All right. Good evening everybody. Welcome. And noting the hour and the presence of a well-fed quorum, I call the ACT in Boxboro Regional School Committee to order. Uh members of the public who wish to watch our meeting may do so on Act TV's YouTube channel. Um
and as a note for posterity and for celebration, this meeting is being recorded uh and can be found on Act TV's website at actanttv.org. We're going to start our evening with a retiree recognition. At this point, I'm
going to hand it over to Deputy Superintendent Andrew Shen to get us started. All right. Good evening everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Uh we are at the stage in the year where we uh have a number of celebrations and one of them is
certainly and appropriately so uh to honor our retirees who will be ending their time at EC Boxboro at the end of this year. Um you know every year sort of being alongside our colleagues who are retiring is the ultimate exercise in carrying two different competing
feelings at the same time. On the one hand, you want to be happy for them because they've reached this important milestone and at the same time, selfishly, you're very sad and disappointed that you're not going to be with them moving forward. We're going to suspend the sad part tonight that plenty of time for that and we're going to
focus on the happy part and celebrate the achievements that they've had, the contributions that they've made, uh, and certainly wish them well. So to do that, u we're going to we have a number of retirees, some who could not make it this evening, so we certainly want to recognize them. But for those who were able to carve out some time this
evening, um all from the elementary schools, good job, elementary schools. Uh we're going to ask the principles from those schools to come up. They're going to read uh a little bit honoring each one and then we have a bit of a parting gift for you. Uh I'm quite proud of the fact that starting last year we
shifted from um certain gifts and and shifting to a different type of gift that we think will serve you well in your retirement in terms of uh your enjoyment and recreation. So we hope you find it enjoyable as well. It's a small token um of our appreciation. So with that, we're going to start in alphabetical order by school. So
Blanchard Elementary, Mike, if you could join us right here. Okay, Andrew's a little taller. Bring them up here. Okay, so first we're going to ask Dawn Charlton
to come up. Hello. So, tonight we honor someone whose quiet strength and steadfast presence have made a lasting impact on our school community. As Dawn retires after 18 years of service, we want to take a moment to recognize not only the years, but the heart, dedication, and
deep institutional knowledge that have defined her time with us. Dawn has been more than a general education assistant. She has been a mentor, a steady hand, and the person we could always count on. Whether it was helping a student who needed extra encouragement, stepping into a support, stepping in to support a
colleague without being asked, or remembering the little details that kept our school running smoothly, she did it all, often without recognition, but never without impact. Her willingness to step up, her patience, and her kindness have touched every corner of our school.
She's the kind of person who doesn't just do the work, she lifts those around her while doing it. As she moves on to this next chapter, we want her to know how deeply grateful we are, not just for her work, but for who she is. Her legacy will live on in the lives she's touched, the lessons she's shared, and the
culture of care and support she helped build. Thank you, Dawn, for everything. You will be missed more than words can say. We wish you joy, rest, and adventure in your well-earned retirement. [Music] [Applause] Connie Long. We're here to celebrate and honor
the remarkable career of Connie Long, who is retiring after 19 years of service to our library and our community. From the time I started at Blanchard 5 years ago, Connie brought not only a deep love for books and learning, but also a passion for for connecting people with knowledge. Whether it was helping a young student
discover the magic of reading for the first time, assisting a researcher in finding the that elusive source, or curating programs that brought our community closer together, Connie did it all with grace, wisdom, and heart. As we say goodbye to Connie in this professional role, we don't just mark the end of her career, we celebrate her
legacy. The impact of her work will continue to ripple through every person who walks through our doors. On behalf of our staff, the patrons, and the broader community, we will be deep you will be deeply missed. Congrats on your retirement, Connie. May this next chapter be filled with rest, adventure, and all the books that you've been
meaning to read. Congratulations. Sheila Owen. Don't make me cry. I won't. I promise. Tonight, we also honor Sheila Owen, who has left an indelible mark in our school
community. Not with loud words or hand or grand gestures, but with quiet strength, deep dedication, and wit that always seem to arrive at just the right moment. Sheila has been a steady presence in our halls for 22 years. Through changing curriculums, generations of students, and endless staff meetings, they've remained a
source. They've remained a source of calm, wisdom, and warmth. You may not always, you may not have always heard them first in a room, but when they spoke, everyone listened. And when they cracked a joke, well, let's just say you had to pay attention, or you'd miss a oneliner that would leave you smiling
for days. Sheila has shown us that leadership doesn't require a spotlight. It can come in the form of showing up day after day with care, consistency, and a deep belief in students potential. Whether helping help helping a struggling student find the confidence to do something, offering a kind word in
the staff lounge or lightening the mood with a perfectly timed quip, Sheila has shaped this school in ways that words can cannot express. As you head into retirement, we hope your days are filled with laughter, peace, and maybe just a few fewer bells ringing every 45 minutes. Thank you for everything,
Sheila. You've made a difference in our world, and we're all better for having known you. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] Last, but certainly not least, Laura Russell. Laura Russell is retiring after
six years of service as a special education assistant at Blanchard. Your compassion, patience, and unwavering commitment have touched countless lives. You've been more than an educator. You've been an advocate, a mentor, a steady hand, and a warm heart to students who needed it most.
Your legacy will live on in the confidence you've helped build, the milestones you've helped reach, and the many smiles you've inspired. We are grateful for the difference you've made. Enjoy your Wellland retirement. You will be deeply missed, but always remembered. [Music]
[Applause] Thank you, Mike. And now uh from uh Douglas Elementary, Larry Walpie. And I think Michelle Riley, the nurse director, will join as well. Where is she? There she is. Right there. Come on up, Diane Auster. So
Diane is everything you'd want in a school nurse. She is kind. She's compassionate. She's caring. She is incredibly knowledgeable and she has the uncanny ability to call a parent when something unfortunate has happened and saying what do you say that's unlucky
just little something happened it was unlucky and I said I am adopting that from this point forward uh you put students first every single day whether that means giving them a little TLC or riding in an ambulance to the ER Diane thank you for your years and years of
service to the entire AB and Douglas communities through thick and thin and of course co. We wish you and your family the best of luck in retirement and you will be missed my friend. All [Music]
right now, uh, Gates Elementary, Allison Warren. You are quite tall. You think I Is that better? Is that better? You You do know I'm not afraid. All right, we will start with
June. Come on up. After 20 years of teaching sixth grade at Gates, it's hard to imagine our school without June. She has shaped the lives of countless students and has been a guiding light for staff and administrators alike. As our union rep for seven years, June always stood up
for what's right. She served on and led more committees than we can count, always with a positive spirit and listening air. June is the person we've all turned to for support, advice, and a friendly smile. Her dedication, kindness, and leadership have made Gates a better place for everyone. June, you
will be missed more than words can say. Congratulations on retirement. We hope you enjoy spending time in warmer climate whether it be South Carolina and I'm adding this North Carolina and Florida. We'll miss [Applause] [Applause]
you. Glattus, come on down. Today we celebrate Glattis who has dedicated over 20 years as a special education assistant. 18 of those years at Gates and two at Conan. Her skilled and compassionate approach has made the classroom a welcoming, accessible place
for all students, especially those with IEPs. Glattis has built strong, lasting relationships with both staff and students through her kindness, her patience, and unwavering support. I feel like I should underline bold and capitalize that. Her ability to connect
and work with every student has truly made a difference in our community. Glattus, your presence will be deeply missed, but we are so grateful for the impact you have made. Congratulations on a well-deserved retirement and wish we wish you all the best in your exciting new chapter and enjoy Scotland.
[Applause] Miss Amy. Amy's journey began in 1994 as a special education inclusion assistant at Conan, followed by three years at MARIM while balancing grad school and certifications. In 1998, she became the
reading specialist at Gates, dedicating 27 years to helping students learn how to read. I'm going to repeat that one more time. 27 years as the Gates reading specialist. That's amazing. She has played a key role in
developing reading instruction both within the district and at our school. Amy's collaborative spirit has helped shape effective reading intervention plans, positively impacting countless students. Thank you, Amy, for everything you have done. We wish you all the best as you enjoy your well-earned retirement
and spend precious time with your grandchildren. You will be missed. [Music] [Applause] Now it's just a punch line. Um, McCarthy Town, Christine Nean, please join us.
I'm honored tonight to speak about Allison Bulock. She has spent the last nine years making a lasting impact at McCarthy Town. Okay, I can't look at her cuz he said I couldn't do the sad part. Before joining us, she supported students at Conan School as an
assistant. She's brought kindness, high standards, and a steady supportive presence in every role. She is a teacher who's a problem solver on behalf of students. Allison has been a thoughtful leader on our art integration committee. As a colleague, she always asks the
right questions, challenges our thinking, and stops at the end of every meeting to summarize. Let me just make sure I got this and we're all on the same page. That is invaluable. Her commitment to collaboration and her spirit as a lifelong learner has
inspired us all. I'm very grateful we have her on video speaking about art integration at our school so that it can inspire teachers for years to come. Allison, you'll be deeply missed, but we are all so excited to hear about your next adventures with your family. We're
expecting lots of writing and great travel pictures. Congratulations and thank you for everything. [Applause] [Music] And finally, uh, Christina Gavin from Miriam Elementary, Carmen Dahare, come on up.
Carmen. Carmen has been a beloved special education assistant at Miriam and a beloved colleague for 22 years. Both of her children went to Miriam and she started working there not too soon after. Carmen is a kind and caring
educator who has gone above and beyond for her students. Often she is quietly working behind the scenes to either translate for new families or connect families with much needed resources. She loves being surrounded by children and making a difference. She shared this
with me. I feel incredibly fortunate to work with such inspiring teachers. I am in awe of the teachers at Miriam, their dedication to each student and their passion. They go above and beyond and make sure no child is left behind. Carmen is looking forward to this next
chapter and excited about going to New Zealand this winter. Thank you so much, Carmen. We will miss you and happy retirement. [Music] Next up, we have Renee
Hill. All right, Renee. Today we celebrate Renee Hill. She has spent the last 20 years as a dedicated learning center teacher at Miriam School. She's been supporting students primarily in K through three
and occasionally fourth grade as well. Renee has covered a lot in her career. In addition to teaching her students, she has been a mentor to five teachers. She's hosted a student teacher and she's generously shared her expertise in so
many ways. For example, she served on committees like curriculum team, sunshine, and CST. And she's helped shape our schools and district's math programs. She's also facilitated professional learning on a range of topics from self-regulation strategies to co-eing to meaningful math. And she's
also been on many of the hiring teams over the years, which has helped to make big decisions about who's joining our AB staff. Renee is off on her next great adventure, starting with her daughter Caitlyn's wedding, a fall cruise, a
month snowboarding in Florida, and a dream trip to Alaska next June. Her bucket list is to visit as many national parks as possible. Renee, thank you so much. It will will be missed. We care about you and all the work that you do. And happy retirement.
[Applause] All right. Thank you everyone. So again, congratulations to those of you who are here. And as I mentioned at the beginning, we do have a number of retirees who couldn't join us tonight. So if you could just join me one last time in also uh congratulating them and thanking them as well.
[Applause] [Music] [Applause] So, just for all of our retirees, if you wouldn't mind, um, if we we would like to get one photo with all of you and the principles. Um, if we could just go
right over to that wall right over there. We'll do a quick photo. Um, before we do and we start moving on to the next agenda item. I just want to thank a few people. I want to thank Kirsten Nelson and the entire food services team for uh the audacular. Uh Guy Duchanic is our custodian here in the building who got
everything ready for tonight. So, thank you to Guy. And I want to thank Candace Doncaster and Julie Lumiere, um two of our assistants here in the office for the tremendous amount of work they did putting this together. So, thank you to everyone. probably a team.
[Music] [Music] Thank you. [Music] Congratulations. Enjoy your retirement. All right. Well, thank you again to our
retirees. And as a parting gift, we're not going to ask you to stay for the remainder of our meeting. We're happy to have you start your retirement at least a little bit earlier. I am totally Okay. Well, Peter Peter stole my thanks
for the organizing crew that put together a wonderful reception for the school committee members. Yeah, just a quick reminder for school committee members, next week is our last meeting of this school year and we are meeting at 6:30 in this room and
then we have an executive session. Um, so please make sure you've got your calendars marked next week next week. So it's immediately after this week's meeting. We're meeting right again next week. 6:30 is a call to order for an executive session. Open session will be at about 7 p.m. Um, and I do want to
add, first of all, welcome to everybody who was in the back who we can now see. Those seats that say reserved are no longer reserved, so feel free to come have a seat up close. Um, and I do want to uh just say a very special thank you to the Madricals. Um, they had an amazing performance last weekend and I'm
honored to say that I'm now officially a knight of the Madricals and so thank you very much for that. It was a little scary having the sword passed around my head, but as you can see, I still have all my hair. Um, all right. We're going to move on now to public participation.
I know we've got a couple folks here who are walking in for some public participation. So, welcome. Um, per our policy, Beedh, members of the public are invited to speak for up to three minutes. Public participation only happens during this time in our meeting. Speakers must be recognized by the chair
before speaking. And uh as a reminder, the committee does not typically respond to comments during public participation. Um and I will just say that as happy as I am to have everyone here for public participation, our meeting is extremely long tonight. So please don't think that I'm being rude when I give you a little
30 second reminder and then thank you at 3 minutes for your time. All right, David, welcome. I won't take three minutes. Uh I rise again uh this year just to express my um amazement uh about the interests and passions of our
seventh graders. I attended along with a couple school committee members this morning our seventh grade civics fair. Uh there were amazing variety of presentations from very specific what to do in in directed study at RJ Gray to
the war in Sudan, climate change things, animal cruelty, um too many to mention and it's a huge variety of subjects and I'm just uh amazed and invigorated um by what I see.
