00:04:30,270	Good evening. I called to order the meeting of the Hamilton-Wenham Regional School Committee on Thursday, September 3rd, 2026 at 7:04 p.m. and like to remind everyone that this meeting is being recorded and live streamed on HWCAM. Um, we will start off with an opportunity for citizens.

00:04:54,330	Comments I am going to say that my guess is that there are no citizens comments here in the room. Um, Eric, do we have anybody on zoom? We have no one on zoom. Okay, so seeing no one, I will not give the spiel regarding citizens comments and we will go ahead and close the zoom.

00:05:12,430	Who’s in it up? Okay. Um, next up, um, we have, uh, our new sort of agenda item that we’re going to put on, um, is our opportunity for, um, us to talk about our community outreach, what we’ve seen in the community, and anything in our inboxes. I’ll turn to you, Amy, do you have anything? Yeah. I haven’t received any emails.

00:05:38,070	Um, but we’ve been doing some posting on our new Facebook page just to update folks with upcoming agendas and options to review prior meetings.

00:06:02,800	Does anybody have any, uh, outreach or activities in the community? Uh, I will say I did have the opportunity to go to the, um, first day of, uh, for our teachers and staff. Um, so I got to be there for the enthusiasm, and I’m sure Eric’s gonna talk about it. I maybe a little bit during his superintendent report, so I won’t steal your thunder. Um, but I was lucky to be there.

00:06:21,900	Um, and see all the excitement, um, as the year gets started. Nice. Um, next up, I think, is to you, Amy. I think a portrait of our protocols. Protocols? Yes.

00:06:50,670	As elected members of the Hamilton-Wenham 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 received the best education possible. To that end, we hereby commit to the following. In the conduct of our business.

00:07:06,770	Number two, the superintendent and the School Committee represent the needs and interests of all students in the district and place the students interests above all others in their decisions, while remaining within the limitations of a voter approved budget. Thank you. Uh, David, if you’re willing, would you read us a portion of the portrait of a learner? Hamilton-Wenham District will be able to independently use their learning to communicate.

00:07:33,400	Students will effectively articulate thoughts, ideas, and feelings using oral, written, and nonverbal skills for a range of purposes and audiences. They will actively listen to, uh, to others and understand meaning, values, attitudes, and intentions. Thank you. Perfect. All right. To the superintendent’s report, Eric. All right. Thank you. It’s out of school. We have quite a number of things that we are wrestling with at this point.

00:07:53,730	We are very excited for our students to come next week. Um, get that energy back into our buildings. Um, a couple of weeks ago, we received word that the governor had signed earlier in August, the PROTECT Act, which outlines how law enforcement, um, acts and reacts on school campuses.

00:08:14,000	There are other pieces of it, but there’s a portion that’s very specific to, um, school campus law enforcement, specifically Ice and immigration responses. So, uh, we are currently following the law as required. We will, down the road see a policy coming our way.

00:08:33,270	Um, one of the things that the governor’s office and DESE, uh, didn’t realize is the timeline it takes to pass a policy to build it. First, MASC took a couple of weeks to build it. Then they sent it out to the schools. We’re going to bring it to the policy committee. Subcommittee and follow our process.

00:08:51,200	So you’ll see the policy itself come up. But I just want people to know we are following the law, um, including meeting with all of our principals during leadership team and going through the expectations and requirements, that that are that we need to follow to be compliant.

00:09:12,700	And then, uh, as Dana said, we had the, uh, today was the fourth of four days of having a staff and faculty. We had over 130 workshops available for our teachers and our ESPs and support staff. Lots of different categories.

00:09:32,670	And, uh, things that are even similar to like, okay, I want to just I need to just get my room set up. So we give them time for that. We give them time to do their mandated trainings. We give them time to dive into something like AI. We had the day of AI come today and do workshops for our high school and middle school staff. So lots of interesting opportunities to learn something, learn something new.

00:09:50,100	Um, another thing that has come out the end of the school year, the timeouts and seclusion law was changed and updated. And we, uh, spent some time, you know, got to sit through module one of our training, training entire staff on the changes that have occurred with timeout and seclusion.

00:10:11,530	And basically we’ve been following it all along. It’s not it’s not really anything new for us. We we don’t have any spaces where we’re locking kids in in in spaces. Um, so that’s good. And then it’s more of just we use CPI training.

00:10:30,600	Uh, we have trainers in-house that do our CPI training for our staff, which is, um, the Crisis Prevention Institute. Just, just really simple ways to defuse situations. Um, work with kids when they are in different types of situations. It could be behavioral or even, um, explosive situation. So that is something that’s new. But we are in compliance with.

00:10:53,000	And then we’ll do uh, we did module two for some of the more specific class during the trainings. And then throughout the year we’ll do more modules as they come out from the state, uh, so that we can get everybody on board, uh, this year. Uh, interestingly enough, our enrollment is up again.

00:11:12,430	Uh, we’re looking at, as of today, about a dozen, 12 to 15 new students across the district. Many of them came in at the middle school level, uh, which was interesting, but, uh, because we graduated, uh, such a small class of seniors and brought in a larger class of freshmen in the high school, actually, their numbers are up

00:11:32,530	as well. Uh, so third year in a row, it trending up and excited about that. And the, uh, state at the during the last week of school decided to open a family portal for MCAS. They’ve been really trying to get this up and running for a long time.

00:11:52,800	Superintendents have been saying like, that’s something the state should run, not us. It is a state run portal in the state has basically asked us to give access to families by giving them their access password. And, uh, for the for the portal.

00:12:15,030	So we will send something out tomorrow that, uh, outlines, um, where to find it. We put it in our power school. So when a parent logs in to power school, then go over to the left hand side and pop it open, and there’s the access information that you’ll need to get into the state portal. We don’t support the state portal. We don’t have any ability to troubleshoot it.

00:12:29,670	So, um, that kind of gets pushed back to the state. But we are helping to launch it so that parents can get a good view of their kids MCAS scores. And then one of the other changes that came about at the end of last year, uh, breakfast and lunch must be served on all early release days.

00:12:49,170	This is required by the state, uh, super complex for us. When you have kids that are getting out at 1115, you got to figure out an hour and 20 minutes or so for lunch while also keeping everybody else moving through the regular school day.

00:13:06,000	Um, the only times we don’t have to do it is the day before Thanksgiving. The day before December break, and the last day of school. Those are a much shorter day. So, um, that’s that’s about it. And we are really excited to to have our students come.

00:13:24,800	And I also wanted to, uh, say I wasn’t here last meeting, but, uh, how excited I am, I was able to meet the new teachers, and we did two days of orientation with them. Great group. Very excited to get them going and get them introduced to our kids and our families. And, uh, looking forward to an amazing school year. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. Anybody have questions? Okay.

00:13:46,730	Um, uh, next up, we have the consent agenda. Um, does anyone have anything they want to hold? Uh, I want I need to hold the minutes from August 20th. I move that. How do we do that motion? I move that we accept the consent agenda with holding the August 20th minutes. Second.

