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All right. Noting the hour in the presence of a very large quorum. Good job everybody's here. I call the Actton Boxboro Regional School Committee to order. Members of the public who wish to watch the meeting online may use Actton TV's YouTube channel found at the top of the agenda. This meeting is being recorded and will be posted on Actant

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TV's website at actctantv.org. With that, let's get on to our most excellent retirement celebration. Peter, >> you know, I just want to personally before I turn this over to Andrew to have some recognition of all the

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individual retirees, it's so awesome to have you sitting in the audience tonight. Um, I think of all of the impact that you've had on AB students over the years and the community here. Um, and just what you've given of yourselves. I mean, I've I've had an opportunity, some of you I know a little

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bit more than others. Obviously, that's kind of the nature of my role. Um, but having talked to you and heard the stories of of the work you've done with students, the letters you found in your desks, um, written to me during co, um, things like that, um, just the

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incredible impact you've had on the community here. I just want to say how much I really appreciate everything that you've all done for the students at AB, for the community, for the other educators at AB because they're all benefiting from the legacy that you're leaving. And I hope that as you embark

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on this next stage and adventure in your lives, you can just take a moment. And I know it's a frenetic time of year in a frenetic year, but take a couple minutes and just appreciate the impact that you've had and the legacy that you've left for the next generation of educators and all the generations of

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students that have benefited from the work you've done. So, thank you very much. I'm going to turn it over to Andrew and let him introduce everything. Okay. Uh, good evening everyone. Uh, as Peter also welcomed you, I'd like to welcome you to our uh, retirement ceremony. for those who are retiring at

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the end of this year. Um, as we've said in previous years, engaging in sort of the process of working with our staff who are retiring, it it necessarily involves holding oftentimes multiple and competing feelings and emotions. Uh at the same time on the one hand uh there

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is a a bit of appropriate uh sadness uh lamenting that sort of a period of time a stage in time has has come and gone that we won't be able to see certain colleagues and cherished friends uh moving forward. At the same time we also want to be celebrating this milestone.

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We want to be uh joyful and and happy for our colleagues uh and express appreciation for the contributions that they've made uh for so many years to this district. So there's they it's it's an exercise in holding those two things at the same time. Uh we're going to set aside the the sad piece for now and

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we're going to focus tonight on on the celebratory piece to thank them for their many years of service uh and to wish them well. Uh to do that we have uh two things. One is uh one by one we're going to ask principles or department directors to come up. Uh they prepared a little statement and a little biography

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uh for each of the individuals who are from their respective schools or departments uh and want them to celebrate. And then the other part is um we do have a token of our appreciation. It's at this time that I wish I could channel Oprah and tell you that under your seats there's a keys to a car. Um

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we cannot. Um but that being said, we still have a token of our appreciation. Um it certainly doesn't um sort of match all of the contributions that you've made, but hopefully still will come in handy and will be something that uh will remind you of your time uh fondly at

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Acton Boxboro. So with that uh we are going to it's not going to be in that order that that slide is alphabetical um but we're going to go by the the presenter. Before doing that I do want to acknowledge also um these types of ceremonies are uh not possible without

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the support of individuals like Julia Lumiere and Candace Doncaster. Anything that I do remotely well is really because of them. Uh and then when they're not supporting you all know it's a it's it's a lot less. Um, so with that in mind, I think the first one, I think Trisha O'Reilly is going to come up uh

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to speak a little bit about a cherished member of the Conan community. Thank you, Andrew. So, we are here today to celebrate Betty Anne Vatitali's incredible 37year

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teaching career, including 22 years at AB. During this time, BettyAnne has had a profound impact on our Conan school community. Betty is a dedicated teacher who cares for her students, knows their families,

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and works to set them up for success. Everyone knows Miss Vitali. Everybody who knows Miss Vitali knows that she is skilled, has high expectations, and likes to make learning fun. A great example of this is her

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annual hatching of ducklings, which actually happened today, and I wrote this last weekend. As as each duckling hatches in her classroom, it is greeted with the song, "Happy Birthday, Little Ducky," sung by a chorus of delighted

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first graders. As the ducklings grow, the students read aloud to them, poolside. And during math time, the ducklings are weighed on a balance with Unifix cubes to demonstrate their growth. The whole school looks

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forward to duckling season each year. Betty Anne is also generous. She offers encouragement, well-organized resources, great ideas, and a listening ear to any teacher. She has mentored officially and unofficially dozens of educators from

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many different positions over the decades. She includes all those who work or volunteer in her classroom and highlights their unique gifts. Betty is the first to offer to purchase snow pants, school supplies, or other items for a student in need. Some of us

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remember the co book window she set up where students came to room 5 and through the window got fresh books from her classroom library. Known as the mom of Conan, BettyAnne's classroom is the hub where many staff gather for advice, laughs, and support. Bettanne, you've

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given so much to so many and we will miss your energy, your humor, and your handy toolbox. As you walk out of room 5 for the last time, please know your work truly impacted students, families, and colleagues. We wish you a fantastic retirement filled with the adventures

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you love. Hiking, jet skiing, riding your scooter, and yoga on Lake Winnipegasi. Thank you, Betty Yan. All right, Mr. Hamill, I think you're up next. I did not want to follow that. But

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so I'm here to bid our farewell to Guy Dhanic. Guy Dhanic started his employment with us on March 18th, 1985. He accepted the position of third shift custodian at our high school. I'm sure

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at that time he had no clue that he would be bidding we'd be bidding him fair a fond farewell and offering him thanks for his long-standing service of more than 41 years in that time like so many that work third shift the initial goal is to get

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off of third shift to get to a normal life guys quest brought him from the high school to the junior high then to Conan then to the old Miriam school and then McCarthy Town, finally here to

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the administration building. Guy reported to me for a little over three years. And in that time, I always felt he was best when a handyman or repair guy was needed. When a head custodian at another building was struggling with a repair, I

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send guy. He never questioned it. Didn't worry about the contract that it wasn't his building. He just went and took care of it. There's a damaged vacuum. Everybody sends it here for Guy. Damaged toaster.

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Guy microwave guy. It's what he does. No matter what, if Guy needed a set of hands, he'd go over and help. Guy will be missed in many, many ways. And to make it short and sweet. And finally, for anybody who's been in this

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building, when Guy laughed, no matter where you are in this building, you heard. So, we'll certainly miss you and wish you the best in your new chapter. Mr. Gibowitz, you ready? Yes. >> To sum up uh over 30 years in about one

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minute. It's a little tough, but uh I'll do my best. It's my honor and privilege to recognize Anne Dempsey as she retires after over 30 years as a PT at Actton Boxboro. Anne joined AB in 1995 and has a unique distinction of working with students

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from preschool all the way to high school providing services to students in all nine schools at AB. Ann has a positive energy, infectious laugh, and a great rapport with her students and everyone she works with. Anne has been a

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fierce advocate for her students and is known for emphasizing strengths and believing every child's potential. She even took on insurance companies who didn't believe a 5-year-old could self-nchair. Anne has been heavily involved in the Special Olympics and helped launch AB's

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successful unified games day. She consistently focused on the whole child and encouraged colleagues to think outside the box. After her many years of service at to AB and is looking forward to having more time to travel and is curious to see what September may bring.

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as she said about this next chapter, "It will be an adventure as long as I can stay out of trouble." And then she chuckled like she's doing now and said, "Well, maybe I'll get into a little trouble." Thank you, Ann, for your 30 plus years of outstanding work at AB. It has been

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an absolute privilege and joy to work alongside you. Best wishes on a wonderful retirement, and I look forward to hearing about what trouble you might get into. I'm also here to honor Lynn Trembley. Uh we're here to celebrate Lynn Trembley who's retiring after 13 years of

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dedicated work in the Actton Boxboro early childhood program. Lynn began her education career at age 16 and brought her background including the Reio Alio approach to the Carol Hebner early childhood program. I can

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honestly say Lynn is the kindest, most reflective and most positive educator I've ever worked with. She always prioritized noticing children's interests, reflecting on lessons they taught her, and emphasizing looking at

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things from different perspectives. She focused on the whole child, building positive and trusting relationships with students, colleagues, and families. In Lynn's own words, her position at the Carolina Early Childhood Program was her

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dream job and the greatest professional honor. She actually never felt teaching was a job and hopes to continue working with young children in the future. Thank you, Lynn, for your dedication. We wish you the best on the next chapter. May

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you be happy. May you be peaceful. And may you be loved. May you be filled with love in retirement. Okay. Thank you, Miss Dean, for representing the high school. I may have to tilt this down a little bit. Um, good evening. I have the

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privilege of honoring five retirees in the high school. I was given 45 seconds for each, so time. Peter Caciola, Mr. C. Mr. C has had a wonderful career as an athletic trainer

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for 44 years with the last 24 at AB. He's worked with over 11,000 student athletes, hundreds of coaches. This year, he earned the honor at athletic trainer of the year. I'm often on the sidelines with Mr. C.

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And it's incredible to see how he individually knows every athlete and has an encyclopedic knowledge about every sport and team. He espouses strong values and many athletes are grateful to him for making them better people. We

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often hear him saying to achieve greatness, work hard, always have a smile and a sense of humor and live with an attitude of gratitude. Now he will have more time to spend with his family. Mr. C, you're truly an AB

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legend. Thank you and we wish you the best in your next chapter. All right, Karen Farah. Karen has dedicated the past 33 years to teaching earth science and environmental science at AB. Her 25 years as part of

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the transition team brought her immense joy and satisfaction. And she's also served on the attendance review board and worked with the data team. She's currently on the spirit committee and is the go-to person for celebrations in the

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science department. Karen's passion is her students and she describes the science department as family. Her colleagues describe her as the glue that holds the science department together. She is proud that her two daughters who

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work here will carry on the AB tradition. Finally, Karen's a fierce advocate for mental health awareness, leading the active minds club and coordinating our out of darkness works. With this year being the 10th

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anniversary, Karen, thank you. You will be truly missed. I mean, we have some long-standing individuals at the high school. That was 33 years. Um, just we're going in alphabetical order. So, now we're on to Andrea Kungjan. Andrea,

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see, where's Andrea? >> She had to step out. >> Oh, she had to step out. Oh, so maybe we should move on. Is she coming back? >> Okay, we'll put her at the end. See if she comes back. Okay, so now we're on to Janet Maxwell. Janet. Janet has taught at AB for 32

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years, starting in 1984 with a little time off to raise her young family. Her husband and three children at are AB graduates, so her family is truly a fixture at AB. Janet has taught nearly every math class

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and can be considered the algebra 2 honors guru. Janet knows how to help students succeed, holding them to high standards and guiding them to get there. Janet was the school choice coordinator, a MAP alternative program teacher, volleyball and cheerleading coaches, class

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coordinator of the class of 2026, co-advisor for the classes of 24, 25, and 28, and an instrumental member on the stress management, scholarship, and graduation committees. Janet is looking forward to spending more time with family and we wish her

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the best in her new home in Maine. Janet, you are literally a part of the fabric of AB and will be dearly missed. Thank you. Okay, Sue Ropiac. See, where's Sue? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sue started her career as an engineer and

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has since worked at AB for 12 years, three of them at the junior high. All of her four children also graduated from AB. During her time at the high school, she taught many math classes and helped design our increasingly experential project-based AP statistics classes.

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This year in her last year at AB, she taught both physics and math so that we didn't have to reduce a teaching position in either department. That was truly selfless and our colleagues are immensely grateful. As a course level

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leader for two years, we're appreciative of her efforts and our course releving work. Sue was the first adviser for our health occupation students of America club and now advises the invest in girls club. Thank you, Sue. We know you're looking forward to spending more time

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with your family and we wish you the very best. >> Should I if she comes back then maybe we can bring she might I think she >> All right. Congratulations to Andrea and if she comes back I'll talk more about her. >> All right, Mr. Marott, you're next.

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Good evening. Hello everyone. I'm here to talk about Melanie Scaliz. Since 1994, Melanie Scaliz has taught seventh grade English at R.J. Grey Junior High School. Over more than three decades, she has served as a mentor to new teachers, a co-ep department leader, and a dedicated advocate for student

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learning. Melanie's classroom has always centered on the power of stories. As she has reflected, she was proud to have helped students use literature to better understand themselves, one another, and the world around them while finding joy in reading. A strong believer in

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teaching the whole child, Melanie has always worked closely with teammates to build community and support student growth. She also advised numerous student clubs and activities, the Star Wars club being one of them. Reflecting on her career, Melanie says she is proud of every student she has taught and

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grateful for the joy that they've brought to her life. As she begins retirement, we thank Melanie for her extraordinary service and we wish her health and happiness in the years ahead. Congratulations, Melanie. Okay, at this time I'm actually going to call two principles, Christina Gavin and

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Christine Neilen, because for anyone who knows Henry, it's going to take two people to to take care of this one. So, Would you like to go first? >> Good evening everyone. I'm here we are here to share about

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Henry Morris. To say that we have been fortunate to have had Henry as our head custodian for the past 15 years is a huge understatement. Henry's dedication to the staff of both Miriam and McCarthy Town has been extraordinary. He has met

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the needs of the Parker Demon building and it has been unparalleled. Every school year after working tirelessly in the summer, the first days of school have always been welcoming thanks to the shiny, clean, bright, organized school building. And

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during the school year, the barrage of text messages that Henry responds to on any given day, from bathroom calamities to hallway spills to AC and heat not working to the occasional birds and other animals around in our school

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building, chairs and tables in needs of a quick fix, the unending number of paper towel and soap dispensers to be filled, elevators not working. Well, let's just say that we've made sure that it hasn't been boring for Henry. It's also impressive to recognize the

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countless hours of time above and beyond that he has worked. He has done so much for our schools and the building over the years. He helps out at both schools PTO events. He's painted hallways, stairways, you name it. He rem removed tons and tons of snow from the

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sidewalks. He's led in the entire custodial staff of the Parker Damon building. He's coached sports teams of all ages at AB. He served as the AB custodial union rep for several years. And it's really hard to put into words

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how much Henry will be missed. Not just for all the great work he does, but for the person he is. He is honest, straightforward, always speaks his mind, always gets the job done. He's a dedicated family man, salt of the earth

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kind of person, and he always seems to be in the know and knows every single thing happening around the Parker Damon building without a walkie-talkie. Henry, I speak for a lot of us when I say you are going to be missed. Congratulations on your well-earned

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retirement. I still have your number, so we may text you. And best of luck. Don't be a stranger. Congratulations. So, Christina mentioned most of Henry's tasks, but I want to just say that I am not I'm shocked we are actually here because Henry has been talking about

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retiring since I started five years ago and every year I didn't believe him. I also want to just name that I want to be careful tonight, Henry, because my first newsletter I thanked Henry and he said, "Christy, please don't ever do that

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again. Please make sure you thank the entire custodial team and not just me." And that was such an example of who Henry is as a leader and who he is as a team member. I also want to thank him for getting the stray shoes off the roof off the roof of the Parker Damon

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building, painting the places in the building where there was paint that I'd be like, I think I want that part way up there a different color and he'd say, nope, that's not possible. And then the next day, I'd see him on the lift getting to that place. We are definitely

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going to miss you. We're going to miss your snow forecasts, your staff morale forecasts, your summer move forecast. We're going to miss everything that you do for every staff member behind the scenes. There are many moments that

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Henry will just say, "Hey, Christy, I don't know if you know, but" and he tells me the thing that we need to know, but he doesn't want anyone to know that he's the one taking care of all of us. We hope that you enjoy that little place in Ireland, far far away

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from all of our phone calls and our texts. Congratulations, Henry. Can't believe it's >> congratulations. We'll miss you. >> Next up, Carol Leandro. Carol Leandro is currently in her 20th year of working for the districts and

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the district and for the past five years she's worked as a full-time special education assistant at Miriam primarily with sixth grade and sometimes with fourth. Her previous roles have included as the sixth grade math assistant in the remote learning program and she spent an

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long era of time as a classroom assistant from 2007 to 2020 looping with fifth and sixth graders. And for two years, Carol was the PTO chair for Miriam and has also served on other committees. Over the years, such as the

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interchool council and the anti-bullying task force. In addition to her work in the schools, Carol has volunteered in the community as well. She was the publicity chair for the precinium circus and she was also a co-producer for Honk

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Jr. at R.J. Grey. And what many people may not know about Carol is that she was first trained as a clinical psychologist and she worked in the field until she ultimately decided to take time off to raise her children. And after she

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volunteered in her daughter's classroom, she found that she loved the school setting. She became a classroom assistant and she never left. And I know that I speak for many of us at Miriam when I say, Carol, that you've been an incredible asset to our school, to our

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staff, to our students. And I've seen firsthand the way that you connect with students and the way that you help them to feel successful and included. And it's so clear how much heart and joy you bring to your job each day. And I will miss working with you. Thank you so much

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for everything. And congratulations on your retirement. And now I'm going to share about Trish Underwood. Trish Underwood, for those of you who don't know, is one of Miriam's beloved kindergarten teachers. and she's been a part of the Actton Boxboro teaching

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community for the past 23 years. Her experience and background has been in early childhood education, specifically kindergarten. And aside from one year at McCarthy Town, Trish has been working as an educator at Miriam Elementary School.