So, I just wanted to tell everyone, thank you, David. I think in fact we have some of those seventh grade students here. If you guys would like to come up, we'll give you each three minutes to uh give us a little preview of your presentation. You'd love to see my top.
Um, should I keep my post up there? You can put Yeah, you can put your display board right on there on the table. And then if you wouldn't mind just telling us your name if you're comfortable. Hi, my name is Sana and I have created a poster for my civics fair
and it's about how teachers are not getting the pay that they deserve. Um, teachers are our the lead to our future and they are currently building our generation. Um, teachers are not getting the pay that they need based on the work that they're doing. Teachers are working
around 11 hours a day and get around $50,000 a year. And the average person works around seven hour um eight hours a day while they earn around $70,000 a year. And that doesn't make sense. So I
did a survey at my school to see what the teachers were saying about this. Um 100% of teachers were saying that they were relying on someone else or a second income to live in Actton or places near Actton while 77.8% 8% of teachers felt
financially unstable. Um, a recent study was also done for college students to see what they were saying about the topic as well. Most of the students felt like they did not want to go into the teaching profession because they didn't want to work the long hours and they
also didn't um respect the small income that they were getting. Um so some possible solutions for this is spreading awareness cuz many people are not aware of this topic and the few people who are aware of this topic
aren't doing anything about it. We can also um decrease property uh taxes for teachers um who are living in Actton so they have more affordable housing um in Actton too the prices for uh everyday items are more expensive than other
places um due to inflation and the teacher pay isn't going up with the inflation as well. So, um, we should also not have taxes as much for teachers. So, we can have like a teacher tax. So, it's less taxes for specifically teachers. Thank you. Thank
you very much. [Applause] Um [Music] um hi my name is Maddie and
uh I am I did my project on a very specific topic. There was a 20 minute block at R.J. Grey called directed study where students are supposed to be like sitting and doing homework
quietly. But the thing is they're not because we don't always have homework. And when we do have homework, some of us just prefer to do it at home. Some of us just like don't want to do academics all
the way through the day, which I think is totally like fair. Um because all students have different needs. Some students might be really overstimulated throughout the day and just need peace
and quiet, but some students might like really need to like move at the end of the day, like really need recess. Um, and I think that since directed
study isn't fulfilling its original purpose to a total degree, why don't we use that time to accommodate as many student needs as we can and give
students the kind of voice that we should have in our own school day. because everyone has different needs and they might change daytoday. Um I know I don't want to do the same
thing every day. That's boring. The solution that I am proposing is that within wings each teacher would offer a different activity during
directed study. For example, maybe the English teacher, you quietly read, but the social studies teacher goes outside for recess. And a lot of people reacted very
positively to this. I created a question box for the people who saw my poster and they made a lot of really good points. Some students said, "Directed study is very good, but I want more choice." Or,
"Directed study is not supportive for everyone." And some teachers said that kids need to learn how to manage their time based on their physical slo/eotional slashacademic needs.
And a parent of three AB kids says that they heard a lot of complaints about directed study and that this seemed like a good way to solve
it. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Hi, Mike Ballescu. I'm president of the
Actton Boxboro Education Association, our district's teachers union. Um, I'm so delighted you got to hear from two of our students at RJ Gray from Maddie and Sana. Um, I wanted to comment on Sana's presentation specifically because I know what you're thinking. You're thinking,
Mike, um, that was really persuasive and she's right. We should pay teachers a lot more. do we need to even negotiate a new contract? Where can we sign for a pay raise? And I couldn't agree more. Um, so I I really appreciate her literally doing my job for me. Um, as a
very small token of appreciation, uh, I wanted to offer her a not for sale, not available to the public swag pack from the Actim Box Pro Education Association, a water bottle sticker, and a t-shirt. [Applause]
[Music] [Applause] Thank you, Mike. And I I it looks like you're also excited for directed study recess by the social studies teachers. Yes, absolutely. Uh other members of the public who wish to speak, please come forward. Good evening. My name is Shayen Bernard
and I'm the captain of the Nordic team and the cross country team at the high school. I also run track. I'm in 11th grade. And tonight I'm here with some of my teammates uh to propose a change to how we fulfill our PE requirements at the high school. As some of you may
know, students are currently required to participate or to complete one full year of PE during their 9th grade year and at least a semester in each of the following years. I propose that for students in 10th through 12th grade, participating in one
after school sport should fulfill that requirement. The goal of a PE class is to inspire students to be active, and having this class certainly does do that for some, but as student athletes, we've already got that down. We're at practice 5 to 6 days a week for an upwards of an
hour each time. And being at practice every afternoon cuts into our time outside of school to explore other interests. Not having to take a PE class would allow us to take a new class in school like um ceramics or political science or explore our interests at a
deeper level like taking an AP science course which includes an extra lab block or we could even just get some homework done during that time. All this being said, I want to clarify that this proposal would not remove physical education completely from our
curriculum. I think there's a difference between physical education and health class. And that's why I think keeping our ninth grade requirement to take uh physical education, which includes a semester of health class, should remain a requirement to provide adequate time
to cover topics like mental health, uh substance abuse, and relationships. And this proposal is not out of the ordinary. There are already so many schools in the area that have implemented implemented similar policies like Littleton and Brooklyn High
School and I would be happy to work with you all in adapting their framework to meet the needs at AB. Student athletes are one of the largest groups on campus. There are over 160 kids on the track team alone. and making this change would allow us to
come to school uh better rested, wellprepared, and ready to be engaged learners and competitive athletes. Thank you for your time. Thank you. [Applause] Anyone else from the public wish to make
a comment? All right. I will note that for the public, uh Shaylen did send a a email to the entire committee about this topic. Um, and I have spoken with the superintendent about this and we've asked him and the principal at the high school to look at modifying the program
of studies for next year um, in response to this request. So, um, if the committee would like to discuss this, let me or Tori know and we can put it on an agenda in the future. Otherwise, if you're happy with the direction of having the school administration look at, um, taking some action on this and presenting to us next year, then they'll
continue on that track. Excellent. Thank you. And thank you for all of our students for coming to present this evening. I'm sure your parents are quite proud of you as are we. Yeah. Um so we are going to take a little bit out of order because I see we also have our friends from ABSAF here.
Um so why don't you come forward and uh we'd be happy to hear about the presentation and the work that Absaf has done this year. Hi and thank you for having us. That was a tough act to follow. You kids are amazing. Um, and you know, I get the pleasure of working with these students
here. So, without further ado, I'm Trish Hasham. I'm co-president with Heather Lambie, um, president of Absoth for the like I was six years on the board and I'm stepping off. We have new, um, energy coming on board. So, I'm excited for them. And I'm going to let these ladies do the talking and we're have a
nice check to present. Hello everyone. I'm Victoria Thermodor. I'm Maggie Ren. And I'm Ashley Harrington. and we are student members of the ABSAF board. And some of the things that we help out with are primarily fundraising, but also things
like social media and just promoting ABS staff as a whole. And we're very proud to present this check to you all today of $34,500. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you all very much. Uh, and I'll just point out, um, if you
could shut that microphone off, then we'll stop getting the ring. Thank you. Um, you'll see in the packet for the school committee and the members of the public all of the amazing things that that that $34,500 will be supporting at both the high school and the junior high. So, thank you very much for um all the work that ABSAF does and the donation to our
district. We really appreciate it. I just also want to express my gratitude to all of you for all of the work you've done. The last probably five years have been an extraordinarily challenging fundraising environment. Um, not just for ABSAF, but for just really any
nonprofit organization. Um, with donations being down, it's harder and harder to get people to come out to things. Um, and the fact that you can continue to invest in our schools um, the way you do, just huge debt of gratitude that we have for everything that you've done and given. So,
congratulations on your graduation. Um, and thank you for all that you do. And we would love to get a picture right over on that same wall. All right. If you wish to, you may escape now. Unless, of course, you're one of the 11 members plus Peter who are
at this table, in which case you're in for the long run. And with that, I will hand it over to Peter for a superintendent's update, please. Thank you, Adam. I thought what Adam was going to lead with was you can escape now unless you want to listen to the superintendent talk. Um I want to start off by just expressing a huge
congratulations to the class of 2025. They will be graduating tomorrow night. Uh we are watching the weather to see what that's going to bring. We have, you know, thunderstorms in the forecast for about graduation time, so we're going to wait until tomorrow morning uh before we make any decisions about what to do with
that. Um, I also just want to again say congratulations to all 23 of our retirees, not just the ones that were here tonight. Uh, we definitely wish them the best. Um, we had 11 student athletes um that we want to congratulate for their commitment to academic and athletic careers at the next level. Um,
we had an absolutely fantastic signing day event at the high school uh for those students. athletic director Jim Scandan, who you saw last meeting um as you visited um just did a really nice job just doing a celebration of our students and their accomplishments. So,
congratulations to all of our athletes. Um I also want to congratulate um four of our students, Rohan Borad, uh Katherine Wang, Tanya Singh, and Ariana Dennis, who were top scorers in community education's 2020 2024 25 math
olympiad program. uh we had over 100 students in grades four through six participate in the activity uh which takes place across the country and in 39 additional countries. Uh we have a number of celebrations that go on this month. We have flag day, father's day, uh junth is coming up which is a no
school day just as a reminder. Um we also are celebrating pride month um for the entire month and ealada is also this month. So we'll be sending out some information on each of those uh holidays and celebrations to our families. Um, we're going to be hearing from
vision of graduate later this meeting. So, I won't talk about that now, but that will be going out to families. Um, do want to give a bit of a strategic planning update and then turn it over to any committee members who'd like to fill in uh additional information. We held our first meeting of the strategic planning committee on May 27th. The
committee comprising school committee members, educators, parents um, and leaders discussed the need for a new strategic plan. The plan is going to be focused on meeting students needs in a period of declining enrollment and limited resources. District management group will assist in developing the plan, focusing on stakeholder
engagement, data analysis, and creating actionable strategies. The committee emphasized the importance of transparency, public records compliance, maintaining community trust. Um, future meetings will delve into stakeholder engagement and strategic planning frameworks, aiming to present final
options back to this committee by December of 2025. The second meeting of that committee is scheduled for this coming Tuesday, June 10th at 6:30 p.m. here in the admin building auditorium. Uh we're going to be discussing the district's mission, vision, and theory of action, communication, as well as
focus areas for any potential reorganization of the educational programs. People can stay up to date on our school website um and also learn more about our agendas on our school committee meetings page. Um we will be sending out a budget
update. You have more information in your packet. I don't want to talk about all of that, but I do just want to highlight um you know some some positive news. The district's credit rating was reaffirmed at the highest level, which is AAA uh by Standard Empor and anticipation of the final borrowing for the Boardwalk campus project. The
district received bids on all of those bonds. The lowest bid was at a 3.03% interest rate for 10 years. Um this is a lower interest rate and a shorter borrowing period than we originally planned. So that is going to be saving taxpayers money. So, we're pleased to be able to report that. Um, also really
excited to be able to share this news, but beginning June 30th and running through August 8th, we will be having a summer eats program, which offers free lunches to youth ages 18 and under with no registration, paperwork, or identification required. The program aims to bridge the nutrition gap that
many families face during the summer months when school provided meals are unavailable. Um, lunches will be available at the Actton Coach Estates um, here in Actton Monday through Friday from June 30th through August 8th from 11:30 to 12:00 p.m. Um, we do not
provide meals on July 4th and then we have more information on our school website as well. I also will be sending out to families and you'll be receiving it as well. Um, but as you may be aware, Massachusetts Governor Mora Healey convened a statewide graduation council uh following voters repeal of the MCCAST
as a graduation requirement. The council's currently surveying stakeholders and we're going to be sending out the link to that survey to all of our families um if they'd like to participate as well. Um this is an incredibly busy time of year around the district with amazing things going on. Um, I am pleased to report that I over
the course of the year I actually was able to visit nearly every elementary jet classroom um in the district which was really exciting. I was actually running around between schools this week because I had like three or four classrooms at different schools that I hadn't made it into yet. Um there's a
couple that I just didn't get to because the timing didn't work out in our favor. But um you know just amazing stuff happening in all the schools and we are working on organizing school committee tours of the schools for next fall so that you can get in and see firsthand what's going on in our schools. Um I was
at Gates Celebrate the Arts Night. Um that was an amazing night. Um a lot of great artwork by our students. Adam already mentioned the magical dinner. If you have never been to a Madrical's dinner, you absolutely need to mark your calendars. They do an amazing job. It's funny. There's it's like two hours of
comedy, amazing music, dinner, um and just wonderful way to spend a night. Um RJ Grey Civics Fair was amazing. I was there yesterday and today um just hearing from our students all the work and research that they've done. Um and then I had an opportunity to go to the
Miriam sixth grade topics fair uh yesterday, which it was absolutely fantastic to see the work that the kids did and the depth of thinking that they're doing around the projects that they have developed um over the course of the spring. So, congratulations to everyone. That is just a fraction of the
great things happening in our district in June. Um, I wish I could be at everything, but unfortunately things like budget and school committee stuff call at times. So, um, have to try and make it to things that I can get to, but thanks to all of our educators um, and families for supporting our students.
