with replacing and renovating. So I think that is the push pull that we have to move forward with. I don't know how to solve that piece, though.

01:34:01,869	S11:
I think the paper will help. Like if we keep prior to the last year. Right. We didn't have a newspaper that went to every single resident in Hamilton and went.

01:34:12,529	S6:
I do think local news is really important.

01:34:15,270	S11:
So I think we need to.

01:34:20,130	S11:
Actively like engage with the newspaper to make sure that the actual facts are getting out there with actual numbers.

01:34:32,029	S6:
And I mean, maybe that I mean, I think this is I'm maybe that is I'm a huge believer in the desperate need for excellent local journalism. Um, I

01:34:48,770	S6:
it's one of those things like if, you know, if, if everybody has at times been frustrated by something that's in the newspaper, that's probably good, right? Like that. Like if if you know that like it's it's not always the most fun when you're like, oh wait, that story isn't necessarily spinning me in the best possible, I think. Yeah, that's probably a good thing if you're feeling like sometimes it, you know, I and to Julia's point, I mean, I actually I think the idea I mean, what I wrote down before you said that, but now that I'm thinking about it, is that Julia's point about like, how do we create a shared belief in an information system, a shared database, that people can agree this is factual information. And I think local journalism and really,

01:35:45,130	S6:
I mean, that's something we can't we can't ask for. That's our local journalist are right here. We can't tell them what to do, but like really intense investigative reporting to call out when facts are not facts or to call out when facts are facts, like. Could be really valuable.

01:36:03,600	S11:
Yeah, information is gonna play a huge role.

01:36:06,869	S8:
I also think a main piece that people were upset about, even though we gave them multiple opportunities to participate in the process, was that somehow this was like steamrolled over them in the last minute. Even though it had been going on for like ten years. And I actually.

01:36:21,500	S6:
But local journalism is a is exactly.

01:36:24,470	S8:
So now I think there is more desire to get involved earlier. There's more of an appetite to like engage in those discussions. So that could be a piece of it, like engaging people earlier or getting information out earlier. I mean, I don't want to at all say that Eric and the building committee did not do that because they did. But the whole thing was it was not it was just not as public. It wasn't as out there, it wasn't as well.

01:36:52,829	S12:
And there was no.

01:36:53,670	S11:
Way for us to communicate with the entire community.

01:36:56,600	S8:
All right. There's no there isn't a release.

01:36:58,800	S11:
Send an email to every single resident.

01:37:00,670	S8:
And that's true. That's true. We're sending emails to the community.

01:37:05,100	S12:
Yeah. I'll just I mean, again, I wasn't part of the school committee last year or in years prior when you all did a tremendous amount of work. But I do think that Eric and the school building, like there was just so much outreach to the community and to the public. So I'm personally struggling with like, yes, what more can be done going forward? Um, right. Especially when there's like anonymous email campaigns.

01:37:28,130	S8:
I'm like grasping at anything. They're just like grasping at something positive.

01:37:31,970	S11:
Yeah. And we're also dealing with the problem of how do we get one of them to vote for something that's just going to improve Hamilton schools? Correct. And how do we get Hamilton to approve something that's just going to improve?

01:37:43,699	S6:
But to be clear, all of our kids go to all of the schools.

01:37:48,069	S11:
I am.

01:37:48,529	S6:
Not.

01:37:49,170	S11:
Disagreeing with you.

01:37:50,130	S8:
But that's how people look at it. That's literally how they look. That's unfortunately, that's one of the the missing misconceptions that need to be addressed.

Yeah. 01:37:57,869	S12:
And so it's almost like like when I approach things from my perspective. Like at work, I try to take stock in like what? What do I see as the known obstacles? I kind of do. Like a swot. Right. Like, um, successes, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And then assess kind of those key threats and how like and a threat is just something that's going to be an obstacle essentially. And how do you come up with strategies for how do you combat that and overcome that? I mean, maybe that's something we apply here, but like understanding that, I think is a key sentiment that exists that we're going to have to overcome. And we have to think about how do we do that thoughtfully to be successful across all three schools?

01:38:41,100	S6:
Exactly. No. And I guess that's what I actually I mean, that's I think that's beautiful. Like, that's like, I maybe it doesn't feel like, you know, I know, I mean, I know I'm sure all of you had I mean, I had people 12 hours after the vote. Say to me like, okay, so what's plan B?

01:38:59,869	S9:
Yeah.

01:39:00,630	S6:
Yeah. Like and we're genuinely shocked that, like.

01:39:05,100	S11:
We don't have a plan B.

01:39:06,270	S6:
No, we've spent all this time and energy to create what we, you know, one plan because that's the way this works. But now we do need to create plan B like we do. And so yeah. So I love I mean I think that is like that to me. Like slowing things down and saying like okay, let's do an analysis. You know, I of course I don't remember the successes, weaknesses, opportunities.

01:39:33,970	S12:
I think I misspoke. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. That's what sorry. I'm tired. I've been up since 430. Um. You know.

01:39:41,470	S6:
Yeah. Oh. Um, so my intent here was really to open up a conversation with the committee, but also to have the community here that, like, we're. starting from here. We are. I don't know. I mean, we don't need to talk forever, I don't know. And I don't know if. Eric, if you want to chime in or not. It's okay.

01:40:05,329	S4:
No, I do, I think I think it's important for us to go right back to where Dana started. No matter what side you're on, everybody agrees something has to be done. I think that's pretty majority. I'm not going to say everybody, because there are some people that are going to say no, and I'm not allowed. I get that too. But the majority of the people, no matter what side you're on, we're saying, okay, we we realize something needs to be done. We don't want this to be done or we don't want that to be done and stop looking backwards. Look forward from that point. Bring the parties in. Whoever wants to come in and talk and tell, you know, what do you think? What do you think? What do you think? Which takes time. But I think it's an important time to be able to say, okay, let's get it all on the table. Let's sort out what's real and what's not. Maybe use the press or not, and then start to move forward. And then everybody carries the the process rather than somebody. Some, some people carry in the process. Some people don't. It's never going to be 100% agreement. It just doesn't work that way. I mean, every year at town meeting, we see somebody vote against the $9 bill to be paid from last year. It's okay, you know, to get that. But I think it's important for us to say we do know this piece of the puzzle. The something has to be done is what I think everybody can say. Yeah, you're right. What it is, is I think our next task. What is it? Because it might not it might be a stretch this far for people to say, okay, we can do a $10 million project, or we can do a $15 million project. We don't want to do a $30 million project. So I think really getting those like, how far does this go? Knowing some of the information about Cutler, there is a lot of work that needs to be done there. That's probably the bigger project right now about all of them. But again, what does that look like? There are a lot of people that had a lot of things to say. Um, good. Bad misinformation. Whatever. Drop it. Let's move forward based on what we have. That agreement is an important piece of the puzzle. And even conversations I've had in the community with people who voted. Now they will still say to me, we got something has to be done. So I think we need to be able to kind of drop whatever, um, concerns we have about the past and start to say, okay, how do we make this connection? How do we work together on behalf of our kids and our staff so that we can get something moving forward? And it's not going to be instant? There are a lot of still quote rules to the to the road. Um, there are rules with bidding. There are rules with design work. All the things that we, you know, we dealt with along the way. We still have to figure out how to fit that. Does it become an MSBA project again? Do we apply no matter what? In the spring? Those are. Those are all conversations I think we need to have. Um, we know it's not going to come around right away, but it could. You never you never know. It could come down in two years, five years, four years. But I think we need to be prepared to start taking some steps in the direction where everybody agrees, and then try to figure out how far we can go out. We can look back and be proud about everybody's anything. What I said, what somebody else said, we need to move beyond that to be able to get something done. I think it's important for our kids. I think it's important for our staff. I think it's important for all of us to be able to make something happen based on that agreement of we all realize something needs to be done.

