all right noting the hour and the presence of a quorum I call the act in Boxboro Regional School Committee to order members of the public who wish to watch the meeting online may do so on Actton TV's YouTube channel found at the top of our agenda um as always this meeting is
being recorded and will be posted on Actant TV's website at actctantv.org um I should have said that a lot slower so the first item on our item on our agenda is a public hearing on the FY26 Massachusetts Department of
Elementary and Secondary Education School Choice Program we've posted this public hearing to start at 7:05 i am going to make this meeting last as long as possible tonight adam did you want a motion to move the
school committee recognition for anyone to 9:00 p.m yeah I believe we wanted to take the school committee member retirements to 9:01 p.m this evening be done in abstentia i have a 20 minute speech prepared you have a 20 minute Wait we'll put yours
first then um all right well who's who's got a second hand on their explain seven seconds seven seconds okay so um Andrew Shen is going to present to us in just a moment as soon as I call our school choice program hearing uh to
order 7:05 so noting the precise hour and presence of the quorum again um I will call the FY26 ABRSD Massachusetts DESIE school choice program hearing to order andrew would you like to describe what this is all about sure thanks hi
everyone on an annual basis uh school districts need to hold a hearing regarding their interest in either participating in the intrastate um school choice program uh or to continue to remain withdrawn from the program so it's it's one of those things where it's it's not so much about
anytime you want to join you opt in it's annually you have to actually indicate that you would like to remain withdrawn which we currently have been for the past several years um just to make sure that we're all on the same page and for those at home I know that oftentimes we we refer to our elementary enrollment
system as as school choice which is probably not the most accurate term that's not what we're talking about this is a system where um school districts could elect to offer um seats within their school district for students who are not residents of their uh public
school district uh and when they do that then the state uh provides $5,000 to that school district um as funding uh in service of taking on those students um we used to do that many years ago as as part of our school district um we elected not to continue that several
years ago and um at this point we continue to have a handful of students who were sort of grandfathered in either because they were younger students or also they were siblings of students who were in choice u and so that's in your memo um our recommendation has been for the past several years to remain withdrawn i think for a variety of
reasons uh we've gotten feedback just around the the the cost benefit of school choice um certainly I will just point out the most concrete example is that um the funding you get is $5,000 but the average per pupil expenditure that we have is uh well over three times that amount um so there is just sort of
a cost benefit analysis to that so our recommendation is that um you know barring any sort of different perspective that you um make a motion and vote to remain withdrawn from the school choice program thank you thank you any questions or discussion from the
committee i think Jenny wants me to keep talking about it uh it oh it is a hearing so we do need to have public participation any members of the public we wish to speak on this topic all right anybody want to make the
motion that's in the memo oh we have to close the hearing first what what are we going to do with it second all right so Jenny made the motion with her microphone off to close the hearing nine years and you still don't remember to turn the microphone on
ben seconded um so all those in favor of closing our hearing i any opposed abstensions unanimous thank you there's a motion in the memo anybody wish to read that motion i got it thank you
um would this be I or do I still say the actro regional i move that the ACT box regional school committee remain withdrawn from the school choice program existing school choice students will remain through graduation second
thank you for Liz making the motion and Tori seconded any further discussion now that we're out of Can I make a friendly amendment that it's a school district not school committee yeah so there's a friendly amendment that the motion be that the act in
Boxville Regional School District remain withdrawn do you accept that friendly amendment absolutely i accept that friendly amendment and Tori I do as well thank you for paying attention Leela so the motion has been amended that it's not just the school committee but also
the full school district that wishes to remain withdrawn all those in favor i any opposed any abstensions that's unanimous thank you okay so next on our
agenda if I can find it is a welcome back to general session and then uh we have school committee member retirements this evening um so the honorable member Kmer from
Actton is retiring this evening um I have something Kramer apologies took me took me seven years um so I I have some things I want to share about Jenny and I think Liz has some stuff she'd like to share about Becca we'll open up for everybody else and anybody
else um but I I'll kick this off so um tonight is Janine's last school committee meeting and while I know she's probably thrilled about the idea of one last meeting in her future we are going to spend a few minutes just a few I promise to say thank you jenny has
served on the committee for nine years that's three full terms and I've had the privilege of serving alongside her for seven of those years in that time she's been a fierce proponent for students a trusted voice on policy and a relentless advocate with our educ our legislators
and also an unwavering champion for what she believes is right a shorter meeting she's always believed deeply in the importance of investing in our youngest learners her advocacy for fully funding all day kindergarten has been passionate and persistent she reminded
us again and again that the foundation we build in those early years matters and that every child deserves a strong start and a free public education and while Jenny brings intensity and conviction to every issue she's also brought efficiency jenny does not have a high
tolerance for long-winded discussions she can spot rambling a mile away if someone tried to turn a five-minute agenda item into a symposium you could actually see and sometimes hear the soul leave the room jinny's unofficial motto might be "Say
your point vote and move on." Which frankly has saved us more hours than we probably realize but what really sets Jinny apart beyond her intelligence beyond her advocacy be beyond her deep commitment to public education is that she's the only person I've ever met who
travels with her own salt and pepper everywhere i'm not kidding she has a higher seasoning standard than the rest of us and honestly Jenny I respect that jenny we will miss your cander your sharp wit your heart you've left a
lasting impact on this district and all of us who've been lucky enough to serve with you on behalf of the committee and the community thank you for everything and now out of respect for your legacy I will do my best to make this meeting last as long as possible thank you uh Rebecca was my fellow newly elect of
2022 so I'm going to talk directly to you Rebecca through your tenure on this committee you have demonstrated passion drive and commitment to our district you've stepped up to the call when needed whether as a chair of a subcommittee as the face of the
committee out in the community or as a volunteer for Project Graduation your hard work has not gone unnoticed and is deeply appreciated i know that we have not seen the last of you and that you will continue to give to our community in other ways truly thank you
thank you anyone else wish to say anything jenny I appreciated how helpful you were when I first joined the committee um especially around understanding some of the intricacies of the history of us not having all day K um I I think it would
have taken me forever to try to pick up all of the different pieces um and Becca it's been really helpful to be able to just like call you and chat about things um and I've really appreciated your perspective um and I am sad to see both
of you go um but also thrilled for all the free time you'll have so have fun just appreciating perspectives um Jenny I think you've always helped us remember it's the educators and the students and we have to keep focused there first when we tend to get rambling down some of those other spaces so I
appreciate that and um Becca I appreciate your mentorship again you know you both clearly had a lot of impact in bringing the next group behind you on and teaching us the ropes so thank you Vicron no I'd just like to say Jenny I've I've
always appreciated you being here because everything you said has just been deeply seeped in wisdom um you know and so I you may not know it but I greatly appreciate your wisdom and Becca I thought you were going to be here longer it's unfortunate you're leaving
uh I thought you're just a stellar member of this committee so it's sad to see you go it's sad to see both of you guys go anybody else bet i just want to thank uh both Jenny and Becca for their years of service in particular Jenny for her institutional knowledge on this
committee her knowledge has helped each and every one of us grow as members on this committee and then with Becca her energy her passion and her commitment to all the students along with Jenny also has really made our district a better place because of both of them so thank
you both for your service i wish I had more time with you too both of you but like what Leela said I congratulate you for getting your time and life back a little bit um I know as working mom and volunteer it takes a lot
out of both of you and I appreciate that i do not actually have a 20-minut speech i'm sorry um I am sorry to be leaving a lot earlier than I thought I would my plan was absolutely to stay a lot longer i do love this work and maybe
it's weird but I really love the energy of this group and getting together and discussing stuff like this is democracy in action and I mean as much as it pains me I could go on late into the night having these like minute discussions about things i think that that's just
you know how the sausage is made in this fabulous messy way um I absolutely plan on being back in the future when my kids are a little older and you know things have settled and maybe we'll be in a different place then and maybe there'll be different faces on here and maybe
some of you will still be here i hope um and I want to say thanks to Jenny because when I think of somebody who's really out in the community doing work I think of Jenny because I first actually
saw her at uh preschool events she shows up to everything she knows everyone she is happy to lend an ear and a hand and I just I think that you're a wonderful community member a fabulous leader and
thank you so much for all of your time and dedication it's very inspiring thank you i I appreciate it really you guys um I first want to to to say that I've I've never ever been accused of
being patient so I I do appreciate that everybody has picked up on that um in fact my daughter's favorite joke when they were little which they would tell everybody was "Oh mom got tested for patients she was she was negative." So
um I I also um just want to say that I really have appreciated uh working on the the committee we've had some uh very tough times with COVID and and other things um I really appreciate Peter your
leadership through all of that it's a really really tough job and um I am so I'm I'm very grateful that you're here and I feel like our district is in very good hands
um and you know with regard to universal all day K I do passionately feel that no child in a public school district should have to pay to attend public school i went from feeling like I was going to die on this hill to feeling like I'm
going to die on this hill and I would just like to say that our state legislature needs to step up uh we have exhausted all options and um it's not fair it's not right it's not the best
thing that we could do for our kids um and and we need the assistance of our state delegation period um and and I really hope that that will happen and that everybody here will keep the pressure everybody out there will keep the pressure to me it would be like
telling a a family who has a sixth grader "Sorry we will be charging you tuition." It's the same thing um there's no difference and um it it just is wrong so that's that's my final speech on universal all day K um and I really have
appreciated I thank you Adam for for sticking it out as chair um it's also not an easy job and I wish you guys all the best of luck it's been great getting to know you and um I I really hope that
um you guys can along with this administration and and I thank all of you guys too um you know as Peter likes to say he gets a lot of the credit but it's a it's a big team that does all of the work and finally to our educators i don't think that there is a school
district that has better more dedicated educators i know it's it's a very tough job you guys have hung in there through a lot of stuff um and um there's a lot of ways to experience this district but I can say on behalf of my two AB
graduates who were in this district from half day kindergarten through 12th grade um that you guys are amazing and um and I I couldn't be more grateful so thank you and um let's let's get on with the meeting
thank you both very much so in addition to the beautiful hydrangeas and cards there are in the front lobby uh a chair for each of you with the actin box crest on it i hear they are highly uncomfortable but very nice for the
formal living room that no one goes in and sits in yeah you could sit you should give it to the chair so that it makes the meeting go faster because it's so uncomfortable um all right we are going to move on and invite our student reps i believe we have Austin and Shaya here this evening just Austin coming up
tonight okay come on up Austin happy to hear from you guys this evening you can sit right at the table austin remember to push the button on the microphone hello hello hello perfect all right hi I'm Austin first I'd just like
to thank the school committee for rather late uh thank you for like two months ago i remember uh talking here and talking about the sustainability policy and a few other students also came up and talked about the sustainability policy and while I was watching from the live stream I still haven't given that
true thank you so truly grateful and um this will likely be my last update cuz I believe Julia and Dick Sha will be coming uh here for the next two months but it's kind of surreal now um I'm ending high school in like two months and we just had senior breakfast and
senior community service day today we had the senior assembly just a few days ago i probably had to choose where I'm going to college in just a few days and I know Shaya's already chosen the place that she wants to go whether or not she wants to show that and um I guess for
just like a few like small like uh comments on the new business today on the DEI or like the title 9 um like business or the new policies i believe it is just a little bit more clear and I when I read through it it just made a little bit more sense when I just like
read through the headlines and what the content actually said as for the JK policy unfortunately I am not an elementary schooler and I quite frankly cannot remember what even happened in recess so um I can't really comment on
that but it's been a great day um I still have an AP essay to finish just like Shaina and I'm probably going to leave soon but thank you so much and that's all I have to say thank you so much Austin congratulations [Applause]
hi uh I was only planning on saying what I had written down but Austin's comments uh I think are going to have me make some impromptu comments as well um like Austin said I am committed i'm going to Wisconsin and I've appreciated the opportunity to get involved however I
could this year um as you may or may not know my freshman sophomore and junior year I didn't do this role and then last minute I kind of felt like I could make a difference um even if it wasn't like super super big I liked being involved and getting to work with the other
representatives um and not to make um this meeting too much longer against Jenny's wishes but I have uh something short to say um good evening everyone and I'm excited to share some recent and meaningful progress we've made at the high school in our ongoing commitment to
diversity equity and inclusion over the past few weeks we've seen a noticeable and inspiring shift in our school culture we recently hosted our second student voices panel which this time featured a group of Muslim students who shared personal stories challenged stereotypes and offered deep insights into how their faith and identity