Thank you, Peter. Any questions or comments? All right, looking at my agenda, we did miss a vote. So, I am going to look for a motion to approve the donation from ABSA in the amount of $34,500. So, moved. All right. Uh, Ben
made the motion. Vicram seconded that. All of those in favor? I. Any opposed? Any abstensions? That's unanimous. So, thank you for that donation one more time. Uh, all right. We're going to move on to our guest and presentations time. So, uh, first group that's presenting is
the illustrious group of officers that are on the back there. So, if you would all like to come forward, uh, we would love to hear our school resource officer presentation for the year. So, yep. You got to press the button to get a red light and you should have a clicker there that you will be able to
advance your slides as soon as they get There you go. First of all, thanks for uh having us tonight. I'm Detective AJ Rotella. To my right is Detective Anna Dapis and to my left is Boxboro SRO officer Reoso. Um we appreciate you guys having
us tonight to hear us out on what we do on a daily basis and how this year has gone. So what is an SRO? We are school resource officers. We are career law enforcement officers with sworn authority deployed in community oriented policing assigned by our employer, the
police department to collaborate with the schools. Um essentially we are visible law enforcement figures inside of school settings. We work alongside of the admin as a resource. We are a member, at least we like to think of it as a faculty. uh we are community
resource and we are not a replacement for the existing school security and we are not disciplinary in the schools. Our mission um is quite large but we ultimately want to bridge that gap between the police officers and the
young students and people. We want to maintain and improve safety in the learning environment in our schools through the reduction and prevention of school violence and drug abuse. Uh we want to increase the positive attitudes towards law enforcement. Uh altogether
we like to teach the value of our legal system promote promote respect and uh for people in property. Um ultimately want to encourage all of our students throughout the school in every activity whether it's sports, clubs, bands, dramas etc. Uh we want to reduce the
juvenile delinquency by helping students uh formulate an awareness of the rules, the authority and our justice and ultimately want to break down the stereotype for police. Um you can see there on the right of the slide is the nine schools that we have in Actton. I did not put Blanchard on there for
Boxboro because it's in Boxboro, but um those are the nine schools that me and Anna cover. I'm primarily in the high school and the junior high and Anna covers the five elementary schools and the two collaborative schools that we also have in town resources courses and training. So
on the right side you can see a large list of the trainings that we get annually. um uh to be an SRO. Originally, we have a 40-hour course that we have to attend and that's the the NASRO course. And then after that, there's a two-day training conference every year that we attend as well as
that long list over there of the school summit, the where sexual assault investigators, mental health train, we have annual training for that, active shooter trainings, suicide prevention. Um and the list keeps going. I can read through all of them if you'd like. Um, we are
also shooter uh situation. That is the last thing we want to teach. We understand that it's it's fearful and everything like that, but at the end of the day, we want our students and our faculty and our police officers to be prepared if we ever do
encounter something like that. Um, we we hope that we don't, but we want to be prepared in the sense we need to have a plan for everything, right? That's kind of what we do. um with for crisis intervention and deescalation that is also our right in our wheelhouse um with
mental health um issues these days I we we see it a lot more in the schools and the young people um so we're extra trained in that and uh our department actually has also recently taken on a department clinician um who's not here tonight but she is a great resource with
for us uh we bring her with us to a lot of our calls if it has mental health um involved in it we bring her along with us. She just brings so much more um experience and resources to those calls. Um where am I? Uh so I did actually one
of the students brought up the classes today where they were actually looking for other things in the in the school for healthy relationships. We actually do teach the ninth grade class that uh we work alongside with DVSM which is the uh domestic violence. and we go into the
school, we teach the whole ninth grade class over a couple weeks and we um ultimately am teaching that and to make students aware of the signs and symptoms of an abusive or uh healthy relationships. Um I also teach in in um a course to the eighth grade students
which is internet safety in uh crimes online with social media being you know the leading cause of everything these days. We see scams. We see extortion. All that stuff on Snapchat, Discord, um Instagram, Facebook, and the list goes
on. Every time I teach this class, the uh the students are actually informing me on new apps, and now I have to be cool and hip and keep up with them, right? Um so that's kind of a gist of what we do on a on that aspect for community policing, which I think is
another huge aspect of our job is what we do. Um this is a long list of the some of the stuff that we do. Um we have a youth academy every summer that we do for a week in July that is for um students aged is between 12 and 15. And
we kind of teach them what police officers do on a daily basis. You know, we let them handcuff me and all that stuff, but we also are we're there to have fun and we're there to show them the side of us that is not just behind the badge, right? We are people as well. And I think that these community events
that we do and the outreach programs that we have uh really get to show that off which is why the SRO to us is so important because we do get to build those rapport with the students from such a young age leading up um and building the rapport with the staff and the faculty as well so they can rely on
us to be a a decent resource for them as when they handle situations that they might encounter for the first time. This year we had four I think four new APs at the high school and I think it was a really good opportunity for us to become closer and have that rapport of you know
they haven't seen a lot of situations before in that position. They you know most of them were teachers beforehand but they were never in that role. So it was good to bounce ideas off each other and just use each other as resources. Um and lastly we we take senior interns. We had three this year for three weeks.
They were shadowing me and Anna for 3 weeks, which is just a great opportunity to also show what is going on behind the scenes instead of um what they see in the school when we show up for a call, right? And these are our uh year-to- date statistics uh since the beginning
of May when we put this together. Uh we had zero arrests within the school system. We had zero shelters in place. Knock on wood, right? Um there's a couple more weeks left of school. We had about 12 medicals, three restorative justice referrals, and that's where we
had cases of students that um and it might even trickle into the outside of the school hours. That's things that we work 24/7 realistically. So if something happens at home and it gets brought into a school counselor, they'll call on us to also help facilitate that way because after school hours they need another
resource. Um so those three cases were of students that found themselves in a little bit of trouble and instead of just you know charging them and sending them right to court we have a restorative justice program where we are able to sit down with a group of
um the group of us. So it's us and the facilitators for that company and we basically have a circle and we we educate the student that made the mistake. We let them do community service. We let them write a letter of apology to the victim that um is at
involved in that case and we kind of work through it that way and it's monitored all through the C4RJ program. But um depending on which officer is involved, we'll sit in on that circle to help as well. Um we had 14 uh mental health calls at the at the school where
again we bring the clinician in if we can. Digital misconduct is um where students are using their phones inappropriately. We see this. I've been seeing it a lot more lately uh with that transition from junior high to high school. Um it just is what it is. The
the apps are they're growing every day. The technology, AI, all the stuff is just tricking students. There's a lot of scams going on. Um so we see that often. We had 10 weapons reports where um a lot I mean there we're all transient in the sense of what was happening which is
hence to no shelters in place. But some kids get gifted a they're in a boy they're a boy scout or a girl scout and they get gifted a Swiss Army knife from their grandfather and they bring it in because they think it's cool, right? Um and that is just an one example of what we might deal with. U we had 10
vandalism reports of just stuff being drawn on the walls. We had five accidents. And it's not only students. Sometimes a teacher might back into somebody in the parking lot or a bus might sideswipe a car trying to squeeze by the tight roads up there. And then the last one there is a big number. You
see 80, but that is also just for follow-ups. We have people that accidentally call 911. We have uh meetings, traffic control, uh a lot of lararsenies out of a locker room, which are very difficult to solve because there's no cameras in locker rooms obviously, but people report missing uh
air airpods or backpacks. And then um we do drills at the school, right? Fire drills, uh bus evacuations, the Alice drills. and every school has to do a certain amount of those and we're always present for those drills as well. So that's just in that 80 number.
Um that's all I have really today. I'm we're open to any questions or if you want to hear from the box side beforehand, but uh again, thanks for having us. Thank you. Yeah, we'll go with the Boxboro presentation next and then we'll open it up for some questions from the committee. Hi everyone. My name is Diosma Renoso.
Uh you guys can call me right. Hold on just a second. Oh, that's not your Oh, that's not mine. They [Music] start for the beginning. Hi. Good evening. My name is Dios
Renoso. I go by Ray. Uh Officer Steman who also in SRO for other my department is not here. He had family matter to attend. Um so I've been office for about four years box for about a year and a half now became an SRO um last year and he was he's been a great experience so
far. I'm still learning the job. I apologize my powerpoints as fancy as acting but I got like five slides uh six of them and then um go from there. So also studying Gath is also in SRO but he wasn't here able to make it as well. So here we got some of the training that I
starting GT attended uh attend uh he been the job for 15 years uh like I said uh four years of statement about over one year if you can see on the slide I went to new child abuse investigation training I'm still got to get more
training you know to be fully certifi I'm certified but like to get their experience I'm not there yet um topics we cover before in the class like juvenile child assistance emotional intelligence um like one of the uh student mentioned today they go through a lot of stress even though when they
meet to school um when they don't have the resources or anything like that they got a lot of homework to do and then you know sometime you can see them you ask hey how's your day going they tell us and then we kind of guide them to the right direction help them out some of the topics that the training includes initial response uh recognizing signs of
abuse we don't try to you know uh was the parents at the abuser we just you know go to DA, they're the one handle all that stuff. Um, there's more like interview the child, victim, witnesses, any adult suspect. Um, we got also the
type of views and the investigation action that we got to take, which is everything's has it own way. Everything's different. The way are able to connect with students, myself, I work through 11 and overnights when nothing's happening. You know, we do sometimes school
crosswalk and branch school. I go when I see the kids in the back uh playground and just talk to them. Some parents like oh what's happen like no no we I just playing with the kids right now here uh I always carry stickers that I have with the kids. They see this they just hand it to them. They just love it. They put
it on the chest and like oh can I get one for my brother and sister like here you go and they just like like it. I always carry those with me. I can give them out if you guys want them. Um um office student works day shift. Usually go inside the school talk to the kids. I eat lunch. Um you can see most
of the stuff there. He does during the day play outdoor game recess. Um he also gets tickets for me give them out and stuff like that. And when we have a new office in the department we go into the school so they get a good layout also mean teachers and faculty and the students as well. So they familiar with
the face new face in the department as well. So this is the training allies officer. What's your name again? Sorry. I mentioned uh it breaks down what the training is about and stuff like that. Um he mentioned B uh bus evacuation,
panic alarms and warping checks. And after this slide, you're going to see the events that we do as well and the times we've been to school and stuff like that. So this is community events. I've done almost all of them. In the picture you see there is myself and
officer Steelman. He's still taller than me. Wish I was tall, too. Uh the picture of up in the middle uh that was last year during the tow truck at the library. Uh kids were you know seeing my stuff and I said what is this? What is that? They curious about what I have on
and it went from there. The picture of the mug which is a coffee and a donut which is funny. That was during the summer recreation at Flarefield. Uh I was there were bunch of tents and then tables. Kids were having different um uh things to do in each table. So I sat
with them and went back and forth. This girl was funny. She she drove me a don and a cop and she gave it to me. So that right there is my locker. It's been there since last year. You you know thinking like hey I'm going to keep this in memory what happened that day that I met this person. So next year or next
year after like hey I still have that donut you drew. It's in my locker. So this is stuff that you know memory you create with them. Um this is statistics for as of May 28 this year. The left show activity we interaction with the students in total 18 times drills we did
it two times discussion with faculties twice career event two times call for service three uh new officer tour of the school that was one time the SRO training uh that's four will be check one you can see the arrest citation and
court referrals like you mentioned we don't try to arrest teenage juveniles you know because the things we don't want to create that negative environment where now they say oh my life is over we just want to you know give got into the right direction stuff like that resource is basically the main focus that we want to be there for
um what elseia that's about it any questions excellent thank you all very much um I will just highlight that um over the course of last year was it last year we
did have a school resource officer subcommittee um where we had a group of educators administrators committee members, members of the public um come together and help to evolve the memorandum of understanding that we signed with both communities, Actton and
Boxboro. And so one of the aspects of that uhou was that we did get a presentation every year from the SRO's to sort of share about the work that they're doing in school. So that's why we have this here and now. Um with that I will go around the table
questions Glenn and then Liz. Hi. Um, a few thoughts in the question. Um, I I do approve of how much training there is. Um, I think that's above and beyond what is technically required for
school resource officers. I think um but uh one thing I'm wondering is how much is um the presence of social media uh covered in things like um like for
sexual assault training like I know sextortion is uh quite a it's an increasing problem especially on Snapchat. So I'm wondering if training uh covers stuff like that. Um and then my last uh question uh could you just
expand on um bullet points uh two about um how you go about uh trying to implement a reduction of school violence and a reduction of drug abuse. When I was a kid I was in DARE and my understanding is that the research showed it wasn't quite effective at least in the early 2000s.
