Speaker 1: Welcome to our school committee meeting Monday, October 6th, starting at 6:30 PM So the first thing we'll do is, we'll, do we have anyone online? Is county online? No, she county Speaker 2: Was there when I lost her. Speaker 1: Okay. Alright, we'll wait. Okay, so we'll do roll call Mr. Patel. Here. Ms. Lathers. Here. Mr. Brand. Present. Speaker 2: Dr. Speaker 1: Fuchs Nun. Here. Ms. Collins? Yes. And I am here. So we have a quorum of, well, more than quorum. We have six people. So we'll now stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silence. Speaker 2: The pledge of all allegiance, all to the flag of
of the United States of America. And to the republic for which it stands. Mediation under God the indivisible. Liberty. Liberty and justice for all. Speaker 1: And we take that moment of silence to honor our troops who are serving us here and abroad. Any announcements from the committee? Speaker 2: No. Speaker 1: Any announcements from the administration? Okay. So we'll go into public speak. Public speak is scheduled for a period 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 through the school committee chair. Public speak is not a time for debate or response to comments by the school committee. Is anyone here? We have no one in the room. I did not receive any emails. Is there anyone online for public speak? Okay. All right. Public speak is now closed. So let's move to updates. Mr. Wood, our teacher updates. Speaker 3: Thank you Madam Chair. I don't have any prepared remarks, although I expected someone else to mention this. So just a reminder that tomorrow is a spark kindness event,
which I believe is at the high school. It they usually put on wonderful presentations and I was trying to pull up the, the information. It looks like Dr. Esman is on it, so I just wanna make sure that that was spoke mentioned of out in the public. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Thank you Nathan. No, nothing. Nothing. Okay. Speaker 2: Elise, can I make a brief statement? Speaker 1: Sure. Speaker 4: I just wanna let people know that I will be knitting through this evening. It helps me with pain control so I'm not d disparaging you or disregarding you in any way.
It just helps me actually really focus. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Collins. Speaker 5: And can I build on that? Speaker 1: Absolutely. I was gonna come Speaker 5: Back to you. Yes. Yeah, good. So you're now alone navigating your child's mental health. That's the presentation, that's part kindness. Organizing tomorrow, October 7th, 2025, seven to eight 30 with it's a high school auditorium and it is with Dr. Christine Crawford, who is a child psychologist who will be helping parents, caregivers and educators of preschool through high school students. So this is the whole pre-K through 12 range with best practices in supporting children's mental health.
For more information go to spark kindness org, but it is tomorrow night, 7:00 PM at the high school. And thanks for reminding me. Speaker 1: Thank you Dr. Fon. Okay, so may I have a motion for the consent agenda? Oh yes. Thank you Ms. Gomes, we see you. Do you have anything to update us about metco? Speaker 6: No, no updates other than there's the back to school night on October 15th and I think I had previously mentioned that it was at six o'clock, but I saw an email from OT recently that said the actual time is six 30, so that was an error. But yeah, that's, that's all I have so far. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. And now motion for the consent agenda. Move Speaker 7: Approval of the consent agenda. Speaker 8: I Speaker 1: Second. Second. Okay. All in favor? Anyone against? Anyone? Ab You can vote twice. Okay. Anyone abstaining? Okay, so we have 6 0 0, the consent agenda passes. So I'm gonna turn things over to Dr. Fash because we have some guests with us today. Speaker 9: We do Speaker 10: Welcome everybody. We're really excited. We have four more of our principals to kind of finish us off on the school improvement plan presentations.
Welcome to all of you. And we're just gonna go in the order we have here and at the end of this evening I will ask the school committee to make a motion to pass these and we're very excited about that. So the first one is the preschool. Welcome Corey who is here as our interim director of the preschool this year and we're excited to hear from you. We were just there yesterday, was it Friday morning? Friday Speaker 9: Morning, yeah. Speaker 10: It's all one day. Yes. But it was so awesome together and we saw formative assessment alive and very well at the preschool. Speaker 9: Thank you. So I
think Linda if you, I'll give you a sec. I'm Cory Comb, interim director of the preschool. I'll just say most of you probably know but our preschool operates at a three sites. So we're at the high school and east school over on Oak Street and also at Ben Hem. So we split, we split our time there. I'm really just excited to be in the preschool at this point. It's really an exciting opportunity to really think about the door to natick for new families. And you'll see as we move through the school improvement plan, some of the focus for this next year will be about being that resource for the town for families of some of our youngest learners.
So, alright. And if I'm moving too slow, this is my first time around so just give me the signal to like move along. I won't take any offense. So I'll start by just going over some of the highlights from last year's school improvement plan. I was not here to be part of the plan or track the data, but given family input from last year, some of the data summed by the prior leader and other input from Staff Family cpac, I've sort of comprised some highlights from from last year
school improvement plan. So last year the highlight, the groundwork was laid for what will become our current goals for our school improvement plan. The focus was on early literacy intervention and screening. So for a second year they lifted a benchmark assessment taking data to really look at overarching early literacy and math gains for students in the preschool. They were able to successfully then transition some of this data over to the preschool, I'm sorry, the kindergarten for those receiving schools
and document a trajectory of growth for the students that went through preschool into kindergarten. There was additionally a focus on family communication and as part of that goal, teachers lifted a consistent platform for communication with families. A classroom newsletter that went out weekly from classrooms. And in order to sort of standardize that messaging and ensure equity for all families in the preschool, there was the development of a corresponding preschool newsletter guide that really supported resources, the platform
and methods for maintaining equity and accessibility for families within the preschool. Next they lifted a series of workshops that included topics like self-regulation, executive functioning, early adaptive skills for parents. And those were fairly well attended. The feedback while the number of parents that were able to attend to attend were was relatively small, the feedback was very favorable. So you'll see as we move into this next year's plan that the focus to sort of grow that to reach more families is definitely there.
Spring parent orientation as a highlight saw one of the highest turnouts pre COVID. So that really just speaks to the family engagement and desire to be part of the community and learn more about the preschool. And last, there was a creation of an IEP completion guide that really focused around the new IEP form to guide service providers and teachers and the development of comprehensive plans for students on IEPs. Speaker 8: Yeah. Speaker 9: Alright, so with all of that in mind, this is the first goal that
we've set for this year, really focuses around strengthening family communication and resource sharing for families at the preschool level. Again, this came from family and staff input taken throughout last year, coupled with an obvious leadership transition that really underscores the need for clear, consistent family communication as well as equitable access to early childhood resources for all families. Again, we're gonna build on that work that was done in 24 25 with some of the family resource workshops that were offered
and continue to expand on the new classroom communication formats. Really refining the implementation of those as we move forward. Next steps also are really gathering baseline data on family engagement with some of the communication methodologies. Family engagement based on some of the data collected was inconsistent I would say. And so we've started to gather some baseline data from our initial communication this year and are working with feedback to enhance the ability for all families to be able to access that.
As we move through this year. The hope is really to continue to lift a platform that's aligned with the K to 12 communication system. So once families sort of learn a structure and a system for communication, that's then consistent throughout their time with Natick public schools. Also expanding on that family learning series, looking at different methodology rather than just in person workshop to help get information out to families. Conducting family engagement surveys to try to gain more information about what will help families and what families need more. And then finally the development
of a preschool welcome guide that will be available for all of the families joining us hopefully by the fall of next year. The second goal area really speaks to referral service delivery and progress monitoring processes within a multi-tiered system. There was feedback from staff related service providers, cpac, preschool families that really highlighted a lot of really good strengths, but also areas for growth within the preschool referral evaluation and service delivery systems while families really praised care professionalism
and the instruction that they were receiving from Natick preschool staff. It also pointed to a need for greater clarity and consistency around the evaluation process, timelines, language within documentation, and also the tiered intervention systems that are in place at the preschool level. So the benchmarks that you see within that really speak to solidifying documented processes that support this tiered intervention system as well as a procedural guide that helps ensure consistency, thereby equity among that referral evaluation
services structure within the preschool. Also some staff training and tiered supports, both with regard to pre academics and social emotional learning. And last is really standardizing some templates for tracking tiered intervention so that that information is readily passed along to kindergartens. Speaker 8: Oh, Speaker 9: This is an old slide. So that title was changed yesterday. I learned from Karen last week. Leadership and collaborative culture is actually the title for the third goal. And that again, really is just focusing on the fact
that this is my first year in a leadership position and as an interim I'm aware that anything that I'm sort of curating will need to be passed along and easily able to be accessible to whomever comes after. So I'm really looking to establish visible leadership, trusting relationships not only with the staff in the program but with our community partners so that we're really amplified as a resource for young children in Natick in general, looking to honor the existing expertise
and also foster leadership that's responsive, inclusive, and then aligned with clear practices and and values of the district. So you'll see in terms of benchmarks that speak to development of this is the develop, excuse me, development of a leadership visibility plan that started with really making sure that I was present in all of the sites, really working with the staff there. We will move forward and gathering collective input about through one-to-one entry interviews at this point I've met
with about 65% of the staff at the preschool and we'll continue to have those meetings through October. Moving on to then availability of meetings with some of the families to get feedback as well as an anonymous needs assessment survey leading by the end of the year to really a multi-pronged family feedback process that will become hopefully an annual loop that informs practices at the preschool and gives us kind of real time feedback about whether we're doing right by families coming through the program. And then last is really just a summary that I hope
to comprise of strengths, challenges, and potential ways to address those to share with the district by the end of the year. So the last slide you'll see, I'm just sharing some pictures of faces 'cause it's really what it's all about. And these are just some of the reasons why what we do is so important, bringing joy and learning to natick's youngest learners. Speaker 1: Thank you. Questions? Yeah, questions from the committee. Mr. Patel. Speaker 11: Hi. As I understand it, the preschool operates out of a lottery based system based for availability.
Do you know how many families don't make it? Speaker 9: So that's a great question. I, I don't have those numbers in part because historically there hasn't been a system for tracking a wait list or families that weren't drawn on an initial lottery poll. So that is one of the things that I think we're adjusting as we move forward just to allow for equitable access for families that maybe aren't pulled on that first lottery poll. There certainly is an amount of attrition that will happen every year as families plans change for any number of reasons.
And I think having a numerical waiting list provides equity to, as you're saying, and a way to track how many families beyond the actual first lottery poll head interest. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Speaker 1: Dr. Speaker 5: Fuchs then I don't have a question but just first of all, I think it was a great presentation and beyond the great presentation, I think these are really good solid three goals. I love the expression that you used of na, the preschool be the door to Natick. And as you were saying that, that was the message that kind of kept in my mind. And so seeing goal one made a lot of sense
that if this is a door to Natick, that we engage with families upfront in their first experience. So I'm glad that there's a very focused goal on that. The other two goals are, are good too, but that's the one that I especially love given my, my now realized reflection that you brought up of this being the door to NAIC public schools. Speaker 9: I appreciate that. I mean, I view the preschool as being beyond the actual families that are accessing or actually are preschool. It's an opportunity to provide resources to all families that have preschoolers within Natick about development
special ed process, public schools. And we're in kind of a unique position to do that because not all of our families that we could be reaching are attending school within Natick Public School. So it's a nice opportunity to Speaker 5: Yeah, and actually I meant, and I meant to also add, I love the first sub bullet around sending newsletters with SELs practices. Can we, we talk about SCL, social emotional learning, it's a whole community effort. It's not just what happens in the classroom. And parents have a really important role. I have an important role in bringing those messages at home and especially at that young age.
And hopefully again, this will be a start of them thinking about how to support their student social emotional development beyond preschool. So I love that too. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Lathers. And then Ms. Collins. I was just curious, kind of similar and adding on to that, what Javin was asking, what are, is part of the measurements going to be the measurement of how many children are evaluated that may did not qualify for services in the preschool and what, what pathways we provide for those families that then facilitate their entry into kindergarten. Like they don't quite meet the threshold,
but you know, are we, you know, tracking those bubble kids? Are we then, you know, you know, what kind of, what kind of things can we put in place to make that kindergarten entry more successful? Speaker 9: Exactly. I mean there may be students that are evaluated that aren't eligible for special education, but that doesn't mean challenges that they're facing in preschool aren't valuable in not only valuable information but also the opportunity for consultation or educational opportunities with community preschools. These are things we're already starting to talk about in the preschool.
There's a great opportunity there that I think hasn't been tapped as much as it could be, just in terms of, again, amplifying that role as a resource for the community as a whole as opposed to just the people that are attending. Speaker 1: Ms. Collins. Speaker 4: Thank you. And building on all three of my colleagues, you said that, you know, one of your big things is, is the community building. I know from reading the moms group, I don't have kids, certainly not in per pre pre-K that there's always a sense of surprise that what do you mean We already had to apply? So do we, can we give some thought to
how it it, you're right in a very fine line I realize because you can't take everybody, but you wanna reach out to as many people as you can so that people have an opportunity and, and maybe being clear that, you know, there's X number of your one. So something that, so that we can see well, well do we have the, the right ways of contacting people in terms of getting them as involved as they can be even if they don't
make the preschool. Speaker 9: Right. I appreciate that. I'm actually gathering information now about our lottery system in the past and how we've advertised, where we've advertised, how we've made that available to families. I think also tapping into preschools in Natick is another really valuable avenue to be able to get information to families beyond the families that actually attend at our sites. And so I, I think both and the lottery is a really particular process that I think we are looking at and making sure that it's equitable,
both in advertisement leeway in terms of lead up to the lottery itself and also how it's conducted to make sure we're being really mindful of equity and process throughout that. And so that's something that we're working on this year. I think in terms of word of mouth advertising, resource sharing, a lot of that is building partnerships with some of our preschool partners and that's some work that I've already started. I think that's an important effort. They're hungry for it. So I haven't gotten anyone shutting the door in my face not
willing to talk to me, which is promising. Speaker 4: Thank you. Yeah. Speaker 1: Ms. Flas, just one quick question, Mike, maybe a little scope of this and maybe broader from the administration. Is there any plans this year I'm interested in, you know, what are the pluses and minuses of having the multiple preschools, you know, single consolidated preschool versus distributed versus within the schools And as part of kind of your entry in this, you know, your entry plan, your interim year, you know, will we, can we expect any kind of feedback on that? Speaker 10: Absolutely. I think that's gonna be something as we move, if the town votes to move us through to feasibility,
that's a critical piece where we kind of give some scenarios. One might be the baseline that's actually funded and reimbursed from MSBA, but others might be some consideration, which is a little bit more far reaching right around whether we can consolidate what it would cost. I think there's many, I, I'd love to kind of add that or kind of have something that Corey can do with the analysis she does this year in conjunction with the MSBA. It's a complicated subject because if we consolidate it all the transportation then changes in the town. So we, I wouldn't wanna answer anything now but to say that it's definitely coming
Speaker 1: And just even, I mean we have a nice case study that we have one preschool, it's a high school and you get the benefit of high school kids can do. I think I've heard there's some of participation. You have one that's in a current elementary school that probably has benefits and one that's standalone and probably all three scenarios offer different pluses and minuses. So just curious, Speaker 10: I mean my vision would be even if we ever did move anything out of the high school, that the kids would still have that opportunity. We'd find another way to make that happen that can't go away in my opinion. Yeah, it's very valuable program. It's like a pathway, which is where a lot of high school education's moving. So yes, absolutely.
