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February 2025 school committee meeting um I am sitting in for Gabe tonight he is unable to be here and uh it's been a few years since I've done this so I'll try not to mess it up too badly but uh we will begin as we always do with the pledge of Ali flag
United States of America republ stand One Nation God IND thank you all all right I'm going to read the
mission statement for the Danver School District District Damas Public Schools is a dynamic community of independent Learners dedicated to respect responsibility creativity and the pursuit of academic and personal Excellence this meeting is being broadcast on Danver Community Access television is anybody in the audience recording these proceedings okay no indication that anybody is recording so uh we'll move right into our agenda um
with items of interest to from the superintendent school committee or public anyone on the yep sure I do have one quick thing I just wanted to congratulate everybody uh that was involved in the Newsies production over the weekend um so I happened to catch all the shows and um just miss Russell as the and her team did an amazing job uh with all the students the students I mean it was so impressive to watch what they
did so um just uh that that was my first time going to see that one and I thought it was amazing so everything from the the middle schoolers uh you know actually performing and then the high schoolers came and helped with audio video it was it was just a great production so I just want to congratulate and thank everybody for their hard work on that that's excellent they've um put on some terrific shows over the years here and it's always always fun to go right um anyone else on the school committee with an item of Interest
Mike i' just like like to uh let everyone know that I attended along with uh Mr Crane the um black Excellence dinner this past weekend hosted by the h i fantastic turnout um great um jazz music from a bunch of young performers a lot of good conversation and it was just really great to see the room the room filled and and the food was fantastic so i' let you yeah that was
a terrific program and uh lots of fun lots of good people to talk with um and let's see any anything from you yeah um I'm the uh scorekeeper and announcer at the basketball games I just want to congratulate uh Dave Chisum and the girls basketball team for qualifying for the state tournament this year uh they've been fun to watch this year boys are having a pretty good season too they're going to be cutting it close but uh congratulations to them all so Mr superintendent yes
I have a couple quick items first of all I would like to thank our school counselors last week was school counselors week and they provide so many services for all of our students and they're a wonderful group and we're so lucky to be blessed with just a strong group that care for our kids are professional and dedicated um and as a former principal I know they're the really the backbone to help our students that may be struggling or those that need a little more Direction so thank you to all of our school counselors and tomorrow is the 100th day of school uh
supposed to be yesterday or today but we had a snow day last week um I was over at Highlands and they kept their 100th day today uh it's just interesting to see how you know you can't take anything for granted our students are like sponges and they weree vests that indicated the 100 things they've learned so far this year and just seeing our young students and the pride out of our staff as well so congratulations to our Young Learners and um again we're blessed with the Performing Arts the Newsies um I've heard just nothing but
but R reviews and just Bravo to that um I would like to add one more item um to last week's statement that we spoke in support of our students in terms of um how we would handle if there's ever any questions of uh student records and and our immigrant students and I just really want to reiterate the sense of belonging and how important it is in our school community and we value every child and staff member in our community and our schools we're an inclusive community of Learners that's respectful
of individual differences we're also students are valued for The Unique skills and talents and challenges are thoughtfully and effectively addressed a welcoming environment for students and families is evident and diversity is valued and celebrated and core values are the underlying support of our mission visions and goals and therefore provide a shared Foundation of working and learning one of our core values is caring the district believes that a child- centered environment that demonstrates value and respect for individual differences best serves the unique needs of our children in
order for students to thrive it's essential that we have a strong sense of belonging in our schools for a sense of belonging cannot be built upon a single experience it's it's multiple experiences every moment every day in the school whether it's transportation to and from school the classroom experience extracurriculars the cafeteria just many of the other lives and areas of our school life it's each and every day that builds our sense of belonging and as Educators it's our duty to create a learning environment that's free from hate
and safe for all we stand stand strongly against any discriminatory practices that may impact any child's sense of belonging these include rhetoric and actions that Target immigrant transgender non B non-binary and lgbtq members of our community not only is this a duty fundamental of our profession as Educators it's the law and our our school district will continue to uphold our legal responsibility to create an environment free of discrimination and Implement policies that respect the dignity and every right of every child and every staff member
as this is the case for many years Massachusetts state law and our Department of Education have regulations that guide our policy that ensure public education provides opportunities for every child regardless of race religion gender socio economic status ability or social identity together we can uphold every child's right to free and public education every child's right to an education free from harassment and every child's right to an education
free for discrimination thank you nope okay um I would simply say that I appreciate the position that we're taking I think you have uh the support of the community in this and uh you know a country's greatness is measured by what we do not how much money we make and how we treat the least of us
um children older people people who are not you know as as high on the economic ladder as as some others in this country are and uh the measure of a country's greatness is uh in how we treat our people so we appreciate the commitment that you are making to the children of this district and I think it's one we all share all right we will move on to I'm sorry items of interest from the community anyone wish to say
anything this is your chance okay seeing none we will move on to student representative reports hello everybody um so today we are going to talk about um some of the elementary schools and the middle school so last week we want to just highlight um great gr Oak so um last week the pack helped um students and families donate items to the food pantry and they held this theme of sweet and spicy um they
had a really good turn out with that and then they are going to be celebrating their 100 days of school um tomorrow on Tuesday February 11 um next week we are going to look forward to a musical Journey Through the Caribbean that they are holding there and then at the end of the month the kindergarten students are going to have the opportunity to see the unveiling of snow Force One and that is submitted to
the mascot and one on behalf of Drake hin and the kindergarten class I um busy past month at Highlands um so they had their chorus Chimes and band Winter concert that was run by Mr Gaul and Miss Bailey um last month they held a food drive that helped support the Danver food pantry um this revolved around collecting boxes of cereal um in order to help Engage The School uh
they played cereal box dominoes um which sounds a lot of fun they had 650 boxes of cereal um that was collected um they continue to come together on their Wednesday afternoon meetings where they focus on the Highland High Five um that basically reminds all students be kind be safe be a hard worker be creative and show Integrity along with those meetings they're continuing with their classroom buddies program last month um
a meteorologist and dver resident AJ Bernett visited Highlands and spoke to the students about weather and at the end of the month the dver high school hockey players uh that formerly attended Highlands came back to read uh to the students for hockey reading day um over here at the middle school they had um their band and chorus winter concerts um they had really good turnout for that and eth grader John Beasley represented the middle school and Denver
at the Statewide project 351 leadership day in Boston um the SK train siblings Jackson and Taylor also visited our sixth graders to talk about um disability awareness and education and then our seventh graders um got to visit the pbd essics museum as a part of their ancient civilization um and then we also just wanted to point out again the amazing drama club performance that
they had with new um this is from Riverside um they also had their abandon chorus uh concert see a pattern there um that was run by uh Miss Dennett and Miss Bailey um the fourth graders gave an inspir inspir inspiring presentation on what it means to be the bre s on which emphasize how pride is about putting forth their best effort every day and their STD progress has reached an impressive 60% and finally they've been putting forth incredible fundraising efforts to make
a new playground a reality with hopes of construction this summer and then over at the Smith School students are working on a project called love and Humanity um each grade level is learning about a special human whether it's past or present who has made an impact on our world and then each grade level will be presenting and teaching the school about their special person during the February Bulldog Gathering um students will get very creative with this presentation and this
project coin with black history month and also women's history and last but not least we have Thor who also had their Winter concert last week um the chorus performed five songs that all tied in together the tiger five and they have an UPC upcoming show on March 19th where all students are invited to Showcase their talents that's all we have for today thank you do you have
any questions for our student representative had lots to report tonight thank you so much I I just want to give a thank you to the DPW for Highlands they were they helped pick up the serial boxes on The Dominoes and brought them to the food pantry so it's quite an Endeavor that's awesome awesome report all right so now Dan over to you for information from the superintendent sure well we have a a great uh information tonight we have the legislative update we have the wonderful Senator Joan lovelyy and the wonderful
representative s Kens they come up for the legislative update thank you wherever you're comfortable do you want to sit here join us at the table we are always pleased to have you here and we know how hard you're working up on the hill so we're looking forward to your update
I will just alert you to the fact that we have new mics and you have to press in order to be heard okay okay working um well good evening and thank you as always um Senator and I always love to come and share and
listen to what's on your mind um loved the update um from students former Highlands parent maybe I've mentioned that once or twice and I remember the 100 day project vividly and my daughter did glued 100 wills and then that morning going into the school was quite quite a scene as you know some parents were helping with rather complicated projects that they had brought
in but all very creative so fun to look back on that um so at the state house it is now um ped the legislative filing deadline we are not yet at the point where we have committees named um but we have passed the filing deadline which was a bit frantic um and we are now looking at the early stages of budget um so we know that for
for you folks you're thinking about your budget as well what's the state going to do what can we depend on um so we are both very mindful of um the degree to which the district depends on the legislature for help um that senior circuit breaker we'll just dive right into the hard stuff the the the circuit breaker the special education circuit breaker um uh you know ranging from instruction
and tuition and then of course the transportation piece of it so it never goes down um and we will be pushing hard as as always to make sure that the Committees understand our district and I find that that's some of the challenge of of this role um you know it's different in different districts the rural districts have tremendous challenges
um urban districts also have challenges and we're in we're not quite the marac valley we're not Cape an um we're not burkers the birkar um but we are the NorthShore and so we try to just always be educating well you know in Danvers it means this in peid and in wenam and so forth Middleton tops field hope I didn't leave anybody out um so just know that
that that that's big Focus for us um all right you want to take a turn you want to do want me to go on to the keep going you're doing great all right so um the next um yeah we've talked about special Leed all right so now just a quick overview um I don't have to tell you and you because you're running it and running it well the EA shelter program
um we debated last week there wasn't much debate because there's no question that if we didn't continue to fund this emergency shelter program the whole thing would have collapsed of its own weight and so it is February it's freezing there is no doubt that we were going to fund the additional funding there were some restrictions put on the funding
there are now tighter eligibility requirements um I'm quite concerned I think I speak for both the senator and I when I say that um there will now be more people who are not eligible and these are women and children and so um I look for continued partnership and we will then move into our whole budget remember this was a supplemental budget discussion
so it was very narrowly defined right we weren't talking broadly about every area of the budget that process now begins and um so we shall see so that cleared the house it's come to the Senate so the Senate will take up the uh EA supplemental Budget on Thursday it just came to the Senate this morning reported out we've an amendment deadline for wednes for two tomorrow a very short Amendment deadline and then uh we
will take it up on Thursday uh in formal session and we anticipate very preliminary um anticipation of also supporting the uh the full funding based on and the house I read the house proposal today um a lot of um a a lot of caps and further requirements to be able to we really do want to get the E EA System emergency assistance system back down to
what it was originally intended for um which is no more than 4,000 family homeless families to be able to support as you know by history Governor Jus and legislature then in the early 80s put that in place um the right to shelter law um and it's intended its intention was to um to care for Massachusetts families who become homeless I will tell you out of about 60% of the program right now is Massachusetts families who