01:43:18,569	S6:
Um, I don't know if I again, this was really just an opening conversation to to I think Jen mentioned a question to, you know. Yeah. No, but I and I guess, you know, if people feel like they have other things to say, we can, but we can also just, you know, move on. Um, and, and know that this is going to continue to come back on agendas and we're going to hear from people and reach out to people and, um, you know, so that we can kind of come. Eventually come forward with sort of what the path looks like.

01:43:55,930	S8:
Yeah.

Yep. 01:43:58,569	S16:
Right.

01:44:00,529	S6:
I actually feel good about the conversation. I hope you guys do. Yeah. Even though, um. Okay, we're ready to move on. Okay. Uh, next up, we have the, um, custodian, uh, MOA. I don't know if you want to speak to this. I don't we don't we don't have to. I mean, I know, but.

01:44:23,869	S21:
Uh, the current M.O. a from the Acme custodian and Maintenance union, uh, in summary, will have the district agreeing to count all vacation in sick days towards their 40 hour workweek. Uh, in return, the union agrees to another, uh, vacation blackout week for the week prior to senior graduation.

01:44:47,069	S22:
Mm.

Okay. 01:44:49,899	S6:
Um. Oh, we should have started off with a motion. I'm sorry.

Sorry. 01:44:54,130	S8:
I moved that the Hamilton Wyndham School District approve. Should I.

01:44:58,729	S6:
Say.

01:44:59,670	S8:
Just MOA approve? The memorandum of agreement entered into between the district and the AFSCME. Council 93, local 2905.

01:45:12,770	S9:
Second.

01:45:13,430	S6:
Second by Amy Berger. Um, does anybody have any questions? Any further discussion?

01:45:21,100	S22:
No.

01:45:22,100	S6:
All right. All those in favor? That is unanimous. Of the five member present members present. And the motion passes. Um, right. Uh, next up is the superintendent contract. I'm going to do it right and ask for a motion first.

01:45:39,529	S23:
Okay? I gotta make sure.

01:45:41,729	S8:
I moved that the Hamilton Windham Regional School District approved the contract of employment between the regional School district and Eric Tracy as presented on the agenda.

01:45:52,869	S11:
Second.

01:45:53,699	S6:
Second by John Carr. Um, does anyone have any questions? Or is there any discussion questions?

01:46:03,029	S11:
I mean, I know people are upset with the number, but most of our teachers and most of our administrators don't get raises that even keep up with inflation. So we're asking them to do more or even the same amount for less buying power. So occasionally we've got to come along and we've got to do a big correction. And we've already done that for the teachers. Um, I think it's time we did it for everybody.

01:46:35,500	S12:
So I've personally been struggling with this a little bit. Um, I'm not a reflection of Mr. Tracy at all. I think you're lovely and wonderful. I think you've done an amazing job for the students, the district, for everyone. We're so lucky to have you. I have been struggling a little bit with the number, right? And with how we derived that. I understand that it stems from some of the increases we did with the teachers contract last year. Right. And we were keeping that in line. And some of that, um, the increase there, I'm just personally struggling a little bit. I know we missed our last meeting as well in our executive session where we would have had this discussion. So that is probably a missing link for me. So fortunately, that's where I'm just I'm just I'm struggling. Um, you know, in my I've always worked in the private sector, um, you know, like a 30% raise is like, really kind of unheard of unless you're jumping companies even at the promotion level. That's like really challenging. However, I'll also say on the other side of that coin, in the private sector, Eric would be considered a CEO and a CEO would make four times this right in terms of total compensation with salary bonus, stock options, whatever. Um, and so like I, I'm just very conflicted with the amount. And if I'm trying to understand if we did, um, analysis around comparable salaries of comparable size districts.

01:48:09,970	S8:
Where did you get 30%?

01:48:11,869	S11:
Yeah, I was going to ask that too. This is only like in between 7 and 8%.

01:48:16,970	S12:
Okay.

01:48:17,699	S6:
No. Well, so just to be clear, it's 6%.

01:48:20,699	S8:
Yeah.

6%. 01:48:21,829	S6:
6%. So that is so.

01:48:23,899	S8:
For one year and then based on evaluations.

01:48:26,300	S6:
Correct. So just for accuracy that it's 6%. Um, and it's a five year contract. And I'm sorry, you could speak to it if you want.

01:48:37,569	S8:
Yeah. No, I was just saying. Yeah. Um, it says in the contract it's pursuant to evaluations every year.

01:48:45,199	S6:
Correct. Right. So the salary is for the first year. Yeah. There's no no information in the contract about the future salaries. So the salary is set each year.

01:48:58,770	S11:
And I will say I did I didn't have time to do as deep a dive as I would like to do with comps, but our superintendent has almost five years experience. Beverly Superintendent, who's just starting out, is making around $200,000. Manchester Essex superintendent, who only has two years of experience, is making about $220,000. So I think it's really important that we reward people for the experience that they have. Yeah. And there's a difference in between a superintendent who's only done this job for two years, and a superintendent tenant that's done it for five and taken a major project, you know, through all the stages.

01:49:41,369	S12:
Yeah. I don't just listen. It's not to me. It's not a reflection of Eric at all. It's like it's the number. I did some research. Um, it's hard to do, but I did do some research. Um, and from what I could find, there were only two districts in all of Massachusetts who make more. One of them is Boston Public Schools at 280,000, and they have a district of like 46,000 students. So that's like compared to, I think, what do we have here? 16, 1700 students, roughly. Um, so it's just a very big difference. The only other district I found was Needham, where the superintendent makes $255,000. And that's also a much I think it's like 17,000 students. I can check my numbers, but, um, so that's just where I was coming from. The years of experience isn't something I factored into it either, because it's like, honestly, it's very difficult to, like, find this information publicly. Like, I couldn't even find the prior contract to do the math. So that's where my numbers are a little bit wrong too. So I missed last session, so I just am I know I'm kind of.

01:50:41,800	S9:
Okay I know, but it's good.

01:50:42,829	S8:
To be. We should ask this question.

01:50:43,970	S9:
Yeah. It's good to bring up.

01:50:45,170	S6:
It's important. It's important, it's important.

01:50:47,800	S11:
Absolutely. Everybody should be on the same page.

01:50:49,600	S9:
I also want to acknowledge how uncomfortable it is to talk about somebody's contract while they're sitting. I know, yeah. I'm so sorry.

01:50:54,630	S12:
I'm so sorry.

01:50:55,600	S4:
Don't worry.

01:50:56,170	S9:
But I also just want to kind of add on to what Jen is saying and a couple of points that you made about like bigger districts because our district is smaller. I think Eric does more than other, you know, other districts that are bigger, have more admin staff than we do. And just, you know, something I didn't know before I was on school committee is just the hours that Eric works are, you know, like 12 to 14 hour days. So to my mind, I think that's important to know when you're considering someone's salary. Like, we all have salaries and we can kind of compare how many hours you work to somebody else. And I just think it the job is massive and I think with what we have coming up, you know, the last thing we just talked about, um, figuring out this facilities issue. Like, to my mind, I think I want to offer something like that, but I am glad that you brought it up because it's, you know, it's good to talk about.