We commit to kind of having something on that more analytical as well as just the, our stories of what we think would, as educators would be beneficial. Speaker 12: It's early days for me, so I'm gathering information, Speaker 10: But Speaker 12: That's why I kind of directed it. Yeah, yeah, no, I Speaker 8: Appreciate that. Speaker 1: Yeah, no, thank you so much. I I really appreciate the, the welcome to Preschool Guide and all the effort of family engagement because I, I mean it's been a long time but I still remember those first preschool days of not having a clue but what school was or public school was. So I, I think it's wonderful that you're doing so much to welcome families in, so thank you for that. Okay,
Speaker 10: Thanks so much Corey. Thank you. And welcome to school committee. Now you're not a rookie at that anymore. Awesome. I'd like to introduce Dr. Shelby Marshall who is coming in and will be giving a presentation on Lilja Elementary. Welcome. Thank Speaker 12: You. Good evening everybody. So I'm excited to report on a lot of the work that we did together last year. We really used last year as an opportunity to do some collaborative foundational work with stakeholders from across our building and across our community and some key areas that then feed into the goals
that we have set for ourselves this year. So last year we really focused on some of that tier one instruction based on the accountability data that we got from the previous years MCAS. We started a learning walks protocol in our building that served as some of the foundation and exploration and how we might introduce this in a larger way across the district. We did see a lot of gains in early literacy, which is especially exciting. You know, it's a really difficult thing for young learners to learn how to do is to learn to read. There's so many things that go into it. And to know that we had some measurable growth in that area
was really exciting for us. We worked on our coaching program to make sure that staff really understood and felt that everybody deserves a coach and that by engaging with a coach, we were just leveling up practice, which I think also led to some of those gains that we saw. And we began working together as a whole faculty, again across multiple different positions in the building to co-construct a positive behavioral intervention and support plan in including our new core values. It was a place that really hadn't been touched
or discussed in a number of years. It was not something that students or teachers felt was alive in the building. So we really took the time to do it well by working together last year to establish those core values and set ourselves up to implement PBIS this year. So our first goal in alignment with the shining the light on tier one from our bridge plan as a district is to work with those students who are identified as partially meeting in math based on the fall Renaissance benchmarking assessments. We are focused on seeing those students grow 60th percentile
or higher by the time we reach the spring Renaissance benchmarking assessment. These are those kids who, you know, the tier one curriculum is never going to reach every single student. And we have some really good supports and practices in place for our students who are identified as needing tier three support. It's the students who are a little bit cuspy who may have it, but who may not be quite secure in that knowledge or who may have it in a very literal sense. And we ask them to move beyond the literal into some of the conceptual ways that we learn and explore math who are struggling. And we really wanna make sure
that we are supporting our teachers in understanding how to best reach these students so that they can feel more confident in their math knowledge and math academic prowess. Students who are confident and excited to do the work will make the gains. So we are looking to build on that learning walks that we were doing last year, build on that coaching systems that we put into place last year, utilize the interventionists that we have in our buildings to make sure that we are really capturing, motivating and providing some explicit and targeted support to those students who are kind of on
that edge of that cusp. Our second goal is around establishing multi-tiered systems of first of support for social emotional learning. We really have over the years developed a process and protocol for identifying students who are struggling academically and making sure we have some tiered supports in an approach to moving students forward with their academics. And we're looking to do the same thing in a systematic way with regards to students and their social emotional learning. Now that we have wayfinder on board as a tier one universal program with the types of students
and the challenges that we have right now, you know, across the country and in our school building, we really need to level up some of our tier two supports to meet the need that we're seeing. So we don't then overburden our tier three IEP systems with students who continue to struggle. So what we're looking to do is use the universal SABRE screening data to host data team meetings the same way that we do for our academic data. Utilize the observations that teachers have within the classroom setting, utilize some of the information that we gain as they participate in some of their wayfinder assessments
and set measurable specific goals for students so that we are moving them through some of the gaps in skills that they may have with either friendship skills, emotional regulation, you know, some of those things that aren't always explicitly taught but really should be for some of our students. And making sure that we're then tracking that information and collaborating with families so that we have students who are gaining these skills and able to return to that tier one level of support instead of moving through to tier three. And our third goal is sort
of teed up from last year's development of A-P-B-I-S program and we're moving on to implementation. So we've established a cross role PBIS leadership team. We have gotten our core values, you know, visible within the school building itself and pushed it out to our community members and stakeholders. We're launching the school-wide positive reinforcement system and we are spending time across this school year really focusing on supporting our staff in understanding and implementing this PBIS system so that it becomes a part
of our culture so that we have a universal language around how we speak to kids about their behavior, how we celebrate kids who are being role models in our, in our building, and how we connect with families at home to make sure that the values that we're living every day in our building are also things parents feel like they can talk to their children about at home and can support the same kinds of learning and conversations at home as we do at school. Because this is a full partnership. We need everybody on every child's team to come together and really live this with us so
that it is the most impactful for all of our students. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Questions from the committee. Dr. Fugman Speaker 5: Also great presentation. Love the goals. I have a question which is literally just curiosity. Sure. Both goals two and three establish, well, goal two establishes an SEL team and Goal three establishes A-P-B-I-S team. And I'm curious, so what I've seen before in other schools is it's hard to get the bandwidth for, to have two different teams.
And I'm curious, and again it's a curiosity like your decision to have two different teams versus try to join them or even just the collaboration. 'cause obviously they're, they're different social emotional development versus beha positive behavior expectations, but there's some overlap and I'm just curious how you envision both, especially since there's each of your, you know, two thirds of your goals Yep. Are about both, correct. Speaker 12: Yeah, so we have two different types of SEL team members in our buildings and you know, in slightly different proportions depending on
which elementary school you're at. Lilja has one counselor and two school psychologists and those are the members of our SEL team as well as administration. And really the goal of those individuals is to sort of monitor at the tier one level, you know, support Wayfinder as is needed, but the teacher is really doing the delivery to do consultation with the teachers so that there's an understanding of how are the kids doing to take that first step in analyzing our Sabre's data alongside our teachers so that we're identifying the students that are showing up as high risk or as some risk on that data.
And then using that to triangulate with other data points from the classroom to know who needs that intervention. And that intervention would be provided by the SEL team member. So whether it's a counselor or whether it's a psychologist at our building, what we are moving forward with is whatever grade level you're associated with, you would provide that intervention either as part of an IEP based service or with family permission and sort of a tier two level service. So that way we feel like our counselors and psychologists are operating as a team together and there's sort of a unified approach in a way
where we feel students can move between tiers more fluidly and get the support that they need more readily as opposed to sort of waiting for things to not get better and perhaps being evaluated and seeing what comes next. The PBIS team is really that crossroad team. I do have our counselor sitting on that team, but I have two teachers, an interventionist, a para, a front office staff member. Our custodian's gonna try to join, you know, it is really much more about the entirety of the building and making sure that all of our staff members, especially those that are often not seen as having a lot
of power by students, are feeling supported and powerful because of the systems that we have in place. Speaker 5: That makes a lot of sense. I'm excited to see how it goes. Speaker 12: Great, thank you Speaker 4: Ms. Collins. Thank you. I thought about this after last week's presentation by Karen and maybe it's, I'm asking it of you because of your background. Sure, yeah. You said that you're trying to figure out which kids have the potential to have issues or already have issues.
Speaker 12: The universal screening data that we have is sort of a broad bit broadband measure. So we're trying not to make too much of a high infringed judgment based on sort of a, a screening, but what it does let us know is a gist of what they're presenting like within the school building, you know, across the day for their teacher. So there are other pieces of data we need to triangulate with, you know, how, how representative was that data of their day-to-day, you know, behavior or engagement. So it lets us know students who might benefit from intervention or students who might really actually require a goal.
So that way we make sure that we're working alongside families to have noticeable improvement in social skills, behavior engagement and different things like that. Speaker 4: And I think that's great. My concern is that subset of kids that is on their best behavior at school, they don't do anything outside of what is asked of them. What they're, you know, what they've been told is expected of them who are feeling incredibly alone. Yes. And I just wanna make sure that we're conscious of that so that we're not saying, well you know, Dr.
Fugman, he's a good student, that college chick, she's a real pain in the butt. Yes. Because it doesn't mean that Dr. Fugman doesn't have correct concerns. Yes. That may or may not be even recognized by the parents. Yes. So that's all I wanna do is, is make sure that we take a step back from the data and say, okay, who might we have missed using all these data points? Speaker 12: Yes. I think that's really important. We have a lot of kids who mask at school, parents can provide data points for us. Sometimes there are kids who are holding it together across all the settings.
And our job really is to both utilize our tier one programming where we are having conversations that are really supportive of students taking a moment to recognize how they're feeling across the day to celebrate things like making mistakes, to let kids know that not everything feels good all the time. And teaching them those advocacy skills because there are some kids that we do rely on speaking up to a trusted adults, whoever that might be. It might be a school-based adult, it might be a grownup at home, it might be their favorite aunt.
So that it then does get back to us. So some of the the tier one programming we are counting on supporting those students and developing the skills that will help bring it to our attention. Speaker 4: Thank you. Speaker 12: Absolutely. Speaker 1: Other questions from the committee? Okay. This sounds great. Thank you so much Dr. Er. Thank Speaker 10: You. Thank you. Okay, excellent. Next is Bennett Hemingway and we're lucky enough to have Principal Hoffman here as well as the newly minted assistant principal or vice principal LeBlanc. Welcome. Good to see you both. It's
Speaker 13: Great to be here. Thank you everyone. It's been great to step into this role as interim principal at Ben and Hemingway and I'm so pleased to be joined tonight by assistant Principal LeBlanc who is going to help us out a little bit with recalling what had happened at Ben Hem last year, which I'll help 'em with as well before we jump into our goals for this year. So Speaker 14: Awesome. So last year we spent a lot of our professional development time focused on supporting all learners, in particular our multilingual learners. We had a good number of students come to us early in the year, whether they were newcomers
to the country or moving from another district, but we're a multilingual learner. So we did a lot of work through workshops with staff focused on, you know, strategies to support newcomers as well as building academic language, which in turn benefited all of our students. We also spent a good amount of time in the spring of last year working on learning walks and norming, learning walks across the staff and our leadership team. And it's a practice we're hoping to continue into this year. Speaker 13: Yes. And I know we are entering into our third year
hosting Boston Resident Families as part of our METCO program. I know last year a lot of work was done and this year we are excited to grow the program to 11 students. I also understand last year Benham laid a strong foundation for the PBIS work that we're going to be carrying out this year by reinforcing the school's core values of taking care of ourselves one another and our world. And we are planning this year to build upon that foundation and strengthen our tier one PBIS work, which leads us to our first goal tonight. So our first goal is to fully implement a tier one PBIS
system by June of 2026. The aim is to increase fidelity to the system by 20%, creating both shared staff ownership of behavior expectations as well as promoting student engagement agency and student wellbeing. So to achieve this goal, we have already started by creating A-P-B-I-S leadership team, which consists of administration teachers across section of really every role in the building because it really is a lift of all of us together. And this fall we've already started defining our consistent reinforcement strategies for students that tie nicely to our core values.
We're also providing ongoing professional development with staff so that our PBIS vision will live not only in classrooms but also in all the common areas of the building as well, such as hallways and cafeterias. What we're looking to do is to really create consistency for students as they move from first to second to third grade. So they know what's expected and, and we can really all work together to create that important school culture when this work is done. Well actually just last week we earned our first
whole school celebration by, we worked towards 25 golden paw prints and we celebrated with a whole school pajama and stuffy day, which was a lot of fun and a lot of the grownups in the building also participated, which was great. So you know, this initiative though, it's so important that we have parents and and families involved with this and that we're partnering with them. We've already communicated with families through newsletters and later this month we'll be hosting an event in partnership with our PTO to share more about what we're doing with PBIS as well as our tier one SEL work.
And then we plan to continue to communicate the big wins over the years, over the years so that we can continue to celebrate as well. And then finally, we're looking to have, we're looking forward to having staff from Ben Hem participate in the development of a K 12 code of conduct really to make sure that what we're doing at Ben Hem aligns nicely with the rest of the district. And then our second goal is really focused on closing achievement gaps by using formative assessments to strengthen our tier one instruction. This will ensure all students are making meaningful progress, particularly those who are more vulnerable, vulnerable. We are planning to measure this goal using our
Renaissance learning benchmark data. Students who have scored in the lowest 25th percentile on the fall math benchmark assessment will demonstrate high growth defined as student growth percentile of 55 or higher on the spring 2026 Renaissance benchmark assessment. While we're measuring this goal, looking specifically at math, these practices and the ways in which we're kind of building our muscles here is going to span across all disciplines. We're just using math to measure it for this year.