have become homeless and 40% are our documented uh Asylum Seekers who are here um with federally legally protected status right uh are here and and we know that that is families so um our parent parents with uh with young with um unemancipated children so we uh will be doing that on on Thursday and I don't know what type of amendments will be filed or what the recommendation is coming
out of Senate ways and means but it will be the floor will be the house what the house has done um and um so and that's to get as we know the funding through to the end of the fiscal year um to um the end of June and where the governor is committed to get that back down to that workable number that's been in place for decades now um it just was never intended to be able to take on the amount of
um families that it did it was emergency that's why they call it emergency assistance and U but that that's the plan uh to do to be able to get that back down to that that workable member and I will tell you there's some success stories to this and I'll use Sal Salem as an example Salem um Salem State had an empty dorm it took in 300 families so about 1,200 people um and and it actually started the summer before really
the kind of the onslaught started like the August before and um those families were supported um they were supported with um English Second Language uh both at at the site and at a site in Lynn um where they were transported over um every adult uh was able to get their working papers every single one because they wanted them um and they that dorm um that closed a year
ago or last June June of 24 U because that was contracted for that amount of time about a year and a half about 16 18 months um and and many people went to work at Salem Hospital Salem Hospital finally had a full census of workers in the laundry in Food Service in the you know those jobs that they weren't able to fill to Salem hospitals at a full census of um of employment now to be able to support the one Regional Hospital really on the NorthShore beside it's
Beverly and I'm a Beverly girl so my kids were born in Beverly Hospital uh but but Salem does take care of Lynn and really a bigger region so there's some success to stories to this um that people are here wanting to be able to work um and be self- sustaining and so all of those families are out in um supported housing they're out of that shelter in that Shel and so they're further looking at some
of these motels to um not be um shelter providing shelter Services as the system kind of wings down so that's the EA and how we're um trying to get it back to where it was while we're also supporting families homeless families that um need our support in a very difficult housing um crisis that we have so that's um that's based on that and we also wanted to just share with you the
school bus saf the Enforcement Act that the governor just signed at the beginning of January it's being piloted in peid um rep Kars and rep Walsh have and myself worked worked on this with a pey woman um who she really spearheaded it she did Y and made yeah and made it happen and now both in PE and Salem there are cameras on every school bus and in Salem I thought I had the numbers
with me but in just the first few months there were over almost 5,000 um incidents of people going by the school bus while it stopped and the then thing was out the arm so it's each Community I just want to say when I first heard of this pilot I thought oh that's terrible someone would go past a school bus honestly thinking thousands of times
I think in PE 3,412 vehicles that were caught failing to stop for 10 camera equipped buses just between September much more than than I expected I don't know about you Senator but a lot more um I didn't know was it was really problem with that spere so towns will have to opt in this the reason we needed the legislation is because there was a
glitch where the state required a town to get permission to install them on the exterior of BU or to install them at all so um this would have to go on the warrant and so wouldn't be anytime really soon um but the town could opt in the state is no longer an obstacle to the town opting to it's also based not on the operator but the owner of
the vehicle so it's based on the license plate who owns the vehicle no matter who's driving it would be fine so they they'll be taking responsibility for that for those communities that are opting in so should be a lot more safety around um students alighting and and you know getting on and off of buses um we certainly hope so because we it's just well it it was there was um
a pbd mom two kids who are hit yeah um so so that that's sort of a you know we like to try to make the state a helpful partner not a not a hindrance and so I I filed this one in that category um I just did want to give all of you I have one little not just a want to put something on your radar which is that this is the um the 250th anniversary of the
American Revolution is quickly approaching um there are events planned there are discussions going on in our town which is wonderful among um damus alarm list company Dam Historical Society U uh Chris Hopkins a teacher at the high school um and I didn't know Mr superintendent that you were a history teacher yourself so we're hoping that we'll kind of rope you into this yes
yes yes um so just wanted to put that on your radar and and if you have any going back to the EA if want to hear your thoughts and concerns as we close this out but you know we we continue to we will continue to push for every penny of reimbursement but the district yeah two more two more thoughts um right so the H the um the governor released house one so we have the governor's budget what
her thoughts are the house will follow and release your budget in April and then the Senate will follow and release that budget in May so this is really good timing for us to we will be meeting with our respective chairs of ways and means Senate and House um put forward our priorities and so this is good timing because this we will incorporate this into our priorities respectively uh with our with our chairs um second just want to say thank you to daners when
I first got a um into the um legislature in 2013 is when there was a quite a large homeless population that was living in our motel and hotels across Massachusetts and Danvers was certainly impacted and you took on the challenge with Grace and dignity to educate um these children and bust them maybe not from where they they didn't live in Danver maybe but they were in a Danver motel and you're busing them back to their home community of maybe lawence or l or wherever it was you took on
the expense and you took on the and we helped but you really took it on and now we're faced with it again in a short amount of time later and and just stepped right up and we couldn't be more grateful and we know it's hard and we know we've been in EA biwe bonly meetings for the last year at least to get these numbers to hear the impact to see where we respond and and assist um but neis is a really special community
mp2 Salem as well Amber's very special because you had really a really large impact so just just want to say thank you to all these students that um benefit from being educated and being kept safe to Mary particular Mary warmers in particular all all of you it is a team it's a team all of you yeah were you
here in 2014 you were yeah you were so um been answer any questions does anyone on the committee have any questions just one on the bus safety uh is there funding that that we can tap into for that or is that something that we would have to fund on our own um that is on each Community to opt in to get the camera soft cameras and software and
the company is called bus Patrol no the role of the state was to uh sort of get out of the way the point of the bill was to get the state out of the business of saying oh no no no you can't do that but in terms of funding um because it's not a requirement it's not a mandate it's a if you'd like to do it here's an option thank you the fines also go back to the community um so it's that would go into your general fund not
necessarily like into the um School fund but it the BS for those would go back to your community so there is a revenue source so to speak not to pay for it up front but that money will be anyone else all right I have a couple um first question in terms of the uh the bus security um you've got towns like danrose that basically have a bus
contract with a third party provider who comes up they run the buses then you have a town like a city like Boston or other cities where they have their own fleets and they do all of the busing themselves so are you is the legislature or does the work you're doing contemplate um working with the bus companies versus individual towns where if you have a bus company that works two three four different towns can the
cost be shared among the uh the different towns and cities for a bus you know you put a camera on a bus it might serve four communities I mean I would say it should work that way I mean I think we're now down to one one company that does that will bid for busing right it's Salter or it's nobody and so I think that's the situation we expect a little more competition this time
around I think pretty much um and so I would encourage communities kind of get together and and make a pitch and say hey this is something we would like to do and can we cost share and I know in Massachusetts we 351 individual communities and everybody has their own um police dep department and our own fire department but this is a great example and an easy one I would think to
work out a mutual agreement and contract but I can't speak for the bus company and I know you can't either um but very interesting question to see how they might respond would you help us do this in the interest of student safety sure um and the other question I have and I'm getting into a dicey area and I will admit it but one of the things
a lot of school districts are dealing with right now is how to respond to um ice or other Federal officials showing up near schools or at schools to try and enforce um immigration law deportations Etc and many if not all school districts are trying to figure out what will we do and where is our guidance is the legislature working on that do you feel there's already guidance in place so I'd like to ask the simple question
question well um it's Federal right so I'm not sure the legislature has jurisdiction over ice um an immigration role uh but so I guess the answer is I I don't know um but it's on everyone's Minds um I know some communities have come out and said you're not taking any of our kids you know we'll make sure that that s for example is a sanctuary city um what that
looks like and if it actually happens we don't know yet um but it's something we need to engage on to to um to talk about I think it's right now it might it's so what are we three weeks into this do ministration and we're seeing some things that are happening now I would I would hope that they wouldn't you know I just wouldn't Comm men and take children out of classrooms it would just be
horrific just so traumatic not only for the child but every child that Witnesses and experiences that the trauma would be significant I would think you know yeah I would hope that every I really applaud mayor woo uh for the stance that she has taken which is to say you will not remove a child from the premises of our school um and I I'm blanking on which other community said the
trained their speaking of buses they trained their bus drivers to say and said to them if ice comes onto your bus that child is in your care and I'm quite certain that the federal government cannot compel any municipality to uh do Isis work essentially uh the idea that a child would come home from school to no parent I think horrifying all
of us I defer to you Mr draw a hard line on that thank you Dan I feel like I do have a few things and uh first of all I just want to say thank you to Sally and Joan for their advocacy for our schools and um given Comfort to a young superintendent I don't know not young but newer in the job I guess um and certainly every email every phone call every Outreach receive a prompt answer and and follow through and whether it's
the answer we want to hear or not they're always working very hard for us and you know the EA program again thank you for your your kind words and thank you for poting the Mary for her efforts and our teachers and our staff and our community they've done a wonderful job and uh the feedback that I receive is just outstanding uh the benefit for our our schools right um and I know just the importance of finishing the uh financial piece extending it to the supplemental bill for the remainder of the school
year is huge with that 104 per day because those funds allow us to not only support our students our newcomers and those in the shelter program but all the other supports we put into place that are not in the operating budget that we need and that has been very very helpful to us so I want to thank you for that advocacy there because the funding was supposed to end on the 31st of this year past year uh but having it extended is is substantial for us and it helps us for our Advanced planning thank you for
that also thank you for the pece in terms I know we talked last week in terms of you know uh protecting student rights and we follow the law so the law is very clear and laid out by the Attorney General in terms of you know releasing any student unless uh permed permission and we have a protocol in place where anybody that would come in that's not a parent or Guardian will be sent to my office and if there's a lawful order then we'll reach out to our school attorney and take it from there so we're very clear on that piece uh we provided that information to our staff as well
and um you know I I think at the end of the day our schools are very safe but but never uh we always need to keep working on that but I just want to say continued advocacy there's two areas that um I know Pam Crum is here so no I know people been working on it but number one the the piece about circuit breaker reimbursement right the tuition we know is fully at 75% which is great the transportation was earmarked at 44% and I know there was work to get that 75% in the
supplemental and that that difference is about $300,000 in circuit breaker funding uh that would be beneficial to replenish that fund so that's substantial if that is if that is still on the table which we hope it is um we appreciate your advocacy for that that's substantial money the special education Transportation um not only is it required but it's that area that U you mentioned know very limited contractors and
certainly uh very difficult to get competitive prices we're working as a district with safeguards in that area but anything you can do to get that to 75% of reimbursement would be hugely appreciated by all the second piece is the Chapter 70 uh funding and we're foundational and I believe it it's $75 per student at the foundational rate if there's ever any way we can get it back to 104 as last year that's at least $100,000 that would come into our our district as well so keep an eye out for those possible within
that supplemental if it's making its way to the Senate we would appreciate any help in both those those items but again underscore the Gratitude to your advocacy um and again your responsiveness to our district um because it does benefit all of our students and families and staff and we're very grateful for that that's all I have chair absolutely anyone else we really appreciate you being here and taking the time and