00:14:10,600	Second by David Polito. Um, all those in favor? That’s unanimous. Of the four members present and the motion passes. Um, I, I don’t even know, but I found this on the bottom of page three. If you it says additional ESP request. And then there’s an exhibit link.

00:14:39,930	But if you click that exhibit link, it’s actually the link to, um, the, uh, fall sports advertisements, which is just a different thing. That was so, um, the link needs to be changed or, it could be removed or it could be changed. Um, anybody have anything else? Motion. I move that we accept the August 20th many minutes with the stipulation that the exhibit link is changed. Second.

00:15:14,630	Second by Amy Kunberger. Um, all those in favor? That is unanimous. Of the four members present and the motion passes. Thank you. And, um, sorry for not seeing that until late enough. Um. Okay. Next up, Eric is going to talk to us about the strategic plan.

00:16:03,970	I wanted to, once we’ve completed the goal process last meeting, we approved goals. Uh, once those goals were approved, we were able to merge them into the final strategic plan. Committee members saw the draft strategic plan at the workshop we did this summer. This is the final compilation which includes all five years of initiatives.

00:16:22,070	So I just want to touch base with with the committee and go through some of the changes that that have been made along the way. Uh, with the with the, um, with the strategic plan. This was a five month process. We started last January, went all the way up through May. We followed the DESE frameworks.

00:16:44,500	Um, we’ve kept some things in place. Our mission, our vision, our portrait of the learner. Those things are foundational for us. And we’ve left, left those in place. We also chose to to only use for, uh, overarching structures, if you will, or focal points and, uh, things that have changed.

00:17:01,470	What we did was we, we went back into the previous plan and pulled forward some of the things that we realized were not finished from the previous plan and started those as a baseline. And then the year one goals are there were seven goals that were adopted last week.

00:17:19,230	Uh, excuse me, two weeks ago at the last meeting and then, uh, the school committee role in all of this will be helping to communicate the plan over the next several months. We all have a hand in that.

00:17:32,570	We all kind of take a piece in that, and it’s a good opportunity for I think it’s goal number two to be able to push that out there with our communications plan. So the process was built over five months in. Um, we we put together a really nice team. We were able to get a real nice mix of people from all across the community.

00:17:52,130	Uh, parents, teachers, administrators, people who haven’t had kids in the, in the school district for 20 or more years, people who are just interested in what’s going on in the school system. So it was really nice to be able to build and grow. Um, this, this whole strategic plan.

00:18:07,600	What we did is we took the initial group and we divided them up into three sub teams academics, Community and Finance, Budget and capital. Each of those individuals was able to pick which segment they wanted to be involved in. We gave them piles of data to sort through.

00:18:24,800	We gave them the previous district goal reports from 2021 on up, and they dug into all of that and synthesize all the data and started to put together, uh, the basis of the plan over the five month period. Um, once we developed the division, the vision for the future, we decided to stay with the four strategic focus areas. We had four last time.

00:18:44,470	There was no real reason other than everything fit cleanly. Everything that we needed to do fit cleanly under those four groups. It could have been a fifth, it could have been three. But the four seems to cover all the bases that we need.

00:19:03,930	So, uh, so 30 committee members, three sub data review, sub team, six committee meetings during the process. And then we use the DESE framework. Um, really a a good group to be able to keep showing up all the time, you know, at 8:00, 7:00, 8:00 at night. People have been working all day. They were able to come and really put it together.

00:19:20,770	These are the things that are foundational for us. Our mission. Together, we inspire our continuous learning to lead a purposeful life. Um, that is is really what we do every day in our classrooms. And then the vision, engaging the future with creativity and competence.

00:19:37,870	We want our students to be able to walk out that door, be creative, be confident no matter what they choose to do. And that’s part of something that we built in the last strategic plan that carries forward. The portrait of the learner is also a piece of that puzzle, the portrait of learner.

00:19:51,900	And you’ll see in my next presentation after this one, uh, really connects to what the work that the state is expecting schools to do. Uh, we are ahead of the curve.

00:20:06,670	We’ve done a lot of work over the past few years using the portrait of a learner, specifically at the high school, but we’re starting to push it down into the middle school. So people that have middle school students will start to hear about the portrait of the learner. Um, and they’re the they’re really the transfer of skills that we want kids to have when they leave us.

00:20:22,370	We feel confident that if kids can adapt and persevere, if they can communicate well, if they can think critically, if they can empathize, collaborate, and are open to learning for life, they’ll have a great opportunity to move forward no matter what they choose to do. Whether it’s college, military, family, business, their own business or something totally entrepreneurial.

00:20:38,230	There are all kinds of opportunities that are open. If you if you have if, if, if we stick with our portrait and are able to transfer those skills for kids in the future, the four strategic focus areas facilities, operations and long term planning, uh, that one will probably never go away.

00:20:54,830	That is something we are always working on. The second one, communication and stakeholder engagement. Really trying to make connections with the community and with people who may not necessarily have kids in our school district, uh, as we’ve learned through many of the processes in town meetings,

00:21:10,730	there are a lot of people who don’t have kids in the district who are interested in what’s going on in the district, and that’s great. And we want to take advantage of that and be able to drive that forward. Academic excellence for all students.

00:21:22,200	That’s what we do all day. We are working on learning every day in our classrooms and always striving for academic excellence. So, uh, seems appropriate to have that as one of our focus areas. Future digital infrastructure and learning. This is already outpacing us. We have set this goal. We started working on it last year.

00:21:42,600	You had seen the guidelines that were brought forward by the subcommittee last year. Um, we continue to grow that work and give teachers little cheat sheets about. Here are some ways to use it. I talked to a little bit earlier about.

00:21:58,670	We had a day of AI here today to talk about, talk to teachers about how this all works, how do these large language models work, and how can you use them or take advantage of them, leverage them to be more efficient as a teacher? Um, but also at the same time being ethical about it and understanding the safety.

00:22:13,270	And then how do we teach our kids those same things? So there’s a ton of work to do. It’s just going to be really we’re going to be playing catch up for the entire time, because every morning when you wake up, something new gets released. Something more powerful gets released and is available. And they just kind of pop it on your phone.

00:22:27,600	So people are figuring out how to use some of these things before we can get to them. Uh, shame structure. We didn’t change the structure around and the the focus areas were the same for, uh, we really tried to build strategic, objective statements to define our focus areas so that they were clear.

00:22:46,530	We spent a lot of work on that in the committee meeting. And I think the committee did a fantastic job really clarifying what each of those focus areas were all about. Uh, we used the smart format.

00:23:06,600	We we lean into that always so that we have a measurable goal, uh, with some attainable, uh, opportunities that that has some time frames built around it. So that helps us to say, by such and such date, we’re going to do x, Y and Z. And then the district goals report. We’ll still continue to do that. At the end of every year we’ll create a district goals report based on the district goals that we adopt each year.

00:23:20,000	And the one thing that’s different with this one is that the goals for the next five years are basically drafted. When you see this, the final document that’s on the agenda, the first year goals of the goals that we adopted word for word, the second year goals are second year through fifth year are

00:23:36,470	just initiatives that came out of the work from the committee. So there are initiatives, objectives, and this is what we’re looking for. That gives us a head start when we’re building our goals for our year two and year three and year four and year five.