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Over the years, Trish has participated in many of Miriam committees um not just as a teacher, but also as a parent. And she has served on the Miriam school council, the teacher council, the curriculum team. She's been a representative on the PTO, and most

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recently the honoring Miriam committee, and she spent her career supporting practices and curriculum that support the development of early social emotional skills. She shares a love for integrating content literacy together

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with science and social studies. And I have seen, Trish, how you go above and beyond to make sure that all of your students are getting what they need. And you're a teacher who cares deeply about your students and supporting their success. I want to say how much I've

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valued working with you these past years. I'm going to miss you. Congratulations on your retirement. And next I'll share about Melissa Gilbride. Since joining Miriam in 2001, Melissa

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has taught across different grade levels from second to third to fourth, and she's always adapted as the school has evolved, always with her steady commitment to her students. She has been a mentor to many colleagues over the years, and her work with students has

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always gone beyond just academics. She's helped students understand themselves, work through challenges. She's always had a big heart and emphasis on SEAL and she's always helping students navigate their feelings. Melissa's passions have

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been science and math and over the years she's created such meaningful and memorable learning experiences. For example, the endangered animals project where students have collaborated, they've built models, created films, composed music, and they've even

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showcased their work right here in the Actton Discovery Museum. Melissa, you've always found ways to connect with your students and to make learning feel special, and your presence is going to be truly missed. We're so grateful for everything you've given to

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Miriam over the past 25 years. Congratulations on your retirement. Right. Thank you everyone. If you could all join me in one final uh congratulations to our retirees, that'd be great. I'm truly glad that we took the couple

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of extra minutes to get the video feed up because those were some wonderful stories you all shared and congratulations to all of our retirees. It is so clear that your dedication and your passion brings so much to everything that is AB and we are

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grateful to you for everything that you have done. Thank you. So as we uh transition to school committee business, I want to welcome Andy Benado and Hillary Grean who were elected on Tuesday, got themselves sworn in are here sitting with us at their

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very first school committee meeting and we are now a complete committee for the next full year. So welcome and congratulations. We are going to shift to public participation next. Per school committee policy beedh.

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Members of the public are invited to speak for up to three minutes. Public participation will only take place at this time during our meeting. Speakers must be recognized by the chair before speaking and the committee does not typically respond to comments during public participation.

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You're welcome to come on up. And there's our microphone. Hello. Hello. Good evening. My name is Diego Represa. Am I a father from Actton? At the last school committee, a plan was presented to introduce artificial

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intelligence tool onto student devices and to incorporate AI literacy into the curriculum. You already covered uh important issues that will arise with introduction of AI in the schools including classroom distractions, reduce effort when completing assignments,

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challenge for teachers in evaluating authentic student work, bullying through deep fake content and other concern. I want to elaborate on those critical issues tonight. CU already addressed them. What was not mentioning is the opportunity cost. Every addition to the

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curriculum comes at the expense of something else. If you add AI literacy, what will you remove from the current curriculum? Teachers already face the challenge of covering a substantial body of material within a limit amount of

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time. What will you ask them then to stop teaching? Because if there is anything more scarce than money, it is time. I work in a multinational IOPS company where we currently use around 10

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different generative AI tools. It takes only days or weeks to learn how to use those tool effectively. It is not too complicated, but it takes years at the right time to develop good persons with deep knowledge, a strong skills, and a

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foundation of solid values. It is similar to learning to drive a car. We don't teach driving as part of the high school curriculum. Even though driving is an essential skill nowadays, instead a school focus on building foundational

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knowledge and habits that enable that enable lifelong learning. History seems to be repeating itself. Years ago, phones arrive in schools. After a decade, statistics shown the harm that they were causing and phones

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were banned from our schools. Later 101 computer were introduced and now we are beginning to see their efforts and asking whether that was the right choice. Do we need to experiment again with our children's and harm another 10 generations? Were we going to be smarter

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and recognize that AI should not be prioritized during this fundamental period of a person development? The question is not whether future generation will need to learn AI. The question is when the right time is to learn it. Students are in high school

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for only four years, but they will be in the workforce for 40. They will have plenty of time later. So I ask you tonight not to introduce AI tools on the student devices given the many important concern that you have already identified and not to add AI literacy to the

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curriculum at the expense of those four years that are so fundamental to a students development. Thank you for your consideration. >> Thank you. >> All right. In that case, um, we will move on to our special education parent

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advisory council report. So, I'd like to invite Amanda Bailey, Abraham Gutierrez, and Kristen O'Neal. Looks like we have Amanda and Kristen to come forward. And so these are our elected co-chairs and they report to us in the fall and in the

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spring. Um so this is our spring report and we look forward to hearing what you've been focused on and what you have to share with us. And then as well um you'll probably notice that Amanda and Kristen are at most of our meetings and they will frequently advise us on things

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if we have questions. So welcome Thank you, Tori and members of the committee. So, as Tori said, my name is Amanda Bailey. I'm joined by Kristen O'Neal. Our chair or co-chair, Abraham Gutierrez, is not able to be here this evening. He sends his well wishes. Um,

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and this is our spring update to your organization. The CPAC's mission for those who may not be familiar uh each district is required to have a special education parent advisory council and our role is to advise the district and the school committee on matters that pertain to the

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education and safety of students with disabilities. So that's students with 504 plans, IEPs, and those yet to be identified. We also meet regularly with school officials to participate in the planning, development, and evaluation of the district's special education programs. We do that in a number of

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ways. Um we collect individual stories and feedback from people. We publish feedback forms and surveys. Uh we hold business meetings and coffees and have a chance to talk with people compiling that information and then subsequently being able to advise you all um to help

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impact policy to help you know guide budget discussions and things like that. >> So just like every organization we do a lot of outreach. Um we've had a presence at events across the district and throughout the year. Um some of those are back to school nights, open houses,

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the junior high transition session. Um we also shared ongoing education opportunities and resources via our newsletter and Facebook. um and here to all um at our fall presentation regarding the Federation for Children with Special Needs basic rights

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workshops which are online and available to anyone in the district thanks to our Mass Pack um membership through the district. Uh we also have a strong presence on Facebook and a regular newsletter to share opportunities, information and updates. Um you can

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subscribe to our newsletter by visiting our website. It's a form. It's very easy. Our website is abcpack.org and it will show at the end of the um presentation. Other outreach includes um presence at the Actim Boxboro Family Network kindergarten social. It's this

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Saturday for any rising kindergarten families. We hope to see you there. Um we're there every year. We also send home um backpack mail through the early childhood program. We were at kindergarten information nights last spring um and uh have had materials and

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representation at the um open houses for the new school communities just this past week and next week. So handinhand with um outreach is engagement. Engagement was a priority for us this year. Um thank you to the

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director and assistant director of special education um for their regular meetings with us as well as invitations to join coordinator meetings. It's been wonderful to meet with leadership around the district um and share our varied perspectives and work and collaborate

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together. Um this year DESIE also performed integrated monitoring review and um as CPAC we shared the survey that went out to all parents um and we look forward to seeing that participation um and the results of that. We also um

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educated folks on the process of what that review looks like. Um and we also participated in an interview as um officers of CPAC with DESIE. And I just want to take a moment to make Amanda incredibly uncomfortable and highlight

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the fact that um the DOSI representative uh pointed out the really wonderful partnership between CPAC and the district and our director of special education um and the exemplary um activities of the CPAC uh in terms of

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what CPACs look like around the state. Is she read? >> Okay, I did my job. Um, we also remain connected to all of the parent teacher organizations in the district through monthly meetings. Um,

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one thing that I think is a standout for us as a CPAC is the recognition form for staff that we roll out every year. This year we had over 20 um, families reach out with feedback regarding their special educators or general educators

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or admins or building staff. and we then reach out to those individuals and copy their um supervising staff. Um just highlighting what incredible people we have here in the district. Um we have oh and I also want to say that um another

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CPAC in the state tried that out this year um for our recommendation and it went really well. We also held office hours both in person and virtual um on various times to try to gather as much engagement as possible. This is for peer

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connection and ongoing support. Um and new this year we had a CPAC questionnaire. All of our new representatives here at this table can attest. Um we sent out questions. The CPAC does not endorse any candidates for office. Um but we felt it was important

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to ask questions regarding special education um and share those broadly. Those questions were created in collaboration with asking other CPACs in the state what they have asked um in similar forums and also asking our

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membership for their ideas. So that was shared via newsletter, Facebook and local publications and we look forward to contributing towards the new um common threads task force. You may have noticed uh the AB forward

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process this year. Um we were named as a stakeholder by the school committee at the outset in May 2025 and we were engaged throughout uh attending steering committee meetings throughout that summer through the decision-making process and through ongoing implementation and expect to do so through the coming year and beyond. The

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CPAC in addition to all of the listening sessions that were hosted by our consultants, we did hold independent listening sessions for our families and brought that information back really a chance to zoom in on the special ed component of this. Similarly, we also compiled a special ed related FAQ

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document because there was so much to sift through for families. So, we pulled out from all the other district materials and consolidated that. In the course of this, the general advocacy that we did as an organization did not always align with what individual families wanted for their children and recognizing that we kept the community

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informed about all of the feedback opportunities, advocacy strategies they could take, uh, special education updates to help them do that and acknowledging that discrepancy where it existed. And we're still here to support families through this. We also continue to follow the development of policies

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and procedures as you've seen um as we move forward with this advocacy in general. A lot of parent education this year through our social media and through meetings um around the budget. We always follow the budget process from the beginning. Um, we want

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to flag this year the elementary counselor additions in particular noting the case loads that they face that they manage the 504 plans and appreciate uh the addition of the elementary counselors. Uh the elementary step program is new this year building out the continuum K through 12 for STEP. We

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did hear from a number of families who had questions about cohorts um professional development methodologies and so we'll be continuing to track that through its implementation next year. And then we also um and we'll talk more about progress reporting have continued

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to advocate around resolving issues with powers school and access to documents through that platform. So priorities for the next school year. You'll note that we say priorities and not goals. Um you goals are something that we we want to benchmark too. Um

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priorities are are wishes we hope to hit on all these topics. Um, but we feel that we need to remain flexible in order to pivot and be responsive to whatever comes up in the school year. You know, reorganization, overrides, that sort of

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thing. Um, so in this coming year, we'll look to continue relationship building with new staff, admins. Um, we hope to host workshops and parent guardian education. Um, if you want to speak to Child Find. Yeah, just um thinking about

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Childfind and with the reorganization, we're going to be entering into new school communities in a big transition. And under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which is the federal education law, um school districts have a proactive responsibility to seek out and identify

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children with disabilities. And so, as we navigate this, helping families understand, you know, what are their rights in requesting an evaluation? How do you raise a concern with the school? What are your procedural safeguards? what's expected as a followup from that. Um, so making sure that people

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understand uh how that process works as we move forward. And I hope no one's eyes started to twitch at the mention of another survey. We actually had a survey on our our our priority list for this year. Um yet we

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pivoted. Um there were a lot of surveys. There was a lot of feedback opportunities. Um it is something that is now overdue for CPAC. We do this every few years just to touch base with everyone and and um hear what's going on. Uh so this is a big priority for us

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next year. That said, we do want to be thoughtful knowing that there will be some feedback required in the superintendent search. So um we will be watching that scheduling very closely and hope to target early fall before that comes out. of course will be on top

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of things um and and shift as needed. What else? Um the we have some existing dyslexia recommendations. Those were last um presented in June of 2020. They're on our website if anyone's curious, but it's time to revisit those.

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It's a topic that's come up quite a bit in the last year. Um so that's something that we'll be looking at this year as well. Speaking of superintendent search process, we'll be engaging in that. Historically, uh CPAC has run a focus group and shared that feedback with the

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screening committee and we hope to do so again this year and this go around. Um and AB forward implementation will include progress reporting which Amanda will talk to. >> Where's my soap box? Um, so just as a

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general piece of information for folks who may not be familiar with special ed, um, IEP progress reports are issued at least as often as we get general education report cards for students without disabilities. So you get a report card in December, you're supposed to get an IEP progress report with that.

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Um, I've cited just the two laws that describe that. Why is this relevant for the school committee? Because there's going to have to be an alignment of elementary progress reporting and y'all have policies about it. So, we wanted to raise this to your attention as one of the u ongoing discussions that we're

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going to need to be having. Um, right now our elementary schools issue between zero and three gened report cards. For a long time, there was a discrepancy as a result with how many IEP progress reports families were getting between schools. Some people were getting two IEP progress reports a year, some people

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were getting three. Um, our advocacy did resolve this problem. All elementary families currently receive at least three IEP progress reports unless their child it's indicated in the IEP they need more frequent progress monitoring and these are standardized throughout the school year. Um again as the

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district aligns these practices there is a chance that we may be moving back to two IEP progress reports in a key year with a number of transitions where progress monitoring is critical. Um, we are advocating for a continuation of at least three IEP progress reports through

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the coming school year and bearing in mind that if again if individual students need more frequent progress reporting that can be written into an IEP, but we did want to flag this um and again it will come before you at some point with regard to your progress reporting policies. >> All right, this is what I mentioned

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earlier. We have a mass pack membership um as an organization through the district and that gives us access to free basic rights workshops on an ongoing basis. Historically before now um the district and CPAC would partner together to give one workshop a year. Um

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now members of our community including members at this table are welcome to um log on to that website there and take advantage of any of these free trainings. Um they are winding down for the summer. Um but they also have a newsletter and I would strongly

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recommend registering for it or subscribing to it. Um they do a great monthly um synopsis and you can look at what's coming up. So if you have any questions about special education, that's a great place to start. And as we conclude, our sincere

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appreciation to director of special education, Natalia, who's at the back of the room, um as she entered the district this year, was very open, collaborative, communicative with us, sought our input on different things throughout the year. It's been a pleasure getting to know and work with her. We wish outgoing assistant director Dan Mer the very

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best. Um it's also been great working with Dan through the new IEP rollout and implementation. our ongoing thanks to you all for your collaboration and our also our thanks to outgoing co-chair Abraham Gutierrez for his service. Um we did have our elections last night. You

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will be seeing more of the pair of us. We still need secretaries. The AG has said it is not a conflict of interest to be both on a CPAC board and a school committee. So I will put that to you all very gently. Um but thank you all and we're happy to take any questions you may have.

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>> Awesome. Thank you. Do we have questions, comments for uh Amanda and Kristen? Glenn, >> thank you for this. And so you hit on so many important points, but and then one point that has informed my thinking is

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just how big of a difference there is between identifying something like a dyslexia diagnosis even between like kindergarten and second grade. Like that those extra two years of time, that's like really impactful and it can reverberate for years to come. So, one thing that popped

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into my head is you mentioned that having a priority having a priority be just like you can't just wait for families to raise their hand and say we think our kid may have a learning disability. It's

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just like you have to actively have some type of process to both allow that to happen but to actively seek it out. One thing I'm wondering is my intuition is telling me restructuring is going to somehow impact that sort of

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identifying process. I'm not sure how it might get easier or harder. That's something I'm just wondering. I was wondering if you had any insight onto that. Um, how do you think restructuring might how do you think our restructuring process may impact how we identify

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students with disabilities as early as possible? Like maybe it get maybe it's easier or harder or just different. Um, and the last thing is just what do you hope our super upcoming superintendent search committee

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considers with all of this, including your recommendations for special education and just having those priorities be baked into the process in day one. >> Thank you, Glenn, for the questions in 60 seconds or less. Um, >> go. >> No, no, no. Um, so I'm going to just pick up what you said about dyslexia,

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um, and specific learning disabilities because the district actually has done a lot around early childhood literacy, early identification, and intervention a lot. What we mostly see and hear from is families whose kids didn't benefit from that. So the middle to late elementary and beyond where maybe they weren't

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caught early and now we have other issues as a result, socially, emotionally, etc. So that's primarily who we do hear from. But I think when we think about act in box and early child literacy, we're kind of all over it and on it when it comes to doing that. So I have a lot of faith in being able to

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carry that over and Gabby Abrams isn't here to talk about that. I know Natalia can talk about it, but that's very much on the front of people's minds. I think when we think about Childfind, it's more about, you know, there may be this grace period that creeps in. And we're already hearing from families who are wondering, do I trigger an evaluation now or do I

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wait till fall? And so what we don't want to have happen is then, okay, people come back, they're wondering how their kids are doing. Okay, we're settling in. Everyone's settling in. That takes time. And now half a year has elapsed during a critical period. So, it's being mindful about that and just making sure that people understand the gened supports and there's a whole range

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of genet supports available. Um, and I think that having people in the same buildings and being able to collaborate at the grade level is actually going to help. >> Um, superintendent, I'm going to punt um because we're going to have lots of conversations about that, but thank you.