uh you're always open and willing to anything we appreciate that we are we are thank you for the opportunity got a great part this Dan for girl thank you this Beverly thank you representative we know you yeah the revolution yeah yeah yeah yeah there's gonna be some really why not I've got an extra Tri Corner hat set aside for you um all right um be well everybody than you know how
to get us so so do so okay all right Mr superintendent all right we uh are blessed to have Mr Landers here tonight or Dam's representative to Essex Tech to provide his yearly updates Mr Landers welcome welcome thank you thank you for
having me I think this is on the red light is on um this is I guess my third time that I've come before you folks uh to give you an update I I actually heard last year's update apparently was on like a radio station someplace um must have been pulled directly off of cable but I'm much better on the radio than in person that's for sure I'm going to face for radio but um there really hasn't
been a lot of change from last year in the the the nuts and bolts of of what I usually bring to you folks um in regards to our numbers this is really good timing I did get the very preliminary assessment numbers uh our number for next year or for fiscal year 2026 would be anticipated to be about a 4% increase um I will tell you
that that is substantial lower than virtually all of the rest of the communities and last year there was I believe no community that had an increase to their assessment of more than 10% this year there are seven communities that have increases that are greater than 15% and a couple that are in the range of 30 or 40% and in the case of a couple of those communities they are big numbers um our number will be about $170,000 increase year-over-year which
is I think what we anticipated more or less based on last year and that's based on basically a flat enrollment number for us that enrollment number which last year was 239 will stay at 239 so um uh that number is actually a smaller percentage of the total enrollment we're down about 2% points
from our high point which was about three years ago at that point I think we were about 18% of the total enrollment this year we're going to next year will be about 16% in regards we've also closed out the application the admission process has been closed out and we had 147 applicants from Danvers 122 of those kids came from from the whole enrichment and those numbers are down slightly from the year before which point I think we had 153 kids who
applied so our numbers have remained relatively flat from that standpoint uh I took a look today at where our kids from Danvers are in regards to the programs and I guess the easiest way to describe it is is that they're they're Blended relatively evenly across the board across all of our programs and they are proportional in many respects to what you would anticipate by the total enrollment that we have as part of the school so
in that regard uh our kids are taking advantage of all the programs both the vocational and the agricultural programs uh it's important to remember that we have 17 sending districts those 17 sending districts which danvas is a part of those kids our kids have an opportunity to be able to to take part in both the Vocational Technical programs and the agricultural programs so when a kid from Danvers goes to the votech they start their their fresh year they go
through an exploratory Discovery period they eventually try to limit that down to three different programs that they'd like to get in most kids get into their first program virtually all kids get into their at least their second program and obviously they all get into one of the three and the Danver kids are no different in terms of their success rate in terms of those programs um the biggest program I think is Veterinary um
sorry Dental Assisting is the is our biggest program in Danvers uh followed by uh culinary arts in Hospitality we've got about we've got about 40 kids in those two programs but again it's it's spread out pretty pretty pretty effectively um I would tell you that we have two what I would describe to you as two issues as we face next year um the first one is going to be like
everybody else that's budgetary I touched on the fact that many communities for the first time in the sending districts especially are facing substantial increases in their assessments three of those communities I won't mention them but I think you know who they are um are facing some real serious issues within their overall budget but certainly their educational budgets and all three of those communities are facing substantial increases in their assessments um pbid
alone is facing an increase of about a million dollars in their assessment this year so it'll be very interesting as we move forward in the in the budgetary process the very preliminary preliminary budget that iar had an increase of about 4.5% that's driven like all budgets in the education by a new contract that we signed last year makes sense there's a very direct relationship between those
Personnel costs and the overall costs that we have for the students and uh so it'll be interesting to see if once that budget is actually presented to our board our school board um whether there is a little bit more debate and a little bit more budget tightening by by some of the member communities I will tell you that last year I voted against our budget and glou to voted against the budget um and I would
not be surprised if there is more discussion this year and we respect to it one of the other things which you may not be familiar with um is our school committee basically the 17 sending communities obviously each send a school Committee Member the towns like Danver that member is appointed by the the uh um the moderator and then we're confirmed by the school committee in the
city ities the mayor makes that that appointment so we are all appointed on the school committee there are also I believe four agricultural members were appointed by the state however even though we have a 21 member school committee our votes are weighted so I get six votes PE gets 10 votes I believe the total is 46 this year based on enrollment it's sort of
bounces around a little bit point being is if daners peid bevly and one of the little communities all band together those four communities can block any vote that occurs now I'm not intending on trying to do that that's not what I'm saying but it is a somewhat unique mechanism and so when I say for example that Beverly and peber are facing much more substantial budget issues than they have in the the past that has
real consequences in terms of the way the vote goes because if basically PB daners and bevly all joined together you're pretty close to getting the majority right there with it so um and and it was sort of funny at our last meeting when we were doing the organizational stuff people who' had been on that that that committee for quite a few years sort of we had to approve that and they were then none of them realized that was the way it was and I sit
next we're in we're in order based on the community so I sit next to the guy from Essex who's a great guy but he goes that's not fair you got six more votes than I have and I said well yeah we have 880,000 more kids than you have too so um but that's that's one issue is that budgetary issue the other issue that we continue to to face and this is is a Statewide issue and it's it's it's good that both of our legislators are here because I know they've been actively involved in this as well and
that is a push by the Department of Education to basically Place upon Vocational Technical districts a a requirement that the admissions process be through a blind Lottery and I will tell you this from our standpoint we as a district nor Essex Northshore Vocational Technical district has worked very hard over the last two
to three years years to try to improve our admission process to make sure that our student body is reflective of the communities that we represent and those communities include places like Lyn and Lawrence because we are also an agricultural school for the entire Essex County and we have done a phenomenal amount of Outreach and we've hired individuals to
try to make the process the admissions process smoother and fairer for those individuals who may come from a home where English is a second language and as a result of that I would say to you and I said this last year and I would say to you again that our student body is a is a model in terms of diversity and I think that everybody at our school is proud of the fact that we have been able to without doing any type of
of blind quota system or anything else have been able to go out and get those kids good kids who want to get a vocational education to apply and to get them into the school and that's been the focus and I and I am personally not convinced that sort of the one siiz fits all model which would be what we would get out of a lottery would actually benefit us at Essex votech now I appreciate the fact and I've had I've said this publicly there are other districts other
vocational districts that are not as committed to this I don't believe that it's fair for our district which has made striding efforts to be able to improve this to be placed in the same ballpark with those districts that have not done that and my feeling is is that punish the wrongdoers and leave the good doers alone basically and I think that that's that's something in this case I would also say to you from a budget AR standpoint it would
not necessarily be advantageous for us in Danvers to face a blind Lottery because as a general rule we have more applicants than we do in terms of our actual uh Town population in perspective to the to overarching so so you know if there is a concern and a continued concern which I think makes sense that we want to try to make sure that we are not getting crushed with our budget as we
did a few years ago going to a blind Lottery without any especially any ceiling which there's no intention that there would be a sailing placed on that there would have to be floors for some reasons but there would be no sailing we could see those unexpected and sizable increases again in our in our numbers so so from a from a just a theoretical standpoint I think it's it it will not be helpful to us to do this um I also think from a practical stand point it could be somewhat harmful from a
budgetary standpoint to us in ders as well bottom line is is it doesn't appear as though the department Ed of Education cares in that respect there is a push on this and when that push begins it has its own momentum that sometimes reason can't stop um but that is the second what I would describe the sort of problem that we have facing us moving forward um other other than that if I've got any any questions I I would say is I say every time that I come here I I
think I have two jobs my first job most important job is to make sure that those that those 235 kids from Danver are getting a great education I believe that they are would I love them to be back in the Danver school system yeah I mean my my kids went to Highlands I also went to Highlands so um you know I I I value the Danver public schools and and the job that they've done for my family for a long time but they're getting a good education and a
great education at the vetech as well and for a lot of those kids they're getting the opportunity to move into a career that that is is really a fantastic opportunity for them so that's number one number two um I'm not going to take any credit for it but I'm pleased to see the fact that we have had some budgetary consistency over the last few years I think that's been been helpful for us as well I would also say that we did have a what I thought was a really good meeting town and gown more
or less to try to what I described as reset our relationship as the host community that was an excellent meeting um I think that it it established some working relationships that I hope will be able to flourish over the course of the next few years I know there's areas we're talking about it today with with the school buses um we do own our school buses at the VTech um interesting
thought process right if you think about it maybe we can I don't know how often they stop in damers but if we get them to put you know some some uh cameras on those those buses it sounds like the money would come to damers in that situation so you know we might might be able to work out some type of a deal where we can use those buses at varying times if we're able to put in G some some Revenue off of those because it
it also sounds like from what the senator said people can't help themselves but want to pay money to drive by school buses so um so that's uh you know that I think is is the next thing I also will just very quickly say to you I wear a number of hats in the town um if you've also got any questions about about the Municipal Light also on the Municipal light board they just reappointed me over my objections so um I
if I know we've been working very hard to get the solar panels um up and running and working and I think that's been a really great Cooperative effort with the with the school department it's not always easy the negotiations because of the way we do things here but um I think that's going to be a really great thing for the town those solar panels are fantastic and then um you know as I've always said to you you know that that on the finance committee um we can we continue at least I continue to believe that it's it's
really important for to to support any type of innovative budgetary stuff that you guys are looking to do and we hopefully can do some for that this year so any questions sure Mike thank you uh for being here for the update in the numbers that you um shared with us each class represents about 25% of those who appli is that the same number that's we're going to be looking to send there this year is that the number they're going
to be looking for 25% of the 147 applicant no no actually I think I think what generally what we what we see on an annual basis is we get about we've had anywhere from 55 to 60 kids on an annual basis right so so our numbers are probably closer to about a 42 to 44% acceptance all right so it's consistent with the number of kids not the percentage right yeah okay yeah yeah it's it's it's and and so the so
the admissions process that we have I guess is the is is probably a good way to think of it is is that it is not it isn't a blind process it's it is there are subjective measures to it and and basically one of the things that I know I've I've talked to the superintendent about and we and both our superintendent and also Heidi is the idea of trying to to find ways to work with our guidance staff here to be able to let those guidance that guidance staff work with
the admissions process to say these are kids we know these kids we've had these kids in our school let us give you some insight about who really is going to benefit from a vocational technical education based on that and I think there's been some back and forth in regards to that certainly one of the big things that the that the votech wants are kids who want Vocational Technical education and so a big part of
that admissions process is an interview it's not an interview like we would have going to college or getting a job but it really is just to get a sense from those kids you know do you really want to go there because you want a vocational technical education or you do want to go there because your mom and dad are making you show up today and of course there's always going to be a part of it we're talking about eighth grade kids but um there is no question that that part has been really helpful in