So I'm wondering if that's been iterated upon. Yeah. So for so for the first one of the trainings we do we do more than what we're required um we are we're lucky enough to have that opportunity where they do we get emails every day about potential opportunities to take these
trainings. So if we're available and we're allowed to go whether it's free or can get paid to go we will do whatever we can to get those trainings. Um and to touch on the the um the topic of the social media trainings we are going to more social media trainings. So they are
now being more prevalent where they weren't before. It was it's kind of they're moving with the times, right? The technology is just and AI is taking over right now on social media in the social media world that they're now creating these extra opportunities to get those trainings. So as those comes
out, uh we do attend those. I've been to a couple myself. I know Anna has as well. Um and that's just something that we keep our eyes on. So when we do see those opportunities to take those trainings, we will go for that. Um, and to go back on the DARE topic, so
DARE, I also had DARE growing up in schools. I know that we don't specifically do that. Um, when I teach the internet safeties, it's in the digital literacy classroom. I try to touch on everything I can, whether it's um, not directly about drugs and stuff like that. But when we have these calls
at the school, vaping is uh, a big topic that we deal with often now, uh, whether it's a weed pen or a nicotine pen. Um when we have these calls and it's handled the discipline is handled within school but then we will be called in sometimes to speak with the students with the counselors and kind of just
tell them of you know the dos and don'ts of what are these are how they're affecting your body your anxiety right your sleep all these things so we're as we learn it in trainings we're trying to pass that along to the students um I would be open to creating a a DARE class
myself and able to teach that class um I know that you know with theou and working through the the past year and everything. We've been trying to follow guidelines and stuff like that. But I think that's a great idea to kind of work the DARE aspect back into the schools because these students have um
it's very accessible to them, right? They're getting it they're selling it at gas stations now and they're not all getting IDed. So, I think that um it's a great topic to teach the students. Liz and then Andrew. Uh I want to start by thanking all of
you for um being SRO's. I think that it's a really important uh part of the day for the students and uh I really appreciate the work that you guys do and uh for Box Bro. I know this was our first year of being, you know, officially uh in an a memorandum of understanding. Um I think that it's been
very positive, at least for my Blanchard kids that come home. Uh they're always very excited to see uh Officer Ronaldo and Stillman. Um, I did have a question and this is more directed at the Actton um, SRO's is with the newer um, I guess
beefier uh,ou that we had drafted and that you have now had the opportunity to be uh, going along with, have you found any significant changes either positive or negative? Um, I know. Hello. I know that it's new,
so we're still working through it. Um, there have been a few difficulties when it comes to, you know, we get a call about something that happened and we can't like the school can't share if that child has like cognitive delays or
anything like that and then we have to kind of go back to figuring that out ourselves. Um so sometimes not having some of the information that we need to proceed on a case where there might be something serious can be a bit difficult. Um there have been a lot of
positive in regards to having that guideline and knowing you know you know what to share and what's okay and what's not. Um I would honestly have to kind of go back and think about you know different situations and things that we've encountered but I know that um
sometimes going to the school and for them not to share like you know if there is something we should be aware of when we talk to a kid because they could present one way but there could be more and I just wish I would have that information because we try to work with the kids. We understand that there's
different things going on with them that we might not be aware of from the report that we get, but again, like we are there in good faith to help them and to use a lot of the things that go on as a learning experience and teaching them. Um, so sometimes, you know, it's it's
difficult when we don't have a lot of the information that I think would help us with just handling the situation. You're welcome. Thanks. And thank you again. It's it's obvious your passion for all this. I was curious about uh two areas within the report, the digital and
the lararseny stuff, but more specifically, could you tell us about the process that you take from when you learn something's going on to what you do to how the result ends up? How do these things come to you? And recognizing that as an SRO, you're not the school police force. Where's the
line drawn and how do you react with these issues as they pop up? Um so you know the school has their own um policies and everything else. So if it's happening in school and it's school related the school will handle it. They might run something by us. It doesn't
always mean that it'll end up you know becoming a case or becoming something that is serious. Um we try to be there and be part of the process to educate the kids and to let them know like this could potentially lead to something else or you know if you had done this in a different place things could be
different. Um so you know it's case by case depends what it is but there is a lot of conversation and we always again we try to think about the child and you know what the best outcome is depending on what occurred exactly. Um so guess
the the question I had is how are you brought in during one of the issues that you you sparked earlier? You talked about you know large is one digital issues was another vandalism is a third. as these things occur inside the schools, how are you brought in versus the school policy, the school
administration versus the police uh on a more official basis? So for vandalism, um if it's anti-semitic, we are we we're obligated to get that report. So they have to let us know about those cases. So typically they will again will handle in school the principal. Majority of
those vandalism ones happen with within bathroom stalls. I don't think we had any this year that weren't in a bathroom stall. So, um, when they're reported to the faculty or the staff, the principal will go in, he'll take a photo or she will take a photo of it. Um, have the
janitors remove it from the walls and then they'll forward us the report of saying, "We found this on the wall." Um, you know, there's no suspect because there's no cameras in bathrooms, but they try to work around like they they do their due diligence and seeing, can we figure out what time it was, when was it reported? we know that it wasn't on
here at this time and they forward that information to us. We take it and we need on our side. We have to file that with um the DA's office. They track everything now on that topic. um for lararsenies, we've had bikes stolen from the school where um during the school
day or there used to be a security officer that actually was in charge of the cameras and everything which they no longer have and that is now kind of my job where if there's a bike stolen, the school will take the initial report and then I will follow up. I'll watch the film to see if I can see someone taking
the bike and then we kind of work back from there. Typically, if if it's the school day, we will relay information to the to the counselor or the APs and they'll kind of handle it what they can in school. Um, if it's outside of school hours, we will follow up with families,
the parents. We'll call the parents in, not call them, I'm sorry, we will call them on the phone. Uh, we'll talk to them. A lot of times these bikes and these AirPods are not found though. Also, I will It's difficult to find the AirPods when you don't know where
they're stolen from. Um some bikes we we do find the bikes and then we find the bike just abandoned at a different area, right? Um and again for us to make it criminal, there needs to be a victim. If the victim, if you steal somebody's bike and the victim is like, I want to press
charges, then we have the police authority to go ahead and press those charges. If there's no victim, we will actively seek out that restorative justice avenue to make, you know, to give these students a chance, right? We understand that kids are going to make mistakes. We all made mistakes growing
up, I'm sure. And that's kind of our mentality going into it. So, typically the school will get the report initially and then they'll pass along to us. And when it reaches that criminal threshold is when we can actually take action. Otherwise, like I said, like we're not disciplinary. We're not going to give
them a detention rate or anything like that. So, um if it can be handled within the school, they do so and they kind of just keep us in the loop as needed. Thank you. Yep. Hi. Um, thank you for your service. Uh, I just have a question. So, I assume the wellness check is for like the students
missing school absent, then the school will contact the family and or send a SRO to the family's home. Is that correct? Um, yeah. So, not not so much for truency anymore. We don't if someone just skips school, they will call home
and stuff like that. But if there's some type of um um a health reason or there they're worried and there's a there's a reason and there's a safety issue behind it, then we will go do that well-being check to make sure that everything's okay at the home. But when we go there, we will
just speak with the family and and the students and make sure everything's okay. We aren't essentially taking them and bringing them to school. Um I I believe that's how it used to be done, but that's not how we do it anymore. we are now more so just making sure that the well-being of the student is okay. Um, and of course if the student misses
the bus and the families don't have the means and the and the parent is okay and the kid wants to go to school, we were more than happy to help the students out in that aspect, but we are not going there for, you know, get in the car and go to school. It's more so of just want to make sure everything's okay. Do you mind calling the school? Then the the parents will typically call the school
and say sorry we forgot to excuse them today or or such as that. Are the families uh allowed to decline a well-being check or I'm sorry. Are they allowed to decline a visit from the SRO's? Um I'm I'm sure they would be allowed
to, but they typically aren't answering their phone. The school will call home before they send us. If there's a safety issue and they're and they're worried about the well-being of the student and there's no answer at home, that's when we get sent. Okay. We don't get sent if the family answers. Thank you. Yep. Ben,
again, thank you for your service. Uh, one question or comment I have is I'm looking at the statistics for year to date. Do you have any comparative statistics from the year before to show us if there are any trends uh with mental health or with vandalism and anti-semitism, whether it's going up or
down? So, this is the first year that we've specifically tracked everything that we do in a in a log. Um, we've also switched over our our system for work. So when we call out at the school, I'll call off and say I'll be out at the high school for XYZ. Um,
and it's logged that way and that's how we're getting these stats. So that is something that we are actively doing now in order to track these stats. So I don't have um numbers off the top of my head or anything like that. I'm sure we could go back and kind of decipher it, but um that's kind of what we're trying
to do moving forward on a yearly basis. Then for uh perhaps for next year, having comparative statistics I think would be really helpful for this group. Thank you. Definitely. Hi. I've I've never been a proponent of of uh having police officers in school.
However, seeing you guys sit here and talk, I I think my mind is is changing somewhat. Uh, and so that brings me to my next thing. You know, part of the outreach here is sort of like, you know, to to have kids not be afraid of police officers, right? And sort of sort of, you know what I mean, and sort of dull
those edges and smooth those things. But I isn't that kind of a two-way street. And do you guys find like working with children that you yourselves, your temperaments are sort of changing in how you view society? Do you find that also changing? Yeah, I I think that um it gives us the
opportunity to to see things in a different light where if you're a patrolman on the street and you're going to all these hot calls, you're kind of going in there, you know, with heightened heightened situations where we're actively there all the time. We're seeing people. We're friendly with the the staff. So, we feel welcomed there
and it doesn't feel like we're there to to be this this figure. We're just there as people. And that's one of the things that I like about it is that, you know, kids are walking down the highway highway hallway giving us high fives, right? And that's just different when you're out on the street. So, I do think that being in this uh position
specifically has made us um expand our vision on everything and where it stems from. And I think that's why the elementary school is so important because you get to get in to all those students and then you get to see them grow up and then you're excited for them. We get to watch them graduate. We work all these school events. We go to
school dances. We go to the prom, we're doing internships. We do project graduation where we're there all night, you know, and they're they're riding the mechanical bull. They're doing the hypnotist and all this stuff. So, it's just definitely a I mean, for me personally, I'm sure they can attest to it. It's just a great position. And um
you know, the reason I'm in this position is because when I was growing up, my mentor growing up was actually the school resource officer and my uh football coach. And it kind of led me down this path all together. So, for years, this is kind of what I've wanted to do. And I think that um I think it
just shows when you're the the SRO's in the positions like you want to be here and you want to do that. And I think that it just helps all around. Um Leela and then I've got a No, no, please. Um I appreciate you all for coming here.
Um the mission statement, particularly the actton one, was pretty broad. There was a lot going on there. Um, so I was curious how you were measuring the impact of your program and you being in the schools on like climate, behavior, safety, um, and how you track some of
that. So, this is my fourth year, I believe, in the school uh, as SRO and I, and I have just seen it get better over time. I'm not taking credit for that at all. I don't think it's me. I think it's the staff. I think it's just, uh, the world in general, right? um the whole climate
of the school has just been different, I guess. Um it's hard for us to gauge that specifically on what we're doing. I think that that's where the evaluations and the feedback is great. I think that's kind of why we're here as well because I'm sure you do get feedback that we aren't hearing um or feedback
from the principles that they can offer. I know that um working with them they they do feel that it's a great resource to have us and I think it's a great resource to have them as well. So I feel like the climate has changed in the sense but I also feel like I am getting
more um building more rapport with everybody within the schools just from the experience of being in the schools. So it's hard to gauge how we're doing on our mission statement. But I think that that is our goal no matter what every year because every year we got new kids coming in. We got transfers, people are
moving to town and that mission is for every student whether we've met them once, met them 10 times or meeting them for the first time. I had a question for Peter about this.
Go for it. Um we'll go to Lax. In theou it talks about a an annual review in with you the chief and the SRO. Did that happen? So the chiefs both sent me the they worked throughout the year to update the annual review process and the forms. So
they've sent that to me and we have not yet sat down to do the annual review. Um I personally would prefer to get through all like the leadership team and principles and things like that and then probably talk after. Thanks for the presentation. It's uh
very reassuring. Um we don't you we usually fill in the blanks for what we believe in but this was good. Um the question is you said you uh work with students go back and try to earn their trust or build that relationship. So my
my question is around the kids who tend to deviate and get into trouble. How effective is other um whatever training or whatever methods
you use to bring build that trust back with them once that that has kind of been destroyed when they get into trouble they obviously it it goes against that right right and I think that's where I do think that the restorative justice piece is is huge for us instead of just
knocking on a door and saying hey you know here's summons for court, right? That's going to build that bad rapport in general. We're trying to work with these kids and give them that extra opportunity to to fix what's going on, right? Whether mischievous behavior or not, they're going to make mistakes and
we understand that. So, I think that they respect that. So, um we do have some students that we, you know, that we might frequently deal with, but there I haven't had that disrespect that I've seen in the past. Um, I think that it's kind of changing whether it's whether it's what they're learning as they're
growing up or it is us being in the schools at the younger age. It might be that as well or seeing us more frequently. Um, it's it's great that I get the whole eighth grade class for the for the internet safety and all that and then it's great that I get the whole freshman class which I understand is the same people right as they move up. But
now that I've been there for four years, I've had almost every student in the school. So, I think that they have had that opportunity to meet me, talk to me, ask me questions if they're comfortable. Um, a lot of them don't, right? They just they say hi, they nod or they wave,
but there's no disrespect, which I think is important. And if there was, I think that would be the opportunity for me to kind of work more actively to to prove that we we're not that bad figure and that we can just be a resource or a mentor or a friend, right? Um, I
understand that kids don't want to go home or I mean when they go home and something bad's happening at home. They don't want to come to school and tell their English teacher what's going on at at home. So, I would love to be that resource for them to feel comfortable to talk to me. And that's kind of one thing I tell everybody when I do meet them,
you know, as I try to be approachable um and to bridge that gap between us. I actually want to play off of that a little bit because um when we were sort of talking about how we envisioned this program, a lot of the concerns that we heard were around students who might be
uncomfortable for any other reason um outside u of what you've been doing around the presence of officers in the school. And so I'm curious, how do you sort of perform those duties but also respect the fact that there are some students and some parents who might not be comfortable with having you in the
school? How do you balance those two? So for me, um, when I get, you know, when I get that read of the room, when I read the room and I can tell that there's that kid that, you know, I make an attempt, I try to be very friendly, but if they turn it down, I keep it moving. I don't give up on that kid.