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>> Anyone else? Adam, >> I'm going to follow along in Kristen's footsteps and try to make Amanda embarrassed and just thank her because we discussed last night that she's been serving in some form on the CPAC for almost 13 years now. So, thank you both

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Amanda and Kristen, but Amanda 13 years congratulations and thank you. >> We're discussing women's age, Adam. >> Lisa, I just wanted to express gratitude to both of you. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you for all the advocacy and uh thank you so much for your

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partnership with us. We really appreciate it. Means a lot. >> And thank you to Lisa Glenn and Vicram as our representatives from this school committee this year. >> All right, we'll stop embarrassing you, Amanda. Thank you both so much. We appreciate you. All right, so we are going to transition

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next to um superintendent search firm interviews. And so those who are kind of following along in our process, um, kind of where we're at with this is the school committee held a workshop and started understanding what this process is going to look like. And of course, we

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did this before we had our Boxboro members elected. So I really appreciate that all three candidates came. Um, that was really important. So you know, both Hillary and Andy were were there for that as well as Felicia who ran too. Um we are now this evening going to

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interview the search firms that were selected as finalists. We had a small group review the uh the four um the four firms that submitted packets and do how many and we do have all three of them here tonight. So that's good. Um so

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the way this is going to work is each um each presentation has about 10 minutes. That gives us five minutes afterwards to ask some questions. Um, I've got the the master list of questions that we kind of put together during during the workshop. Um, so I've got one of those that I will

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hit for all three because that was one of the things we talked about as being as being important. And then after that, we've all got to figure out how to kind of keep this under control. So, it's probably not in everybody asking a question, but if you feel like there's something that is a gap that's missing, let's make sure we get that out. Um, and

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then once we've heard from all three, we'll have a conversation about what we think uh our best option is. Everybody good with that? All right, Andrew. Um, >> yeah, great. In fact, everybody, um, our first, uh, presenter is, uh, Alicia Milin from MSC. So, I'm going to invite

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Alicia to come up to, uh, the presentation table. While she's doing that, Peter, I actually did email you or forward to you. Alicia has some slides in potentially if that sort of becomes just as a in addition to that. Um

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there's paper copies and I've also emailed the a the school committee shell with those slides as well. So um if for some reason we can't get them out there. >> That's fine. >> Okay. Yeah. So then I would say to the school committee members just um use

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either the paper version or the digital version that you have available to you um as reference for when Alicia makes her presentation. So I'll hand it over to Alicia. And actually a as Alicia is getting settled, we are going to see more of Alicia because she is our field director for the Massachusetts um uh

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school committees and association of school committees. So we will get to have more conversations, but tonight this is in this specific context of selecting a superintendent and doing that search. So welcome Alicia. >> Thank you and thank you for having me. So by way of introduction, my name is Alicia Malin. I am a field director for

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the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. I'm the field director for the Northeast. So if you look at Massachusetts, I have sort of above Boston up towards Maine and New Hampshire. And there are three other field directors along with me. And we are a staff of about 10 people. We're we're a small group, but we are

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primarily your member association. So um as Tori said, we do a lot of governance training. We run charting the course. For those of you who are new, you'll see us when you come to do your charting the course. Um we provide backup for our members. So, um, essentially what I have

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handed out to you tonight is just a really quick overview. We like to when we're talking to our member organizations, oh, let me back up and say it is one of the benefits of working for MASC is that everyone on staff either is now or has been a school

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committee member. So, we have all sat where you sat. I am starting my 10th year. I was five years on the Westford school committee and now I'm in my I'm starting my fifth year on the Nshoba Techch school committee and I am their secretary. Um and both of my kiddos go to Nishoba Techch as well. So um one of

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the things we like to start out with and you can see it in the slides and I won't read through them is um we just like to remind our or our member organization um our members in our organization that there are two things that school committees have to do to hire a superintendent in the state of Massachusetts. one, that person that you

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hire either has to be certified or able to be certified as a superintendent in Massachusetts and you have to do it at a public meeting. Beyond that, there are many options open to all of you and you are in a very advantageous position where you're talking about your search the year before you want to run it. Uh

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we do have some districts that sort of come in in urgent situations and have to talk about interims, but you are in a very advantageous position where you're go looking at starting in the fall, which is fantastic. So, I did include in my slides some of the other options, things such as hiring an interim, hiring

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internally, etc. Um, and what that would look like just for your reference, but I know that you are more interested in um an external search. So, there are two options for you when we're talking about an external search. You can either run the search yourself and if you're going

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to do that, you have to make sure that you have the administrative um capacity within both the school committee and the administration itself to really be the boots on the ground. Those are the people who are running day-to-day everything running for your search. Um

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the other option is you can hire a consultancy, a consultant firm. Um and there are many and I know there are a couple more here tonight. Um there are many that operate in Massachusetts. I will say this, no matter what path you take, we are always your member association. We are always your backup.

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If you hire us, if you hire someone else, if you run it yourself, we are always here to support you and we will continue to support you, especially once you get on the other side of hiring your next superintendent. We very often come in and do all kinds of workshops for operating protocols and things like

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that. So it we as much as we love to run searches for our members, we are not offended if you choose another group and we will still continue to support you. Um so hiring a consultant um that there's a wide range of fees that are um

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out there for consultancy firms. There are many that are larger than us. There are a few that are smaller. Um we also as MASC we offer what we call the no fee technical assistance option. The difference between you paying us to be your consultant and you doing the no fee

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technical assistance is if you do the no fee technical assistance you really have to run it yourselves. You really have to have the capacity on the committee within the administration to run all those things and then we would be your backup. When you hire us as a consultant and this is a really this is an

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oversimplification of it but when you hire us as a consultant we run point on everything and you back us up. there's still input that has to happen from the committee, from the administration, all those things. Um, but you know, the difference is, do you have the capacity and the resources, the the human power

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to be able to pull that off. Um, I've outlined for you what no cost technical assistance looks like and what full cost looks like. Um, it's technical assistance plus. I do want to share that in the last year, I personally, um, my

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two searches that I did this year were Gloucester. They actually promoted their internal candidate, but they went through a full um interview process and decided to hire that person. Um she starts next year and she's been shadowing their outgoing superintendent this entire time. And I also just

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wrapped Littleton Search um this past spring. So myself, I've done two this year and I have done many before that. Um there are three, like I said, three other field directors and our executive director. Um, I know Sean Costello, South Coast, uh, he had, I think he was

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up to 11 searches this year. He was crazy busy. It sort of shifts around. Um, but we as a team, we tend to work together. Your field director for your area is usually your point person unless someone has multiple searches running in places and then we always tag in our

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other staff as backup. And I can tell you that our executive director Glenn has had decades of experience in all of this and he is always on call for the field director. So we always have backup there. Um there is a slide there that shows you um from our website um the

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phases of a search when you're thinking about a search process. Um we like to start with the information gathering first. We're going to ask you to provide us with a lot of information about your district. We're going to do stakeholder feedback. We're going to um we can run

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public forums and online surveys. That way we can sort of get as many responses in as many places as possible. And then we use that to put together your district profile that will become your application. We te we partner with um MASS. We partner with um the National

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School Boards Association. We have partners across the country. There's an association like us in every state. So we share out our listings out to all 50 states as well. Um, MASS has a fantastic pool of people. They have they run a program called the aspiring

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superintendent program which Glenn Coocher and I have been a part of for the last couple years where they are literally building the bench of superintendent, people who hope to be superintendent. So, there's a great pool out there for you all. Um, as I said, we have a list on our website of our most

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recent searches, and I did include all of our staff members, but I thought, you know, just to give you that brief overview and then answer any questions you may have. >> All right. So, as I'm juggling here, I do actually have a question. um

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when you are looking at candidates, how do you know that a candidate is ready to be a superintendent, especially for a district like Actton Boxboro? >> So, as a search consultant, we are giving you the background that we have

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available to us. We help you. So, one of the first steps that you will take in your search if you work with us is you put together your screening committee. Your screening committee is a cross-section of your stakeholders in your district. And through your screening committee, those are the people who are going to take all of your

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applications and narrow them down to the semi-finalists and the finalists. So, what we do with the screening committee is we orient them on all of those things that we had gathered from your stakeholders that your district is looking for. We also review the packets and um like I said, everyone in the

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office works collaboratively on this. We talk to each other about what we've seen in certain places. We make sure that you are um considering whether or not you are considering the leadership standards that you are looking for. Um when we just wrapped with Littleton, they had five and that's how they considered

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them. And most of what we do when we start working with that screening committee is we help them formulate the questions that they're going to ask in those first screening interviews and those are based on what your district is looking for. So we very much work with that stakeholder feedback and your

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district profile to narrow it down to what it is ACT and Boxboro is looking for because you are looking for your superintendent. We are I kind of I consider this sort of like a matchmaking process. Um we are looking for the best match for you and that doesn't always

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mean someone who's been a superintendent for 10 years. Maybe it's someone who it's their first superintendency. We're looking for the next person who can partner with you to give you the results you want for act. >> Glenn,

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thanks for this. So, in that you just mentioned um I'm curious about what are the different leadership standards you have seen from district to district uh and um just what variations have you seen? So, a lot of

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what happens is the district will identify priorities. Um, there are districts such as yourselves, which you're a regional. There are districts that say we really want someone who's had regional experience, whether they've been a superintendent or an assistant superintendent or someone in the administration within a regional. Um,

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very often we look at what are your budget priorities. Do you want someone who has been a uh financial officer? Are you looking for someone who is more coming out of the classroom primarily? It depends on what the district identifies. We the bottom line is they have to be available able to be

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certified or certified as a superintendent in Massachusetts. So they will have that everything else is sort of what their leadership experience is and lines up with all of you. There are fantastic superintendent out there who this is their very first superintendency but they had experiences that lined up

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with what the district wanted and they hired them so they could grow together. And then there are other districts who hire people who have 10 years of experience because their leadership profile matches what the district is looking for. >> Andrew, >> thanks Tori. Uh thanks for being here. Thanks for the presentation all the

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documents. I was looking through one of the other documents that you have specifically the one about pricing and on page nine of that section seven you break out the pricing into two separate items consulting services and advertising services. specifically within the advertising services. You talk about buying full page or buying

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ads in the Sunday Boston Globe and the education week. Um I understand I I wonder actually if we are in a post-print world when it comes to this and also what are the qualifications for this and what kind of campaign are you looking to do? Is it reposting? I I just

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want I'm curious about this. Also, you call out the difference between the print ads that you're looking to purchase and the other consulting services and expenses. Do the other does section A manage online job boards and optimization in that respect? And option

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B is just these two print. >> Yes. So, option B is there because sometimes people really want to do a print ad. I can tell you that's not usually the standard. We're not usually printing brochures anymore. or we're not usually putting things into the globe. Most districts do not pay extra for that

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advertising. When we have your application ready to go, when we have your brochure ready to go and we're ready to post, we put it up on our website. We share it to the superintendent's website. I'm gesturing to your superintendent. We share it to MASS and they share it. We share it out on our our social media platforms. And

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then we email it to we maintain a list of interested parties. um either people who are looking to be superintendent, people who may currently be superintendent. Um we also share it out to um the National School Boards Association, to our partners. We mostly

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do this online. We post it, we blast it out via email, we blast it out via our social media. Um we have multiple social media platforms that we post on. We share with the superintendents. The superintendents share it out with their members. Um so less and less we're seeing that people are doing actual

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print. Uh we do leave it there as an option because you never know someone may want it. It's possible but for the most part most districts will not choose to do that. They will just stay within that first fee and everything is included in there. >> Jake,

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>> hi. Thank you for the uh presentation. Um I'm wondering if you could just answer uh what from your perspective do you think your firm does differently than other firms uh in a search process like this? What makes you distinct? >> So I would say what makes us different

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is we are definitely small but we are a member association and because we are your member association again almost everyone in the office either has been or is currently a school committee member. I can tell you that part of the way I got my job at MASC was I replaced

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the irreplaceable Dorothy Presser. She was my field director and I actually my district ran a search where she was our field director, search consultant and I was the lead for the search committee and then I worked with her on policy projects and through that is how I came

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into MAS MASC. So because we are the member organization, because we are school committee first, we have those relationships on the ground with our members with all of you and we do this, we are in and out of your districts where we are, you know, working on governance. We have that eye to what the

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school committee superintendent relationship really should be. Um really focusing on making sure that the lines of communication are clear between superintendents and school committees, that roles are understood and accepted, and that you all start off on the right foot. So, I think because we're smaller,

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we do offer that advantage. But again, as I said, if you go with a larger group, we still will back you up otherwise. And I think also because we have a really good relationship with MASS, um, and Glenn and I do work with them with their aspiring superintendent

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program. And we recommend that all of our districts send whoever you hire if they have not been a superintendent before that you send them to the new superintendent induction program as well because then they get a mentor and a cohort through MASS. So I think it's really it's less about our size and it's

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more about our experience across our 10 member um staff. We have decades and decades of experience. So >> all right hearing silence here. Thank you Alicia and we look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks. >> Thank you.

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So Sherry's gonna help us out and grab uh the next uh consultants from NASDAQ. Welcome. All right. So, these are our representative from the New England School Development Council and I believe we have Dr. Carolyn Burke. And I'm sorry

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I didn't get >> Nancy Mara. >> Nancy >> M A R A Mara >> Mara. >> Welcome. Thank you. Let me just get my water. Should I just start? >> Yeah. Whenever you're ready, if you'd

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like to share what you have and then uh we'll ask you some questions afterwards and we'll go from there. >> Okay. I wrote out notes because I could go on forever and I know I have 10 minutes and you had particular information you wanted to hear. So I figured I I better rein myself in.

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>> Thank you. >> So good evening. Thank you for inviting NASDAQ to present. Um I'm Carolyn Burke, one of the lead consultants for NASDAQ. Oh, sorry. Come on over here.

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I'm Carolyn Burke, one of the lead consultants for NASDAQ, one of search consultants, and it really is a privilege to speak to you tonight about uh superintendent search because, you know, it's one of the um probably the most important responsibility that the

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school committee has. And it can be daunting, but it can also be a wonderful um process and uh if it if it's done right. And in my experience and many years of experience conducting

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superintendent searches um throughout New England, successful searches have probably four main characteristics. thoughtful planning, meaningful community engagement,

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a developing a strong and varied candidate pool and then ensuring that the ultimate decision is based on community priorities. If we are the firm selected, we'd begin

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probably with one of the most important meetings that we'll have, the first organizational meeting, the first planning meeting. And during that meeting, we'll talk about I'll have drafts. Um, but we'll talk about the timeline.

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You'll look over the timeline. You'll make decisions. The announcement letter that's going to go out to announce the position. You'll add your input to that. We'll organize for who is going to be our liaison. We'll make some um

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communication protocols. We'll we'll address those and we will discuss the many options available to you at each phase of the search so that you'll have a a heads up. You don't have to make all the decisions that night, but you'll know what options

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you need to be discussing at your meeting as the search goes on. you can tailor the search so that at the end you can say yes this met our district's needs and we'll we'll talk about that at that meeting. We'll also

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begin an ongoing conversation to discover what you as members are looking for in your next superintendent. and I'll be talking to you about ways to talk to each of you as individuals and then as a group so that I get a real

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feel and you get a feel for what you're looking for in your superintendent. Recruitment begins after that first meeting. So after you've designed your announcement letter, it goes out and recruitment is not static. It's not an

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event. it it continues throughout the search until the applications uh deadline. So at the beginning we cast a broad net over professional networks and professional organizations and

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superintendent uh groups and we are looking to attract a wide and diverse candidate pool of highly qualified candidates from different many different experiences, backgrounds, leadership

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pathways and educational settings. We include um the Association of Latino Administrators, the National Alliance of Black School Educators in our pool. You had asked about about that. And the

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diversity is also brought in through the extent of our networks. We have a national network. We're part of a national group of study councils and our searches are advertised through their

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networks as well. So it we have a a n a national national reach. We have a regional reach. As a matter of fact, the NASDAQ board has 18 superintendent on it from the you know from each of the states and and they become involved in

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our searches when we develop the profile when they know what they're looking for. They do targeted recruitment within their state in the New England states while the position is being advertised. And we like to have it out there for about 6 weeks. We found that that's

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that's a good amount of time. A candidate either knows or doesn't know within six weeks and gets the materials together. While that's we are engaging the community in order to seek to understand

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not only the strengths and um aspirations that they have for the but also what what are the opportunities and challenges they see facing the next superintendent. And as we gather understanding about that we can have more targeted recruitment. As we gain

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more knowledge about what the community is looking for specifically, then we can target um candidates whom we feel match those skills. And at Nest, we absolutely believe that community engagement done well is

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essential to a successful search. As a matter of fact, that's where I started with Nest with the community engagement piece and um it has proven true over all the years that that piece needs to be done and

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needs to be done well and really thoughtfully. If the search is if the superintendent is to be successful in the district, you can complete a search and and choose a superintendent, but is that superintendent going to be accepted

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and successful in the district? And you want that too. So community engagement is absolutely necessary to ensure that. And the superintendent serves students and the and staff

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and parents, guardians, school committee. So you need to have those voices in in this even the planning, you know, phase, the early phases of the search. And you have to provide opportunities for community engagement through to the

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selection of the new superintendent. You need to build build those in. Those voices need to be heard and they need to be felt heard. So, it's one thing to hear, but you also need to have your communication back to the network. I

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mean, back to the community reflect the fact that you're hearing them. So, we'll talk about that. Uh, we use, you asked about, we use a um an inclusive inclusive datainformed

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s approach. We combine quantitative data that's gathered through the online survey with qualitative information that we gather through focus groups, interviews, community conversations and

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the comment section of the survey. Um both forms of of data are important. The quantitative data it shows uh identifies patterns and priorities and

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levels of agreement across groups. And the qualitative data adds context and it and it provides insight into the community's hopes and concerns and aspirations. So it adds that sort of human feeling to the piece

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and people really will express themselves. we've learned if given the opportunity. Once collected, we analyze the data looking for recurring themes, areas of consensus and perhaps areas,

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perspectives that might warrant further discussion and we provide that data to the school committee. The school committee will get both a raw data document and a summary document. And then we work with you to add your

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perspective, your viewpoints, and to revise that document, the summary document, until it reflects what you are looking for in your next superintendent. And that will

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go out as the successful candidate profile. or you can name it whatever you choose, but that's what I name it, the successful candidate profile. And and candidates are looking for that now from NASDAQ. That's an important document.

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Um, and it's a leadership profile that is grounded in not on assumptions and the opinions of a few, but in in real data from the broad gathered from the broad community.

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We always suggest that you put it online. You don't have to. Now, in my experience, in my opinion, the successful candidate profile is the single most important document created during the entire search process.

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And it becomes the profile becomes the foundation for every subsequent phase of the search. your screening committee made up of a res representative group of community members and you would choose and we'll discuss

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that they will use the successful candidate profile. It's a unifying lens. It's a unifying language. They use that profile to go through all the applications that were submitted, look at them against the profile and

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choose candidates to interview. They'll also use the profile to develop their interview questions and then to assess the candidates's response to those questions and finally to choose those candidates who will move

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on as finalists to you the school committee. You will use the su successful candidate. I have maybe should name it something I can actually pronounce but you will use the successful candidate profile called the profile to develop

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your own interview questions and you will use it also use it as a lens to assess the candidates through the entire final phase of the search. You'll be looking at who best you know and how do they best

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match and you the what we said we were looking for what we are looking for and it's a unifying document for you as well even in your deliberations we would encourage you and of course we'll have a meeting about all of that you know I won't throw you to the wolves you'll in

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your deliberations you'll be talking about the candidates as far as they match with what you are looking for in your profile. It gives you a very positive uh way to deliberate. Let me just make sure I'm covering here.