terms of getting kids into that school that want that education and that'd be the part that I would really hate to see go away through through it but um you know we we basically in that regard would see yeah probably probably 40 45% but there's no guarantee you know it it could we could have a hundred is enough kids who have applied that our 147 kids from Danvers of them get in you
that would be mathematically statistically virtually impossible but there's nothing in the admissions process that says that it has to work that way so for clarification purposes if they did go to a blind admissions process it wouldn't be blind for each Community it would be blind overall for all kids that apply really yeah yeah there's no the only part the only the only caveat to that that I would say to you is that there because you have to pay whether you send
kid we never ran into this problem obviously but smaller communities do there are situations there are times where I think it's Essex is one I think I think Nahant might be another where they literally don't have a kid in the class in a class but yet they are required to pay a minimum assessment so it's unlikely in that scenario just from a fairness standpoint that we wouldn't have to have some floor in regards to say well we there's got to be four k kids from nly you got to take one of them because
we can't they're going to have to pay for at least one C but just from a mathematical standpoint yes now I said this last year and and and it's a it's it's part of the weird dynamic we do do a lottery blind Lottery process for the agricultural there's a lot of reasons for that it's it's a very different scenario for a lot of reasons as well
but that has worked out fairly well all things considered but those communities that are involved with that especially havil Lynn Lawrence um th those are communities in which a lot of a lot of those kids are going to are going to help diversify the school so um you know that's just the that's just you know the reality of it thank you yeah other questions anybody no um I see representative Kerns might want to say something you're you're
welcome to come up we're all friends here I'm going to ask you to come up where there's a microphone that's all just elbow mic out of the way I went to taping not Highlands um both class presidents we have Bond there as well I just wanted to interject one which I think is an important component of the discussion around enrollment and
admission to the wonderful agie I will always affectionately refer to it as the yaggie and that is that unless this is changed but the criteria for admission are grades attendance discipline now as long as those are your criteria to even get into the mix you are very likely missing
kids best suited to this kind of an education so I've joined others uh in advocating for desie to adopt criteria that are not strictly grades attendance and discipline um and I think because I think that's a bad gatekeeping mechanism the blind Lottery part you know I don't know I sounds a little bit not lazy
but like a little bit like yeah just throw it in and whereas unless we're talking about the grades discipline attendance policy um I think we're missing part of it and I love the idea of getting the guidance counselors who do know these kids to say h maybe a good fit uh but don't let a suspension of a you know
fidgety unfocused 10 or 12 year old determin that they're never going to get a shot at what could be the very best spot for them that's all as as is always the case my friend from Canta street is so right in her basic opinion on this but the good news is is that is that although those are factors they're they are not nearly weighted as much as they were five
years ago okay and more importantly especially when it comes to the disciplinary component the only way that your application is sort of diminished is if you've had a very serious um disciplinary matter basically the involved with Poli so the uh that yeah now now grades so I think the other good news with this is is that is that what has changed in my estimation I've been on the admission subcommittee the last three years and I think
one of the things that has changed dramatically and people probably should know that this who we going through the application process there this isn't the prep this is not a this is this is not an objective mechanism from the standpoint that you you know 30% is grades and and an a gets you it's it's much more a situation where the you have to be bad to have
points taken off it's not pluses that that makes sense I I'm trying to say this nicely but you don't get points for getting A's but you do lose points for getting FS that make sense to you you know these are 12 year olds I I I understand and I and again I it's it's the but the bigger component that they' that they've added to this is that application proc as the interview
process that's very subjective super subjective it's again it's it and it's and I you know I I will say this when I entered into the process three years ago I was all for the the blind lottery I thought I thought this is just ridiculous and as I've been brought through the process for the last three years up there and been part of that subcommittee and watched the process it's far from perfect but it's far better better than I thought it was
and unfortunately at least from what I'm getting and of course some of my stuff is filtered but what I'm getting from desie is is desie is not at this point interested in doing the heavy lifting to do what you and I want which is to try to get the best kids in there they will just go what we're being told is the going to go the easy way which is you do you do the line Lottery which again I don't think it benefits
anyone either from that standpoint yeah I think we need to do a workshop or maybe a debate but uh a worksh my there's no debate no debate but they no I again I and I appreciate exactly what s's saying and I and I don't think I I you know again I've had long talks with the superintendent on this and I think that that that I agree with him 100% And that is that
ultimately what we want is kids who who are going to benefit by that unique style of education and especially kids who are unlikely to flourish in the more traditional education that we provide at danver's high school and I and I and the good news is is that I do believe strongly that the administration at the vetech believes that as well and that's what their commitment is and that's what's
good um you know the devil is in the details for sure but I do think that as long as everybody is on the same side and board believing what the ultimate goal is we have a much better chance of getting there I think we all agree that that's the ultimate goal and again I don't I don't think I think what we want to make the point is it's a blind Lottery doesn't do that in a entirely subjective based on you know just grades for seventh graders is doesn't make sense either well
we we appreciate the work that uh you're doing Mike and uh I just think there's more time in your life to be on more committees I mean you're only on like three at the moment step it up I actually res I resigned from the Municipal light board you did yeah which was met with the reappointment letter last week ah okay there you go congratulations I don't know how that works you're wearing two hats uh representing
danver's interests and also um I think you're truly committed to making sure the voke is giving the right education as you mentioned to uh our Danver students and of course that extends to all students and uh I feel like since you have become the representative to the board we've turned a corner a little bit in terms of the relationship and that's a good thing so we appreciate what you do and unless there are other questions for that if I could Mr Crane just real quick oh yeah please yep and Mike thank you again for your
communication is outstanding and um and I appreciate you saying that trying to build relationships and we had a recent visit to over at SX Tech with Heidi and her team and our high school team to look for ways to explore the after dark program where we can send our students that would benefit from vocational but yet they love the components of our piece it's a blend I've been involved with NE districts and we're looking to see if we can make that work and then see if maybe there's a reciprocal way way that students can benefit from us
uh the transportation we're working to see if we can get some inroads on that but again it's it's um I think it's important to note um the commitment to more information because we would not want to see a student who would really benefit who's disinterested and that's why their grades and performance may not be great but they can really see the spark and you know the tour over there they got tremendous facilities you know there's a strong commitment so you really have to be committed to do this because you're in class for one week and then you're on the site for one week and
it's a lot of lot of work so finding that student that really is committed is important and you know and I and I know that you're working really hard to gear the process so the kiddos have an opportunity to show you know what they can do besides what's on pap yeah I agree I you know again it's been I I would say that it that honestly I wasn't all that enthused when I sort of forced into this position um but I have I have found of all the things that I've done in town over the years that this is one of the more rewarding maybe it's
maybe kids are generally rewarding I don't want to believe that but I guess that's probably it and and I think to a point too it's having us reimagine like what we're doing at the high school right we have Pathways we have other exploratory and experiential type learning that that really is engaging and although we can't compete we're not at six Tech but we have Pathways where our setting might be better for those but having some opportunities for kids to gain some credentials and and we can work with that te to help us as we build our programming too and I think that has
helped us at least you know level off the curve in terms of some predictability for the budgetary stuff yeah I AG I agree 100% and I and I I can't you know obviously um I can't speak to any great extent The Experience before me I mean Wayne was a amazing man and he did a remarkable job in regards to what it was and and I would just to let other people know just so they you know um and I apologize for taking up all the time but um we
we they've just finished up there um sort of a public space we actually had the opportunity to to to to go to the Grand Opening and there's a very good chance that when the when danver's dedicates the rail trail to Wayne that the the ceremony will actually be up there um which is fitting because Wayne in at the end of his life and in those last years that he was there was a huge huge huge part of it and and when I talked to the people who had served with
him up there um you know they they just thought the world of him so they anything that they they could do to help out in that effort they were more than happy to do so um you know I so I have to try to every day live up to that you know I'm walking in Wayne's footsteps crap but you know too old for it at this point all right thanks guys we see you next year hope thanks any again and any
any questions you have feel free to to contact me and and any concerns that you have with it we'll see you in a couple weeks for the budget all right Mr superintendent okay onto our danver's car's update we have Amanda Weber and Lord Meyer here Whitney mcney could make it tonight so we have our uh presentation on the youth risk behavior survey so I'll control the slides and just know when to turn
them should I give you a signal to I'll do the best I can awesome but thank you uh a lot of great work and I know the last meeting uh really brought in you know the Coalition is growing um and I know the opportunities to to expand even further so thank you for all the work you do thank you um so hello again uh Amanda Weber social worker at Danver high school and also program director for Danver cares Laura is joining us tonight hi everyone Laura
mayor I'm a clinical social worker at the high school and I am the school and Community liaison for damis cares so we are going to do our best we know that it's getting late um to cruise our way through be really concise in how we present the information but I imagine that people may have questions so um there with us Laura is going to start uh and okay so uh this
past October of 2024 we conducted our ybs which was offered to all students at the high school grades 9 through 12 in English Spanish Portuguese and Haitian Creole uh there was an option to opt out for parents and students as well uh the survey itself identifies emerging issues at the local state and National levels you can see the areas of focus on the right hand side there this uh survey will support planning and and the evaluation of
school and Community programming and it helps to monitor adolescent health behavior uh changes over time which is incredibly valuable to us so protective factors form the foundation of Wellness starting in early childhood which is why we wanted to start with that tonight we want to emphasize the role of protective factors when looking at decreasing risk for all health problems not just mental health challenges research from the uh NIH shows that teens
ages um uh excuse me teens need 9 to 10 hours of sleep each night due to the significant adolescent brain development that they're experiencing um when asked our students were asked on an average school night how many hours of sleep do you get over 35% of Danver high school students are getting less than six hours of sleep per night with 5% getting less than four 4 hours of sleep per night
it's important to recognize the negative impact of screen time on sleep specifically at bedtime blue light emitted from smartphones tablets and laptops suppress the production of melatonin which is a hormone that promotes sleep this is something that Amanda myself Emily other social workers talk with our students directly about when we talk about sleep challenges we often say things like when you charge your battery with sleep your phone should be charging its
battery and perhaps outside your bedroom so when asked during the past 30 days how often were you hungry but didn't eat because there wasn't enough food in your home 2% of damus high school students went hungry and that looks like out of a survey of 698 students about 14 of our students go hungry each night when asked how how
much do you agree or disagree that you feel close to people at your school looking at school connectedness overall 48% of our dver high school students felt connected however when broken down by race 25% of our black students 30% of our Hispanic and Latino students and only 28% of our lgbq students um reported that they felt connected at our high school when
looking at trusted adults in our community we asked when asked uh excuse me we asked if they had people in their lives who were important that they could talk to when they had a problem we noted that students in grade 12 felt that they were much more likely to reach out to a teacher than students in our grade nine
there a lot of clicking on this one so when asked if they felt that they were sometimes most of the time were always treated badly or unfairly in school in the past year 8% of our student body said yes because of their race or ethnicity six% said yes because of their gender identity and 5% said yes because of their sexual orientation
