##VIDEO ID:https://videoplayer.telvue.com/player/994DtmGEsi0VDYK3jJI2BJ72GfgNIpU2/media/912072?autostart=false&showtabssearch=true&fullscreen=false## <v Speaker 1>Good evening everyone.</v> Welcome to our meeting, the school committee meeting Thursday. Sorry, Monday, November 4th, 2020 fourth. We'll start. I'll start with roll call Ms Flats. Here, Mr. Brand. Present. Ms. Collins? Yes. And I'm here. And now I'd like to make a motion to open executive session in order to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining of an open meeting may have a, a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the public body. The chair. So declares, EIN, units A and B, administrative assistant food service, paraprofessionals and custodial and maintenance. Bless you. <v Speaker 2>And the chair. So</v> <v Speaker 1>What?</v> And And custodial and maintenance. <v Speaker 2>No. Did the chair declare?</v> <v Speaker 1>Oh, and I. And I and I. So declare second. Oh.</v> <v Speaker 3>And, and I And sorry. You declare.</v> <v Speaker 4>Second.</v> <v Speaker 3>Second. Roll call. Vote. Ms.</v> Flatters. Yes. Mr. Brand? Yes. Ms. Collins? Yes. And Emma? Yes. We'll come back at approximately 6 35. Good evening everyone. Welcome back to our meeting the the school committee. November 4th, 2024. We did roll call right before executive session. Then we had executive session. So I'd, now I'd like to ask everyone to stand up for the pledge of Allegiance and moment of silence. <v Speaker 4>I pledge allegiance.</v> Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to Republic. Republic for which it stands. One Nation and Justice for <v Speaker 3>Thank you for taking the moment of silence.</v> We do so to honor those who have sacrificed for our country. I'll now go to public speak. Public speak is scheduled for a greater of 15 minutes. Each speaker will be permitted a maximum of three minutes during which time they can speak about topics within the scope of responsibility of the school committee. All remarks will be addressed to the school committee chair. Public speak is not a time for debate or response to comments by school committee. Is anyone here for public speak? No one signed up. Anyone from the public? No. And I don't see anyone online. So with that we'll go to our teacher representative comments and then student and METCO representative. <v Speaker 5>Thank you Mr. Chair. I have nothing</v> to say at this particular time. Thank <v Speaker 3>You.</v> Great, no problem. Thank you. And I don't see our student representative so we can go to our medical representative. <v Speaker 6>Thank you Mr. Chair. I also</v> have nothing to say at this time. Great. <v Speaker 3>Thank you all. Thank you both for being here.</v> I would like to, if we can, I'll take a motion to approve the consent agenda. <v Speaker 7>Move.</v> <v Speaker 3>So moved second. All those in favor?</v> Anyone against any abstentions? The consent agenda is approved. And with that I'll pass things to the superintendent for the superintendent report. Oh, I didn't say announcement. Does anyone have any announcements? Sorry I skipped over announcements. The announcements, no announcements. Oh sure. <v Speaker 8>Just to share that tomorrow we have our Nils day,</v> which is our Natick Innovation and Learning summit, which is our full day professional development for all the educators in the district. Should be really exciting. We have Dr. Dona Monte Jackson coming to speak to all of our educators in the district. We also have many outside providers coming into present to our staff as well as many of our expert staff presenting to their colleagues. So it should be a really exciting day. Great. <v Speaker 3>That sounds like the most important event happening</v> tomorrow in the United States I believe. I can't think of anything else. Well good luck. I hope it's a productive day for everyone. And with that now I'll turn things to the superintendent. <v Speaker 9>Great to see everyone.</v> So we're gonna start off with four of our schools presenting their school improvement plans. I'm super excited about this. The leaders, their teams have worked, been working incredibly hard looking at their data considering culture and and teams and structures in their buildings and how they can meet the unique needs of their buildings. So it's a bit of a shift. If you watched our last meeting, we really reviewed that shift where we're now not having one plan for all elementary schools or all middle. We're actually doing a plan by school. So we're gonna present all of those and my understanding is we'll vote on those after our next meeting when we hear the other four schools. So really excited to have our principals and teams present today. And we are going to start with the Wilson Middle School and Principal Kearney welcome. <v Speaker 10>Hi everyone. So I am proud</v> to present our school improvement plan. I think just to kind of highlight a couple of things before we kinda get into the meat of it, I just wanna thank Dr. SP for coming in and really guiding us on really having like a laser focus to our school improvement plan. We have been working on similar goals that we have now. They're just definitely more focused to really target specific areas. We've been doing a great job. We've had a robust enrichment and RTI intervention program at the both middle schools and it's really had, we've had great success where, you know, our median student growth percentile, we've hit all of our goals over the years. So you know, when you think of school improvement plan, if we're hitting those marks, you probably don't need to improve in that area. So it really gave us, she gave us some great guidance on really how to focus our, our goals on more, you know, things more specifically. So it's been a great journey even in the last couple months and really feel proud that we've in involved the staff probably more than we ever have. A lot of times it feels like sometimes we're doing this in isolation and then just kind of letting them know. But we, you know, started with our team leaders at Wilson Middle School really to just highlight what our focus areas would be. And then even today at our staff meeting, really digging into the data, we won't show it here 'cause obviously it has students' names and you know, confidential information. But it was really great conversations, really digging in deep into each of the goals and more to come on that. So we're really excited for the work, so, so our school mission and vision really has, hasn't changed much. Our vision changed a little bit. If you just go to the next slide, sorry Linda, really just to focus on the work that we're doing around belonging and introducing the advisory program this year and really working with every staff member in small groups with students once a month. So you'll see that embedded in some of the goal. And then just a lot of the work that we've done around restorative practices and just seeing the drops in office referrals and even suspension rates, which has been really fantastic. Next slide. So just some key areas here on our school highlights just in regards to MCAS data when, you know, the state has accountability data and gives us a percentage on our progress towards improvement targets for it. And we went up 6% in that area from 2023 to 2024. So wanted to note that. And then just some more general things for Wilson. We've had unified sports at Wilson Middle School and certainly throughout Nat Natick public schools. We've got designation from SP, the Special Olympics to be a unified champion school. And that's something we're really proud of this just last spring we also received the designation from our Anti-Defamation League in Massachusetts. That, that we have are considered a no place for hate school. So that was, we've been really proud of that. We've done a lot of work in that area and this was the first year that we received the designation. So we have a beautiful banner up in the, in the lobby at school. And then just towards the bottom, some other areas just to focus on. We continue to make moderate to high growth for all of our students for in all grades for Renaissance reading and math. And that's our universal screening tool. And through restorative practices we have our office referrals dropped significantly. Last year we had 173 less office referrals from previous years. So that is extremely successful. And then we've had some improvements in our attendance rate, our average number of attendance, decreased absences rather. And then 10, any 10 or more absences also decreased by 3.6 and our chronic absenteeism also decreased by 2.3. And those are pretty significant when a lot of times we don't feel like we always have, you know, super control over whe whether or not kids are going to be out. So in looking at all of the data, our three key areas, one is really more around academic growth and what we decided to do this year is really focus on our lowest performing students, but not just in regards to their proficiency. Also looking at their growth. So what we are targeting this year, and obviously we want all students to make growth, is really targeting students who did not score at grade level proficiency in MCAS. We started there and then we also just did our fall reading and math screening for our renaissance renaissance universal screening. And any student who was below grade level proficiency in MCAS but also had low growth. So it's kind of like both of those, those twofold. So if they had low growth and were below grade level proficiency, we really wanna look at those students because certainly when we think of, you know, even our students who have IEPs, if they have a specific learning disability, let's say in reading, we're not always expecting them to necessarily be at grade level proficiency if they're already starting grade levels below, below. But we do and should expect them to make moderate to high growth. So within the students that we're targeting, it's, they're certainly not just students on IEPs, many of them are, but it's also looking at students who we, you know, may not our, our ITI system may not be working for them at this time. So at each grade level it varies. What we have found is that there's less of, there's less students that actually fall into both categories who scored low proficiency and low growth in MCAS and then again this fall. And we're really unpacking that still what we think, especially for the M-C-A-S-E-L-A and the reading, the discrepancy is the renaissance really just looks at the reading, right? So there's no writing component to that. So that's something else that we're looking at. But generally anywhere from 25 to 40 students in each grade level is really who are targeting in both math and reading. So if you go to the needs assessment, this is kind of what got us there. You know, as I said, many of our students are making moderate to high growth, yet 35% of our students didn't meet the grade level proficiency as measured by them CAS. Our special ed subgroup was the group that made the least amount of growth according to MCAS. So that's really kind of what led us to this goal. But we also, as I said, have some students who don't fall into that subgroup. So our goal essentially is this. So any student or all students who scored below grade level proficiency and have low growth on the fall administration of Renaissance in both reading and math, the goal is to meet for that they will meet or exceed moderate growth as measured by the Renaissance in the spring of 2025. Because we don't get our MCAS results until like the late summer, early fall. We really wanna make sure we're able to have some sort of measurement for the spring. So as I said a little bit at the beginning, we have done a baseline analysis. I do wanna give a shout out to our literacy and math specialists, Kaitlyn Ley and Linda McKenna. They really do amazing work at digging deep into the data. They attend all of the reading ELA and math PLCs and really work one-on-one with teachers to really dig into this data and really support students. They also push into many of those classrooms where students are struggling to support teachers and the students. So we today really started to like see who these kids are at our staff meeting staff really looked at it by team and then by their PLC groups to really start to think about how do we look at the reading strategies and some of the math strategies and instructional strategies that we're using with students. Are they universal? One compelling piece of data, I just wanna say that is something I think worth noting. I also wanna give a shout out to Cory Comb, who's our special ed coordinator. One of the things that she did last spring, as you know, any STU student who receives an accommodation of say like a graphic organizer, they are able to get the DSI graphic organizer. So each student gets that, you know, their name is on it, it gets, it gets to them for the MCA testing, she then we have to collect those, you know, that's part of what we have to turn in. She did some data analysis on it and we had anywhere from 11 to 15% of the students. Again, 11 to 15% of the students used the graphic organizer. We can't force them to do it as you know, we can guide them and say this is here. Some of them wouldn't even take it. So that's information for us that we as educators certainly need to do a better job of, you know, asking students and encouraging students to utilize the resource and also to really dig deep. Are we using the same graphic organizer that Desi's using? You know, we wanna make sure that students have the accommodations that they need and certainly are utilizing them to help them be more successful. Does that mean that they would be more successful? I obviously I don't have that data, but we certainly, just the fact that they're not using them I think says enough for us that we need to do something different. So that's work that she's doing with the special educators, the case managers and certainly, you know, with students having more voice in regards to their own goal setting for their IEP goals, we're hoping that we can really, you know, encourage them to be utilizing all their resources. So goal two is a similar goal that we've had in the past around connectivity and belonging. I think just to highlight some of the key things that we're doing this year, the needs assessment, Linda, thanks. Next slide. Really just looking at, we've looked at the Metro West Health survey data that students took a couple years ago. We also do a connectedness survey with students in the, each fall and spring. And it is clear that students report, you know, most students report that they have at a trusted adult and feel connected to the school, but we still have students that don't. So certainly we always wanna bring those numbers up and those percentages up. 80% of our students reported feeling connected to the school community in some way. 88% said that they felt connected to at least one adult in the building. But we still wanna have those numbers increase certainly. So our goal and our target is really getting over 90% for each of those. The students should be taking the connectivity survey this fall, hopefully within the next couple of weeks something we'll go out to families about that and then we will assess them again in the spring. So some key things that we're doing, you know again, our advisory, instituting advisory on each early release for half an hour, students are grouped anywhere from six to 12 students. I've spoken about this obviously at a school committee meeting last month. We're really excited about that work. Teachers, every single staff member in the building has a group I co-teach in a group. I work with seventh grade students, there's eight of them. And some of the students I didn't know, like, you know, I knew their faces, but now I know each and every one of their names. They see me in the hallway now that it's like, hello Mrs. Kearney, where I probably, they wouldn't have done that, you know, maybe say last year. A lot of times it's team building games as you have seen. But it's really helped us, you know, really get, get to know students at a different level and hopefully students feel like they have another extra adult in the building who is on their side. So we're hoping that with some surveys and you know, as we ask students how they feel about how it's going, that'll help us continue it and hoping that that will, you know, certainly help students feel more connected to adults and to the school. And then again, as I noted before, I think just continuing restorative practices. So what does that look like? I mean, certainly at a middle school you can imagine in student with students 10 to 14-year-old, they're certainly developing and many times having conflict with other peers, a lot of times that's what it is and they need to talk it out. And I think, you know, since COVID, we obviously know that students have less resiliency and for many of them, maybe even less social skills. And I think, you know, having students coaching them around, sitting face to face to each other when they have conflict is one of the best life skills I feel like that they, we can instill in them. I feel like many of us as adults probably can still use that. We certainly do it with administrator or with a school counselor, whoever the students feel comfortable with. We always, you know, in, in involve families to make sure that they're comfortable with that. And I will just tell you that the, the data is showing us that it's working many, many times when we do those mediations students, those same students aren't having the same conflict. Does it always work? Absolutely not. It doesn't always work. But it, we've definitely found it to be very successful and in turn we then see less office referrals and, and and