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And oh, a challenge. Uh one search that I conducted involved Nancy was there committee members and stakeholders who held who held very strong and differing views about the district's future direction. Now, in and of itself, that's

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that wasn't the challenge because that's true of most districts, and it can actually strengthen the search. But what made this search particularly difficult and challenging was the degree of skepticism and level of mistrust about us as a search team, about the whole

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process of a search, whether it was um you know, a frame up job or whatever, I don't know. But there was a level of mistrust and they didn't want some groups didn't want to participate. Some community members questioned whether the consensus was even achievable or whether

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their input would be genuinely influential to the outcome. And um and that maybe the process would ultimately favor one group over another. So when we recognized that we did a lot of work

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upfront to build trust in the process. We created multiple opportunities for participation. We communicated transparently to each how their their data would be used, how it would be, you know, what we were going to do with it, what the you know

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and uh how they could trust it. We gathered both the quantitative and qualitative data and we ensured that all voices were heard and reflected in the findings. And as themes e emerged and as

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um we began to inform people, they realized that while they might differ on the how, they didn't differ in the skills and qualities that they were looking for in a superintendent. They were looking for

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somebody who could um work positively with multiple perspectives, etc., etc., and would ensure everybody would be heard. So they saw that there was actually more consensus than there was disagreement around the ultimate product. So that's that successful

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candidate profile um became invaluable in um the rest of the search because it was that unifying document. So finally the uh superintendent search is much more than a hiring process. Some some people say, "Well, I you know, I

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hire all the time. Why why couldn't I just lead it?" But it's more than that. It really is an opportunity for the community to reflect on its values, celebrate its strengths, and identify its future aspirations. And it is an

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opportunity for the community to speak directly to you, the school committee, through the the opportunities for input that you provide. So people might actually take advantage of some of those opportunities to tell you about, you know, a schoolyard incident that they

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never got to complain about. But in the mo for the most part, it's very informative when you read all of the comments and throughout each phase of your search, NASDAQ will be there. We'll be there to to provide support, guidance,

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training, clear communication guidelines. will help m maintain momentum and will help ensure that the process remains aligned with the goals uh established by you the school committee at your first planning

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meeting. I'll give you my cell phone. You can call any time. We don't close at 5. And um any questions or suggestions, you'll be encouraged to call because at NASDAQ, all of us, we don't view our

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role as simply as consultants, but in this endeavor, we're partners. And again, it's such an important decision for you to make. Uh we want to be there to help guide the process. So that's not an area of concern for you.

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So, thank you for your time this evening and I'll turn it over for questions. >> Thank you so much for coming in with the list of questions that we asked for to begin with. That was that was really helpful. Thank you. >> Um

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so something about ACT and Boxboro in immediate recent history is we have just gone through our strategic planning process which also involves Yes. um thousands of emails, probably 20 hours of community forums. We we have a we have a community that is ready to

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engage in this. So, one of the questions that we have is, you know, as you're going through your candidate pool and recruiting, how do you determine that a candidate is ready to be a superintendent in a district like Actton Boxboro?

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Well, first we know the district. You know, in a regional district, we'd be looking for somebody who um had experience dealing with multiple communities or if not a superintendent of a regional district in a position

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where they would have had that experience and would be able to demonstrate how their skills would be appropriate. And that's how we go about it. We take a look at at the fundamentals. First of all, the fundamental skills needed in a superintendent across the board are what

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they are. But then in actton bars, you will need a particular set of skills for your particular um situation. And that's what we will that's what we would go about learning from you in the first planning meeting so that when we put out the

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advertisement, it reflects, you know, what you're looking for as the school committee at this point. And then we would refine it. Um, and look for more targeted as we learn, as we bring in more community voices. Thank you. Who else has questions?

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Andrew, >> thank you. Thanks for putting this together, for going through everything. Um, you you recognize there's a particular set of skills, as you say, that superintendent need. Your process seems to be create an introduction or invitation to apply letter, get it out

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to your network, then place on specific websites that are tied to this arena. But is this based on active searchers, people that you don't know, or how much of the network, how much work is your network doing to be able to fill the applications? Seems

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like a lot of what you were talking about in here are are these are known quantities to your group that you're reaching out to. And I'm just curious every superintendent's organization in every every state, every um university or higher education

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that that has an administrative program. We are in uh we send out to all assistant superintendent, superintendent, etc. So, we do a broad I'm not sure that I heard you all what you said, but we do a broad base, but we

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also, as I said, have the superintendents in New England who know candidates and we'll we'll do specific searches and we have people that we know across the country. I mean we might you'll get applications um some will make you smile from a

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second grade teacher in the Philippines perhaps but we do have reach and we will um if we feel if if someone feels that a a sitting superintendent or a sitting administration

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calls us and says you know this person over here would be excellent we'll call them. So, we do both targeted and and uh broadbrush. And I'm sorry between I I'm I'm not always sure I'm getting the questions.

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>> That's all right. You did wonderfully. Thank you. It was really mostly a question about the known quantity of the candidates you're able to tap into versus those you do not know and how much are you activating your network going towards finding applicants. >> Right. And we have a propri people go to

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the NASDAQ website all the time looking to see what's open. You know, candidates know to look there. Candidates across the country know to look there. And as soon as we put out an uh your letter, we'll start to get calls and people want to discuss the community with me or with

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um the director. Glenn, >> thank you for this. And so one thing that there are different things you can prioritize when screening candidates. It

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can be like, well, act in Boxboro is regional, perhaps a candidate that's been part of a regional for like 10 years or so. What I'm interested in is how do you identify candidates that could potentially be an excellent fit

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but just haven't been directly a superintendent before? like what are those traits that you look for besides just well they've done it before? >> That's a good question because I always say if you if you really think they have

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to be a regional super sitting regional superintendent why what are you looking for? You're looking for experience here and there and there. I would say in your announcement letter you don't want to cast too narrow a net. you want to do a broad net but to know and say something

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to the I'll be talking to you about that experience in these areas preferred preference given to candidates who um some candidates will self- select who you just wonder but um for the most part

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candidates who say yeah oh okay I've I've led multiple districts yes I can handle financial complexity yes um I understand there'll will apply and then the screening committee will have to take a look at all that application material and say

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these 12 or so look really interesting and let's talk with them and do an initial interview. We will say, you know, we did the search before when Peter was was appointed, but we will say, you know, we know people who could

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be really good in this position. Let's give them a call. It's a little bit difficult in a public recruitment because we're asking the candidate to put his or her name, put their name out there in the public

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and they jeopardize their own position when they do that. and um superintendent searches do that to people. So unless we thought they had a really that they were a really good match, we wouldn't, you know, push them too hard to to to apply.

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I'm sorry that we wouldn't, but uh we would try. >> Andy, >> um thank you for this. I think we're all keenly aware, no matter how long you've been on the school committee, uh on the focus on the community engagement. Um,

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and so I noticed on the the specs there are up to four focus groups either virtual or in person. >> And then um >> I don't know if that's going to be enough for for all of us. So when I looked through the cost and I saw that that each one is an additional, you know, 425, whatever it is. Um, is there a set

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>> criteria for your focus groups? Are there a set timing duration? Is there a set format at the the fifth one, the sixth one, the seventh one, or is it just kind of the timing we need, the format we need, etc. >> Right. Um we can talk about that at the planning group more extensively but

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basically we have a couple of questions that we ask you know the at all focus groups they they last an hour to an hour and a half but people don't need to be glued to their seats because we find that can be

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they say well I don't have an hour and a half they can be drop in and drop out and we make sure that we post the data all around the room so that if they come in they can scan scan, read the walls and and and participate. They can be Zoom if you decide you want some um to

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offer that that some are Zoom and some are in person. And we say take a look at the voices in your community and see if they're all have an opportunity to participate. You know, um

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are you providing enough focus groups and maybe four isn't enough. Uh some communities feel they want to push the the the participation toward the online survey. That's a choice too. But um yeah

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about six focus groups. I know NASDAQ offers four but about six because you you want we'll come maybe to meet with the teachers after school and we'll be available for a couple of hours and so as they get dismissed they can come and drop in there. We might go to an

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administrator's lunch or administrator's meeting when one is scheduled. You want maybe one for the parents either before after school and then one in the evening parent guardian and you can decide yourself if you want to uh have a municipal

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one or you want to include that into the community. So we can talk about that but that's part of the options available at design. You don't want to you don't want at the end of the search for any group to say or for you to say but we didn't really hear from so and so or we didn't

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really given have an opportunity to include this group and you know the superintendent is going to be working with that group after the search. So you you do want to make sure that you include a lot of people do opt for the to participate through the online survey

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though we're finding that's becoming more and more popular. They have to include the students too. >> Oh, and the students. All right. Yes. She loves the student groups. >> Yeah. >> Honest. >> Yeah, they are. >> Lisa,

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>> I just wanted to inquire about how you keep your um your pools fresh. Um because I was just thinking about um or wondering about the frequency with which some of the same candidates might reoccur if you know it didn't work out at a district or they didn't get

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selected. And so just thinking about that when you know examining the the pools that you might >> Right. Well, we don't have a a stable of candidates. Every um search is new and sent out and um we can't stop the

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frequent flyers, but um hopefully you'll get enough targeted that you will find your 12 or so to interview in the screening committee. Um, sometimes people have been in and it's not uncommon for people to have been in four

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or five searches, but if they have the skills to do X and they're a better match over here, like sometimes you'll have a community and they'll be a talented superintendent of a regional committee

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and they might apply here and the district will say, "Well, we're not a region. We we're very this. That's not a match for us. But we do get fresh applicants for we have traditionally gotten a new set that I have to then go

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in and we give you everyone who applies. We don't screen out. We don't uh if if they complete the application, screening committee sees it. >> Okay. Thank you so much. And maybe just to wrap up here,

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>> what sets NASDAQ's approach apart from other firms that we might be interviewing >> or any other ones? What makes you different? >> I think I you know, I'm sure they're all fine. Really, you can't make a bad choice. I wouldn't say that. But um

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we're very personally involved. We do have a strong New England network. We do have a strong reputation in the region and nationally. We

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we do a good job. We do a really good job when when we if we are the firm selected, we'll work so closely with you that you can pick up the phone at any time and say, you know, Carolyn, we wanted to

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maybe think about this or this has come up. So you'll have that personal connection. >> Awesome. Thank you so much for coming. We really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and answer all our questions. >> Thank you for having us. We appreciate it. And really, you can't go wrong. So,

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good luck with whomever you choose. >> Thank you. Well, you did bring us Peter. Um, we'll not hold it against you that he's escaping. >> Yes. Well, don't forget that. Yes. >> Every time you make a decision. >> Yeah. Thank you.

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>> Okay. Good night. Thank you. Welcome. Come on up. >> Good evening. >> Good evening. >> Hello. So, >> can we do the handshake or just wave? >> Okay. >> We We'll let you >> I asked so you know I just want to be sure. We'll let you introduce yourselves

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and share with us and then we'll ask you a few questions and we can go from there. >> All right. Jump right in. All right. Are we between you and adjournment? >> No. >> Okay. All right. So, we'll be >> Oh, it's it's a it's a full agenda. You're you're at the fun end of it. >> Excellent.

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>> Talk quickly. >> Well, we'll do a quick introduction. Uh my name is Mary Flanders and I lead the HR practice at the Colin Center for Public Management. I've been there 16 and a half years, which I can't believe. Uh the uh we do everything from

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executive recruitments, classification, compensation, organizational studies, you name it, HR, we do it. Uh a lot more um mentoring and coaching lately for people who've been promoted into jobs that may not have municipal experience,

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as you all can imagine, succession planning and, you know, training from within. We're doing a lot more of that work lately and uh love what I do. I've been doing this work 30 years. I quit my job as an HR director 23 years ago. My

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son's going to be 22. Um I couldn't afford daycare for three kids and I was in Watertown for nine years and Barnstable before that Welssley for a short time. Mass DPW and Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly. So all nonprofit and public sector. Um, I was a union

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organizer for a little bit. That gives me a little bit of credibility with employees. I work for ASME organizing clerical workers in Illinois. I was going to be Norma Ray. Um, I'm also dating myself by saying I was going to be Norma Ray. Uh, a UMass Ammerst grad.

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So, when I say UMass, that means Ammerst. Don't tell my boss that it doesn't mean Boston. Um, you know. So, uh, I'll let Monica introduce herself and then, uh, we can either go give a quick overview or just answer questions. We know you've read what we've given

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you, so it's up to you. Go ahead. Can you hear from me? >> I'm Monica Visco. I retired as an HR director in the Welssley >> in the Welssley public schools two years ago this June. Um, I'm not going to get into my background as deeply as Mary

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just did. Her Mary loves to talk. Um, so I um retired. I was in Welssley. Prior to that I was in Lexington, the show regional, the town of Framingham, started in Watertown. I'm sure I'm missing something along the way, but I've been working for the Collins Center

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doing a lot of these projects and a lot of the coaching projects. So, I look forward to working with the entire team. >> Great. Uh, was it a quick rundown of our proposal? >> Yes, please. Quick overview and then sure we can dive into questions. We

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don't want to bore you with uh you know the writing. We we presume you've all read it. Um so thank you for for reading it and having us be invited in. I think that um it's hard to write a proposal without having met you first. Usually we

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like to customize things a little bit more. So we made some assumptions of processes. So uh really there's a few sequences. It's developing it's developing a profile of the position.

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Some people call it an ad, a posting, a profile. Um I tend to use profile. Um because it's not just an ad. It is your marketing. It is your marketing tool. Um we want to hear from you the elected

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people whose respons biggest responsibility is filling this position. the debate becomes when do you bring in other input and stakeholder interests. Um we recommend doing that more at the beginning so that that is incorporated

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into what you say you're looking for rather than having you say what you're looking for and then having people add on after the fact. So there's a blended way and we as we put in there uh we like surveys. it it provides more equitable

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access to input. Um, we would like to, you know, we recommend doing a survey. We also know that people like to come in person and, you know, everybody's input is important and I know one of your questions is around that. So, we can

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talk about that then. So, we developed a profile while the position is being advertised. uh we work with we assume a screening committee and we work with them while it's being advertised. So when after the deadline we hit the

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ground running we will work on developing questions with them. We do that before they see the candidates because we want the questions to be tied to the profile and not customized to um

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a candidate or a particular interest. we do even with screening committees so that we are hearing all the voices. You'll be shocked to know sometimes committee members have stronger voices than others and we try to use some

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survey work to compile that before we meet. So we're sharing what they said as a group versus the maybe the dynamic personality who is crowding the the the field there. uh we do an awful lot of

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training and facilitation of team meeting and those skills those HR skills really come to play. I should send my uh Bill Lupini's regard. He is part of this team. He ended up not being able to be here but he will be on the team. So uh

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he was uh superintendent in Beverly and a long time in Brookline. So just remembered that I didn't forget to introduce Bill. So once we work with the screening committee, it's important and we really do we never require anything because you're the client. We really

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strongly urge you to vote a charge to the committee what their role is. They are not picking the next person. You are and their role is to help you know screen with us and recommend potential finalists. So that's really important

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that from the beginning they the screening committee knows their role and and it's hard people like candidates they become favorite. So we work really hard to say this is uh this is your

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role. One of the ways that we do that is we do not use a point factor matrix in anything. We use our consensus building and we use yes no maybe. Do you want to interview this person? yes, no, or maybe. We summarize that before a

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meeting and we then use that as our tool to and that's either who are we going to interview or who are we going to move forward. So, we use that theme throughout. We will we do all of the scheduling, all of the advertising. Um,

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we set up the interviews. We do not participate and we do we are not members of the committee, you know, and and we make that very clear. um we facilitate their work in accordance with your guidance and then when they

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get to the point of recommending potential finalists um we will then do the references and then you all would determine the finalist. So, and then we help you facilitate whether there are focus groups or meetings, public meetings.

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They can be at the beginning, the end, a survey, a facilitated f focus group where we uh have people submit their questions. There's there's risks with open meetings and questions. So, we we do recommend that there's some sort of

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feeding of cards or, you know, whether it's electronic, we would have to work out. Those are some of the details we would want to work out. That's that's it in a quick nutshell. Great nutshell. Thank you. Um I'll lead off here.

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We have we have a very engaged community. We have just gone through strategic planning. We um ended up uh closing one of our elementary school buildings, reorganizing the other five. People are very interested in this process. Um, and so we're wondering how

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do you determine that a candidate is ready to be a superintendent in active box? When you're going out and and using your networks to recruit, what what makes you gives you the sense that, hey, maybe this is somebody who we should nudge to apply here?

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>> That's a great question. Uh, we we actually encourage anybody and everybody to apply. We don't say we don't think you're a good fit. That's what your screening committee is. If you're not going to use a screening committee, we would look at it differently. Um, we

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want people to apply. Now, if we have your profile that says absolute Massachusetts superintendent experience, no ifs, ands, or buts. If there is a a real requirement for that, we would tell

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somebody you do not need that. It's if you're going to wave that, then that gets fraught with a fair advertisement. So, we're pretty we never uh recommend that. We want you to be sure that the language is including those who

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uh might look a little different in terms of their path. So, that really is the conversations we're going to find out with interviewing um each one of you. We will interview each one of you individually so that we and then we summarize that into the profile with

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with data that we get. So we would always encourage anybody to apply. We will refer them to that profile. That becomes our marketing tool. And if it's close, we say it hurts nothing to apply

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and we work with the screening committee. And if there's a real requirement of you must have this license or certification, if that's what you say, that's what we will we will not give those candidates to the screening committee. Barring that, the screening

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committee will see every application. We don't use our judgment. We facilitate theirs. Ben. >> So whereas other consultancies are focused solely on superintendent searches, the Colin Center is focused on

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municipal and state placement of employees, whether it's uh director level or higher. Could you tell me how would this benefit a district like AB as a regional school district whereas we're looking for a

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very set uh specific candidate whereas your consult well it's not consultancy but whereas the Collins Center really focuses on larger municipal agencies or municipal towns and cities and state agencies.