intersect with daily life at our school several classes opted to attend and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive um many students expressed how eye- openening and humanizing the conversations were another exciting initiative was our first ever Passover table a thoughtful shift from our typical Hanukkah and Porm displays
members of the Jewish Student Union educated on the story of Passover and gave out a matzah bark which was a huge hit um and students not only walked away with a sweet treat but a greater understanding of the culture uh cultural and religious significance of the holiday many or one of the most impactful days was during our recent
flex block series which I mentioned last time uh where students were invited to participate in a variety of workshops centered around identity justice and community building one standout workshop that personally resonated with me uh featured formerly incarcerated individuals who are now enrolled in continuing education programs through
our partnership with Tus University hearing their stories of transformation and resilience was deeply moving and challenged many of us to think differently about restorative justice and second chances what's been most encouraging to witness is that at this point in the year it feels like the school has made great strides towards prioritizing community as well as diversity something that will hopefully
continue with time after my departure so yeah thank you thank you anybody have any questions or comments for either of our student reps leela not a question and I just wanted to say that Austin it was really nice to
be able to work with you through um the sustainability work and to hear your perspective and you certainly brought energy into the room every time you were there um and Shane it was really nice to meet you at Absge um and I remember you kind of being like should I run like I don't know about this um and so it's
been really cool to see you here um and I appreciate both of you and have fun in your next adventures thank you and I'm sure Austin says thank you too wherever he is excellent all right thank you very much next item on the agenda is public participation so per our school
committee policy BEDH members of the public are invited to speak for up to three minutes public participation only takes place during this time speakers need to be recognized by the chair before speaking and the committee does not typically respond to comments during public participation hi Amanda
hello so my name is Amanda Bailey i live in Washington Drive in Actton and I'm speaking to you right now as a parent and as an advocate not in any official capacity this is to bring attention to the remarks regarding autism made yesterday by the US Secretary of Health and Human Services i work as a parent
support professional for an autism nonprofit in that role I have the humbling privilege of being the first person to receive many parents of newly diagnosed children and teens i also run introduction to autism workshops for those families at one point I asked one of my kids what he thought was important for those parents to know he paused and
he said "Autistic kids are worth more than you think they are." Wrapped in the language of institutionalization and eugenics of financial burden and eraser the HHS secretary asserted that autism destroys families and children he stated that these are kids who will never pay taxes
will never hold a job will never play baseball write a poem go out on a date use a toilet and assisted as if these things are what impart value as humans some will never do these that is true but these do not define potential or worth the secretary's rhetoric invites
shame over understanding and inclusion this is an individual whose agency may be placed in charge of the oversight and enforcement of the individuals with disabilities education act parents of autistic kids are fierce advocates we're deeply divided on issues and varied in our lived experiences our kids range in
their support needs some intensive and lifelong yet we are universally scary when it comes to others messing with our families on one hand we've got this our major autism organizations divided across an oceansized ideological gulf even banded together today in an unprecedented joint statement on the
other hand we need your help this is also a plea to our towns our communities our children need collaborative early person- centered planning through the special education process for life after high school we need options and funding for adult programs for housing many
families are exhausted and overwhelmed we need resources shared advocacy respit paraphrasing Jordan Leavan what destroys are ableism unmet needs and broken systems we need your awareness and more than ever our kids need your acceptance
thank you thank you very much Amanda um I I just I would just want to say very briefly Amanda um and and everybody I share your absolute and utter horror and disgust at the comments that were
made by the secretary um and I you know I I I was remiss in not mentioning Amanda Bailey in my remarks i didn't prepare anything to say before there is almost nobody who works as hard
as Amanda um and and the amount of work and effort that you put in on behalf of our kiddos and families with special needs is truly just unbelievable and you know I I don't know what we would do without you but thank you so much and thank you for
bringing that to our attention and if anybody did not have the opportunity to uh hear about those remarks I would commend you to to do so thank you thanks any other public comment
okay hello everyone i just wanted to introduce myself one last time uh before the election for everyone watching at home uh my name is Glen Cody i'm an advocate i'm an activist and I'm running for school committee here in Actton i went from failing just about every class
in middle school to graduating magnaum lad with a computer science degree at UMass Lowel and what made that turnaround possible was the dedicated support and mentorship I received from staff and teachers in my life during college I worked as a writing tutor from
students all across the globe and after graduating I worked as a special education teaching assistant at Wayland High School so now I'm called to serve on the school committee to help best serve our community to the best of my ability and I believe we have to address the situation we're in right now that these are just not normal times for our
community this is the fourth straight year of budget cuts as I'm sure we're going to continue discussing tonight you'll hear more of the challenges we're facing public education itself is under attack at the national level we're hearing harmful rhetoric from very high up seats and the way Massachusetts funds
our schools is utterly broken and doesn't meet our district's needs at all we cannot continue to endlessly cut more staff we can afford to re-evaluate what buildings we use but we must do everything possible to protect our staff members for more cuts i also believe
it's important that we look forward to the future and we do everything that we can to lay the groundwork for fully funding all day kindergarten as Americans we value public education and we value ensuring that our community here in Actton remains as welcoming and belonging a
place as possible we need to ensure that we're working towards supporting all of our communities all of our students and their families all of our teachers staff members teaching assistants and classroom aids our LGBTQ plus friends our immigrant communities who need to know that we have their back no matter
what happens we need to support everyone who calls Actton home our schools are a pillar of our community we cannot and we will not go backwards on who we are and what we value we can and we will build a better future for all of our students my
name is Glenn Cody i'm running for school committee and I humbly ask for one of your two votes thank you thank you Glenn hi Lisa got to turn it back on okay you got it hello I am Lisa Adel and clearly do not
use microphones very often um I just wanted to come forward not only as a school committee candidate um but just as a member of the community who deeply appreciates the work all of you are doing um as Rebecca and Jenny are in
their final moments of their last term I would like to take a moment to thank them for their service um I appreciate both of you for the incredible dedication you've shown and the ways each of you have brought your talents and strengths to both this comm
community um committee and community you have been serving i wish you both the best and your new chapter and um just from the bottom of my heart really wanted to say thank you thank you so much thank you
Lisa any additional comments from the public you can leave it on amanda's right behind you different hat lurking different hat lurking very different hat um so my name is Amanda Bailey i'm one of the co-chairs of the ACT and Boxboro special education parent advisory
council and in that capacity I would like to first say thank you to Jenny Kramer for repeatedly serving as a liazison to the CPAC for always having an open door and a curious mind how can I help what can I do tell me what you need um so thank you Jenny jenny so much
for your years of service deeply appreciate it um I wrote to you previously about the recess policy or the language in the behavior and discipline policy regarding recess and I drew your attention to the fact that there is language about recess in the wellness policy averting that um
asserting that that recess is beneficial that kids need to move their bodies in order to be healthy and that it shouldn't be removed for academic reasons and and but leaving some leeway to have it removed for punitive reasons or disciplinary reasons um understand that discipline and punishment and restorative practices are all different
things but they are all responses to student behavior um so in reviewing the revised language in the behavior and discipline policy um no argument regarding safety student safety is paramount um but there is a clause that has been inserted around um recess may
be limited in cases safety or to participate in a restorative exercise um I urge you to reconsider the inclusion of that last phrase um discipline and restorative justice or restorative practice again are both
responses to behavior kids don't make the distinction um their peers certainly don't make the distinction when they ask "Where were you?" Recess is a break by definition a recess is a break if we recessed right
now which we won't um we would be taking a break it's not a reward it is the 20 minutes a day where a child has to rest move their body to regulate to take off the burdens of whatever they're dealing with
um the kids most in need of that break are often the ones who find themselves due to dysregulation and impulse control etc having it curtailed or removed for disciplinary reasons or other um we
understand that the administrators have concerns and they've shared anecdotes about student behavior and they need to address those in the moment um we know also that we have anecdotes from families about whose kids had recess removed for reasons they didn't understand why um so we're glad that you
are addressing this in the policy um research again shows that recess actually improves behavior we want to protect that break for those kids um and we again please consider updating the language in the policy um to protect the
right to recess thank you thank you Amanda any other public participation all right seeing none we're going to move on to the superintendent's update peter all right so you know first Becca and
Jenny I just you know want to say thank you knowing it's your last meeting I wanted to do something you know different so I was thinking of like public figures that I could look to for inspiration so I'm going to do my best to channel my inner Corey Booker
um exactly no um in all seriousness I just want to say you know sincerely thank you thank you thank you for all the work you've done um over the years that I've known you um you know Becca being able to work with you on the SRO task force um budget sub over the last
few years um the SRO task force was maybe a little bit more joyous than budget sub um given the economic circumstances but really just you know having to make hard decisions and understanding the community and families and just a real respect for people um
stands out so thank you so much for all of that um Jenny you know I think you know you were you've been on the committee since I've been here um in fact I think you're the only person left right since I've been here um so I appreciate that because I know I have
outlived the average superintendent lifespan so you know thank you um but it's it's been great working with you um I too appreciate that you get right to the point um no I think you know it it's so hard actually um in times to just
make the point say what you need to say and be able to to keep it moving um but when you talk it's because you have something to say that's really meaningful and needs to be heard so I really appreciate that so thank you for all you've done and much appreciation um
I want to also say congratulations to our two students i know they have um AP Euro papers so they already ran out the door uh but congratulations to our um school committee representatives who are graduating this year we're very very proud of you um and then I want to start
just with some positives going around the district um in the music world um there was a Micah festival which is the Massachusetts um an instrumental coral conductors association um recently held its festivals um we had three of our uh bands participate in that festival um
the high school concert band uh received a gold medal at the festival the RJ Grey eighth grade band received a bronze medal and the um Blanchard concert band also received a gold medal so congratulations to those ensembles um if you are around um on April 23rd at night
and want to go to a Red Sox game um get there a little bit early because they are actually honoring our um AB girls swim and dive team before the game so they will be on the field uh before the first pitch um at 6:45 p.m so get your
tickets and and show up um they might be more exciting than the rest of the game um congratulations also to uh one of our seniors just really did something truly incredible in the community sarah Willard um she actually for her senior project partnered with the acting
council on aging and put on a senior prom um for our seniors so it's just what a great example of connecting our students with our you know seniors in the community and being able to bridge that generational gap so congratulations Sarah
pictures we do have some pictures and we'll be sending those out yeah so we also held our final meeting of the superintendent and school committee advisory council um that is made up of both junior and senior high school students um we conducted our last meeting last week uh we had two working
groups this year um one of which was working on continuing to refine the role of the um school committee student representatives um and then the other one was designing kind of communication maps for students at each of the schools sec
at junior high and high school so um our students gave us some feedback they wanted a little bit more clarity on who to contact for different things and you know to know that earlier in the school year so that was something that has been in process for the year as well um I want to thank you know Jen Faber Heather Stout and Leela um for working along
with our five school committee reps and all of the student reps on that council so thank you very much for all of the work on that um vision of a graduate continues to progress and you will be seeing that um come to you in over the next few weeks uh we were pleased to
host two back-to-back workshops on Tuesday night with a variety of community members to take the development of our vision of a graduate to the next level nearly 45 individuals engaged in conversation and learning and contributed incredibly useful feedback that will be brought back to the vision of the graduate steering committee um
who's going to take our first draft and refine it and share it back out with the uh whole community for a final look um thank you to all involved in the important process because that's really going to help shape our strategic planning efforts for the next several years to come um also just for that if you were able
to come thank you to our performing arts students and our clarinet ensemble under the direction of Mr arseno u they provided some wonderful music in the break um as well as our food services team led by Kirsten Nelson um for the snacks that we had in between so thank you so much to those individuals um I