01:51:46,930	S12:
But that's also a great point. I think, you know, I know he works like 12 to 15 hour days, right? He's been at school probably since seven this morning. He's still here with us now. He works all the sporting events on the weekends. Whereas like teachers, I know we're not. They get the summers off, most of them. Right. So I understand like I understand the, the difference and and the rationale behind the compensation. So I do I do understand the efforts and and what goes behind it. So thank you for that. It's good to bring up um.

01:52:21,470	S6:
Yeah, I.

01:52:24,270	S6:
I certainly thought about all of those things and, um, I mean, for me, this is this contract, as is important for our district, in my opinion. Um, that that is how I look at it. Um, I think Eric has been a first a stabilizing force for our district and then a forward moving, forward thinking force, and I, I really think this is, um, not not just the salary, but the five years I think is, um, really valuable. Um, and I will say to all of you, I, I.

01:53:13,069	S8:
I'm sorry you've been through quite a few negotiations.

Yes. 01:53:16,569	S6:
Um, yeah. And I just the one thing I'll say is, like, think about every communication you've ever sent, Eric. And how long did it take him to get back to you? Whether it was 7:00 in the morning or a holiday or like, you know, I like the man works all the time. Um, you know, I, um. So, anyway, I don't know if other people have other things. I think we had a motion and a second. Does anybody have anything else?

01:53:49,270	S22:
Nope.

01:53:51,199	S6:
We're ready to vote.

01:53:52,170	S22:
Mhm.

Okay. 01:53:53,869	S6:
Um, all those in favor? That is for those opposed as one opposed. And the motion passes 4 to 1.

01:54:06,229	S6:
Okay. Uh, next up is. Oh, this is.

01:54:14,529	S8:
Pathway.

01:54:15,000	S6:
I need you to. Yeah I know. Yes, please. I was going to try, but no. Go ahead.

01:54:21,000	S4:
So this got on the. This actually is on the wrong agenda. It should have gone to policy first. Our dilemma is that the state has given us the November 1st deadline to submit something, so it really doesn't have a chance. I am very willing to bring it to policy and request an extension. We do have that option. Um, miss doctor, best put this together based on all the information that the state sent out using the template for the middle school pathway exploration. It is part of the new law that was recently passed, uh, around technical schools, CTE education schools. They call them. They are Essex Tech in our case, for the majority of our kids, uh, they're trying to get more access into schools from the technical school side. Technical schools, I think, were complaining that not all middle schools gave them access to the kids to tell them about the school or give them an opportunity to see literature or things like that. We've kind of done that all along, so it's not a big deal for us. Um, this is, uh, Zach following the template. Doctor bass following the template. Um, as expected from the state. But again, I, I, I'm very willing to bring it back to the to the policy committee. I just realized that the other day when I looked at the thing that we put it on the wrong agenda.

01:55:43,970	S6:
So if we were to bring it back to policy, I think you mentioned to me that we could send a letter or something just saying it's going to go to policy and we want an extension.

01:55:53,170	S4:
Request, an extension saying has to go through a policy committee, which I think is the right way to do it. Okay. I just didn't want to take it off the agenda. And everybody go, where'd it go? You know, it just it should have been on the policy agenda for the next meeting, so.

01:56:06,529	S8:
Okay, I think that's fine.

01:56:08,130	S6:
Do you feel like you need anything from us in terms of requesting an extension or.

01:56:15,369	S4:
No, I can I can do that through the portal. The state portal.

01:56:18,569	S22:
Okay.

01:56:19,270	S6:
Um, but I do think we probably need a motion to move it. Maybe to policy. I don't.

01:56:23,100	S22:
Know.

01:56:23,970	S6:
What do you guys think?

01:56:25,170	S22:
For sure.

01:56:26,500	S8:
I vote that the Hamilton Wyndham Regional School Committee move the middle school pathway exploration policy to the policy subcommittee.

01:56:37,069	S22:
Second.

01:56:37,670	S6:
Second. By Amy Berger. Any further discussion? So we're ready to vote. All those in. Oh go ahead.

01:56:45,100	S11:
Are we adding another step? That's not necessary.

01:56:48,270	S9:
Yeah.

01:56:48,729	S22:
Can we just.

01:56:49,300	S11:
Like does it have to go through policy.

01:56:51,170	S8:
Oh yeah I don't I don't.

01:56:52,329	S22:
Know.

01:56:52,699	S6:
It definitely does not have to go to policy.

01:56:54,470	S22:
Okay.

01:56:55,670	S11:
I mean all.

01:56:56,199	S8:
The.

01:56:56,970	S11:
Policy we're here here.

01:56:59,770	S22:
Oh now or.

01:57:02,470	S4:
The problem I have with it is it's not a policy that fits in the policy manual. So for me it's not really a policy, but the way the law outlines it, they're saying every district has a policy about how they'll interact with tech schools. So this is it just doesn't fit in the.

01:57:18,699	S11:
I just thought we were doing most of this already.

01:57:20,970	S4:
Yeah. We are.

01:57:21,500	S22:
Yeah.

Well. 01:57:22,630	S6:
I guess maybe that's. And maybe if it were to go to policy, then maybe part of the discussion is like, is this like a middle school policy or is it like, I don't know. You know, rather than that's interesting.

01:57:36,300	S22:
Could we put.

01:57:36,899	S11:
It in the middle school handbook?

01:57:38,899	S4:
We have to publish it in middle school and high school handbook, and it has to be on the website once it's approved.

01:57:45,229	S22:
Okay.

01:57:45,699	S4:
It has to be. And it'll go in the weeklies so that you have to make it very publicly available.

01:57:50,670	S22:
So I know.

01:57:51,630	S4:
It's part of the.

01:57:52,470	S22:
Law.

01:57:53,800	S9:
I don't have an issue bringing it to policy.

01:57:56,800	S11:
I don't know either. I just wonder if it's a necessary step. Yeah, like I agree. If we can save him work of not having to request an extension and just vote on it right now, I'm fine with that.

01:58:09,600	S9:
I guess the only question I would have is if, like, are we setting a precedent for introducing.

01:58:17,229	S11:
And that's why I asked the question.

01:58:18,569	S9:
Pathways in middle and high school. Like, do we want to just broadly talk about it and have this be part of it? If we do this, does it open the door for other things? Like am I overthinking?

01:58:29,670	S4:
No, I think it's I think it's important to follow the processes we have in place. Okay. I think, like you said, down the road. Oh, I got another one. You know, I don't want to get into that habit. This was clearly just on the wrong agenda. So I don't think I don't think it's worth going on out of line when I can go on to the portal tomorrow and say, this is what happened. This is, you know, the policy is written and it just needs to be reviewed through our processes. I don't think that would be a problem.

01:58:55,970	S22:
Okay.

01:58:57,500	S6:
Um, all right. I think we have a motion to move it to policy. And a second. Yep. Is there anybody have any further? All right. Um, all those in favor? That is unanimous. And the motion passes 5 to 0. Members present.

01:59:14,100	S8:
Can I mention a typo in Eric's contract that I just saw.

01:59:18,529	S6:
Really?

01:59:19,729	S8:
Unless you want this, Eric. It says July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 3031.

01:59:27,630	S6:
I've read the contract so many times the way I just saw it. Where on your first board. Your first board will have to be the superintendent forever. Oh, it does.

01:59:39,369	S11:
Frozen.

01:59:39,899	S6:
Every year. I don't know.

01:59:41,100	S8:
If we need a motion, but just. It's a typo and I.

01:59:44,069	S6:
Where is it? It's in there. It's not a term. It's in term. Oh! Oh my.

01:59:49,500	S9:
Gosh. I feel like.

01:59:51,130	S6:
You shouldn't.

01:59:51,569	S24:
Have something.

Oh. 01:59:54,000	S6:
I know that we could keep that.