00:23:49,730	And then again, I talked about the mission vision and the portrait that they they will outlive any single plan cycle. Those are foundational for us. And kind of the way we do business every day. What’s different? There’s a number of things that are, um, different. We have a school committee goal.

00:24:08,630	I don’t think we’ve ever had a district, a school committee goal. So that’s exciting. And new. Uh, we are looking at a timeline and horizon to build our facility schedule. We pick the number 2050, um, thinking, well, that’s kind of a long way away. It’s really not. We’re 24 years away already.

00:24:26,930	Um, so that was an opportunity for us to begin to lay out a plan, knowing that we can’t do it all at once. So how do we attack it? How do we work with the towns to understand what their needs are, understand what our needs are, and then help people within the communities to understand where that balance might be as we build and grow

00:24:43,170	the communities and the school district. SEL is a big deal for us. We are expanding Open Circle in grades four and five this year. Um, that social emotional piece is the missing link for our MTSS model that we were waiting to put in place.

00:25:01,200	Uh, you will see that expand across the district at all the levels. You’re also seeing as one of if you remember, the goal we set for this is to push it out to families and to help families to start to understand and take advantage of some of the things that we’re doing in schools.

00:25:18,070	So and then the portrait of the learner, the currently the high school is really the only, uh, level that’s enacted. The portrait of learner. They actually have, uh, can do statements that say, this is how you show how you do this. This is how you show how you do this. We’re moving that down to the middle school this year and then eventually down to the elementary school.

00:25:33,930	Um, and then the the real framework for when you’re looking at MTS MTSS, we’re going to now create a handbook and document things so that we have some cohesiveness so that we can use that to keep the structures in place as we move through the continued growth cycle.

00:25:56,870	MTSS over the next few years, um, roadmap, pretty straightforward. There’s a not there’s not a I’m not going to read all of these, but the, um, focus areas give us the opportunity to spread things out over five years in a really nice consecutive order.

00:26:17,230	So when you start to look at, you know, the facilities and operations, let’s look at some of the projects that we’re doing now. We have eight big projects underway this year. Then we’re going into that. Hopefully that feasibility study, if we can get the funding for that from the towns to be able to do the five building feasibility study, actually six building, including central office, then looking at how staffing

00:26:33,770	interacts with our facilities and what that looks like, and then master planning. What’s that? What’s that long term 2050 horizon look like. And coming out with a plan that we can share and be comfortable with, with the towns of the community. So that’s an example of one of them.

00:26:48,800	I won’t read them all the goals you have seen. Um, there are seven this year, and I think I was worried when we presented them to the staff that they would be like, wow, that’s a lot of goals.

00:27:06,870	The beauty of the goals out there specific to some people, like one goal is specific to the school committee, so staff doesn’t really need to worry about that. We really wanted to focus on keeping things moving forward that we’ve done for the past 3 or 4 years.

00:27:26,100	So goal three, the MTSS framework goal for SEL behavioral stuff, which connects directly to MTSS framework, the PLCs and common planning time Enhancement goal five. Those are the things that we’ve been doing all along, so we’ve not created any new initiatives. We’re just pushing it out a little bit further and growing. Uh, the opportunities that we have to make all these things work for our kid. The newest thing is AI.

00:27:42,800	Um, that’s something that we’re all curious about. We have learners from somebody who has never really understood how it works, or used it to people who use it almost every day, all day, far too much. You know, it’s just one of those things you get, you get pulled in and you’re hung up.

00:27:59,670	But, uh, so those are those that’s really the newest area for us. And I think it’ll be in the long run. If we hit our goals, it’ll help our teachers to be more efficient and our administrators to be more efficient. Uh, getting ready and prepping for their classes and getting quizzes.

00:28:15,900	It allows them to scaffold lesson plans in minutes rather than trying to figure out how do I, you know, raise the bar here or lower the bar a little bit here, or make adjustments so that it can meet the needs of all the kids that are in front of them. And technology needs that our tech department will manage that one. Teachers don’t really need to manage that.

00:28:28,530	So the nice thing is the goals are spread out. They’re not going to overwhelm anybody. And the third, fourth and fifth goals are really focused on our our the major staff members. Facilities and operations will continue to drive this forward. Uh, we have next week going out a card.

00:28:47,870	I think by the end of next week, once we hear back from the printer, uh, the card that will basically take people to a one question survey, and that’s about, uh, the, the RFQ that you excuse me, the RFP that you had seen at the end of last year, which basically says, what direction are people comfortable with if we start to

00:29:06,000	move forward, improving our facilities? Do you want to see just some general repairs done? Do you want to see general repairs and Ada compliance? Do you want to see some level of renovation? Do you want to see maybe a renovation slash addition? Or do you want to build a new school? So basically basically it’s a

00:29:21,530	structured around those five options to we’re going to send it out to the entire community, everybody that we can mail it to so that we have the ability to take that survey data, bring it back to all of us and figure out, okay, what’s the direction

00:29:33,400	that we want to go, and then put that in line with the Capital Improvement committee that runs annually and try to figure out what’s the best, what’s the best way forward so that we’re not struggling, um, year to year trying to figure out what to do next.

00:29:51,800	The communication, stakeholder engagement. It’s really about public cadence. It’s hard to keep a good public cadence throughout the school year. Um, things, things sometimes get a little stale, and you’re doing the same things over and over, like budget. I mean, we we talk budget from November to February.

00:30:09,870	Um, how many people, how many times do people want to hear about the budget? So trying to figure out, like, how do we keep that cadence and getting information out there so that people, it’s not overwhelming people and it’s simple and baseline.

00:30:23,970	Um, and then how do we increase that cadence around things that might be more beneficial, like can we create materials that help our public to better understand our, you know, 80 page district report that we do at the end of the budgeting process. So those are all things that we’ll look at and dig into.

00:30:41,930	And I think it’s it’s an important thing to continue to look at communication, um, readjust, you know, some some years Instagram is the go to it’s easy to just throw stuff on Instagram and people are on it. In other years they’re they’re not. They’d rather just get an email or a text. So we’ll just continue to grow that as we go.

00:30:57,870	Academic excellence will continue to grow. The MTSS framework, uh, that will continue right across this whole strategic plan, social emotional learning. We just talked about PLC common planning time enhancement for us is an important piece of the puzzle.

00:31:14,870	When we’re looking at what kids do in class, we want to give our kids take advantage of things that we already have built into our contracts, and we already have the opportunity to put, for example, all of our algebra teachers together at the same time during a particular day so that they can look at student work, look at the standards, and figure out

00:31:30,670	how to integrate the standards, look at opportunities for enhancement, look at opportunities and build opportunities for scaffolding with our special education staff. So we’re starting to do that better. It used to kind of be like, oh, just go meet and figure it out.

00:31:50,930	And now we’re trying to organize that and make it more specific as we as we grow this through the five year process. And then the portrait of learner that will continue to be important, as you’ll see in my next presentation, digital infrastructure and AI is, as I said, outpacing us. So we’ll continue to try to work on that.