also just want to highlight and I did it that night um both Julia Lumiere and Debbie Sai two of our admin assistants at the central office just do absolutely amazing work to get everything set up and keep it running smoothly so thank you to all of them um on the strategic planning and reorganization front um I'm
going to actually hold that it's going out in the update so the community knows about it but we will be talking about that actually as an agenda item so I'll I'll save that for a little bit of time thank you Peter any questions or comments for Peter on the update andrew
peter just um a reminder about kindergarten enrollment oh thank you yeah um so in an interesting um plot twist kindergarten enrollment is actually coming in higher than expected based on the NASDAQ projections um last
year when the um kindergarten lottery closed we had 277 kindergarteners registered and then we opened the year with about 299 um for our October 1st enrollment reports um this year when the kindergarten lottery closed or just after it closed we actually had 320
kindergarteners registered um based on kind of that about 9% increase in students we get between the lottery time and the opening of school we're projecting now somewhere between 340 to 345 kindergarteners um which is you know a bit of a plot twist for us um and was
unexpected and good um however based on that you know if we program for the number of kindergarten sections we budgeted um we would be running class sizes of around 22 in kindergarten which we think is just too big um and it would
actually I think just over 22 um is the way it shook out so we don't really feel comfortable doing that so um we're working right now with Sherry because we think we're going to have to actually add a kindergarten section next year so we're looking at where in the budget uh we can make some reductions to be able to fund that just as a reminder a large
portion of any kindergarten section we add is actually covered through kindergarten tuition um and I I pause on that i didn't mean to have to go there tonight but um here we are um but a large portion of any costs for what we add in kindergarten between the teacher
and the classroom assistant that goes with it are covered through the tuitions um that come in so it's not um assuming a full $100,000 for a classroom it's actually a a fairly reduced cost from that so we're working to make those reductions obviously um you know we have
to work within the voted budget of school committee it's not going to shift the overall budget but uh we do really feel like we need to make that um we you know barring any you know concerns that you have and share with me tonight um we're planning to actually add that at Douglas because there were so many
requests at Douglas um that if we don't add the section at Douglas um the only students who would be able to get in would be siblings of current students um and so typically we've also then the second priority at Douglas is walkers um we would not be able to have any walkers
um go to the school and no new students that didn't already have family there um and essentially what we'd be doing is turning away more than an entire section of students who really and families who really wanted Douglas and they'd have to choose a different school to go to um so
it's you know it's always a tough decision when we have to make those uh decisions about where to put sections but um on this one we are recommending that that section go to Douglas and that is our plan barring any concerns that you share thank you questions
comments all right uh we will move on to our guests and presentations up first this evening is principal Jim Marott who is planning on managing some ear infections i hear second half of next week based on his uh his principal's update that I received but uh so I did
write to family and say my family will spend one night this week at a hotel cuz my kids want to swim in a pool and just took a bet for how many ear infections I'll end up with in a week from now but we're playing the odds because fun is fun so um thanks for having me i'm setting my timer to be always I do this every year but especially tonight um so
thanks for being letting me be here to talk about the junior high we've had a really great year um in complicated year and hard year for all the reasons that you already know but we're still trying to build this joyful inclusive community of engaged learners um I think we're doing a good job but we still have more work to do uh what I'll tell you about
tonight is some of the student learning and data teams that we've tried out this year um I'll talk a little bit about attendance talk about interrupting hate and bias planning for next year and a little bit of the fun stuff that we do too um so this year for the first time we really dug deep on data teams at the
junior high particularly around English and math and what we were able to do for a little while was to use a period already existing in our day directed study um and we used data MCCAST I Ready COMAT assessments and other classroom based measures to kind of figure out who who are some students who need some
extra help extra something and it could be kids who you know um we ran several groups math fact fluency kids who really needed to master fraction concepts we did small groups during directed study with our math teachers and our ELA teachers we did um two sessions two six
or seven week sessions each 71 kids the first time 101 kids the next time and really we could say positively that the outcomes were good in that kids felt more confident in their English class as a result of kind of doing some small group work and more comfortable than math class from the same reasons and
then we had to pause because we were asking teachers to do too much asking teachers to do things that were outside of their contract and I always benefit from the amazing junior high teachers who are like "All right Jim wants me to do this let's try it." And we tried it and they gave it a huge effort and we we made some good progress and then we
decided no it's not the right time so we backed out of that and you see my that's my computer that sits there on my left hand every day and it actually came from Instagram about more like fitness and healthy living be stubborn with the vision be flexible with the plan i knew like yeah the vision still is we need to get to all students in a different way
that we're doing but we need to do it in a different way so we paused um we will reassess when we have some better opportunity to do that we're still using data we're still studying kids and really tracking their growth um just not with that workshop model you know that attendance is a challenge
for us for the district for the state the nation um these are the desi numbers for the last three years at the junior high school so certainly we've made progress in the right direction by making sure kids are at school as much as they can be when I think about why students aren't coming to school the
reasons are listed there always acute illnesses right um the the strep the the flu there's been there's been a lot of stuff this year we have students with chronic illness we have students who still travel um and take time on either ends of vacations or long weekends um we have challenges with housing instability
when students can't know don't know where they're necessarily sleeping on a given night they're not necessarily getting to school the next day despite our efforts to go get them to arrange transportation all those things in place it still presents a barrier um at times there are students who are school avoidant um and at times there are
family systems that really complicate students getting to school on a regular basis um I was studying and thinking through like how do I visualize what it looks like and so I took last year's data and mapped it out on a chart the red numbers show anything that's less
than 95% attendance so that top graph is from last March the bottom graph is this March so really if I looked at all 10 months of our school year last year and this year Mondays and Fridays are our hardest days to have a stronger attendance that's not a not a surprise i would imagine there was a when I did
last year's data April 8th 2024 was our lowest attendance in the two years that I've studied it it was 87.7% does anyone remember why we we had to Google it because we didn't know why either the solar eclipse
the day of the solar eclipse we only had 87.7% of our kids in school that's a lifetime event and I gave nobody a hard time about missing school that day but we're the point is we're trying to study what's going on and how can we be supportive and so also looking at data you know this year is the top row versus
last year this was as of day 130 of our school year this year we have 60 students who have met the threshold for missing 10% of that length of the year at that point so they've missed 13 days you know we're not terribly far off from last year but we are in a different place um what we try to think about is
why would kids want to come to school well it's because there certainly we promote a sense of belonging as much as we can they want to come to see their friends and classmates we hope that they have trusted adults and they generally tell us they do and we want to build in this like they want to come to school to learn and I think a lot of them do do
that and we know for many students a predictable routine really helps that's what they do they come because they get breakfast and they get lunch and they see their friends at lunch and they do this the the predictable parts of what being an adolescent entail um we do our follow-up you know monthly attendance
letters from our assistant principles our counselors our APs are always in conversation with kids and families about hey what's going on how can I help you um I've been somewhat bold when I talk to incoming sixth grade parents and I remember in the auditorium last year and I'll do it again the week after vacation like seventh grade and eighth
grade become the times that and this is no slight to elementary because it's equally important it's really hard for you to miss school when you go to Disney for a week there's work to make up there's tests that you miss and it's hard on your child when they come back and so I certainly I'm bold when I say
that and people take it how they do and yet our attendance is more challenging this year so maybe I'm not actually being effective but the point is we're talking about it a lot um kids being in school is really important to all of us another area that we spent time on this year is really trying to educate students about how they help to interrupt hate and bias you've seen the
issues that we've faced over the past couple years um working with last year there's a committee to kind of train staff on this concept and so we then brought it to train our students and so I did a team at a time 100ish students at a time really with these four
strategies of interrupting questioning educating and echoing and we did an interactive activity with their Chromebooks and they were you know dragging their dot to the thing that they felt comfortable doing in that moment and it was productive I feel um and I say to them the easiest of the things up there is echo because somebody
else took a bold move to say "Hey I don't like what you just said hey we don't say that here." It's really important for that second and third person to jump and be like "I agree with her he's right." And so I say to them we need we need lots of echoing but we need a couple of people who are confident to stand up and say and interrupt question
or educate to kind of move the conversation along so we do that training with students in October and I showed them this data u or partial part of this data so the the chart on the upper left is what students say about how adults interrupt something when they
see or hear it and so I shaded in yellow obviously where we want to be and so last spring's students responded that about 83% of about 83% of them said "Yep I've almost always frequently or sometimes seen an adult interrupt." In the fall of this year 88% of students
said that they did so that's an increase in the positive for sure the goal is to get students to do it more so last fall excuse me last spring about 56% of kids say they've seen a student interrupt when we took it this December about 63% said they did so we're growing in the right direction for sure we're doing
another version of this survey on May 2nd through our advisory so I'm really hopeful and I told them I want to see better numbers than this i want to know that you're all engaging and trying to figure this out for the behalf of your your classmates um as we talk about for next year you know the two goals that
I'm kind of working on right now and has started to talk with the leadership team about is we have two major things one is adjusting to what is new next year so we are reducing a team our seventh team is going to be a combined seventh and eighth grade split team we're going to have larger class sizes than we're used
to well teachers will have case loads of about 125 students that's going to take us some time to figure out what that feels like because you noticed I I talked already about like that instruction that student learning piece because it's going to feel different when you've got larger classes and um larger case loads so in addition to
adjusting to what that feels like we need to focus in on the we couldn't do that tier 2 pullout workshop because it's just not right for us right now and it's not kind of contractually where we are so we need to dig in deep on what is it what is every student getting every period of the day and how can we build
skill for teachers there and so we just did um a quick survey on what teachers feel they need for professional learning for next year and it certainly comes back to instruction for ML learners it comes back to really in as simple as like making sure we really understand
what the framework that DESIE prescribes how are we making that actionable in the classroom so that's kind of where I my focus is our focus is for for next year to start us off um finally I want to show you just some pictures of the fun stuff right so these are from our Instagram account mostly but the picture on the left with the hearts was a really
cool spontaneous kind of every student in advisory was assigned the name of somebody else they had to as simple as put the students name and adult's name on a heart the hearts all got hung up in the cafeteria and you would have seen right around Valentine's Day the kids wandering through the cafeteria looking
for their own name and finding it and having a friend say like "Oh you're over on that wall." And another teacher did to me he was like "Jim you're over there." And it was "Mr mark thanks for always smiling." I'm like "Wow all right they get me that's awesome." So yeah that quickly went up on Instagram you know and then we had a volleyball tournament you know you would not think
that the coolest one of the coolest parts of the Thanksgiving assembly is the turkey drawing contest but you know we teams cheer on they're representative to you know the best turkey artist so you see the four you know reps from the seventh grade there uh and the the newest thing that we did this year part of advisory was the 100 missing marots
so 21 pictures of myself but a 100 copies of them were put around the building throughout the week hidden and kids when they found them brought it back to the counseling office and claimed a point for their advisory so you know it was pictures of myself from being a year old up through my school picture um kids had a good time with it
so this is what we're trying to do on a regular basis do the learning do the hard stuff do the interrupting bias while also remembering they're 12 and 13 and 14 years old and like to come to school and have some fun so that's where we are that's what we worked on this year and I'm happy to answer questions or hear comments if you have them at 10
minutes and 14 seconds so I did okay joanie 10 minutes and 14 seconds so you have to just do 10 minutes and you win this year large twice as large oh twice as large twice as much time it's a good thing Jenny won't be on the committee with All right thank you Jim questions or
comments ben and then Yanshin and then Becca so two comments um first and foremost the small group work has directly impacted my family i've seen directly the impact that my son has had from directed study um it's the teachers
who I want to acknowledge that have done more with less and they are really the foundation of our society so that's one entertain one more excellent moving on to interrupting hate and bias i know that there have been significant incidences at the uh junior high this
year from what my son has told me looking at the percentages of students who interrupt hate I'm concerned that 74% of our students either sometimes or never interrupt hate what can we do as a community to bring those levels up i