So we plan to accomplish this using a few key strategies. First, teachers will use, consistently use formative assessments in their classrooms such as exit tickets, cool downs to inform instruction and provide students with timely feedback, general education teachers, special education teachers, multilingual education teachers are all going to be collaborating at a high level to ensure that all of our students have access to tier one instruction regardless of their current skill level. And that's really a hard thing I think, and that's something that our coaches are going to be playing a big part in as well.
And teachers will be participating in structured coaching cycles as well as targeted professional development to elevate our practice in this way. Just today we had a faculty meeting where we were leaning into our, how we write really strong learning objectives and also ensure that students have internalized them and are owning them, understanding what they're learning and why that learning is important. And I think we made some nice gains today, which was exciting. And then additionally we'll be engaging in routine learning walks so that we can continuously examine what's happening at Behe
and make sure that the professional development we're putting in place our coaching and the supports we're providing to teachers all match what the current needs are. So I think the work of this, this work will be really impactful. Formative assessment makes learning visible. I I, I see the formative assessment in this work around creating really well structured lessons as promoting equity for students, ensuring all students, especially those who have been historically underserved, their needs are being met. So I'm excited about this goal and I'm gonna turn it to Mr. Leblanc to share about our third goal.
Speaker 14: Awesome. So our third goal is around reducing chronic absenteeism. This is a goal that we had on our improvement plan last year and quite frankly we just didn't get the traction with it that we wanted to. So we've put a lot of thoughtful work so far in the first month of school around communication and really building that proactive approach to be able to partner with families on this. So a big part of this has been forming an attendance team, which has met several times already this year. We've developed and communicated out just messaging to families around both the importance of students attending school frequently,
as well as what our support and response looks like based on the number of absences. So at what point a teacher checks in, at what point a counselor supports and administrator supports. Just wanting to have that clarity for folks as far as how we can support and also the expectations around school attendance. We know our counselor role and our nurse role are a big part of supporting student attendance, so they're a important part of our attendance team as well. And we've really just developed this system to be able to regularly track, see broader trends and respond to students quickly so that attendance,
you know, it can go so quickly from five days to 15 days. So we want to catch things early and provide support where needed. It's of course still early, but we've already from our September data, seen some some good improvement. Speaker 13: So at Benham I feel like we're, you know, building upon a strong foundation from last year while also taking really deliberate steps forward to make sure we're supporting all learners. And I think our three goals of PBIS formative assessments and reducing chronic absenteeism kind of all are connected by a common purpose of making sure all students are supported and feel and are engaged
and are able to achieve at their full potential. So we're excited for this work ahead and, and we're happy to answer any questions you may have. Speaker 1: Thank you. Questions from the committee, Mr. Brand. Speaker 7: Thank you. Another great presentation last week. I said three for three at this stage, so, so far so good track. Okay, seven for seven. Can, for the sake of anybody listening, can you, do you have any data on the chronic absenteeism that you can share and what the threshold is? Like what counts as chronic absenteeism? Speaker 14: Absolutely. So chronic absenteeism is if a student is
absent 18 or more days in a school year, so that's that 10% mark off the top of my head, we had I think roughly 45 students who are chronically absent last year. Within that, and this is something I, I used to like bolt our bolster our attendance team in tough moments. Of those 45 7 were, you know, 28 days plus and then the other 38 were, you know, 10 or fewer days over that chronic absenteeism threshold. So really I keep emphasizing with folks, like there are those individual cases that are really challenging and we can work to support them
and if we put the system in place and manage it as a system, a lot of those students who were 22 days missed, 23 days missed, we can probably get under that 18. Speaker 7: So as a quick follow up, I mean, and I think you sort of just alluded to it, do you have, and I won't hold you to a specific number, but do you have a, a goal that's a little more specific than reducing? Speaker 14: Sure. I think within the actual language of the goal, I think it's reducing by 25%. Is that correct? Speaker 13: Our goal? Speaker 14: Just, I'm trying to read it from Speaker 7: Here. I couldn't see a number. It's okay, whatever.
I just, I'm curious. Sure. I don't think it's in the slide. Okay. If, Speaker 14: If it's not there, I believe the goal is to reduce chronic absenteeism by 25%. Great. Speaker 7: Alright. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 10: Just a little context to that, the state actually gives a target but they haven't given it yet. This is like, we just got our accountability data. So it might be something that you choose to kind of amend your goal once you have the data from the state. Speaker 13: We've already started digging into that data a little bit and I think it's affirmed for us that this goal is the right goal for this year. I think we have some work to do and I think it's already well into place
and Mr. Leblanc has been leading that work this year with a team and he's been doing a fantastic job and we're already seeing the benefits of it, of the systems and structures that have been put in place and we're only in early October. Speaker 1: Okay. Anybody else? Dr. Fugman and then Ms. Lathers, Speaker 5: I still don't have a question. I'll, I'll come up with a question with the end the night, but can I, I usually don't do this, but can I just also not hold you to it, but just give you a resource Sure. That I love. Yeah. Attendance works do org, attendance works.org.
They have amazing resources around attendance. The one thing I love about it is the organizing resources in an MTSS context, which I, whether you realize or not, you kind of did too because you are talking about what are the efforts to promote positive, you know, encourage students, all students to come in a communication for all stakeholders. And also how over time do you look at data to identify who are the students who are struggling with attendance and what kind of specific supports they need. And I would separate into, you know, some kids, you know, and I think I was just looking at their website,
so I don't know that you have to go by the numbers, but for example, for them it's student missing 10 to 19% is what they call tier two versus students missing more than 20%, that's tier three. And those get the, you know, very specific and, and also if the need is great, like if it's chronic absenteeism related to anxiety, for example, school anxiety, that might be a tier three. Anyway, they have a lot of great resources. Speaker 14: Thank you. No Speaker 13: Problem. Thank you Speaker 1: Ms. Lathers. I was just curious is are these numbers is is I'm glad that, I'm really happy that the school improvement plans are by school. So it's really every individual school's needs.
I mean is this are, I don't know what the numbers are kind of across the district, so I don't know what kind of the benchmark is and maybe that's a comment, something you can comment on. And then also it's are you looking at is, do you have any information about how these line up, you know, you were mentioning anxiety's one reason for chronic absenteeism. Others may be, there's a lot of reasons you would know them better. And do we know kind of how those, how these students run along the different reasons? I mean I assume some's probably actually medical or Sure, Speaker 14: That's, that's definitely a big one for some of those students who are, you know, significantly
above, chronically absent. And that's something we're really trying to have a better handle on this year. Last year we, we had the meetings, we did all the things we were talking about students and how to support them. But just the documentation piece I think kind of got in the way of that a little bit. But as we have our, our school administrative assistant take keeping track of student's attendance when families are calling saying so-and-so's gonna be out today, we're getting the reasons behind it and we're following up. So like when I, if a student's out five days, say
if they're out five days and every single time was medical related and there were doctor's notes related to that, that's going over to the nurse to be able to follow up and support versus if it's a variety of reasons or if there's school refusal involved, then it would probably go over to a school counselor. Speaker 1: Ms. Collins. Speaker 4: Thank you. Anybody who's watched me in these meetings knows that percentages sort of get my spider tingle senses tingling. And I'm just trying to understand what your goal is here. Is it reduced the total number of chronic absentees
absent students by 25% or is it to reduce by 25% the number of days? Because the first one can be accomplished if all the people who aren't coming to school are fourth graders, they move on to fifth grade, they're not your problem anymore. It's easy to accomplish that. And I'm just trying to understand what your goal, what you're hoping to get out of this. Yeah, either way it's a problem. I am not trying to cover that. Speaker 13: I think we're looking to reduce the chronic absenteeism by 25% and while yes our fourth graders have matriculated, I think there seems to be, from what we can tell
an even spread across the grades in terms, in fact I would say more often than not our absenteeism exists more at the younger grades. And so I think having our fourth graders move on, I would anticipate that we're going to be up against similar numbers and in terms of the accountability data, that target's kind of always moving for us. So we are looking to still meet what that target is and again, that data just came out so we're looking at that, but I think it does seem to match where we are right now. Speaker 4: Okay. Can I follow up? Speaker 10: Sure. Speaker 4: Let me try it a different way.
And this is hard for me because I don't think I was out 18 days in my entire school public school career because if my mother was going to school, you are going to school. The downside of having a teacher but is, and I realize you're only in in year one here, essentially will the data be captured so that you can see this first grader who is chronically absent is now the second grader who's chronically absent or this first grader was CR chronically absent and someone else in their class is chronically absent in the second year.
Which to me they're like different issues she need to try and figure out and I'm just trying to make sure that we're capturing the data in a way that allows us to look at it from a lot of different points of view. Speaker 14: Yeah, absolutely. And we have a, I would call it a robust spreadsheet where students as now that Everyone's, it's my heart that one, everyone's on the main page and then, you know, as we go from step by step, because I really want to make sure that we're minimizing like that lost in communication piece like you're talking about. So there's the, you know, point where teachers may contact
and then counselors being able to follow up and really ensuring at each stage that that follow up happened with the family before moving on to the next step. Because we don't want to jump from nothing to, you know, a meeting with the assistant principal because we, it, it would be too much to do that. Speaker 4: Okay. Thank you Speaker 10: Mr. Brand. Speaker 7: Alright, so one more on the absenteeism and, and I, I think all the goals are great. I don't, if I had to pick a favorite goal, it's that one because it sort of feels to me like you can't achieve any of the other goals if, if people don't come to school. So this isn't a behe comment as much as
through the chair for the superintendent. I guess at some point, I guess I was curious about chronic absenteeism across the whole district and whatever learnings the folks at BEHE have this year. I'm assuming all of this, every school deals with it, I'm sure and I, I'm just curious about how big a challenge that is across the district and what we are doing across the district. Yeah, but it doesn't have to be for now. Speaker 10: Well, I can say a few comments. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you. Great question. And this has been an ongoing enduring issue ever since COVID
and it, it didn't just go away because COVID was over. So it's a definite challenge. I love what the process, the Behem team and it is a hundred percent related to the data in their 20 20, 25 accountability. All the targets are different. So it's a relative target. Every school has a target set based on their prior year and where they were. So the ultimate measure I would say, and we're, we're happy to bring the data to you next time we're together, we'll give you data on MCAS and we can easily give you data on chronic absenteeism across the district. But the key measure to me is how many points people are getting in
terms of their accountability. So everyone's allotted four points and so some schools get none if they don't make their target. Some get four if they do make their target. Many of our schools are getting four but some are not. And so it's, and it can swing from year to year. So I think we'll show you that just as a framing, it's not good or bad, it's just short, sort of shining the light on these types of processes that to me are deeply relational and building family, you know, connections with families and getting curiosity around what do they need and how can we help. And so the process you just said around an attendance team,
figuring out these ones go to the nurse, it's literally like a hub of sort of data and spreadsheet and then dispatch how we go and help and partner and always doing that in a positive asset based way with our families. So I love this and I, I wrote down before you even brought that up, like maybe we can come back and kind of give a little bit of a process story. It's not a case study so much as a process story. You could even bring your attendance team in to kind of say like, here's how a month, here's like a, a cycle, how a cycle works and what we learned. I think it'd be helpful for everybody. Absolutely. So we can commit to some elevating attendance if the
committee would like to hear more about it this year. Speaker 1: Does that sound like something we're interested in? I think I see a lot of nodding. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I have a question that's not, I mean it's for you guys, I guess it's for everybody. So with the, with the account, the student growth scores, student growth percentages, right? Everyone has a slightly different goal. Is that just based on where you're starting from? What sort of meaningful improvement would be like 55 versus 50 versus 60? Speaker 13: Yeah, I, I don't know if you wanna, I mean we talked about this at length 'cause we went back
and forth a lot about where we should land with this goal and Dr. Spa and I kind of agreed that maybe starting at the 55 still is strong growth and maybe not a goal that would completely overwhelm our staff with me being new in this position as well. So I wanna set a goal that feels attainable but also will move all students along. I don't know if that you wanna Speaker 10: Add to that. Yeah, it, it's perfectly answered and I, what I would, what my experience in this setting, anything 55 or higher people If we're whatever they line up are likely to beat it. That's my opinion on that. 60 or higher is considered high growth per MCAS.
Renaissance is pretty aligned to MCAS. So 55 is a great goal and I'm, I'm thinking you guys are gonna beat it, especially that we're focusing on that lower 25 fifth percentile. The student growth percentile is a measure that's very specific to every student. So it's basically saying where did a student score the prior year? Like if there were everybody in the state took the test, how many people got four 90, let's say, and those kids, where did they move the next year? And as a percentile. So some kids did better than the average, some kids did less. We can do a little tutorial on that, but it's a relative measure against where they were
with a group of peers getting the same scores in the prior year. It's, I, I think it's a great measure because it's actually really about the growth versus the kids who did the same in the prior year. So it's not like the growth because you're the highest performing, the lowest performing. It's literally a level playing field of a measure. Yeah, it, it's a true looking technical, Speaker 13: How, you know, how what kids have done in terms of learning over the course of the year, removing a lot of the variables and comparing them to like peers and you know, I mean, we could have a student that has really high achievement and yet low growth and we wanna make sure all of our students are demonstrating high growth regardless of their starting point.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. Thank you so much for explaining that to me. Yeah. Any other questions? Thank you very much and welcome Yes to Natick. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome back to Speaker 10: Exactly welcome back. One more thing, just because I love student growth so much, there's literally research that says focusing on growth is a more equitable way to motivate kids and motivate teachers than to focus on achievement. Like, there's research that says this kids can digest growth better than we can do. Digest a bar of achievement, even though that's the end goal through growth, we get kids
and grownups to be very motivated to be on that journey together philosophy but worthwhile. Okay. Last but not least, Dr. Johanna even who's new to us this year, we're so happy to have you. And she's going to give her sip presentation for Brown School. Welcome. Speaker 15: Thank you. Good evening everyone. I'm excited to be here with all of you and excited to be leading brown school this year as a new member of the administrative team here in Natick. I'll start by sharing some highlights that were shared
with me by our, my predecessor from last year's school improvement plan. And so last year in the school improvement plan that they focused on literacy growth for students with low, low growth and low proficiency from the prior year. And when they reviewed the data, more than half of them had identified moderate to high growth in reading and they saw similar gains in math, even though that wasn't the focus of the goal, they also looked at that and saw similar gains. So to Dr. SP's point, focusing on growth, you know,
does show those, those improvements. In addition, going back to referring back to the attendance, brown school actually had some significant improvement in the attendance following some targeted outreach to families as well. Last year. They also, the team really laid the, the foundation for a shared vision for instructional coaching in our building. We had three brand new coaches last year who spent a lot of time building really strong relationships with our teachers, which has proven to really be a,
a wonderful foundation starting point for the work that I'll be talking about this year. Also, our team built the phase one for the multi-tiered system of a success. So sorry, multi, multi-tiered system of supports by really working to align what we're doing in academics with social emotional learning and behavioral supports. So really a lot of the work from last year really is the starting point and kickoff point for the work in our 25 26 school improvement plan. So our first goal is to accelerate ELA
and math growth for students performing below benchmark. So we decided this year to expand our goal, expand the scope of our student achievement goal. In addition, last year we focused on grades two, three, and four and made the intentional decision that we're really looking at kindergarten through fourth grade and we're looking at ELA and math, but really focusing on students that are scoring below benchmark on that four fall 2025, early literacy and reading and math screeners and similarly to Ben Hem, we're looking for that student growth percentile of 55 or higher.