00:32:08,970	We will have some classroom pilots at the high school this year to see what that looks like. It’s literally the giant experiment of, okay, how does this work for us? We have a number of teachers who are really competent with AI and AI usage, development of prompts, and how to use it for various things.

00:32:24,100	So we’ll work with kids and staff to try to figure out the best approaches so that we can, um, push that out to other to other teachers and other classrooms as as we grow it, we’re looking at data privacy. One of the problems you have with AI is it just gets loaded onto your device.

00:32:39,400	You know, you got you had a phone and the next day suddenly your phone had AI, um, surprise. A lot of people weren’t ready for that. I think a lot of public corporations and companies are now looking at, whoa, wait a minute, what is AI actually have access to in the softwares that we use or

00:32:57,000	the applications that we use? So we are looking at all of our AI related applications and non-related, uh, just to see what our agreements look like with some of our software companies to make sure that they’re in compliance with the laws like FERPA, CIPA and COPPA.

00:33:17,700	Um, the, the, the real security of what are we doing with student data? How are we managing it? How are the companies that we’re entrusting managing it? And now we’re we’re going to work with a third party vendor to be able to help examine those things for us so that we’re in a better place.

00:33:32,470	Um, and then looking at technology needs and assessment technologies changing really fast, just as fast as the AI. And we’re starting to see this kind of uptick in a shift of where what devices kids want to use, at what point in time. It used to be, you know, we could spread iPads out pretty far.

00:33:48,970	Now you’re seeing more kids have access to MacBooks or laptops, um, that are just more powerful and doing, you know, they’re able to do much more with it.

00:34:02,770	So what does that look like two years from now for, for our kids and within our schools? So the one piece of this is part of the school committee. We talk about this a lot. Um, we have the new communications subgroup. We’re hoping that, um, that can help with getting information out about the strategic plan. Uh, always we’re always at town meetings. We’re always involved in town meetings, like being there and talking about it, including the strategic plan.

00:34:20,400	And things that you talk about are public presentations that you make or places that you go to talk to the public. If you do a Q&A or you have office hours, um, reviewing the district goals, we’ll do that in June together, as we always do, and review them and make opportunities for us to be able to see where

00:34:37,030	we’re doing well and what we need to to do better. And then, uh, committing to the cadence and that’s that’s a word I’ll use over and over this year to try to get a good cadence of information out there, including the things that we do at these meetings.

00:34:53,070	Um, I’m going to try every Friday after a meeting to at least put one, if not two things into my weekly so that people get it. One of the things that, um, all of the issues with the building and the failure of the, um, the, you know, the Cutler School project did was give us an opportunity to connect to

00:35:06,500	more people. There are more people than ever getting my newsletter who don’t have kids in the school district. Uh, it’s an important piece of the puzzle. That’s huge. That’s good for us to be able to get information out there.

00:35:21,670	Um, and then setting goals in the spring, you know, the committee will work with the strategic plan and with the draft goals that we’re already there and start to help us build them. We might have to change and adjust them as well. When we say, oh, we didn’t get far enough in this, or we went really far on this and we need to make an adjustment.

00:35:36,670	And then we’ll measure the reports. We looked at it in every year 23, 24, 25 and now 26 and seven. At the end of the year, we’ll get a report, we’ll look at it and examine the things that what we did well, what we need to work on, what we can extend into

00:35:50,530	year two, what we can pull back, uh, those things will give us an opportunity. Those, um, reports will always give us an opportunity to reflect and think back on the work that we’ve done each year. Um. Thank you. I’ll take questions if people have them. I have some questions. Um, so thank you.

00:36:11,930	This is a really nice way to kind of lay everything out. I have questions around, um, AI usage, so I know in last in our last meeting, it’s baked into one of the goals, and we approved the goals. And I the goals mentioned finalized guidance by June 27th. Um, sorry, I can’t see now. The lights are not. Yeah.

00:36:36,970	Um, and then in this presentation that says finalized district wide AI usage guidance, uh, formal school committee adoption confirmed and distributed to staff July through September 26th. So I’m just curious, like what the actual guidance is at this moment. And I know it changes all the time.

00:36:57,300	So the the guidance you’ve seen at this moment is the one that was presented to you in June. Okay. Um, there are more documents coming out of that sub documents that we’ve just finished building that are for specific grade levels. So here’s guidance for teachers.

00:37:15,470	There’s we’re building these one page into infographics, um, that we knew we could get ready before we did the pilots. So that team that worked last year worked over the summer to get those ready. So they’ll be presented at the next school committee meeting. You’ll see, um, the different levels.

00:37:29,870	So teachers at the secondary, teachers at the elementary, students at the secondary. So just gives you an idea of what will go. And those are going to change. They’re going to once we do the pilots, we’ll go back and look at them and say, okay, this we got to shift that, we got to shift that.

00:37:40,530	We’re still using the DESE models that are on the ground. We just don’t know how far that will take us because things are shifting so fast. Yeah. The guidance document from DESE itself is like crammed full of things I don’t like. It’s hard to navigate.

00:37:56,630	There’s a lot of jargon in there, and but there are some, there are some stabilizing factors that I think you can use as, as foundational pieces. But it’s it’s inevitable. It’s just going to change because even the modeling is changing. You’re starting to see models, AI models that are thinking, but prodding you with questions to, to, to basically get an idea of how somebody would answer this particular problem.

00:38:19,470	And then using that information as part of of its main database. So it’s interesting to see how this is all growing. Um, and it’s also, you know, one of the things that we worry about is the wrong answer.

00:38:36,270	You know, it’s literally guessing at what the next word is going to be or what the next phrase is going to be. It’s based on all the information it has in its hands. It’s not always right. It’s not always right. Well, that’s one thing I’m curious about. And maybe this is a conversation we don’t need to have in this meeting, but it’s interesting.

00:38:50,530	So we’re investigating our rules at Salem State. And I’ve already learned that UMass Amherst has an internal like a closed AI that they feed. That’s like an internal AI that they feed with all of their information. So there’s a higher confidence level that the information is correct. It’s vetted. It’s all research that people in the university have contributed to.

00:39:10,200	Um, have you all thought about a system like that? It’s expensive. Yeah. Hugely expensive. Um, for, for a lot of reasons. You basically have to pay somebody to do it. But, uh, one of the things we, we do have is the Google platform.

00:39:28,400	So we use Google Apps for education, and that really helps. Uh, it’s not foolproof because once you get into Gemini, it still has access to the internet. So it’s really a lot of work on our part to be able to help kids to use it safely, understand what’s happening, be able to, you know, I mean, go, go back five years to any one of our social

00:39:47,200	studies classes. And our teachers were teaching kids how to use primary and secondary sources to validate or invalidate information. So there’s nothing different from the that kind of classroom model to what we need to still do with AI to be able to help kids understand, is this valid

00:40:03,700	or is this invalid? Is this cheating, or is this, you know, something that’s supplementing? Is this something that’s that we can use as a scaffold? Or is this something that is giving kids too much advantage, you know, um, pulling, kind of pulling the they’re using less of their brain than we want them to do.