But, you know, I try to fill the room and understand and I understand and I explain it to sometimes when they do ask me a question or two that, you know, I don't know what their experience has been, but, you know, I can be different like I am different. um like how can we
help? Like what can I do? Um I do love like going to the elementary schools because going in there and the kids see me at lunch, they're like, "Oh my god." It's like, you know, I'm a superstar and I'm going there. Um but yeah, no. Um I think that it is very important for us
to be aware and know that we are going to have those times where, you know, there are kids that don't want to deal with us or don't want to see us. And we do have parents that might not want to speak to us or may not want their kids to speak to us. But we're very we respect it and like you know we work through theou we work with the you know
administrators to get permission every time we speak with a kid. Even if the kid does want to speak with us and the parent doesn't then we'll let them know like sorry you know like we need your parents permission. So we are respectful and we do understand that people have their reasons or you know their experiences and um we don't take it
personal. I don't take it personal, but I always try to take advantage of every opportunity that I get to change that or make it better to do something. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Um, so what I've seen so far is that, you know, I meet the kids at the school
sometime, you know, gave secret meet the first time. I introduce myself. Hey, that's my name. I'm is Ray. They say, why is that? I go by Ray. Make it easier for everyone to remember me. Uh, I would say I've been to domestic disturbance and domestic abuse between parents where the kid now I've seen him before. They
remember me. They see my face. You can see that, oh, there's someone I can trust. And I would say remember this kid, six years old, came to me, hug me and almost cry. I'm a father, three-year-old boy. Um, I would say some back you up. Some parents don't not like the police officers or want to see in
school where it happens where the parents time give me uh angry face something like that don't take it personal you know uh people don't going to like me all the time a cop or off duty and when I meet the kids for the first time and give stickers they go home talk to the parents hey I'm officer
I'm officer Ray Ray they talk about me all day long the next time the parents see me say are you officer Ray like yes my kids always talking about you now so they like that kind of changed how they perceive in how they look at a police officer then now they say hi to me when they see me all the time so I'm no longer a stranger but officer Ray and
then that can also you know it's a good impact on both ways thank you um I just want to point out that um I really appreciate the work that both the um Boxboro and Actton Police Department have done to um compromise with us on theou I know there was a lot of
negotiations that sort of went on there I also want to thank both towns for supporting um the training and the funding so that we can have certified school resources resource officers. These are um officers are employed by our town, so there are no costs to the district, but you clearly provide um an
an excellent benefit to the students of our community. So, I want to thank you for that. Uh and thanks to the chiefs for for working with us on this. And um you know, I'll remind everybody this is year one of theou so always evolving. Uh any school committee members who have feedback, please feel free to share that
with Peter um so that we can make sure that this program continues to evolve and improve. So, thank you all very much for coming this evening. All right. Up next is the Special Education Parent Advisory Council um providing their annual report and I'll welcome up
Amanda Bailey and Abe Gutierrez. Hi, good evening. Good evening. Um, so I'm a Gutierrez, one of the co-chairs for the special education uh parent advisory council. Amanda Bailey, another co-chair of this back or CPAC
rather. Wow. Um it's late, it's been a long year. Um so thank you very much for having us. Abee's going to start us off. So our mission is to ensure understanding, respect, support, and the
appropriate education of all children in our community. Um the CPC serves in an advisory role to the district on matters related to both the education and safety of students with disabilities. Additionally, we meet regularly with school officials to discuss the
district's special education programs, which include participating in planning, development, and evaluation of the programs as well. So, this year we had a number of ways that we engaged with the district. As per the CPAC procedures, we met regularly
with the special education leadership, our interimm director, and our assistant director. regarding programs, the process of adopting the new IEP form staffing uh as an ongoing issue. Um we served on a number of district level committees, particularly uh the chronic absenteeism task force work. It was
great to follow up on the student opportunity act plan feedback that we submitted to the district and be able to see that through. Um we're excited to be part of the strategic planning and reorganization steering work. Um, we sit monthly with the joint PTO to help engage with other parent leaders in our community and share information about
how things are going. Um, and then we also do have a rolling feedback form where families can submit the names of staff and administrators who've really made a difference for their children and we're able to follow up with them and just give them that acknowledgement and CC their supervisors. And it means a lot to be able to collect that feedback and
share it with our educators. With regard to advocacy, you may have seen us around the budget a bit. Um, we did some work again on documenting the ongoing access issues with P school. We're going to follow up with that in our parent guardian survey
next year just to touch base about are people able to access their students records? Are they able to get to those IEP progress reports easily? Um, do they know where to find them? We also um are following a number of emerging trends. uh the competency determination
requirements at the state level and one of our big um big accomplishments this year was the development of the inclusion recommendations during COVID and afterward and in between our long form surveys. We adopted a feedback form model to quickly capture information
from our community to be able to bring information back to administrators about what was going on and people's experiences. We expanded this process to target big issues that were identified through the surveys or in conversation with folks. um for a long time it was like the tale of two disabilities where dyslexia and autism kept bubbling up to
the surface. So we used our feedback process of having a listening session an online form and then gathering that and creating recommendations for the district around those topics. Um those documents are then be able to be used uh for advocacy to document what is working
well and areas where things might be improved. Um in order to do that for the inclusion uh piece of this we had to first define inclusion and for our purposes we landed on inclusion being students with disabilities being part of and
participating meaningfully in everyday activities with non-disabled peers. We really want to stress that this is individual. This can look very different individual to individual and it has to be done in um we'll talk in a minute about free appropriate public education.
We use this graphic in our in our report to start to um delineate the different what we actually mean by inclusion and how that looks. Um if we were to take for instance an example of segregation where we have students with disabilities bubbled off that might be uh vans pulling up to the back of a building to
let all the students in the same program out behind the school. Um do they all need that? You know Paul says you know anytime they all do something we've lost the IEP. We've lost that individual. So that would be an example of that kind of practice. Um thinking about like
separate sensory friendly spaces that would also be segregation um even with best intentions. So thinking about those different ways um of how that looks for students. Why does this matter? Um even these little things that I'm talking about that don't seem like that big a
deal. There is a horrible meme that goes around and it's something to the effect of when there's one dis kid with a disability in a class of 20, 19 other kids have the opportunity to learn about difference and inclusion. All 20 of them do. All 20 of those kids are learning
about difference and inclusion and what that means to belong. some quotes that sort of uh guided our work as well, talking about uh how authentic inclusion must, you know, be communicated from the top down that
there are often points where things get reset when students transition to a new school, when there are staffing changes or we fade support too soon. Um it's unsustainable and exhausting when those efforts come from the bottom up. And that inclusion is more about curricular more than curricular access. It's about
being a valued member of the school community. Everyone has something to offer. When we think about inclusion, there are two principles we want to just sort of educate you about with regard to um educating students with disabilities. The first one is the free appropriate
public education that FAPE that every student is entitled to. The second one is the least restrictive environment. Every student is entitled to access that least restrict environment and we're only supposed to remove them from that general education setting if we've
exhausted all of their means of appropriately educating them there whether it is uh services supports um etc. It may be appropriate for a student to be in a different setting. That may be a question of fate but there is one least restrictive environment. It's the gened classroom with non-disabled peers.
Any other continuum on that placement is a question of what's appropriate for that student. and they might move in and out of those spaces. Um, our concern is, you know, making sure that we begin in that general education setting and then only pull out when we need to, not place in a substantially separate program,
then go, okay, well, we're going to push you in for stack and we're going to push you in for art, but maybe not if you're not having a good day, maybe you have to earn it and things like that. And that's not necessarily happening in every case, but thinking about how do we start from the left side of this and only work out when we need to. And in fact, in the
IEP, we have to justify when we're removing a student from that. We have to say why. When we think about the recommendations that we did develop, we put them into five key areas, starting with gened classrooms. Few quick examples would be teaching about disability history, disability rights
movement. Um, teaching peers how to interact with our students who may use augmentative and alternative communication. Um, not using uh non-disabled peers as the the model in social interactions. Everyone again has something to offer. Um at the school level that might be professional
development. Uh we really want to just um laud the McCarthy town PTO here. They've done a beautiful job developing a set of um inclusion guidelines for running events. Um which is fantastic to read that document. Thinking about um making sure that we're having inclusive
events, that we're making sure that students are included in pictures if they so choose, things like that. At the district level, we're talking about um recommending things like an accessibility audit of our facilities, including the high school, thinking about including out of district families and district communications and culture
climate surveys, um co-eing as part of a long-term strategic plan. So, just thinking about different aspects of this, and I really encourage folks to go take a look at it. I promise you, you will learn something. Um and there are some great uh resources and citations that we've included, too.
Um, our outreach efforts do include having a presence at the back to school nights, um, the basic rights workshops and, uh, in addition to a social media presence as well as our own, uh, newsletter as well. Um, our outreach efforts have a focus uh, and an
emphasis, excuse me, on reaching families that have younger children with disabilities. Um this is especially helpful we've learned with uh families that recently move in um to the Actton Boxboro School District. It's one that I can speak to myself um as well.
um the CPAC's priorities for the coming school year. Um in addition to the ongoing relationship building with both school committee and the district, um we do have our communication plan which we it's an iterative process where we adjust to continue to have the biggest
outreach that we can um for the student population uh and for families. Um workshops and parent guardian education. This is very very beneficial for parents um of younger childrens with younger children with disabilities or parents
that have also recently um have had a child with a recent diagnosis of a disability as well. Um the parent and guardian survey continues to serve as a source of feedback from families as well as we know that not everyone is able to
attend um a CPAC meeting. Um we have community building with our friends of CPAC organization as well. Um and also our engagement in strategic planning and reorganization process. Um my co-chair had actually said it best that any
effort that benefits students with disabilities benefits all students and I think that's something that should really we should try and remember. Um, with that, we want to
uh thank uh the interim director, Mary Emmens, uh the assistant director, Dan Mur, who has been um a consistent collaborator with us throughout the year. Um we welcome Natalyia Kirul, who's the new director
um and as well the school committee for the ongoing collaboration and support. Natalya was able to attend our annual meeting and officer elections last night. So, it was nice to have her in the room to talk about what we did la last year and what we intend to do next year. So, it was a really great chance to just get to know her and have her get to know us. Um, we did have our
elections last night. You will be seeing more of me. You will be seeing more of Abe. You will be seeing more of Kristen O'Neal in the back there as our third co-chair. We do have openings for secretaries. So, if you want to get involved, we'd welcome that. And we did also fill our entire officer slate for
our friends of 501c3 organizations. So, thank you to those uh parents and guardians for stepping up to serve. Thank you both very much. Any questions or comments from the committee? Leela. Hi. Thank you both so much. Um I know
every time we're designing a process or a a group to look at a something like we're always like, "Oh, who's going to be the CPAC representative?" um because you all are always really helpful in rounding out the perspectives that we need. Um and so thank you for constantly
showing up and providing some direction. Um I'm curious how the school committee might be able to support either the work that you're doing or the things that you'd like to see done um in the ongoing year. It's a great question, Leela.
Thank you. I think that it's in continuing to ask exactly that. Did we talk to the CPAC about this? Making sure that um we're included, that multilingual families are included when we talk about these different things, bearing in mind again that what helps our kids helps all kids. Um and we're
part of the process when it comes to special education for a reason. Um including family members and parents in those in that process, I would say. So ensuring that we're included or continue to be included. Um celebrating what's going well I think is really important. I would say staying on top of the policy
subcommittee and the conversations that you all are having is incredibly helpful um to be able to know, hey, by the way, there's something on the agenda coming up. And I think also just with regard to the budget, continuing to prioritize special education uh resources and honoring um just how great the need
remains and as well as your advocacy at the state level. Other questions, comments? Glenn. Um, I just have a comment.
Um, as someone that was in special ed myself, just I am so glad you're here. Um, really, I mean, I might have had an easier time in school growing up if there were more people like you when I was a kid.
Um, so email me with anything Vicram and then Lisa. Um, I also want to say how uh how proud and and honored I am to actually be on the the liaison for the CPAC committee and Amanda I don't think people sing your praises highly enough. Um I I think
I think people are not wholly unaware of what Amanda I mean I think we are but I think it goes beyond I mean what you bring to the table Amanda is just the the amount of good you do for the number of people is just it's it's it's virtually immeasurable. Um so I want to
thank you from everybody. just to echo what Vicram said. Um you're phenomenal. Um we really appreciate all of the work that you do and I really particularly appreciate the visual aids in this presentation and kind of reframing how we think about events. I
think that's absolutely critical to um anything that's done on school grounds or you know giant events a way to include everyone and it's not having something separate. It's having everyone together. So I really loved that. Thank you. [Music]
All right. Uh, I have a quick question. Liz, are we signed up to have a school committee table at Fifers Day? We sure are. Okay. So, we talked about this a little bit at CPAC last night, and we've talked about this amongst some of the committee members. Um, anytime the we I think both the school committee
and the CPAC um have have a great deal of outreach that we want to do over the course of the next year. And so, I would extend the invitation for the CPAC to share a table with us at any of those events. So, I'll ask Liz maybe reach out to Amanda or Kristen and see if they've got some folks who are available. Absolutely. Let's go hang at it Fifers
Day. There you go. Um, thank you all very much for coming. We appreciate it. Okay, two minutes ahead of schedule. No clap for clapping for all of them.
Uh, nine minutes ahead, one minute ahead of schedule. Uh, ongoing business. We're going to move on to our ABRSD vision of a graduate presentation. So, as those presenters come up, Peter, maybe you want to give a just a quick intro of who's coming to speak and what we're about to [Music]
see after you get the presentation up. Yeah. Thanks, Adam. Um, I'm not going to do too many introductions, but um, you know, we had an opportunity to pull together 21 students, educators, leaders, family
members across the district over the course of this year. And it was just really a wonderful opportunity to get to collaborate with a wonderful fantastic group of individuals to think deeply about what we want for
our students and how we want them to develop as whole people over the course of their time from prek all the way through their graduation from from ACT in Boxboro. And so I'm not going to do any more talking because I'm going to let um three of our representatives. Leela um has been a school committee
representative on this um and was one of the school committee representatives who kind of helped take us to the finish line by drafting some of the final language. Um and then you know Allison and Sarah are two of our educators. Allison's at the high school and Sarah's at Conan. Um who also helped get us over
the finish line. Um and so you know they've been involved throughout the process. We wanted to let um some of the committee members actually do the talking for us. Um and I'm really proud of the work that this group did and excited to be able to share it with everyone tonight. Hi folks. Uh I'll be starting off some
of the presentation about our vision of a graduate work. Um just wanting to acknowledge how many people were part of this process. So just in the steering committee there were classroom educators um administrators Gabby made a point of saying that she just couldn't fit them
all in one column so she had to split them up um but also students and community members. So this is the guiding question that um our community responded to. So we asked what are the most important
skills and experiences our students need to prepare them for success in life and learning. This was the timeline. It's a kind of brief overview. So back looking to our strategic plan. Um some of this
work was actually included in that strategic plan. Um May of last year we looked to form a steering committee. Um in October there was a thought exchange um which was an online platform that folks could respond to that question
that was just up. Um from December to February the steering committee was looking at the data that came from it. Um kind of generating some drafts of what our vision of a graduate might look like. Uh plenty of rounds of iterations.