01:59:57,670	S8:
Oh my God.

01:59:59,569	S4:
Cross it initially on it.

02:00:01,670	S9:
That's funny.

02:00:02,829	S6:
That's great.

02:00:03,829	S4:
You won't be here.

02:00:05,000	S8:
Yeah, sure you'll do that?

02:00:05,930	S6:
Yeah.

02:00:07,670	S21:
How many hands that made its way through?

02:00:09,369	S6:
I know exactly.

02:00:11,170	S24:
What.

02:00:12,170	S6:
I saw. I saw.

02:00:13,500	S9:
It twice.

02:00:14,500	S8:
Oh, no. I only saw it.

No. 02:00:15,930	S9:
I'm sorry. No, no, no. That's wrong. Just the one time it was funny. I was like.

02:00:20,600	S16:
Sorry.

02:00:21,630	S9:
Just keeping you all on your toes. All right.

Okay. 02:00:25,199	S6:
Um, I just want to give a quick. I think everybody is all clear on the update on the Tuesday the 21st this coming Tuesday. Um, we are going to meet jointly with the one, um, select board here. Um, the one I'm select board is going to start their meeting at 6:00. They anticipate that the portion of the meeting with to a point to appoint a new school committee member would begin around 645. That's what they're planning on. Um, there are four, um, candidates. Um, from one of them to fill the seat. I'm I'm really excited that, like, I think that's a wonderful thing that for members of the community. Um, stepped up and are willing to do that. Um, I just wanted to let the committee know, and, um, candidates know if they're listening to that. Um, if you remember this committee, we approved those questions. Questions? We sent them over to the one, um, select board, and we sort of said this is the general framework. They made some, uh, some wording tweaks. And they actually, I think maybe, maybe split one question into two questions or something, but, um, they did a little bit. Um, and if everyone's okay with it, I, you know, I didn't feel like we needed to bring back the minutia of, um. And to Jens. Jens, at the end, I think you added, we're going to make sure that there's an opportunity that if somebody else has a question us. That's good. In other words, if anyone here or the one who's blackbaud has another question, that's okay that can get asked. We said that in the meeting before, and we also made sure that if they wanted the candidates had question, they could ask.

02:02:17,369	S11:
Are we going to bring all the candidates into the room at the same time?

02:02:21,100	S6:
Yeah, that's how we've done it before.

02:02:22,899	S11:
The boards, how we've done it before. I've never liked it, though. I'm the first person who answers any given question has a disadvantage on all the other three.

02:02:34,470	S6:
Well, we do rotate. Yeah. So we wouldn't have the same person answering the same question.

02:02:39,630	S9:
Did you want to have four separate meetings?

02:02:41,500	S11:
I would rather have four.

02:02:42,699	S8:
I thought we did that one time.

02:02:45,100	S6:
Not to my knowledge.

02:02:46,100	S11:
Somebody does a job interview. You're not interviewing in a big room with ten people?

02:02:49,630	S9:
True. But when you run for school committee, you're, you know, being a candidate publicly against multiple people. So I feel like the job interview, um, comparison makes sense. But also, you know, you may go to a debate or you might write, you know, write Right.

Publicly. 02:03:10,199	S12:
That's how I likened it. It's like it's you're running. We will eventually run for public office.

Right. 02:03:15,600	S9:
Yeah.

02:03:15,970	S12:
And there could be a debate. You're subject to that. I mean, I hear you, though I don't disagree. And. And I sat through it.

02:03:21,869	S24:
Megan, just. She just lived through it.

02:03:24,270	S11:
Giving two people an advantage that the other two don't have.

02:03:27,869	S9:
But I guess the advantage you can.

02:03:29,270	S8:
Prepare, right? I mean.

02:03:30,529	S9:
Everyone has the question.

02:03:31,569	S8:
And I mean, you think if they thought of something right to say.

02:03:34,970	S11:
Or if they listen to somebody else's answer and said, oh, that's good, I might use that.

02:03:39,270	S9:
Maybe we could ask the other three to do that.

02:03:41,369	S6:
But I and I did. I will say I did talk with Ben Timon, who's the chair of the Windham Select Board, about that, about making sure that, like, we didn't know we were going to have four candidates, but making sure, like, you know, question one, this candidate will get to answer first, then question to the next candidate will get to answer first so that you're not always because that is an advantage or disadvantage depending on I mean depending on the person it could be good to answer first or last. I mean, in other words, sometimes it could be hard to answer last because everyone's already said the same thing that you were going to say. I mean, now.

02:04:15,729	S12:
You have to be even more creative to come up with a compelling response. So I don't know exactly.

02:04:20,430	S6:
Um, so I, I'm only just sharing with you. Not that if this committee. I'm at the will of the committee, if you want to make changes, I'm telling you that like it's on Tuesday and we've done we've sort of arranged it this way.

02:04:36,270	S11:
I don't think I want to make changes now, but it's something we should think about if it happens in the future.

02:04:41,670	S6:
I think we can. I think, yeah, in the future we can think about, um, you know, some of it is kind of spelled out in the regional agreement how it's done, but it doesn't it doesn't spell it out to the minutia. So like the part where it's a public process needs to happen. The part where the committee members need to vote publicly needs to happen. Like it's not a secret ballot. It's not. Um, so those kinds of things. But you're right. There's nothing in there that says that we couldn't have them, like, have a soundproof booth somewhere where they come in, and one at a time.

02:05:14,170	S12:
Um, do we have budget to buy, like, noise cancelling headphones.

02:05:18,729	S4:
Sitting in the audience?

02:05:20,729	S6:
Um, yeah. No, I think it's a point. Well, point well taken.

Um. 02:05:27,430	S8:
Something to think about.

Definitely. 02:05:29,170	S11:
Yeah. It's just something that has bugged me the last couple of times, so I just wanted to bring it up. Since we don't talk about this super.

02:05:37,630	S6:
It's super awkward, and I, I actually really value the three of you who all actually have. Well, not yet, but Megan will have on Tuesday experienced it from both sides. Like, you know, um, because that's important perspective I think like, um, so, um, anyway, my biggest thing is I wanted to let everybody know about that. The meeting has been posted. All four candidates are listed on the meeting with their resumes are all posted. Um, and I just want to make sure everyone's comfortable with, like, a little bit of wiggle room in terms of what the questions are in terms of, um, if something doesn't get asked, you can go ahead and ask at the end if you feel like something didn't get asked that you wanted to ask. Um, and I will if it's okay with everyone, I'll do what I've done before, which is like physically print it out so everybody has questions and then. So, um. All right. Are we good? Good. Yeah. Good. Okay. Um. All right. I don't think we have anything on finance and operations, do we?

02:06:49,569	S25:
Should we just mention.

02:06:50,670	S4:
The meeting that's going to be.

02:06:51,729	S25:
Started when they arrive?

02:06:53,170	S6:
Oh, I think I said that, but I'll say it.

02:06:54,829	S25:
I'm sorry.

02:06:55,529	S6:
Um. So. Yeah. That's okay. Yeah. So they're starting at six. We started, the Wenham Select Board is starting at six. They have some a hearing of some sort that they have to have like a procedural thing. I think it's on cable providers. Yeah. Um, okay. So that's why they're starting at six, and then they anticipate they'll be, um, ready for us at 645. So of course, it's a public meeting. You can come at six, but we're not going to sit up front until 645.

So. 02:07:29,829	S16:
Um.

02:07:31,000	S25:
Sorry.

02:07:31,569	S6:
All right. No worries. Um, okay. Vinnie, did you have anything on finance and operations?