What we noticed in looking at the data is that we did have a discrepancy in the growth percentiles between our students that were scoring at benchmark or above benchmark. They were, they were making stronger growth than our students who were performing below benchmark. And so we know that if we wanna close those gaps, we need to accelerate that growth. And so we're doing this really looking at all of the resources that we have and the structures that are currently in place and how do we really maximize those systems and structures. So we have professional development
and our monthly curriculum meetings and we're really focusing along with the focus of the district on how do we use formative assessments to inform our tier one differentiation in the classroom so that we can accelerate the growth for all of our students. In addition, we've been really intentional in making sure, in supporting our educators and aligning their goals with the goal, with the school goal. And so everyone is focused on really accelerating the growth for these students that are performing below Benchmark.
We just finished our data meetings last week, which were a real shift and really some exciting changes starting with the tier one instruction. So looking at the data, looking at the data overall, and beginning with a conversation of what are the implications for our tier one instruction and differentiation. And then moving into conversations about tier two small group interventions and support. I'm really under underscoring the, the sort of mantra is that we all own all students. And so as we're looking in our data meetings,
really having conversations about how can we collaborate to best meet the needs of the students that we have in front of us. Excuse me. And another key piece of our, our strategy here is our coaches and our coaching cycle. And so those will are going to be focused on really how are we effectively utilizing formative assessment within our tier one differentiation. And we will, we're excited to start learning walks as well to help us get more data around the practices that we have in our building. So aligned with that goal, I feel like these two goals really go hand in hand
that we know we need to deepen our tier one instruction specifically in the area of formative assessment, which is our focus. And we're utilizing the resources that we have through our coaching and our coaching structures to really help us do that. And as I mentioned previously, our coaches have built wonderful relationships and are excited to do the work of, of the coaching and working on the coaching cycles in there with the teachers. So we're launching those cycles right now. And our success on this goal, we're really looking to,
for our, the coaching participants to, to share that they, that, that the practice successfully, you know, help them improve their practice at the coaching cycles as well. We've set a lofty goal that 75% of our teachers who provide either literacy and or math instruction are going to engage in coaching in the 25 26 school year. So we've been, we've launched the vision, we've trained folks on it. Our, our coaching cycles are beginning this week and we feel that we're very poised to utilize that resource
and support our teachers in really deepening their, their tier one instruction and their use of formative assessments And goal three. So we are working as well as some of the other schools to strengthen tier one PVIS and our behavior systems. And our goal, similar to what you heard from other, the other schools, is that we're establishing a tier one PVIS system with school-wide expectations and reinforcement system and consistent staff responses to unexpected behaviors
and expected behaviors. And so we have, we're building off what was already in place. We did have a set of core values that was really not consistently utilized across the school. So we're working to revitalize the work that we're doing around teaching and reinforcing those pause core values of practice empathy, act respectfully work hard and solve problems together. And we have our pause recognition systems and our PBIS assemblies and all the strategies that we're implementing. We also have positive office referrals, which is super fun.
They come to me and get a positive referral and a call home. And so we're working to really To, to reinforce with our faculty the importance of that positive recognition and the consistency in our language around how we're reinforcing the expectations and the expected behavior. And we have established A-P-B-I-S committee that is cross role. We have teachers, interventionists, paras, counselors, we have a member of our ASAP team because they, we wanna really make sure
that we're really wrapping around the work that we're doing with paw. And so we had our first meeting last month, we were looking forward to our next one. And we also are excited to work and collaborate with the district efforts around the code of conduct so that we make sure that what we're, our efforts are aligned and the work, what's happening in Brown is aligned with that. The schoolwide, sorry, the districtwide code of conduct. Finally the last point here is that when we talk about consistent responses to behavior, we're also focusing, we're also addressing consistent responses to unexpected behaviors and really norming around
what are the actions teachers can take in their classroom when they're having unexpected behaviors. What constitutes an office referral? What are the procedures and processes for office referrals? What is a crisis response and what are the procedures and processes for that? So building consistent understanding around the and implementation of those systems. So it is our, our hope and goal and we are confident that with this really focused effort to get everyone on the same page and shared practices, that we will just continue to see increased levels of joy and engagement
and focus on learning in the brown school community. Speaker 1: Thank you. Questions from the committee? Nope, not true. Not true. So I had a question about your, your goal around coaching. So the metrics are really all about participation and sort of positive feedback to the coaching program. Is that right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. And do you expect that that would change in the future? Like I guess I'm thinking of like learning something and then putting it into practice, you know, like actually being measured on having changed
Speaker 15: The change in practice. In practice. Yeah. Yes, definitely. Definitely. Is that Speaker 1: Like in the future or? Yes. Just out of curiosity. I don't know. Speaker 15: Yes. I think, I think one of the key pieces too, especially around the formative assessment work is that we're gathering a lot of baseline right now. So we have a new tool for, for our learning walks. We have new pieces. And so what, when we were building the goal, we really thought, well we don't yet have a baseline to measure, to set a goal around. Ultimately we wanna see improvements in the formative assessment practices within our school knowing that those formative assessment practices are going to
increase student learning. But we are at that baseline right now. We're at the very beginning of this process. And so we wanna get the structures in place while we're also gathering the data around, okay, so what is our baseline in terms of the components of effective form of assessment practice? And then we can set a goal around, you know, moving that. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. That makes a lot of sense. I appreciate that Dr. Yeah, Speaker 5: I do have a question also. Great presentation and I, and I love the goals. This question I'm asking you 'cause you're at the podium but or at the table, but it really applies
to all elementary schools. I love the fact that there's this common theme around PBIS, specifically PBS tier one and one of the key ingredients of the effect of PBIS implementation is A-P-B-I-S team or committee or I'm curious, have you talked with each other about, I see nodding already, so maybe the answer is yes of of having the teams connect with each other and answer it all the time. And obviously PBIS is very specific to each school in terms of the specific values and you know, how you celebrate. Whether it's pajama days in one school
or there's a different celebration, a different school. But just sometimes there's great lessons to we learned from each other and I'm curious if there is that, if there's gonna be an opportunity for them to, for you all to talk to each other about how do we support each other in implementation of PBIS across schools. Speaker 15: I love that suggestion. I think we are already, right now we're at this stage and anybody else can jump in. We talk to each other. Yeah, the principals are, we just had dinner right before this meeting and we were talking about our PBIS systems. But ultimately as we build our teams, I think the opportunity to have folks collaborate across schools would be a
fantastic way to, to share ideas and strategies and challenges. I love it. Great Speaker 5: Dinner's always a good place to start. Yes. Speaker 15: Yes. Speaker 1: Any other questions from the committee? Thank you very much. Wonderful presentations. Thank you from everyone Welcome to Natick, Dr. Even Speaker 15: Thank you. Speaker 10: Can I say a few closing? Speaker 1: Absolutely, yes. Speaker 10: I wanna thank everyone's here. I love that you guys went to dinner. Breaking bread is our cabinet actually broke bread this afternoon as well and that is always a great moment. So early on when we were kind of as a team at retreat talking about what our words were
for the year, mine was cohesion, of course I picked two cohesion and alignment and I hope you saw that as you saw our eight schools present, it cannot be understated the work it takes to pull this size of a district together to align their goals to the bridge plan and to our strategic objectives. And I just wanna compliment every leader here, the four who were here and the four who were here before. Because I see the work, I see the deep, deep work you did with your teams and I am incredibly impressed. I hope you also are seeing that move that feels maybe a million years ago,
but is really actually pretty fresh. Whereas Ms. Blather said, you know, schools have their own school improvement plans and you see it and I hope you saw the students in each of their schools come alive in their plans because I did. I was really listening for students and I heard them and I am convinced you saw them in the data and as human beings that you're with. So thank you for that. And then, you know lastly, just MTSS coming alive, right through both instruction, through behavioral and SEL supports. It's very much alive. It's amazing what you guys are getting done. Can't wait to see what you do. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so, definitely. Alright, do we want to take a motion to approve the, the school improvement Speaker 5: Plans move to approve all eight school improvement plans? Second. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Alright. I see that Ms. Brune ISS online, so we'll do a, do we have to do a roll call? Vote Yes, we do when someone's online. Okay. Mr. Patel? Yes. Ms. Lathers? Yes. Mr. Brand? Yes. Dr. Fugman? Yes. Ms. Collins? Yes. Ms. Brune? Speaker 2: Yeah, Speaker 1: She's a good Speaker 2: Go. Speaker 1: We should have tested this first, but yeah, Speaker 2: She may be in an hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Okay. It's Speaker 2: Just another allergy. Just sit tight. We'll be there. Speaker 1: We, we can add her and I'm a yes. So let's go for 6, 0 0 and we'll add Catherine in. Yeah, thank you. That's when she hasn't actually. Yeah. Super Speaker 2: Great Speaker 1: Night. Thank you guys. Really appreciate you being here tonight. Speaker 2: I'm coming here. Speaker 10: So continuing on with my report, we're gonna go through and Ms. Menza is going to go through the non-res schedule. We did have a memo on this and she'll be available to answer any questions as well as others here and to bring us through a bit of Speaker 16: The process that brought us here.
Yeah, good, good evening. So I think many of, you'll probably have seen this memo before now, but we're basically examining all the ways that employees are paid outside of what they were initially hired for. And we're ensuring that there's equity across all of those lanes and that the process for which people apply to and get appointed and get paid are all very visible and transparent. And part of that process is, you know, instead of non rep re requests kind of trickling in
as the year goes on, we kind of wanted to maybe do an all call, get them all at once, present them to you at once so we don't have to continually go back to a non rep piece. And so I'm just gonna very, very briefly go through the requests that we have now. And unless something very large that needs to be dealt with comes to our attention, our intent is to not come with any more non rep requests for the rest of this fiscal year. Again, unless there's something urgent or something that we feel like really can't wait.
So the memo was outlined pretty much how, I'm just gonna briefly talk about them. It, it goes by the request, who requested it, why they requested it, and how the funding is gonna hap would happen. The first one is the school building committee secretary. This was requested by Dr. Stash and Mr. Gillis and it's, it's needed to keep the minutes, ensure a smooth, transparent, organized and timely school building process. The, the request is about $4,800 in total. It will initially be initially be funded through the general fund,
but once it's approved, the cost will be charged to the project fund. The next one is the Natick High School Assistant AP Exam Coordinator. This was brought forward by Principal blocker. This is pretty amazing. There's almost more than 1300 AP exams given at the high school. And so additional support, which is fabulous, but it means that additional support is needed for organization management, proctoring coordination, test spaces, all of the good stuff. And it would be a self-funded flat stipend of 2,500 for about 120 hours of work. This would be paid through the AP exam account,
the student fees, it includes 90 hours of test day admin and 30 hours of pre PO post test coordination. So that'd be a stipend. The next piece kind of goes in line with that side letter that we had brought to you earlier and that was about any extra outside music time that, that an educator is asked to do, to be able to support students. Except we didn't ever clarify how much money they're gonna get paid. And through some discussion we figured
that we were gonna separate this into super just staff members supervising an event. So if you're just literally with a bunch of kids that are participating in an event and you are just a supervisor and the difference between that and actually teaching or facilitating the event because if you're conducting a concert or if you're teaching a class that those are two very different asks of an educator. And so the pay would be different. So we would say that supervising staff members would get $20 an hour and the teaching facilitating
of approved events would get their per diem rate per hour. And again, remember that before any of those people are paid, they have to go through that approval process that our side letter spelled out that our deputy superintendent would approve. The next piece actually has already been in place since, since 2010. It just was never documented in a formal way through our non rep list. And so we were, we're just trying to get everything out in the open and transparent. So this is all
of the fun extras of the athletic department and these positions are essential for the operations and they're currently funded by the athletics department revolving fund. And we continue to be so do so. But just listing them will ensure consistency with all the other positions that we have. So we have a scoreboard operator, a PA announcer, ticket sales student spectator supervisor, and the REDHAWKS mini bus supervisor driver. So, oh, did you wanna add something? No, you
Speaker 17: Have a ask you about the student spectator supervisor. Speaker 16: Do you have a question on what that is? Yeah, so sometimes, I don't know if you've noticed, if you go to the football games there, there's staff there that try to, are in support of making sure that there's safe, safe student participation. Sometimes those staff members would be paid for their time. That's what that is. Yeah. So there's a difference between if it's a weekday game and a a weekend or evening game, these are the rates that they currently have. We're not changing those. Again, we're just getting them out in the open
and putting them on the non wrapp list. The next piece is the code of conduct committee members stipend. And this is the requester is Dr. Ferguson. And as part of the bridge plan, as you know, and you've also heard it in all of the other plans, we are creating a code of conduct and there is a committee involved in that and an incentive. And in for initiative and incentive in the committee, we're asking for 15 stipends at a thousand dollars each, which would be $15,000 total. Our funding source is to be determined,
but it will be budget, budget neutral. That's something that the superintendent is very intent on. And then finally, last but not least is a transportation monitor pay increase. And this is coming from Ellen Erin Miller, director of Student services. So transportation monitors often mandated in IEPs are necessary and a a small increase will help us avoid having to outsource to ex external agencies, which will cost a whole lot more money than a little increase. No increase was provided when the current
non-res schedule was approved. But it is being, we're at the point where we're, we're really feeling like we need to ask for that, but it would just be a 2% increase, approximately just $500 in total for this fiscal year. And that cost will be absorbed by the student services budget. So again, this is just an effort for us to try to be as transparent and equitable as possible for any, with any of these opportunities. If you have any questions, I can answer them or people in here who have asked for these components could also answer them.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Questions from the committee? Ms. Flatters? Just a quick question. This might be Matt, maybe it's for you. I was just curious and I think I've seen it but I just don't know how for four, the paid for by athletics department, are there different funds within the athletics department? Like these feel like these feel like things are directly associated with like ticket sales and like, I don't know whether those things are kind of separated out. Speaker 18: So yeah, we have the user fee revolving fund and there's also a gate fees, you know, line item component for that for athletics. So there's two sources of funds that come in
and then they, they pay these expenses as well as some transportation, some other things out of the athletic revolving fund. Speaker 1: So all the gate fees go into the same as all of the other athletic fees. And the use would Speaker 18: Be, it goes into the same fund, but they're two separate, separate revenue line items. So we can track how much we take in with gate fees and how much we take in with user fees. But then you're, it goes into the same fund. The Speaker 1: Costs don't learned about the revolving funds. It's, you have, it's a source of revenue and then there's only typically certain things you can pay out of it. Right. And do they have the same, do
Speaker 18: Gates have the same? They do. So the the, you know, the intent for both is that they're gonna cover athletic related expenses. So, so paying these folks that help make athletics happen is, is a reasonable expense and it's been common everywhere else I've worked. So Speaker 1: Yeah, I should know whether there were, because we also, there's boosters and lots of other things that come in and I just don't know the difference between like gate fees and then the food cells and all the other things and how they get pulled in and directed out. But we can cover in detail another day. Dr. Fugman.