conflict. So our goal for two, number two is really that all of our students will report an increased strong sense of belonging and connection to the school community through our advisory program and restorative practices as measured by a 90% positive response rate in the school connectivity survey and a 10% drop in behavior referral data. And then for goal three, we're taking on attendance. We know that this is so many pieces of how all of these goals obviously connect to each other, but certainly since COVID there has been an increase in absences. Next slide. Thanks Linda. In chronic absenteeism, and they are due to multiple factors. So school, we have, you know, students with school avoidance, mental health needs, family vacations, I mean we can just name it. We know that going to Disney in March is probably half the price. It is if you go during February or April vacations. And I respect that, but sometimes families will pull students out for family vacations for a week. Sometimes it's certainly, you know, more significant. We have several families who then fly out, you know, to other countries due to like family illness. And certainly if you're gonna fly across the world, you know you're not going for just a week. Sometimes we have students that miss more than that. We also are, we feel like we're competing against outside clubs and you know, many students compete at a higher level and they many times are going to other competitions across the country. So they're missing schools, school for that. And then obviously just being sick, right? That happens. So we know that the negative impact of chronic absenteeism, it has a huge negative impact on academic growth and connectedness to school. So certainly if they get into a pattern of not coming to school for any of those reasons, sometimes it's harder to get kids to come regularly. So there was just a typo, it's actually corrected. You're using my live link, so thank you. I just wanna note it, I had that student attendance would increase to 95%. We are, we're already at 95, so I apologize that was a mistake. So we wanna get it to at least 96. I know that's probably doesn't sound very significant, but 1% is pretty significant when you have less control over some of those factors. It was 95 and 2023, we were at 95 and a half last year. So we wanna be, you know, right about that. I think the biggest thing here is really around the chronic absenteeism is really lowering that piece because those are the ones that more significant. And if you can go to the next one just to talk about a couple of the action steps. We've really focused on just communicating with families more regularly and even around the education and the implications of attendance. We're making more one-to-one calls even just over one or two absences. We have a great team of the vice principals. Sue Dino is one of our vice principal who's a leader in this area. She meets with the school nurses and our school counselors. They're meeting typically twice a month to go over the absences and then really coming up with intervention plans if needed. We're reaching out to families right after five absences, which I think is pretty good. And again, not to, you know, not to shame anyone, but just like, hey we're, you know, we're noticing is everything okay? Do you need any support? We focused a lot of this, a lot about this at open house. We at our parent piece with the vice, with the vice principals, really just educating families about, so for example, if a student misses, I think it's, if they miss 10 days, sorry, 18, yeah, 10 days over the course of their schooling, they will miss, they will miss a year of schooling. So if you just add all those up. So it really just speaks to how important it's to come to school. And a lot of family's mouths dropped when they saw that because you know, if you add up all of the years, it is pretty significant. That's it. Thank you. <v Speaker 3>Thank you so much. And thank you</v> for bringing the brave one to go first. With that, I'll open the floor to questions. Mr. Brand, <v Speaker 11>Thank you for the presentation.</v> One quick curiosity question. When you were talking before about students who are reading below grade level, and I was just curious, it said you're looking for moderate growth. Is that growth relative to the grade level or to the individual students? It's <v Speaker 10>A great question.</v> It's very similar to MCAS. So what they do is they look at where they score among all the other peers that score around them. And then they look to see are they, you know, so the next time they take it, are they kind of in that same place with that group of students or are they dropping? <v Speaker 11>Right. So they're not compared against if I'm in sixth</v> grade, I'm not, it's not an expectation of moderate growth for all sixth graders. It's from wherever I was. Correct. Got it. Thank you. <v Speaker 12>Had a big catch on Halloween.</v> <v Speaker 11>Oh, cool.</v> <v Speaker 3>Any other questions from the committee?</v> So I have a question. It's, I know the answer, but it's always good to put it out there. So obviously there's three goals. The first one focuses on lowest performing students, but this is in a school improvement plan, which means that the commitment to all students' academic success is still there. Is that right? <v Speaker 10>Yes. And as I had said before,</v> because we have met that for the last five years essentially, and I think even since we started with Renaissance, we have met that where all students are making mediant growth. When you look at the, at the whole, I feel pretty confident that we can target it on this. And that's just 'cause we have great teachers who do great things for students. <v Speaker 3>Great. Well thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.</v> <v Speaker 10>Thank you.</v> <v Speaker 9>Okay, thanks</v> so much Theresa and all of Wilson. Next we're going hear from Dr. Erica Cole Harms who's going to give us the school improvement plan for Brown Elementary. <v Speaker 13>I'd like to first start by thanking Theresa</v> for going first so that it wasn't me, but I'd also like to just echo the thanks for Dr. Bash, also for Sue Balone. And most importantly, I would actually really like to thank my team of principals back here as the interim principal. They have been just a huge support for me getting all of this up and running and I'm, I'm grateful for all of you. So thank you. So Brown is a wonderful place to work. Our mission and vision have not changed over the past few years with Pause being our, our symbol of the way we are at school. We practice empathy, we act respectfully, we work hard, and we solve problems together. You can go to the next slide. Thanks. Some of the highlights that I am super excited to talk about Brown is just, it's such a great place to work. The kids are wonderful and we are recognized for making substantial progress towards meeting our goals. In math, specifically, our lowest performing students, which I think you'll hear this, this group mentioned a lot, but they actually improved in their scores over the previous year. We had 50% SGP, which is the student growth measure, the student growth percentile in math and reading on Renaissance, which is really impressive. As again, as you've heard throughout the district, illustrative math was implemented last year and it was actually quite successful. I, I'm not ready to say it's why our lowest performing students improved, but it certainly seems to be working well for, for our students. And then our attendance has also increased. We are not quite at the 95th percentile, which I believe is our district goal, but we're getting there and it has definitely improved since last year. So my, our first goal at Brown is to enhance student literacy specifically in the upper elementary. And I'm defining upper elementary as grades two through four based on our data. So it aligns here with the district goals three and four. You can go to the next slide. So the, the data that I'm talking about largely comes from Renaissance, although I, I do wanna be clear that we are looking at other data as well from our teachers, from our, our other experts in the building. But Renaissance data is sort of the easiest accessible data that we have to, to give you a really nice swath of information. And I'm a big data geek, so I always look for the data sources. So between 28 and 38% of students in grades two through four are not meeting grade level proficiency in reading. And what we are going to do is we are going to, much like you heard with Wilson Middle School, is that we are going to take that population of student, but then we are also going to focus in on the overlap of those students who are not meeting grade level proficiency along with the students who have this low growth score because the growth is, in my mind, actually more important. So we want students to continue to grow. So we'll be looking at that targeted group of students. The the 28 to 38% is just shy of a hundred individuals. And then when we, when we focus in, it's, I apologize, I don't have the exact number, but it's about half of that next slide. Thanks Linda. So, so as I said, we're gonna be looking at this sort of targeted area between the overlap of the lowest performing students, but also the lowest growth. And that low growth is defined by the students who fall into the growth band of zero to 39%. And our goal is to get all of those students up to the next band, which is around 55% growth. And I think we can do it. <v Speaker 7>Go to the next slide.</v> <v Speaker 13>So we've identified a number</v> of action steps, and I'm not gonna read them all to you, but, but what's good for this population of student, I'm, I'm in, I I'm, I'm trying to sort of anticipate Mr. Folkman's question. It's also good for all students, right? If we're working with these kids on this targeted work, that work will be good for all kids. So we are gonna do some baseline data analysis. Again, I love data. We are doing some focused curriculum work with at least one teacher from every grade level team using the text, shifting the balance to really do some focus literacy work led by our literacy coaches. We're also gonna develop some individualized learning plans for this smaller population of student that's really targeted and we'll continue to do the good work that we do. Analyzing that Renaissance data. We have two other implementations of Renaissance where we will be able to look at how they're doing. They, they go through this coaching cycle every six to eight weeks. And so we will be doing a lot of targeted intervention, both tier one and tier two on this population. And again, what's good for this population is gonna be good for all students. Next slide. Again, more, more action steps. Just this, this next slide sort of talks around the data tracking and how we'll be able to make sure that we are doing what we say we're doing. Next slide. Thanks. So to move into our second priority, and you'll see this one in a few other elementary schools, as Dr. Sp talked about, we're not doing, you know, one plan for all of the elementary schools. We're really able to sort of target based on what is of import to our student population. But this coaching system is something that we are working on across the board. So we're all kind of taking it from slightly different angles. And what you'll see at Brown is as we are going to support the implementation of this coaching system, we are looking at it from a very specific brown lens. And you can go to the next slide. And that lens is the fact that we are all new. So the administrative team, the coaching team, there's only one, well two people who have been here for longer than this first year on that team. So we are really tackling this supportive position by trying to develop and establish a clear vision of what coaching means. At Brown, we know coaching is important. There's so much research that shows the efficacy of coaching across schools and for students and for teachers. But what does it mean for us as a, as a, as a brown school population teachers and for students? We want our students to be able to access learning at the highest level. And the way that we can do that is through excellent coaching and teacher relationships. So that's where we're gonna start. Next slide. I think I actually covered this. So this is our, those are our goals and then our action steps. So we are going to take a look at some surveys to sort of talk to our stakeholders. And in this case our stakeholders are our teachers as well as our students and our families. So what do we want coaching to look like? What is our baseline data? Where are we at right now? What do we, what are we doing and what do we want to be doing? We're gonna work with the team. So some teams in this district have been doing coaching quite successfully for a couple of years at this point, what's working for them? What isn't? What can we collaborate on together? I know the district is developing their own vision for what coaching looks like. And so we can work with the district to, to support that and make that work with what we are trying to engage in. We are doing some professional development. We will be doing a lot of feedback loops. Again, I said I'm a data person. That doesn't always have to be numbers. That can be qualitative data as well. And we are also looking at ways to foster coaching sessions during the school day so that teachers are able to really get this good coaching work within their time so that it's not just one more thing that we're asking teachers to do on the outside of their day while we support students. I'm just flying through this today. All right. And our third goal, this one, again, you might see this in in a few other plans as well. And this is another goal that I know the district is working on and other buildings are working on in, in different ways. So developing a, a multi-tiered system of support that's MTSS framework for Brown school. And I'm calling this phase one because it is, that is a big, it's a big task. So where, this is where we're gonna start and it aligns with all of the, the district goals as well. Next slide. So one of the things that I, I didn't mention before, because I wanted to highlight it here, is that Brown school has a really a, a really wonderful response to intervention or RTI process that's in place right now. In fact, Paul, our special ed coordinator, likes to really focus and highlight on the fact that because our RTI or one of the reasons that we have such a a, a smaller number of students who qualify on IEPs are because our RTI system works so well at the Brown school. So we have a very rich response to intervention process here at Brown. So we know we do that piece well, but we don't have the other legs to the MTSS framework as as robust as we do the RTI process. So we really wanna do a comprehensive sort of look at that so that we can address students' academic, social, emotional, and behavioral needs in a more robust way. <v Speaker 7>Next slide. Thank you.</v> <v Speaker 13>So we are going to collaborate with a number</v> of different leadership groups at Brown School, one of which is called the mental health team and the instructional leadership team. And we're gonna offer a number of different entry points for teachers and students to have to the MTSS system. So a lot of these opportunities will allow teachers to really begin to flush out their understanding of what MTSS is, that RTI is a robust part of MTSS and that SEL and some of the other great work that they're doing actually does fit into this framework, but it just gives them an entry point to understanding what that is. <v Speaker 7>Next slide</v> <v Speaker 13>And the next slide.</v> So some of the things that we are doing that I'm really excited about is that we've, we've recognized that at Brown Elementary School we have a number of people who excel in different areas of this work. And so we are giving them opportunities to really shine and share what they do well. So we are, we're doing three different paths during our curriculum meetings to highlight some of this work. We're doing a literacy path, a math path, and a teaching all students path. And there is at least one teacher from each grade level on each of those paths for the, for the remainder of the year. With this focused intensive work with our mental health team, we are really looking into developing a scope and sequence for embedding this social emotional learning curriculum. We will use Wayfinder, other research based SEL curriculums, we're going to come up with some real, and I shouldn't say come up with, but we are going to highlight the tier one and tier two supports that we have and potentially ones that we want to grow at Brown Elementary to enhance student learning, but make it very clear and very transparent. I I think if you were to ask the faculty what's my sort of catchphrase, because I say it all the time, it's clarity is kindness. And I think we don't, we really need to be clear on what are the offerings that we have for every student so that we can enhance their learning. What does MTSS mean? It's not just a cool acronym. How do we live it? How do we work it? And the way to do that is through clarity and developing this focus. So that is what our goal is going to be for this year, is to start developing this, this clarity around what it is and how we're going to implement it and what, where we need to do our, our deeper dives so that we can develop a phase two for the next year. <v Speaker 3>Next slide. Oh, and that's it</v> <v Speaker 13>I guess now questions.</v> <v Speaker 3>Okay. Any questions from the committee?