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>> Sure. And we have we don't have the numbers of uh superintendent searches. I've been on a few uh myself. Sbury, Somerville, um done many more principal searches. Again, Somerville, uh Salem,

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we did four principles uh years ago. Um it's about leadership and management and where the line is that the elective board wants it to be. Uh the subject m I can recruit a DPW director. I can recruit a community development and

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planning director. Um it's really hard to recruit an HR director these days. Um so if you know any I've got a few other clients uh so which is why we do so much mentoring in in in HR. It's a process.

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Hiring is a technical process. Um but that's why we do the work upfront. What are you looking for? We ask the questions. You know what are the challenges facing this position? what is the challenges and opportunities facing

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uh the district or the region? Uh what are the characteristics that will make the best person and you know what are some of the things you're looking for that might be intrinsic? It's the same questions we asked when we did the

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Chelsea city manager search. The the public demand, it's a high demand position. Uh everybody's watching everybody with act active you know active groups. Um we we we specialize in

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active uh uh constituencies. We also do a lot of government study and charter work if you need that on the side. Uh so I don't think that it's really that different. It is the same process. When we do a DPW director search we have a

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DPW director on our team. You know, when we do a city manager, we have a a manager on our team. When we do a superintendent, uh we have a superintendent on the team. But what we uh and what we pride ourselves on is

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really that HR view and certainly I don't love talking about I'll talk about Monica. I don't love talking about myself. We are very cautious of equal employment laws, open meeting laws, not googling people in social media searches

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because of bias. Um certified uh got a certification during COVID because what else do you do but go back to school um from Cornell uh we train an awful lot on fair employment and hiring processes. So, it really comes in nicely. Sometimes

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with a board uh I'm sorry, a screening committee who doesn't know municipal um and hiring. Usually, you're bringing people in who have a different interest. Sometimes there'll be an HR person or a recruiter in the group. So, we we bring

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that as well. Andy, um I'm >> noticing in the proposal is a very strong commitment to engagement with the community and the school committee and others. I'm just curious about the what does that timeline look like, right? Because we're, you know, looking for

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something that in a certain time frame. So, what how how long does that take? What is the the general sense of that? >> No more than two years. No. Um uh it's typically we back into it from

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the date. So if you said we need somebody in January, we got to get moving. You know, if you say it's for next July, we always back into how much notice does a sitting superintendent or deputy have to give? So we would back

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in. So if you are saying you know we want a July start date somebody wants to take a little vacation give a month or they want the tricky part is do they want to start in September because they want to finish out the year all of those things. So when we think of and it will

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depend on when you want to do the public input and if you want to have public input on both sides of the candidates. We like the public input so that you have it when you are creating your profile. We like doing the survey work

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then and maybe just doing a meet the candidates later. It really is it does depend on you. I would think and this is just a guess which is why it's hard to put in a proposal that you would let the school

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year start. Get people settled. People aren't focused yet. If you ask them in August, they won't know their schedule in September. Uh when do you form when do you form a screening committee? When we would want to do the work with you all really starting the end of September and

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the beginning of October when you actually advertise the position is tricky and I think we would want to back into we don't want to interview people in October for July. So many things could happen. So, do you tee it up so

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the interviews are in January or do you tee it up so that the ad is published in January and then the work moves quickly there? Your biggest delay will be how many people you have on a screening committee. Um, so it the answer it may

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not be what you want to hear is it depends. >> I'm going to go Jake and then I'll come to Glenn. >> Thank you. Uh, just two quick questions. One's short. Um I was noticing um that in some of the other contracts we looked at they have a warranty if there is a

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failed search. I did not see that in yours. Is that something that you offer or no? Um and second uh just wondering how the team works with you know having um both uh Bill who's not here um and

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Monica and you how like what's the team dynamic like and what are the roles that you play when you're when you're when you're actually conduct in bringing in the search since you're coming from a sort of broader than just superintendent background. Um, it's great to have a a decentsized team because we can cover

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all any and all the meetings. We can interchange with doing the focus groups. We also have another team member, Lindsay, who handles all the resume collection and doing doing the data. Um, I tend to be the liaison to whomever the

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liaison is for the for the district and the committee so that we have one voice communicating. So we we manage we meet regularly. Email and technology is a great thing. You know where are we? What

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is the deadline? Uh for example in a recent search it was um you know working on the questions. I wasn't available. Monica and Bill did that. It's rare that it's only one of us. So,

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it's usually two of us because we bring different things to to the table in different lenses. Having, as I said, we wouldn't do a DPW search without a DPW director. So, having a superintendent really um especially when you've got an

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engaged constituency, they want to see, you know, do they know what we're talking about? So, there's there's that part of it. So, that's how we work as a team. And the first part I lost the question. >> Oh the warranty. Well, you know that

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never happens. So um you know a failed search uh we don't call it a failed search. We call it we do we need to extend it. Um if there is new costs like advertisements or background checks to

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extend a search we just do it. It's part of the, you know, if somebody doesn't work out in 6 months, you know, we can refine the contract if that's important. I wouldn't want to answer that on a dime. We have done it.

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We have done it. If they um but what we like to say is you're the appointing authority and we're not recommending who to hire. we can say we've done things like we don't feel you have enough good candidates

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let's extend the deadline so that's where I don't count that a failure I count that a success of doing the right thing the worst thing you can do is hire the best candidate from a mediocre pool and

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your towns your region deserves the best so we'd rather have you and we wouldn't call it a failure. We stick with you and language can be arranged on that. >> Glenn, >> thank you for this. So,

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um, besides this community and this school district being very civically engaged, uh, what can you tell us about what makes Act in Boxboro unique? what we and considering what we've gone through this past year and

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with the restructuring process, managing conflict, disagreement among the civically engaged community, what can you tell us would be two or three good traits in the in leadership qualities in the candidate pool of a superintendent that

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you would be looking for or suggesting that we would look for? So your question is about what traits we would suggest focus on. We would tease that out from you, but off the top of my head, what I'm hearing is what's

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wonderful about the district also is everything. Um, it is the diversity, it is your model of the school campuses, it is the the choice issues, it is the, you know, there's so many wonderful things about this district. So, that's easy to

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sell. Uh, in terms of the traits, which is a really important thing for you all to hone in on, and I wouldn't want to answer for you, but off the top of my head, even some of the things you said right there is who's going to market and

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project and and help this group be transparent and forward- facing in the communities. It's not one community, it's communities. I also think um you brought up one of our favorite HR words

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is conflict resolution and that doesn't mean people are fighting. Conflict can cause something good to come out of it. So I think mediation skills, diplomacy, diplomacy is one we use all the time because this is your diplomat to and

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that connection to the to the parents, to the students, to the families who don't want to talk to you uh but need to. You know, you you look at the leadership team you have. You have really great positions to be those

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tentacles. and this is a person who can be a conductor of all of the instruments that you have. So I think those things I think diplomacy, mediation and and one we I should do more of active listening

438
02:06:36.800 --> 02:06:56.560
instead of talking. So I'll end on that one. All right, maybe I will close this out with what do you think makes your approach unique or your firm special compared to everybody else out there? >> Well,

439
02:06:56.560 --> 02:07:13.040
we are a bunch of dedicated fools at the Colin Center. Um, we all do this for passion. Many we have other lines of work which I won't bore you with. You can look up the web page. Um, we have phenomenal people like Monica, like Bill

440
02:07:13.040 --> 02:07:30.079
who do this in retirement. We don't pay that well. Um, you know, we are a public agency. Uh, and I think the team and the approach and we actually have a real mission, not a marketing plan. We want to help

441
02:07:30.079 --> 02:07:45.920
governments be better. And and we say that about being a dedicated fool. We mean it. Um, we I think having the unique HR piece is a is is a difference and it is a blend and

442
02:07:45.920 --> 02:08:04.480
we do an awful lot of supervisory training. We do a lot of mentoring. So, we can see in people. We're really the really good at judging character and talent and we can help facilitate those conversations, but we do not ever in

443
02:08:04.480 --> 02:08:21.440
interject our opinion. We we are not a firm that will say you do a search, we'll give you finalists. We're not in your shoes. We're visiting you. So, that would be it. >> Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. I know we uh you're a little later than we planned to be

444
02:08:21.440 --> 02:08:38.040
tonight. We appreciate you being here. There's no basketball game tonight, so it's okay. >> Okay, so now we know what the priorities are. >> Good luck. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Be well.

445
02:08:42.159 --> 02:08:57.119
>> All right, team. So, now for the fun part. We get to have a conversation about what we want to do here. Um, I would propose that if that maybe we just work our way around the table and if you're not ready to share a few thoughts, you can wave it off and we'll

446
02:08:57.119 --> 02:09:12.960
we'll circle back, but maybe we just get some initial opinions out there and uh then see where we go. That sound okay? >> All right. Um, and Hillary and Andy, it doesn't feel fair on your first meeting to do that to you. So, I'm going to look at Adam as our most experienced member

447
02:09:12.960 --> 02:09:28.480
and make him start. I never have a short of of thoughts or opinions on anything that comes in front of us. Um so I think um one thing that stuck out to me was there's going to be a lot of work that

448
02:09:28.480 --> 02:09:43.199
we need to do and our committee is going to need our selection committee is going to need to do. I mean we saw three great facilitators this evening. Um, and so, uh, you know, I think for me the the part that felt most important is who are the people that I'm going to want to

449
02:09:43.199 --> 02:09:58.800
work with through this process. I think that they they all have some upsides, they have some downsides. Um, but I I look at the the folks who came before us and first say, who do I want to work with? And then secondly, who do I feel

450
02:09:58.800 --> 02:10:14.480
has a process that is going to be most responsive to our community? Uh, and then lastly, who demonstrated in some ways that they get us. Um, and when I think about all of that, um, Colin

451
02:10:14.480 --> 02:10:29.119
Center really st stood out for me. And I I will remind everybody that at our workshop, I kind of poo pooed Colin Center because I didn't feel that they had put stuff forward at that time. I will I'm always happy to change my mind. In this case, I will. Um, you know, Mary

452
02:10:29.119 --> 02:10:45.840
said something which she said towns and she emphasized the S, which is one of Liz's favorite things. So, like a clear understanding that there are two towns, two communities here. Um, and just the the vibe that I got from them. I felt like what we're going to need a lot of

453
02:10:45.840 --> 02:11:05.520
is facilitation. We're not going to have a small selection committee. We're not going to have uh, you know, always be aligned in our opinions and thoughts. And so I felt like they were going to be the ones who could be easiest to work with and could get us through some of those difficult conversations. >> Um

454
02:11:05.520 --> 02:11:22.400
I was actually a little bit surprised. I did I did not want to like the Collins Center. Um even in the screening committee I was the one that's like, "Oh, we don't put them forward, right?" And I think it was Dennis actually Dennis and Andrew Shen that were like, "Well, maybe." Um, and I really do and

455
02:11:22.400 --> 02:11:39.280
I'm a little bit torn, especially I didn't want the Colin Center because of the higher price tag and how sensitive our communities are to um price. And then when I do think about it, having two people for the increased amount and one thing that I do like about the Colin

456
02:11:39.280 --> 02:11:54.960
Center is that they they have experience in, you know, other types of searches which I think could lend benefit. That being said, one reason that I am torn and um I did very much like Carolyn as well. Um I think that she would be easy

457
02:11:54.960 --> 02:12:11.840
to work with with us. I think that she kind of gets us. I got sort of a good vibe for her even though she's a little bit more softspoken. Um but I did notice that, you know, Nest does have a lot more experience with regions. You know, when I was looking at the superintendent searches that Collins had, it was more

458
02:12:11.840 --> 02:12:28.239
town-based and less region based. even though I know that, you know, I think that Mary would do an excellent job. Um, you know, I'm I think that this team could really work well for us. But that's where I'm at is I'm kind of between those two. >> Glenn, so

459
02:12:28.239 --> 02:12:43.119
sort of just high altitude, big picture first impressions. Collins is the one that I felt like they get us or at least like if we had to deal, excuse me, if we had an audience

460
02:12:43.119 --> 02:12:58.400
of like several dozen parents at least that are filled with passion and very engaged and like some of them are like ready to hold signs and this and that. I feel like Collins would be able to help steer that

461
02:12:58.400 --> 02:13:14.560
ship without it devolving into chaos in a more skilled way than perhaps NZDC could. NZDC I got this sort of more sense of just like this like this institutional backing. We we we've

462
02:13:14.560 --> 02:13:32.960
we're the top of the top like but I I'm not sure that's what the moment is calling for right now. I feel like Collins um between having if you know what it goes into

463
02:13:32.960 --> 02:13:49.119
into working with a town manager and a DPW, you know what we're dealing with when we're encountering different constituencies like seniors and the and our select boards about the cost pressures they're facing. Like I I think

464
02:13:49.119 --> 02:14:07.119
that's a benefit cuz if NZ is all like we just do super intense, we just do superintendents. That's good. NZ would serve us well. They found Peter for Christ's sake. But what I I think Collins is more well I warmer. That's also another thing

465
02:14:07.119 --> 02:14:22.560
that I I noticed. The fact that just I I feel like they'd be the the excuse me, the easiest to work with. I like that they have experience with other um with town administrators, DPW,

466
02:14:22.560 --> 02:14:39.119
things, other municipalities. Um Brookline and Welssley were school districts that they've that those are excellent school districts. They know what goes into an excellent school district. Um they even have some like experience with navigating union stuff.

467
02:14:39.119 --> 02:14:54.480
Like I feel like between all that interdisciplinary cross-pollonization like I feel like Colin that Collins is what I'm leaning towards. I'm I encourage my colleagues to be candid here.

468
02:14:54.480 --> 02:15:14.239
>> Jake, I'm very worried about group think and like Adam um I'm open to changing my mind uh about the Collins Center. Um, but I do think um that both for me both MASC and the

469
02:15:14.239 --> 02:15:30.639
Collins Center seem to offer the most um likely options of full like a full service kind of continuum. I felt there are things in the um in the NASDAQ um proposal uh where it felt like they might actually be a little more

470
02:15:30.639 --> 02:15:45.360
hands-off than we want particularly in the middle and around the in the in the interview and screening process. Um so I am leaning uh primarily towards Collins um uh with MASC as a backup.

471
02:15:45.360 --> 02:16:01.920
I also would put on the table that MASC offer all the things that we might actually want out of MASC we get without paying for >> Andy. >> Yeah. So I I'm leaning a little bit to what Jake said minus the flip. I would flip MASC with Collins there, but I

472
02:16:01.920 --> 02:16:17.119
think those are the two I'm looking at. I think when I look at it from a really analytical contract business thing, I I like what Collins is saying. I'm wondering if I like it double the cost of what I'm hearing from MASC. Right. I think MSC has a lot of what Collins has. I think

473
02:16:17.119 --> 02:16:34.000
Collins might have a little more, but I do like the handsoff option or at least the handsoff minus some things that they'll do for us. So, I think I'm leaning MASC, but I could be convinced towards Collins if we think that the the the 100%

474
02:16:34.000 --> 02:16:52.080
difference in cost is worth that price. >> I'll flip around here and Hillary, if you're ready, I can start there or I can also start at this end. Your call. All right. Go for it. >> Oh, hi. Um, so I guess my first impression was I I liked the the MASC

475
02:16:52.080 --> 02:17:07.519
because they're Massachusetts focused. Um, and they have a board of school committee members and superintendent. Um, but I hearing what folks are saying about the Colin Center, like Glenn, at

476
02:17:07.519 --> 02:17:23.439
first I thought it was a negative that, you know, they're focused more on like town administrative stuff, but Glenn's point where actually maybe that could help us with some other, you know, community or folks in our community. Um, that might be a positive. Um, I did like

477
02:17:23.439 --> 02:17:39.519
their superintendent profile report from Malden. I thought that was very comprehensive. Um, and I like how it's um, laid out. Um, so I think I think all the folks that presented tonight I could see us working with. I think they're

478
02:17:39.519 --> 02:17:57.040
they seem like great people. Um, so I guess I I don't have a strong preference either way, but I I'd say I'm leaning towards out of the three those two. >> Dennis, >> great. Uh, thanks Tori. Um, so again, I looked at all of those

479
02:17:57.040 --> 02:18:12.719
like Adam did. who's going to be the one that we want to work with the most. Who's going to help with the facilit facilitation? We have a very engaged community I think would be the way to say it and which of those are are ready to meet that challenge. Um, one thing

480
02:18:12.719 --> 02:18:27.439
about the NZDIC one, if I heard her right, and I did have a hard time understanding, was that they would do the community engagement after we already wrote the profile. I think that seemed a little bit flipped. Maybe I misheard that, but I was like that. and and I'm sure they would do it ahead of time, but I think getting the at least

481
02:18:27.439 --> 02:18:44.479
some community engagement in some way before we write the profile and the um the search documents would probably be good. And um Collins did mention that. I I think the two that settled for me were the the MASC and the Collins. I'd

482
02:18:44.479 --> 02:19:00.399
probably lean slightly towards Collins, although I could go either way because of the engagement of a superintendent. they have a p past superintendent from Brooklyn, which is another district similar to ours. Um, highly engaged population that that might be uh

483
02:19:00.399 --> 02:19:16.399
beneficial to have that on the team and again having multiple people to help facilitate that. >> Lisa, >> I was really encouraged by the list of successes that MASC had in terms of who they were having successful searches

484
02:19:16.399 --> 02:19:32.559
for. um heard through the grapevine that Littleton is very excited about their new superintendent and I know that MASC helped them find that. So um for me that was really encouraging. Um, one of the things I liked about NASDAQ was um, when

485
02:19:32.559 --> 02:19:48.319
we were when I was doing a deep dive is they really look at um, they understand that representation matters and when they look at survey results um, I appreciated the fact that they were looking at the respondents and the groups who responded and um, we're really checking that for representation.