in recognizing that 80% of our students at Danver High School identify as white when breaking that down by race the survey shows that 22.5% of our black Hispanic and Latino students reported unfair treatment at school based on their race and ethnicity and while male and female students reported low discrimination based on their gender identity 42% of our transgender stud students reported unfair treatment at
school based on their gender identity when asked during the past 12 months have you been bullied on school property or electronically overall 16% of Danver high school students reported they were bullied at school and 18 electronically however there were statistically significant differences when looking at the following demographic groups for
our transgender students 37% reported bullying on school property and 36% reported electronic bullying our lgbq population reported at 34% bullying on school property and 37% reported electronic bullying and when we're looking at emotional support 51% of Danver High School students felt that they needed to talk with someone they were asked during the last
12 months have you felt the need to talk to someone about how you're feeling how things were going in your life or problems that you may have had this is significant for our lgbq students who at 84% reported that they were significantly more likely to feel the need to talk with someone and our transgender students who reported at 64% that they were more likely to speak with someone
okay so moving on to mental health um so Dan if you could thank you okay uh so starting with distress our students are reporting that 27% felt overwhelmed by stress most of the time or always when looking at depression which is defined as feeling sad or hopeless almost every day for Two Plus
weeks 24% of our students reported having experienced that in the last 12 months and when looking at self harm uh and let me be clear this is nonsuicidal self harm 16% Express hurting or injuring themselves without wanting to die um when looking at the lgbtq Plus student population rate were significantly higher in all
categories and were significantly more likely than the average high school student to engage in self harm uh when broken down by by gender and looking at the lgbtq uh Community it was a 50% harm self harm rate which um was sort of a shocking statistic uh I will I do want to note a positive because I know that this is it sounds Grim in the way that we're presenting it but depression um sorry d uh
24% we came in at 24% the state average is 30% um actually that's that's incorrect the state average in 2023 was 34% so we're almost 10% lower than the state average and Reporting depression all right next slide so now we're into um Suicidal Thoughts so when asked during the past 12 months did you consider attempting suicide uh 133%
of our students reported that they had considered it the Mass state data is also 13% uh for our lgbtq students it was significantly higher at 38% which is also consistent with the National Data 39% uh it drops to 9% when only looking at DHS students that do not identify in the LGB btq plus Community uh female students we broke it down
that way it was at 13% and male students slightly lower at 10% and then when we looked at attempted suicide uh it was 4% for the DHS Community which is overall lower than the Mass state data which is at 8% for our lgbtq students 9% which is lower than the National Data of 12%
and for our male female students uh 3% if you just accept that nine and 3% for the lgbtq students so 9% for the lgbtq population and then for our male female Stu uh as far as gender goes for our students that identify as male or female uh it's at 3% is that attempted or that is for
that's for the attempted rate uh okay go on okay for sexual behavior students were asked have you ever had sexual intercourse 22% of DHS students have reported that they had compared to 37% which is a mate data um we did break it down if you look by grade nine 10 11 12 when we first got the report back they had the statistics
in the reverse and social workers had a little panic attack for a second um but this is this is uh pretty much in line with what we anticipated and um it was encouraging that we were significantly lower than the Mass state average okay so Dating Violence DHS students reported that in the past year someone they were
dating um looking at sexual violence 6% reported that somebody forced them to do sexual things they did not want 5% reported that someone they were dating had physically hurt them and 15% reported that their partner tried to control or emotionally hurt them we didn't have any Statewide comparison data on this one um but we did break it down I have it right here if
you look at the numbers sometimes the percentages are hard to get a sense of how many students were talking um but I did break this one down when you think when you look at the sexual violence with the sample of 698 students we're looking at about 42 students who are reporting um in the past year having been forced to do something sexual that they did not want to do and the 5% is closer to I
think 36 or 37 students okay next again there's an increased risk for lgbtq plus identifying students on Dating Violence if you look at these uh if you look by gender uh as you can see the yellow bars significantly higher um in all
categories uh and just to clarify if you as we broke this down so lgbtq plus students encompasses all students that identify either um not as straight cisgender um whereas when it was looking at just sexual orientation that does not necessarily am I getting this right Laura okay
so sexual orientation is strictly um preference for sort of romantic connection whereas gender is really in reference to how they identify um gender wise right next one all right so alcohol use why does Prof perception matter so a teens ception of their peer substance use matters significantly because it
can be D it can directly influence their own likelihood of engaging in substance use as they often feel pressured to conform to perceived social norms within their peer group leading them to experiment or participate in substance use if they believe their friends are doing so even if it's not entirely accurate so these stats let me explain because it does look a little confusing so students were asked about substance use alcohol specific in this one in the past 30
days in the past 30 days that's the perception uh graphic so if you look 9% of our ninth grade students said that they had consumed alcohol in the last 30 days however they had perceived that 45% of their peers had used alcohol in the last 30 days uh 12th grade same 30% had used in the last 30 days whereas they perceived that 85% of their here as were drinking alcohol in the last 30 days which is a lot um so
if you feel like you're like you know only one out of 10 every 10 kids that is not drinking that's that's a whole lot of peer pressure to be facing um if you look at the stat on the other side the lifetime use I know it looks slightly different our ninth graders so what this meant is maybe they didn't use in the last 30 days but they had experimented with it historically so ninth grade was lower uh at 19% and our 12th
grade was um higher at 55% go to the next okay so moving on to vape products which they identify as electronic vapor products uh again perception versus reality so if you look at the overall use so the 11% again is the 30-day within the last 30 days our students reported 11% of them report reported actual use they perceived that 83%
of their peers were using I do want to just note that this uh survey was given in early October um you know I I hope that that wouldn't skew the statistics but I do imagine particularly our ninth graders who are just sort of making their way into high school um I do think it will be valuable in the future to sort of take a look at what the spring data might look like to compare to early in the year uh lifetime use DHS students
reported vaping at a higher rate when compared to the Mass state data so even though it was only 11% in the last 30 days 21% reported that they had used Vape products whereas the mass data is at 12% uh marijuana set up similarly uh grade n in the past 30 days 5% of actual use but perceived that 41% of their peers were using uh and for grade 12 16% was
actual use whereas they perceived that 77% of their peers were using marijuana in the past 30 days uh in terms of Lifetime use DHS students actually reported lower rates when compared to Mass state data so Mass state data says 30% whereas DHS students it was reported at 20% overall okay so what does this all mean so taking a lot of this information and thinking about how we use it and how
we use that to drive programming um in supporting our youth and our families currently you know this is all very new information historically we don't have a ton of data um I know we've done the youth risk behavior survey in the past but uh it really wasn't we don't have a good amount of consistent data to be looking at over the long term so the hope is moving forward we're going to continue to gather this more often um so a couple pro programs that
we have in place right now to help address some of the issues is right now we have our in-depth program um which is a nicotine cation Intervention Program and what that is is we have uh social workers nurses and some school counselors in the district who um are have been trained to offer a four-week four session class uh about it's it's a prevention Intervention Program it can be you can meet
with students individually or as part of a group and it's also been used as a alternative to suspension so students who may be caught uh with a vape product in the bathroom you know rather than the traditional route of you know having them suspended and being out for a couple days we're giving them the option of hey let's do this really cool educational program you might learn learn something um so on the first offense they're able to do that rather
than it being logged in as a disciplinary infraction um just quickly healthy relations uh this month is do uh teen violence Awareness Month uh we have a couple healthy relationships assemblies planned for this week I'll be finishing up that presentation when I leave here tonight um but our Focus really is on friendship so uh healthy relationships are so important but I think more and more what we're really seeing even in
the high school age students is that they need a lot of support in developing um their social emotional learning skills uh and uh it starts with friendship so Laura so as far as future programming by Danver cares as you can tell by the photo I'm in the middle there holding um algae who is a koala bear here is the um youth Mental Health First Aid uh mascot uh I was trained along with uh four
peers of mine at Danver high school to be a um an instructor for this program and it's it's wonderful it's thorough it's been um widely successful we are hoping to train a lot of our staff right in District and there is hope as well to possibly even partner with um you know part of the public right in danas so maybe offering um to parents um or other you know know important members of our community so that is coming um and
we also have uh some some conversations and um planning is going on around parent and guardian engagement opportunities uh and that's something that we're looking forward to doing I also just want to point out I know this was a lot of data to throw at you so as uh the Danver car's website what we'll be doing is um Whitney who is not here tonight will have this week we'll have this slideshow uh up on
our website so that people can access it there and also we'll have a link to this portion of the school committee meeting so that people can watch it and uh us talking it through through the website that's it yeah questions from the committee yeah I think it's more of a comment I mean I wish I could say this data was great I mean but the data is I mean it's it's a good Baseline right but it's it's shining a light on
things that are not necessarily positive in the community right um so I I mean it's good to see some of this stuff that Danver cares is doing but you know when I look at um like feeling a connection to the school like how do you do that like I'd love to just hear and you don't have to comment on it now if you if you do you can but even for our school system what can we do outside of dver cares that can help to to address some of these issues right um yeah and I actually that reminds me
so one of the things that was prompted from our last ders cares meeting was um surveying students on a trusted adult not through the youth risk behavior survey but we did our own survey within the school um and I actually think it was Wendy from S6 Tech that had sort of talked about how that's something that they do uh for all of their nth grade student incoming nth grade students I also know that we do it at the Holton it's like pretty standard yep they do it at the okay Mary's giving me the nod
that I'm correct um so we did that actually recently and students were asked also to identify their safe adults in the building uh which is really connected to students feeling a sense of belonging and connectedness in the school so we haven't yet taken that data and acted on it but the goal is uh to identify all the students who did not were not able to ident ify trusted adults and ensuring that we are doing everything we can
to make those connections um and also recognizing The Trusted adults that have been identified uh to to allow for them to really see the impact that they're having um so that's one of many we also have our community blocks we're trying to implement much more seal programming um exciting things happening uh but yeah it's a it's a a really hard one and do we're going to do this again in the spring also is that
what you said well so right now we're planning to do it at we're going to administer the ybs at Holton Richmond this spring and then what we had talked about and Dan you can correct me if I'm wrong but that moving forward we're really going to align we wanted to get this done early um because we were excited about it and we wanted the data and we wanted to be able to take the data and make some uh really educated decisions about programming moving forward the hope is that we'll align it to be in the
spring for the high school and the middle school moving forward so we're getting Gathering all that data together consistently yeah it'd be great to see Trends too we what does this do year over year and and years great thank you and I I think if I may um to your point is the data this really is the Baseline the the survey was administered uh with a thirdparty vendor that works with multiple Cor itions throughout the state so you know unfortunately we just haven't for whatever
reason have done this data so it's hard for us to really get Trends and and see where things have been um I don't remember the last time that that this was administered and it's full soup I think it was done in abbreviated chunks over time it is what it is so at least we have this now to keep working I think your question about connectivity is one of the things we all believe in and it's it's the community block but it's also those little things like you talked about the Newsies here at the middle school and finding niches for for
kids and working at the middle school because that does continue to the high school as well uh anything that's involved clubs groups all those are great items but um and there's a lot of great connections but I know and that's the thing I also asked the team to do is like look at the state data and start to look at the Coalition because when you look at it alone it's like wow some of this it's like wow where is this but I think you got to put in perspective too uh knowing that we got a lot work to do but we have done a lot of work