</v> Yeah, Ms. flas, go ahead. What? I'm looking for it. Oh, okay. Anyone else? So while she's looking for it, I'll just say I'm really excited about the goal 3M TSS is my language. So really excited about that. Thank you. You good or good? Good. It was very clear. Seek clarity is kindness. You, there you go. Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. You're very clear. Thank you so much. <v Speaker 9>Excellent. Thank you so much Erica.</v> Next we are going to have, sorry, I'm going in the order on the agenda. So the next one is gonna be Memorial Elementary School with principal holding and assistant principal, vice principal Pat Mara. <v Speaker 14>Thanks everybody for having us tonight.</v> Before we get started, just a quick shout out. I want to give Matt a shout out for coming out to read to our kindergarten scholars during jump to read. He was a rock star and they are still talking about him and and shy, of course, a shout out to you for coming out during that MSBA visit. Appreciate your support. That was a lot of, a lot to take on at the beginning of the school year, so appreciate you being there to support us through that process. In, in regards to the plans, certainly wanna piggyback on what everybody's saying. Very appreciative to have the opportunity to have some autonomy to do what works for our data at our school. But just understanding too, that you're hearing a lot of common themes and you will continue to hear common things when you receive the plans from the other four schools that haven't, the other schools that haven't presented tonight as well. And, and the reason for that is because we do still continue to do a lot of collaborative work together. And some of the things that you hear going on at other schools doesn't mean that we're, you know, we don't get to do those things too. We spent a lot of time talking about best practices and visiting and marketing classrooms together. So if there's something that's really working well at another school and we need to adapt or abandon something that we're doing at our school, we share those ideas with each other. So that's just important to know that our work is still very cohesive even though it might appear to be separate. With that being said, we'll dive into our discussion. Our memorial school, our vision really hasn't changed. You know, our big focus and our pride is the love of learning at our school and inclusivity. It's really important that we focus a lot on cultural responsiveness too. We pride ourselves in that and just nurturing the whole child, approaching things very personalized and respecting our school community. Our vision too. It's a very collaborative and engaging vision. At Memorial, all our stakeholders work together. We meet with our team leaders on a regular basis. We have a personalized learning coach. We have two great, amazing literacy coaches, Karen McNell and Liz Brothers. Kelsey Hawks is a phenomenal math coach. She's part of our instructional leadership team. And then our counselors this year who have taken a really big initiative, which you're gonna hear about as one of our priority goals, priority goal number three, Katie Anderson and Kennedy Barry. They're just doing some amazing work at our school to support our kids social emotionally. And with that being said, next slide Linda. Thank you. Our school highlights, you know, we believe in a comprehensive curriculum. We engage our students in reading, math, science, social studies, and we're really focusing on promoting critical thinking and inquiry as our school. UDL is very universal. Design of learning is really taking a big leap at our school there. We're doing more project based learning this year and what we're noticing with that is that it's not, and solace teachers last year started doing some project based learning, but now what we're starting to see is the momentum is picking up where teachers are collaborating more together and doing between classrooms, between grade, lay grade level, project based learning. We have a huge focus on social emotional learning, which is a big highlight for us. An inclusive supportive environment, which Pat, my assistant principal, has really taken on a lot of initiatives to help boost that. Cultural responsiveness is really important. We do make sure that we are representing each and every child that sits in front of us in the classroom, no matter who they are, no matter what they look like, no matter where they come from. And then collaboration and teamwork is really, really important for us too. So those are our highlights. Priority one. Erica touched upon the whole MTSS model. I believe in MTSS, the multi-tiered support system. We had a big discussion amongst our stakeholders at the very beginning of the school year with my team leaders and how we can prioritize. We do RTI really well and that's something that we're still working to kind of hone in on and get great at. We do it really well. But RTI is just a little piece of the MTSS model and looking over our data this year, it was just really important for us to kind of focus on things that fall under the MTS umbrella. So one of our goals is focused on academics. Our second priority is gonna be focused on behavior. And then our third is gonna be focused on social emotional learning. All of that is data driven. So whatever the data speaks to us, that's where our focus is. But to answer that question too, our data does work for all students. So even though our priority one, I feel like I'm talking very fast and I apologize. Even though our priority one is gonna focus on the lowest 25 percentile, the data still speaks to us when we do our testing because we have some kids that I like to call the golden eggs and we don't wanna leave them behind either. So we want to make sure that we're using that data so that we can provide some additional enrichment for those kids that need those extra challenges as well. Next slide. Linder. So needs assessment for priority one. You know, we, we just finished our fall star renaissance assessment and we are identifying our lowest 25 percentile. We're noticing some trends and patterns, patterns in that achievement. So what we did is with, we gathered our data, our stakeholders got together, which involved our teachers and our coaches, myself and Pat. And you know, we had some data meetings and we kind of looked through what some of our perceived challenges were and are, and then the resources that we need. We developed a clear smarty goal. Next slide, Linda. Our goal is by the end of 24 25 school year, a hundred percent of our students scoring in the lowest 25 percentile will achieve a 55th percentile growth measure or higher on the spring assessment. So that gives us a whole year to kind of work out our strategies, our interventions, and our supports to help boost those students up to where they, where we know they can be by the end of the school year. Some of the highlights that will take place in order to achieve that goal. We're gonna continue to do data analysis. Like I said, we just identified our bottom 25 percentile of K four students. We're gonna implement some targeted literacy interventions this year. We entered, we embedded a new block of time in our schedule. We call it a win block. It's really not a true win block. So we're kind of toggling back and forth. I think we're just gonna call it target time at some point where we're just gonna target the skills that students need for that extra support, whether it's tier one, tier two, or tier three supports so that we can help them develop the skills they need to be successful when they take those assessments. Professional development teachers receive professional development. We have a curriculum staff meeting. It's a two hour meeting once a month. So our literacy coaches, our math coaches, our counselors, our assistant principal, our special ed coordinator, all these stakeholders will take action during these curriculum and staff meetings to provide some resources and supports, look over some data, figure out what's working, what's not. Our work really evolves around what we like to call the cycle of continuous improvement. We look at data, we come up with a plan of action. We do the work, we study the work after we do it and collect more data. And then we decide do we want to adopt, do we want to abandon or do we want to adapt the practices that we're doing? So that's our, our cycle. It just keeps moving throughout the school year. There's no right or wrong and we're always willing to take risks and try new things. And then of course we want to get our families involved. So we haven't done this yet, but it's just a huge vision for me as a principal of a school on how we can increase parent involvement around academic pieces of schooling, social emotional pieces of schooling and behavioral pieces of schooling. We don't do enough of it. And, and then we're trying to figure out what those barriers are and how to break down those barriers. Have a good team in place. We have some good ideas and good practices that we're thinking of. But you know, one of our goals is to really try to organize some literacy workshops and even math workshops, even though it's not a holistic goal in our SIP plan to really provide families with resources to enhance all of this work at home. And I would love to bring out, you know, some of the, our outside partnerships into this work as well. Next slide is priority two, I think I'm gonna let Pat have a voice in this piece of, with your permission, because a lot of this work really does, I don't wanna say fall on your plate, but it kind of, this is a lot of work that you really are involved in. So I'm gonna let Pat talk about priority two, if that's okay. Yeah, <v Speaker 15>Thank you.</v> So for priority two, these are the district priorities that it aligns with. And like Troy had mentioned, we're talking about very similar things. Our goals are, are slightly varied, but a lot of similarities, similarities to brown school. So if you go to the next slide, you'll see that we're focusing this on, on behavior and how we're supporting behavior. So the needs assessment shows, you know, the students that are in need of support, but there's a lot of proactive measures too that we'll talk about that go into this. So we have office referrals at our school, and that's one way we track behavioral data. Last year we developed behavior matrix, which helps staff members see like how they can respond to certain behaviors, but also categorizes behaviors to, for, to let us understand as staff, like is this something we can use counseling support on? Is this something that teachers could reach out to an assistant principal for? So those are, those are tiered behaviors. There's tier one, tier two, and tier three. So from our LA from last year's data, we had 63 office referrals for repetitive tier one, tier two or tier three behaviors. And they're defined in different areas, different behaviors. And the three biggest areas of concern were for our school were the bus, the classroom, and the playground. Most of the, these referrals involve peer-to-peer conflict and disruptive behavior. And then the amount of behavioral incidents across those settings underscores the need for some interventions to address and mitigate these effectively. Obviously, students spend different amount of times in these places. So that comes, that is a factor as well. And there's, there's other interesting points just from this data that we, we can look at, you know, we can, we can, we can look at time of the day and all these things that, that are factors when we're thinking about proactive measures that we could take to support student behavior. So in the next slide it goes into a little bit more detail. So our goal is we'll lead the implementation of a multi-tiered system of support framework and collaboration with, you know, myself, Troy, the counselors, special education coordinator and team leaders to, to reduce student behavior reports and referrals. We'll track the number of reports and referrals aiming for a 25% reduction from the previous school year by June, 2025. So I believe the next slide we'll go into a little bit more detail as well of what our action steps and highlights are. So like I said, the one thing that our, that it doesn't address is some of the proactive measures that we're taking as well. So we do a lot of things that we would call PBS approaches. So positive Behavior Intervention supports is a research based program that we use at our school. We use a lot of different strategies from PBIS to to promote an environment where all kids feel safe, where they understand our core values. So that's part of this too. And we started this year, we just started last week, a new incentive program where we're highlighting our five core values. We have weekly announcements where we recognize kids who are being role models. That's some of the proactive work that we're doing. And then the collaboration with our counselors. You'll see that in our, our third goal, but stated here we have the first step is to create a behavior focused framework, right? So a team, we have a, a team that meets weekly administrators, counselors to, to look at supporting behaviors in the that tiered model. What are we doing at tier one, tier two, and tier three? We're obviously tracking behavioral data through our incident reports, and we want to continue to look at that throughout the year and see where we need to provide more supports. At our curriculum meetings. We have a few different professional development just developments planned where we're including the counselors to talk about management strategies, social emotional learning techniques, other positive behavioral supports that we could be doing in the classroom. So there'll be some professional development provided for staff, constant review of, of you know, what's working and what's not. And, and ultimately by the end of the school year, we'll have a whole year's worth of data to compile and compare to last year's data. We also have, we do school assemblies is another proactive approach. We've had grade level assemblies this year to talk about our core values and what those look like in different areas. And once again, all, all of these things are directly aligned to that behavior matrix we were talking about. Like what are our core values and what do they look like in every area? So that's how we're promoting this, this goal in a proactive way. <v Speaker 14>And then our last, our last priority, again</v> that falls under the MTSS framework was to do something around our SEL. So we decided to come up with an objective that is to address social emotional needs. Linda, if you wanna go to the needs assessment of the students at Memorial, particularly those identified as at risk according to the srs. SRS is a behavior risk screener if you're not familiar with that. And what it does is it, it breaks it down into three parts. A social, academic, and emotional. That's the acronym there. So we just finished our first round of Sabre teachers spent some time a few weeks ago filling out the SABRE tool for all their students. And this data here is going to allow us to identify who our at risk students are at this time of the year. Current situation is that a percentage of our students are characterized as at risk, and this is impacting their academic performance and overall wellbeing. So therefore there's a need for targeted inve interventions and support systems to reduce the number of at-risk students and enhance their social and emotional skills. Our action plan goal would be by June, 2025, Memorial will achieve a 15% reduction in the number of students identified as at risk according to Sabre's data through the implementation of Target SEL programs and staff training and ensuring equitable accesses to resources for all students. Now, right now we're just doing the Sabre in the fall and the spring. I'm gonna speak to my leadership team this week. I've done a lot of research around Sabre and really with Fidelity, it, it, it really makes sense to try to implement it three times a year and not two times a year. It's always good to get a mid-year benchmark. So that's something I'm gonna be talking to our stakeholders about to see if I can allow some time. Everything it's, it's the, it's the time and we don't have enough time, right? And I just wanna make sure that I, I give our teachers time to do this because if we're gonna do the work to Fidelity, we really need to make sure we invest that time into it. So that's an important piece. Action steps. So we establish an SEL team, which we already have in place. Our teachers, our counselors, and like Pat said, administrators, we will oversee the SEL initiatives. We're gonna provide training on SEL strategies and interventions. And one thing that we're really proud of that our counselors are just really, really so excited about is to start an SEL consultancy. Now I had mentioned that we embedded a little block of time to do that targeted intervention around the academic piece. We'd also like to use a little piece of that time where counselors can push into classroom and teach our targeted intervention strategies and tools to our students and, and have that consultancy. So, big vision, again, it's just, it's in a design process right now. We also want to implement, oh, I just mentioned that, and then engage families, obviously, right? So like I said, the, the vision would be to maybe host workshops and informational sessions for parents and community members to support SEL initiatives at home. I know Spark Kindness does some of this work too. So we will probably reach out to them and try to pull them in and I think that's all Memorial has for you at this point in time. <v Speaker 3>Great, thank you. Any questions?</v> Any questions or comments? No, <v Speaker 14>No. I'll take it.</v> <v Speaker 3>I'll just say I'm, I'm really excited about all this, just</v> how data-driven all this is. I'm excited to see you bring PBIS to Memorial and it's all very exciting. Thank you. Thanks <v Speaker 14>Everybody.