Speaker 5: So I have both a comment and a question. So my comment is just to express my support for this because I think it highlights two, a couple of different important values that I think this document represents. One is deep respect for the professionals who work in our district. People have lives, people have things to do if, you know, we all are excited about having, you know, students go and watch a football game, but there's a cost to having that supervised. We're all excited about having Dr. Ferguson lead this committee around be a conductive behaviors,
but there's people who need to have extra time to do that. So I think it puts the value of like, we want these things, so we need to basically put our money where our mouth is and say, you know this, if it's valuable, it should be paid. So I love the fact that we do it and the, and balancing it with a second and really important value, which is in its budget neutral. So we're trying to figure out how to make sure that we're doing both things. Making sure that we're compensating people for their time, for their professional expertise and their time while at the same time making sure that we're responsible fiscally responsible in doing so.
My question, so that's my comment and why I support it. My question across all of these, what is missing for me, and we don't have to put it in the memo itself, but is how do these individuals get selected? So how do we make sure there's fairness, you know, in school building committee secretary, if three people want to be that secretary, how do we choose that person or you know, for all of these, what's the, what's the process to make sure that it's fair? Because if you're gonna put money out there, it's make sure it's Speaker 16: Huge. Yeah, and that's part of, you know, the athletic piece is very important.
Why I wanted it on this non repless. So anytime we wanna pay people outside of what they were initially hired for, and there is a direct line or task we have, we do a posting and so it could be just an internal posting if it's just within the Natick public schools or it can be an internal and an external posting. But basically it's a notice to anyone that you are, this is what we have, this is what it pays, this is what we are asking for and who to apply to. And so then that whoever is in charge of
that hiring process would do anything. Just like you would hire a regular position, you would conduct interviews. If you have to have a committee conduct interviews and select people and then they are appointed to the position and the, and then their forms are filled out and they're paid for that position. So very similarly to regular jobs, any, it would happen along the same lines. Speaker 5: Great. Perfect. Yes. Makes a lot of sense. Speaker 1: Ms. Collins. Speaker 4: Thank you. Some of these don't have an impact on the budget,
like the athletics, which are being paid out of revolving funds. Some of these do have an impact on the budget, although we're able to cover them this year, so we don't need to add to it. I just wanna make sure that all of those get picked up for next year. Yes. So that, you know, the special ed, the student services budget isn't on the hook for what they didn't need this year plus the 500. I just, I would ask that we make sure that when we do the budget Speaker 16: Each the non rep director Speaker 4: Yes. Includes whichever positions
Speaker 16: Their non rep needs too. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Speaker 4: Yeah. Not just faculty. Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Collins. Speaker 4: Mr. Stewart. Speaker 1: Mr. Wood. Speaker 3: Thank you Madam Chair. Can I just get a, a clarification on item three, the music educator compensation. There is a, a list for the teaching and facilitating, facilitating approved events is a per diem rate per hour. Is that per diem based on like the, the person who is in charge of the teaching facilitating.
So it, so it determines so it's based on that person's salary? Yes. Okay. So it may vary depending on whether it's a first year teacher Yes. Or whether, okay. Alright, thank you. And it, and the per diem rate is their salary per diem as opposed to a percentage of their, their their Speaker 16: Hour. What would break down is their hourly rate. Speaker 3: Right. Okay. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Any questions online? I don't see, I can't see if ca Ms. Brunell, did she ever hand up or anything? No, not online. Okay, that's fine. Just wanted to check any other questions from the committee? Are we ready for a motion? Okay.
Speaker 5: Oh, not to make it though. Move to approve the memo dated October 6th requesting for additional for additions to the non-represented list. Second, Speaker 1: The only thing I would ask for friendly amendment for is it's actually dated October 1st, even though we're discussing Speaker 5: Oh, October 6th. Yeah. Yep. So to approve a motion, move to approve October 1st memo requesting for additions to the non-represented list. Second. Speaker 1: All in favor? Anyone against? No one abstaining.
Is that 6 0 0 I vote yes. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Sorry. You are there. Sorry, Catherine, you have to do it again. We should do it again. So we'll do it again. We'll do a roll call. Vote Ms. Brunell. Yes. Mr. Patel? Yes. Ms. Lathers? Yes. Mr. Brand? Yes. Dr. Fugman? Yes. Ms. Collins. Aye. And I'm a Yes. So that is 7 0 0. Okay, Speaker 10: Thank you. Would you like us to move into the vacancies and FY 24 26 hiring trends while we have Jackie here? Speaker 1: Great idea. Okay. Speaker 16: Hello again.
So you, you received another memo from both Mr. Giles and myself that first just outlines the vacancies that we currently have. So I don't think I need to go buy them one by one. But you, there's the, the chart of the vacancies. We currently have 14.6 vacancies and the bigger, the bigger portion of this memo is to really talk about the hiring trends from 24 to, to now to 26. And it, the, on the second page, you'll see the breakdown
of the new hires by academic lanes. And I know this, this was data that was requested, especially because we were negotiating a new contract and we have a new contract. And I know there was a lot of thought put into that salary scale and the effects that that would have particularly in hiring. And so we really wanted to make sure you had a clear picture and you can obviously, you can see that there's been a notable slowdown in hiring with 37.2 FTEs in this School year.
And the majority of the hires fell between the masters and the bachelors lanes. So it is reflecting a shift towards earlier career in mid-lane positions. And then there's another just a little colorful graph graph for those of you like me who really are a visual person. And then I just, we, and I'm I'm hap we're happy to talk more about all of these, although, you know, it's pretty self-explanatory, but we're happy to to chat about it. But I just kind of wanted to talk about what our next steps are around this for you so that you have a, a clear understanding of, of kind of
why we're investing a lot of time in this. So right now, HR and finance, we're in the middle of, we're almost done, actually we only have two more. We're conducting one-to-one review meetings with administrators in each building. And we're review, we're literally going staff member by staff member reviewing all titles, FTE schedules, shared staff responsibilities, how we're titling people, all of their licensure, all of those types of things. And we're identifying any discrepancies, we're confirming accuracy.
And then the next piece is that HR and finance are gonna align our records across all of the systems so that we have as clear of a picture as we can have of, of the staffing that we have. We're gonna begin the work of using Munis to establish position control. So that will be a really, it'll be a really important unified system of record keeping. And then once we kind of have all of these pieces in place, it's gonna allow us to really be able to do salary and budget projections with pretty accurate real-time data.
And this is gonna help us, especially moving into budget season as we really wanna understand who's in, who's in our buildings and who's in our district and what it's gonna cost for the people who are currently here to continue to be here. And then to be able to identify any needs that we're feeling are also needed at this time. So I I just thought it, it would be, I just wanted you to kind of understand the, the scope of kind of what Matt and I are participating in right now to ensure that as we go into budget season, we're really being thoughtful
And very accurate about what, who we currently have and, and where we're gonna current go next. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. I see hands up Ms. Collins and then Ms. Lathers, Speaker 4: Jackie, I go back to the days where it was all kept on a spreadsheet. Yes, Speaker 16: We do have those Speaker 4: Plus one minus one. So I'm thrilled that we are moving beyond that. But I'm particularly happy that most of our hiring this year is bachelors and masters. 'cause that's where we put our money in negotiations to, to get those new hires that we could grow within our system.
So I'm very pleased to see that. So thank you. Speaker 16: Yeah, and that's something we've talked about in the cabinet and Matt and Melissa and I a lot around making sure we continue to message to our principals who do a lot of the hiring that that goal in, in some of their hiring as well to re and so that we can also grow our educators in Natick as well. Speaker 1: Ms. PLAs, Kathy Stillman. Thank you. You had me at integration with unis Dr. Ton. Speaker 5: Just one quick question, I don't know if you have the numbers here, but a total of 14.6 vacancies feels pretty low this time of year compared
to previous years, which obviously previous years were all kinds of reasons why we had vacancies including the pandemic. But is that good? Like 14.6 that Speaker 16: This in terms of like statewide, this looks really good. Yeah, Speaker 5: That's what I thought. Speaker 16: Yeah. Especially our par but even that par, even though that parent number says 8.4, it like I think I've told you in the last, last time I visited you, it's the need for paras in our state is extraordinary.
And this is actually pretty, pretty awesome. Speaker 5: So I'm hearing you to say two things. One, it's better than previous years and it's better than other districts. I don't Speaker 16: Know about previous years. Remember this is my first year. Yeah. So I can't necessarily off the top of my mind, but Sue is shaking her head yes. It it, I know that from where I sit this is very healthy in terms of But Speaker 5: Did you, you did say better than the state average. Oh yes. Speaker 16: Oh yes. That, Speaker 5: That in itself is a win, right? I mean clearly we're competing with other districts to hire a lot of these positions. So if our vacancies are lower, that means we're doing a good job attracting the difficult
to attract positions. Speaker 19: Good. Speaker 5: That's a win. Speaker 1: That's super. Any other questions? Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Do you wanna do my goals now or do you wanna wait until we go through the other Let's, yeah, yeah, let's wait for a few other agenda items. Let's go to, can we go to subcommittee? Actually first let's vote to appoint MR. Brand to the education collaborative. That's what it's called. Text stands for, right? Is it education collaborative? It, it's, I got it.
I got it right for 2025. 2026. Can I have a motion? So move second. Okay. Any debate on that? You're willing to accept this Mr. Bran? I am. Okay. Alright, let's vote. All in favor. Anyone against? So that is 6 0 0. Thank you Mr. Bran for doing that. I have six years. Hey you get up at eight o'clock. Good for you. Yeah. Okay. I just wanna give a quick update on the Johnson Future use project.
So it's the workshop that we talked about last week is happening tomorrow night and Mr. Patel and I will be attending that. So we'll report back at our next meeting about what that was about. And I think Dr. Fash, you said you might share some insights. Yes. Thank you. From administration that we can take to that as well. Yeah, I, thanks for the reminder. Okay. Super. Thank you. Alright, so then yes, I'll likely be there as a member of the public. Okay. But we don't Speaker 19: Have a quorum issue anyway. Speaker 1: Okay. So yeah, the whole thing's open to the public isn't it? It is. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And I, oh yeah, miss Brune. So
Speaker 19: Part two of that memo invited boards to stay, have a statement to the select board. Were you thinking of our inviting our board to do that? Speaker 1: Yes. So that is the after the workshop, right? For us to bring that information back? Yeah. And then for us to talk about it and decide if we want to make a statement. Okay. That's what I was thinking the process would be. Yeah. Speaker 19: 'cause this, the school, the Memorial School Building Committee doesn't meet in October. So I think it would be, I think the deadline was October 31st. But I, given all the conversations
that we've been having about preschool space and space in the district, I just think it's in, it's important for us to have with space constraints, it's important for us to think creatively about spaces in the district or in the town. And in the town. Speaker 1: Okay. Are you suggesting that the, the school building committee should weigh in on this? Or We can as a committee we can make a statement to go to the Speaker 19: Select board? Yes. Yeah, I, but it's because our full committee hasn't been privy
to all the conversations we've been having around space in the district and the need for the preschool. I mean we have I guess in different way different times. It's just, I think we're fine if we talk about it again after the, after the, the session tomorrow. Okay. Speaker 1: Ms. Lathers. Yeah. So I just wanna understand that that piece of it a little better. It sounds like by the 31st we just have to say that we're interested in having, we're interested in, in asserting an opinion that we don't have to assert until the end of the year, correct? I, I think so. I think that, yeah, because I think we would want to definitely say yes
and even if we don't have a strong opinion at the end of the year, I don't think we wanna say we won't have one. Yeah, I think we should have either a statement, some kind of statement. Right. So by the about it seems like can we agreed that we're gonna tell the select board that we do intend to have a one page position paper by the end of the year. And whether that ends up being very strong or very neutral, I don't know, is we need to wait till the end of October to say that we intend to have a one page position paper. But we can wait until the next meeting. Okay. Okay. No thanks for that perspective. Okay.