00:40:20,200	You know, I’m uncomfortable with students using a so much AI, especially in the lower levels. Um, I’m like the trend in higher ed now is freshman classes coming in being completely analog for this reason? Like they’re kind of needing to wean freshmen students, especially off of AI.

00:40:36,800	Yeah. So I just would love a little bit of caution and pause about how reliant we’re making our students on AI. And absolutely, I have questions about like two elementary students need AI at all. Like part of the DESE messaging is like they can use it to brainstorm ideas.

00:40:53,200	And I’m like, elementary students have great ideas, you know? So I just I’m, I’m curious to see the actual long form guidance if we’re going to have access to that. That would be great. There’s a lot, a lot of conversations coming our way.

00:41:08,470	Still, when you think about that, you know, we we see the data, we see the research. The research is very clear, like even today, the trainer was telling us, you know, uh, Khan Academy came out with a Khanmigo AI thing that was going to tutor kids in all of their, uh, using all their videos, all the Khan Academy videos and, um, the top 5% of

00:41:29,530	kids really got better. They got they learned more and kind of gained more. Everybody else nothing. So the reality is, where’s the balance for our kids so that they’re not reliant upon it because we still want kids to think, we still want kids.

00:41:47,670	And I and I can tell you, there are our teachers are really like, we want our kids to be able to still take notes, and a lot of our kids do. It’s fascinating. When you go to the classroom, you’ll see kids shut their computer and take take handwritten notes, um, which the research also tells us.

00:42:02,970	So we have to look at all of those things and then figure out what’s the best direction forward do. I don’t think we really use AI at the elementary level here for kids anyway. Um, teachers may, but not in the student realm. There’s not really the ability to get there.

00:42:19,730	Uh, at the elementary level, they they could, but it’s not part of the curriculum. It’s not part of kind of their everyday computer use. And again, we’ve talked in this forum about how much access should a kindergarten have during the school day technology.

00:42:37,330	We go from none to maybe some, uh, those are conversations that we want to have. We want to kind of dig into that and see where even the community lies with that. Um, it’s it’s an important piece of the puzzle, you know, we want kids to learn, grow, understand how to use AI safely, ethically, morally.

00:42:54,200	And then but also, we want kids to be able to still use their brain to its fullest capacity. And we know that, you know, overuse of AI will limit, you know, that kind of that brain piece that we want to be enhanced, if you will, through their pre-K to 12 years with us. Sure. Thank you.

00:43:14,130	Other people, I mean, I don’t know if there’s a question or comment. So just so the public understands, like the strategic plan is informing the district. Goals, correct? Okay. So the strategic planning process informed, um, the district goals. And so it’s not like reinventing the wheel like it’s all part of one holistic, um, process.

00:43:33,900	Right. And for us, it’s an eight year process. Remember when I took over I came in in October of 2021 and took much of that year to build an entry plan? Um, we went back and we looked at that entry plan and we looked at where we got with

00:43:49,030	our first three year strategic plan and still took piece of that said, okay, we’re not finished with some of this, and we’re able to integrate that.

00:44:05,500	So we have a nice, uh, continuum, uh, from 21 all the way till now and beyond, of connectedness across the things that we’re doing, like MTSS has not gone away. I mean, you’ve seen it over and over and over, and we’ve been able to grow it and adapt it and shift, and we shifted it again this year, even within the buildings. On how how that, um, those interventions are working. So it’s a pretty cool model.

00:44:20,500	I think we’re one of the few that’s kind of traveled in that, you know, it’ll be an eight and a half year window, basically. And what I like about the strategic plan is it involves people other than the school committee, you know, it involves the public, it involves other people that then

00:44:36,470	inform the goals. So I think that’s that’s really positive. And there were a lot of people on the committee who, again, didn’t have kids in the district who contributed so many pieces of information to us that were like, oh, we didn’t think of that. We didn’t think of that. So it’s fascinating, but fun to.

00:44:57,700	Other people. We’re good. Julia sort of highlighted what I wanted to say. So we’re good. So can we just can we vote to accept the strategic plan, the final strategic plan? Uh, as presented? Uh, why don’t we have a motion and then we can have a discussion? I move that the school committee accept the strategic

00:45:24,470	plan as presented second. Second by Dave Polito. Um, does anybody have any discussion? Or any other questions? Okay. Looks like we’re ready to vote. All those in favor? That is unanimous. Of the four members present and the motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right.

00:45:51,100	I want to thank the committee to a lot of work. It was a lot of long nights. To thank everyone in the committee. Looks like a lot of work. Yes. The strategic planning committee. Um, okay. I guess you’re gonna continue on on the graduation information. Yes. I’ll shift gears a little bit.

00:46:09,870	We’ll talk about reimagining High school, which is a fascinating, uh, uh, title for this report of the statewide graduation council. We saw the draft of this in December of 2025. It was, um, pretty similar to what they finally put out this June 2026. Document is 125 pages long.

00:46:30,200	Uh, it really talks about kind of, okay, where do we go from here in the state of Massachusetts? And it looks at things like, what types of kids courses kids are taking, what types of things they want kids to be involved in.

00:46:41,270	So I’m going to try to give you a little bit of a quick overview. Uh, I’ll go I’ll shrink down the 125 pages into a little more, uh, digestible format, uh, for the committee. So the design principles is, is from these are all from the State Council. They want to allow students to pursue a post-secondary path. Um, it doesn’t matter if it’s college or not like this one.

00:47:04,000	It says the workforce. It could be the military, it could be anything. But they want kids to pursue a post-secondary, uh, path. They want consistent rigor. One of the things that you will find if you go to all of the high schools in Massachusetts, the offerings can be different.

00:47:21,330	And I’ll give you an example. If you’re a children in a rural part of Massachusetts, you do not have the options for courses that we would have say in our area. There’s just not enough kids and not enough teachers, you know? So the opportunities are limited.

00:47:36,330	So part of this is forcing all schools to kind of get in line with the MassCore. And I’ll talk about that a little bit more in a second. Uh, rigorous coursework. They are. This group has aligned, um, and said the MassCore uh, framework, which we already follow is the basis for admissions to mass colleges.

00:47:57,130	So when you want to go to UMass, I’ll just use UMass as an example. Any of them, um, you got to take four years of English, four years of math, three years of science, three years of social studies, two years of language.

00:48:10,570	So they’re trying to standardize that across all schools within the state. And then there’s a big push to make bring in real world skills, critical thinking and communication, collaboration, digital literacy.

00:48:29,230	Some of those things may sound familiar if we just went through the strategic plan, it looks like we might have hit all of those, um, and the other piece of it is financial literacy and civic responsibility. We have a lot of civic, uh, civic projects going on. You’ve seen them, you’ve gotten emails from kids to say, hey, I’m passionate about this, this whatever project. And we all get them at the end of the year from some of our middle schoolers and many of our high schoolers.

00:48:44,670	And then, uh, the flexibility for our students to personalize learning, uh, that’s a push for the group. I think it’s harder, again, for some schools and not others. We do happen to have a number of options and paths for kids to travel. Not all schools do. So they’re really trying to align that information.