know you talked about it as a goal but how are you going to manage that goal and put it into effect for next year for the incoming students sure or I mean the the goal for this year was the first time that we actually started to train students on that right so that four-step you know interrupt question echo educate
um was new for them at all and so the the slight progress that we saw between last spring and this December feels good um and I'll tell you that you know yes there are incidences that happen there are um I feel what we're trying to do is change the culture so that there are
fewer of them but we're not going to we can't we won't end them completely but what we do do um is that when the assistant principal the counselor myself other educators get involved it becomes a real hopeful learning experience for those students and so what we haven't
seen is repeat offenders this year and so I do feel positive that that is actually a real good takeaway that kids say and do things that sometimes is highly inappropriate how we respond to them and how we get their families to support us in that work has been promising so it's a hard job that
it is we're still trying to figure it out but I appreciate your and other people's support as we've been doing that yeah hi Jim um I have a comment and and a question the comment is I uh my family is new to junior high this year and my observation of your leadership style is
leading from the front there's not a thing that you ask your staff to do that you wouldn't do it yourself you're always there in the thick of it and we really appreciate that thank you my question is can you elaborate on um the part of the small workshop the tier 2 support you're talking about that there
is some discrepancy between what you asked them to do and the contractual agreement that they have right so yeah the contract is pretty clear about student uh excuse me teachers particularly in the junior high and high school about the number of preps that they can have and the number of teaching periods that they have so they can teach
five periods a day which is what we have them do um they can have up to three preps which generally the junior high doesn't apply we teach English seven five times a day um so we were within within possibility there when teachers really took on this challenge that we presented to them they essentially
treated as a sixth class and they did it because they knew that was the right thing to do um and it was not because teachers complained Jim you're working us too hard it was actually the advocacy from the ABA which you know Mike is a teacher in our building we have really excellent relationships with the people
and they were just like Jim you're asking too much and so that was about Novemberish that we um maybe December that they came to me and we actually agreed we agreed and so they were great though and said like but let's finish the cycle that we're in and so we went all the way through the end of January with that cycle and I said to the
teachers like I always do appreciate that you will do what is right for kids and I have a responsibility to make sure I'm providing you the right working conditions and and all those things that are contractually obligated so I if you would ask me an opinion about what happens next I would love in the next round of negotiations for this to be a
conversation i don't know the answer i don't know that what we did is the right solution for the long term but um kind of workshop groups as we call them pull out groups for kids who struggle or need gaps kind of remediated um may need something additional to what the 45 minutes a day that we can offer so
that's the future hi um so I also have a couple of thoughts um one for the chronic absenteeism i think it's interesting just look at some of those um pieces of feedback that you've gotten from families
um that you know housing is an issue um some of these certainly point to sort of the general theme of poverty uh being a barrier to access um and not allowing children to get the full
education that they're um deserving of so I wonder you know what initiatives the district could kind of do to work with the town around that and help people secure you know steady housing and you know address some of these issues that you can't deal with just by
telling somebody it's important to come to school and I think we all know that um but I do appreciate that you know you're digging into this and you're asking people directly what is the barrier for you and what do you need because I think that's definitely where it starts um and then for the combating
hate and bias I personally would not include sometimes in the positive category i I feel like that's the lowest bar ever i think when we're asking why students young teenagers or pre-teens
why aren't you stepping up to combat hate and bias when the adults around you aren't modeling it consistently i think that that's probably your biggest issue these kids are not going to step up to the plate and and do work that isn't being shown to be of value to be
important um to be non-negotiable so I personally would start there and focus on the adults i agree with you and we did we do care deeply about the adults the challenge with asking a question like this on an anonymous survey is how much does a
student think that the teacher heard or saw the thing that happened and so they're going to say never no she didn't she was in the room she didn't she heard it she didn't do anything when in fact the teacher didn't hear it so this is the challenge i do think that we're actually doing a very good job of modeling that um when we see it when we hear it you know in situations that we
when two administrators walk in the room after something happened it's because it's that serious um and for the why the students aren't doing it's cuz it's terrifying it's terrifying to go against your peer who you've played lacrosse with for 5 years or you've gone to you
know religious school with for 10 years that's really scary and so it's building them up to know that you can do this and all of us do this on a regular basis so I appreciate your comments Rebecca cuz they're true um and we're trying to hold both of those things how do you how do you model this for kids and how do you
embolden kids to take action any comments from this side of the table i've been staring at you for three minutes and then you raise your hand when I look away just enjoying your gaze andrew um I I this is on chronic absenteeism and it's more of a comment of encouragement because we've heard a
lot about chronic absenteeism over the last few years and know that it's important to track whether people are in their classes but I've been really bothered by the fact that we're focusing on whether they're in their classes because a lot of the absenteeism isn't because kids are out the local pool hall hustling games what they're doing is
lots of other issues and a lot of the absenteeism comes from other real issues i want to thank you for looking beyond that it's more than just the tally of whether they're in the state the seats it's it's more of why they're not there and I think that it's not only being
aware of their situations and treating them with respect but it's also um encouraging a communication between the parents who are ultimately responsible for the kids to be there and than just saying "Oh you missed 11 days i don't care why here's a nasty gram from us." So thank you for looking beyond that i
really appreciate it i really appreciate all the data in this as well as the stories that go with it um and I think my one thought as you're talking about the tier 2 experiment is as we start looking at restructuring maybe that's another angle we look at that from what are the possibilities
all right um my comments have have mostly been addressed already i wrote down after you talked about the small group instruction is this a tier 2 intervention and then of course we identified it as a tier 2 intervention and we know as we went through our budget process this year we are starting to impact our tier 2 and tier three
interventions for our students so this is not just a teacher contract issue this is the ability to fully fund our schools in a way that we can provide the services to all the students who need them so I appreciate you bringing that up Jim because I think it's a really tangible reality of the of what we're
facing in terms of of trouble financial trouble in the district so I I might even incorporate it in some of the public speaking that I do over the next few months to advocate for our budget both this year and next so thank you for that all right thank you very much thank
you Jim all right moving on we have a presentation from Joe Costello who is uh joining us from the district management group to talk about um the strategic reorganization uh project that we've got so I'm going to let Peter sort of kick
off how we got to this joe you are welcome to come up to the table and get yourself comfortable while Peter gets your presentation going and does a little leadin for us yeah so while Joe is getting settled and welcome Joe um you know I'll just give a a bit of an
overview so as you know you know a couple months ago now we released a request for proposals um to secure a strategic consultant um to help us with a strategic plan as well as options for reorganization of the district because
we just don't have the resources anymore to do the things we need to in as many places as we currently do so we need to think a little bit differently um we recognize the confluence of you know fiscal restraints that we have as well
as declining enrollment um and you know just really thinking about you know the emerging needs that we've seen among student populations and thinking about how looking forward we can continue to serve the students that we're seeing in
our schools um within the means of the community and I think that's something that's going to be really important to be able to to tackle so we know that's going to be extraordinarily complex so we needed to uh bring in a consultant to help us with that work so we released a request for proposals um we had an
interview team of about 15 people um who went through the proposals that all proposals that were submitted identified three finalists um we then convened another group of about 12 individuals I think um um and that to do some interviews of our three finalists that
we selected and you know I was pleased um both Adam and Tori I know are going to be working on the steering committee so they joined us for those interviews and then thank you to Mike Balescu and Amy Maciel um president and vice president of Abea we also brought in for the interviews so that we had an educator voice um listening to all three
proposals as well um and through that uh district management group really emerged as um the the preferred consultant to to bring in um we have had experience in the past with district management group and very very positive experience um as
well but I think their presentation and focus really stood out to us uh particularly in the interview process it was clear that they understood what we needed um and what we were working on in ways that some of the other consultants maybe through the interview process just didn't quite get to um so you know in
particular a couple consultants focused a lot on GIS and mapping systems of knowing where your students are in the community and its relation to schools um which just really isn't didn't really hit home with a lot of the interview team um so we're really thrilled to be
working with district management group u I'm going to let Joe take it from here introduce himself um and tell you a little bit about their proposal um the work they're intending to do and some of their teams clicker works for me and can you hear me yeah excellent uh thank you Superintendent Life for that wonderful
introduction um good evening everyone uh as you've heard my name is Joe Costello i'm a director on the consulting team at District Management Group um a little bit about my background just very quickly uh I'm from the greater Boston area originally our organization though works with school districts all across the United States i'll have a little bit
more about that in a moment um my background also before DM Group I was a high school teacher um out in Las Vegas Nevada so that's really where I got my start in public education really developed my passion for public education um and I'd say more so how to make those uh systems of public education work a little bit better um
it's been a privilege working with DM Group and so excited for the opportunity to work with you all um and learn a little bit more about the needs of ACT and Boxboro and and how how we can think through strategic planning and and reorganization to again make the district work a little bit better um in terms of my time with you all three main
objectives i want to give a quick background on our organization and I know some of you uh know a little bit about who we are but for those of you um who are less familiar or those listening at home want to give just a quick background about our organization then I'll provide a brief overview of our scope of work and the deliverables and sort of what you can expect throughout
the process and then of course provide some space at the end of at the end of this uh session um for any questions or comments that that that folks may have um so with that uh here we go um so as I mentioned we're based in Boston Massachusetts we've been around for over 20 years and our uh we work with school
districts all across the United States so we've had the distinct pleasure of working with districts in Massachusetts but again across 35 states hundreds of districts thousands of schools and district leaders millions of students supported um and one of the the great things through that experience that we have found is that school districts can
learn a lot from different uh from from one another from different states from different communities um and we can really bring some of those emerging best practices together uh to really support school districts as they think about what the next 5 10 15 years might look like um in terms of what our
organization is all about um our mission really is to achieve systemic improvement in public education starting with a relentless focus on student outcomes doing what is best for students but then thinking about how you design a system around uh supporting students so
that uh you can really achieve systemic lasting improvements and really without the combination of relentless focus on student outcomes educational best practices but thinking about how you're using your resources how you're designing your organizations um without doing all three of those things it's
really hard to make that systemic lasting change so it's really with that lens we approach uh our work in in public education um there are all sorts of different uh branches to our organization our work is really going to be focused on that DM consulting portion
um as uh superintendent light mentioned we have had a wonderful history over the last five six years or so um through various partnerships with you all first and foremost as a a a member of our of our district management council organization that brings uh school district leaders from across the country
together for different professional learning opportunities um we also had the privilege of of partnering with you all in a social emotional behavioral opportunity review back in 2019 um and uh you all have been using our our DM schedule software for special education um so we are very privileged to to know
a little bit about your organization already um so in terms of our uh work ahead of us uh for the strategic planning and reorganizational consulting there really five phases of work that are going to really uh shape uh shape this partnership so the first is
convening a steering committee bringing the the a group of leaders together um to really think through what the design of of the effort is going to be and then from there uh conduct a really thorough diagnostic so digging into quantitative and qualitative information to get a really deep understanding of the
specific needs of of the community um hosting a variety of different stakeholder engagement sessions really learning from different uh stakeholders within the community about what the the greatest needs are understanding um the facilities understanding what's working what's not working etc and then using
the the learnings from all of those uh all of those various engagements um to create an initial draft of of a strategic plan and then generate some district reorganization scenarios and then once we bring those initial drafts back to the steering committee make some
modifications based on preliminary uh uh feedback and suggestions then we'll go back to the community uh to gather feedback on those proposed scenarios so the goal here is to really have two uh different phases of stakeholder engagement both to generate input generate that initial input make making
sure we're hearing from diverse representative corners of the community and then workshopping the the learnings from all of that engagement and then going back to the community to really get uh deep uh uh feedback on on the various options that that have bubbled up to to really be the the best options