And then does that mean, Speaker 19: Does that mean that you're gonna respond to him or no Speaker 1: To Mr. Evans? Speaker 19: Bruce that we're gonna have a one page. Okay. Speaker 1: Yes. But I would like us, when's our next meeting? It's in two weeks, right? 27th. 27th. 27th. So we will meet again before that response is due. So what I was thinking is that Mr. Patel and I and whoever else attends this session tomorrow could bring back any information that we learned there, kind of share it with the committee and then we could use that to inform us wanting to make a position or not.
Yeah. And I, but I also think it's a combination of things. I think those, I mean I've been in those meetings already and they're very much around town uses and using as a town building without any thought that there could be any sort of future educational needs there at all. And so I just think we should be cognizant of depending on where things are going, if there is, if there are opportunities or desires potentially to keep in mind that we should be doing that as well. I mean, I know depending how the MSBA stuff comes out, I know that there's potentially building constraints in the,
in the area down there. If the town goes with something where they are going to make it, I mean a swing space at some point. Just if there's any needs for it, just I'd encourage the administration to talk about it and the Memorial Building Committee. 'cause they're gonna have a lot of logistics to play into that the town isn't thinking about or thinking kind of in a town vacuum, which is what they should be doing. Yeah, no, yeah. I haven't been part of any of these discussions. So that's very helpful insight that that has been more focused on town needs. So this is our opportunity than to share school needs. Yeah. Dr.
Speaker 5: Fugman. Yeah. Just a clarifying question. So are we considering taking a position that Johnson should be considered for school purpose for educational purposes? Is that the discussion Speaker 1: I that that wasn't No, no, no. That No, but it was also I some of the options they're putting on the table Yeah. Involved potentially refurbing it to make it use for like community education. Yeah. And so if they are looking at actually making the building usable, like we may have a position that, you know, in this some interim period that we, that we could have some or we'd want to be consulted about potential, you know,
and they also did some of the options really talk about community education and some other kinds of programs. And so just, I just don't think that they're thinking at all about combined. Speaker 5: Yeah. Uses, Speaker 1: Uses Speaker 5: Just one thought off the top of my, my head. I Speaker 1: Know whether they, I don't just haven't felt that way. Speaker 5: Just to close off one thought off the top of my head, I'm wondering if one issue that intersects I think between school and community that is huge and the community keeps pushing us on is after school. And I know that space isn't the only issue,
staffing is the other big one. And I'm not saying the school district, the, the MPS are taking responsibility for more after school beyond asap. But that's just an opportunity for the cu you know, especially as a result of the human service audit. I think that was called for the town to think about just because it's something that we hear a lot about that would be good to convey to select board. Like the community really wants more opportunities for afterschool care. Speaker 1: Yeah, no that's a really good point. Yeah. MS Lab. Yeah that's exactly where I was. Yeah, that's what I was heading towards.
'cause I had a conversation today with someone who works, a student who works for the Y program that's now at FCC and he's like, oh I really like, I didn't know Johnson was there. I really missed, we had so much space there, like had an active like feeling like it was like a lot more conducive to a good program. And that's just, you know, why program I know we used for the one year. So, you know, I, I think that kind of making sure those needs are understood and that's where, you know, we're thinking about the community is important. Ms. Brunel, did you have a comment? No. So that, I don't know if, if you have data like that Dr. Dr. Stash that you could share about
that we could take in in terms of, you know, the waiting list for asap, what the ideal, you know, number of spaces might be that might be helpful to share with this committee at some point. Speaker 10: Yeah. Speaker 1: So on some future use committee, not our committee, Speaker 10: I think what you're likely to get from us if you want it before tomorrow is some kind of 30,000 foot ideas or views from the administration which may be different or overlapping or the same as what the school committee would come up with in terms of analysis. I mean my understanding is we aren't at data and analysis. Is that what's expected in this meeting for the select Speaker 1: Board? No. Great. No.
Speaker 10: So that might then follow up with, you know, once we all have a chance to talk about it and there's other things to do, but I, it's good timing and maybe, You know, we're about ready to launch this year moving towards a long-term plan and I see a lot of overlap with that with this. Unfortunately that's not done yet but that's where we'd be kind of gathering a lot of community input as well as our staff input around that and the school committee's opinion on that. So it's sort of pulling up a piece of that quite early based on where the select board is and we get that. So I think we'd be able to live to deliver
where our thinking is on some suggestions at a 30,000 foot view for tomorrow. Speaker 1: And I also think that this is like, it's too, I think it's supposed to be a two and a half year process to decide what to do there. So this like positions is like things that we think the town should be thinking about because they might not be as close to parents and families as a school is. And so I think putting those nuggets in there in the official capacity is important. Yeah. Thank you. Any other input on if, and if you guys have any thoughts or ideas you come up with between now and 6:00 PM tomorrow?
Just email Jamon and myself and we'd be happy to share that. 'cause this isn't something really within our remit, we're participating in the town process so I think that's fine. Okay. Super. Thank you. And then could we move to, I'm jumping all over this agenda to subcommittees and the let's, we have Dr. Ferguson here so I wanna make sure that we talk about policies. Do we want to move to the policy subcommittee and the policies that are under consideration for tonight? That would Speaker 7: Be great. And Ms. Miller's here as well. Yes. So if it's all right to do
the seven B and seven C and whichever would you like to do first Speaker 1: Is fine. Yeah, sure. Let's start with seven B. Speaker 7: Yep. So just as a, a quick I guess summary. We had a good discussion about it last week, the second, this is I guess officially the second reading. So there's not much to say other than if you would like a motion or, and then we can discuss or whatever you like. It's up to you Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell. Speaker 19: Well I have a motion to, so I'll put that on the floor. Speaker 1: Sure. Why don't we have a motion then first to approve and then we can add competing motions.
Sure. Does that sound okay? Speaker 7: Would you like one? Yes please. So I would move to approve policy JICJ. That's the student use of personal electronic devices. Second. Speaker 1: Okay. And then are there any other motions Speaker 19: Move to add the word backpacks to the list of additional storage procedures in the section under storage and security? Speaker 1: We would need a second for that if we, oh second. It's okay. Alright, sorry's. Okay. Okay. Alright. Any discussion on this? Yes, I just, what was the rationale to not have it on there?
The backpacks, I mean I'd like it not Speaker 7: Speak Speaker 1: Backpacks but I know practically at the high school I don't know where I Speaker 7: Would do it. So semantically let me, I'm just gonna bring it up. Excuse me for one quick second Dr. Ferguson, I'll just, so maybe I'll let art go first and then I'll tell you at least what my, my opinion is 'cause I don't wanna speak for the, Speaker 14: As the policy is currently written, this practice actually already takes place. So for students who are, who come to school with their phones and do not take those phones out, those phones are safely tucked away in their backpacks.
And so, and for students who have their phones and don't want to put it in the parking lots, they can keep those phones in the backpack as long as it's off and away for the school day. Speaker 19: Totally get that. It's already the practice, it's just not in the policy. So except for to direct elementary students to put it in their backpack. So I just thought it would be more, it would be helpful in terms of if you have, if somebody's reading this by the, you know, the letter of the law just to add something, this word backpack to say that students can have their cell phones in their backpack.
Because right now it seems like you actually can't have your cell phone in your backpack unless you're in elementary school. The way with the way I read it, Speaker 14: So there go ahead. No objections to adding backpack Speaker 1: Mr. Brand. Speaker 7: So my opinion on this was that designated cell phone holders is a, a semantic difference but could be considered a backpack. I'm I, in my my view, if we get too granular about listing containers that might hold a cell phone, I'm not sure what their, the different kinds of purses and bags and things that my daughters have.
They're not backpacks but they are containers. And so having like designated cell phone holder and leaving it to the, the teachers or the administrators to determine what is considered a designated cell phone holder is why I was okay with it. But, 'cause I just don't think we're gonna ever be able to list every single kind of container. So that was my, that was my opinion on it. This is not a thing that I would lose a ton of sleep over a ton of sleep. Speaker 1: So I just have a quick clarifying question. Where did you wanna add the word backpack? Under which section? Speaker 7: Storage and security. Right. It's clause five
Speaker 1: Security. Okay. So then my question about that is that I read that section as being, 'cause it says school define storage locations and all the other ones listed are like provided by the school. So I'm just wondering if that's a place to put like a personal storage. Just quick suggestion. I mean I think when it says designated makes, it feels like if the school's created it and school defined school's created it, could we just change like either designated to approved or school defined to school approved?
'cause then it's generic. Sure. And doesn't make it sound like it's just part of the school as another friendly. Speaker 7: So would you, you're, so you're suggesting either one a friendly amendment, Speaker 1: Friendly amendment either. I don't know if there's a preference either say approved cell phone holders, but I like designate cell phone holders 'cause that's the holders or other school approved storage locations. 'cause then a backpack is an approved storage location. Dr. Fon. Speaker 5: So I have general comments and then specifically to the amendments proposed. So yeah, last time I talked about the importance of looking at research and I went home driving
thinking I didn't look at research. So what I did last week was the past week was do what I said I should be, you know, I, I heated my own device of actually looking at research 'cause I felt bad talking about it without looking at it anyway. And I found some interesting things that I think were, were helpful. So there's no conclusive res Well so first of all there's conclusive research about the positive outcomes of any kind of effort to remove phones from the school. So this actually really important as as a whole, this is a really important policy. Changes specifically around academic outcomes were found social emotional
outcomes were found, behavioral outcomes were found and increase in a attention were found. So this is what we're working towards for everyone else, it's probably obvious, but I just thought it would, to me it was helpful to see the research actually say that in terms of the method of how to ban, there's no conclusive research on that. What there is, what, which kind of what we talked about last time, there's a whole range from both the state level. So a bunch of states, not Massachusetts, but other states have already put bans in and then many districts have al already. And the, the research that has been done has about different
methods, hasn't been, there's no one specific place that you can say this is the best place for teachers to, or students to restore their phones. But a couple of things that does support our policy is a change, the differences in approaches for elementary versus middle school versus high school. And it is that decreasing in rigidity of the policies and increase in student responsibility over the age development is very common. Including in some state policies, including Connecticut is the one that I'm reading about.
And also that there is no, basically this one study from Auburn University said there's no one size fits all in terms of how students put their phones away. Kind of calling for, and this actually kinda relates to the amendment really is this needs to happen at a school by school basis, you know, so we don't wanna be too prescriptive as a committee about how phones are put away. So personally I would support the policy. All that's to say that I support the policy because it does, it is consistent with the research in terms of the, of the amendment. I don't know if Ms. Brunes and Ms.
Lather's two amendments are one or the other or, or combined. I would personally support Ms. Lather's approach to say or other school approved locations because it's not about specifying, it's about saying we're we're telling the schools they need to have a policy about phones being away where those are or sh should be determined by the school as opposed to listing specific places. I think to Mr Brand's point, if you put back back, I think you just, you might as well start making a long list. So backpack doesn't seem like a specifically,
it's not good reason for me to call out book pack, book packs or backpacks. I would just say school approved and that kind of lets the school makes, makes that decision. And even from our experience here, from here in the two middle school principals, I know that two middle schools I think do it some slightly differently. And so it allows for that flexibility that according to research is a good thing to allow teachers and, and schools to kind of determine what works best in their specific school community. Including different grades. Different grades might have different approaches. So anyway, so just, I approve this, this I,
I'm gonna support this motion and I, I will approve or support an amendment to change or other school approved storage locations and I would prefer not to put backpacks so that we don't have go into this rabbit hole of like naming every potential police Speaker 1: Mr. Brand. Then I wanna talk about the amendment. Speaker 7: Yes. Just procedurally, I actually don't think we could take it as a friendly amendment. No, it would've to be its own amendment because it's a word change. Not like a you're not, I'm not making a motion or we need to make a motion to specify every word. So it wouldn't be friendly. So if you would like to make an amendment Yes.
Speaker 1: Proposal. Getting feedback first before going through the efforts. Good. Speaker 7: Is that what you were gonna Speaker 1: Yes. Okay. Yeah. Propose an amendment to change the language in section five from, I need to find it from and get the glasses on from other school defined from or other school defined storage locations to or other school approved storage locations. Speaker 7: Second. Okay. Now they're competing. No, they're not competing. They're still not competing. They're Speaker 5: Not, they're not overlapping? Speaker 7: No, they don't overlap. So they're not competing.
We can take 'em both. Speaker 1: Okay. So do we have any more discussion on either of the amendments? Speaker 19: I'm just gonna withdraw mine because I agree with Kate. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 7: Okay. And then there's only one amendment to vote on. Okay. Speaker 1: Alright. Okay. Are we ready to vote? Yes. Ms. Brunell, Speaker 19: I just have a clarifying question about, are we just voting on the amendment or the full thing? Speaker 1: Well, we'll vote on the amendment first and then the amended motion. Okay. Speaker 19: So I have a question about the amended motion if Kate's pass passes. Speaker 1: Okay. So let's vote on the amendment. And this is the one to change school defined to school approved storage.
Location. All in favor? Anyone against? Anyone? Abstaining. Okay, so the motion for the amendment passes 6 0 0. And now we can have discussion on the amended main motion. I could be town moderator. I'm good at Speaker 19: This. You could be. You're doing great. Speaker 5: That's good. Do you want to No, Speaker 7: No, no. Good job. Speaker 1: Very skilled in that position, Ms. Brunell. Speaker 19: So I just thank you for all the work on this policy and the work that is gonna have to happen in the classrooms to make it happen. I mean, no, this is, I have to do this in my house. Like it's, it's uncomfortable.