</v> <v Speaker 16>Thanks</v> <v Speaker 9>Troy. Thanks Pat.</v> Okay, we're gonna close it with at least for the, this round of, of the improvement plans with having the preschool and Principal Kincaid will be presenting on their behalf. <v Speaker 16>Hi everyone, I am Mary Beth Kincaid, preschool principal</v> and I have with me Amanda Curley. Amanda is a special educator extraordinaire. She and I have worked together for 13 years at Native preschool and she finished her administrative licensure internship last year. So the school improvement plan process looks very different to her this year having sort of been through the rudimentary stages of it last year, but now being here to help present. So kudos to you. So Linda, the first three slides show some feedback and they should be able to sort of go along with what we're we're talking about. If you wanna just sort of scroll through them slowly so people can have a chance to see the words on them. So in essence, I just wanna echo my colleagues. Thanks to Dr. Sp for guiding us through this process and sort of bringing us back to the building based plans. We presented vertically for some time now and to make sure that native preschool is aligned with elementary. I really appreciated that model, but it's also because native preschool is near and dear to my heart. It is. I appreciate this model as well. So it can be very building, building specific. So for anyone who doesn't know native preschool serves three through five year olds with and without disabilities in Natick. And can each, each class, we, again, the threes, fours, or five year olds can represent 20 to 25% of each incoming kindergarten class. So hence that vertical alignment piece is really important. So the, what Linda was just scrolling through, and if you're following along in the, in the plan at home or here, you can see words that were elicited from feedback that we received through spring, all parent survey through IEP meeting surveys and just in general ongoing discussion with parents. So really the, the, all those are the collective, collective for our needs assessment for the goals that we are sharing with you tonight. In essence, every everyone can relate to sort of what we've been through the past five years. If you think about three through five year olds, those children haven't really known anything except the last three through five years. And those have been very different than some of the years that preceded them. Hence those years have been very different for their parents. The, our, our goal one and goal three are really aimed at revitalizing that sharing of expertise that schools have and that parents are craving. But the parents of today's three through five year olds did not get to have the opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with other parents on playgrounds at playgroups in the bagel shop where the music person was doing a Special Friday special and say, how are you doing toilet training? How are you doing bedtime? How are you managing those big meltdowns? And so there is a little, there is a craving we understand from our survey results for parents to better ha have better access to the information. And our team at Native Preschool, both being both experts in early childhood and in special education, have lots to share. So our first goal is around, Linda, if you just wanna scroll to the first goal. Thank you. You can keep going to the, the actual goal. Our first goal is around our newsletter. Our thanks, our parent communication from the school and that we, again, Natick as a whole has done a lot of looking into how do parents want to receive their information. And at, at the preschool we use an app called Seesaw. It gives, it can give photo evidence of what has happened throughout the day, which is hugely helpful for a little learners who need that visual cue to then share about their day or get excited about their day in whatever way they can communicate with their parents. And, and then gives their parents a sense of their day when they can't remember or choose not to, you know, want, have the time to be able to share that with their parents. And so the news, the newsletter piece is, has several aims. One is to, even though Natick Preschool shares many sites to help convey that we are one preschool, it's to help share that information from a school level while also making sure ensuring that is it is accessible to all parents regardless of what they need, whether it's translation, whether they need visual support and so on. So we're, and the intent is that our, the newsletter to er Echo, Dr. Brown Clear is kind that that newsletter is as clear as possible in communicating the, the instructional goals as well as how can you translate this to home? How can, what are some parent pro tips for how you can convey this learning to home? So it's gonna feel like I'm skipping around, but goal one and goal three are a little bit bundled and then Amanda will talk about goal two. Goal three is sort of a live action version of that newsletter goal as one of our teachers said about the newsletter goal. It sounds like a newsletter goal, but it is so much more and it really is intended for all the things that I said. The live action piece of it is a chance to bring parents and teachers together in person with video recording for anyone who cannot make it in person to be able to talk about the things that we are understanding. Parents are craving information on how to help their child grow and develop self-regulation muscles. How, how to help them understand how to make, how to make appropriate choices or how as a parent, how to give appropriate choices so that they, they feel like they are giving their child some agency while also keeping things within the limits of what their family is, is, you know, what their family designates for. Now the other, the parent, our first in the series of parent communication or parent workshops is going to be in the middle of November, November 13th. We're going to come together and actually Amanda is going to co-present with another colleague on our self-determination skills, choice making, self-advocacy and self-regulation. Native preschool identified those skills years ago knowing that if children were able to make choices, if they were able to self-advocate and if they were able to self-regulate, they could do pretty much anything else and learn pretty much anything else. And so that will be the topic of our first parent workshop. We have the intent to have other parent workshops and panels that will be based on the feedback that we received from parents last spring on a, a gamut of topics related to child development and how to foster independence, foster that love of learning, foster that curiosity and joyfulness while also being a functioning member of a family. So we are excited to share our expertise in those ways and we're energized that the topics have come from parents and that we have information to share on those topics. So that is sort of our parent collaboration that comes from the teachers, comes from the parents, comes from ongoing discussion and feedback. And then we also have in, in the middle we had, and goal number two is a literacy goal and Amanda is going to talk more about why this is important to us at, at this stage. <v Speaker 17>Yeah. So just to give you some feedback on</v> how some background knowledge and how we got to this. Three years ago we went into a pilot to determine which literacy screener we were going to use. Sorry, you start First time Griffin use to look at our literacy skills in the preschool. This came about with the mandate for the DYSOXIA screening, but also looking at the data of the literacy data at the elementary school and what they were seeing for patterns at the elementary school and how could we spiral down that intervention to the preschool. So after going through a pilot program, we settled on the Stars Early literacy, which is a Renaissance product which is used at the elementary school. We're going into our second full year of implementation of that program. So for some of our students that are in the preschool now, for their second year, they just had their third round of using the Stars early literacy assessment. So our hope in desire is that at the end of this year, to be able to collaborate with the K literacy teams so that 90% of our incoming kindergarten students to the elementary schools, their data from their stars, early literacy will be able to be used to determine if they need intervention with after taking that fall benchmark in the kindergarten. In the fall of kindergarten. The reason that we're at 90% is because we do have rolling admission into the preschool. Not all of our students will have taken enough, sorry, lost iteration, lost my words, iterations of the assessment at the preschool level. Or we also have some students that are just not ready to take that type of an assessment. However, those students that aren't able to take the assessment on the iPad, we do use alternative ways to track their progress that they're making so that a hundred percent of our students are being looked at in both the fall and the spring. That alternative data collection that we use is also shared with the K teams many times at k transition meetings for our IEP students. And then we also have done a lot of collaboration work with the elementary literacy specialists. Most, you know, most often Holly at Ben, him, she's been great supporting us through this process and teaching us how to use this assessment. And then I think that's pretty much it. Yeah. <v Speaker 18>Good job.</v> <v Speaker 16>So, so,</v> so I mean, since we are last, before we open it up to any questions, I just want to say I appreciated so much Dr. Fugman a couple weeks ago when he said you, you, Dr. Sp presented the, the outline of what the plans would be like and then you said get psyched. This is the good stuff. So we so appreciate this chance to share the plans with you and I, I echo you get psyched because the good work is coming, that's what's coming in the next few months now that we have this all on paper and that's been such a collaborative thought process. Any questions? <v Speaker 3>Any questions? I'm glad my words had such an impact,</v> <v Speaker 19>Miss McDonna.</v> So I was curious why you decided to use the Canva tool for your newsletter instead of some more, which the other schools use. <v Speaker 16>So the Canva is essentially being the,</v> the like the format for it in Seesaw. So I can give you, there are several layers as you know, there's like district level communication, there's build field level communication, and then the teacher communication in addition to email, et cetera. The Canva template template will be what is used in Seesaw directly from the teachers to the parents. Okay. Different <v Speaker 19>Than this.</v> More. Okay. And how do parents, how are they alerted that there's something in Seesaw for them to look at? Do <v Speaker 17>You want me to answer it?</v> So when parents set up their accounts, they can set it up to either receive it notifications, it's, they can have as an app on their phone, they can get it l that there's a notification that something was sent to them. You can also set it up that you also get an email sent to you as well. The reason that we use Seesaw specifically at the preschool is that it allows for translation right inside the app and parents can select the language and if they write back to myself in their native language, I can then translate it into English so I can see what they are able to trying to tell me. <v Speaker 19>Yeah. Yeah. It would be nice if we had that function</v> for like all of our schools to not, I don't think we do right now, so. <v Speaker 4>Sure. Feedback.</v> <v Speaker 3>Any other questions or comments? Yeah, Ms. Brunell,</v> <v Speaker 20>I, I have a couple comments</v> and questions, not specifically about the preschool presentation, but just about the school improvement plans in general. Would this be the time? So two quick comments. I will say the district priorities, when they first came, Dr. Sp, you were like promised us that we would get to the numbers and you're following through on that with these school improvement plans and all of these leaders. So thank you because I do think the data is essential and it's just awesome to see what happened back in August, develop to where we are now and to see all the numbers and like to get into the nitty gritty. Like that gives me a lot of confidence as a school committee member and as a parent, I, one thing I just wanna say, speaking for myself, I hear the newness and perhaps even a nervousness about digging into the data around being totally clear and transparent that we have students in the district that are not achieving what we want them to achieve. And we're talking about lowest profile things that we haven't actually really set explicitly in goals like this. We've talked about it, we've known about it, we've seen it, but we haven't ever explicitly created a goal. And I am so proud of our district right now and I'm so grateful that knowing that work will impact everyone. It's the sidewalk effect, whatever you, whatever you wanna call it, right? When you, when you give the kids in a classroom who need to be seen, the ability to be seen, that improves the educational system for everyone. And so I think it's our educational obligation and I just wanna affirm the work and thank you all for doing it. I know our educators do it all the time. You wouldn't be a teacher without knowing like, you know what, that kid is not where we want them to be. I remember it, even though I taught 20 years ago, I remember feeling that way, like feeling at the end of the day, feeling like just not right because I knew somebody had walked away not knowing the skill, right? That, but to see a district take that on is just really empowering. So thank you. My two questions are for Dr. Fash and I think also for our committee, how are we going to track these goals this year? How often will we see them at this, at at this level? You know, what, what, what, what's the plan? <v Speaker 9>I'm happy to start with that. The formal goal process.</v> So all the goals you saw today for all the principals teams here, those are their goals in their teach point for the year. So there's that hard wiring. These goals don't just sit out on this report, they're actually in their goals, which is one of my goals, by the way. So I'm definitely gonna be attentive to it as well. So I, I foresee the formative, the formative process, which happens around January or February, which is a formal process of feedback to each member. We'll meet, we'll discuss them and I'll probably have some sort of memo coming out of that or they'll come back depending on how the team here wants to hear it. But that's a formal process with an anchoring. But in addition to that, if you go through the full plans, you'll see progress monitoring and in there these guys will be, you know, doing all the things they set up in their action plan to measure progress. A lot of what they're talking about with the student goals are anchored in Renaissance and those have formalized benchmarking and progress monitoring all year long. So this isn't something they're creating just for this goal. I think it's helping them look at the window of a small number of students. I think depending on the school you're looking at, it's like 25 to 45 students ish. So it's like very manageable for them to be tracking those kids. And we'll be presenting on that data and really the narrative that goes along with it because it's gonna take a lot of sort of iterations and pivots as they really take a look at those students and decide the next steps for them because these are human beings. So hopefully that answers your question. <v Speaker 20>And then just my last question is, is there a way</v> to see if some of these students within the goals that they relate that, so perhaps the goals are talking to each other, you know, like I was thinking about Memorial, if there's a student that's having, I thought it was interesting that Memorial is like tier, you listed tier two first, then tier one, or no, maybe tier two, tier three, and then tier one. So I don't know the language, but if, if, if tier one is the, is, is there a way to see if a kid is having repetitive tier one say, if that's a, if that's a concerning behavior, are we also looking at that kid is, is the child, I should say is also perhaps in goal one perhaps, and is a child that's gonna be receiving support in goal one? <v Speaker 9>I think that's some, I don't know.</v> I never thought about that, but that's something I think we could talk to the principals about and reflect on after we get a little further along in this. I don't know, do you have a different thought? <v Speaker 1>I mean, I don't know if it was intentional that we,</v> we listed it that way. It was because of our behavior model. Like if we're thinking about office referrals, like you think about, oh sorry. <v Speaker 20>Yeah, I don't wanna get hung up on that.</v> I that, that doesn't matter. I was just like, I was like, oh, I wonder <v Speaker 15>The framework of our behavior matrix was like thinking</v> about what, what constitutes an office referral, right? Yeah. So you have repetitive tier one, but would be like tier two would be a like, it's kind of like who do you, there's more support involved in tier two and tier three. So that's why those are listed first, but Okay. Usually <v Speaker 3>You'd see it tiers or across goals.