for the district to move forward with and then once we incorporate that feedback um we'll be able to share that final plan and set of recommendations that's been workshopped with that steering committee back to district leadership um through uh the the steering committee but then also back to
the the school committee more broadly and then from there set you up on a path for implementation making sure that there are very clear action steps for how you take a set of options and a strategic plan and convert that into meaningful change for your community um I have two uh additional slides here
that I just want to show um that kind of ground us in in our approach to both strategic planning and then how to use the the strategy from that plan to to really bring about change so what you're looking at here is our uh district management group strategic planning framework so one branch of our
organization uh DM learning we call it um does extensive research within the realm of of of public education and really how to make uh transformative change within public education so this is the framework that that we use to really design that strategy um and use it to inform then the the options for
district reorganization so starting with that mission and vision using the the thinking there to design a theory of action right the fundamental beliefs around what will bring about change and and why the different actions will will yield the the benefits that you're hoping for and then using that uh
strategy to inform specific priority areas uh with very specific uh actionable measurable goals and then use that to then design implementation around what your specific initiatives are and and various action steps so this is the framework that we use um in with districts all across the country uh
related to strategic planning um and we'll be excited to engage to use this this this framework with you all as we engage in the strategic planning aspect of the work um the other framework that I wanted to share with you all um is how you then use that strategy to plan to
manage change effectively um to allow for that that change to really take root within your community so this is our our change management framework which is based on a few different uh change change management frameworks that are out there but again thinking about how you take what can be a fairly abstract
idea around how you might improve public education and think about what the various steps might need to be in order to take those ideas and allow that change to take root so there's a lot more information behind behind this that that we'll get into at various points throughout our engagement together but I
just wanted to share this just to to ground our our work in some of the theory behind both strategic planning and change management um in terms of how we're going to measure success um this is something so this is work that that we do in with districts all across the
country and we are very careful to to monitor uh success all throughout the process so a few key points here one of the the top ones I think for for our work with you all is going to be the scope and volume of stakeholder engagement we have a variety of measures that we use uh to that point to make sure that the stakeholder engagement
that we're conducting really does represent the various diverse uh perspectives of of community members uh particularly those uh community members who u may not always get a seat at the table we want to make sure that that we're engaging all of the various community members so it truly is
representative um whenever we present specific uh opportunities or options we'll always clarify the specific benefits of those opportunities really weighing the pros and cons um evaluating the financial impact of of various operational recommendations um and then
ultimately we want something that is is is worthwhile and actionable for you you all so a a key measure of success for us is building consensus with the the steering committee guiding coalition if you will all along the way so that when we present that final set of options
we're able to build consensus around that strategic plan and ultimately have a successful ratification of whatever those recommendations may be um in the end though two key deliverables that we'll be providing to you all um which is a written strategic plan that is uh focused resultsoriented
and really grounded in the the needs and perspectives of your community um and then from that strategic plan really using that strategic plan as the architecture for district reorganization two to three reorganizational options um that are grounded in effective and
efficient school environments that you all can then consider uh for how you might make some of these potential changes moving forward and it's really those key deliverables that will that will serve as the the the conclusion of of our work together um where we go from here we'll be uh connecting with with
Superintendent Light and and his team um really in the coming weeks or so uh to really get this work off the ground start to plan out what some of that stakeholder engagement both both uh the preliminary diagnostic phase of of stakeholder engagement and that re-engagement in the fall um so we can
so we can really get this work going um and with that uh I'll turn things over for uh any specific questions or comments thank you very much Joe questions comments from the committee vicram then Becca hi thanks a great presentation i have some uh can you show
some examples of where you've implemented change and what that change has looked like and what the improvements have been maybe one or two examples given the time I mean but yeah yeah absolutely uh just to clarify just to get a sense of like examples of what what you have done that the outcomes
changed and what actually changed to create those outcomes yeah um gosh uh um are are you interested in like strategic planning type work or all the above just something I guess uh sort of
in congruent to what what is expected to take place here um it's a great question i mean I'm just trying to think of what the the best example to share with you might be uh a recent project I did this was three or four years ago um over we worked with
this uh midsized urban district here in New England um and we worked with them basically on on school restructuring uh it started with their their budget office because they had lost I think I think gosh they had lost about 10% of their students over the course of 5 to 10 years and we worked with them to
think through what the right set of options would be to in this case they had a number of schools that were quite outdated and so they ended up consolidating some of their schools and shifting some programs around um that was uh that was one example where we were able to help them uh reallocate
their staff and and um ultimately shift staff to to programs and it's kind of interesting to hear you talk about the tier 2 and tier three interventions um through the work that that we did with them they were able to free up staff to offer more of those tier 2 and tier three interventions so that's that's one
example um another example we worked with a u a district one of my most recent projects actually a district here in Massachusetts in central Mass um working with them to understand their their true
financial picture um and uh through that work we were able to create a really thorough narrative for for how the district is currently um uh managing their resources so they were able to go back to their town and successfully pass a an override to say "Hey you know you
entrust us with your with your with your precious tax dollars we want to make sure that you feel that we're spending those tax toddlers really effectively." Um so the end product there was a really clear articulated narrative for how they're currently spending their resources so that they could then go
back to their community um to uh argue for for additional resources yeah no that's great thank you very much no problem Rebecca and then back to Ben hi hi um I was going to ask if you had
experience with more rural and like suburban districts because I think maybe things are changing but it does feel like we're sort of like on the edge of like ruralesque or at least when I tell people I'm from Actton they're like "Wow that's the sticks." Um so it sounds like
you do have a range of experience um urban and and you know and I know Las Vegas pretty well my uncle lives there so that's a good place to cut your teeth for sure um now I guess my real question is um what sort of value you place on um
you know more qualitative data speaking directly to students and staff who would be impacted by the changes or have been impacted by changes um that have been implemented by your group in the past and other areas um and then I also kind of want to raise a bit of a flag for
people about um I guess the CEO and founders um just listed in here the transforming education through social entrepreneurship course that he taught at Harvard i I just wonder sort of like how that philosophy comes into play um
partnering with businesses and communities or nonprofits and communities i'm sort of interested in how that vision affects maybe like the work that your group does um how holistically I
guess within a community are you looking and and what sort of like outsourcing of things might you be interested in doing you know that sort of thing okay because I guess that's the sort of red flag I have is like um you know trying to improve public transportation by cutting funding and privatizing it that
sort of thing I worry about yeah gotcha um okay so first question qualitative information um paramount in this kind of work right ultimately our our approach is placing students and staff members first in understanding what their
greatest needs are because you can't make any kind of meaningful change in a public school system without thinking about what's best for kids and listening to students listening to staff members listening to family members um so that is going to be a central part of of our effort with you
all um and something I will say we will rely heavily on the steering committee for in terms of making sure that we are talking to the right people because we come in with our plan for stakeholder engagement but obviously we're outsiders even though we're you know a few miles down the road in Boston um we don't know
your community as well as you do and so we will partner with district leaders um to make sure that we're talking to the right mixes of people um so first first question there um second question is a great I mean I'm sure John's going to be
watching this later uh so um it's it's a it's a fantastic question um I have had the opportunity to sit in on a lot of John's classes um and I would say his approach is how can we think differently about how we're operating our school districts i think um one of the the the
classes that he or one of the like the le lectures that he teaches or case studies that he does um is on the Baltimore City public schools which is all about how they shifted how they do their school school-based budgets so that rather than the district making the budgets for all of the schools they push resources down to the schools to really
empower school leaders to make the right kinds of decisions for their organizations um so that's really the lens that he takes um ultimately the recommendations that we will generate are going to come from from the community and sprinkled in with our our
experience with with other school districts um so our plan is not to like bring in subcontractors or anything like that um for any of that i don't know i can actually give a good example too of maybe more of of what I've seen John do um so John was actually the
person who introduced us to the founders of Cartwheel Care um and so that certainly wasn't to replace any of our staff because they're providing a service that our staff don't but we were able to partner them in a very cost-effective way because most the vast majority of the cost is actually through
students health insurance um and then supplementally funded through kind of contingency funds so that anyone can actually access the service so I think maybe that's a better example of what I've seen John doing in some of that social entrepreneurship course i think that's a really great example and
something that I know I personally have used and and is a great sort of um what's the word implementation I don't know like connection to the school system um I also Yeah thank you for that response i think it's actually really
um it I I think it's powerful that you actually have sat in on his classes and and have you know experienced him in that sense also so I think that that's really great so uh thank you for coming out here tonight from uh the city of Boston one
of the concerns that our community has is the closure of one particular school i think you know has gone around within our community in looking at your slide deck earlier I noticed that you had the city of Boston as one of your clients the Boston public schools yeah for those
of you who may not know or be following the news in town the city of Boston is closing four schools the Denver Elementary School in Dorchester the Community uh Academy in JP the Excel High School in Souy and the Mary uh Lion
Pilot High School in Brighton did your organiz organization make any recommendations to close those schools and were they were they part of the decision-m not decision-m but the recommendations going to the school committee who then voted on that um no
we we we supported Boston with their strategic plan maybe like 10 years ago um we had no part to play in in that in that effort with them hi thank you for coming um so I have a question just I tend to focus a little
bit on the financial piece um and in a lot of situations with restructuring there's um a sort of bigger upfront cost than one might expect would you say that that is more often the case and if so is there like a range that you would typically see with
you know like obviously there will be savings over time but in order to get to those savings we need this additional capital at the beginning yeah it's a terrific question it's it's hard to give you a range because it varies so dramatically based
on which options you want to pursue like if what you're doing is just shifting programming within your buildings and you're like regrouping programs to have a slightly more efficient sort of configuration your startup cost might be pretty negligible whereas some other
ones where it's like okay actually if we like are going to really do this right we need to knock down some walls and like push some things out like that would be a little bit heftier um so I'm struggling to to give you like firm numbers there because I've I've worked with districts doing this work where it
was really just shifting people around which you know they were able because they were regrouping students and staff members they were able to run their programs a little bit more efficiently so they were able to actually save costs and then repurpose some of those staff members for some of these really important initiatives that have been
really hard to run historically um whereas in other in other schools uh or other districts um they're like oh oh in order for us to like really do this well we need another facility here and what came through this process is that in order for us to do this right this is
this is what our facilities really need to look like and so let's put ourselves on the on the right path to work with state organizations to get the funding that we need to build a new facility something along those lines so probably a very unsatisfying answer but at least it points to you know the different
options and that it's something that you you know are considering and would be proposing as well yeah absolutely i would say in in our our set of like findings and our our work with you we will be extremely clear about what we believe the financial implications of
each of of each option so that as you're weighing the different options and and you know maybe we give you three options and you decide on the fourth option where you kind of mix them all together you'll have a really clear understanding of what the potential financial implications of of those options would be
leela Denshin hi thank you so much um I have a question and then a comment so I'll pause after my question um could you share a little bit more about your approach um to making sure that we are reaching folks who kind of had haven't
historically been at the table um to be able to get the diverse and representative feedback that you mentioned cuz I imagine that the steering committee though great like won't be connected to many pockets that are super important to get um and so I'm curious what the approach is there