so it's really hard to unless you have further data anyone else so when you talk about Coalition work around this issue I I can report very favorably and very positively my first D KES meeting um there were 23 people in the room that me so kudos to Mara for get word out people and and a lot of our conversation was
about people doing work but doing work separately and so how does this network or Coalition connect in ways to to drive godan engagement so that rich conversations are happening how to have them at home and in places where you know these conversations obviously AR happen even amongst themselves so uh it was a very positive meeting the room was full a lot of great ideas and hopefully that will continue and I was just happy
to in that thank you yeah thanks for coming um well first of all what is the confidence statistically in the responses what I mean is is there a margin of error where students are not potentially telling the truth either way in most tests like this or most surveys there sort of a baseline yeah we assume
3% are are not accurate or there's a margin of error of x% is is that the case here I mean I don't we don't have the exact numbers of what that looks like but there is a margin of error and remember this is all student report right so this isn't based on our observations this is students reporting um so yes however I will say this has been a survey that has been used since the mid 90s and um you know through the CDC
who originally developed it and they really feel um the data the data is more accurate I know in general than people would believe it to be surprisingly especially in the way that we framed it to students we were really careful about ensuring their confidentiality and and that they wouldn't be identified um we did a ton of pre-work to make sure that students felt safe and comfortable answering honestly yeah I wouldn't expect it to be off by multiples but I figur it'd be like a
baseline could be could be off here or there um second question now for example there was a question questions were asked about sexual activity um was there a question asked about birth control how many of the students who are sexually active are using birth control I can and Laura you can step in any time so when we were going through the survey um working with the company that uh the consulting firm that worked with
us they we had sort of a a standard uh survey that we I think there were like a hundred questions that came on the basic survey and then we were able to add questions in the areas that we were particularly interested in um I think when we first went through it we had like 180 questions we were really interested in um so we had to cut them down uh we did I think we got it down to like 123 questions um I
would love to ask more about you know whether they're using protection and what their understanding of sexually transmitted diseases are one of the things that has come out of this that I realized is we're getting this like Baseline data but now we can use this to ask to gather our own data as a community so there are other ways for us to gather our own data to collect the information that feels like it's missing here
I do want to add quick we also didn't include stuff about uh the information about screen time because that was another one that we felt like it just wasn't giving us enough information and I think we need to ask some more targeted questions around social media use and how often kids are online and how they're using that time okay and I want to get back to from a data standpoint the questions about suicide suici
so I want to make sure I'm right about this the report says self-reported lgbtq students 9% report that they have attempted suicide that strikes me as a crisis number and I feel that way even if the state even if that's below the state average then that just means the state average is terrible too um it seems to me and this is really first of all not
for you guys did a great job on the survey and what Danver cares is doing is vitally important so don't take anything I say as it but as a group we've got to recognize this is a serious issue and find ways to address this directly and through danas cares but also any way that we can that that is a critical number almost 10% of a discret group has attempted suicide that terrifies me I think
it terrifies us all Eric and and yeah you know I know that we have the SOS program that we've implemented in the schools which is an awareness and and the screening way that we work with students but um it is it's concerning I mean I'm wondering if and again throwing ideas out there but you know if we uh find a way to do workshops with parents and you know May it's aimed at parents of lgbtq students and just you know
anything we can do to support the families because we can't do it all clearly a lot of what happens happens outside of the schools whether it's the bullying whether whatever it is it's not all happening within the school day and uh but if we can support the parents and families who are facing these issues in a way that helps bring that number down in any way that's a win that's a real win and that's something that should be a goal I think for
us% mean to quantification that's a scary and and I think and I know Mr shann has a question but one of the things that we're working on is more Outreach with families that's that's an area that we know is missing um and there's some recent work that was done and we'll continue to do that so that is the keys to provide resources as well for families and for anybody so valuable one quick question do you know if
it's happening or is there a plan for it to happen to share this data with say health health classes to help drive the conversation the lesson you know I know the ninth graders have this data shared with those and I know not everyone is equipped maybe to to have facilitate lessons some of these topics because they delicate but I'm wondering is is the data
even shared with our students so it's interesting you say that because I've been trying to figure out we had talked about sharing it with students I do think I want to be we want to be really intentional about that um and what the setting is for that originally we had talked about maybe presenting it sort of in small chunks right maybe you want to speak to that Laura she had go ahead well I mean I think the the conversation is that this is important and this is Val and how do we want to disperse this information out you know so there are a lot of conversations that are that are
occurring um to try to figure out the most thoughtful way that we can do that um but just to specifically answer what you had asked our health classes do do the signs of suicide SOS program so that curriculum has been in use and each of us typically will go down introduce ourselves to those ninth grade health classes prior to the start of that so that they can see our face hear our Voice learn a little bit about what we do do and who we see in the building know where we're located so that they
you know should they have an experience while they're learning these you know difficult topics that they'll have a face to recall and a person to speak with I also just I know that Drew bets just recently you know asked us to share the data with him I know that he's been talking about using it to drive some decisions I don't know the specifics of that and if that's related to the health curriculum or if he wanted to use it it is okay
yes all right thank you thank you it's appreciated you got it I also just feel like I have to end on saying that Danver is doing amazing things we've got awesome kids and the majority of them are feeling connected and loved and like they belong and um you know I just want to make sure that I I think that's an important clarification because when you look at the DAT as a standalone you
know but it's it's a start and I remember when just asking should we do the survey I'm like of course we should do the survey but you have to recognize that start from you know Ground Zero but we do have so many great things happening and great connections but we can always improve thank you um next up and I'm not going to believe the point I want to get moving our policy subcommittee met um back in January just to give a quick update on five areas we discussed comp determination we'll talk about that later
tonight but certainly it is needed because of the mcast requirement no longer being part of a graduation requirement number two um we brought we discussed the library material selection adaption policy that actually was implemented here in 2006 and just looking to make sure that our informal and formal considerations in terms of any challenges um you know any revisions we need to make to that that that will be coming and we we'll bring that to the school committee at a later date the transportation policy now that we have
vehicles that are non 70 which means Transportation by our staff to extracurricular events or even during the school day uh we need to put together protocols and qualification guidelines for that that's in progress we've shared that with our attorney we'll bring that back next month uh the entrance age we had uh a Family Outreach just to bring this to the school committee for discussion which I'll bring this into a later meeting but the bottom line line is with the entrance age is that uh the policy itself
states that know kindergarten you know must be 5 years old or older before September one that's the cfff and interg grade one that is the same U for six years old on September one and that's important because that's always difficult you may have individual situations that um when you weigh into it but when you're looking at the whole um that that is always the discussion piece so that'll be coming further for discussion uh and then school choice uh as we each year enter into a hearing for participation or not you know is this the year to
take a good hard look at is school choice an option for us and we just talked about the actual policy itself just understand the parameters so when when I do bring the Deep dive into whether we should do this or not we understand all the policy implications so that's it on the policy subcomittee questions concerns anything to add no all right thank you again okay thank you so new business
monthly budget report Here Comes good evening everybody uh so this month's budget report is not um exceedingly different than last month's was uh there have been some small adjustments that were made uh to the projections that we were looking at for the overages in special ed transportation that numberers actually gone down
a little bit um and the contracted Services number hasn't changed a whole lot but the there was an offset that was identified one of the reasons it was over by the amount it was was because we are um using contracted services to replace some work that would typically be done by one of the staff members that that it's an unfilled position right now and so that salary savings can be used to offset overage and contracted services so it is not an overall deficit in the
budget um that needs to it has an offset now um but I mean other than that it we're largely in the same place we were last month um for you know as we continue to work to try to um get a handle on the transportation costs and and other pieces um it kind of still is what it is questions for my
only question is that um clearly this the special ed budget and transportation is a challenge no question and uh we're up on the um cost of instructional assistance which I take largely arising from the contract which um we needed to do and was reasonable um are you content that we're going to be able to meet those three areas of challenge um and or do we need certain
help do we need do you anticipate need from the town no I I mean I think we'll be able to um successfully navigate the fy2 um year closing out the budget and everything um I mean part of that is because we do have certain resources that are still available to us through the emergency assistance funding that we've gotten from the state um and the circuit breaker res Reserve even though we are digging a little bit deeply into it more deeply than we would maybe
prefer um it does offer us uh continued flexibility to close the gap on some of these things um I will be keeping an eye on and I'm not sure you won't really know this until the end but you know those those reimbursements that come from the state for transportation um we've talked a lot about the transportation for special education that through circuit breaker that reimbursement um but they also the Kento transportation is reimbursed based on last year's end of year report um I
was kind of crunching some numbers while I was waiting to come up and the um the reimbursement the last couple of years has hovered around 80% it's been as high as 100% a couple years ago um the last two years it's been about 80% and if that were to hold true again that would be $150,000 that would come in at the end of this year that we could use to help close these gaps that we see so that's the kind of stuff we don't really know until it all kind of comes to fruition and you see that payment notification um that
that money is coming but um I'm I'm still fairly confident that we'll be able to navigate f25 it's just you know getting a getting a better handle on some controlling some of these costs in future years well thank you Pam it's important work you're doing and we appreciate it thank you assistant superintendent
interview at long last great well we'd like to bring uh Kristen Anderson to the table um and I'd like to provide an introduction uh and before I do that though I I want to thank our search committee for the work uh that they did it was a great process uh Julie Pastak and Brian Riley chaired that committee and it was a great cross-section of administrators uh School Committee Member Mike Shannon uh parents
um You Name It We had them on there admin assistant which I think is important because the assistant superintendent cuts across multiple stakeholders so that process was great but we also had a strong second round with my administrative team our administrative team I should say um then we had the public uh virtual um presentation which we had over 90 participate in that so that was outstanding and they provided some outstanding feedback and that was very useful we brought back that second round search committee to really dive deep into
that data and then We Came Upon individual meetings um with myself and the finalist um and then from there a real deep dive into the uh background checks the reference checks and those were quite extensive and then we asked Kristen for some more uh as we did and um you know we're very pleased to to present Kristen uh as the finalist but I do want to say that uh one of the other finalist Peter dearo did an outstanding job he's our acting High
School principal um longtime curriculum director teacher at Danvers High School um he's just done it all he's an outstanding leader uh he did a great job to the process and I think we're very lucky to have Peter in our district in um continuing to do so as we transition the principal ship and he'll be back in a curriculum director role next year and he's really eager to hit the ground running with that but I just want to give a a special thanks to him uh for extending his leadership into um this particular round it was an outstanding
round of applicants and very strong um but Peter's very well respected by all um myself personally respect him a great deal and um I just wanted to make that public um you know just make this known publicly of his strong candidacy but also the willingness and understanding that we are building I think an outstanding administrative team and he's part of that we're grateful for that and also grateful that we have Kristen here um and we're very pleased to present her and you know again uh we provided an update to the community today and I