It's like this is, cell phones are everywhere. I will admit that I'm coming from a place of fear 'cause I am afraid kids are losing their childhood and that's not a good place to make a policy from. I think that this is moving us in the right direction. I would like to have this policy one 'cause I think it's good practice for us to revisit policies after we put them in place to see if they're working. I would like to have this policy come back to the committee at some point in the next year and check in and just see what's happening. Shai pulled up research, you know,
there is not conclusive evidence, you know, but there, there are examples where kids are having, they are reporting to have happier experiences with peers when cell phones are not involved. So I just want to revisit it if the committee is open to that. Speaker 5: Just to clarify, the research is conclusive on your last point. So the outcomes are all were found across social, emotional, wellbeing, relationships, attention. It's the method by which school
phones are put away that is inconclusive. Just to clarify what the research says. Speaker 1: Okay. Ms. Lathers, just a clarifying question. So speaking back is not the expert saying that the research says the phone should be away, but do you enforce it by taking it or do you push the kids to be responsible and take the action? It's kind of like, like as, as two opposing different things like making it a compelling part of your, your cultural norms in the school versus taking, you know, a more aggressive
approach are kind of methods. Just asking. That's clarifying. That's what you mean by methods. Speaker 5: No, so that is a great question though. I don't know what the research says about that. 'cause what you're saying is policy versus Speaker 1: Saying Speaker 5: Self-regulation. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I thought he was hearing the self-regulation side of it is the piece of it. So the methods of keeping them is the part which is kind of what we're, so the policy, so one direction is expanding the policy to being like CDS study. Lunch would be expanding that way. And then the methods of putting it away would be, you know, are they required to stick it in a box
or you just expecting they keep it in their backpack and they show responsible behavior like you always would Mr. Woods class 'cause no one would ever do the wrong thing. 'cause you wear a suit every day. Speaker 14: I think just to make a quick comment on that, I think we've taken a position as, as an institution of education that we see it as part of our responsibility to improve skill building and self-regulation in our students. Right? So to your earlier point, which is an excellent one, taking a strictly disciplinary approach is not the right approach. Knowing that this is a challenge that is going to only
increase in its scope as, as students become more engaged in a digital world. So part of our charge is to create, you know, positive digital citizenship, help students develop the skills they need to self-regulate. And as a school, that's part of our philosophy and I think that's really been embedded into this new draft of a policy Speaker 1: Mr. Brand. Speaker 7: So just procedurally, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is it possible at some point in the year, later in the year to just get an update on how we think it's going? Is that what you're asking?
Speaker 19: Yes. Okay. Speaker 7: So at some Speaker 19: Point I would, I would prefer it to have some sort of data so that we can be objective about it and not, 'cause right now I'm coming to you with a anecdotal experiences when I talk to people at the cross country meets the field hockey games, the soccer field. Right? I what I hear from parents is that they want the, they want the phones outta the schools, which is what I think we're doing in terms of attention now, how much further we go. I think I, I would love to hear how this policy is working, if it's possible. I think it's always good for our committee to get numbers
and not just like a thumbs up or thumbs down, Speaker 1: Ms. Lathers. And then, yeah, can I just make an additional request that I'd like to see how this policy is working and I'd like at some point, you know, as we get through this year of, of through you walkthroughs and through the work you're doing, specifically what you're thinking about CDS studies, lunch and hallways. You know, like maybe it's not feasible, maybe it's not practical, but just, you know, what the, what the thinking is on those spaces. Speaker 19: I would add after school for middle school as well. Speaker 5: I, so adding to that, I don't, I'm,
I'm less interested in the data 'cause I don't know what data we would be collecting to be honest, but I would be interested in the feedback from principals and teachers. There's a couple of things that I'm cur, you know, and they could just come here and we can have a conversation with the principals as we have in the past. But the kinds of things I'm curious about is the kinds of concerns that we've heard from educators about we're adding one more thing to their list of responsibilities. So you have to manage a class, you have to focus on your scope and sequence. You have to, you know, the, the curriculum
and now you also have to be enforcing one more policy and one that is hard to enforce as, as we kind of discussed. So what is that ex And one of the things that I've heard is teachers be concerned about how will this impact relationship with students. You know, you wanna develop a positive relationship with students. If, if you're become the phone police, that might impact, you know, and some teachers are better probably than others and engaging teacher in students and building relationships and incorporating the discipline part to the, to the relationship building. But I'm curious just how that school culture, school climate relationships, like how does this policy,
and also, I mean for all of us to also keep in mind that this is an ever-evolving issue. Not to make things more complicated. I think this policy addresses it well, but in that event that Spark kindness had, one of the things that can, I forget if it was the movie or the, or parents or, or the panelists we're talking about, it's not just phones. There's watches, there's, there's the computers. I mean, kids will figure out if they want to text each other, they'll figure out how to do it. You don't wanna take away computers 'cause obviously, you know the laptops because that's important. But how do you, you know, that all part
of self-regulation too. How do you help students have the, the access to devices? 'cause you can't take away digital tools from student students altogether. But how do you teach 'em to using responsibility anyway, just complicating the whole situation just to make it more fun and to make Matt's life harder as a chair of the policy committee. Speaker 1: So I'm hearing, I'm hearing a, I'm hearing a lot of support for this policy and I'm also hearing some curiosity about how we can sort of assess if there's a need for additional
policy work on areas that are not currently in the scope of the current policy. Does that sound right? Yeah. Mr. Brand. I Speaker 7: Don't wanna put Dr. Bash on the spot, but I I would love to but I what you, I just want, like, I, I would love to hear your thoughts on what you think is like a viable, I don't want to over prescribe what you, what you should be looking for. I should spend your time. But like, it would be interesting to know what you think you might be able to learn and then bring back to us at some point. Speaker 10: Yeah, so I, I appreciate the conversation and, and all of the thoughtfulness
and sharing your own concerns as people. I was thinking to myself, it's like parents who see a screen ages who are, or who are raising children and having their own struggles, which I had too, by the way, with devices don't always have the window into what's having happening in the schools. I'm not trying to paint a Pollyanna picture, but we were in Kennedy today and did not see a, a single phone and we were in many classes. That's not to say they weren't some, but I actually am incredibly proud of the team in Natick and how well they've gotten a hold
of this dynamic in a very short time. I, as you were speaking, I was saying again, some philosophy, but to me this whole thing has to be paired, this policy in its current iteration with partnership, with partnership with families, with students. They should have a say, they should be involved. That's who's here dealing with this, with the school committee, with parents, et cetera, families, stu staff. So we have to do some work in our long-term plan. I think we should do some engagement around this as to where that iteration goes. And we have to educate our parent base too about the fact
that this idea of gradual release and how tightly coupled or loosely coupled we are on how strongly we're gonna kind of discipline people or be so strict or rigid. Elementary is much more strict than high school. What I do understand from the principals, 'cause I texted them over the weekend after we kind of saw emails and then after we had a lot of back and forth, I'm like, I'm done. We'll see if this either goes past or it goes to committee, they don't, the rule is not to have these out during club time, but I'm not sure if they are.
So I can tell you that's what the principals want, but I don't know what the, the practice is. I haven't asked the short I that's way too long of an answer. But the answer is, we, we have no problem going back and give you, giving you a status update. I don't know that we've ever kind of come in with an update without data where we could get data. I wanna be really thoughtful about how we get that. And I actually wanna make it sort of an anonymous because I almost want the teachers to be able to say what's really happening. Yeah, when I walk in as the superintendent, it doesn't mean it's what's happening. The, the second I turn the corner, I, it's not my first rodeo so I know that. So I wanna kind of hear, really hear
from our populace, all of them. So that can go nicely with our long-term plan. I will say that we did talk to principal blocker about CVS. I think that is an area that we do call time on learning. And while I don't advise right now or myself putting it into the policy, it's an area we're gonna start working on before the next iteration of this policy. And so we'll be happy to come back. I mean art's gonna do some walking through just to, to take a look. Not telling now it's on school committee, but I don't know who's watching tonight. No one Speaker 19: Know. Speaker 10: Alright, you're routed. So we'll have some sneaky people.
But you know, the kids will tell us anyway. They'll tell us what's going on. So we have plenty of work to do. This is not, this wouldn't end tonight even if we made the most perfect policy. 'cause it's all about operationalizing it. And I appreciate the committee's thoughtfulness around that tension between like making a good written policy and how to operationalize it. It's not easy. So of course we'll deliver that by the end of the year. And we're, I think the other thing that could bring this back to the committee earlier is if anything comes from the state, Speaker 1: Which Speaker 10: We, I don't have a crystal ball on that. Speaker 1: Thank you Dr. Bash. Ready to vote? Yes. Okay.
All in favor? Anyone against, anyone abstaining. So we've passed that 6, 0, 0 and thank you to everybody for all of your hard work on this. And to the policy subcommittee. I know this was a heavy lift and to Erin and Dr. Ferguson. Thank you. Speaker 7: Erin has one more? Speaker 1: Yep. Oh no, I know we've got another one. Yep. That one was all gone. Oh, okay. All right. So let's move on to the next one. Speaker 19: Okay. Yeah, Speaker 7: Go ahead. Sorry. Did we make any, I don't we, do you have anything to add to it? No, we didn't make any changes to this either. We had a first reading and now we're back.
Speaker 1: Okay. Alright. So any questions from the committee on the sexual harassment policy? Ms. Brunell? Speaker 19: I just, I don't have it up yet, but I, it's not the content, but in this memo, are you, are you changing where it is in the policy handbook? I spoke to our attorney and she advised we used just replaced with the, the old policy with the new, so AC and AC A B would be replaced. Okay. As as titles. And they're the same exact areas. Okay.
Can you gimme just, I just need to Speaker 1: It's okay. Yeah, no, take a minute. Speaker 20: Should make a motion. Speaker 1: Sure. Yep. Speaker 5: So I'll make a motion to replace the current, does it say, which I'm looking at the memo. I don't see the letters. It's the Speaker 15: AC and ac. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 5: To replace the original or the current AC and A CAB policies to the revised policies as outlined in the memo of September 17th, 2025. Speaker 7: Second. Speaker 1: Any discussion on the
motion or the policy Speaker 19: And what would the title, sorry, I'm having a hard time pulling it up. So what would the title change to? So AC right now, let me just open up the other one. I wanna do the same thing. So the, the new AC would be titled Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Procedures except for Title ix. Okay. And the new A CAB would be sexual harassment slash Title IX policy. Okay. And it, I, I believe it was sexual harassment only previously. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Speaker 1: Okay, are we ready to vote? Okay. All in favor?
Anyone against? Anyone? Abstaining? 6 0 0. Speaker 7: Is it all right if I give a quick rest of the policy subcommittee update? Yes, please. Oh good. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. So just quickly, we have another policy subcommittee meeting next week, next Tuesday at one 30. Just so people who are really interested in, in tuning in, we have a couple of policies there. One of them is another one that is time constrained. It's a career technical education. The CTE thing, you want to sue was gonna, Speaker 15: Sure.
This is a Dssi mandate to implement a new policy for college and career exploration because we don't have a technical high school, we don't have to worry about that part of the policy. But we do have to implement a middle school policy to ensure that we are providing our middle school students with opportunity to explore technical opportunities. So basically to ensure that we are collaborating with the technical high schools as well as the agricultural high schools, that they have opportunities to explore those pathways
and that we are supporting them in their application process and providing them with the knowledge and the information that they need to be able to make informed decision. The state has given us a very, very tight timeline that we need to have a policy in place by November 1st. That said, we have applied for an extent, yes, unreasonable in my opinion and in the opinion of all of my colleagues across the Commonwealth. So we have applied for an extension because they put that in place because clearly everybody needed it.
So we have applied for that and we are, I'm working collaboratively with all of the assistant superintendents around the Tri-County area to develop policies that are pretty consistent across these areas. So we're still working on that. But those policies also are required to contain the My cap scope and sequence, which luckily we're ahead of many other districts in the area because we've already implemented thanks to Dr. Ferguson
and Mrs. Carney and Mrs. Cohen, we've already implemented the My Cap work and we have that alive and well at our middle schools in the seventh and eighth grade. So it's just a matter of, of documenting that and adding that to the policy. So we will likely come to you next meeting with some information. It may not be the full fleshed out policy because we will have likely have been approved for the extension because they're giving that to most districts. I actually asked for February 1st on our extension
because it seems completely unreasonable to have it with such a tight turnaround. There are deadlines that we need to meet by October 15th, but they are things that we already have in place with Keef Tech in terms of communicating, educating, letting them know about the process, the timelines, having meetings with guidance counselors, the visits to Keef Tech, all of the things that we already have in place. It's just putting them into policy. Speaker 19: Do we only have to have them in, I'm sorry. Oh, go ahead ms. Do we only have to have them in place
with Keef Tech or do we have to have them in place with everybody? Not everybody, but with like more folk Gagg for Speaker 15: Example. So that's an interesting question that I'm trying to find the answer to. Yeah. 'cause it actually says technical and agricultural schools and I have tried to find out from my counterparts in other districts, oh how they're handling the Aggie and they, nobody seems to have an answer. No one seems to be in all the policies that I've seen, no one seems to be sharing with me what they are putting into place for the Aggie.
So I actually have tried to reach out to the Aggie without success. So I am putting a call into them tomorrow to see what policy they're putting into place and how we can collaborate. Because the policy actually says that we have to have the opportunity for students to visit the school at the high school's ex expense just like we do with Keef where Keef comes and picks up our students and takes them there Aggie based on this policy,
Aggie is supposed to do the same thing, but that's not how it works right now. So I have to figure out how Aggie is going to handle this new policy and what they have in place. But none of the other school districts that I've talked to in this area have been able to say how they're handling that. Speaker 19: Okay. It'll be curious to hear, 'cause Aggie's out of district for us. Right? It's because KE Tech doesn't have an agricultural pro program. So that's why our students go to ag. Ag, Norfolk, Aggie, otherwise that's in, they wouldn't be able to go to, right. It's not right. Speaker 15: But I've talked to other districts that ha have
Aggie close to them that would be in district and they still don't have a response. Okay. Speaker 19: Hopefully because we're out of district it won't be an issue. But, Speaker 7: So just as a, to wrap that up, in addition to that and a couple of other things, we are also non-specific policy related. We are also gonna have on the agenda a discussion about housing mechanism slash searchability of policies to make it easier to navigate finding content in policies. As much fun as it is to click on A, B, C, D and then open up all the PDFs individually and then search for what it is that you're looking for.