00:49:06,200	So one of the things is MassCore I talked about they want us to be aligned with MassCore we’re already there. Um, it’s basically our graduation requirements. We’re going to tweak them a little bit and I’ll tell you why in a second. As I go through this, uh, end, of course, assessments.

00:49:19,400	MCAS, as you know, was voted out by the public as, um, to be required as a requirement for graduation. Um, whether you agree with that or not, the state is trying to bring, uh, end of course, assessments in, in line. Uh, we don’t have a lot of information with this.

00:49:35,030	I, had a webinar with the commissioner on Monday, not just me, all the superintendents, uh, to talk about this. They do not have a plan yet. They are not sure what it will look like, but they basically are thinking math, science and English and of course, exams that all kids will be responsible to take.

00:49:54,600	They’ll be distributed and scored by the state. Sounds similar to MCAS to me. Um, and then that will be a requirement of graduation. So we’re still that’s in a wait and see mode. Uh, post-secondary planning. They are pushing their framework called MyCAP. We use Scoir. Same there, same things.

00:50:14,330	Uh, we’ll just have to align our milestones with theirs. Um, we’ll talk a little bit more about milestones in a second, but they want to, uh, give kids the opportunity to gain, um, so the thing I compare it to is we have the Seal of Biliteracy.

00:50:34,630	So kids who they take an assessment and they can be, uh, assessed to be literate in a particular language, in our case, Spanish or Mandarin. Um, they want to do these seals for other things. So kids can kind of collect badges, if you will. Um, financial literacy, artificial intelligence, digital literacy and others that they haven’t even come up with. Um, so that’s part of the post-secondary.

00:50:53,970	They’ll build milestones where kids starting in sixth grade will now have to begin, uh, planning for their post-secondary future. And again, not necessarily college, but just an opportunity for kids to start to, um, take a look at what’s available.

00:51:12,130	What am I interested in? They’ll be in you know, we do interest surveys and things like that already. So again, we’re meeting in this one. We’ll just have to adjust to the milestones that the state puts out, culminating experiences. Uh, the high school has done a lot of work with the portrait of a learner. That portrait of a learner.

00:51:27,530	Last year, if you went to graduation down the walls of the middle school, high school, connecting hall, it was all about, uh, kids took one of those, uh, portrait of the learner pieces and wrote about it and how they were impacted through the school year. Now we’ll push it into a culminating project.

00:51:44,530	Uh, what we’ve heard from the state is they’re going to develop a rubric for our kids. They’ll have to use in these culminating projects. So kind of like a graduation capstone, if you will. So that’s something that we’ll have to kind of get in line with.

00:51:58,930	We’re not sure again, what that looks like from the state, but we already have the portrait of the learner. It aligns with the expectations of this graduation council report. And then there’s some embedded components, um, financial literacy I talked to about that’s that’s one of the things they want kids to be involved in. We offer financial literacy.

00:52:17,570	That is not going to be required. Um, we have we have a couple of different math courses that have some type of financial focus on, including courses, including courses in our business department. Um, credit for life is also part of that. Financial literacy. And the one we do in Moscow every year, work based learning.

00:52:35,900	They want kids to get out internships. We already have the opportunity for internships. This past year, 2025, we had the highest number of kids involved in internships ever. Uh, continues to grow and kids start to take continue to take advantage of that.

00:52:52,330	At the end of the year, they do a fair where they talk about they have a poster, they talk about their internship experience. And, um, it’s it’s kind of a fun way to see what kids did during that quarter for and how all the things they learned.

00:53:05,270	It’s also fun to see how excited they get about, you know, I went out and I, you know, some of them were with the police department, some of them with the fire department, some are ah, with the water department. So it’s cool to see them come back and say, this is what I did.

00:53:14,930	It was so cool. Um, every student is going to be required to be at least introduced to the FAFSA and the MASFA. Those are financial aid documents for the state and the federal government for federal scholarships. Um, you can opt out of this.

00:53:35,130	Uh, many people, uh, especially high income earners, do not generally fill out a FAFSA. There’s really no you’re not going to get any benefit from it generally. So they want every student family to fill out one of the two documents towards scholarship, to give them opportunity to go to college and receive some some level of financial aid.

00:53:53,670	Kids and families can opt out so they it’s not it was originally a requirement of everybody. Um, but they’ve now shifted that so that people can opt out AI and digital literacy here comes those will be milestones that kids again can get badges for. Um, they’re going to call them seals. So AI seal the digital literacy seal.

00:54:13,000	You know, those are all things that kids will get along with their diploma as they grow through their high school experience and then civic readiness. We talked about this before. We do it in eighth grade. We do it in high school. Excuse me. Middle and high school.

00:54:28,600	Uh, we just have to look at what the expectations will be from the state and just align To that. Not a big deal. Something that I think kids in this district are already fairly confident in completing.

00:54:47,700	The one thing we did hear is they want to, again, have a rubric so that they can make sure this consistency across all of the schools. And the final thing is, in comparison, I just want to show the the left is the vision of the Massachusetts graduate. If you remember, a couple of years back, we shifted this this here on your right hand side was the portrait of a graduate.

00:55:06,930	The reality is, each of those components of the portrait of the Graduate are really worked on. From the time students walked through our doors their first day. We start to teach them about being adaptive, going to a kindergarten classroom. We’re talking about adapter adaptability. We’re talking about perseverance.

00:55:25,000	Um, so all of those things started to touch kids all the way from pre-K, all the way through graduation. Um, and our business is learning. So we felt like, okay, let’s change it to learning. But it aligns fairly, uh, cleanly with the the vision of the Massachusetts graduate. When you start to say, oh, we have a problem solving.

00:55:44,270	Um, we’re academically prepared, effective communicators, responsible decision makers. So many of those things aligned. Um, the one thing that I think we’re we have is the learn for life piece. I think, you know, we’re always learning. We have every day we have an opportunity to learn something new every day, every night.

00:55:59,730	And I think that’s that’s a kind of the the gold standard in your future skill set. So and that’s it in a nutshell. I’ll take any questions if people have any. Is this is this significantly more work than MCAS was or. No. Is this sort of. We we don’t know.

00:56:20,670	I feel like it’ll be the same because you have to have you’ll have to have a third party vendor who’s not only distributing the assessment, but then a scoring the assessment. So that’s going to be the same as from what I can tell. I’m not sure where they’re going to go with it. Um, they’ve tried this a couple times.

00:56:39,270	If people have heard of, uh, DMs district determined measures they before MCAS and districts were required in every course to have these measures that kids had to reach to be proficient in a particular class.

00:57:02,270	And it went all the way from A to Z, whatever classes you had in your building, you were supposed to build district determined measures that failed went away. They weren’t sure how to manage it. Uh, I don’t think the state’s clear on what they want to do and how they want to do it.

00:57:19,330	I think there’s some pushback, um, from some of the groups that are, uh, you know, even even some of the, the educational groups are pushing back a little bit to say, what is this going to look like? Is this MCAS to we already kind of been down that road. So it’s kind of a wait and see. But we don’t have a ton of work to do. Some of it coincides very cleanly with our strategic plan, uh, which was purposeful. We saw this coming.