</v> <v Speaker 20>Across goals. I guess my question like often we'll say</v> like if a kid has a hard time in the morning, right? Like is if the bus ride was chaotic when we walk into reading class, reading might not be happening, right? So that's what I'm curious about. Are we, will you be looking at that cross-referencing? Yeah, I <v Speaker 3>Think the other piece too is, Mike,</v> <v Speaker 14>Come on over. Thanks.</v> <v Speaker 3>There's three seats.</v> <v Speaker 10>It's such a great point</v> because I mean that's the whole point of like really digging in and creating essentially plans for every student, right? So like for us with our absences as the third goal if we start to see, you know, is if we have a student who's chronically absent and also is in like our list for lowest performing low growth, those definitely are probably, you know, tied together and what interventions do we have in place <v Speaker 14>For sure.</v> And I, and I think that the important thing to mention too is this, that's why we wanna have a very robust MTSS framework, right? Because all of that falls under there. Like you're absolutely right. Like one thing could impact the other or all of it, right? So it's definitely like that pendulum, like we're looking at it throughout the day, even if it's not the bus, it could be the cafeteria, right? Which could derail a student or have a student, you know, deescalate a little bit. So it's, our goal really is to just form a very robust MTSS model and framework for our schools, which I think you're gonna start to see that across the board anyways, if that answers your question. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it does. <v Speaker 15>I can think of one. Can I just add one thing I can think</v> of, because that's a great question. <v Speaker 3>I gotta the mic.</v> <v Speaker 15>There is one area</v> where we might see all three of those, the convergence of all that data. So Erica mentioned data meetings and all student support, data meeting, math meeting, and a literacy meeting. So the all student support piece, you would, you would be talking about students particularly who might fall within all three of those buckets. And the third bucket, the all student piece, you'd be looking at SRE data office referrals, a counselor notes like student, like parent notes from parents. So like you, the data meetings you would, you might see a convergence of all the data, like pretty readily, right? So that might be an area that we could look at when we're having data meetings that all student meeting. <v Speaker 3>You have a second question</v> or was that your second question? Any other questions? I just have to add just to that previous conversation. That is what I love about MTSS. Natick has had for many years very robust RTI model that is very academic focused. And mts RTI is in essence a part of a broader framework. MTSS that brings in the social emotional and the behavioral into academics kind of connecting the three three. So I think I'm excited to, to have that be part of our framework lean forward. <v Speaker 9>All right. Excellent.</v> I just can't thank you all enough for your hard work for diving in, as HAI said, being extremely brave. So thank you so much and look forward to seeing all the progress you make this year. Okay. Excellent. Okay. Oh, we're clapping. Excellent. Thank you so much. Have a great night. All right. So I'm excited to shift gears as the next piece of our report. Thanks Mr. Erickson, for your patience. Jamie Erickson's town administrator will be presenting on a memo that was written on the potential over ride. It was shared with town meeting. I'm sure he's gonna go into that, but we'll hear a little bit about this. It was also introduced to the select board, I believe, on October 30th. Welcome. <v Speaker 21>Thank you. Good crowd For the record,</v> Jamie Erickson, town Administrator. Thank you for having me tonight. Really inspiring what I just heard. As a parent of not natick kids in the school system, but in a different school system, middle school and high schooler, twin boys, middle school, and high schooler, it's, it's amazing the work that all of the leaders and teachers and principals and everybody does for all of our kids, especially in this time coming outta the pandemic and having to really understand the true impact that such a an event can do to our, our youth. But that's not why I'm here. I'm here really to make sure this body, the the school committee is informed of a memo that town administration provided to town meeting about a potential override for this upcoming May, sorry, March town election. The memo, I believe is in your packet for this evening. It was presented to town meeting, it's up on the screen too if people wanna read at home. It was presented to town meeting less presented and more provided to town meeting on their last night, which was wow, week and a half ago now. Even though it feels like a month ago or just yesterday, depending on how you view town meeting. And it's, it's just discussing the high level details of what town and school administrations are realizing as we one come, come into partway through FY 25 and are preparing for FY 26, as has been the case in Natick for many years, even predating my time as town administrator for the last four years, it's really been a dialogue for 10 plus years is my understanding. There's been a a, a structural deficit in the community when it comes to our operations. The structural deficit has typically been plugged with one-time funds free cash is the most commonly known source. More recently in the pandemic it was ARPA or or America Rescue Plan Act funding, which is stimulus funding that the federal government provided to communities in re in response to the pandemic. And I know in the, in the school department side, there was other one-time funds that, that the school committee and the school department has used as well. Most recently in FY 25, just non-school resources, meaning I know there's funds that just the school committee has oversight over just sort of town wide resources. These were 4.5 million in free cash and 2.7 million in arpa. So the last year of arpa. So right away we don't have 2.7 million for next year in addition to any of funds that the school committee had put towards the structural deficit. And then the 4.5 million in free cash is still likely to be there. But free cash is one of those fun things in, in municipal budgeting that's neither free nor cash is sort of how it's viewed. It's what's remaining at the end of a fiscal year, along with a lot of other calculations and balance sheet work. And it's not guaranteed and it's not considered a reoccurring funding source's considered a one-time funding source by the state, by DOR Department of Revenue. So in the last several weeks in dialogue with Melissa and her team and Matt and John Townsend from the town finance side, we've been really putting the details together, understanding that this was coming, I think I mentioned this in my budget message for the last four years, at least during the pandemic and coming outta the pandemic that these funds were going away at the federal level and we had to work to address this. We are at a point where for FY 26, we really do truly need to start talking about a potential override. We're still at a high level stage working with the team. I think the town and school team we meet, gosh, multiple times a week now, not always about this, but many times about this just to make sure that we get the best data for the community for all of you, for the select board, for the finance committee, to make sure that everybody's informed about the needs and about why we're talking about this more intently. Now, as this board may or may not recall the select board and the school, I believe school committee were talking is, was at a time and actually was not working for the town, but I believe in 2019, 2020, we're talking about the need for an override at that time. And then the pandemic hit, which put a big pause on that conversation. Now we're back at that sort of point where we need to have that conversation again, current estimates projected to be in the seven to $8 million range. That's a big impact on community, on families, on people, taxpayers. We re recognize that. We're hopeful that it won't be that in that range, meaning we're hopeful that it'll be below that. But we have to really be just truthful and honest and transparent with the community about the realities of what we're looking at in the numbers. But again, the details are to be, to be coming in the weeks and months ahead. This opportunity was just for me and really Melissa and the partnership that we're creating and have created to present it to you. We again provided it to the town meeting. I presented it to the select board last week and I wanna make sure I came to this body as well. We're happy to answer any questions or provide any additional direction. <v Speaker 3>Any questions from the committee? Yeah, Ms. Fathers.</v> <v Speaker 19>Hi Jimmy. Thank you for the free C component.</v> My, I don't wanna recall numbers. What's been the average free cash over the past however many years? <v Speaker 21>Sure. So our average is typically in the six</v> to $7 million range pre during the pandemic. We had a year, maybe a year and a half where those numbers were much higher, largely in part due to a couple things. One, we cut back on spending significantly because we weren't sure what the pandemic was gonna do from an economic standpoint. Two, we had a lot of open positions and when you don't fill a position that money, you have to budget for it, but that money drops the free cash. And three, we had some of the federal stimulus dollars that came in place. So there was an outlier year or two, but six is generally, but typically six to 7 million. <v Speaker 19>How does that balance bet, I mean,</v> my understanding would be either unex un unexpected revenues or money that wasn't spent as part of the budget. What's the percentage difference between how much is typically revenues that exceeded exceeded budget versus expenses were below budget? <v Speaker 21>Sure. So that,</v> that's also somewhat challenging coming outta the pandemic years because we were not sure what was going to be happening with some of our local receipts. And those are where during the pandemic years, we saw the biggest impact to some of our revenues. So a good example is that 2020 without the pandemic we're expecting anywhere from 18 to $19 million in local receipts overnight. That went down to I think 11 or $12 million. So we weren't sure how quickly we were gonna, the community or the, the, the economy was gonna bounce back. So recent years, it's been more some under conservative budgeting when it came to some of our local receipts. But that was largely because we're coming outta the pandemic. We weren't sure how quickly those are gonna rebound. Historically, it, it really is a year to year basis. It could be anywhere from, I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I believe we're in the one to 2 million if not more range when it comes to turnbacks. Then there's also the budgeting, conservative budgeting, the, the state requires us to do conservative budgeting and those are in local receipts into a certain degree, new growth every year. We tend to have a new growth number above what we budget. Again, we're almost required to do that by DOR. We have to do conservative based budgeting. An example of that is this current fiscal year, we budgeted 1.1 million in April. We have a new growth number of 1.6 million that came in. Certified new growth comes in in August or September timeframe, depending on when our assessing office can do that work. We did capture that revenue at fall town meeting, which then goes into the baseline for Nick's fiscal year. But that's just some of the factors that come into play when it comes to less free cash and more just budgeting when it comes to conservative based budgeting that we're required to do at the state level. <v Speaker 19>Do you have those numbers?</v> I mean I just, the outliers of covid, we just completely ignored, but for the last several years, are those numbers broken out somewhere to see where the extra, <v Speaker 21>The free cash, I believe every budget book</v> that has free cash in it, we can provide the budget turn in sheets that we send to the state. I'm not sure if it's actually in the budget book, but we can certainly get that for members. It's they're public documents. <v Speaker 19>That'd be helpful. Thank you.</v> <v Speaker 3>Any other questions or comments? Ms. McDonough?</v> <v Speaker 19>I felt like the memo was pretty high level, correct?</v> It's slightly vague. So good feeling, it feels like we'll need to make a decision on this pretty quickly. So when do you anticipate so that we can go out to the community and explain the rationale and provide all the data and all that. So when do you anticipate that that would happen? <v Speaker 21>Well, the, the ultimate decision</v> of the select board is they need to determine whether to put it on a ballot, I believe just from a paper exercise they have until early February to do so. With that said, in the coming weeks and even, I think we're planning more details. Obviously we have a, a pretty big day tomorrow and, and we wanted to get past that time before we started really hammering some of the public dialogue around this. But in the December, early January timeframe is when at least town and school administrations had been talking about getting more details out to take it from the very vague high level components down to a more detailed level of, of need when the select board feels most comfortable to technically vote on it is to be determined. I suspect they would be doing that in the January timeframe. But ultimately the, the quote unquote decision to go to an override is likely to be done before that and there will be more information coming out in the coming weeks and months ahead. <v Speaker 19>Okay.</v> <v Speaker 21>Which just might not be a technical,</v> like the actual literal decision of the select board until later. <v Speaker 19>Is that typically how it's been done?</v> <v Speaker 21>So Natick hasn't had an operational override since</v> 2008, 2009. Right. Every community's a little bit different living in Holson. Holson just recently did an override and the way they approached it was they, well one, it was for the current fiscal year. So what they had to do is actually hold a special town meeting after the regular town meeting to then vote on an updated budget subject to an override vote. And then they held a special election in early September about a month and a half ago to do their override. I'm not exactly sure, I believe it was the, I'm not exactly sure when the select board chose to put it on the ballot, but the, that was unique situation to them natick it, it's atypical to have overrides. We just don't do a lot of operational overrides. <v Speaker 19>Yeah, no, no, I meant, I meant the order</v> of operations from the select board voting to put it on the ballot just to give the, I mean there's a significant public education campaign campaign that has to happen so that people understand the rationale for voting for it and what might be the consequences if the money is not available. Right. So that takes a lot of time. So I can't imagine not doing that until February when the election would be in March <v Speaker 21>A again, the the, the technical vote doesn't have</v> to happen until early February. Yeah, I fully suspect the decision will be happening sooner. Okay. <v Speaker 19>All right. Thanks</v> <v Speaker 3>Ms. Brune.</v> <v Speaker 20>Thank you Jamie. Yeah, thank you for the memo.</v> Thank you for getting that to town meeting as well. I think that was a critical piece and I really appreciate the select board having the collaborating right now and putting it on an agenda. You know, I know that the technical vote hasn't come yet, but I definitely think that that conversation is there and I appreciate the gravity that you feel for taxpayers and for, for everyone like this is, this is not something that obviously, like you just said, Natick is used to doing. I'm gonna get to my question. I'm not gonna keep talking around I, my question is, it's actually, if I may, it's more for Dr. Bash and feel free to say, say, you know, we're not, we're not there yet. I lo I really appreciate you coming to deliver the memo. It like makes us feel real. Our job, much of our job is dependent on what somebody else does, right? And and really you have the town administrator's budget, which is different than the school committee's budget, right? So you will, right? You recommend a budget to town meeting and you don't know what you can recommend yet until we all those numbers work outs. But as the school committee, we knew last year when we voted FY 25 that we were taking $2 million out of our circuit breaker. That was one-time funds. So last year when we voted FY 25 budget, we knew that we started FY 26 $2 million at least in the whole, because that money was used as one-time funds. So I am very interested in the conversation we are gonna have about what it is that the schools need so that we can shorten what Jamie's saying as like weeks and months. I don't like it when you say months to be honest. I would like to be able to shorten that and say this is what we need and I am willing to be patient. I'm not great at being patient. I'm willing to be patient, but I would like that. Yeah. <v Speaker 9>Yeah. What I can say is I feel like we're working in</v> great collaboration with the town. I think we are meeting frequently in terms of the high level. What I'd say is what we, the schools need is to keep as close to level servicing as we possibly can and any sort of reductions, whether it's because we no longer have those circuit breaker dollars, which are one time funds on behalf of the school or any other sorts of cuts would have have to be aimed at having the least student impact. So that's the overriding thing we would be focusing on. Obviously we'd like to have no cuts, right? But we also understand we're moving in asking a lot of the town in terms of what the need is. We wanna make sure we're also delivering as a, that's would be my recommendation would be to be mindful of our own expenses as well. So I think shorter, I think we all know there's an urgency to get this closer and more defined quickly. And I, what I would say about that, what makes that complicated is not delay tactics I would say, but the real need for collaboration with many different groups. So I hope that answers your question. Yeah. But I think we feel your urgency and there is kind of a public education campaign that needs to start that's independent of us. And so pulling all of that together with that urgency in mind is, is why we're meeting so frequently. And it is a commitment I wanna make as a superintendent to support that in every way I can and be available to anyone who needs help with, with recommendations from the school side. But I feel confident we're gonna get there. Thank <v Speaker 3>You.