02:07:36,899	S21:
No. Not today.

02:07:37,500	S6:
Okay. Um. Thank you. All right. Uh, Committee reports.

Capital. 02:07:45,170	S11:
Finance.

02:07:46,100	S6:
Okay. All right. Um.

Policy. 02:07:52,300	S9:
We've got some stuff.

02:07:53,229	S6:
Yay!

02:07:55,000	S9:
Um, so we discussed the. In this meeting, we talked about The competency for graduation because of the MCAS removal. Now all school districts are required to do this. Eric, do you want to present what we talked about?

02:08:11,699	S4:
Sure. The competency determination policy, it is an actual policy that goes into the policy book.

02:08:19,199	S6:
Um, it's an actual.

02:08:20,529	S4:
And if you want to know how it works, this is the submission process and 20 something page document from the state. Um, as you know, the ballot question in 2024, remove the MCAS as sole basis for meeting the competency requirement. The state has determined that districts must create a competency determination policy that has to be approved by the governing body and then submitted uploaded into the Gems website. The Department of Education runs, and this has to be completed no later than December 31st. Again, it's a fairly straightforward process. I have the booklet here if people are interested, but it's another templated item and each school principal works on it. We've worked on it with Mr. Goni, worked on it with a number of principals in this area. So all very similar. There not a lot of changes other than plugging in what happens in each school. So this is our it's gone to policy, been sent from policy to here. And following our processes would be our first read. And this is brand new. There's no we've never had this before.

02:09:26,199	S11:
Um, I actually had a question under English Language arts, the coursework requirements say the equivalent of two years of high school English language. But then the notes say they have to take it ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th. So shouldn't that to be a four?

02:09:42,270	S4:
Um, so the.

02:09:43,170	S6:
You have to pass.

02:09:43,800	S25:
It.

02:09:44,000	S4:
The, the requirement for the competency determination is different than the graduation requirements, which is what the notes are. So our graduation requirements are actually higher than the competency determination. Termination. So English is a great example. The state is only requiring kids to have the equivalent of two years of high school English language arts as part of the competency determination. We made the note that we have them offered in four grades. Okay, so thank you. That's a good.

02:10:12,199	S25:
Question.

02:10:12,569	S6:
Okay, wait. So maybe because I didn't understand it that way. So now let me just make sure because I thought, well maybe it doesn't matter. No no no no, it doesn't matter. I mean, I understand what it means for our students. I guess I just thought all students statewide had to take English for years.

02:10:29,470	S4:
No, that's not necessarily.

02:10:30,930	S25:
Necessarily.

02:10:31,630	S6:
Pass English for years. So take.

02:10:33,600	S25:
English.

02:10:34,130	S4:
So there is a there is a standard. The state has the curriculum frameworks. And those frameworks are designed to have four years of English. Um, I think the majority of high schools in Massachusetts anyway have four years of English as a requirement. Um, but you could substitute something else. It could be, you know, some type of a literature course. It's not necessarily just Ela. In this case, they're trying to say that if I if I roll back to the EAP process when kids didn't pass the MCAS, there was this process called the educational proficiency process. They're basically mirroring that old process now to say, all right, in order to get a diploma, you have to at least complete these two things. Our graduation requirements happen to be more extensively extensive. The dilemma you have with a kid like, um, a kid who doesn't, who didn't pass, say, English senior year. You you don't have. They don't have the option to graduate until they meet you. I mean, they have they would have the option to get a diploma under the competency determination, but they would not under the schools.

02:11:40,869	S11:
Right. That's what I was going to ask. Which one supersedes.

02:11:44,270	S25:
Which?

02:11:44,670	S4:
The graduation requirement.

02:11:45,930	S25:
Okay.

02:11:46,300	S4:
The competency determination is just a trigger to say the child has done the minimum work necessary under the state's guideline. To receive a diploma. Our graduation requirements still have to be met. They still have to meet the number of credits required.

02:12:01,470	S9:
Are we able to change? Just to clarify. Are we able to change the name of the column to help us understand?

02:12:10,430	S11:
Could we do competency requirements and then graduation requirements?

02:12:14,500	S4:
I think it's a I think it's a template from the state.

02:12:16,970	S16:
Okay.

02:12:17,399	S4:
Yeah. It is a template from the state. Yep. Coursework requirement.

02:12:21,100	S6:
Right. So and this is just right. So as a template this is just basically us filling it in like they're saying.

02:12:27,630	S4:
Yeah.

02:12:28,229	S6:
What.

02:12:28,699	S4:
Yeah. Yeah it's.

02:12:29,899	S9:
In parentheses.

02:12:31,399	S4:
It's like the last, the last thing we were just talking about is the same thing. It's a it's a template from the state that they're trying to get everybody on board. Now that there's no MCAS requirement because you still have you know, we have we have kids that may not have passed MCAS in the class of 2026. So we got to fall back to this now. So the principal now has to say, okay, who didn't pass MCAS or not? A lot of kids in Hamilton, one of them, but who didn't. What's their, uh, competency determination requirement look like? Did they pass two English? Two classes of English? The other thing is they have to pass the final assessment to show mastery. So that's a if you look at kind of in the middle to show mastery, a student must successfully complete in accordance with the district grading policy and course requirements. A final assessment for a course, a capstone or a portfolio or an equivalent measure. So let me give you an example. One student we know we're looking at didn't happen to get the the score. The competency score at the time when he or she was a sophomore, uh, that student. Now we look back at the courses did not pass the final assessment, but passed all four quarters, which is possible to do. Yeah. Of course. Um, so now it puts this, this child into this very interesting situation. It's been built into these that they can now go to the principal. And the principal determines what what's acceptable could be something like an assessment, a portfolio or something. It just has to be. It'll end up being reported to the state that Eric Tracy didn't have a final passing final exam for, say, English to English ten. This is what was used in addition. So it gives a lot of options for kids. There's a requirement for appeals. There's a requirement for kids to come in from other states that may not have, you know, their their kids that could come in as a junior and may not have anywhere close to the course requirements that we expect. By the time you're a junior. So the principal is going to have to make some calls on what that looks like, and then it has to be reported to the state.

Mhm. 02:14:42,899	S6:
Well and this we, I mean we, we knew this was coming and when, when Brian came and talked about the in the I mean, a lot of this is similar to what he talked about.

02:14:55,770	S11:
I think the the column headers just threw me up.

02:14:59,869	S6:
Yeah.

02:15:00,199	S4:
Yeah.

02:15:03,869	S8:
Do we need to vote on it or it goes to policy or.

02:15:06,770	S6:
This is your first. This is just a yeah.

02:15:10,199	S4:
This is the first read. It came out of policy.

02:15:12,000	S16:
Oh yeah. So we're collecting a feedback.

02:15:14,170	S6:
Collecting feedback. Well I heard the feedback. I heard the feedback that there was concern about the column titles. But maybe that's part of the template. But I'm wondering is is but the wording within the square of the notes is ours. Is that correct.

02:15:28,770	S4:
Wording within the square of the where it's notes? Yeah.

Yeah. 02:15:32,270	S6:
It's it's so like maybe that's the place for some clarity. Like in other words, right now the top one under it says this is the one you were talking about. It says to satisfy this course requirement, students must. Maybe it says to satisfy graduation requirement. Yeah, like, I don't know if that's the place to clarify it.

02:15:50,699	S9:
Like or to add like the name of our district specifically.

02:15:53,630	S11:
To satisfy this course requirement. Hamilton, Windham regional.

02:15:57,329	S6:
Right or something like that then like, yeah, like maybe that's the area, maybe that's the feedback. Is that like if we can't change the column then maybe tighter.