yeah terrific terrific question um the way we typically approach it we'll do like almost like a social networking type map to understand the various communities within both both of your towns here um and then from there we map
basically the the best ways to to engage with various communities um so to give you an example uh I worked with uh a large urban district in Nebraska um that had surprisingly like a very a very diverse community um and what we found is that there was a group of um recent
immigrant students and families who uh the district was having a really hard time engaging with and so we ended up partnering uh through the school district with one of the like immigration agency services within this within the city um and they were able to
to give us access pretty much to some of the their parent liaison and things like that so essentially our approach we we once we identify the the various groups that we're struggling to connect with um we work with uh liaison who might have better access to some of those groups
and so usually that means going beyond the steering committee and finding other folks either within the the school district organization or beyond different community partners who may have better access to to those community groups i appreciate that relational
approach um and then kind of not connected to what I just asked um I saw around the metrics of like how are we going to collect data um things around APs and reading and math proficiency and thinking about college readiness um and
then I'm also just thinking about how do we accurately pick up on the pieces around like how students are feeling about their experience in our schools um and I know that it can be tougher to get at that data um but I'm hoping that this process will craft kind of desired outcomes and metrics
that more holistically look at like what student success looks like or what makes a a school experience successful um and I'll just end by saying a community member had reached out about some of what they read and said that data informs the process and we can't make good decisions for all of our students
without all of the information and I feel like that hits home on some of how I'm feeling about this um but I'm looking forward to working with you thanks hi uh my question is also on about the community stakeholder engagement so Actton Boxboro is um unique in a way
that we have a lot of um family members who are from different countries so their education experience is very very different from folks who grew up here um it's very interesting i I'm just curious like do you guys have any experience working with communities as such because
for me I grew up in another country like my parents didn't have a say in how I'm was being educated where here you know you're basically asking people to stay engaged and you know you have a say in your kids's education like how do you um
I guess um encourage people who never knew I could have a say in my kids' education to participate in this engagement and process yeah thank you so much for that question um first part of your question yes we have experience working with similar districts with
similar communities um and the approach that we typically take is creating a really thoughtful communication and outreach campaign that starts with really clear easy to understand um communication around what the engagement
is how community members can engage throughout the process what all those sort of clear milestones are within that process um we work would work with the school district to make sure we're translating resources into the appropriate languages um to make sure that we're we're reaching all the
various uh pockets of the community um and then I'd say throughout the process as well we're carefully monitoring our results to making to make sure that if we have surveys or if we have various touch points with different community members um and then if we're not we
course correct very quickly to re-engage and make sure that we're we're doing that really intentional outreach with with various groups but I think having that that thread of a really strong communication campaign running all the way through so that it's not like oh Joe
Costello presented at the board meeting or the school committee meeting on April 17th and like that's it we're not going to talk about it until like October um we would never like obviously would never do that we have a lot of different touch points it's constantly being blasted out um so that we can make sure
that we're engaging with commu with all the various diverse corners of the community thank you Joe um I have just two quick comments um one is that I just want to highlight for everybody one of the things when when we were interviewing that stuck out to me um was DMG's
knowledge of our open enrollment system which is somewhat unique um the fact that you're based here in Massachusetts and understand some of the challenges we're facing around chapter 70 funding and the the real intricacies there um I I think those spoke to me really well and then uh the other part that I really
um that really spoke to me was in the presentation and the work that I've seen from DMG your ability to handle both the big picture strategic visioning which is really got to be the the underpinning of the work that we're doing but then your ability to go real deep and deliver those breakthrough results at the ground
level with our students and with our teachers so I think that your ability to to sort of balance both of those was was super important um and stood out and then the only other comment that I would make is to you um that you've just seen the the sort of the input from this committee and I want to commend my
committee for your um interest and and participation in this this is a super important topic for us um and I just want to say how proud I am of the committee to have um provided you with some really good feedback and questions and um let's hope that we get that same level of participation from the rest of
our community but uh I think you've got a fun a fun project ahead of you so thank you yeah I'm so excited to be able to work with you my team is thrilled um looking forward to continued conversations to to really dig into these important topics excellent thank
you so much thanks okay we're going to move on to new business um the first is uh some proposed changes to uh a number of policies that are title 9 related um shall I hand it over to Andrew to speak
quickly about this yes thank you um so a reminder to the committee you might recall that earlier in the school year in the fall um we brought forward to you um proposed changes to a number of policies that um
relate to Title 9 regulations u the impetus for that was that during the Biden administration um there were changes to the scope and definitions that were used within Title 9 and so once those were made um then those
trickle to obviously um organizations to which it applies including us so we worked with legal counsel to then adapt all of the policies that uh were affected by it and so then we brought that to you and we changed it uh then obviously things changed at the federal
level with uh the new uh administration um along with a court decision and this new administration's um areas of emphasis um there were new changes made to title 9 where basically they wanted to revert back to um pre-Biden administration definitions that were
developed um in the first Trump presidency so uh with that and I'll just provide you a very brief um description a lot of it is really around defining what is a protected class specifically gender identity so gender identity has been removed as a protected class as
part of Title 9 um and so in terms of of the scope of what a Title 9 case would involve that is probably the most substantive change that I would present to you um and so there's that piece what I do want to share with everybody if there you know if there are concerns
about that piece from an implementation standpoint in our district um we have other policies and uh procedures that have to do with bullying and harassment that do incorporate um gender identity as a protected class and so if there are situations of concern within that realm
uh there's still avenues to address that um and and be responsive in the way that we would want to be it just certainly wouldn't be categorized as a Title 9 case it would just be categorized under other um procedures that we have so I do want to present that to all of you uh it just wouldn't be title 9 so um what I
present to you tonight um may is probably logistically simple but perhaps uh emotionally or otherwise elicit other thoughts but just in terms of the actual technical request the request is that you make a motion to uh revert to revert
the language in those um stated policies to the original uh language that was in place prior to our changes in the fall of 2024 liz do you have anything to add no okay
nothing at this time uh any questions or comments from the committee on this Leela yeah um just quickly I think I understand that we have to do this and so I'm not suggesting that we don't pass it
um number one I think we feel some protection being in Massachusetts under this federal administration um and this is the real impact of of some of these shifts at the federal level i think also number two um personally having a hard time with this because um funny enough a
Title N case under the last Trump administration is why I got into policy um because those shifts were so significant um and so I look forward to working with the school district around like how we keep protecting students
um but here we are folks that's it thank you anybody else comments questions all right so is there a motion to revert the policy language for policy AC policy ACAB and policy JIE that
existed prior to the approved changes voted on November 24th 2024 in order to comply with the current Title 9 regulations and policies so moved second
all right liz motion made the motion and Jenny seconded all those in favor i any opposed i'll All right so we have uh Ben Yansen and Becca abstaining and you are abstaining too sorry i've
been so used to looking at the side of the table all night um and and I'm just going to check around the room the restain All right Vicram is abstaining so I'm going to need someone to help me with the the Robert's rules and abstension is neither in favor or against so as long as we have a majority of the folks who
haven't abstained to be in favor of this it passes what am I going to do without Eugene all right so one last time oh yeah i'll go around the room very quickly tori was a yay andrew was a yay leela was an
abstension andrew's gonna abstain as well so now I'm just gonna roll call vote tori not a happy yes andrew abstain leela abstain liz Harvard can
afford to say no to federal funding we can't yay i'll say yes i have to abstain becca abstains jimmy with discuss I am voting yes yen abstain ben abstain and Vicram
abstain all right the motion passes thank you uh next on is policy JK which is the second read of our revised um student discipline guidelines and
student behavior policy liz do you want to give us just an update of the changes that were made since the last time we saw this and maybe we'll have some discussion following that yes primarily the changes that you're seeing are around uh the language concerning the right to recess
um and I want to like I know that we have heard a lot of feedback um on that particularly with the clause that's about restorative justice i had written this down for Beth i'm sorry I'm completely veering from what I wrote so uh bear with me i'm just going to go off
um sort of feeling and instinct here because I did want to explain sort of the intent around that um our goal in creating this language in the policy was
to create sort of the right for recess as we could and also allow for flexibility one example that we heard was of a teacher who you know may need to talk to a student alone away from the classroom you know maybe for two minutes
and really the only opportunity that teacher may have to talk to you know this second grader whether that's to check in whether it's to provide additional support is you know having them wait for the first two minutes of recess so while we fundamentally agree
that recess is vital for our students we're also hoping to avoid unintentionally hindering the opportunities for these students to be supported in the ways that they may need by their educators so in sort of respect to that as well we also included that
second piece for the checks and balances where if there's going to be any you know with limitations around that student having access to the full recess period an administrator needs to be involved this is not something we were looking to
avoid any potential for you know punitive like you know stay in and copy lines for recess not that I'm saying any of our educators would do that it's just you know sort of going back to things that my parents have told me that they experienced um in their educations as
well i also wanted to take a moment and personally thank elementary principles Trisha O'Reilly and uh Christina Gavin and also Amanda Bailey for the discussion input and uh collaboration on this policy we really really appreciate
you guys um giving us your time as well all right thank you questions yeah Adam can I just also mention just um to in in service of what Liz said I also uh Trisha who was part of it is is here because I do think
what's helpful um is to give um to be able to answer questions either from the committee or that that Trisha thinks that might be useful in terms of just offering a bit more contour in terms of how we understand or how they understand kind of the moments in which um they may need to sort of consider sort of
weighing kind of how they might use that time because I totally appreciate some of the comments that were made around concerns and so I do wonder if it if providing a bit more scope and scale around when those moments might happen might be useful as well so sure uh so Trish is here as well for that for that
piece trisha I have a question for you already so you might as well come up and get comfy um so I I'll start off by saying I appreciate the work that the the subcommittee did to sort of formalize this i also recognize some of the feedback that we've gotten my question um I hope is quite simple which
is to say if if a restorative exercise were need uh were called for and recess were not a time that it would be performed what might where might there be other times in the school day that that could happen academic time would be the primary pull uh we really try to
never pull kids out of specials because specials happen so infrequently um and there's always a possibility dependent on what time a child actually arrives at the building that maybe we could get a couple minutes in but that is highly
dependent on family schedules and buses that day that kind of thing great thank you Becca hi uh I wonder if you'd agree with me that the issue really comes down to because nobody wants to take recess away from a
child i don't believe any teacher in this district feels that way we all know that everybody has the right to a break and that fresh air is good i think you'd probably agree with me i suspect that the issue is funding we do not have
enough assistance we do not not have enough bodies and boots on the ground in order to get those two minutes because you know yes academic time but you know the real issue is when there's one teacher and 20 some odd kids in a room
and you've got one kid that's disregulated having to figure that out and you know it's not getting any easier certainly I agree with you Rebecca hi hi I have a comment um because Becca just asked my question um I think it's
very interesting that when you guys came to speak to us during the subcommittee meeting bright and early on a Friday morning I think people perhaps do not know what a principal's life is like in the building these days i think you guys are probably on everybody every
educator's speed aisle like there's something going on you are the firefighter um like Becca said it's not that we wish to take anything away from anyone but I think we need to recognize that educators as well as administrators are
human beings too they have to do what they have to do right yeah i I mean I I don't know an educator who will take recess away from a child in a punitive way i I really don't um when I knew I was going to have an opportunity to
speak here I did a a quick survey of my staff i said I'm going to go talk to uh school committee said "In the last month just tell me how many times anybody in the building has taken any time away from students." And 68% of the the teachers said "In the last month I've
never done it." Um for the the smaller percentage of students uh teachers that took away time I asked them how much and it was 1 or 2 minutes or 2 to 5 minutes and I think the the greatest was in sixth grade the upper
grades where it was 5 to 10 minutes um in the upper grades it you know our teachers have very very little uh in their toolbox really in terms of that kind of flexibility and it is because of funding and frankly it's also because