gave that to the school committee over the weekend but we and you've seen a resume over 33 years of experience uh through each individual phone call by myself and others it was clear that she has not only the experience but the ability to work with multiple stakeholders in such a way that she builds collaboration right she builds that feeling of trust um she really understands data and how to move data but also understands the
Dynamics of a community and she's been in different communities and in different leadership roles so it's very clear that she knows how to work with a multiple stakeholder group but she also has a strong understanding of curriculum a very strong understanding of at all three levels and I think that's important professional development is is strength of hers but also getting into looking at how a district moves and how she can best align and keep that movement going forward and I think that's important you know there's always the thinking of an outsider coming in
and how that will look and the feedback from all of the references was that she does this very well with Grace um and everybody was very sad to see her go but very happy for this opportunity so again I'm very pleased to bring her forward as our finalist and I'll turn this over to the committee thank you thank you welcome Christ we are uh excited to have you here and now you've seen this Rogues Gallery in action do you still
want the job okay that's good to know so we're going to go through a uh a round of uh questions there may be follow-up questions um so I am going to start with uh Mr Shannon we'll start down that end and and go from there thank you uh Mr crank Kristen I wonder if you would tell me or us what steps will you take to familiarize yourself with the
specific needs and challenges of damers Auction New microphone so excited um I have been welcomed here um I think I've had five interviews I think 25 people that I've worked with have been called something extraordinary um and every step along the way I felt a warm generous Community coming through that wants to
uh succeed um and sort of be at the top of its game and all the pieces are there for for that to be true um so in terms of an entry plan I think is what you're asking me about uh I'm smiling because uh after 11 years in conquer and Conquer carile um I led committees that hired all all the principles um so five principles um
and gave them one book which was how to write an entry plan book um and it went through five components of how you really get to know a community and that's what I would do basically follow those so I've been doing some of it already which is the first component which is to look at every piece of data out there um there's a lot of public data so the department of Elementary and secondary education has a lot of data on socio economics on um academic
achievement you heard some on social emotional wellbeing um but all of those pieces uh what are the languages spoken in the and so forth all of those um pieces as you see from my resume I'm an economist and a mathematician by training um so I actually like the data uh and love to dig into it so I've noticed some things in the mcast uh for example or your I ready scores which are your internal achievement um that I can sus
out so that first of all getting to know it sort of numerically the lay of the land um and then the really big part is starting to get to know all the stakeholders in building relationships so I want to you know talk to all of the administrators in depth where are you in your career how can I support you how can I help you because that's that's I I see my job as my job is to do whatever Dan tells me to do that is really my
job but to know where each of the leaders of the buildings are and where they want to grow and where they see their Community growing and then within their communities help them by getting to know all their stakeholders there's formal stakeholders curriculum developers Vice principls there's counselors but there's also informal um who are who's who are the staff members that other staff members really listen to when decisions are made um and what connections and
um sort of personal relationship can I build with them um to put money in the bank so that when big decisions come along um I can be right there and holding a group together to make the really important decisions um and just to underscore how important entry plan is I would say I went into conquered and Conquer carile with that mind and then maybe seven years later it really
fruit came to bear if you will because we had to reinvent education during the pandemic um and I had probably seven or eight people who were staying overnight at the end of February with me in 2020 and we were literally Reinventing what education was going to look like in two weeks not in a year but you know so those relationships um probably are the most important thing I
also think sort of you know lastly coming in from the outside not being from Danver I can hold that objective lens and say okay 4% suicide ideation is a real problem and you know you can mention it then you can manage it I give the district such kudos for for giving the youth risk behavior service in the first place because if you can mention it you can manage it now you can come up with that list and I started listing
them here all the things that can be done you know but you need the data um so just objectively coming in and saying this is a real strength look at these science scores you know or whatever it is how can we build what's happening there that we can build off of in other areas so I would say those those pieces but there is a entry plan book and I do follow it and I do create a report yeah sure happy to answer it Josh
great thank you so uh you sort of answered my original question so I'm gonna I'm G to move jump around a little bit but you touched upon this a little bit in your answer but can you describe your leadership style and how it aligns to the goals of the Danver School District yeah so um I hope to be someone who leads from The Middle so I have this sort of idea in my mind because I have five kids and we've
watched a lot of movies together of like the Super Friends coming in together and so I'm just in the middle of the Super Friends I'm not leading the Super Friends and you know it's your formal and your informal leaders and you just get them together um and you know each other well enough that you can just bounce ideas off each other not judge somebody you know it's the content not the person you're talking about um
so it's very collaborative leadership style um I will say in some incidents especially when I was a school principal there are some decisions that you you just have to make you're in the moment it's a fire alarm for example or you know something violent is happening that calls for I need to come in I need to bring my best thinking at that moment talk to the few people that I can um but decision needs to be made quickly um but most decisions especially the ones
that we're talking about here curricular decisions and so forth are collaborative decisions because if you have these big committees like the 22 members who um intro you know interviewed me you're getting Buy in from all of those people because they were involved and they had a stake in in the choice that was made so the collaborative Le leadership style is the most sucessful sort down the road as well but also I just like to talk
to people so and I'm a huge sports fan so if anybody's a huge sports fan I'd love to talk sports thank you sure sure thank you um before I ask my question I just want to thank you for U mentioning the super prins my favorite cartoon in so um 100% Saturday mornings but um how would you engage with the uh teachers and the staff at the ground level to better understand their challenges and ensure that their voices are heard as part of District decision making
yeah so um I would say three ways I would engage with staff um the first is and I don't know what happens here now so I I would have to talk um with Dan about that but formally I right now meet monthly with the Union leadership um and we just try to circumvent any problem s before they become big um so you know I'll bring up okay let's talk about next year's calendar like in
November you know much earlier um and we talk about Personnel things if that's what's done you know all the things before they become big issues um I try to get a lay of the land of you know we're thinking about adopting a new Ela curriculum in two years what might you see as a process you know what might you see as a makeup public committee or something like that so that's like the formal
you know um I do hold a big stake that Administration and teachers unions working together actually does make things better for student achievement um then uh I mentioned as part of my entry plan I like to talk to principles and work really with principles because they're the leader of their building um so in my first year I would um set up what I've done in nset right now is set up weekly times to walk around each building with each principal and so
we go into about 45 minutes we go into different set of classrooms and I start to get to know the teaching styles I get to get to know some of the people um and then eventually that's just me walking around alone and I love how the central office is in the high school I love that year I've never had that before so I always have to factor in the the travel time but just walking around and talking to people um I made the mistake in my first couple of years of
doing it of always going to the same school at the same time so I would always see like the fifth graders in art but I never saw them doing science for example so now I I switch it up so I have a week A and A Week B schedule um for doing that and U my assistant uh just knows that's Sac or Saint like we just don't mess with it uh unless there's some emergency coming up but yeah I just make sure to get out there people know who I am I used to
call myself a visible principal when I was a principal but I was a visible assistant superintendent you know just the relaxed sideline talk yeah here I'm going rogue yes and what I mean is that these questions that we've worked on there they're Technical and how would you do this and how would you do that and Dan and the search team has already really vetted that um so my interest is in um
is in your interest lots of people start out they become teachers and 30 something years later they retire as a teacher and they've had a great career you chose to move into the administration of schools and what made you choose that what was in your heart that that filled that desire for you to become an administrator as opposed to staying in the
classroom director so the um kind of sarcastic answer is I was trying to build a school at home by having five kids but it didn't work so uh I had to become a school administrator no I think in general I had an elementary school principal who um you know I was from a very destitute area Capitol Hill in Washington DC um I
mean we were so far below the poverty level nobody didn't have free and reduced lunch um and yet he uh having come from the community really raised us up um we were the students first of all I knew where he lived I'd been to his house but uh we just knew he cared about us he entered us into multiple contest I think I won the DC Science Fair like five years in
a row um and there weren't that many entries you know it was it was a a public Urban public school system that was failing at the time but he just drove and drove to make us um be achieve more than our potential and I saw that power that he had um over you know our lives and the the positive piece he could have so he's in my mind all the time yeah yeah and what
I found honestly as a teacher um was that I was working all summer anyway and so working all summer res an administrator didn't really bother me I was taking on all the roles I was the mentor facilitator when I was a teacher I I was the head of the math department then I became the K to 12 head of the ma like I just kept taking on more and more roles um to have more and more impact um and that was
very satisfying good thank you that wasn't that Rogue well was Rogue enough I'm I'm a rebel as everybody knows um laughing yeah followup Mike when we Community looks at your resume your body of work is very impressive thank you um what jumps out is you spent 12 years at conquer KY yeah made the
decision to leave there and go to naret for one year and and now you're sitting here so would you mind sharing with us and whoever's watching and listening will listen and watch what motivated you to make this leap from you know your your establish the conquer carile go do a year at nit and here you are sitting sitt and you're sitting there for a reason very good reason but could you just uh share with that with everyone why
that is yeah um so three reasons why I would leave conquered and Conquer KLA after as you say a very successful career there I facilitated the establishment of two strategic plans two fiveyear strategic plans um and when it became the fifth year of the second one the last year I'm sitting there realizing we've achieved all of our goals and they were pretty height heighty
goals so um there I could do more but I couldn't we had grown as much as we could grow under my leadership um and I just felt time for a new a change um the other thing is that conquered and Conquer carile are extremely well-resourced District so um we both had a lot of support in the community as danas does um super high
per pupil expenditure but then we also had uh the conquered education fund which gave us literally millions every year um so there was almost nothing that we couldn't do with good planning um and I felt like through that sort of generous Community I became able to figure out what what were the levers that actually make a difference in students lives and help them maximize their potential and wanting to take that
to a less well advantaged um Community um you know as the retirement system works here I had already established a pretty high salary in in conquer so that's what salary that I'll retire on um so that wasn't as much of an issue um so I just really was looking for a community that had all the pieces at play um that were going to make a district realize their potential um
but they weren't there yet and here I feel um nset had all of those it had great leader very supportive Community mcast scores that were about average but the the bulk of students who are needs Improvement were just under average and that's not a hard lift that's a pretty easy lift um and what I didn't expect uh after I went to NSA was that my
five kids and my husband would not like me away from home in Newton um for five days out of the week so uh I I turned to my youngest I think it was maybe November and I said how are you doing she's a junior in high school at Newton North and I said how you doing with me away and her eyes just filled up with tears and that was kind of the end of that story I I went to my superintendent
um Brooke clenchy who is wonderful and I told her and she said whatever you need to do I'm going to support you so um we she gave me a long list of tasks uh to rewrite the handbook the emergency plan the Decap the you know just things that policies and procedures that weren't in place or they were so old they needed to be updated and I've just been checking down I'm working with committees um since then and so I think I've done about 15 of them already um and about