02:16:05,500	S4:
Maybe if I can ask I don't know. I'm just saying.

02:16:07,670	S21:
I.

02:16:07,869	S6:
Just think it could be if, if the place where we get to right what we want is in that little square, then we should just clarify.

Um. 02:16:17,000	S9:
That's helpful. It is confusing.

Um. 02:16:23,000	S4:
Yeah, we can dig into that a little more. There's no there's not a rush in this either. This one. This one is, uh, December 31st to be submitted.

02:16:31,300	S16:
Okay.

02:16:33,069	S8:
I think it looks good.

02:16:35,899	S11:
Are we still going with AP? US history not meeting the history requirements.

02:16:44,829	S4:
As the third year we were asking.

02:16:48,030	S16:
Yeah.

02:16:48,930	S11:
Um, not for a while. We weren't counting a push. Sorry. I used the acronym um as a a true history course.

02:16:58,829	S4:
No, I think we are. I think I think it was Brian clarified that.

02:17:01,530	S11:
Okay, so we switched.

02:17:02,399	S4:
That during the programme of studies.

Yeah. 02:17:04,329	S16:
Okay.

02:17:04,829	S11:
Just making sure.

02:17:11,430	S9:
Um.

02:17:13,200	S4:
So I can take the suggestions, dig into it and bring it back for a second. Read with some answers.

02:17:19,329	S16:
Okay.

02:17:19,930	S4:
All right. Thank you.

02:17:23,569	S6:
All right.

02:17:24,329	S26:
This one's not me.

02:17:25,629	S6:
Next up.

Amy. 02:17:29,030	S9:
Give me one.

02:17:29,569	S16:
Second.

02:17:29,799	S9:
Sorry. Try to ignore.

02:17:30,829	S16:
That.

02:17:33,399	S9:
Yes.

02:17:34,430	S6:
Tell me all about this document. I'm so excited.

02:17:38,200	S16:
Sorry.

02:17:39,270	S9:
Uh, yeah. So this is something the policy subcommittee has been working on for a while. We were tasked with creating a handy document about voting thresholds. Though it got a little more complex.

02:17:53,469	S6:
Very complex.

02:17:54,930	S9:
Are you able to pull up the actual Google Doc, not the PDF?

02:17:58,930	S6:
Yeah, I know it's not clickable. It says click here.

02:18:01,569	S16:
Helpful.

02:18:02,670	S9:
So um, and also we can talk about. I know we usually put PDFs as exhibits. So they're kind of like set in stone. But we can also kind of lock up this document. So it can't be edited by accident.

02:18:15,600	S26:
This is the one right.

02:18:16,469	S9:
That's the one. Yep. So on the left there's tabs.

02:18:20,100	S6:
Um, zoom in a little.

02:18:21,729	S9:
The main tab is all of the places within our district. Policies that mention voting are approval. Um, and I think as we go through the policies, like, you know, in our usual process, we might want to consider, um, Being more consistent with our language as far as voting versus approval. Some of it feels really casual. Um, but so this is where they're all mentioned. So when we end up, if we end up doing that, it'll be easy to see where they are. So everything here on this first tab is everywhere that it's mentioned by both.

02:18:58,399	S16:
Okay.

02:18:59,170	S9:
A regular simple majority or two thirds. And then.

02:19:02,430	S6:
I love that it starts right off with incapacity of the chairperson.

02:19:05,600	S16:
I know. Thanks, sir. I just want an order. I didn't.

02:19:09,629	S6:
Section eight right there.

02:19:10,799	S16:
Okay.

02:19:11,370	S9:
Um, but then if you click on either where it says click here or the other tab, these are all of the votes that require a two thirds vote of the committee. Okay. So this just filters out anything that's simple.

02:19:25,600	S6:
Yeah.

02:19:26,969	S9:
Um, and this one is shorter. If you scroll down, it's not super long. So this was my stab at making this as simple as possible. It wasn't as simple as, oh.

02:19:39,969	S6:
Very complicated.

02:19:40,829	S9:
You know, my my vision of this was like a one page cheat sheet. Cheat sheet. But these, you know, some of these votes kind of deserve explanation. Um, I can go back and link every single policy to the headings, but for now each section is linked. So for example, if we're talking about fiscal policy, section D if you just scroll down a tiny bit. Yeah, that is linked right to the website with the policy. So I can easily go back through and do all of the.

02:20:14,670	S16:
You know, I think.

02:20:16,799	S6:
I mean, I don't know, I.

02:20:18,370	S9:
Incapacity the chairperson in meetings, especially.

02:20:20,969	S16:
If.

02:20:21,270	S6:
We want to just focus in on that one. But um.

02:20:28,329	S6:
Yeah, this was a ton of work I can see. Thank you very much for working on that. Thank you to that.

02:20:35,930	S16:
It's interesting.

02:20:38,299	S6:
Um, I think this is, I don't know. So let me just make sure I understand, like you would share, obviously, with the committee, sort of a a document that would be more clickable.

02:20:53,100	S9:
So this. Yeah. So this Google.

02:20:54,770	S6:
Doc, the Google Doc.

02:20:56,030	S9:
Lock it so that it can be edited by anybody except I mean.

02:20:59,530	S16:
I can't read.

02:21:00,100	S9:
It so I can edit.

02:21:00,870	S16:
It.

02:21:01,569	S9:
We can also because it's in a Google doc. You know right now our policies are um, they are searchable, but this way it's searchable to just the page. So if you do like a command.

02:21:14,299	S16:
Graph.

02:21:14,899	S9:
And search for I don't want to use incapacity of the chairperson anymore. But like.

02:21:19,500	S16:
You know.

02:21:20,299	S6:
You can use.

02:21:21,329	S16:
Something.

02:21:21,569	S6:
Else, but you can search out, you.

02:21:22,870	S16:
Can search out really easily.

02:21:24,000	S9:
So the ability is really just filtering out everything. That is a two thirds vote.

02:21:29,500	S16:
Right.

02:21:29,829	S6:
I mean, to me, I this is it's much more complicated than I thought it would be, but it's also really helpful, I think. I mean, I'm for me, and I fully admit that I'm the one that asked for this. Um, for me, this is really helpful, although it's longer and bigger than I imagined, but it's really helpful.

Um. 02:21:56,000	S6:
Because and I guess what I'm wondering is like, does it make sense? We don't. This is not a policy. This is just a useful.

02:22:04,030	S16:
Useful.

02:22:05,270	S6:
Tool. So to my mind, it's sort of like maybe we just use it and see like just as it is and see if like, oh, we really wish that it was. Each policy was linked and you could click on it or not, you know. Right. Um, and I don't think so. I think my personal.

02:22:25,100	S8:
Document is always going to be updated.

02:22:26,870	S16:
Right?

02:22:27,530	S6:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my personal stress is always like, um, you know, like. Like. Okay, what? You know, what if I'm, you know, like. Appointment of a working group member, like, we're in the moment, and I want to be able to look it up.

02:22:45,870	S9:
That is that's where this is handy. So there's definitely.

02:22:48,200	S6:
I don't really need to be in the weeds of each policy. I just want to know, like how many?

02:22:52,469	S8:
Well, it's like a reference document.

02:22:53,700	S9:
Yes, exactly. For, you know, reading through every single policy with the goal of pulling all these out, you know, as a committee member, I'm like, there's definitely stuff in that is not in here that we vote on, right? But usually that language will come from, you know, a motion that's written for us by council or whatever it is.

02:23:13,399	S6:
And I mean, I will say there are certain things like Vinnie will know, like Vinnie will say this.