486
02:19:48.319 --> 02:20:05.359
So those were just a few things that I wanted to call out that I thought were important. >> Andrew, >> this process is mostly commoditized. Yeah. Every organization that's in this business kind of does things the same way. It's how people find jobs. It's how candidates are vetted for those jobs. I

487
02:20:05.359 --> 02:20:21.920
don't like the cost of Collins. Um I didn't necessarily like the approach of NASDAQ, but between the two like my namesake, um I think in MASC and as a second Collins, but I do really I want to point out that the cost of this is important. We're at a point where we're

488
02:20:21.920 --> 02:20:38.160
trying to to tighten every budget we have to tighten every moment we have. And this is a fabulous opportunity for you, Peter. It's an additional expense on top of everything else. We need to be as aware of that burden as everything else. And I get back to the the beginning of what I said. The

489
02:20:38.160 --> 02:20:54.240
application process is commoditized. There's a limited number of people with particular skills that can do this. If they're looking, they know where to look. if we are putting this out there. All three of these groups know where and how to get that information out. Um, how

490
02:20:54.240 --> 02:21:09.439
we work with them is going to be based on how we choose to tell them to work with us. And I think it's going to be as important for us to really understand what we want to get out of this. Like Adam said, the work we choose to do on on our own as anything else. Um, we'll

491
02:21:09.439 --> 02:21:26.319
get roughly the same from any of these. There's no magic candidate hiding inside just one. >> Ben, >> there's really not much to say after all my colleagues have uh chimed in.

492
02:21:26.319 --> 02:21:41.680
I will say this, one of the things that does concern me about the Collins Center is are they too overstretched by being so, you know, overstretched between superintendent, town managers, DPW

493
02:21:41.680 --> 02:21:57.040
directors, um, principles to me either, um, NZDC or MASC focusing on specifically superintendent, whether it's regional districts or just

494
02:21:57.040 --> 02:22:14.000
singular districts is so important in this process. We have an obligation to our constituents to get this right. And to me, focusing on either of those two, you know, good consultancies, we can't go wrong. As much as I do like the

495
02:22:14.000 --> 02:22:28.960
Collins Center and I've had experience with them through various um uh not opportunities but through various opportunities to work with them. They're a great organization through UMass

496
02:22:28.960 --> 02:22:45.200
Boston and yes I did say Boston. Uh but I do believe that if we are going to be successful, we need to be focusing on a consultancy that truly focuses on superintendent searches, not, you know, a pick and choose what you need type of

497
02:22:45.200 --> 02:23:00.880
adventure. Excuse me. >> Well, this is going to be fun. Okay, so um I'll just summarize a couple of my other notes. Um things I noticed that were different between kind of the three. Um

498
02:23:00.880 --> 02:23:16.399
MASC offers one of its phases is at the end kind of like an integration workshop with the uh school committee and the superintendent. Um that is something that is under their their free category included with our membership. Um NZDC

499
02:23:16.399 --> 02:23:32.720
does something similar Collins does not. Um something Collins does differently in their engagement is that they're involved in finalist forums. So they were talking about not just the the the um the focus groups of getting input,

500
02:23:32.720 --> 02:23:48.319
but on the other end when we have site visits, they're involved in that. It's not that we couldn't do that. I think at this point in time, we're pretty experienced at hosting um focus groups or forums. Um but just knowing that they could be part of that. So that was

501
02:23:48.319 --> 02:24:03.359
interesting. um MASC they attend all of the interviews and screenings and that is something the other two explicitly do not. So that's a difference there. NZDC they didn't talk about this but um they do an agreement

502
02:24:03.359 --> 02:24:18.720
in principle with all finalists. So, kind of like a not the full end contract, but uh like they've already gotten a preview of the contract basically and all the rest of them, nobody else does that. And I think Collins was actually explicit about not

503
02:24:18.720 --> 02:24:34.160
doing that. Um Collins is different on how it describes its reference checks. um they used they used the quote extremely thorough and while we could certainly do additional ones, they saw that as their primary focus and it

504
02:24:34.160 --> 02:24:49.520
sounded like that was something that they took pride in compared to the others that said we would do some and we would help you do yours as well. So there's there would be more on more onus on us there. Um,

505
02:24:49.520 --> 02:25:05.280
I would say just from rapport and who it seemed like we clicked with quickly, I would say Collins, that was that became a more relaxed conversation pretty quickly. Um, and the piece that that interestingly, Ben, the part I think that you were

506
02:25:05.280 --> 02:25:21.200
like, "This feels like you could do anything. You're not specializing in superintendent." The part I actually liked about that is there are some very strong strands of leadership that you need to have to fill any of those roles. and that's why I could see them doing that, especially if they have an experienced superintendent on their

507
02:25:21.200 --> 02:25:38.240
team. So, um, I didn't necessarily see that as disqualifying. I would probably rank order them Collins, NESD, and then MASC. I'm not sure that MASC has the same networks that NESD and Collins have. Um, that is

508
02:25:38.240 --> 02:25:54.080
just an impression more than any real knowledge on my part, though. Um, okay. So, at this point, we probably ought to get somebody to throw a motion out there so that we know what we're debating about. Anyone? All right, Dennis is gonna lead. Go, Dennis. I just have one. >> Oh, you have a question? Okay, more of a

509
02:25:54.080 --> 02:26:10.160
comment or question, and I'm doing math in public, so this is dangerous. People talked about the cost difference, right? It's about 10,000 out of a hund00 million budget. My math is that's 0.01%. >> Yeah. >> So, it's a small it's a small difference. If we think that they are the right one to get us the search, the

510
02:26:10.160 --> 02:26:26.160
cost of not getting this right is far more than that. Yeah, to to follow on that, another perspective is $20,000 is 10% of the superintendent's first year less than 10% of the superintendent's first year salary. Um, so again, I I recognize the

511
02:26:26.160 --> 02:26:42.319
cost pressures, but I I I mean, we could also advertise that over say a 9-year tenure, and that cost us pretty well. With that, then I guess I will uh find the right motion language here to make the motion. So I move uh to select

512
02:26:42.319 --> 02:26:58.479
Collins as the uh sorry as the Collins Center as the search firm to conduct superintendent search and authorize the chair to negotiate and execute a contract with the firm. >> Second. >> All right. So that was moved by Adam and seconded by Glenn.

513
02:26:58.479 --> 02:27:20.680
Further discussion? >> Andy? I would just point out for the math geeks among us is that one other way to look at that is it's 100% more that you would be spending on one than the other. But I understand your points. >> Let's

514
02:27:50.560 --> 02:28:14.479
All right, Jake. >> I just want to ask, is there anything else that we're missing other than the price difference? Um I mean um just gen like we've we've kind of honed in on maybe two

515
02:28:14.479 --> 02:28:30.240
two firms that we're and this price difference seems to be one of the the major considerations. Is there another consideration on the table that we should be talking about that isn't just a $10,000 sticker price difference? >> Yes. I'm raising my hand.

516
02:28:30.240 --> 02:28:47.439
>> Sorry. Go ahead. Uh I it's a good point and I think it sort of responds to some of the feedback from the room which was um scale of the organization or the organization's ability to take on this work. Um Collins Center if you go to their website the number of associates they have is

517
02:28:47.439 --> 02:29:04.479
screensworth um so yes they do a lot of stuff but they have a much larger organization. MASC um there are four field directors there's a marketing person there's a manership person and there's the executive director and that is that the group um and I would say that in the heart of our work they're

518
02:29:04.479 --> 02:29:19.600
also putting on their MASC conference and that team is is leading that work so I think we if we're thinking about capacity for the organization um I I think MASC brings a really great perspective as a as a um association for

519
02:29:19.600 --> 02:29:33.680
school committee members but I worry about their capacity and Alicia alluded to it for one of their field directors running nine searches this year or whatever it was. >> Go ahead. >> I I just wanted to echo off of that

520
02:29:33.680 --> 02:29:52.200
point cuz um like we can still work with MASC with the the no cost aspect. Um I feel this Collins just has a much more robust set of resources to work with and we're going to need them.

521
02:29:54.640 --> 02:30:10.319
All right, it looks like we are ready to vote. Um, all in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? All right, so Ben and Andrew, any abstensions?

522
02:30:10.319 --> 02:30:26.640
All right, so that motion passes. So we will um move forward with Collins. Thank you. Okay, we are so far behind. Oh, love it. Okay, awesome. That gets us to ongoing

523
02:30:26.640 --> 02:30:43.680
business. So, we are on to the second read of the high school handbook. Um, we did our first read on May 22nd. Um, there was no substantive feedback. I think we had some update the mission and the vision.

524
02:30:43.680 --> 02:31:00.479
That was pretty much it. Um this is something that we do annually in the spring and it this is the only school handbook that is actually reviewed at the school committee level. Um and that's a legal thing. Um the rest of uh our school handbooks um

525
02:31:00.479 --> 02:31:16.319
that's a superintendent thing. So >> yeah, so the big one of the big comments that came out of the committee last time was to update the mission vision values to reflect the the current new version of that that was done. Um there were no substantive policy changes that came out

526
02:31:16.319 --> 02:31:41.200
as commentary or questions from the last meeting. Um so what's being proposed is the same handbook with that one minor revision to mission vision values. Um I did not ask Joanie to be here tonight because she has graduation tomorrow. >> I'll move to approve the 2627 ABRHS

527
02:31:41.200 --> 02:31:57.200
student handbook. Second. >> Second. >> All right. Moved by Adam and I will give that to Dennis. We'll get Dennis on the board here. Seconded by Dennis. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Great. That passes unanimously. Thank you. All

528
02:31:57.200 --> 02:32:12.640
right. So, that moves us down to the revisions for the enrollment and transportation policies and procedures. Um, and so we last we looked at first read on May 7th, second on May 22nd, and we got some pretty substantive feedback from CPAC. And uh, with that, I think

529
02:32:12.640 --> 02:32:27.840
I'll hand it to Andrew to thumbs up from from >> Thank you. Uh, so we're revisiting the uh, draft revisions to transportation policy and procedures and enrollment policy and procedures. Um the primary feedback that we received at the last

530
02:32:27.840 --> 02:32:43.120
meeting came from CPAC via Amanda Bailey which is much appreciated and uh that feedback has been incorporated into the drafts that are before you. Amanda and I checked in uh ahead of the meeting and I I I got the informal thumbs up. So

531
02:32:43.120 --> 02:32:58.720
there's the more formal thumbs up. Um so I think that those those that piece of feedback was was met with um was satisfied with the draft before you. uh and beyond that there was no additional feedback that was received between last meeting and this meeting. So if there is

532
02:32:58.720 --> 02:33:13.680
a comfort then I would certainly encourage you to consider uh a vote to approve those uh policies. Just to clarify also typically it's policies that are voted on my school committee. However, Peter made the point which I think is a good one that just given the

533
02:33:13.680 --> 02:33:30.000
the gravity and the depth of the transition that we're facing with AB forward um even if it's not sort of a formal one but certainly voting on the procedures themselves just uh to give kind of that school committee um stamp of approval and review I think probably

534
02:33:30.000 --> 02:33:47.439
would would be appropriate. >> All right, any questions or comments? Adam? >> Yeah, I had a a question earlier. um that I shared with the administration. There's a policy that we have which is policy E AAA um which is a policy around

535
02:33:47.439 --> 02:34:02.720
bus passes um and the policy states that given certain circumstances uh families can apply for um one time or reoccurring bus passes for afterchool child care and what have you. Um and I was curious if our vote on these transportation

536
02:34:02.720 --> 02:34:19.840
policies affected that. And you know, the the response from the administration was no, there's still that opportunity, but um you know, the the caveats on that are always if there's room and there's a route that's served between that school and that final location. So, I know

537
02:34:19.840 --> 02:34:37.280
we've gotten some public feedback around some of the challenges that may exist. There have been these opportunities for bus passes. There will continue to be, and it doesn't seem that our vote on this policy really affects that. Um, so we still have a policy in place that does allow for um, bus passes, albeit

538
02:34:37.280 --> 02:34:52.880
they'll be more limited given the geographic constraints that we'll have now, but there are some options there. >> Hillary, >> I have a question about the transportation policy. So in it, it says students may be required to use

539
02:34:52.880 --> 02:35:19.920
centralized bus stops within a reasonable distance of the residents. What's the definition of reasonable different distance? I will find out that answer for you. >> Okay, thank you. >> I think reasonable distance um I forget

540
02:35:19.920 --> 02:35:35.200
what the state law is offhand. I think quite honestly the state law is like a mile. Um it actually exceeds it. A lot of regional districts actually use us to restrict transportation because they're required to provide transportation, but if the bus stop is placed further away

541
02:35:35.200 --> 02:35:52.640
than the school, then students by default end up having to walk. We don't do that here at AB. Just to be really clear, I think reasonable distance in our community can be a little more complicated because it doesn't just consider a distance, it also considers whether there's a safe walking route to the bus stop. Um, and so it it's

542
02:35:52.640 --> 02:36:10.800
actually a combination of factors. I think typically our bus stops are usually within about a quarter mile of of a student's house, which is pretty reasonable standard um and significantly under state guideline. Okay. I just the reason I'm asking

543
02:36:10.800 --> 02:36:27.760
because I know there's a bus stop in Boxboro where some folks have to travel almost a mile n10 of a mile to their to the bus stop. So that's why I'm asking. There there are certainly some times and I think um one of the things I'm going

544
02:36:27.760 --> 02:36:44.160
to say I remember it distinctly because it was the year before I got here the school committee made a decision to stop going into culde-sacs um for a variety of reasons. One the time it took buses to try and go down a culde-sac turnaround. You know oftentimes they actually couldn't turn around. So we had

545
02:36:44.160 --> 02:37:00.319
times they'd have to back up. Um that was causing a lot of cost experiences on buses. um which meant more buses, more costs, things like that. So um school committee made the decision to stop that and that did increase particularly for culde-sacs. There are times when

546
02:37:00.319 --> 02:37:23.520
students are walking further. >> Any other discussion? >> I agree. I I thought it was a mile as well. And I know that they try to go to the closest main safe place to do all the stops when they're doing all the

547
02:37:23.520 --> 02:37:47.920
routes, but it can be up to a mile. >> I'd like to make a motion that is a daisy chain of motions. And so I move to approve the proposed changes to policy JC, enrollment of students as presented. Additionally, I move to approve the proposed changes to policy JC-R

548
02:37:47.920 --> 02:38:04.960
enrollment of students as presented in the understanding that future revisions of this procedure may be made by the administration. And additionally to approve the proposed changes to the transportation procedures as presented with the understanding that future revisions to that procedure may be made by the administration. And finally to

549
02:38:04.960 --> 02:38:20.800
approve the proposed changes to the transportation policy as presented. >> Second. >> That was moved by Adam and seconded by Liz. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Great. That passes unanimously. Thank

550
02:38:20.800 --> 02:38:36.880
you. All right. That takes us to the um electric services agreement. Um, this is a solar generation agreement on for the main campus that we voted back on March 19th that needs an update that I'm going to let one of you explain.

551
02:38:36.880 --> 02:38:52.080
So, the school committee back on March 19th had voted the original contract. This is to just satisfy the contract with Calibrant, which runs through the spring of 2031. We've agreed to pay them a maximum of 11,000 per year, which

552
02:38:52.080 --> 02:39:08.319
normally we would have paid through quarterly invoices that they sent us. So, this is just a one lump sum a year. We just need um approval from the school committee to approve the amendment. And if so, then we'll have Peter sign it tomorrow.

553
02:39:08.319 --> 02:39:23.439
>> Can I give a 10-second background on that? So, Calibrant, if you don't know, we have a battery storage array at the high school. Um, Calibrant is the operator of the battery storage array at the high school. We were one of the first school districts in the state to install a battery storage array on campuses. And one of the unique things

554
02:39:23.439 --> 02:39:39.359
we found in the contract with Calibrant when we went to expand solar is they had a clause like a basically a makeole clause in the contract that if we ever added solar capacity, we somehow had to make whole their the loss of production that they got

555
02:39:39.359 --> 02:39:55.920
because they would lose an offset in revenue. So there's there's no overall negative impact to the district, but this makes Caliburn whole, which allows us to expand the solar production um that we had voted prior this school year. >> Andy,

556
02:39:55.920 --> 02:40:16.800
>> just confirming. So the cost to us is not changing just in the way in which we're paying them or is Okay, >> go Adam. I move to accept the first amendment to the electric service agreement between actin Box Regional Schools and Caliberbees SS Holdings 1 LLC as presented.