Folks were also throughout this looking at other visions of a graduate um to see what it'd be like. where are there places that we might replicate what is helpful to us. Um through this also there was a desire to engage the community in a deeper way. Um it didn't
turn out exactly how we intended because folks didn't sign up for the thing that we had designed um enough. And so there was also this learning kind of around how can we design engagement in a way that folks can and will engage. Um and so thinking about that as a helpful learning as we go forward um in other
initiatives and wanting community members to be involved and participating. Um if you look to April and May, the steering committee reviewed the vision of a graduate updated it based off of what was heard in the community workshops. um looking to right
about now um the community got to see vision over graduate again. Um we got more feedback and uh incorporated it into the working draft and so that's what you will be seeing today. Um and
here's our presentation. So this engagement process was thought exchange which is that online platform I referred to as well as um in-person workshops. So over 2400 folks um engaged there were and each person could contribute more than one idea. Um and so
there were over 2,700 unique ideas and you also had the opportunity to rate what other people were putting into the platform. So over 58,000 ratings. Um and then over 50 people actually came in person and participated in workshops to to kind of learn together and contribute
reflections around some of the drafts that had been um developed. Oh, thanks. Um, so I'm going to introduce some of the competencies that we narrowed in on for the five main um, they're called competencies that make up
our vision of a graduate. But before I get into the specifics, I just wanted to name them and then just give a a couple points of context. Um, the five that we landed on are adaptability, communication, collaboration, intellectual curiosity, and integrity.
Um, and in response to all of those rounds of feedback and the workshops, including the most recent feedback that we received, we did make a couple of changes to to arrive at this final version. One of which was to put adaptability first. Um, and within
adaptability to include in the first bullet point, which you'll see in a moment, um, mental health that we named that explicitly because it was clear that that was a priority um, in the community. Um I also just want to say before we see each one that there are three bullet
points within each competency. Each one is individually and equally important and the order of the competencies and the order of the bullet points is also intentional. Um and we do also envision some growth from one to the next.
Um the vision of a graduate is of course intended for all learners in the district to achieve these competencies as they go through AB. And we also want to acknowledge that there are a lot of types of students. There are a lot of types of learners and the pathways that
we will develop to help diverse learners and all of our students achieve these competencies um may vary and we will be developing those specific pathways at a next step. Um so the language the language that we uh developed um after
again many rounds of feedback lots of drafting and reddrafting um we tried really hard to write these in language that students would understand and also use themselves. Um and the statements are written in a student's voice. So I
am going to read them like that. Uh so as a student who demonstrates adaptability, I can demonstrate physical and mental wellness by developing my self-confidence and self-awareness through understanding my strengths, passions, emotions, and needs. I can
take healthy risks and use setbacks as opportunities for growth. And I can show resilience by adjusting to changing circumstances and persevering toward goals despite challenges. As a student who can demonstrate communication, I can listen
actively to build understanding, engage in conversations with others about a broad range of topics, and convey ideas in multiple ways for a variety of audiences and purposes. Within collaboration, I can seek diverse perspectives to broaden and
deepen my understanding. I can demonstrate empathy by respecting the feelings and experiences of others and I can work with others to contribute to collective goals. I'm going to pass it on for the next two. Yeah, sure. Thank you. um under
intellectual um curiosity. This was another area where we received some community feedback and so we did rearrange the order of these um as well. And the first one being under intellectual curiosity, I can reflect on
and question my own ideas and think critically about information. A lot of the feedback or a significant amount of feedback we received from um the community was around the importance of being able to think critically, be critical consumers, especially there's been a theme tonight about AI and social
media. Um and knowing that that's what's here today, but what will it look like in 5 years? We want to make sure our students are critical thinkers of everything in front of them. Um, so we moved that one up to the front and then um I can identify effective strategies
to expand ideas and navigate obstacles and I can develop work through creative synthesis and ethical use of resources. Um, in that one as well in the work that we did as a steering committee and then also from community feedback there was
also a lot of discussion about AI. Um, knowing that we're really at the beginning of it and it's hard to know what that will look like. um so knowing that it will play a role in our students lives moving forward but that we want to make sure that whatever they create they
are doing so ethically um and so that's why we came up with this language um in this area related to AI and whatever else might come in the future thank you integrity um I can take ownership of my actions and decisions I can demonstrate
respect for others myself and my environment and I can understand my role in and actively contribute to my communities. And our language here with the second around my environment and the third around my communities was thinking
about this um not in one singular way but in the many different ways that you can look at your environment like physically the environment but also the environment around you in any given time. And then recognizing that our students are members of many communities
not just one. Then there's where we go from here. So our next steps with a vision of a graduate is that we'd like to work with student artists to create visual representation. So there was intent in our presentation tonight of only having stars um because we'd like to have
student input in that next stage. Um and then um communicating the vision of a graduate broadly to the wider community um and within our district. and then um integrate the vision of a graduate into our strategic planning process. Next, we'll be identifying current practices
that support the vision of a graduate and areas to grow. So, looking at what we already do and places where we can expand on what we're doing to help meet um students achieving these goals and then identifying pathways for all learners, including diverse learners,
and determine how to measure students growth toward the vision. Allison spoke to that earlier. um and recognizing that there is more than one pathway that we can achieve um these goals here and making sure that um students understand that and that staff understand that and we're supporting each other throughout
that process and then knowing that we're always constantly um you know works in progress reflecting celebrating and then improving along the way with our vision of a graduate. That is our presentation. So we can take questions now. Yeah. Um I
just before you we do questions, I just want to acknowledge we have a number of members of the committee who are also here with us tonight and I just want to acknowledge them. Um Yangction was one of our members of our committee who was with us the whole way. Um Gabby Abrams was also um a member and one of the
leaders of this work. We have Caitlyn Nean in the back. Um and then we have uh Verun Narella as well. So thank you Verun. He was one of our student representatives. Um and Jen Faber as well. Oh, and yes, that's everyone,
right? Oh, wait. Did I miss someone? Did I miss anyone? I think I got everyone. Yeah. So, thank you so much for being here. Um, and I'll turn it over for questions. Could I say one more thing, please? I guess so. Please.
Thanks. Um, I just wanted to add that it was genuinely one of the most interesting and um, joyful experiences to be able to have these conversations about this. Um, going through this district wasn't always an easy
experience for me and I did feel a lot of focus on um, academic achievement and not really thinking about folks holistically. Um, and so I've really appreciated the opportunity to be part of this process. I think we're really lucky to have these educators here. Um, our conversations
were fun. Um, and I am really glad that we got to this point. So, just wanted to add that. Thank you, Lea. All right, let me see show hands who wants to go here. All right, we're going to start with Laxshmi, then we're going to go to Andrew, and then we're
just going to work around the room here. And Glenn, we're going to come to you at the end since we're going to start with Laxmi. Okay. Thank you. that was that was really really done well. Um uh just looking forward to the next steps where you
actually take it to realization on the paper. The concepts are absolutely phenomenal. Thank you. As one of the few people in the room who was not part of the team, I just want to really let you know uh my appreciation for all the work you've done. Um this is really great. I
can't tell you how much I appreciate the centering of your work on the person. I think that's a really important thing. We think about these institutions we're part of to build the institution, but our job is to make help these students become the best versions of themselves and I really think you've caught it in
the strategy document. So, thank you. I think it's a great step for us moving forward. Uh, since we're going around, I I have um a question and a comment. First, the comment is I I really appreciated you giving that context about the order in which the the items
come. Um, I did participate in some of it and that had not clicked until now and as I see that it really makes a lot of sense and I kind of hope that as we get some visuals those visuals will help sort of give some keys to that as well. The question I have and maybe it's it's more of a question for Peter. I know that we did send a survey out to the
community to sort of get some feedback on how the community responded to this and I'm curious either the the group here or Peter can share what some of the the feedback was as it was presented back to the community in that one question survey. Yeah, sure. So, you know, we got uh we
were almost over excited at first because within a day we had 650 responses to the the final survey and then we looked at the number of individuals who then actually completed it and it went down. In the end, we had about 110 150 responses somewhere in that range which was still good
feedback. Um we looked at really the top five themes that came in. Um, one theme, um, I think that resonated really strongly that we had some really good discussions at the very end about with our our group trying to finalize this was should the same vision apply to all
students. Um, because there was a lot of feedback around the inclusivity piece of this and in the end we felt really strongly that yes, you have the same vision for all students and recognize that the pathway and the way that that vision looks in the end might be different for different students. Um,
and but you don't want to give up on that vision. And quite honestly, um, we even had some discussion that some of the statements in here could also actually read as goals for some of our students um, to be thinking about how they communicate the ways things like that. And so, you know, we wanted to to
recognize and highlight that that we didn't want to give up on the the singular vision for everyone, but there are different paths to that. Um a second component of this um I think there was some operational feedback that that you heard as well like how will this be
operationalized? Um I think one thing that feels fairly successful is we had some people who gave us feedback that said I wholeheartedly agree with this vision. Um I'm not sure if you'll do it because this sounds like a more classical education than what AB provides. Um, and then we had maybe
other people who said, "I'm not sure you'll do this because I agree with it and I'm not sure you're progressive enough to do it." Um, and so to be able to kind of hear from people um, who may think differently politically um, and kind of how society is to feel like
there was something in this vision that they could really relate to for students um, feels like a nice unifying force. So I think that was something that came through as well. um the three pieces of specific feedback where we made adjustments. One, prioritization of mental health. That came back loud and clear in the feedback that we received
in the final survey. Um and that was consistent along the way. So you saw some really clear and strong language around that. Um another one was this idea of being able to think critically about information. Some people phrased that around artificial intelligence and quite honestly um in our discussions as
a committee artificial intelligence is just the next technology. Cell phones were a technology. Websites were a technology. Paper was a technology at one point. And what we wanted to do were create skills that endured through changing technology and not just latch on to one. Um, and then I think the
third one helped me. I'm thinking there were there were five. Gabby, can I phone a friend? I'm happy to be a friend. Um the third one was really wasn't that that was really around the practical application
of um of the work. So the critical thinking piece and the practical application of the learning. So helping students to apply what they learn to a broader context. Yeah, we we added in the words diverse
learners. I think it was just in the very last slide. Yes, with the next steps. Um, thinking about what scaffolding might need to be in place for some students. So, um, that was a piece that we knew, but we felt it was important to clearly label that here.
Um, I think that was the same with mental health. It was woven in there, but we really felt those were words that needed to be um, explicitly stated. And I think you know one of the things we were thinking about and just to actually carry on to kind of CPAC's
presentation before is as we identify the opportunities where we want to grow or opportunities currently exist and we think about how we're working with students through those opportunities and as we develop new ones. We want to be doing this with kind of a universal design principle so that these things
are accessible to all learners from the ground up. And it's not about you have a vision and then you accommodate that vision for students, but how do you actually design the experiences for all students at that initial stage? So, um that's why we wanted to include that in
some of the language in this slide. I really appreciate your work on this. Um it's neat to see the end product and just feel that it is so affirming. The language is just beautifully written. Um, something else I really appreciate about it is how flexible it is. Not just
for the the things that we haven't imagined yet for our students, but also, you know, what we've been hitting on with diverse learners. Um, I teach at a school that is competency based. And while it makes writing narrative progress reports very, very long, one of
the things I love about it is the opportunity to look for where are students meeting your competencies and how are they doing it? and recognizing it's exactly what we're talking about. It is often so very different and it's so exciting to see that there are so many pathways. So, I think this just all
feels really good to me. Um, I'm curious about process because we've done so many new things here and I'm wondering what what you learned out of doing this because clearly you've brought so many voices together successfully. Um, and do you have any advice for us as we move
into some more of these processes? I think time, right? Giving ourselves time. In our last large meeting we had, we broke up into groups and kind of workshopped even more based on feedback and then realized we this is not enough
time to do the work there. More needs to be done. Um, I think Peter stating that he wanted to make sure that we took the time to have a really good product that we were bringing forward um was important and um
and I I think as teachers, right, we were going through the revision process just like we teach our students of, you know, there was a lot of condensing and clarifying and a lot of conversation and and us having to be flexible with um changing things as Well, yeah, I would
just add two things. Uh, one of which is the language that we used really did evolve even if some of the ideas I think we had an inkling of from the start. um which was exciting, but I think it's it's validating that through all of
these rounds of feedback and workshops and brainstorming and and getting feedback from the community that we ended with even stronger versions of those ideas or slightly different ideas because we hadn't thought of how to include what really every everybody thought was the most important. Um, I
think one of the things that we worked on the most throughout the process was really, like you said, um, finalizing the language and getting down down down from what was initially wordy and and jargon in a lot of ways. And even when
we thought we'd done that, we realized we could do that three more times. Um, and so I think that was really helpful. And having students be part of this process was integral to that piece in particular. Um, and I appreciate that you recognized the flexibility of what we've come up with. I think that was
another thing that we learned. There were many points at which we had specified more within the bullet points and realized that may box us in and that may leave things out. Um, and so where we envision delineating more specific
ideas is in the next step of how will we help students prepare to achieve these different competencies. Um, but we decided ultimately that the vision itself should be flexible and general enough so that it can encompass all of the different things that we would like students to be able
to include here. Anything to add? Go for it. I was just going to add one technical thing I learned was you can't write detailed language in a group of 20. Um, no really like you can't. We we
started trying that and I think what we landed on ended up being a real learning lesson and a strength in the end where the whole group had to provide feedback and thought and guidance but when you needed to actually draft something you had to put a small team together um
because they you just you can't have 20 people all trying to write something at the same time. It's just too complicated. And so this notion of going kind of from, you know, community feedback to whole group feedback to a team of writers, back to the whole group, back to a team of writers, back to the community, back to the whole
group, back to a team of writer, and kind of going through those iterations was actually really successful because, you know, it to settle on language with 20 people sitting around a table is next to impossible. Um, but I I hope that people in the room feel like all of the
thoughts and ideas of that whole steering committee and eventually the whole community were really captured in the final product. The only thing I would add is that I made sure to mention the piece around designing community engagement and it not going the way that we planned. Um, because I think there is an
ability to see that people didn't sign up and be like, "Eh, people aren't interested. People don't care. We might just want to scrap this." Um but I think reinvisioning like what might be the barriers and how do we how do we approach those and how do we remove some of them um is a really helpful approach
as we engage in other processes. Hi um nice to see you guys again. Um I have a question because I know um educators spend a lot of time after work. We're talking about 11 hour work days plus some or more. a lot of time um working on the VOG process. I'm just
curious like for all the time spent that what what was your takeaway from the process? I think I would echo what Leela said that it was a really um rewarding process. It was really a nice opportunity to work with people who
people from different levels of school. So, I I work at the high school, but it was a great opportunity to meet and work regularly with elementary and middle school um or junior high educators to meet some people from the community to engage with students that I didn't already know.