02:23:17,600	S9:
Most of them are financing financial related. But so but to your point, you know, if we were talking about creating a working group, this is a place where, yeah.

02:23:26,530	S6:
You know, I thank you for this. I think this is great. And I think, you think, uh, no, I think it's great. And I think it's a really important document. I'm the more thinking about what's the best way. Like so that to me, it's something that all the committee members and Eric and Vinny should just have available to them. So it's more about like how to share it. I don't it's not really something that is like all this information is already publicly available to everyone. This is just an organizing document so that it's easily like at our fingertips. So it's more just about I think this is really helpful. I'd like to just dive in and use it and see what we think. Um, and so it's more about making sure that the whole committee has it, that it's a fixed document that can't get screwed up by somebody accidentally.

02:24:14,469	S9:
So I would propose that we lock it so it's view only.

02:24:18,600	S6:
Yep.

02:24:18,899	S9:
And that it belongs to the policies of the committee. So, you know, over time, whoever is maybe whoever's the chair, that committee is responsible for keeping it right.

02:24:29,600	S6:
If you changed a policy or updated or got a new policy, it would. One of the questions policy would ask is does it need to change anything or be updated or added or deleted from this document?

02:24:41,469	S9:
And I wish there was. I was trying to think through a way where it would like automatically update, but I think that's to future.

02:24:47,129	S23:
That's future of the future. All right.

02:24:49,129	S8:
Do we still need to vote on it?

02:24:50,969	S6:
I don't I don't think so. I mean, it was a no I don't think it's not a this is not creating any new information or this is really just a tool that an organizing tool.

02:25:03,329	S9:
The agenda does say vote but I don't like I agree, I don't think we're we're not changing anything. We're just.

02:25:09,370	S6:
Right.

02:25:09,799	S9:
I, I guess we could vote on the process of me owning it and locking it and serving it to everybody if we need to.

02:25:18,299	S6:
Sure.

02:25:19,670	S9:
I really want to make a motion. I don't know.

02:25:22,930	S8:
I don't I don't know, vote that you're the steward of it or.

02:25:26,370	S26:
No, no.

02:25:27,069	S8:
Just the policy committee is the.

02:25:28,329	S26:
Steward.

02:25:28,930	S4:
Vote threshold.

02:25:30,270	S23:
0000000.

02:25:31,930	S6:
That's the.

02:25:32,229	S26:
Voting.

02:25:32,899	S4:
Documents.

02:25:33,370	S6:
Oh.

02:25:34,899	S8:
All right, that's fine. Then we're not gonna get in trouble first.

02:25:38,829	S26:
All right. The title is.

02:25:39,770	S8:
Literally.

02:25:41,299	S6:
I think this is getting late. We're I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much.

02:25:46,729	S23:
It's so helpful.

02:25:47,670	S8:
I found it very helpful.

02:25:48,770	S6:
And I'm gonna spend some time with it.

02:25:51,469	S23:
And I'll send.

02:25:52,700	S9:
I can send out the link right to the lock version.

Okay. 02:25:55,530	S6:
Yeah. So thank you very much. And again that's, I mean I, I know I'm like a broken record but like in other words, there's nothing open meeting law ish about this. Like you can send it all to us. This is all information everybody has is just a tool for us to use in the meeting. There's no. Yeah. So yeah send it out.

02:26:10,729	S4:
Probably embedded in the on the policy page.

02:26:13,700	S23:
Yeah. We could put a link.

02:26:14,670	S26:
Yeah.

02:26:14,870	S6:
So yeah. So yeah. Right. Exactly. And then if in a meeting if you know, I can find it when I'm trying to find it. Um. Thank you. Um, Negotiations. We do not have anything to report. Right. You know.

02:26:32,569	S4:
We brought it forward.

02:26:33,670	S8:
Yeah. It was.

02:26:34,930	S4:
Brought.

02:26:35,170	S26:
Forward. Oh, yeah, we talked about.

02:26:36,329	S6:
We already did it.

02:26:37,030	S8:
That's.

02:26:37,629	S6:
I knew that I was just.

02:26:39,170	S26:
Yeah.

02:26:39,399	S6:
We've already done it. We don't have anything new. Um. Secretary report.

02:26:44,100	S8:
Um, so I emailed Janelle to try to get some information. Um, so there's still a bunch of minutes from the subcommittees that are missing. I have David's old spreadsheet. I'll send that around. I guess our thing is, what do we do when it's like, from 2021 or something? Let's I just I just don't know what to do.

02:27:06,129	S6:
Like, in the past year. What? Do we have things missing? No, I, I'm concerned about.

02:27:11,469	S8:
I guess I could look at this I could look at the spreadsheet. I mean, I can send it around to you.

02:27:15,200	S6:
Yeah, I know I'm concerned about the old ones, but, like, are we up to date? Like, we're.

02:27:19,969	S8:
Pretty up to date. Oh, and then the school committee meetings. We're totally up to date. There's a missing set of executive session minutes, which I. Oh. Um. Janelle.

Okay. 02:27:29,770	S6:
So what are you doing on that? Like, in other words, are we marking the executive session like that, Janelle? Like they're held like Janelle has them. Is that what you're marking like?

02:27:37,969	S8:
They're they're the spreadsheet that I have that that David created. That's pretty amazing. Has a status bar. So it's like missing drafted awaiting approval.

Approved. 02:27:48,370	S6:
Right.

02:27:48,729	S8:
Just a question mark. It's approved and held.

02:27:50,969	S6:
Right. So like the executive session if you.

02:27:53,500	S8:
I haven't even drafted.

02:27:54,500	S6:
But like if I send that message Janelle then it would get marked. Yes. Awaiting approval. So you would know because that's my big fear is like.

02:28:01,270	S8:
Oh, not voting on them.

02:28:02,329	S6:
Like things that are like if it's if Janelle has it like any minutes, any minutes. If Janelle has the draft, then any future committee if something occurs and it's not been approved. But Janelle has the draft minutes, the committee can convene, review the minutes and approve them, right? The concern is what you were talking about is about the ones that are from 2021. And no one has.

02:28:26,829	S8:
That exactly, exactly.

02:28:28,030	S9:
Right here anymore.

02:28:28,799	S6:
You know, they're not here. It's one thing. If we had minutes from 2021 and Janelle was like, well, they haven't been approved, but here they are. Well then we can review them.

02:28:37,000	S8:
But and I don't actually know how up to date this spreadsheet is. So I'd love for you guys to look at it because like, I just see a pair of minutes. A pair of minutes. I don't know what you call I see minutes that I wrote that we voted on that are listed as missing.

02:28:49,829	S6:
Okay.

02:28:50,469	S8:
So I just I need to just reevaluate with the whole committee. And I see a few from policy that I'm sure you guys are not missing. So, um, it's a very helpful spreadsheet and then I will try to get it, keep it as up to date as possible.

02:29:02,500	S6:
Thank you.

02:29:03,170	S8:
But it's we're doing we're doing pretty well.

02:29:07,170	S6:
Thank you. Yeah. And yeah you can share that again.

02:29:09,899	S8:
That's where I can have Janelle share it with all of you.

Yeah. 02:29:13,569	S9:
Okay, great. I think it needs to be. I think we need to make a copy of it, and someone new needs to own it.

02:29:21,329	S6:
Because it was David.

02:29:22,670	S9:
It was David's document.

02:29:23,799	S8:
All right.

02:29:25,100	S6:
Unless Janell owns it.

02:29:26,270	S9:
No, I just looked at it, so. And that's something, you know. I mean.

02:29:31,000	S8:
I will make a copy of it.