557
02:40:16.800 --> 02:40:32.080
>> Second. >> That was moved by Adam and seconded by Ben. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Great. That is unanimous as well. All right, we are to subcommittee member reports, which is awesome. Liz, tell us about

558
02:40:32.080 --> 02:40:54.880
negotiations. Um negotiations are continuing to um negotiate. Um at our last meeting uh we did invite the uh select board and um finance committees of both towns to really try

559
02:40:54.880 --> 02:41:11.520
and increase the transparency and be able to um sort of you know understand both the perspective of our teachers um as well as the challenges that the district is going through. Um we only have a few items that are left. Granted, they are sort of the more meat and potatoes of the contract and we are

560
02:41:11.520 --> 02:41:27.439
hopeful that we will come to a resolution over the next uh the next time that we meet is Wednesday. >> Thank you. Any questions for Liz? Okay, next up is common thread. >> At your desk, you will see a list of

561
02:41:27.439 --> 02:41:43.920
voting members that have agreed to be a part of this. Um we are looking still for a couple of folks to join. Uh, we did get somebody since this meeting started this evening to volunteer from Flanchard. We're looking for somebody from McCarthy Town and someone from the ML world, but Jen Faber is working on that. You'll see that as we have this

562
02:41:43.920 --> 02:42:05.359
list of voting members, we are rep we're representing CPAC, not Amanda. >> We are, you know, thrilled to have Kristen involved with us. We've got folks from the Parker Damon building that will be the next version of that. Miriam as legacy, McCarthy Town, we

563
02:42:05.359 --> 02:42:20.240
don't have yet. Douglas as legacy, Conan as legacy, Boardwalk going forward, and Blanchard to be determined. Um, this is the list that you'd asked for and we're very happy to present it to you

564
02:42:20.240 --> 02:42:36.160
>> before you make a motion. Oh, you have a question. Okay, you can ask a question then. >> Did I understand that you have someone who signed up for Blanchard? >> Yes. Over the like within the last two hours. I mean, would it would it make sense since we're voting a membership to put that name on there so that we can

565
02:42:36.160 --> 02:42:50.960
vote that person now instead of having to come back at another meeting? >> I sent the name to you. >> Yep. >> Nicole Ga. >> Yeah. >> Great. >> All right. So, I was just going to say how much I appreciated looking at that list and seeing a number of people

566
02:42:50.960 --> 02:43:07.840
who've expressed a range of diverse perspectives over the past year. And this is exactly what we said we wanted to do was pull people together in moving forward. And >> I really appreciate the work that you've done to bring this. I know it's been

567
02:43:07.840 --> 02:43:23.840
hard to to get to this point where you had these head lists of names and memberships that we can vote on. But thank you for doing that. >> Anybody else? Andy, >> if I if I can find some people who are um interested at MCT, would they get in touch with one of you?

568
02:43:23.840 --> 02:43:41.840
>> Yeah. >> Okay. Excellent. >> All right. Looking for a motion. >> All right. Um I move to approve the membership updates to the common thread task force as presented with the addition of Nicole Gerga as the Blanchard representative

569
02:43:41.840 --> 02:43:57.520
>> and I'll second that. >> All right. So that was moved by Liz and seconded by Andrew. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Okay. Excellent. that >> that. >> All right, so hang on. We're not quite

570
02:43:57.520 --> 02:44:13.439
done because I saw hand waving and I need to go back to my list of >> There we go. This um No, we're not there yet because I saw Glenn, you said you had something you wanted to Yep. Extensive or succinct? >> Succinct.

571
02:44:13.439 --> 02:44:29.520
>> Succinct. >> Succinct. Okay. Good thing I asked. Um do uh select board is currently reviewing a proposal for two-story promo school childcare facility on Massachusetts A significant deliber del deliberation

572
02:44:29.520 --> 02:44:44.880
ensuring traffic safety and pedestrian protection near the junior high campus. Uh there are goal listening sessions taking place and act in leadership uh group is scheduled to meet uh in July. Uh we

573
02:44:44.880 --> 02:45:01.840
acknowledge that and we're working on scheduling and uh Kelly's Corner continues to progress. The next goal setting workshop is on Monday, June 8th from 4 to 7 in the library conference room with final goals slated for approval on June 15th. Residents may continue to to email suggestions to

574
02:45:01.840 --> 02:45:20.080
sbapta.gov. >> Thank you, Liz. >> Um quick question for you because you mentioned that the select board is looking at a potential um new school that has applied. Is that the Primrose school? >> Primrose. Correct. It's Well, it's a child care facility. >> It's childcare facility, not not like a

575
02:45:20.080 --> 02:45:37.040
charter school. >> Correct. >> Childare. Yes. >> Thank you. I wasn't sure and I couldn't find anything on the preliminary. >> I personally would have titled it just childcare facility if I was in charge, but regardless, it's a childare facility. >> Lisa, uh, the finance committee has

576
02:45:37.040 --> 02:45:54.000
recently formed a new subcommittee, which is very exciting. And this subcommittee is going to be tasked with looking for opportunities for cost savings uh knowing that there's some tough times ahead financially. And so uh that's something that they're really working on. And that's all I have to report.

577
02:45:54.000 --> 02:46:12.080
Any other reports that we've missed? Okay. Awesome. So next up as we move into the reorganization, Peter, we're not going to give it to you quite yet. Um, this is something we do annually once all of our new members are seated. And Hillary and Andy, I remember this 3

578
02:46:12.080 --> 02:46:28.399
years ago because it was literally the first thing on the agenda. So the first time I touched the red button was voting for Adam as chair. So there you go. Like that's it is a really hard thing to do. And just recognizing that, you know, I mean, at least Dennis and Jake, you guys

579
02:46:28.399 --> 02:46:46.880
have had a couple of meetings. Um, >> it's not awkward at all. >> No, not at all. and and we'll get through it. But um yeah, it it's tough. And I think Adam, you shared some kind of some background last night at CPAC that I heard was was

580
02:46:46.880 --> 02:47:03.279
something that people in the community really received well. And I just wondered if you'd kind of share what what you shared with the rest of the crew here before we proceed. >> Gladly. Um so you know what I shared is a bit of context about how we got to this process that we're at today. Um it it used to be and it's it's always been

581
02:47:03.279 --> 02:47:19.520
in our policy that um as soon as the new committee is fully seated, we vote for our chairperson for the the following year. And in the past, we would vote for that chair and at the end of that vote, they would literally pick up their stuff and move into the chair's seat. So, you

582
02:47:19.520 --> 02:47:34.319
can imagine being a new member and not only like making that vote, but then thinking that this person was going to run the rest of the meeting and someone else did and maybe that person didn't know that they were going to run the rest of the meeting and had to sort of take that over. So, um, the the committee looked back somewhere around

583
02:47:34.319 --> 02:47:49.279
like eight, seven or eight years ago and said we probably should make this a little less awkward. And so, what we did was say, okay, we're going to when we seat the new members, we're going to vote for the leadership of the committee for the following year. And that leadership handover is going to take

584
02:47:49.279 --> 02:48:05.520
place as of August 1st because that provides for a smoother transition. So we have this awkward moment where Peter gets to take over and be in charge of the committee and you know gets to hold the gavl and all of that and then we sort of we do the thing and then we go back to sort of business as usual. Um

585
02:48:05.520 --> 02:48:22.960
and you know over the years the part that still is uncomfortable in particular for the Boxboro members because we end up being seated later is that at your first meeting you're asked to vote on the popularity contest that is the chair position. Um, and so, you

586
02:48:22.960 --> 02:48:39.200
know, I've recognized that and we we actually Tori and I had a conversation about it and I was advocating for us to be able to push this back at least one meeting. The reality is we have a full we committee this evening. Next week we won't. And so, you know, when you think about that, I would rather have the

587
02:48:39.200 --> 02:48:55.359
leadership of the committee voted by the entirety of the body as opposed to those some people who may not be able to be here next week. Um, but I also just really want to recognize, particularly for the new members, um, this is a really uncomfortable position. Um, and you know, the good news is it only lasts

588
02:48:55.359 --> 02:49:11.120
for a year. The bad news is it lasts for the next year. Um, but you know, I I just I think it's really important to name for this group in particular, for all of us around the table. This is uncomfortable for those who are new. It's maybe even uncomfortable for those

589
02:49:11.120 --> 02:49:27.920
of us who have done this a number of times. But, you know, it's a really important opportunity for us to set the the leadership um of the committee for the next year. >> Would you like the gavl, Peter? >> You didn't bring your own this time. >> Oh, okay.

590
02:49:27.920 --> 02:49:43.840
>> No, Adam, I think that was your request. Um, so just before we get started with this, I'll just go through the procedures so everyone would knows how this works. So the first thing that happens is I open the floor for nominations for chairperson for FY27. Um

591
02:49:43.840 --> 02:50:00.960
you can nominate another member or yourself. Um and there's no second needed. So it's just anyone who's nominated is on the floor. Um once nominations for the position of chair are look appear to be done, I'll ask you to vote to close nominations. All right?

592
02:50:00.960 --> 02:50:17.680
And that's a vote that you all take as a school committee. Um after nominations have been closed, we give each nominee a chance to speak. Um and then members may speak in support of candidates as well. Um once that's done, we then uh do a roll

593
02:50:17.680 --> 02:50:31.840
call vote per our procedures. Each member here um can vote for one candidate. A candidate must have a majority of weighted votes to be elected. the candidate with most weighted votes will be declared the new chairperson unless no candidate receives

594
02:50:31.840 --> 02:50:48.319
a majority vote. Um in that case uh additional roll call votes will be taken. A majority vote if all 11 members are present and cast votes is 10.75 out of a total of 21.5

595
02:50:48.319 --> 02:51:03.040
total weighted votes. Okay. Is that clear? Any questions on procedure? Okay. So, with that said, uh why don't we open the um floor for nominations for the

596
02:51:03.040 --> 02:51:25.279
position of chairperson for FY27. >> I nominate Tory Campbell for chair. >> Little bit of pretext. I thought a lot about this vote. It's more than just running the meetings. It's what we need from the chair for the next year and this coming year is going to be

597
02:51:25.279 --> 02:51:40.319
important one for the district. We'll be overseeing all the implementation all the major changes and I think the most important qualities of the chair are the ability to listen to diff differing viewpoints remain thoughtful and dispassionate during difficult discussions and to hold strong convers

598
02:51:40.319 --> 02:51:56.160
convictions rather without making disagreements personal to translate ideas into action. We need someone who can help the committee do its best. I've had the opportunity to work closely with one member of this committee in a setting where those qualities have been on display repeatedly. I've seen someone who is an excellent operator who

599
02:51:56.160 --> 02:52:11.279
approaches problems with rigor and fairness, who can remain steadfast in her beliefs while gen genuinely engaging with other perspectives and who is focused on moving the work forward rather than winning arguments. For those reasons, I'd like to support Liz Folks

600
02:52:11.279 --> 02:52:35.200
for chair, but I also know she's too busy to say yes. I just wanted to say nice things about her. Trying to figure out the best way to articulate what what I'm I'm nominating Adam. And the reason I'm doing that is because I feel like we've got a lot

601
02:52:35.200 --> 02:52:50.800
coming up in the last year. We've got a lot of baggage from the last year. And I think we need someone who has had the chair um before because we've got so much on our plate um especially with the superintendent thing going on. And so I

602
02:52:50.800 --> 02:53:11.600
think that given some of the points that you made and some of the points that I'm thinking about continuity or at least having someone who has a smaller learning curve that I that's why I'm nominating. Yeah. Lisa,

603
02:53:11.600 --> 02:53:28.080
>> I vote to end discussion >> to end the nomination. >> Can we >> All right. >> So, >> okay. Question. >> Just a point of order question. Um, when at what point do we accept or um

604
02:53:28.080 --> 02:53:46.319
politefully polite >> after we close once we close the floor? >> So, I think parliamentary inquiry. So we're this is just the who are we nominating for chair and >> this is only nominations >> only nominations and then after and then

605
02:53:46.319 --> 02:54:00.080
we close nominations and then we discuss. >> Correct. >> Okay. That that sounds great. >> Nominations. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So there's a motion on the floor to close nominations. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Okay. So we have a motion and a second.

606
02:54:00.080 --> 02:54:17.600
Um any discussion around that? >> Okay. All in favor? >> I I >> Any opposed? >> Any abstensions? All right. So, the motion to close off um nominations is unanimous. Um and we will go on to um

607
02:54:17.600 --> 02:54:33.120
giving each candidate an opportunity to speak. Um so, I'm just going to go in order of candidates that did that. And if you decide that you either do want to accept or don't want to accept, you can also share that at that point. All right. So, Tori, you were nominated

608
02:54:33.120 --> 02:54:49.359
first. I feel like I've gone first an awful lot in uh speaking lately. Um so thank you Ben for the nomination. Um and thank you to the committee for the trust that you placed in me last year. Um you know as

609
02:54:49.359 --> 02:55:05.840
Andrew highlighted a lot of what you see with the chair is what happens here in the room. Um organizing the discussion, making sure that everybody has the information they need and that their questions get answered. um making sure that everybody's voice is heard and

610
02:55:05.840 --> 02:55:21.359
making sure that we come to that point that we are ready to actually vote and this year definitely tested that a lot. We had complicated, difficult, consequential decisions and we didn't

611
02:55:21.359 --> 02:55:36.640
always agree. And that was important because we reflected the diversity of views across our community and the perspectives that we all brought to the table strengthen the decision that we

612
02:55:36.640 --> 02:55:53.359
made. We couldn't wrap everything into the structural decision. I think we talked about that a lot. It was really hard to know that there was no answer that could do everything for everyone. But everything that we brought up that we couldn't address through the structural implementation or through the

613
02:55:53.359 --> 02:56:08.640
structure, we looked at how do we wrap that into the implementation? How do we keep all of those things in our minds and take care of them? And as we've done this, we've all gotten to experience what it means to be an individual on this committee and to bring those those

614
02:56:08.640 --> 02:56:23.520
perspectives in and then what it means to be a member of a decision-making body and then to move forward together. And it hasn't been easy. But one thing I am incredibly proud of is that even though we have struggled

615
02:56:23.520 --> 02:56:40.479
through some of this, our disagreement has never prevented us from continuing to work together. some of the people who challenged us the most now sit at this table. And that's awesome because again, bringing in these

616
02:56:40.479 --> 02:56:55.600
perspectives makes us make stronger decisions and it helps take those perspectives back out to the community because we all bring different networks in. And it's also really exciting that so many of the people who raised their hand to run are

617
02:56:55.600 --> 02:57:11.439
still raising their hand for how can I be involved with this committee? I'm excited by that. I could I saw Diego walk in the door today. I was like, "This is cool." Um, so I believe we are in a much stronger place for as hard as this past year has been. And I think we

618
02:57:11.439 --> 02:57:28.080
are strengthening the connection to the community that we serve. And so I see three important um opportunities that we have this year. And that first one is absolutely strengthening relationships. It's with our boards and our committees. It is with our community. And it is with each other. And that's important because

619
02:57:28.080 --> 02:57:43.359
that's what gets us through these hard decisions. and what helps us to be strong when we're all looking at each other and the answers aren't easy. We have to be able to keep having these conversations. Second, we have to grow our capacity as

620
02:57:43.359 --> 02:58:01.120
a committee. You know, my first year was like this. It was a year of great turnover. There were five of us that were new. The next year, the full committee was the same. And last year, we brought in Glenn and Lisa, but like this is the biggest turnover we've had in a while. So, a third of our committee is new. And so what I think that means

621
02:58:01.120 --> 02:58:16.720
is that we have to be deliberate in bringing everybody along and making sure that we all have the same context so that we can work together effectively. And I see part of that as providing that context as we've been trying to do in this meeting this evening and providing a clear roadmap for where we're going

622
02:58:16.720 --> 02:58:32.640
after this as well. I also think that it's really important that leaders as leaders we are providing opportunities for everybody to gain experience and confidence and grow our leadership capacity. Um sure you know we

623
02:58:32.640 --> 02:58:48.479
have two of us who've been chairs before Liz who's been a vice chair. Um it's good to have lots of people who are ready to be able to do this. And so I see that as as a key thing that we keep working at this year. And then third, you know, as Andy mentioned, we are

624
02:58:48.479 --> 02:59:04.960
navigating some really significant transitions this year. It's it's not routine. It's not last year. It's different. We are keeping a close eye on AB forward implementation. We are conducting a superintendent search and finding that right superintendent to be able to implement

625
02:59:04.960 --> 02:59:22.720
the strategic plan that we worked so hard to put together. And we probably have another challenging budget cycle. And I respect incredibly that we have two select board members that are sitting here with us through this meeting. and they are still here. You, my returning members, you have all

626
02:59:22.720 --> 02:59:38.399
been incredible partners through this year. There have been times that you picked up the phone and called me and said, "Keep your head up. You're doing good work. I know it's hard." There are times when I picked up the phone and called you and said the same thing. Um,

627
02:59:38.399 --> 02:59:56.000
Adam, you have been the most incredible partner through this year. Um, you bring tremendous experience to this committee. You have a sense for looking at big ideas and knowing how to make them real and I have really valued having you as

628
02:59:56.000 --> 03:00:12.000
somebody who was right along there the entire time. We are going to be okay whatever decision we make tonight. Chairing this committee for me has the learning piece I think has been that you get to speak less with your own voice.

629
03:00:12.000 --> 03:00:28.479
and you spend more time having to represent what the committee is is thinking. And on the one hand, that that can feel hard. There are times that there have been things I really wanted to say and I couldn't. But it's also really important because

630
03:00:28.479 --> 03:00:44.960
it's something that really speaks to my why. I love in leadership bringing together teams of people who see things differently and working through things and coming up with that shared path forward. that is just something that I'm passionate about. Um

631
03:00:44.960 --> 03:01:03.000
so for that reason I would I would embrace the opportunity to do this again. Um I would value providing some continuity in the year ahead and um I would be honored to have your support. Thank you.

632
03:01:04.240 --> 03:01:20.399
>> Okay. Uh Liz, >> um I want to thank you for the nomination. Uh this is actually a role that I have had my eye on for um a while with my tenure and much how Tori says you know a

633
03:01:20.399 --> 03:01:36.880
lot of being the chair is in this room there's a whole lot of being the chair that happens before this before we're in these meetings you know between setting agendas meeting with Peter something that my 9-to-f5 just unfortunately would not afford me enough time to dedicate

634
03:01:36.880 --> 03:01:56.080
myself in the way that I would want to for this committee. Um, so I will respectfully decline the nomination. Um, and I will still be all up on all all those other subcommittees and such. >> Okay, Adam.