</v> Any other questions or comments? So I'll just add a comment and really just appreciation not only for you coming here, I do appreciate you coming here Lynn night, but for all the work that you and Mr. Townsend in your office, Mr. Gilli and Dr. Pash in our office have been doing for a long time. I know an override is not something that would be moving forward unless it was absolutely necessary. And that was very thoughtful. And so I know that was reason for so many meetings. I'll also add that myself and Ms. Lin, the chair of the select board have been discussing figure the, the process for moving forward so that we, the two bodies are moving forward each in its own deliberation and figuring out its purview. So us trying to figure out our budget, what do we need? How do we get from the administration, how do we study it and understand it and presumably approve it so that that can be part of the conversation as well. Some more of that to come. But thank you to all four of you. And I'm Ms. Johnson Sni here. I'll probably see him walking our dogs later tonight and I'll tell him myself. Excellent. Yeah. Ms. Brunell, <v Speaker 20>Have you and Catherine talked about a joint meeting</v> between the select board and school committee? We <v Speaker 3>Have in the past.</v> We actually, actually last year it might have been your idea to have meeting all three bodies including fin com as well. So we were playing on doing something similar. Okay. Yeah, <v Speaker 21>If I, if I, one thing that, so there's a couple dates</v> that are firm based on bylaw or state law. One of which is we do have to produce no matter what a budget, a balanced budget on February one, it's a preliminary time administrative budget. I guess it doesn't, I mean when we say balance, it's balanced by the time it gets to town meeting. So it will likely show the gaps. But what we're preparing there is to show a budget that assumes no override because we do have to, in my opinion, we have to provide that because it's just, we can't guarantee that there would be the override vote and then one with an assumed dollar amount. So at the very latest, that is when many, many, many, many details will be coming out. That is not our ideal of when we will start getting the details out though. That's just a guaranteed date of when Yeah, a budget book will be presented because that's a town bylaw requirement And we're, we're trying to look at all of those different target dates. 'cause we know that there's a number of target dates, like an actual ballot would be on the election in March, end of March. And then February 1st is obviously the town administrative budget per the, the town bylaws. And then there's other dates that we're plugging in. And then we're trying to fill in all those gaps of when can we have a joint meeting. We have the last two years had a joint meeting with the three bodies school committee, select board and fin com with the budget book time. But I think we've talked also about doing an not waiting for that and having another meeting at some point. So we are trying to balance obviously the required dates with the additional details that need to be put together. <v Speaker 20>Is that, is February 1st the required date</v> for the school committee to get our budget? I forget <v Speaker 21>That's just the 10 administrators budget.</v> Usually in advance of that, usually January one ish is when we get a number from the school department. I don't believe the school committee technically votes on it until March or has historically not voted on the number until March. But we use that number and that, that's usually for many years it was what people refer to as the gap. The gap between what the town administrator's budget was and the school department budget provided this year we're going to have that because that's why we're talking about an override. I think the gap will also be really across the entirety of the budget though, not just in one department. <v Speaker 7>Thank you.</v> <v Speaker 9>But we've taken these dates into</v> consideration with the budget calendar. Matt presented last week. Yeah. Or two weeks ago. <v Speaker 7>Hey, thank you so much.</v> <v Speaker 9>Thank you so much for coming.</v> <v Speaker 21>Thank you. Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 22>Appreciate it.</v> Try, try and keep you honest trying. I know, I know. It was not an intention. It was. <v Speaker 9>So I'll close out my very lengthy report this evening.</v> Thanks for everybody for patience. I do have on here the enrollment report and unless anyone has any questions, I don't plan to present on it because it, again, I'm gonna use the word unremarkable. There's just not a lot of change. But I'm happy to address any questions people may have. <v Speaker 3>Okay. Any questions about the enrollment report?</v> <v Speaker 9>Okay, great. Thank you so much.</v> <v Speaker 3>Oh, so, oh, so you're done.</v> I was like, wait, where's more? So we'll now go to subcommittee liaison updates and one of them is the, well the one we have is a tech update, Mr. Brand. <v Speaker 11>It wouldn't be a subcommittee update section</v> without a visit from me. So in Novus, there's, there are a couple of attachments for tech. Essentially there's a new agreement, the collaborative agreement that, that we are considering. And there's a process in place. The biggest change, so the, the biggest change is a proposal to add two more districts to the collaborative. This is King, Philip and Sharon that would bring the number from 17 to 19 districts. So there is a, there's a timeline for all of this. And Just so everybody's on the same page, essentially what happens is this time counts for, you know, like a first reading. What what ends up ultimately happening is in order for, for the agreement to be ratified, all the member districts have to vote on it. And that will typically be for school committee members sometime between the middle of December and the end of January. Prior to that, I believe at our next tech board meeting, we just had one last Friday, but at the next tech board meeting, the board of directors for tech would vote and then it goes to the individual member districts to vote. A majority of the districts themselves have to affirm the vote and then the agreement is updated. So that is, I mean there are some small changes that are, that are in the agreement. Most of them, it, it's basically the tech is taking the opportunity to clean up the agreement, like update it with some small things. But the, the most substantive change, of course, is adding to more member districts. So you can read the proposed agreement in NOIs and then I will give an update after the next tech meeting about what that vote was. And then we'll have to put it on our agenda to take up again. And I think that's, I'll leave it at that. <v Speaker 3>So we will have to vote as a committee. The committee</v> <v Speaker 11>Has to</v> <v Speaker 3>Vote on agreement.</v> <v Speaker 11>Yeah. All the, all the, the 17 member districts have</v> to all vote sometime between the middle to after the next tech meeting sometime by the end of January. And if a majority of those districts vote in favor of ad of the, the changes to the agreement, which includes two new member districts, then that would happen. And there are a couple of small things. I mean, I I I guess the next biggest thing is the, if, if a district is withdrawing from the collaborative, the current agreement says the FD of six months notice, it's, there's a proposed to change that to 12 months to allow for more time, obviously. So, but you can, again, you can read through the agreement. We're not gonna go line by lights a long agreement. So, but you can read it and I'll give an update in our, at the, after our next, it won't be at the next Natick school committee meeting 'cause we won't have another tech meeting before then. But, <v Speaker 3>And then we'll vote based on those</v> <v Speaker 11>Yes.</v> <v Speaker 3>Agreements. Any questions</v> or comments about any of that? Yeah. Ms. Burnell, <v Speaker 20>Do you have an opinion about it now based on what you've</v> seen or anything like you're the closest one to it. <v Speaker 11>Yeah, I am. Yes.</v> Do you want my, do you want my opinion? I do. <v Speaker 20>Yeah. I mean, you're the closest one</v> <v Speaker 11>To it.</v> Yes. You're my opinion would be to, so the, the board voted to go through this process and I agree. So like to, I think that in a collaborative, I mean there's certainly a limit. You can't have everybody. But the, the more the merrier at this stage, I think it's benefit. The more of us there are, the more benefit there is for everybody. We have more buying power, we have more. It's just good. And if, if, you know, I was, I was just after Friday's meeting I was saying I pre Covid, we used to have the meetings at the school itself. We don't, we do them virtually now it's, if you haven't had a chance to take a look at what the education cooperative is doing, I highly recommend it. It's really incredible work and is a great service for students in this district and 16 others and hopefully 18 others when this is done. So yes, that's my opinion. <v Speaker 3>Thank you. Yeah. Ms. McDonough,</v> <v Speaker 19>I had an update.</v> Oh sure. Yeah. A different update on a different topic. <v Speaker 3>Are you, any more questions or comments for Mr.</v> <v Speaker 11>Brand's? Had enough of my update</v> and she would like to move on to her update. <v Speaker 3>So with</v> <v Speaker 19>That, I wasn't sure when to chime in.</v> I appreciated your update. I just wanted to give the committee and the community an update on the calendar task force. We are, we have worked through the draft of a survey. We are now fortunate to be working with thought exchange to be putting that survey together in good survey language using what all of the members of our task force and what they came together to, to do. The purpose of the survey will be to understand what holidays are celebrated by our community, what is their desire for school operations on those holidays and what are their priorities for the school year. I sent it to the committee, but I would highly encourage everyone to look at Wellesley's recently completed process. They have a lot of good data that they came away with that has allowed them to make some, we talked a lot about data tonight. A lot of to make a recommendation to their school committee and their school committee will be voting on it in the next few weeks. So the goal of our survey is to hopefully get it out by mid-November, November 15th and have it open till just before Thanksgiving, which will give us some data to look at in December. So just wanted to give that update and for people to be on the lookout for it. This will be a survey of high school students, staff, and families. <v Speaker 3>Great. Thanks. Any questions or Yeah, Ms. Collins,</v> <v Speaker 2>I assume you mean families of the district?</v> Not just families of high school students. Okay. Just that's what I thought, but I just wanted to be clear. <v Speaker 19>Yeah, all families.</v> <v Speaker 3>Any other questions from Ms.</v> McDonough? So none more questions. I'll move to our last item, which is a committee goals. I wanted to just provide brief, very brief context for anyone watching us a couple of years ago. The committee decided that in addition to the decisions that come our way as part of our purview and part of the regular process of of the school year, including budgets and policies, we also want to be proactive as a committee to identify some of the specific priorities that we want to accomplish each year. And so we came up with idea of putting together goals, committee goals for the year. So this year at our last convers last meeting or two meetings ago, we had identified four potential areas for goals. Those were originally community engagement, budget professional development and facilities and facility slash capital as one area. What we did next is we divvied up the work across multiple, across the seven of actually the eight of us across those four areas. And tonight we have the reports from each one of those four groups. What we'll we'll do is go through each one bio alphabetical order. Three of the four groups have specific documents that are Novus. And then can you share on the screen? She share What? I <v Speaker 22>Can't access two of my</v> <v Speaker 3>Reports.</v> Oh you couldn't, you can't. I, <v Speaker 22>The only one I can access is</v> the one I was involved in writing. <v Speaker 3>Oh, I'm sorry about that. Which</v> <v Speaker 2>One do you wanna do? Are you doing first?</v> <v Speaker 3>We'll do budget first.</v> <v Speaker 19>You can download it. It's just the link. Yep.</v> <v Speaker 22>I No.</v> <v Speaker 2>Oh,</v> <v Speaker 19>It doesn't download. It doesn't</v> <v Speaker 22>Download.</v> Okay. And the link? <v Speaker 19>No, I have the same issue. The link, the download.</v> I did not get into download. That's <v Speaker 22>Fair.</v> But I'm just trying to do it on my phone and that doesn't download Well period. <v Speaker 7>Alright Kathy,</v> <v Speaker 3>So, so we'll just go through that.</v> I mean they're relatively short documents. We can discuss 'em together. So my goal for each one of these areas is to, no pun intended, is to have someone from the the group present the, the goal as they came up with and action steps. And then we'll vote on the plan. And then we didn't really decide this, but I would like to propose that the same people who are involved in writing the goal then continue unless anyone wants to change groups around. But otherwise I think we can just have the same people kind of con work towards putting the action steps into place. Does that make sense? We can do it goal by goal. So the budget group was Ms. Brunell, Ms. Collins, and Ms. flas. I don't know if any of you want to just briefly walk us through what you came up with. <v Speaker 19>I don't care.</v> <v Speaker 7>Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 20>Kathy, do you wanna take this one on?</v> This is one of the documents that you had. The <v Speaker 2>Only one that I</v> <v Speaker 22>Could open.</v> So yeah, <v Speaker 2>Unfortunately it was also the only one</v> that I had a clue what was in it. So we talked about adding this as a subcommittee. We thought, you know, this is like a one year, I don't wanna say trial 'cause hopefully it will go well and it'll be more than just a trial. But we just sort of tried to outline what steps we think need to be achieved in order to give this a fair shot. The, so we came up with four steps. First one is to meet with Dr. Bash to incorporate how she would like to see the budget process unfold. I'm sure that she'll pull in Mr. Gilles and that would make perfect sense. We just didn't, we don't have a direct claim on his time. Review the budget from 24 and the 24 and the 25, both the template that was used and the cycle that was was on. Figure out where we might need more information. You know, what, what good changes have happened, what things have gone away that maybe we wanna see returned. Create documentation that indicates the key changes to the process to provide clarity. And after the budget in the April May world is to do a retrospective meeting as to what worked and what didn't so that we can make adjustments for next year on an ongoing basis. The one thing we spent a fairly good amount of time discussing was the fact that giving this a shot does not absolve for people who don't sit in this group of looking at the budget and providing feedback and understanding. And esp Yeah, sorry Matt, we <v Speaker 19>Were thinking</v> <v Speaker 2>Of you specifically,</v> especially since we're gonna have a lot of education and such that's needed both within the committee, but certainly outside of the committee. We wanna be able to, we wanna basically have everybody in the committee be in a position to answer a question when they get stopped in the grocery store or on the street corner. Or at least be able to get back to it fairly quickly as opposed to, gee, that's a good question. Or some bigger explanation that people's eyes glaze over at. So those were, <v Speaker 3>So those were the action steps towards achieving the goal.</v> <v Speaker 2>The goal being to evaluate the budget templates</v> and schedule the process with the administration to agree on a budget process plan for FY 26 that optimizes efficiency, clarity, and transparency. Okay. <v Speaker 3>Ms.