five more to go yeah does that answer your question yeah yeah any other followup all right um thank you for answering our questions for being for my pleasure and um I think we'll have you step out if you don't mind or we'll have Mary escort here and then we'll deliberate a little bit and uh call you back shortly oh great thank you thank
you all right um com ments questions from anybody on the committee in terms of what you think uh your
impression I was just going to say I think it's you it's it's hard to really interview somebody for 15 minutes here and get a get a really good feel but I do trust I trust the process she's been through you know a lot of it but I I did like a lot of her answers um especially like around the leadership how leading in the middle and collabor leadership style um also with her entry plan I thought she had some really good details
so I um I would support her C I'm happy to jump in I I had the advantage of being on the initial committee um and got to see everybody but the end of that night well two days actually I had Kristen and Peter in my top to her her
body of work is incredibly impressive um her references put put to rest a lot of concerns and I tried to address that that last question how did you end up heing Damas um I just think from the position of bringing in just Talent she she checks that box in a big way SE I mean uh reading through her
resume and just meeting her she's got all checks all the boxes of having the background having achievements and very personal so I feel that's a combination of somebody that's that this town needs somebody that every town needs but we take it um you can have somebody who can check the first two they're not willing to person I feel that that's a little bit of that she was able to just fit right I think that she would be a
great candidate um yeah I agree with everything everyone said nothing that you said in this interview process in any way um said May me say to myself not the right person no I think um she'll be a great fit and uh I've also always been a believer in the sort of Bill parcel's approach which is we're asking you to make the dinner and you need to have depict the ingredients so to speak and
I have great faith based on the hiring I've seen already that if you if this is the person you come to us and recommend unless there's some red flag out there and there certainly isn't here then I'm supportive I say I say we like I I'll vote for I support any comments from you before before we uh take a motion and a vote thank you for asking that uh Mr Crane uh
to your point you know I I think the process was very strong and we I'm very grateful for the support of the school committee to allow us to go through the process and having Mike sit in there for school committee was the ability to be able to share information back and forth and you know um we're blessed to have such a strong pool of candidates and we had almost 40 overall and I know many very qualified didn't even receive an interview because you just can't interview everybody um and as the process went it just became very clear
Kristen was there as well as Peter too as I mentioned earlier but just the the the followup on all the references it was like almost too good to be true check those boxes of like why I leave concerete why I leave nset all those pieces because we want to build the best team here and I'm looking to really learn and match with somebody's style as well you know there's a lot to the assistant superintendent's job it really is but also um how can we continue to build and I really am intrigued by your conquer background you know because that is
a high performing District um and I know we have so many great things in place here we have some awesome people and teachers are working really hard can she bring an outside perspective and look at what we're doing for ways to keep pushing student achievement while working within our what we have right bringing that lens in um and she has a strong Equity lens too which is important um so I I think through that whole process you know and just keep digging down and and looking like and even just checking social media and all those things just everything just matched
up very strongly here and it was um you know very it's like we want to bring in the best we really do and I think your point is is very well taken Sean somebody that can work with everybody you know and yeah there are times for the tough decisions I get that but you know like Kristen mentioned there's a lot of things that just have to get done as you know married us so just having that institutional knowledge it's going out the door but bringing somebody board that can bring people together um and I think we're
blessed by being able to keep Peter as well I think it's just um yeah I I again I want to note my appreciation to the committee and and we've V at this one very deeply um so I feel very confident that this is a very strong candidate I think she'll our district will benefit from her expertise all right um so with that we're going to do uh two motions and the first motion is going to be to
uh offer chrisen the J and the second motion will then be to authorize because we signed the contract so we um what I would suggest is that um Dan come to us with a proposed contract but since we're technically the one signing will make a mo to have B Rec that make sense to everybody y okay so with that I'll accept the motion
to uh to offer uh Kristen the assistant superintendency subject to the successful contract negotiation U anyone want to make that motion a motion that we offer do we have a second second all right we have a motion in a second any further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say I I I
I all those opposed none that motion carries and second I'll accept a motion to um uh ask the superintendent to come back to the committee in a reasonable time with a proposed contract having negotiated same with Kristen um someone want to make that motion all right we have a motion do we have a second second we have a second is there any discussion hearing none all those in favor please say I I
I thank you that's also a e
please we probably have another hour of questions that we need to ask you so settle it no get started we have um taken a vote and I am very pleased to tell you that we want to welcome you to the uh Danver School District as
our new assistant superintendent thank you so much um no thank you I think we're going to be you're going to be a great addition and we all feel that um we also uh agreed that Dan would work on negotiating the contract with you and he'll come back to us with his recommendation and uh other than that we look forward to you joining us oh thank you so much do if you have any questions for us at this point before Millions but really more for this lady sitting next to me I was just picking her brain
there you go she's wonderful It's a Wonderful brain to pick she has been uh yeah you know we love Mary Mary has done so much for us and and as you may know served as interim superintendent for a year and really kept this District going we can't thank her enough but uh there a big shoes to fil but we have a feeling you're going to film so thank you thank want to thank you from the bottom of my heart it's going to be great it's going to be great will thank you thank you congratulations thank
you congratulations thank you back to the superintendent okay thank you very much and we're going to move into to the uh last portion I have that correct uh which is um recommending the first reading of the competency determination policy uh which um I I put in the the
folder the slideshow and and also an updated document I had uh Peter deoro the EHS principal along with Mary wormers and the team review the document they did make some updates to the specific document I want to make um a point to those areas that are highlighted um as we know that the company determination so they they basically made the difference or the the distinguishment between
2003 to 2026 2003 when mcast began the the class of 2026 so we know that mcast was part of that compens determination so if students have completed that piece they've met the compens determination that included the um credits that are required for graduation would be the diploma right but we also know that beyond the class of 2027 we we know that desie and
and the Board of Education they're working um right now on there could be changes to this so our feeling is that let's keep it basic it's roughly the same document as before with the competency determination so if they did not pass mcast you know then it falls back to two years of science completion two years of math two years of English right which are the basic as we equated to with the sophomore year would be take the mcast keep it as simple as that
because this allows us flexibilities that things change and also knowing that we're developing our portrait of the learner so there may be connections further down the road to those competencies that that we've been talking about um so again on this particular slide which is the the change to the the draft is that we've classified 2003 2026 so somebody did not pass they did not graduate which they very few you know obviously if they've met this they get the diploma and we'll do the
out best Outreach that we possibly can to ensure that all of our courses are already aligned that's the standards as they are right and again we have a piece in place where if they didn't meet the requirement ways we can monitor and help them make p the courses so my recommendation is for the first reading of the updated compeny determination policy I think it's important that we do the the first and the second so that it's in place before the end of the year all right so um first of all
is there a motion to approve this policy for first reading a motion so move okay second so we have a motion on a second um discussion and questions Sean J Mike no yeah I took a look at this and it's just just a uh it's clear to me it's a way to make sure that we're meeting the state requirement along with our
own requirements so is that focus on math and literacy and I think it makes perfect sense until you know if and when the state comes down and make some changes which is entirely possible um all right any further discussion all right so with that we will take a vote all those in favor of approving the policy for first reading please say I I I oppose none carries thank you uh the next piece and
this is in your folder as well as we're to that point to look at the calendar for next year so um I don't have a slide or whatever for that presentation but um Janet worked together the uh proposed calendar and it virtually the same as this year's calendar where we moved one of the professional development days to J January we also moved one of the early release days beginning of the year to December the difference is where the
December break begins because of where um the falling of of Christmas so it's not as clean as it was last year where the 20th on that Friday we had the early release and then we were done um there was research done with most districts and they're looking at the 23rd is that early release day then you jump into your December break if you look on the backside of of the break in January you know where the second falls on a Friday you know it just doesn't make any sense to come back into school that Friday
just start clean with the wheat right so you kind of make up that day it's not a makeup it's just the way that the calendar Falls it'll change over the next couple of years um and that we did work with the union and talk with them in terms of did they like where that professional development day fell uh on January and we all feel that that's a great Point um it was well received because it's a nice midpoint it does break up that weekend of Martin Luther King so um we're going to they they said yep we'll continue that no problem um
so it's pretty stock and standard so you have any questions or what have you have we'll have a motion to approve the proposed calendar for a first reading motion to approve for the first reading all right is there a second second we have a motion we have a second is there I'm sorry no no I I apologize for interrupting I don't know if do we necessarily need to have two readings unless it's policy oh fair point we are yeah I I'm guess I'm I'm going back
in time but okay so that's just an advisory presentation okay fair enough so uh and I was going to offer up if you needed me to do any other research and wanted to you know do a vote next month or whatever but it's pretty stock that's fine I would just one quick point of uh for discussion sure that December 22nd is probably going to be a light day for attendance I would imagine in the dver school district um with two clean like uh you're looking at two weeks vacation but that coming back for that Monday that's
going to be a tough one so and a half day Tuesday right so just just some boot for thought but it doesn't look like it's GNA change all right uh so we will move on to the order take a vote though right I'm sorry if you want take a vote all right all those in favor please say I well I think we need a motion so I'd like to make a motion to adopt the superintendent's recommendation for the 25 26
School C second all right do we have a motion we have a second and this is for final approval all right all those in favor please say I I I all thank you we have a vote order of business uh consent agenda so this would be to approve the homeschool request fundraising requests the uh HRM this Library donation for which we are very grateful and uh the Personnel member I have a motion to approve
the consent agenda y motion to approve the consent agenda is there a second second are there questions on any of the items on the agenda all right hearing none all those in favor please say I I I all oppos none uh D you want to talk about the contribution at allation or rather pardon me if I put you on no you didn't put me on the spot but you
know certainly the um the check and again just want to be careful that you know of course but for the recogniz 75th birthday um and and you know that that generous donation uh that's needed for teachers and students always a lovely thing we appreciate that anytime uh someone does that thinks of us that way it's a very nice thing so thank you um okay minutes I secretary I'll move that we
uh approve and release the minutes from the January 13 2025 and approve but not release the minutes from the January 13 2025 uh both of those are executive sessions no strike that the January 13 2025 regular meeting minutes to approve and release release but to approve and not release the January 13 2025 executive session second do
we have a motion we have a second any discussion hearing none all those in favor please say I thank you Dan do we have any Communications we have no Communications this month legislation I think Sally and Mike covered it so um it was amazing they all three were here and there was some great discussion there which we appreciate um any subcommittee liaison updates I think I
gave my dvas K one earlier yep so we have that good and uh you talked about the danis human rights and inclusion commission event on Saturday night yes that was really terrific so I think that covers that um any other subcommittees to report no all right U so before we adjourn our next meeting is on the 24th that is our budget hearing um and
beyond that unless anyone has anything else to bring before the committee I will accept a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second we have a motion we have a second all those in favor please say I I I oppose none the carries good night damis and for