635
03:01:56.080 --> 03:02:12.399
>> Uh, thank you Andy for the nomination. Um, you know, as as I look over here, I can remember this time last year and I said to Tori, I said, "Do you have something prepared because you're probably going to get nominated?" And she was like, "What? do I need to prepare something? And this evening, you were quite well prepared and I looked

636
03:02:12.399 --> 03:02:28.880
over at myself this evening and said, I should have prepared something. Um, but I have some thoughts. Um, and you know, I would say first of all, the work of of being the chair of the committee is something that I I genuinely enjoy. Um, and oftentimes people say, "Oh my gosh, are you still on school committee and you're the chair? Are you crazy?" Um,

637
03:02:28.880 --> 03:02:45.760
>> yes. >> But for some reason I like it and I keep coming back to do the work. Um, and you know, I think there's a lot of important work ahead of us. Um, and I will be honest, I'm happy to serve wherever we need that that work done uh in any capacity um needed. Uh, and like Tori, I

638
03:02:45.760 --> 03:03:01.359
believe that um we need a really strong bench of future leaders. Um, because we've got a lot of talented people on this committee now. And I think that particularly uh as chairs and vice chairs, we need to start to build that capacity amongst our team. we need to be

639
03:03:01.359 --> 03:03:16.479
able to sort of offload some of that work and um be able to build that capacity in our in our um committee moving forward. Um but yeah, I would I would be happy and would love to do the the responsibilities of the chair again

640
03:03:16.479 --> 03:03:36.160
and thank you for the nomination. >> Okay. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak? Lisa, >> I would like to speak in support of having Tori as our chair. Um, I'm going to recognize what's kind of funny is

641
03:03:36.160 --> 03:03:51.680
last year when I was sitting where you are as the new members, I actually voted for Adam last year and my reasoning was that I wanted the continuity because he was chair the year before. And now I'm actually going to say the same thing

642
03:03:51.680 --> 03:04:06.800
again, but for different reasons. I would like to see Tori as chair again this year because of continuity. Um she served as the face of AB Forward and I just feel as we're going into this next year with implementation I think that's

643
03:04:06.800 --> 03:04:24.080
going to be really important um just to have her finish seeing us through with that. Um, and I'm gonna say one of the things that I really appreciated about Tori, um, is taking this last year as I've gotten to know her, is as a new member and sitting where, sorry, not

644
03:04:24.080 --> 03:04:39.120
trying to call out our new members too much, but sitting where you're sitting, I just remember last year, it feels like yesterday, coming into this and being so nervous and I feel like it doesn't matter what background or, you know, what you have in terms of experience.

645
03:04:39.120 --> 03:04:54.160
This is a whole new ball game. This is very different. And I just remember being terrified because I had those knowledge gaps and there's things you know you don't know and there's things you don't know that you don't know. And um it took me some time before I

646
03:04:54.160 --> 03:05:10.960
developed that trust. I was nervous about coming to Tori about with all my questions because there's just so much when we're voting on things. It's important to have that understanding about operationally what's happening within the district and you know how do things work and every school district's

647
03:05:10.960 --> 03:05:26.080
different. And even though I taught in other school districts, I just was still learning AB. And uh Tori was so patient and so kind and just answered my numerous questions. And my kids have this joke about, "Are you on the phone

648
03:05:26.080 --> 03:05:41.680
with Tori again?" Because I she was just so patient and just giving me the knowledge that I needed to understand. We had hundreds of pages of stuff that we had to read throughout the AB forward process, but I had a lot of questions

649
03:05:41.680 --> 03:05:58.800
about, hey, how does this actually work? And it's I'm reading this and I understand this from an informationational perspective, but from an operational standpoint, you know, help fill in some of these knowledge gaps and what does this look like in a school, uh, particularly our schools. And so she was just this unending

650
03:05:58.800 --> 03:06:15.040
patience to work and I there was a lot of, you know, mentorship. I saw her not only with me, but then, you know, checking in with our other new member here, and I won't speak for someone else's experiences, but just seeing that and one of the things that I really appreciated that I witnessed was the way

651
03:06:15.040 --> 03:06:32.080
that she just reached out to all of us and genuinely cared about through us. Last year, I would say that it is quite an understatement if I were to say that it was challenging. Um, I've described it to other people as emotionally arduous. This last year was very very

652
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very difficult and it was through her leadership that I I truly believe in my heart of hearts that got us through that and brought us together as that glue because relationships really matter to Tori and getting to know each and every single one of us. I've seen the

653
03:06:49.520 --> 03:07:05.439
way that she takes the time to talk to all of us really matters. the mentorship, the giving, the transfer of knowledge, and not only those relationships with committee members, I've also witnessed her in ALG. I've also witnessed the way that she has

654
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worked to develop those real good working relationships with other board, you know, the select board, finance committee. She's worked to get to know a lot of different people because she wants a very informed perspective and I've really appreciated that. And so,

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um, these are just a few of of the many, many things that I appreciate about you as our leader. And it's I I could go on and on as why I support her, but, um, these are my reasons. >> Hillary.

656
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>> Okay. So, I I can't speak to all the experience you have working with Tori. Um, I can speak to working with Adam just being involved in that the town of Boxboro and and um having different conversations with him. I think he's um

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fully capable of being the chair. He's done it before. Um, and I'd also like to point out that um the sentiment that the community heard with the AB forward process is that we're asking the schools to start a new this coming school year.

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So, I would encourage us to think about that and maybe we should start a new this coming year. Um, so >> Glenn, there was just something that sort of zipped on by that I just wanted to touch

659
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on cuz I thought the quote just you get to speak less with your own voice was so indicative of the kind of leadership style that Tori has demonstrated over the past year.

660
03:08:44.640 --> 03:09:02.240
So I for a little background like I've I've I have an activist background and I've been in nonprofit spaces and I facilitated meetings for years and I I I I didn't even really realize this but I I feel like I sort of just had this idea

661
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where leadership is like well you come in you assess the situation you say what needs to be done and then you charge ahead and like that's what leadership and that there are people that are literally in the seauite of Fortune 500 companies, the upper echelons of government status

662
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and prestige where like that's their view of leadership. You come in, you say what needs to be done, bark in order, and then that's it. And that's not at all what embodied genuine consensus building leadership truly is. And it has

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03:09:34.319 --> 03:09:50.640
been nothing short of an absolute gift and a privilege to see Tori Campbell lead this committee and this region through with probably without exaggeration one of the most tumultuous,

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03:09:50.640 --> 03:10:06.240
volatile and disruptive years in the history of Actton Boxro in at least the past half century. and we are stronger for it. And the fact that Tori owns

665
03:10:06.240 --> 03:10:24.319
that, yeah, we don't always agree all the time on everything and that that's a good thing. And it's a good thing because we hear your perspective. Just the other quote, that wasn't my role to say it. And I mean, sometimes I've there

666
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have been a few conversations behind the phone. It's just like, Tori, your judgment is great. What do you mean you're not your role to say it? that's exactly what we should do. And it's like that's not the the lead the role of a leader is to be able to build consensus

667
03:10:39.040 --> 03:10:54.800
so that you're not just you're not telling people what to do. You're helping build the the committee and the consensus in the entire town to be able to come together and discern those decisions as a team. And that's the leadership style that

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Tori has demonstrated for the past year. And that's what we need for the next one. Dennis, >> I just want to say how fortunate we are to have such capable and and thoughtful leaders um to step up into this kind of role. And whatever way this goes, um I'm

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happy to support either one of you. >> Anyone else wanted to make a comment? Okay, with that said, uh we will do a roll call vote and if it's okay with you, just so I can track the votes, I'm going to go in alphabetical order by last name. That's all right. Um so Lisa

670
03:11:40.080 --> 03:11:57.279
and so just your the the two candidates remaining are Tory and Adam. Um and just to be clear, an abstension actually reduces the total number of weighted votes as well. Um, so if you know a box bar member abstains, it goes from 21.5

671
03:11:57.279 --> 03:12:19.479
to 20.5 votes total and if an acted member abstains, it goes from 21.5 to 19 total votes. Clear? Okay. So, Lisa, >> Tori. >> Okay. Uh, Ben, >> Tori,

672
03:12:20.319 --> 03:12:39.680
>> Andrew, >> Adam, >> Dennis, >> Tori, >> Glenn, >> Tori, >> Tori. >> I think alphabetically I'm before Glenn.

673
03:12:39.680 --> 03:12:54.479
>> Wow. >> What's that? >> I I'm questioning your ability. You're I'm pushing your literacy skills, Peter. >> Okay, go for it. >> Tori, >> at almost 10 o'clock at night, I'm sure you're correct. >> Second, I thought Tori voted for me. >> Uh Jake,

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>> Tori, >> we're gonna just keep going right through this if that's okay. Liz, >> Tori, >> Hillary, >> Adam, >> Adam.

675
03:13:11.120 --> 03:13:25.920
>> Did I mention this was awkward, >> but I'll vote for myself. Adam. >> Okay. And Andrew, >> Adam. >> Okay. So, um, Tori wins a nomination on that. She has a majority of votes at, uh, 16 weighted votes. All right. So,

676
03:13:25.920 --> 03:13:47.760
congratulations, Tori. We need two vice chairs. >> Thank you everyone. And I also hear the comments from um everybody who's looking at what we need to do to move forward together.

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Keep keep talking to us. It's good. Thank you. gets to take over. >> Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. Um, okay. So, I do have to run this part and I didn't prepare for this part. Um, so let's see. According to my agenda, we

678
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are now doing the uh the vice chair from Actton. Thank you, Peter. Great. I am opening the floor for nominations for the position of vice chair uh from Actton. Um, you may nominate another person, another member

679
03:14:22.800 --> 03:14:41.200
yourself. A second is not needed. And once we've got those nominations. Yeah. Great. Liz, >> I would like to nominate Lisa. And I could sit here and talk, but it's 10 p.m. So, hearts I was going to nominate.

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>> Do we have any further nominations? All right. Lisa, would you like to say a few words? >> I move to close nominations. >> Oh, thank you, Adam. See this? >> Thank you, Adam. I don't even have a >> I know it was moved by Adam and seconded by Dennis. Thank you. All in favor?

681
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>> I. >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Great. Lisa, would you like to accept the nomination and would you like to make a few comments? >> I would like to accept the nomination and I would like to say thank you for

682
03:15:13.279 --> 03:15:31.279
the nomination. And um I am a very relationshipbased person. And so while I was um praising Tori for how relationship based she is in getting to know people, I would have to say that I believe that I embody those same attributes and characteristics as well.

683
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It's really important for me to connect with individuals and to build those relationships. And I'm recognizing again we have new people on the board. Um, but through this last year, it's been really important to me to get to know the board

684
03:15:46.479 --> 03:16:03.680
members that we have, and I appreciate each and every single one of you. And um, I'm looking forward to getting to know our new members because it's important. And while we might not always agree, it's really important to have that good working relationship as a

685
03:16:03.680 --> 03:16:19.439
foundation so we can have those better conversations. And it allows us to be more open and share those thoughts. And I would also like to um on along that same vein talk about how important it is to get to know other board members and

686
03:16:19.439 --> 03:16:35.279
other committees. And you know it's through my liazisoning with uh finance committee. It's that's been incredibly important especially as we're going into this next year and through the year that we've been through. I really appreciate them and the relationship that I've

687
03:16:35.279 --> 03:16:51.439
developed with different members there. I really appreciate that and um it's again it's been important to my relationship with CPAC. I've gotten to know Slack board members even though I'm not their liaison. I just really love making connections with people and if I

688
03:16:51.439 --> 03:17:08.239
were to serve as the ACT vice chair I just want to recognize and acknowledge the fact that I don't view that as oh it's just for ACT and I'm it's about the AB community. It's about working with each and every single one of you. It's about supporting Tori and doing what I

689
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can to try to bring the be the glue to bring this committee together so we can all work together and um we have a lot to accomplish in this next year and I hope to be part of doing that. >> Would anyone like to speak in support of

690
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Lisa? Go ahead. I I think the first time we met was we were we were over there during one of the committee and then um we had heard of each other's names. We hadn't seen each other's faces. The first night we

691
03:17:45.920 --> 03:18:00.239
met each other. We signed each other's ballot signature things. That was that was great. Um and then we met at it used to be KJ's and it recently turned into B that the New York bagels place. the bagel place next to Trader

692
03:18:00.239 --> 03:18:15.680
Joe's. You just immediately came off as so warm and so caring and so thoughtful and you've always had students and kids at the forefront of your service from day

693
03:18:15.680 --> 03:18:32.160
one. And you've like we've been in the barrel with this thing. kind of feels like going down Niagara Falls sometimes and you're just like Jesus like it's been so much and you have been

694
03:18:32.160 --> 03:18:49.600
it has been such a treasure to grow into this role with you. I have absolute full confidence in your service in this role. I have your back. Um and you have you have this committee's back too. I fully

695
03:18:49.600 --> 03:19:10.800
support you. Lisa, you're going to do great. I think we better vote. Let's move this evening along. And I'm going to just go around the room because this one should not be hard. So, you're either voting for Lisa or you're abstaining. I think those are your two options. Hillary.

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03:19:10.800 --> 03:19:25.120
>> Lisa. >> Dennis. >> Lisa. >> Lisa. >> Also, Lisa. Andrew. >> Ben. >> Lisa. >> Tori. Lisa. Adam. >> Lisa. >> Liz. >> Lisa. Lisa, >> Lisa, Lisa, >> enthusiastically, Lisa.

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03:19:25.120 --> 03:19:41.680
>> All right, awesome. Thank you all. Um, uh, oh, okay, good. Not asleep. So, now I'm opening the floor for nominations for the position of vice chair for Boxboro. Ben, >> I would like to nominate Adam.

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03:19:41.680 --> 03:20:01.359
>> Do we have any other nominations? >> I move to close nominations. That was moved by Adam and seconded by Thank you, Dennis. You guys are all over it. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Great. That one's unanimous. Adam,

699
03:20:01.359 --> 03:20:18.000
>> thank you, Ben, for the nomination. I gladly accept. Uh, it's been an absolute pleasure to sit next to Tori this year. Excited about continuing to do it next year, and I might just kick you under the table more so that we can keep keep meetings from going past 10 p.m. Other than that, thank you. >> That is completely legit legitimate.

700
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You're going to do great. Anybody else want to say something? All right, let's do this again. Hillary. >> Adam. >> Adam. >> Adam. >> Adam. >> Adam. >> Me.

701
03:20:33.520 --> 03:20:49.279
>> No. Adam. >> Adam. >> Adam. >> Enthusiastically. Adam. >> Awesome. Thank you all. Great team. Um. Yes. And now we get to vote to reelect Julie Lumiere.

702
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>> Yay. >> Yes. Which is like the best part of the night. So if you have not clicked on the link in the agenda and read everything she does for us, please go back and do so later on because Julie is amazing. >> With that, can I move to reelect Julie

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Lalumir as the AB RSC secretary for the 2026 2027 school year? >> That was moved by Liz and seconded by Ben. All in favor? Hi. >> Any ab uh any opposed? Any abstensions? Great. Congratulations, Julie. >> Can Amanda Bailey be our treasurer?

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>> I'm just looking to make Amanda more uncomfortable this evening. >> So, next up, we are on to electing our treasurer. >> I move to reelect Stephanie Grants as the district treasurer for the 2026 2027 school year. >> Second. >> Second. Moved by Adam, seconded by I'll give

705
03:21:43.520 --> 03:21:59.680
that to Ben. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Awesome. We are to the consent agenda and you are not letting me forget that. Okay. Um, items on the consent agenda do not usually require discussion and are approved with one vote unless any member

706
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would like to hold an item for discussion and a separate vote. I will read each item and if a member would like it held, please say hold. Members do not have to have attended a meeting to vote on the minutes. Item A, approval of ABRSC meeting minutes from 52126. Item B, recommendation to approve budget

707
03:22:16.080 --> 03:22:33.439
transfer per policy DBJ. These next ones are good ones. Item C, Blanchard PTO 2,100 donation dollar donation for grade 5 Nature on Wheels. Item D, ABRHS track boosters 3000

708
03:22:33.439 --> 03:22:49.600
donation to the program. Item E, Boston Bruins be fit to win 10,000 donation to McCarthy Town Elementary. Item F, approval of Warrants, is presented in the packet on June 4th, 2026.

709
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Given that no items were held, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? Moved by Andy. Is there a second? >> Second with gratitude to all the donating organizations. >> Thank you. Awesome. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Any abstensions?

710
03:23:06.080 --> 03:23:22.000
Thank you, Ben. All right, so that is all set. Before we adjourn, something I forgot to say. Um, if you are interested in being on the search committee, we need to start figuring out what that looks like. Um,

711
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please send me an email. Let me give you an idea and I'll I'll I'll put some notes on it on Friday. Probably a pretty big time commitment. Um, so over the summer probably looking at sometimes they're going to be about 1 to two hour meeting probably on Zoom. That's probably during the workday. So say

712
03:23:38.080 --> 03:23:54.160
between about 7 and 4. When we get into the fall and things start getting really big, you're probably looking at it like big long meetings like tonight big long meeting um nature of 3:30 to 8:00 at night.

713
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So think about whether or not you can fit that into schedule into your schedule. If you're interested, send it to me. Lisa, Adam, and I will put our heads together. We will come forward with a proposed slate and we will discuss it at our next meeting so that we can vote it and get that piece going

714
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and start getting search committee um connected with the consultant. Any questions on that? Peter, anything in the FYI? >> The fall open house dates are in the packet. So, if you want to look for fall open houses, that's there. Uh Julie

715
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publishes those to our website. And just one last congratulations to all of our retirees and our graduates who are graduating tomorrow night. >> Move to adjourn. >> Second. >> All right. >> Moved by Adam, seconded by Ben. All in

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03:24:42.000 --> 03:24:49.000
favor? >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Great. Thank you all. Good night.