</v> <v Speaker 19>Flas, I just wanna add a couple pieces</v> of context from that meeting, which I think was really productive of what we're solving for. So I think, you know, whether we need a budget subcommittee moving forward, we know that we want it to be in support of getting that clarity and efficiency within the meeting. So not again, how do we make it easy for everyone to understand? I think the other piece specifically in this year we're solving for is there was a process and a set of templates under the administration. Bella brought a different set of ways and I remember when she introduced some really great changes when you're first seeing those templates for the first time in the same meeting that you're trying to understand the numbers, it creates that, you know, clarity is kindness. You're, you trying to understand a new template and understand the numbers at the same time can be really challenging. So what we were hoping to accomplish here is to understand how, how you, how the administration would want to present the budget. Make sure you understand any things that were presented in the past that could create cognitive dissidence and get that ahead so that in December we could say this, the process, including how you, you should expect to see the numbers and create that kind of, that journey before you're actually looking at numbers when you're like, wait, is it the template? I don't understand? Is it the plus side and the minus sign? So that's kind of what we were solving for. And then if it goes really and then see it, did it go well as a retrospective? And then that can tell us whether there's a real benefit from having the conversations with a smaller, smaller group in preparation or whether, you know, it was streamlined enough that it's not really needed. <v Speaker 3>Anything else? Joan,</v> <v Speaker 20>Just one last thing is I think it</v> aligns with the district priorities if we are interested in doing that. It's, it's communication and leadership development within the school committee. Because you know, that idea that any of us, well, I will not answer questions in the grocery store by the way, any of us should be able to answer questions when, when we get it. And I know sometimes the budget is hard to, hard to talk about because it's because it has been presented in different ways. So that that communication leadership development within our board and then also I think it is looking at the excellence of our support systems. So I think it's <v Speaker 3>Any questions or com?</v> Yep. Ms. McDonna. <v Speaker 19>So my question is, so what does this look like for,</v> so I'm assuming the three people who met would, would do this work and then would you come back to this, the rest of the committee and present at a meeting where you would just go through what you learned and we would look at the documentation? <v Speaker 3>Yeah. Ms. Burnell and Mrs. Fathers,</v> <v Speaker 20>One thing I, I don't know if Matt, you,</v> you found this helpful, but when we did the handbook, we sent out a survey to all of you, like before we developed the handbook and we brought the table of contents and we said, you know what, what would be helpful to you in a handbook? So I could see us doing like a in educate, like as KWL, like what do you already know about the budget? Where do, where do you feel like, what things do you like about previous presentations? You know, like what has worked for the committee? And then then meet with Dr. Stash and Mr. Gillis and figure out, you know, what direction they wanna take and then come back to the committee with both sets of data. That's, that's my <v Speaker 19>Thought.</v> So it's not really an investigation of a budget subcommittee, it's just talking about our current process. Yeah. And, and just having the documentation that we already have. Right? I mean, 'cause I heard budget subcommittee, but then when I read this, it says nothing about a budget subcommittee. It just talks about reviewing the process, deciding what might be more efficient and or things that have been lost might be brought back. And so it is the end question like do we need a budget subcommittee or is it just, here's a documentation of our process. Are we sure that this is working for all members? <v Speaker 3>Flas</v> <v Speaker 19>I mean, I look at it as, as you know, Kath said,</v> a trial run by more, look at it as you create a subcommittee to fill a need that we think would be useful. And so I think in this transition year where we're looking at, we went through a number of different, when we got to here, we said, we were thinking we don't wanna put more burden on the administration. That's not useful. So, you know, I think from the understand budget subcommittee would be feeling a need to have communications upfront to bring more clarity to the broader, in a more flexible way to, to facilitate some conversations just to bring clarity. So the committee, you'll notice we started with meet with the administration to figure out what, you know, what utility would be here, what knowledge we have of the past. I think the process itself, we could decide, look, this is really useful to have to talk through the budget, to come up with a plan to meet with a smaller group in a subcommittee. That's really useful. As we, as we, you know, take it past this first year or we come to the end and say, you know, it's not really required because the templates are really straightforward and and really well understood. Think it's tried feedback. So are you like piloting this like with the FY 26 budget or? Well, yeah, I mean that's the proposal, but again, we're putting this on paper not to vote on today, but to say we want feedback from the administration. We don't want to create more burden. But we also do know, you know, through the experience of last year, I feel like we had someone's early meetings with the budget. Like we, I understand the template. So I mean, I'd look for feedback from the administration. Mr. Gus. <v Speaker 23>Yeah, I I'm, I'm happy to, to meet with folks.</v> I, I'd like your feedback, whether it's content ads or format ads or changes so that we give you something that's, that's helpful for you to make a decision and vote it and support it. <v Speaker 9>I can add to that. I welcome it.</v> I think this is a critical year to have. One of the things I think about with the potential override it, the number one thing we have to deliver is high credibility and unity around any numbers we present. And so as being someone new here, I think that the voice from many people who've held many different roles throughout Natick government is critical. And so we welcome it. I think it's good as you've presented it, which is a reflective process that, which would say like, how was this? But I think getting to kind of a systematized way that we do this that feels really transparent is a goal I have as well. And I think you'd be great partners in that. <v Speaker 19>I'm not, I'm, I guess I'm cranky tonight.</v> I do not, I feel like this is like, 'cause there's been a lot of talk about a budget subcommittee and there's been a lot of o like opposition to it and there's been like a lot of people for it. And so it feels like when I read this I was like, oh, it's just gonna analyze our budget process. But then when I hear you talking, it feels like we're just piloting a budget subcommittee, which is fine. But I feel like we need to say that like for the FY 26 cycle, we're gonna have three people meet in a subcommittee and we're gonna have them walk through the budget process. And so if that's true, then I would like some confirmation that the committee members who are not on this subcommittee would then be brought into the process as well because, and then I would also like on this goal to say we are piloting a budget subcommittee for FY 26 because that to me is, is what I'm hearing people saying. Unless that's not true. <v Speaker 3>Ms. Collins,</v> <v Speaker 2>I was one</v> of the biggest voices against having a budget subcommittee for the reason that I didn't, I mean I got on this committee originally so that the school committee to help try and help other members of the school committee understand the budget. Because before I got on, it was very clear that most if not, well at least most school committee members didn't know what was in their own budget. And that was a problem from where I stood. So with the caveat that this doesn't obviate anybody's any other member's requirement to understand the budget. I think, you know, as Kate said that sometimes when you get something new, I'm looking for the old format. Somebody else who isn't, doesn't know the old format is looking is fine with the new format, but they have a question on this number. But I'm so stuck on the format that I can't even get there. So yes, it would involve other people. They would obviously be open meetings, but it, it's, we don't want to prejudge that there. One of 'em, the things that, my concern is that if we say we're forming a budget subcommittee, then it makes it sound like it's at infinitum. And I don't think we agreed that it was added infinitum, that it was sort of a trial. <v Speaker 3>Can I try to summarize what I think I'm hearing?</v> No, it sounds like what you're all proposing is, and by the way, we can change the membership if people want to change the membership, but that there will be a small group of people who for the coming year, so we're not starting anything permanent, but for the coming year we'll look at the processes in the documentation for the templates for budget. So we're not, they're not actually examining the budget itself, but rather what is the process by which we as a school committee receive the com the the data and how we go about understanding it. So that for, for future budgets is that, <v Speaker 19>Yeah, I think for this year I think it's, I</v> for this year it's a transition year is to like work with the administration and the smaller group to make sure that there's clarity that the information is that you guys understand what, what has hap you know, things have happened in the past and just to get to clarity to present back, I don't, I don't think we're looking at evaluating or making recommendation about the budget at <v Speaker 3>All.</v> And I'm not sure if you're saying there should be a subcommittee, budget subcommittee or call it something else. But either way, I mean, whether we call it ta Yeah, I don't know if, yeah, Ms. Elli had your end up <v Speaker 20>Well one thing it just, I I can guarantee you that</v> anything that happens we're right to be a part of it would always come back to the full committee and I think all of us would make that commitment to each other. Right? So I I like, I've always seen a budget subcommittee, like the policy subcommittee. It's just efficiency. It's just, it is just to like develop things in a smaller setting so that you can bring them to the full committee. You would never just, the policy subcommittee would never just make a policy, right? In the same way that the budget subcommittee eventually, if it, if it does occur, would never just set the budget of the school committee. I'll be honest, I'm not, I don't know if we need a budget subcommittee. Their time is really precious. And so three years ago I obviously absolutely thought we needed a budget subcommittee 'cause I couldn't understand the numbers. I can understand the numbers right now. So I, I don't, I don't wanna prescribe a process that I was adamant about when I got elected the first time to now because things have changed. And so I know a lot of school committees use budget subcommittees. They use them not only just for budget, they use 'em for capital planning and for facilities. And so they, they combine all three of those things in the into it. I'm, I don't know if we need that. You know, I, I definitely think if an, if we are in an over I override year, we are gonna have to be crystal clear with everyone about the numbers. And so I thought that this was a nice hybrid idea that Kathy came up with to say like, you know, we are, we are going to be, it's kind of like a, in some ways it's like a fire drill, right? Like there's not a, like you actually do the things even though there's not the emergency. Like you still walk through all the motions. So we'll still be using the FY 26 budget, right? And like looking at the, looking at the numbers but it won't, it'll be more with an eye to does this make sense? Is this comprehen? Is this comprehendible? <v Speaker 3>Any other questions or comments?</v> <v Speaker 19>And I think to that point, I think working together</v> and you'll hear the update on the capital planning goal, the conversation we had there. 'cause I was involved in both. I think to that end, coming out of Melissa's first year, you know, this is an opportunity to collaborate on a process that's going to be very difficult and potentially very fast and have a lot of back and forth with, you know, as needed support and, and more flexible subcommittee meetings. And then we'll just have a lot more knowledge at the end of this year of whether a permanent subcommittee makes sense. I think it's premature to say one makes sense right now. One to your point, Catherine, we, you know, we're in a totally different administration and could have different experiences, but I think it's pragmatic to have some of these conversations. <v Speaker 3>Do we, yeah,</v> <v Speaker 19>It still feel,</v> it still feels like it's just piloting a budget subcommittee that is the goal. And now that I read the top budget process plan for FY 26 that optimizes. So I just, that, that is important to me to know as a committee member so that I know what, like what's happening in these meetings so that I know why people have like certain amounts of information that they will come back to the committee with. But that that's what's happening in this meeting. That it's not really a retrospective on what we've done in the past and just looking at processes, it's using the FY 26 budget as as the analysis. And so you're actually walking through that process with real numbers and asking real questions and then deciding To bring back that information to the whole committee and documenting the process along the way. If you, just to comment, if you look at the timing, we're actually really looking at coming back in like by December, which is well before the real numbers exist to say, okay, when, when the budget comes through the, this is, this is how it's gonna, this is, you know, the templates are how, I mean most, I'm sure you have a way that you like to present the budget and if we look at it and say, yeah, okay your templates are even with fake numbers, that, that makes sense or, so I don't really anticipate this group in these next bunch is really looking at the numbers to pilot the actual budget process just to prepare for the information that's gonna come out. That was the idea anyway. Can, <v Speaker 2>Can I follow it?</v> What questions does the presentation create irrespective of what the number is? That sort of evaluation? <v Speaker 9>Yeah, I mean I think it makes sense to keep things</v> that worked in the past in terms of the presentation and keeps those threads. I appreciate saying I might have way, ways I like to present it, but honestly what's important is that whatever's presented can be digested and feels very credible. So I think partnership in that, in this transition year works. I see what, what's being said around if this is piloting a subcommittee, I mean I think that's really a school committee kind of call on on where you wanna be with that frankly. But, but we appreciate the partnership. I've never once felt the team has not been respectful of our time and it is true, we are very stretched thin, but I respect that that'll kind of be considered as part of this work. <v Speaker 3>So to move us forward, I just wanna present the options</v> so we can vote on it as is or we can ask the, the group that worked on this too. Edit it. I mean I, I'm just offering options. Not saying we should go one direction or another and come back next time. Do people have a, <v Speaker 11>I mean</v> <v Speaker 4>It,</v> <v Speaker 11>I think it's a good goal</v> and I would be happy to if we were gonna vote, I'm happy to support it now. I'm comfortable with that. But I could also wait I just, for that particular goal in particular, well in, I just use particular twice in the same sentence. A 75% of it happens quickly and so to wait till the next meeting feels like it delays the work. So I'd be in favor of, I'd make a, if we want one, I would make a motion to approve that goal. Do you want one? <v Speaker 3>I'll</v> <v Speaker 11>Take one. I can make, I so alright, move</v> to approve the, what are we actually calling this goal? The budget efficiency, clarity and transparency goal. Very Washington DC feeling. Second? Second. <v Speaker 3>Any discussion before we vote? Say none.</v> All those in favor? Anyone against any abstentions? The motion is approved. So next in alphabetical order is community engagement And oh sorry, just one <v Speaker 11>Quick thing.</v> Yeah. The goal is the goal. Do we need to ratify the people working on the goal beyond just your assumption? <v Speaker 3>Yes. Let's,</v> <v Speaker 11>How do we do that?</v> <v Speaker 3>Do the three of you wanna continue working on it?</v> Does anyone else wanna work on it? <v Speaker 11>I do not.</v> <v Speaker 4>I'm</v> good. Sure, sure. <v Speaker 3>Three of you're good with working on it</v> and no one else wants, I'm looking at Matt, Julie, myself. Wanna take on Elise. <v Speaker 4>Elise?</v> <v Speaker 3>Okay, so I don't know</v> that we need a official vote, but we can just give you the go ahead. The green light. So community engagement, that was Tamika, Matt, ca, Catherine and myself. And we have a PDF and I'm sorry Kathy, that you're seeing the first time, but it, it is right here and I'll, does anyone wanna so <v Speaker 4>Read that to me or larger</v> because there's no way I'm gonna here Roger, that's it. Put me further away. <v Speaker 3>Any of my colleagues wanna provide a brief summary?