we've changed our our thinking on recess over the decades uh when I was a brand new teacher and you forgot your homework it was pretty common that you stayed in until you finished your homework that doesn't happen anymore and frankly if it
does I don't I I think it's an issue that needs to be brought up to the classroom teacher and to the administrator um I think that um our teachers know that kids need to be outside are teachers of younger
students have actually a little bit more uh a few more options because they tend to have um schedules set up where there might be a choice time during the classroom time or there might be a fun Friday on a Friday afternoon where kids get to pick and choose things and
perhaps um something that needs to be finished or something that needs a little more attention can happen during that time teachers aren't taking uh away time from kids because they can't finish it it's because they
are disrupting somebody else from finish it because they are getting up and walking away um that you know when I speak with a teacher about not having the opportunity to even use recess they say so so
blindfold us and put both of our tie our hands behind our back because anybody who's raised kids know that there has to be some sort of natural consequence and what we're talking about when we talk about taking away recess is a is a couple minutes I just had a meeting
yesterday with my assistants who uh wanted to talk about recess they supervised the playground and they said to me "So like what do we do when the kids don't listen to us what do we do when somebody says "Shut up to us?" What do this this is
everyday stuff i said "You say to the child come here you're going to stand next to me for 2 minutes while the rest of your pen friends play and then after 2 minutes you can go back and play with them because that's not acceptable behavior on the playground." I I stand by that um we
have to have standards for behavior and we have to have standards for expectations and for respect and we're not we're not angry at that child we're not being punitive but there has to be a natural consequence for behavior in order for behavior to change when it can
and I'm not I'm not suggesting that um students who have recognized diagnosed disabilities or behavior concerns that that's not what I'm I'm talking about our general education students who need to know what the rules are you know we
had a lot of rain last week i can't tell you how many times we told kids to stay out of the puddles and finally we and finally the same kids kept going in the puddles and they're like "Guess what you can't go on the grass now you have to stand up." you know there have to be natural consequences and I think recess is just one of those opportunities and I
and I did I was the one who said at that meeting you know a sixth grade teacher needs to talk to a student privately because you you you know it's respectful as the kids are going out to recess and you say "Just stay stay back a minute i
need to talk to you about something." You know that's all that we're that's the only kind of thing that we're really talking about kids who are purposfully not completing assignments in class need to know that they have a responsibility
to get some of the work done um no one has had their entire recess taken away this year in my school I'm going to say I don't know about every other school but I just like I said I just kind of picked the survey as a a random sample
or picked the school as a random sample and teachers had really strong um really strong feelings about it they also need for the community to trust their professional judgment and I
trust their professional judgment um I think most parents trust their professional judgment and if if there is a problem it's my job as principal to correct the problem it's a parent's job as a parent to ask questions about it if
things aren't you know working the way they're supposed to or if their child is being harmed in some way um but to but to say we can never ever take anything away from them it really is it it's taking away a professional judgment that
um I I don't think the teachers deserve um because I I think they've proven that they're actually handling this appropriately and developmentally the way it should be handled thank you Tori i appreciate the research that you did
on this um especially because if I had to go on the end of experiences of kids I know and granted this is some years out of date I'm aware of one who lost recesses for an entire week and that's a kid with a pretty significant IEP so it's not that it hasn't happened in the past and I'm glad to hear that it isn't
happening now um I'm wondering a little bit about the language that we have in here cuz the conversation I'm hearing and what you're describing is not how I read this at all when I read restorative exercise I'm thinking about um my experience with my
own school which uses CPS collaborative problem solving and that's like that would be a 20-minute exercise in fact in some cases it might be a little longer because some of our kids need a lot of help walking through that and as I thought about that um we're pretty careful about when we schedule those
because you need to get a kid at the right time to have those conversations and a preferred activity is generally not it and also recognizing we're taking away your your general education assistance we're taking staff
and we're asking you to share across schools we are not making this easy i get that um so one of my wonderings is this language only talks about restorative exercises and recess and I get it that we're talking about right to recess but do we have somewhere in our
policies that talks about just how we give you the ability as educators to make the right choice for the kid the educators involved in that moment at that time and that might be an Andrew question because you probably know the policies better than
So you're asking is there is there an explicit policy that sort of codifies that sort of educators and school-based leaders have the sort of discretion to Yeah that that it's not just recess is the only place we talk about this cuz that's how I read this is
the only possible option is recess yeah no no i think that came out of the conver well in my experience that came out of the conversation of what would be the reasons why kids might be missing some recess and res and restorative practices went so let let me just try to
give you a couple examples to help um I had an incident on the playground recently where one student uh was um being really unkind to another student and really taking advantage of the fact that the student didn't
understand he was being unkind to him and when it came to my attention um you know I called the parent I did all the sort of traditional things you think you might do when a kid gets in trouble but then I said to him "How are we going to repair this?" and and and frankly one of
the things he was saying was he was he was getting the other child to say that he the child was gay and the child didn't really understand what that meant and so I had a a long conversation with this child about uh with a student who did it um about how that other child
might feel and I said "How do you think we're going to repair this?" And what we decided was that uh the the child who did the harm was actually going to spend some structured time during the school day um playing a preferred game that the
other child had sorry I can't do it with the names in other words some forced time together to to understand and appreciate it each other a little bit so that actually happened during the school day and then I said to him "Now what about the fact that you just made fun of
someone being gay what about all the other kids who heard it?" And he said "Well I don't I don't think there's anybody else in the sixth grade who's gay." I said "Well I'm going to tell you something there's 75 kids in the sixth grade i guarantee you I guarantee you somebody there is having some thoughts
or some questions about their identity." And he goes "Oh I never thought of that." I said "Yeah so what are we going to do about that?" He decided he was going to make posters on his own time and the posters say it's okay to be gay and they are up all over the sixth grade
right now that that he made and that that was my interpretation as much as we can to embrace restorative justice there was repair done with the child where there was direct harm and there was repair done with the community in the way that the child could do that in that
instance we didn't use a minute of recess we didn't have to in another instance I had a couple of kids go into the bathroom and purposefully do some damage and that required an enormous amount of cleaning
and um and they thought it was funny which never helps a situation and so um I had I had I had a discussion with them i had a discussion with the custodian and we decided that they were going to take 10
minutes of their recess the next time they had recess and they were going to help the custodian in the building um not clean the bathroom but just recognize that the the harm that they did the repair they needed to make was to this person who now had much more
work to get done during the school day because of because of their choices and and they did and they and they understood why they were doing that so that's a long-winded answer and I apologize the point is that the
restorative component was when we were having that conversation at the subcommittee i believe if I remember Andrew when we were having the conversation I said those are sometimes the times the only time we have to do that so yeah absolutely get that and I guess what I'm just saying is that Tory
Campbell reading this policy the way it's written makes me think that the only time we do restorative exercises is during recess so it's probably a language thing but that was my takeaway when I read this so that's where I got stuck thank you Andrew
thank you you know they said in the Godfather they come after what you love and kids love recess and that's an important part and I wonder if you have an opinion on the thoughtfulness of any kind of recess restriction because pulling recess for restorative activity or any other activity is a heavy switch
to flip i'm aware of groups of students who've had their recess restricted and knowing how little time they have for free time in school I'm concerned about the consequence of this being pulled too quickly i have four children and I know my patients dies quickly i have seen
um schools deal with difficult actions from kids ranging from slamming dust pans on the table during lunch to using bullhorns to other actions that have have come down and in some
cases it's easy to flip when you have this heavy power because as with many punitive actions and restricting recess is a punitive action even with a restorative side to it some guidelines or training or processes or guard rails should be explained to those who wield
that power of assessing those actions to get to the point of doing it so what might we see what do you think we should do as a way of harnessing the the wielding of this power because there's great responsibility that comes I'm going to step in Andrew because the second half of the paragraph and it took me a couple reads on this as well the
second half of the paragraph says it must be an administrator um it says uh in such cases this decision would only be made by a school administrator um and an alternative means of physical activity and social engagement should be provided so I think it's clear there
that says if this is happening then you have to have an administrator involved it's not the the the playground monitor it's not the the classroom teacher who makes that choice and even with that administrator my question comes to the guard rails or the the process or the
escalation that would be presented to that administrator are we just saying to the administrator get ahead or are we saying that there's an any other type of way of doing more about the question of to the general populace if it's frustration
that pulls it because that's what I've seen in other schools here i hear what you're saying and I think we're moving from policy to procedure at that point um so I my question for the committee is is is going to be quite simple one do we feel like there's language here that's
sufficient to vote the policy or do we need to send this back to policy subcommittee and or have a larger discussion around this when we're not here to just approve the policy yeah um in that vein I think um I was
wondering about maybe amending the language slightly to say you know that you wouldn't be taking away the entire um recess period because I think that's an important piece that people aren't hearing they're thinking it's and I know recess is short but still you know it's
only a couple minutes and if you know that is like a guideline that we stick to and Andrew I also think we need to have some balance where I I do think we need to respect the professionals here and know that if people are overstepping in their their
power that they have then it's up to us and Peter and the public to hold them accountable uh it's same as if anything else happened you know anytime power is abused by somebody at the top it's going to have to be you know a process for
people um I think we have to trust the people that we've hired to be able to lead the schools um and I personally do in all of my experience and and I know anecdotally we all have our own experiences but I feel that the most
important part to me is that the consequences of behavior match the behavior that was done and I feel like that has been a really big push i'm happy I think with those examples of restorative justice and also the sort of
working definition that I think we're using of restorative justice um and making sure that um you know students understand exactly why you know the consequences are coming and I think timing sometimes it it does have to
happen during recess and and largely I think we all know because of personnel difficulties all right so I'm looking for a sense of the committee about whether we want to table this item and discuss it more in the future or if someone is willing to
make a motion on the revised policy in front of us i think we need to discuss microphone hey um I have some other things to say as well but I mean general in in the sense of time I think we really need to uh
discuss this further we had a long conversation about this last night at the CPAC meeting y um and there's wording here people are generally favorable towards it let me just get around but there needs to be work to be done on this because the thing is I think what's not coming across here i'm
just I want to say one thing here is that people seem to miss we used to have recess for an hour it's 20 minutes now recess should be in the same category as food and going to the bathroom it's a quintessential aspect of their day shaving 5 minutes is 25% of their recess all right so we're going to table this
topic for the future since it doesn't seem like we're going to be able to get a consensus on voting it which is what I wanted to go to um so we will find time in our agendas in the the the last four meetings of the year to discuss this uh
more so uh thank you and I really look forward to the entire school committee providing some input for the policy sub who has been working tirelessly on this and uh is really looking for some additional help thank you thank you
Trisha we're moving on it's not about this i mean it's just a clarify process is it coming back to the full school committee or is it going back to policy and then going to the school committ i it sounds to me like it has to come in front of the whole school committee because even though there is a
process for the policy subcommittee to collect input we had this in front of the committee once we provided that input and then revise it and provide more input it seems that the school committee as a whole wants to discuss this at length so I think we need to bring it in front of the whole school committee and that may mean that we
don't get to other things that we need to get to on our agendas for the rest of this year can I chime in on that i want I the the only concern I have about that is an amendment that we make in a meeting may not have an opportunity to
have our educators and administrators talk about the implications of how that actually impacts what they do and I'm a little concerned about amending it on the floor making a change without understanding the impact of that so I I would actually suggest if if you don't if you're not comfortable moving it
forward as it is I think it should go back to policy sub get feedback from committee members to policy sub but then also be able to talk to some teachers and administrators about what the potential changes are before it comes back and I know that puts a burden on policy sub but I'm really concerned