00:57:33,730	We knew this was coming in December. So, um, I think we’re I think we’re in good shape. I think one of the reasons I wanted to do this to say, hey, we’re there, we have masks are in place. I think that would be harder because then you have to change your course structure.

00:57:46,800	You got to add more staff. We need to do that. We have those pieces in place already. So. Yeah. I mean, I don’t really I mean, I have comments, but they’re not really for you. They’re for the state. So I do too. Yeah.

00:58:17,000	Like yeah I, I’m comfortable with the what’s presented in terms of how we are handling. But I do have concerns about. We are in good shape. The work that we’ve done in literacy, the work that we’ve done with our curriculum, we have, um, you know, the literacy bill that was passed, we are ahead of the curve there. I believe we’re ahead of the curve here.

00:58:33,700	We have some tweaking to do, and we’ll have to wait and see what these rubrics look like when they come out from the state. We’re not sure if they’ll hit their timelines or not, but they want a lot of this enacted with the current eighth grade class.

00:58:49,730	The 2020 fall 2027 is the first group that they’ll start to say. This all applies. Um, I think we’ll be fine. I don’t I don’t see anything that is outrageous or that we have to go re budget or replan for. I just I’m just not sure where the state’s going to end up.

00:59:06,300	I guess maybe my comment would be to build on what Julia just said. And what you’re saying is that just as a committee member, I guess I want to hear along the way, if we start to discover that some of this requires so much work that it’s that it’s detrimental to our students learning like that, I guess.

00:59:27,770	I’m not sure if that’s what you were looking for, but that’s what I would be looking for, is that I understand it’s really hard to predict, and I do want to comply with what the state is telling us, but at a certain point, we need to give information back to the state. So we do.

00:59:44,470	If you know, if it becomes clear that jumping through whatever hoops are being presented is, is actually making it more difficult for our students to learn. I guess we just want, I, I want to know about that. As soon as the district discovers that. And it’s an important role of not only the committee, but me, my team.

01:00:03,800	Um, using our state agencies to our advantage to really to push that message back. Um, and coming straight from the committee to DESE is, I think, a powerful thing to say. Hey, wait a minute. We’ve examined this and this is what we’re seeing. We’re not there yet, but I think at some point, you know, I don’t know what it’ll look like.

01:00:18,670	Like an end of course exam. Um, for, say, algebra one or algebra two or geometry. I’m not sure what that would look like, because again, there’s a whole bunch of schools that don’t teach all the courses that we’re already teaching.

01:00:34,670	So how are they going to choose as schools are getting up to speed, adding these courses in or dropping courses so that they can make room? Well, and so. I mean, I guess I would say like, forgive me if I’m not right about this, but to me it would be easier to make an end of course assessment with something like algebra than it

01:00:54,530	would be to say and end of course assessment on a literature course. Because because we might have an easier time agreeing upon what algebra skills we think it is important for our students to have versus what exact book you might read, or how an essay gets graded. I mean, those are much.

01:01:17,670	So I just am. I am concerned about how what the I, I understand the intent of what the state is trying to do. I’m not really concerned about this sort of intent.

01:01:37,700	I’m just concerned about what? So anyway, all I’m saying is that as you discover and our teachers and and administrators discover how challenging it is and what the impacts are on the students, it’s just important for us to know along the way. Yeah, that’s that’s literally one of the questions superintendents asked in the meeting with the commissioner twice earlier in the summer and later in the summer.

01:01:51,170	You know, what does that look like? If my ninth grade class does ten pieces of literature along the way, but they’re all aligned with the standards and, you know, three towns over does five pieces of literature. The the answer that comes out is, well, they need to be aligned with the standards.

01:02:06,500	If they’re aligned with the standards, then they’ll be fine. I mean, so that’s that’s a worrisome. Um, but we’ll see and we’ll report it back.

01:02:19,900	And, you know, if we if we have to, you know, I the the beauty of some of the work I’ve been doing at the legislative level is that I, um, have the ability to to kind of say to our local legislators like, hey, these are the things that we’re having trouble with. And they listen, they’ve done a great job for us. On behalf of us, uh, the chapter 70 funding, all of those things have shifted because of the work that they’re doing.

01:02:35,070	So they’re very willing to listen. And we’ll take advantage of that. Well, I mean, I think that what we’re getting into with this is, is, you know, and I think you just sort of nailed it with, with the, the redundancy of it.

01:02:55,000	Right? I think there was a clear message sent, um, you know, with the vote of MCAS, whether you like it or not, that, you know, it’s educators and people didn’t want this sort of being this looming sort of bar that you had to meet because, you know, the neighboring districts are in very different places. Right.

01:03:12,970	Um, and the whole idea of having the standards that are updated regularly is to provide the guidelines that we need to be trying to meet. And I mean, from classroom to classroom throughout the same school, right? We have students that are at different places, and you can be educating each one of them to the, you know, their highest ability, all while

01:03:32,470	maintaining the, you know, um, you know, maintaining the the direction given by the guidelines. Um, but, you know, coming in and having a third party assessment isn’t going to help that at all, other than giving some arbitrary sort of measurement. Agree. Right.

01:03:56,030	And, and, and I think I, you know, I would find that, that if there was no sort of statewide measurement at all, I don’t think there would be a single district that would not do their own, you know, sort of testing and measuring.

01:04:15,330	So, you know, how many, how many different things do we do that aren’t required, but just for us to make sure that we’re not missing any students, you know, and, and finding them like, okay, well, we were missing something here.

01:04:36,600	Now what can we do? You know, um, I think that, uh, so, so, yeah, I mean, I, I really see this as the sort of redundancy not to say that there aren’t good ideas within it, but I just whether or not that, you know, execution. So it’d be really interesting to see, you know, where you and, you know, especially when you’re meeting with the superintendents groups sort of start seeing it as, as it’s sort of develops more. Yeah.

01:04:52,000	What I would hate to see is that I would hope that you guys would speak up to very early. Would it be just we’re just replacing the MCAS with a new test, with a new company that’s basically sort of the same. Yeah, same thing because it’s not doing anything to help the students.

01:05:07,770	It’s kind of been the consistent mantra since they started talking about this. So people have said, well, this is how is this different from the MCAS. So state the state continues to answer that differently as they evolve and grow this. So like I said, it’s kind of a wait and see now.

01:05:21,930	But we are all waiting to make sure that it’s the right thing for kids, right? I mean, it’s and it’s so it’s so difficult because you know, what’s what’s the right thing for Hamilton-Wenham Essex, Manchester.

01:05:45,400	Is it the same thing necessarily for Chelsea? They’re either different kids coming from different places and, and while they, they all have the same level, you know what? They don’t all have the same opportunities. Right. And the test isn’t going to be able, you know, is only going to show that more. It’s not going to help solve the problem. You know, that the fact that we’re already basically compliant with this, this kind of proves that. Yeah. So.

01:06:08,370	Okay. Um, anybody else have anything? I’m, I’m sure we could have a. Yeah. Talk for. I could talk. For hours, like, literally. What I like sort of taking notes on anyway for something else to do. Yeah. But, um, but. Yeah. Thank you. You’re welcome. Thanks.