</v> <v Speaker 4>Oh,</v> <v Speaker 3>Excuse</v> <v Speaker 7>Kathy.</v> Put my computer. <v Speaker 3>I I can go ahead just 'cause I wanna move on.</v> Oh, do you wanna do it? You looked at me like you wanna do it. Go ahead. Thank you. Okay, <v Speaker 6>So the goal for this was that</v> during the school year we'll increase the number of school committees engagement touch points with the NA public school community, which includes students, parents, teachers, educators, and other community members in order to A, receive input and diversity of thought to inform decision making and B, to raise awareness of the committee's function and work. So there were several apps action steps that were discussed in order to follow up with the school. Which number one would be to create memorialize an engagement calendar. The timeline for that would be as soon as possible and to revise during the year. Number two would be a commit to meetings with student reps four times a year. That would be around two times a semester for the timeline. Number three would be to work with the superintendent slash union to identify channels to engage with teachers. The timeline for that would be winter and spring. Number four would be to offer in-person and virtual coffee hours to all community members, including the possibility of partnering with school boards. Words, office hours, I'm sorry, <v Speaker 3>Select board.</v> <v Speaker 6>Thank you. Select board office hours.</v> So the timeline for that is still undecided there. Number five was to offer specific forums and other and or engagement opportunities related to major decisions. Examples of that would be the budget, the MSBA process, which is to be determined. Number six was to offer a Natick 1 0 1 session about the school committee and that would be a timeline to connect with town in October and aim for December to have that. Okay. And that's basically it. <v Speaker 3>Any questions or comments about the community engagement</v> goal and action steps? Yeah. Mr. Brand or any other additional comments from anyone? <v Speaker 11>Yeah, I, I mean I, I would just summarize we do a lot</v> of these things already and the, I think the point of this particular goal in the discussion that we had was to formalize and have a structure and be deliberate about throughout the, you know, about all the different kinds of ways that we can reach the community and define the community with all this engagement. So, so you know, we've always been at Natick days we are, there are already been meetings with very, you know, with student reps from time to time. Like there are things that we do sort of piecemeal and this is just sort of putting a plan together, a more comprehensive plan. <v Speaker 3>Anything else to add or any questions?</v> Comment, comments? So now I'll take a motion to approve it. <v Speaker 11>So moved.</v> <v Speaker 3>All those in favor? Anyone against? I second</v> <v Speaker 11>It. Did you get</v> <v Speaker 3>The second?</v> Oh no seconded. Sorry I was, you can tell I'm ready to get <v Speaker 11>Moving</v> <v Speaker 3>Along.</v> Yeah, let's move along. But thank you for seconding it Ms. Ms. Collins. So those in favor? Anyone against anyone? Any abstentions? And should we just clarify, do the four of us wanna continue working on this goal? <v Speaker 11>Sure.</v> <v Speaker 20>I am gonna have to step back just</v> 'cause I have to with the budget. I can't <v Speaker 19>Be on both.</v> <v Speaker 3>And to</v> <v Speaker 11>Me, which means we have room for if,</v> 'cause to me we are you on still? If somebody else was interested right? We could, we could add another person and be okay. So, but we can be flexible. Yeah, we can also wait to see if maybe Elise wants to participate. <v Speaker 3>Well let me ask, is anyone who's not on it right</v> now wants to participate? And Tamika, you're okay with sticking with man and I? Yes I am. Great, thank you. <v Speaker 11>High risk. High</v> <v Speaker 3>Risk crowd.</v> Okay. So, but yeah we do have an open spot for that. The next one is the fields and capital. And I know Julie and Kate worked on it along with Elise, who unfortunately couldn't make it today. Do you, I know there's no document but I know you wanted to provide an update. <v Speaker 24>Sure. So</v> <v Speaker 19>We talked through it a lot and so I think part</v> of the reason this, there's two areas where this trickles up a lot is something of high concern is fields obviously is an area of concern that has bubbled up and already a lot of work been the other is RJ Round Elementary, the capital plan for the elementary schools, you know, with the, the MSBA processes starting at Memorial, we know that will be an involved process but wanting to also you knowing historically we have a building every decade or so, it's kind of how it's been falling out. You know, we have modulars at Loja and Brown that won't make it through multiple MSBA cycles. And so I feel like we want there to be, you know, not just get in the middle of A-M-S-B-A cycle, but really proactively, regardless of the outcome there, you know, what are, what are options, you know, what are, what are options and more education potentially around the MSBA process. But as we were kind of looking at, we're looking at a lot of information coming out. We don't have a decision from, you know, we are waiting for, for the MSBA we're waiting, you know, Melissa's still in the middle of her, you know, she'll do a readout kind of in February. We have the community survey that went out that we don't have the results back from the town. And so as we looked at the timing, we said it's not, it would just be a burden we try to make, like make up things that we could do. We would be requiring other people who are overburdened right now with, you know, the potential override that that it's not a good time to try to have those conversations. But we didn't. But what we did also think is that we don't wanna wait until next October to have the conversations. So we, so our proposal is to not have, to not have a specific goal established right now around the capital plan. We do wanna have a two follow ups though is we do wanna reconvene to consider a shorter term goal around the athletic fields. I think already conversations. So we'd propose that we have another meeting to talk about a potential goal there. But that we actually proactively schedule after the superintendent entry plan after MSBA response after the community service survey after the election, probably around the April timeframe to, to reconvene to have a conversation about it to get ahead of next year. 'cause I think we wouldn't wanna wait into that. So that was our proposal <v Speaker 3>After the March election.</v> Hmm. After you said after the election, after the March election. Anything to add? Any questions from anyone? <v Speaker 19>Does that make sense to everyone Time</v> <v Speaker 3>Mr. Burnell?</v> <v Speaker 20>It does. I, it just, the part that's hard</v> for me is like the, the elementary school space right now I just, I'm frankly I'm hearing a lot from brown parents about the playground there and just how frustrated that people are about playground space for elementary school kids. So I don't know if that's something I guess I, I understand what you're saying but I think that's something that we need to have on our radar. <v Speaker 19>Oh I completely agree.</v> But what we just kept coming down to is what could we as a school committee do in this short time horizon that isn't potentially, I assume that these are, you know, feedback that Melissa I think you're probably hearing already through your onboarding plan. Yeah so I just, we didn't have productive things that we could do that wouldn't overburden people who are already probably thinking about this in the next short time in the next, you know, through March time horizon. But we were very adamant that we, that we want to reconvene to establish our goal for the next year in April. Like we don't, we need, we can't wait until then to get behind by another year. Happy to get input on what we could do but it just, with everything else going on. Yeah and none of those things happen happened fast. Like it didn't, it we would be talking about something that we don't really have the ability to change fast. We did a lot of scenarios. <v Speaker 9>Can I weigh in? I agree with all the,</v> all the things in motion before having that meeting would make sense. And I agree with being early on planning for next year. I also think to the extent there's things like what you mentioned Catherine, there might be solutions that aren't about building new space that can make a playground situation better. Oftentimes it's the teachers probably in the school-based folks who are gonna be able to kind of come up with a better solution. So good to know. I haven't heard that resoundingly coming out 'cause you know, I'm meeting with all the parents but that's something I can talk to the principal out and see if there about their some temporary solutions on that. So I think I would encourage people who have concerns to go and talk to the principal about those concerns to see if there can be a solution made that we don't always have to jump to kind of brick and mortar is what I wanna say. <v Speaker 19>Ms. McDonald? Yeah, the only thing I would add is that,</v> you know, I, Kate is saying during our meeting it feels like this is something that would, some of these elements would come from the administration. It would, it would be, Hey, let's look at all of our buildings and all of our spaces and all of our equipment and make a plan for what needs to be replaced when, where there might be deficiencies, changes like has happened at, for example at Brown and Kennedy that has encroached like and made some space issues at Brown but it didn't feel like the school committee could really like execute that sort of plan. I'm worried about having like the staff and the ability to do that. 'cause it's a pretty big undertaking to develop a, an analysis of all of our spaces and buildings and then to put that plan forward and then work it into the budget over a series of years. But it just, you know, we talked about a survey and then we were like, well you know, it doesn't make sense to do a survey with all these other inputs coming at us. But that was like school committee purview is kind of represent the community. But it's not to like, we used to have a plan for playgrounds and we don't, we haven't had one in years, you know, which I'm sure what we don't even have a plan. We, so this is, this is what happened with the fields. We didn't have a plan for the fields. We don't have a plan for the playgrounds. We don't have a plan for our elementary schools. Like we, you know, what's, what's gonna happen when the, the modulars that are supposed to last 25 years, like reach the end of life. You know, we just don't have that. But I I I guess as school committee we can say we really need a plan. It's just when we get that plan, what does that look like? <v Speaker 9>Agree. And I feel that what you're saying is being echoed,</v> I'd say in this listening tour and what I've had to do, I'm just gonna be real. What I've had to do is somebody who considers myself a bit of a fixer or a doer, I've had to really remind myself to have breaks so that we can, I can finish listening, report out on findings and then build a systematic approach that has the buy-in of our many stakeholders. So families, teachers, we want our teachers to stay, we want our families to feel steady like we're making stead and informed. And so to me that process after the entry plan comes out in February is to build that plan and cross check it and make sure we cannot do everything at once. Right. To make a capital plan is a really big thing that takes some time, some collaboration, some kind of engagement with the community to make sure there's buy-in. 'cause ultimately people have to pay for that plan. And so to me it's about really taking all the feedback we have, building themes and then making a plan that is not one year or three months, but it's probably gonna be more far reaching 'cause we cannot do everything at once or we're gonna burn people out too much. That's be me being real. <v Speaker 3>Any other questions or comments about facilities</v> or capital projects? So this one doesn't have a goal, so nothing to vote on, is that right? So move to the last one, professional development and that again was at Tamika, Matt, Catherine and myself. I dunno if anyone else wants to go through it. Go ahead. <v Speaker 11>So this, this goal was just to, to set</v> a few action steps in place to make us a, a better school committee and make us all more informed school committee members with an eye and focus on equity informed decision making. And so if you look at the action sets, we're already way behind. Yeah. The, the idea here would be to, to have some different options for trainers to come up back to come back to the committee and sort of see what people wanted to do. And then we, we also talked about the idea of having a little school committee, book club and, and choosing a book to read that we would, that, we'll, we'll definitely choose that by the end of October of 2024. And then read it and then have another, have a discussion about it at the end of January. So there are a couple options for books, but that's sort of the basic goal is to be deliberate about becoming better school community members. Not that we're not all awesome, we could always be better. There's always opportunity to learn and grow. That's it. <v Speaker 3>Any questions or comments or anything to add?</v> Ms. Collins? <v Speaker 2>I have nothing to add, but I'll say it again.</v> I don't do book club. Don't do it. <v Speaker 3>I was gonna, I I was curious</v> besides proving this goal, people's general feedback, 'cause obviously this is for us, if people basically there's two ideas here. We can do one the other or both. One is to have a trainer come versus a book club or, or both. So we know where Ms. Collins stands on that. I'm curious if other people have any thoughts about either option. <v Speaker 20>I I understand the,</v> the term book club has actually been a little polarizing on our committee in the past. And so I just would like to take that off the table. I I don't think we're talking about a book club. We're talking about doing a book. We're talking about having material that we review and then we have an intellectual discussion and process about what we would like to take from the book. So I would see it as an open meeting. I would not see it with tea and coffee and knitting needles. I, I would see it as a conversation where we looked at and we analyzed stuff. So I am reading the book, AJ Cray. Bill wrote Why school boards fail. And I think that we should all read that book. I think we could do both of these things too. I think we would behoove us to have like a little bit of individual thinking and understanding and then also do a trainer, there's a lot of school boards that are having school board coaches. We heard tonight about coaches and how effective they are in our school systems. Like we are responsible for a hundred million dollars. So if we don't do professional development, we're not doing our job. <v Speaker 3>Ms. Collins, to be</v> <v Speaker 2>Clear, I am not against professional development.</v> I am, I read for my pleasure and my information not to discuss with others. So that's the piece that I'm having a problem with. I have no problem with doing professional development. I have no problem if Ms. Bruno wants to share the name of the book. I, I may go and pick it up and read it, but I, to me it was a distinction without a difference. <v Speaker 3>And just to clarify, we're obviously gonna,</v> well no obviously we can vote on the mo on the goal. The what the action steps would be more, I was just getting general feedback, like we're not voting on the action steps, but I was just curious what people would be interested in engaging in or if <v Speaker 19>We called it like a class, like we had to take a class</v> and we had to read something for the class and then we had to talk about No, <v Speaker 2>If it is professionally led, yeah,</v> <v Speaker 19>I'm okay with it.</v> Oh, you mean like a, a facilitator. Okay. Versus just the seven, eight of us. It's of us are <v Speaker 2>Sitting around, oh, I like this paragraph.</v> <v Speaker 19>I like, oh, I see, I see what you're saying. Okay.</v> That's helps me to understand the distinction. Okay. Got it. Mr. Wood, what do you do on Monday nights? <v Speaker 2>This</v> <v Speaker 3>Don't be so excited when you say that</v> <v Speaker 2>Happen to know somebody who</v> <v Speaker 19>Needs</v> <v Speaker 3>Just kidding.</v> I mean that's an idea is to have the trainer come first and have them walk us through some readings if we so choose. Okay. So any other feedback before we take a motion to approve this goal? <v Speaker 2>Move to approve the goal. Second.</v> <v Speaker 3>All those in favor? Anyone against any abstentions?</v> The third goal is approved. So we now have three goals for the year. Oh, and do the three, four of us wanna keep going with professional development. So just a reminder for all the groups, just please work with Linda to post any meetings that you have, including the facilities group. If you meet again, just we all need to post our meetings 48 hours in advance. And with that I'll take a motion. Two business days, two business days for the meetings. And thank you so much Linda, for helping us with that. Move <v Speaker 2>To adjourn.</v> <v Speaker 3>Move to adjourn. Second. All those in favor?</v> Anyone against any abstentions? With that, I just wanna wish everyone a very good evening.