about it's a it's a fair comment i think impact we we'll have to find a balance it may be that this has to come and get discussed as a committee and then go back and get polished in subcommittee um but it doesn't seem that the policy subcommittee is getting the feedback that they need and the input from the committee as a whole and I I agree i
think it needs to it there needs to be further discussion around the full table it needs to go back again and get polished and further input and then come back for a vote again um but it it seems that we're we're not able to we're not able to come to a consensus without a
great deal of input which is fine it's an it's an important policy to go through uh I'm going to move us on to another important topic which is in our ongoing business which is the superintendent evaluation process so I'm going to look first directly to our departing school committee members and tell you you're not out of the woods you
still um get the joy of providing uh some input and evaluation on the superintendent's performance um an email will be coming out um an email email will be coming out shortly from Julie with all of the information that we received last year
but updated for this year so there will be an update on the school committee and super sorry the school district and superintendent goals uh for the year as well as his self-evaluation Peter's self-evaluation on that um and then you will also get a copy of the superintendent rubric and the um
superintendent evaluation document um those items will be going out probably immediately following our next meeting which is when the superintendent will be presenting his um end of year goals update and then the due date the most
important part of this the due date for superintendent evaluations will be back to me and Julie Lumiere by Friday May 23rd so you'll have about two weeks from when you get the um full report out on the um end of your goals report uh to
then do the evaluation fill out the rubric and send that back to me for consolidation and reporting back out to the community as a whole um I'm quite happy to say that everybody who's participating in this process this year has done it at least once before uh but should you have questions please feel
free to reach out to me i'm happy to to walk you through this um and to whomever gets the the seats that are vacated uh you don't have to fill out the evaluation but again I'll be happy to speak with any of those people um about the process because it is a bit daunting uh and with that we're going to move on
to Oh sorry any questions on the superintendent evaluation process seeing none subcommittee me and member reports uh so policy sub you met and I think we've discussed pretty much at depth uh what you uh you guys have been working on thank you for that
budget Sub Rebecca budget sub met on whatever Monday was it was the 14th at 2 p.m on Zoom um we have started discussing town meeting preparations um making our presentation
um we did talk about some updates um you heard about the kindergarten enrollment increase um that was a big part of the discussion um I think that was pretty much it there wasn't there wasn't a lot of news um and
that is the final one that I know about before i don't know what you guys are doing after I leave the chair is retiring from the budget subcommittee uh we'll have to look we still we still have three members on that that subcommittee tori Andrew myself i'll sit
in as chair um until we reconvene the budget subcommittee we'll probably have one more meeting I think um beforehand as an FYI for school committee members let me just get a calendar in front of me before I make a fool of myself um too
late did someone say that april 30th which is a Wednesday evening there are uh pre-Town meeting meetings uh in both Actton and Boxboro um so Rebecca I believe you'll be presenting the um the school committee's report out for the
town of Actton town meeting so you'll get to attend that pre-Town meeting and then uh Liz and I will be uh attending the BLF meeting which will be a pre-Town meeting um Actton Town meeting is May 5th boxboro town meeting is May 12th
actton Town meeting is in the high school uh auditorium um please arrive with ample time to get checked in if you're an Actton town meeting member um and if you are not a resident of Actton please arrive with ample time to explain why you're should be allowed to go into
the auditorium uh and then Boxboro town meeting is like I said May 12th um we'll get some more information following the pre-T town meetings on the 30th and I'll share out with everybody all the details for both of those town meetings about um where and when we should arrive we typically post um tentative school
committee meetings for about 6 p.m prior to both town meetings just in case something crazy happens and we need to meet beforehand um so please pencil that in on your calendar um as a possibility albeit doubtful um and what else did I have in my notes
that I wanted to go over um I'm going to sort of bypass does anybody have any pressing um liaison reports that they want to share andrew so active box health insurance trust met this morning to review our activity in the trust
during the runout period well we currently have about $646,000 on deposit at Blue Cross Blue Shield and continue to pay out statements to Harvard Pilgrim most recently they provide us with a credit of $22,000 our claims are going to continue to look like this for the next couple of months and we may have a
few additional federal fees considering the amount of money on hand at Blue Cross Blue Shield and the waning runout charges for Harvard Pilgrim and other obligations Health Insurance Trust voted today to turn back $800,000 to the school and towns within the fiscal year
2025 meaning that there'll be about $616,600 returned to the district based on the existing formula methods and timing of the distribution are to be determined but we're pleased to offer the return of these funds to this school and the towns thank you Tori
so ALJ met um at 7:30 on April 8th at town hall and uh on Zoom the group did reach consensus about the fiscal 20 fiscal year 26 budget column of the ALG plan for fiscal year 27 there was consensus about reflecting the
district's budget increase at a 5.6% actin assessment increase and the towns at 5.2% beyond that there is disagreement about what to reflect for fiscal year 28 and further um as well as how to represent that lack of consensus in the warrant
for town meeting um we asked for support in advocating for education funding um chapter 70 reform with the joint ways and means committee um and thank you to everybody who participated in that there's a huge um huge letterw writing
campaign i think everybody pretty much got to see those but um as part of that we also had the uh act infincom and select board chairs both write some really strong letters so that was awesome um kind of the outcome of this towards the end our moderator encouraged
us all to think about the work that was done to get this budget for this year prepared and also how to present our different perspectives on the future at town meeting um Yenshin you want to um the last meeting was definitely very
very lively and uh there was disagreement about whether or not we have reached consensus or we have not reached consensus so to is correct we've reached consensus on FY206 right and the outyear model is where everybody feels like nope um
apparently has never happened before in ALG process but I think I I said that at the ALG meeting i think our town our town since it's ALG sorry um is at a crossroad we must decide that are we
going to be the town and the people who've always supported the schools and children students and the future of our community or we want something else so it's some heavy things to ponder before town meeting
yeah I know for the committee Adam fored um an email around the House Ways and Means budget coming out and they have put out a budget with uh minimum aid per people at $150 um generally they don't backtrack uh so that's generally a good sign um
and just for folks to know the Senate is going to be debating theirs the Ways and Means Committee will be debating their budget um probably over the next month and then there's kind of a conference committee to figure out between the two budgets that are proposed where is this going to land um but given all the not
so great news about education that was a brightish spot yeah and I'll just remind everyone that we did vote to increase our budget by $150,000 hoping that we would get additional state funding so we will probably go back at some point once that the state budget's finalized and amend
our budget not to change the bottom line but just to change the assessment numbers to take account for additional revenue and um reduce the assessments to the towns did you want to add something Peter yeah just um piggybacking on what Leela said I
think you know we're hopeful and optimistic about the numbers that came out and also cautious um I think you know the real positive was chapter 70 minimum aid being increased we do see the region
um charter school reimbursement is down um for us for next year so that revenue won't be coming in at the same level necessarily unless that shifts um trans regional transportation is still very much up in the air and I think the the house has been very supportive of that
um I'm skeptical that regional transportation will ever get funded at 100% um there are very few people who believe that anything should get funded at 100% so um I think it might be higher than 80 maybe 90% might be a nice nice thing to get to
um you know there is some movement around increasing um circuit breaker transportation aid to up to 75% which would be significant um for us so a lot of numbers in flux right now um and interestingly both actually
for the current fiscal year FY25 and for FY26 because the supplemental budget had some some positive news for us as well so we're we're trying to really wrap our heads around exactly what this means for us um we also did get a letter from the IRS um confirming that we met all the
criteria for the 2.75 million um rebate and that they have indicated that that I'm going to say this without a smile that the check is going to be released in you know four to six weeks um and they did say a check would be released
um even though we've heard that there are no more checks so um but we do anticipate that that aid will be coming in so that's that's a good thing so we are likely to need to to think about how
to manage excess and deficiency um as we approach the end of the year because it if that aid comes in before the end of the fiscal year um that reimbursement has to go immediately to excess and deficiency um and we know we need that for out years to be able to do you know
particularly the high school rooftop units that are coming due within the next year or or 18 months we need to get to um and we can't exceed our threshold on excess and deficiency so we probably need to have a mechanism to be able to take that money and put a substantial
portion of it over into capital stabilization so just thinking ahead to that and I'm going to suggest as part of Sherry's uh Q3 update at our next meeting maybe we we have some some indication of what these money flows look like because there are refunds
coming in from a lot of areas and um we have um started the process of setting up an additional stabilization fund for health insurance so I think we've got a lot to to share um and let's do that as part of the budget update at our next meeting any additional or uh member
liaison updates vicram uh so CPAC committee uh met yesterday uh and we talked about there's a new high school coordinator has been hired at the high school um she's in New Hampshire uh it's quite light um talked about Natalia
starting on 71 and our largest conversation revolved around right to recess so again I strongly advise liaisoning with CPAC and their recommendations for the wording of that thank you anybody else all right we're
going to move on to our school committee communication i'm going to blame Janine's last meeting right brain injury and say that it takes me a while to process um Vicram can you send me the language that you're referring to that you would like us to
refer to in policy sub yes thanks it's getting late uh so thank you to Tori and who else did did you work with on the Um uh Andrew and Liz um Becca I think was aware of what we were up to up to i'm going to say that silence was
consent um and uh then you and Vicram got to jump in so exactly so team effort what I'm going to do because I think it's important and I think it's not that anyone's going to be listening in at 2 hours and 20 minutes in our meeting i am going to read out the narrative that the the group came up
with um it's one that I think we all need to internalize and be able to speak about um with our community so here it is imagine a future where our schools are designed to meet the needs of the community from our taxpayers to our students a place where teachers feel supported not overwhelmed and students
thrive in the best possible learning environment picture a community that celebrates its outstanding sustainable schools what would that look like for your family for all of us everything's on the table you may have heard about the challenges of recent years and tough choices we've had to meet to balance the
budget the funding we received from our towns and the state is no longer keeping up with external factors driving up costs in our current system the reality is the way we've structured and funded our education over the past 50 years is no longer enough to meet the fastchanging needs of today we're taking
this on because we believe our students and our community we believe in our students and our community our goal is to build something sustainable that will endure for decades not just a patchwork solutions for another budget cycle our everchanging world demands both more
from us demands more from both our educators and our graduates we are committed to ensuring every student has the opportunity to reach their full potential and that our educators have the resources they need to support that goal at the same time we also recognize that our community must be able to
afford our schools this isn't just about saving money it's about being smart smart with the resources we have act in Boxboro has evolved and our students need new skills that our current system isn't equipped to provide that's why we're reimagining how we approach education rethinking everything from the
number of schools and grade configurations to how we match students with the best opportunities for growth while there's still much more to explore we're excited about these possibilities ahead we know this process brings uncertainty and that can be scary but we're committed to designing a
sustainable innovative structure that allows us to rise together and meet the challenges of the next 50 years we need your voice in this conversation we can't do this alone together we can shape the future of education in Actton and Boxboro so I think I'm just going to
copy and paste that right into our town meeting speeches um so this was great work thank you this is in the agenda that's in the packet for everybody please um share even just this text broadly use it as your talking points with anybody um any other school
committee goal communication updates sharing no all right so I'm going to go back to the agenda here and we're at the consent agenda so items on our consent agenda do not usually require discussion approved with one vote unless any member would like something held if you would like it held please say hold remember
you don't have to be at a meeting to vote on the minutes uh item A approval of ABRSC meeting minutes from 32025 item B approval of uh ABRSC meeting minutes of
432025 fy25 budget transfers item D approval of warrants as presented in the packet of 41725 item E approval of Act and Boxboro Friends of Drama Booster organization of $4,000 donation to Precinium Circus item
F approval of football boosters organization donation of wireless headsets uh valued at $2,333.40 to the ABRHS football program and item G approval of Blanchard's PTF donation of
$1,650 for Nature's Classroom in-house field trip is there a recommendation to approve the items is there a motion to approve the items on the consent agenda so moved with appreciation on those donations so that was Liz with appreciation and then seconded all those
in favor i any opposed any abstensions that is unanimous peter anything in the FYI we want to highlight yeah just um Student Opportunity Act progress report um that is something that you know we have submitted to Desi at this point um
we're required to do every year uh we need to make you aware of it um but it's not something that you need to vote so we put that in the FYI it's just an update on the chronic absenteeism work that we've we've been doing so you'll hear more about it as we progress through the year thank you very much
jenny would you like to make a motion move to adjourn rebecca I'd like to second that so that was Jenny making the motion and Rebecca seconding all those in favor i thank you