02:29:32,399	S9:
Okay.

02:29:34,299	S8:
Good point.

02:29:35,129	S6:
All right. Thank you so much for doing that. Um, and then maybe I don't know what other people think, but then maybe, like, to me, I think that we really need to kind of divide it up and, like, think about, like, what's current. Like in the past year. And then separately, like, is there anything we can do about these old missing minutes.

02:29:55,969	S8:
Right. Because personally I would set it up by date. Yeah. Um, he set it up by committee. Right. I mean, I could do, like, committees or dates within the committee.

But. 02:30:03,700	S11:
Yeah, but isn't it by date within each committee?

02:30:07,870	S8:
Um, yes, but it's, like, hard to look at. At least to me.

Yeah. 02:30:13,399	S9:
Yeah.

02:30:13,969	S8:
You know, it is by date right now.

02:30:15,600	S9:
You can.

02:30:16,329	S8:
I know, you wanna know. It's fine. I think you're right, John.

02:30:19,530	S9:
I just updated mine.

02:30:20,670	S6:
All right. Um, anybody have anything else on the secretary report? All right.

Amy? 02:30:28,229	S9:
Yes. Oh, yes. What's in my inbox? Sorry. I'm finishing other things. Um, okay, so we had some email this week. Um, and again, just the the goal of this segment of our meeting is to just give a little insight into some of the communications we receive from the community. Um, we had some emails with questions, comments, ideas regarding Halloween celebrations during the school day. Um, I had some good conversations and an opportunity to plug the friends groups, which, um, you know, my children went to the Winthrop School and the friends group there doesn't really awesome job putting on a Halloween party on the Friday night for Halloween. Uh, that we always enjoyed. So hopefully, A people take this as an opportunity to get involved, more involved with friends groups if they aren't already. I don't know if you want to if anyone else has thoughts on that topic.

02:31:29,229	S11:
Okay, sorry.

02:31:30,799	S9:
Um, some comments on the superintendent's contract that we just voted on came through, and then we received some emails in strong opposition to the letter that was read to the committee from a member of the community. Last meeting regarding progress flags in school. The emails we most recently got were in support of the flags being in school, and that is my report.

02:32:00,229	S8:
Sounds like what I know. Thank you.

02:32:02,530	S5:
Thank you.

02:32:03,829	S6:
Um. All right. Uh, to you, Eric.

02:32:10,329	S4:
A couple of things I wanted to talk about and trying to just Not make this to too much information, but the state recently released their vision of a graduate. They have a separate committee running under the guise of the governor. And, uh, this is hard to explain, but they they were trying to come up with a way to unify school districts across the state and decided the vision of a graduate would be the way to go. The hard thing is that a lot of school districts, through the end of this process, had already done this work. Um, so they released it anyway, they released their vision and they are now looking at, um, what measures will take place. So their committee continues to to look at this and dig into some of the ways, uh, they can, you know, they'll be able to measure each segment of the vision of The Graduate. Again, this was run by the governor's office, not by Ducey. Ducey has very little involvement. They sit at the table. They they have not been, uh, giving us any guidance or any direction. So there is a concern at the school level to try to figure out, okay, what do we do next? Um, they're supposed to be opening up some more opportunities for people to chime in, uh, about this, this process, what they've released so far with questions like, we have a lot of questions here about, okay, what about our vision of a learner that is very clear, uh, clearly connected to this, but does one supersede the other? The word we're getting back from, uh, Patrick Tutwiler, who's a secretary of education, is not to worry too much about it. It's not going to supersede at school level. We're just trying to trying to help connect the dots for all schools. Um, so there'll be more coming from this. They're just trying to figure out a graduation standard to say, Massachusetts kids are here, here and here. Um, and again, the hard the hard part is a lot of that work was already done at the school level for high school specifically, but a lot of school districts have started to adopt it down into the lower grades like we are. So stay tuned. But I just want you to know that the state just released that, um, and there'll be there's more to come. The opportunity for chapter 70 superintendents and the mass MSC, all the fairly substantial groups in the state have been trying to lobby the state House to get changes in the chapter 70 funding formula. It is a uniquely complex formula that no one could actually sit down and draw out. But, uh, the superintendents have been begging because certain parts of the formula formula leave uh, some districts, short rural districts are the best example. They tend to lose funding. Um, and they, uh, bigger districts like Worcester, Boston tend to, to gain on it. Uh, there have been some shifts over the years where the Student Opportunity Act was one shift to try and get more money to the States. Um, but now they, the state House is willing to to listen and hear what people have to say about it. So they open up a number of listening sessions. They're all listed here. Um, you can go. We can go. I'll be at Moscow if you want to go. Um, I just think it's important for us to be out there as part of the legislative committee. I'm connected with the North Shore Superintendents roundtable, so I'll kind of be working in the middle of that to try to figure out, um, you know, what other schools. It's really, um, such a complex issue that seems to be leaving some districts short based on a number of things. Equalize housing values. Um, number of kids and families that meet the poverty levels. So there's all kinds of number of levels that you have. You can lose a lot of money by losing a lot of value students in one shift. So there's there's some interesting shifts that take place. Um, so the state has finally opened up the opportunity to get some information. So we are trying to just get as many people out there as possible to go to these. Um, there's one online. There's one uh, Tuesday, November 18th. It's our it's a virtual one. So even if you go and just listen to see what some of the other schools are, are dealing with uh, with chapter 70, uh, along the way. So we'll be part of it, and I'll bring back any information I can find.

02:36:45,000	S26:
Cool.

02:36:45,569	S6:
Thank you.

02:36:46,569	S12:
Thanks.

02:36:47,270	S6:
Thank you for doing all that.

02:36:50,930	S4:
Oh, there's one other. There's one. Sorry. There's one other thing that didn't make it. Only because it came out last night was, uh, the state was looking at nine C cuts, which are cuts that would occur in state budget if there was a projection that we wouldn't meet the budget. Um, so if we were going to go over budget or revenues didn't match where they thought they should be. There's an opportunity around now to make what they call 90 cuts to the budget to keep it balanced. There are none occurring. There was some there was some worry last week that there were going to be some cuts. But revenues have uh, are above last year's standards. So that's good. It goes up and down it. Each month we try and track that. But yesterday we were notified that there are no cuts. So right now state revenues will stay as projected in the budget.

02:37:38,829	S6:
Thank you. Um, and I'll just say to the committee, I did see that on the M a if you're on the Mac listserv, I don't know if I don't know if you are yet if you're on the M. So if you go to Mac, you can, um, you can get on the listserv. You can. I think you have to actually, you know, log in, like, show, say what district you are from and everything. Um, but the listserv. A lot of things come out, but that's definitely one of them.

02:38:07,829	S4:
That's a big item right now.

02:38:09,200	S6:
So, um. All right. Um, anybody have any questions or anything for Eric? No. All right. Um, I feel like I've said just about everything I need to say.

02:38:23,100	S11:
Okay. Some good questions.

Yeah. 02:38:26,170	S6:
Thanks. Um, yeah. So unless anyone has any questions for me, I don't have anything. Um. All right. Topics for future meetings.

02:38:38,299	S9:
Uh, we'll we'll bring back the competency.

02:38:40,569	S6:
Okay.

Yep. 02:38:41,200	S9:
See you at some point.

02:38:42,069	S6:
Yep. Um. And, uh. Yeah.

Great. 02:38:47,229	S8:
No. Okay. I moved to adjourn at 9:39 p.m..

02:38:52,030	S12:
Second.

Second. 02:38:53,299	S6:
Uh. All right. We'll give it to the back end. All those in favor? And we are adjourned at 930.