Um, and I think once I started serving on this committee, I I really did become I feel like I'm already invested in AB as a school, but I became invested in wanting this vision to represent sort of the best that we can do for our students and the potential that they all have.
Um, and so I I feel really good about this final version. And I think that feeling means a lot that after going through all of these steps um it feels good to have to have been part of the process and to end up with something that as one of the educators here I feel
like we can really do and implement and represent for our students and with our students and and from our students. So, we kind of always joke as educators, you know, we're advocating for our students to have balance and we're probably really not good at modeling
balance. Um, but, you know, being an educator at sometimes it can also be very isolating because we're around people all day, but we're mostly around students the majority of our day. Um, yet we work in
this massive district. So, um, being able to find opportunities like this one to serve on a committee where you are getting to work with community members, um, administrators, but then also educators across the entire district is so rewarding. Um, whether it's this or a
book club or another committee you get to be part of. Um, every time I'm part of that, I'm reminded of just how amazing AB is and just the people who I wish I could work with more, but they're, you know, up at the junior high and I'm in the elementary school. Um, but it really helps us see where our
students are going and who our students are working with all the way from K to prek to 12. Um, and so I think the more our educators have an opportunity at some point to engage in that cross district work, um, the more valuable it is for them.
So, first and foremost, I want to thank the members of the subcommittee for this amazing work. Um, being a parent of a neurodeivergent student who has an IEP who is going on to high school next year, what I read here are his goals
which he articulates himself and he was not on this uh subcommittee. So, I just want to thank each and every one of you for really taking the time and care and the due diligence to put this together. Thank you. Um I I just I'm just so so impressed.
It's just absolutely excellent. This is excellence. Absolutely top-notch. Um but but in going from here, is this sort of the final thing? And how do you see this implemented? When will we start seeing implementation? And obviously there'll be I guess like you know iterations about and and how do you envision its
implementation and timeline? I would start by saying I think a lot of what we already do at every level is already encompassed in this vision. Um it's it's not intended to be a completely new addition to everything that is already going on. Um, and so one
of the steps in identifying current practices is what are what do we already do that helps students develop um self-awareness and develop the skills to be able to listen and engage in conversations with others um at at all of the different grade levels. Um I
think once and while we're doing that, we will also see are there areas within the vision that that we are either not explicitly doing or could be addressing more. Um and once we have identified those areas, I think it will be a question and what we plan to do is at
each grade level or at each school level, how can we effectively incorporate these skills into the learning that is already happening. I think in terms of the end when students actually graduate, we will we will have
developed ways to measure their progress and then be able to sort of credit them for having developed all of these and achieved all of these goals by that time. Um, when we were designing the language, we were really thinking about those words that come right after I can as
words that could be measurable. So, there were a lot of revisions that took place where we said, well, wait, how would we measure this is a great statement, but is it really measurable? Um, could you really like point to something that clearly shows you're able to accomplish that? Um, and then also as
we were working through the language, you know, I was thinking as through the teacher lens of, oh, I already see aspects of some of this um, in the SecondStep curriculum that we've adopted or in the um, EL um, English language arts curriculum at
the elementary level that we're using. So, it was this idea of not saying to teachers, here's another thing, um, but to really look at where it aligns. And so, um, making sure that teachers know that and the community knows that that this is really going along with what we
have already. And then that part of reflecting, celebrating, and improving, but we're not in charge of the exact timeline. And sorry, just and just one followup. I mean, what you're saying is that you really enjoyed engaging with other teachers from other grades and other
schools, and it seemed that that was really like quite a big beneficial thing for everybody across the board. Perhaps there's some way we could do more of that, you know, in some other fashion. Lisa, do you have anything? I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of
you for your work. Um, I can tell this was a very large undertaking and I really appreciate it. Um, honestly, when I'm reading this, one of the things that I'm really thinking about is a lot of people when they go into education, they go into it thinking about making the world a better place and obviously
teaching the students, but also making them better humans. and I felt like this was a really good recipe for that. So, thank you, Glenn. And then we're circling around back to Lakshmi. Oh, go ahead. Well, so I just wanted to say well, thank you again. And I just
feel like this would be a good vision for the country too in general. Um, one thought I had is like could there be like student profiles or like student like here's a student that exemplifies like communication in its
most thing or like at the yearbook at the end of the year there's like here's a student who demonstrated what we mean by intellectual curiosity or this or that and it's just like an end of the yearbook thing and like if we're looking for measurable things maybe want something more qual qualitative where it's just like here's someone who did a
really good job and then like it's the then everyone gets to go like then they can come here and do like a little presentation or something that'd be really sweet. So that's a thought I had. Um, and another thought is just I want to reiterate what Tori brought up
specifically is that this is a good what was learned here through process and procedure can I I hope some of that can be implemented in the monthsl long undertaking of the steering committee for restructuring. Um, I think that this
this procedure was demonstrated that like here's how you absorb community feedback and have it not devolve. Um, so I think being able to have this as a roadmap for imple for gathering and implementing community feedback to implementing
policy is just a good thing in the future. And I love the idea of arts of like getting student artists too. That'd be really sweet. Um, and those are all my thoughts. Not really questions there, but those are like so two thumbs up from
me. Thanks Glenn Lakshmi. I think this will be just a question. I'm going to leave mostly for Gabby and maybe Peter. Um, so when I see the these documents, right, it really excites me. It's really nice. But when we delineate,
this is a question just a um thought. When we delineate the c kind of capabilities or whatever we want to develop in kids, right? Do we once we translate the these to
practices, don't they more or less kind of we become slaves to a kind of a scripted um- scripted uh experiences rather than human experiences because we're now looking them as layers. We don't look at
it in a holistic way. And what what that leads to is teachers are constantly worried about that assessment of a kid on those rather than just being naturally spontaneously reacting to what the kid needs which we all all have
built-in abilities to do that. And I just do worry that by doing this do we kind of get get to that point. I'll leave it there. Thanks. I just had one thought around that. Um, I appreciate your desire to stay away from scripting exactly what teachers
have to do or exactly what students have to be. I think one of the exciting things about this process was the ability to expand beyond just getting all A's doing APs, right? And so whether spoken or unspoken, I think there already are scripts for what a student
should be and excel at. And so I think this is an ability an opportunity to think a little bit more broadly. And so the the script um is one where there are multiple paths. It's almost like a mad libs. Um so you like see where you end
up. Um but I appreciate that that concern. Yeah, I I think I understand. I mean I'm saying this already is an established pattern, but I'm talking about more my kids went through Blanchard. There was a star um thing that they do that right. I always go back to thinking that did that really
inculcate in them anything that actually is underneath that they were just paring saying okay I can't do this I can't do this I have to do this but really did not emotionally grow them and I think that's the part I have
yeah thank you so much for that thought I have so many I have so many thoughts that I'll try to organize quickly I mean one of the the first thought that I have is is one that you've often heard me say which is what gets measured gets done. Yeah. Um and so one of the things that I
think about is since 2016, so 2016 was the first year of the new kind of generation, the next generation of the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks. It was the science, technology, and engineering frameworks. They were the first frameworks that came out subsequently followed by English
language arts and math the next year, social studies the next year, performing arts the next year. Well, I know I have them all memorized because this has been my life for the last nine years. What shifted in those frameworks monumentally was a focus on skills-based
learning over content. It's really important for me to like re-emphasize that the skills-based learning. So because what was became the reality and the understanding is that this world that we is in our pocket having this this computer in our pocket
where we can access information at light speed no longer needs to be the focus of the way we think about what schooling is but rather how to take in information that is so accessible to us and sift through it and the skills that are
involved in navigating this very complicated world because of that And so what I love so much about this work is that it it's very aligned with that notion of skills-based instruction. And I also love what what Sarah and Allison
and Leela said about like really knowing where we're at. So if we are um if we're prioritizing the notion of communication and collaboration just as two examples and we really assess the degree to which we see our students on a continuum and
there does need to be some sort of continuum some clear language around what does success look like around this continuum what's beginning what's I think about the world language framework and how it's very proficiency based um what's the beginning level of understanding of this and where where is
their journey going then we as educators can be a very explicit with the development of that skill in a natural setting. Right? So responsive in a natural setting integrated into our units of study. So it's not, you know, we're not stop dropping and saying,
"Okay, now we're going to stop and collaborate." But we're really going to think about the learning in which our kiddos are engaged and assess the degree to which if collaboration is a prioritized say competency in that particular unit of study, the extent extent to which our students are
progressing and where do we as educ that's the gift of educators, right? the craft of really helping educators access their students access greater understanding of content certainly but of skills and so I think this is like really beautifully integrated and
because what gets measured gets done it can be done in a we have to make sure that it feels organic and natural and integrated um and and so that's my blah blah blah response about that so thanks for asking yeah l I'll close this out too for the the whole group you know I
Whether or not you make explicit what the goals of your organization are for students, there are still goals for an organization. And I think the whether they're hidden or whether they're transparent. And I think what this was
was an opportunity for the community to come together and talk about, you know, in 2025 and headed forward. what is the vision that we have for the type of education and the type of educational environment and classrooms and schools that we want for our students. And I
think what we came up with, you know, based on what I I remember entering the district seven years ago too and doing a lot of stakeholder interviews. And I think what we came up up with broadly was a very explicit statement that we can hang our hats on that our schools
and our classrooms are about much more than just the academic work that students do. And it's really about students developing themselves as whole human beings and people um into young adults that thrive. And I think that's the piece I'm most proud of. And I absolutely recognize that it feels like
it might be limiting, but I think it's actually in some ways based on where we have been, it's a very liberating view of that as well. I would just offer that up. Um, I will also offer as a closing, you know, I want to thank Gabby because she did hours and hours and hours of work behind the scenes to coordinate
meetings, get things organized. Um, and really, you know, just huge thank you to all of our community members, all of our steering committee members who participated in this process. I'm excited about moving forward. And while it feels like we're launching the strategic planning process now as we've
started putting out more information, I actually want to take a minute and recognize the start of this process was the start of the strategic planning process because now that we've defined what we want for a vision for our students, now we can start to talk about the vision for the next 5 to seven years
for our schools. And that this is the formative document that we want to build everything else off of as we move forward. All right, Sarah, Allison, Leela, thank you very much for your presentation. Got them started. It is.
All right, we are plowing ahead. Uh, next item is the approval of the ABRHS handbook. Uh, this is our second read. Uh, this was presented to us two weeks ago. Um, Peter, were there any changes, any significant feedback
since the last time? No, there there are no significant changes. Um there are no changes. Um I should say, you know, I think the the biggest piece here I think we recognize um particularly the discussion around the cell phone policy. I appreciate that. Um I think in the end talking to
Joanie, you know, we didn't receive any additional written feedback to to consider. Um we definitely thought about it a lot. Um you know, I did ask Joanie, have you we've been implementing cell phone pockets now for the whole school year in many of our classrooms, just not all. And I asked if they've had any
reports of thefts, student phones lost. No, we don't have anything like that. So, you know, we haven't heard of those types of issues at other schools where we're we're getting those concerns. I recognize, you know, kind of the change in feeling that this presents to to many of our students and families. Um, and I
think um, having kids put the cell phones in the pockets for the the duration of class is something we decided to stay with because we felt it was a step forward overall in creating the educational environment we want. Recognizing that one of the hard parts of doing policy is that when you try to
do good for the most people, there are people who may not feel like that that's working for them. And I think this is one of those situations where we can recognize that while we think it's a positive move forward, there are people who may not feel that way and I I certainly recognize that.