01:06:30,970	Okay, let’s wave our arms around just a little bit more, because it’s hard to see. Um, okay. This makes me. Sleepy and sleepy. It’s hard to see. Um, okay. Never calls me unless I be here. I swear to you, all your kids. All goes off the hook. What? I mean. It’s very popular. My daughter. No I’m not. No, just the two weeks I don’t see you.

01:06:53,670	I was like, I’m, um. Okay. Uh. There’s no idea. Where I am. Next is. Next is finance and operations. I think we don’t have anything. Correct. Okay. Okay. Um, Committee reports, uh, capital finance. I think I have not responded to an email about scheduling. Is it. Just me? Is it? Anyways? Oh, did we.

01:07:16,130	Forget it? Um. when is it? Hold on. 21st. I think it’s the 21st. 21st. I think. Yeah. 1:00 on the 21st. Is that a Monday? Yes. Oh great. Okay. Okay, okay. Um, policy. I need someone in my group to respond to scheduling. I didn’t say, I didn’t say, oh, no, no, now.

01:07:38,570	I can’t figure out how to get back to my email. Oh, okay. Well. And I’ve done this a couple. Of times. We can talk about it. You want to want to give it a shot and try to do it right now. Yeah. Shadow trade some phone numbers. Get it? I don’t.

01:07:52,400	Open up your calendar. Amy will call you. Shout out of date. Well, let’s take like three minutes and try to just schedule a policy subcommittee meeting. Sounds good. Um. So this is on zoom, correct? Oh, yeah. Zoom. And it should be really short.

01:08:10,670	It should not take too long. Um, to David, do you have, like, gaps in your schedule? Where are you? So I’d say the only thing I really can’t do is, like, Tuesday evenings. Okay, okay. That’s broad. Right? Yeah. Okay. That’s good. So we could do. This one. I teach.

01:08:34,930	Um, sorry, I’m just trying to fit my schedule because Dana, somebody hurts. So I’m looking at that. You can’t do Monday at all. This coming. Yeah, this coming Monday. Coming Monday is Labor. Day ready? Yeah, I. Know I could, though. I don’t know if we’re allowed to have a meeting on that day. I don’t know. Um, Labor Day. I could I’m having the barbecue on Sunday. Did you.

01:08:54,970	Could you do. Oh, God. These are like, all when I have class Wednesday after one. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, this probably isn’t. No, it’s. I mean, let’s just do a couple. Can we do Wednesday at one? Wednesday the ninth at one. You said after one. Yeah. I meet with Eric until one so 115. But you’re gonna. So. Yeah.

01:09:18,970	Is that okay. I don’t know. Yeah. Ninth at. 115. Is that helpful to have the 15 extra minutes? Yeah. Perfect. Email janelle. Okay, great. Great. Wednesday, September 9th at 115. Not am PM. Not am. Although if you’re open. Oh I’m off. I’m available but okay.

01:09:46,870	Thank you all for patiently waiting for that. Um, and we will get that. Um, we actually probably should get that posted tomorrow because of Labor Day. So yeah. Um, okay. Thank you. Uh, negotiations. Nothing to report. Um, Secretary report. Our secretary is not here. I will just like to just say.

01:10:12,870	And I’m going to say to you as the I think you’re the assistant secretary. Um, I’m just going to say it again. We don’t know when we’re going to have our next executive session meeting, but we really want to have those minutes available ahead of that time. Oh, which ones are are missing.

01:10:27,770	So they are I they are on. On that spreadsheet. They’re on the spreadsheet. They’re also on when we had that zoom meeting, it was in uh, July. They were listed there. Um, I’m happy to send it to you again. I oh, I can talk to Tom. Um, I’ll send them to you again. The dates.

01:10:57,700	Yeah, because I just have. No, I don’t know if I was there or not, so if I was there, I’d probably have them. Okay. All right. Um. All right. Uh, next, uh, chair report. Um, I think my. I don’t have much.

01:11:19,900	I already said I went to the, um, opening day, and that was fantastic and, uh, very exciting. Of course, to hear how those student opening day goes. I did hear from somebody. You said that, uh, orientation went well, and I heard from somebody else. That high school orientation went really well. So I can only talk for my son and his friends. Kindergarten was fun. Excellent. Great time.

01:11:37,200	Buses were on time, and everything was excellent. Everything went. Smoothly. Yeah, exactly. Then I have one more thing after. But go ahead. All right, a little fun. Yay! Oh, can I take one. Of those? Yeah, I brought one for. You. I had a dead end. Street we had last year.

01:11:52,170	We had a lot of problems with people passing buses. When the signs were out and the lights were on. So we tried to work with our bus company. We split the cost of putting together lawn signs to get out. Um, so that we can get the message out ahead of time.

01:12:06,230	We’ve got most of them out. We have a few more left to get out. Um, just so people can understand that you do need to stop for the the buses, even if you’re on the other side of the road. Uh, so if the lights are flashing the stop signs out, please stop.

01:12:20,500	Um, we’ll continue to get this message out and get them out on people’s lawns over the weekend. So thank you. Sorry. No. That’s great. Um. All right. I don’t have anything else except that it was a request that our first meeting and I didn’t have it information.

01:12:38,070	So take guesses on what our average meeting length was from last year. Oh. All right, shout them on out. Oh 4502 hours. 50 minutes. Two hours. What? Oh, no. That was that was not an average. No. I just didn’t hear what you said. Two hours, 52 hours, 15 minutes. Okay. Is it like prices, right? Yeah. It’s like I.

01:12:59,370	Stole mine. I was gonna go, like, 212. Oh, okay. One can’t. Go over, so its. Price is right. You could say 212. Price is right rules. I’m not. Sure if the price is right. You could still win. An hour and 15 minutes. For 515. So I’ll probably lose. All right. Uh, well, we’re playing prices, right? Rules.

01:13:17,130	Oh, Eric didn’t guess. I don’t know if you’re guessing. 232. Okay. All right, that didn’t change anything. We’re playing prices, right. Rules where you can’t go over Amy wins. It was two hours. One minute. Oh. Heartbreaking to me because I wanted so much to be under two hours. No. That’s amazing. That’s wonderful.

01:13:35,730	Thank you. Okay, I’ll take it. That’s a wonderful. Um. Prior years to. Oh, yeah. Um. Huge improvement. Yeah. We’re shooting for the two hour. When I joined the school committee, I thought meetings were supposed to be six hours. Yes. Well, like, they’re. Not. I don’t. Know if that.

01:13:51,800	Was what they were supposed to be. Yes, that’s that’s. that’s why that’s why. I. started keeping. Track. Um, okay. Um, topic for future meetings. Anybody? I don’t have anything. Oh, we’ll have that policy soon. Yeah. For the next meeting. Yeah. Our hope is to get it on. Okay. For the first. Reading. For the 17th.

01:14:13,630	Yeah. The PROTECT Act policy. Okay. Um, okay. Anything else? All right. Oh, I move to adjourn the school committee meeting at 8:14 p.m.. Second. Second by Dave Polito. All those in favor? That is unanimous.