Thank you. All right. Any further comment on the handbook or anybody wish to make a motion? Andrew. Thanks. Um I maintain that this mandate for cell phone storage in non- studentent controlled locations is an incorrect policy. Every phone will be under the
control of the district which of course means that every action that happens to those phones will be the responsibility of the district. It opens up the doors for issues regarding student safety, regarding equipment safety, IBRSD liability and educational authority. On the student safety side, students may
find themselves in situations that demand discrete immediate communication. In the case of an incursion into the school where someone tries to do harm, students will not have the ability to connect to their families if they are not able to get there. they can't get into emergency services or other
communications that could be stifled. We perform Alice drills in the schools in preparation for potential harm as potential defense options. These personal communication devices should be considered in preparation as a potential safety and communication plan. Those
examples speak to the physical safety. There's also the need to continue to build a space for emotional safety, personal privacy, and freedom from emotional abuse for harm. Excuse me. There's equipment safety, which is a different question. 20 students using one storage location
before and after every class creates the opportunity for equipment to be damaged or mistaken. This potential for damage increases each day and each class as careless habits will form and placing phones out of the control of their owners allows for unintended mischief
and potential peer use. Which gets us to the ABRSD liability. What is the liability of the school district for damage to this equipment? What's the liability for improper use of the equipment while in storage? As an example, near field communication, these are the chips that allow you to use Apple Pay when you tap on something are
also set up to work automatically. Occasionally, sharing files, contacts, photos with a tap. Additionally, multiple financial transactions could incur or be initiated without the consent of the owner simply because of the proximity of devices to each other inside these cubbies. What's the
responsibility owned by the district for those whose phones were used without their permission or for ill means? I know plenty of kids inside of the middle school and the high school who grab other people's phones and turn on their cameras on a locked phone and do something with them. It's not difficult
to see that mischief could be had for people who want to cause trouble for other kids by taking their phone, doing something to it, and putting it back. But the other question I bring up is the education, the educator authority. By setting a policy that removes the authority of the educator to balance
responsibility and device ownership and the responsibility for education, we're not giving our educators the ability to be able to be in control. Prohibiting phones in classrooms, removing them from the control of their owners also relinquishes the ability of the educator to provide standards for their students
in class. I strongly suggest a change to this policy to allow for the storage of phones as an option, but add to the student code of conduct an escalating consequence for improper use in class. Treat this as we would any other infringement to the code. You know, first offense, second offense, third offense with clear escalating
consequences for bad actions. RSO RO's were here earlier talking about their goal is to reduce juvenile delinquency by helping students formulate awareness of the rules and authority and justice. the policy is offered removes the ability for our students to
self-regulate it rec to recognize the rules to recognize the standards and it doesn't support the vision particularly the integrity part that we are just talking about inside this last strategy I think that this particular piece is really troubling and needs to be
adjusted before we can vote on it thank you any other comments I would entertain a motion to approve the ABRHS FY26 handbook. So moved. Second. All right. So that was Vicram
with the motion and Tori with the second. All those in favor? I opposed. Abstensions. Okay. Thank you. So Leela and Ben abstained and Andrew was a nay. And I'm calling that out only because that's how our minutes are getting
recorded now. so that the AI and the person reviewing that can note that. Um, but that did pass. So, thank you. Uh, next item on our agenda is the proposed budget actions for school committee approval. Sherry, I'd like to
talk. Yes, we would like you up front too, please. With the microphone on. Thank you. Um, this is actually pretty quick because these I'm just kind of summarizing what we're going to do next
week and we're going to need at least four votes from you. You all got it in your packet. Um, Adam, I don't know if you want to. All right. So, the first vote we're going to be looking for next week is going to be a transfer of $2.1 million
from our excess and deficiency, our END account. and we're going to ask that we transfer it into our capital CIP revolving count. So, as you might remember, we said we were going to be getting a check from the IRS, which we
did end up getting in and receiving the check, largest check I've ever held in my hand. Uh, it was pretty big. I don't know if you want to show how big it was. We'll take a pause here. So, it was an average size check, but but but
the the value of the check was quite large. So, we did blow it up. Um, and I will point out here, this is a check for $2,962,4545. And included in that, you'll notice down here in the note, there is $210
$210,87745 worth of interest because the federal government was 352 days late in delivering us this check. So, you hear that? Federal government. Sherry was Sher was very um amused that they were going to send a real paper check. She did a wonderful job of blowing it up for
me, but really the here were our facilities team, including Kate Cosby. So, the whole school committee has signed the big fat check. Um we're going to present it back to Sher and the facilities team as our gratitude for doing uh amazing work and getting us some great rebates on the Boardwalk
campus. I will make sure Kate gets that check and I will have her hold on to it because she deserves it very very much. So, we're only asking for 2.1 million to be transferred because when you deal with excess and deficiency, it's the
number that the Department of Labor um approves for us each year and we can't take out more than what's certified. So 2.1 is what was certified for us last July. When we do get reertified again this fall, we probably will come back
for the other 800 plus and ask for the vote at that time to move that money in as well. And we plan on using that money for future capital expenditures. Mainly uh we have some rooftop units at the high school that it's going to cost us about $4 million.
So, we're going to be putting it towards that so we won't have to come to the towns asking for funding for that, which is a great thing. Uh the next vote we are going to be asking go ahead Sherry can make one more comment on that just to to also preview for you and you know
community members who are watching and interested um a lot of the work around state advocacy this year paid off and that resulted in a significant amount of additional money coming for the current fiscal year so FY25 that we'll receive before July 1 um as well as some more
money for FY26 next year the FY20 25 money that we're going to be getting between now and the end of the year will be sufficient to more than replenish what is in the current excess and deficiency fund. And so that's one of the reasons why we're moving what we
have now into stabilization. We have a massive massive rooftop project looming over our heads at the high school. Um that is just that one project alone is a $4 million you know venture. Um, and those are currently being, you know, you
know, kind of moved along with garden hoses and sprinklers in the summer, literally. Um, we are pretty close to the opportunity to be able to do a $4 million project without having to ask the taxpayers for another dollar. Um, and so by moving this money now, that's
going to allow us to do that without any more cost to taxpayers in the towns. And we think that's a real win. So, that's one of the reasons why we're doing these budget transfers now is to be able to take care of that future capital liability um without having to go back to the two towns for money.
And the second vote we're going to be looking for is the amended FY26 budget to reflect the additional state revenues that we received. Um you did see the backup in the packets, but basically we're going to be asking for an
additional poll, please. 237,890 which reflects the increase of state aid of 387890 less the 150,000 used to reduce the assessments that we previously agreed on on the budget Saturday to bring the assessments back to what they
were. The third vote is going to be on a municipal bond for the 10 years. We had three point we had a ban, a $5 million ban. We have about 1.2 million left in the revolving account to pay off that
ban. So, we knew we had to go out to bond for the difference of it. As Peter said earlier, we did get a AAA bond rating, which was wonderful. and Hilltop Securities. They accepted all the seven bids and it was
capital C capital Finances I believe that won the bid and as Peter said 3.029 so 3.03 103, which is a great rate for us. And because of our bond rating, they were able to bring
down what we actually need to bond to 3.530 and the rest was premiums. So, we'll be coming to you for that. And then finally, we are going to be asking to create a health insurance stabilization account. We had to go through the board of selectmen or the
board the select board, sorry. We had to go through each select board to have them approve first per mass general law which both of them have done and now we can come to the committee to see if we can open up the stabilization account.
As we talked about previously from HIT, we got a $619,000 check that will also get put into END and we are going to come back in the fall and ask to probably transfer about 300,000 of that into the stabilization account and that's going
to be used for unforeseen circumstances where we have additional new employees signing up for health insurance that we hadn't budgeted for. Those are our four votes that will be coming. Does anyone have any questions?
I just want to give a little explanation on the this idea of like bonds. You heard the term ban and I just want to explain that a little from the building project perspective. Building projects are funded through long-term debt. Um
long-term debt for a municipality is a bond. while you're doing construction. There's we bonded most of the project about 3/4 of this project was bonded upfront and that resulted in us getting an extraordinarily low interest rate. There was until you're done with the
project though there you don't know the exact amount that you have to borrow for 30 years. And so what you do is a series of one-year borrowings and then once the project is closed out and you have your final accounting of it, then you do the
long-term borrowing for that. Initially, we thought we'd do it at 30 years, but based on the rate we could get, we actually accelerated that to 10, which means that the debt for the community will come off, you know, that portion of it will be 20 years sooner than what we
had anticipated. Um, in an ideal world, we we knew we had to do the bond this year because of the timing of the the ban from the previous two years. You can only do it at one-year intervals. In an ideal world, MSBA would have completed their accounting process and been able
to return money to us ahead of doing the bond. Um, however, they are still in the accounting process and they won't finalize our accounting until a August um at their board meeting, which means that the final reimbursement from MSBA is not in our bank account. It's still
sitting at the state. Um, once they do that, we will receive another million dollarish um check from the state of Massachusetts as the final installment from MSBA. Um, if we had already had that, it would have been easier to have a discussion
with you about whether or not to roll that into the bond or not. But because of the timing of this, we can't. So, what our intent to do is to combine that million dollars with the $2.9 million that Sher just talked about as the way to get to the $4 million for the high school rooftop projects that I talked
about. We think that's, you know, keeping capital money in capital is a reasonable way to approach this um in a fiscal manner that takes care of our long-term needs again without having to go back to taxpayers and the communities to to fund more things.
Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Sherry. Questions from the committee? And um I have a question uh regarding the second vote, the resto the restoration of some of the positions. Um, we did,
the committee did receive emails from reading specialists and literacy coaches about the need to hopefully restore all four reading assistant positions. And I see that we res we're planning on restoring two. And the other thing that I noticed that we're restoring 47 hours
of classroom assistance. Is that like I'm just curious like is where is that number coming from? Is it need-based or principal advocacy? Um, so you know, we we do talk to our principles a lot and I think one of the things that we knew going into um the
bud the budget process was we were reducing classroom assistance by 25% the funding for that. Uh we made that reduction and principles have now been building out their schedules for next year and reducing that full 25% um really makes some of the operational
needs of the buildings um very very challenging. And so, you know, that that's one overall issue that we were trying to solve with this was just to provide some relief to the buildings um in operationalizing what they have to do dayto-day. A second piece though is we
really looked hard at Blanchard Elementary School. And what we found out is at Blanchard, the educators there are actually the only classroom teachers in the district that don't get a prep every day. Um whereas all five of the other schools get a prep every day uh because of the resources that they have in the
schools. but Blanchard wasn't getting one. Um, even though contractually teachers aren't required at elementary level to get a prep every day, we just felt it was the right thing to do at this point, which is why the overall allocation to Blanchard of classroom assistant hours is significantly higher
to the than the other schools. Um when we talk about kind of just to put scope on what we're talking about for elementary uh general education assistance um the schools next year basically have seven part-time assistants each. It this is not a large
workforce that we have left in these their schools for this. Um and what we're doing o overall in the schools it's about five extra hours. um which is just you know lunch and recess coverage just the opportunity to have a little bit more time in the building for individuals and make quite honestly the jobs a little bit more appealing for
people um than just keep cutting hours. So that was the thought there. Um faculty support center at the high school you know is another one that that you might be wondering that's FSC um that is something that the high school had for years um as a way of helping educators with some of their burden and
workload. Um the move to have duties at the high school um has been progressing and we're planning on implementing that next year. Um and one of the small things we thought we could do at the high school level based on a lot of educator feedback was to provide just some support in that faculty support
center. So those are the two other things. The other items on the list that aren't reading assistance are all special education needs. um which when we reviewed kind of the changes from you know early and midyear um understanding of IEP needs to the end of the year um
as IEP meetings happen and transition meetings start to happen um more needs crop up students move into the district um and those special education needs are actually required in order to provide the level of services we need and then the multilingual educator during budget season we came to you we needed really
to add three we didn't add any um this is just one step in that direction so we tried to take kind a balanced approach to restoration knowing that the budget made so many areas so thin that we were just trying to provide some relief in a few targeted areas.
Anything else? All right. Thank you very much, Sher. Um, we are on to subcommittee member reports. So, Peter, you already gave a a brief update on the strategic planning and district
reorgan reorganization steering committee. Anything um from the other members of the committee who are on that? No. Uh the one thing I will point out is one of our actions for our next meeting next week is to find an easier name to say other than strategic planning and reorganization committee with a very strong focus on strategic
planning. Uh policy. Any quick updates from policy? Seeing none, we're going to move on. Anybody have noting noting the hour any um any committee or um other board
leaison have anything that you want to report? Wonderful. Um I'm going to move us straight to the consent agenda. As a reminder, items on the consent agenda do not usually require discussion and are approved with one vote unless any member would like an item held for discussion. If you would like it held, just say
hold. Uh a reminder, you don't have to be present at a meeting to vote on the minutes. Item A, approval of ABRSC meeting minutes of 5225. Item B, approval of revised strategic planning and reorganization steering committee membership. Item C,
Douglas School PTO donation of $6,000 uh sun shade donation for the Boardwalk campus. Item D, Gates School PTO, $6,000 sunshade donation for the Boardwalk campus playground. Item E, Conit School PTO, uh,
$2,850 picnic table donation to the Conet school. Item F, AB boosters lacrosse boosters boys donation to ABRHS athletics for a coach bus of $1,000 and uniforms of $4,000. And item G, approval of warrants
as presented in the packet from 6525. Seeing as no items were held is I do have one just um did so the steering committee was a member added removed. Do you want to hold that item and we'll discuss it? Okay. So we're going to hold
item uh B and then uh is there a motion to approve the consent agenda agenda items A and C through G? So move second. So Leela did a great job of making the motion and I'm going to give Lisa the
second. All those in favor I any opposed? Any abstensions? Glenn, you had a question on item B. The Yeah, just a new a person was added, they couldn't make it or Yes, Peter's going to speak to that very briefly. Yeah, at the time you voted the original membership. U we had not yet identified
an educator from Blanchard. Uh we wanted to make sure that there was one educator from each of the elementary schools on this group. Um and so they've been added. We're just asking you to revote it. I'm good. So moved. Second. How long has my not mic not been on? Just that one sentence. Just that one
sentence. So Glenn made the motion to approve the updated membership of the strategic planning and reorganization steering committee. Really needs a new name. Leela seconded the motion. All of those in favor? I. Any abstensions? Any opposed? Unanimous.
keep scrolling. Anything in the FYI to highlight our retirees are again listed in uh the FYI. So, congratulations and thank you for your service to all of our retirees. With that, I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn. So, move second. Ben
and Vicram made the second. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Abstensions. Thank you all very much. Remember, we're meeting next week 6:30 p.m. [Music]