As part of that agenda, we're gonna have a discussion about improving the user experience. Speaker 15: I have an update on that as well. Speaker 7: Sue has an update on that as well. Speaker 15: Dennis and I meet every week to be, now that we don't have our Office of Digital learning, my office has taken that piece on. So Dennis and I meet every week and there are platforms that you can pay a lot of money to house that sort of program for school committees. And we don't think that that's the way to go because you're spending a lot of money to do something
that we can do in house. So Dennis and I are actually meeting again this week to talk about how we can do something in-house that won't cost us a whole lot of money that would be very efficient and do the same thing without, without the financial implications. So we're meeting Friday, we'll be coming to the subcommittee next week with a potential solution. Speaker 7: Great. I mean it, it is something that we've talked about for a while, is making sure that those who are interested, the mass, the massive amount of people in AIC
who love reading through all the policies have an easier way to do it. So that will be on the agenda as well. So again, 1:30 PM on October 14th, tune in. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Brand Budget subcommittee. Do you have any updates? We're gonna talk goals. So one of the questions that I had in, and I failed to meet the deadline on Friday to submit a school committee goal. 'cause it's not necessarily clear to me that there's a set, the goal's clear that we get a an FY 27 budget through that
meets student needs, meets district needs and is within what the money that exists and our, you know, remit on the budget subcommittee as I see it, is being a sounding board that can meet more frequently or as needed with the administration to support them in those efforts. And so it's kind of, I don't know whether I don't, I'm, I'm struggling to whether there needs to be a set a goal within the school committee and it's just, it seems like it's part of doing business like with the, with the policy subcommittee to be responsive to the needs to be, you know, I think, I like to think
that's what we're doing with you guys. You know, going deeper on fees or these questions to then be able to come back and be efficient within these meetings. I think that's what subcommittees are about. We did a lot of work last year to get the process in a way that I think is, you know, really clear. The book is really clear and I think we'll follow the same. So I don't know what the thoughts are on the broader committee of whether I know that that's gonna be a lot of the work of, you know, the subcommittee, but I don't know whether there is a separate goal there. And I just, that was kind of the feedback that in terms of updates from, from the budget subcommittee,
we have been a lot of the focus, we have like several meetings we met and we talked about starting the budget process, what the timeline would look like, are there updates to the, the school committee goals. We kind of went run through that. So we'd have proposals that will come forward for that. Obviously there've been ongoing discussions of fees and capital plan timelines, chapter 70 money, the monies that are coming in. So really just, you know, as, as Matt and Melissa start undertaking the work of building the budget and, and getting feedback from the town.
Just kind of being that sounding board for making that happen. But most of the work is really under the making each of the deadlines for the calendar. I don't know madam if you wanna talk about what that calendar looks like. You know, we have, we've seen kind of the first draft of it. We're still pretty early days there so I dunno, I think about getting you guys' thoughts, is it just kind of redundant to make that a goal or should we focus really on these other big things? The end. Okay, thank you. No, and I, I appreciate the update and part of the reason that, that I, that I asked,
I think it'll be really helpful just like when, for the policy subcommittee, when there's an upcoming meeting with an agenda, it'd be great to, to shed some, just share it here just because otherwise, you know, people don't look necessarily to see if there's a subcommittee agenda posted. So just so that we can be a, a little more communicative about the things that we're working on in the subcommittee. A hundred percent. Yeah. The, the last one that we had really was just talking through what the timeline would be for the timeline would be brief discussion on what our goal, we think that
what we said last year from the school committee in terms of our goals of school committee really hasn't changed for next year. It seems pretty consistent. So that will come forward at some point, but not really recommend any big changes, some concerns about how, you know, what the early numbers are gonna be from, you know, from the town and whether that's sufficient to meet our needs. I, and I'll let you know if, if you wanna share any more, but that's all really kind of early days. We did talk last week about how the capital plan timeline changed to January and asked for the schools are coming out, but really the work in the last was just kind of updates
around, okay, we're getting started so nothing really earth shattering to report, but I don't know if you guys wanna share anything else but I, I take your point that we can make sure any agendas are coming up and Okay. Yeah, thank you. No, I think that'll just be helpful for everyone to be aware of what's happening. Speaker 10: Yeah, I I think you summarized it really well. I think I remember the prior retreat where we talked just about a goal around this and I think I was probably one sort of raising it as an issue and we're feeling it now. Like I kind of said we're in those brackish waters after the override. Very grateful for it. But we're still adjusting to that.
And so I think to the extent there's a a will to like share a goal, I think my goal three, it mentions the budget subcommittee many times. And so I think that alignment there, which I did align that goal by the way, and we're not on that item to the budget plan that we reviewed at the subcommittee. The other thing we did just to add was we kind of went through the budget book and talked about what worked, what didn't. And I think we're planning on a little bit of a, building out some of the capital plan into the budget book. So that's the main thing that we talked about doing. We, we haven't drafted anything yet, but that's it.
Speaker 1: So then I guess my suggestion, and maybe we're moving from this topic into topic, talking about school committee goals. So maybe I'll save it for there, but if I, I think it might be good if, if there is a subcommittee or an activity that's mentioned in Dr. SP's goals that if we have a reflecting goal and I thought that's the question I wanted to ask. It was more, does it make sense and do we think it makes sense and, and we started to draft it up, but I would prefer to, and if we don't have, I can write it up so that it aligns
with assuming we, we approve the superintendent goals today. I can write up a school committee goal that aligns to that more clearly. 'cause I think the one Kathy was helping was writing up, I'm not sure the dates exactly aligned, Speaker 19: So I wanna just make sure it Speaker 1: Aligns to what you've laid out. Okay, I can do that. Alright, so should we move to superintendent goals then? And then we can have a discussion of our goals after that. Okay. So thank you Dr. Sp. Speaker 10: Great. I actually don't have many changes to offer here. I did take the committee's advice from last time and I actually really loaded up my team's sips,
which you had all the presentations on and I loaded up my cabinet teams, we call them dips department improvement plans and just made sure my deadlines in here were a hundred percent aligned. So I feel like that's extremely clean and I also compared it to the budget calendar that we put through the subcommittee and that Mr. Gillis prepared. So aside from a few budget like date adjustments that kind of made all that alignment happen, I feel like I did not do any major changes to these. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you Dr. Sp, any questions for members
of the committee? Ms. Brune? Speaker 19: Not on the goals at all. I think the goals are great. I think they are. I think I honestly, I'm amazed by you as a leader and admire your, what you take on and I'm grateful to it to you for it. The indicators, I just wanted to call our attention to the indicators. You have chosen 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 indicators. So I just wanted to make sure that we, you wanted to be evaluated on those seven. I I think the recommendation on the, on the evaluation is
between four and six indicators and there's a lot of overlap. I can, as everybody remember the EVA or jamon, this is new for you. But in addition to the actual individual goals, then each goal has like these indicators, for lack of a better word. And he did tell Oh you were, you're right. My bad. My bad. Yeah. Speaker 21: Weekend. Speaker 19: Oh right, okay, great. Okay, my bad. Sorry to assume there. So I just wanted to give, give a second to like let those indicators breathe because sometimes they get, they get lost when we set the goals
and then they become super important when we actually evaluate the goals. Speaker 10: Can I respond to that? Oh Speaker 1: Of course. Speaker 10: Thanks for bringing that up. This actually was intended to be the alignment of each of these goals, which is one very specific part of the eval. So to show where there's overlap, I remember I did it the same way last time and then we chose which ones the committee wanted me to focus on more tightly in the indicator portion of the eval. Speaker 19: So these ones are your suggestions in terms of like where the goal lines up, but you'd be open to other Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah. If you, if the, this just is purely goals, not which indicators I would be rated on.
I do think there's a lot, I, as you saw last time, I envisioned probably preparing a very similar memo with all of my evidence and there's a ton of overlap. Many of the artifacts were shared across my entire evaluation. So I'll be organized about it again, I do think that is a lot of areas for the committee to even consider. So if you wanna prioritize some, I can take a minute while, while we continue and kind of give a recommendation or I take whatever suggestion and discussion you offer. But those are the ones, these goals are
how I'm gonna demonstrate proficiency in all of the indicators for being a superintendent. I just don't, this is the work of the year. I can't separate it. So I'm okay with wherever you really choose to focus. Speaker 1: Dr. Fugman. Speaker 5: So I have a related question, and this may be for you. Does it make sense to have an item on the agenda around the super, the superintendent's evaluation where we select as indicators? I think it makes a lot of sense that we have seven that we know for a fact are aligned to the goals and to Pernell's point, we may wanna choose between four and six. It makes a lot of sense to choose four. Between four and six among those seven.
Obviously, you know, we can all discuss that. But I'm wondering if that would be worth an agenda item just to like think about, thoughtfully think about was redundant, Speaker 19: Is it an indicator Speaker 5: Indicator which indicators we want to select? Speaker 1: Yeah, no I think that's a good idea. And did we do something like that last year? Did we choose them at this time of year? Speaker 5: Did Speaker 10: We We did. We did it in the same meeting I did. Speaker 1: Did the same meeting, Speaker 5: Yeah. Oh, same meeting. Speaker 1: Okay. So, but we, I, I think we could, you know, if we wanted
to take a beat and think about the indicators and come back and vote that at the next meeting, we could vote the goals today. Do you think? No. Speaker 5: Yeah. Oh Speaker 1: Okay. Does that sound reasonable? Yeah, very. And then we can, and if you wanna give us a suggestion Sure. For what you think might be appropriate and we can think about it too. And we'll have that in this agenda item for the next meeting. Yeah, thanks Dr. Fon. That's a good suggestion. Okay. Do we have a motion Speaker 5: Move to approve the superintendent's goals Speaker 19: For the 25 for Speaker 5: 20 25, 20 20? Speaker 19: In general, in life in general.
Speaker 5: Every goal she ever Speaker 19: Sets. Second. Okay. Speaker 1: Any more discussion on the motion or the substance of it? No. Okay. All in favor? Anyone against nobody? Nobody abstaining. So 6 0 0. Speaker 19: Did you secretly want us to vote against them? Weed? Speaker 10: Yes. I'm taking the draft at watermark off right now. Great. It's ready for that. Okay. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: And then I, I just realized we didn't get to an agenda item. Is there any update from MSBC or do we need Speaker 19: That? Is she Sorry, is Dr. Bash gonna give her a your opinion on the indicators
Speaker 1: Before the next meeting? Speaker 19: Oh, I see. Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. So we'll have it as, as an agenda item, the indicators for the next meeting and we'll ask Dr. Bash to give us a suggestion. Perfect. Speaker 19: Okay, so the update from the ms, the MBC, what is it at the M-B-C-S-B-C-M-S-B-C Memorial School Building Committee? We, the vote passed at FinCon 12 0 0. The administration, at least you were a part of it, gave a really out of the park presentation about the need at Memorial
and in our elementary schools. And it just was very reassuring that FinCon voted unanimously with the members in the room 12 0 0 to support the $2.6 million a motion to fund the feasibility study for $2.6 million. Now that ultimately goes to town meeting and town meeting votes on it. And the funding source right now is indicated by the town administrator to be a set of bands.
But our part was to present the need and the case for the school and it was an out of the park knocked outta the park presentation and I was just like literally floored that it passed 12 0 0. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Brunell. And then I think we have one action item this week on that too, which is filming like a town meeting primer that I know Speaker 10: Dr. Yeah, we'll sit with the moderator for 10 minutes on the eighth and we're gonna have you do a little introduction and then we'll sit myself, Mr. Gillis and Ms. Principal Gani. They can only fit three at the table. So that's what we're doing. But he said he's gonna have some
kind of, he'll have some questions prepared and we shared a little excerpt of the slides. We're planning on doing the same presentation at town meeting. I don't see any reason we would not we would do that any differently. Yeah, that's the update. Yeah. Great. Thank Speaker 1: You. Thank you. Okay, so moving on to our last agenda item second to last, which is our school committee goals. So I shared them, I think everyone should have access to all three of the draft goal documents. I don't know if, and right as the meeting was starting, Dr. Fugman pointed out that there's a lot of overlap
between the two two communication goals, which I think is great 'cause it means we're all thinking about the same things. So I don't know if we wanna talk about those two together or if we wanna Yeah. Okay. So maybe Dr. Fugman, if you wanna lead off with your goal and then we can talk about or your team not your goal. Speaker 5: Sure. Yeah. So I had a pleasure of working with Mr. Patel and Ms. Gomes last night on our goals and our action steps. And I'll invite both of them to chime in. The one thing I'll say, and I think this is a good thing,
a a good mistake, is that our goal was, I think, look, looking back at the other goals, we were supposed to focus in specific groups. Our goal was actually general engagement, including outreach for specific groups. So if you look at our, the goal itself as it's stated is for us as a, as a, as a committee to engage with native public schools community and the NA community at large. So native public schools community means everyone who's part of the NA schools, community educators, et cetera in the NA community at large, including those who are not directly involved with the,
with the public schools, including targeted outreach for specific groups in our community. I'll quickly go through them in two buckets. The way I think about them, one, the first bucket is some ideas that we had for general engagement and then the second bucket is specific groups. So in general we talked about doing some of the things that we had done before, just making sure that we're doing it again. So, and really a lot of it revolves around that outreach spreadsheet that Ms. Brunell created last year. Just kind of going back to it, re
repopulating it, both in terms of events but also in terms of us setting up for those events. And that includes going to Farmers' Market at least once a month, going to na, public schools related events, plays, sports events, just making sure that there's a school committee presence that people are used to seeing us on the community. One specific kind of event that we wanna highlight are multicultural events. Obviously that might help with some of the specific outreach for specific groups. So for example, Benham has a multicultural, I think it's a multicultural event or multicultural day. So looking to see what are the other events throughout the,
throughout the schools and and attend Thoses as well to show support for promoting inclusion and diversity in our community. We also had a specific idea, I think this is Mr. Patel's, do you wanna share? No, it was a good one. The Facebook one. Speaker 11: I think one way to engage the community a little bit more would be to sort of put the school committee meetings and their agendas in their face and places that they usually visit. Obviously Farmer's Market was one of them, but Facebook with the comments turned off so that there's no deliberation, but just sort of letting them know like, hey,
tomorrow's meeting we'll be talking about this, this and this. Here's the link to the agenda, you can tune in and that's it. Right. Just something to sort of remind them of what's coming up. Because let's be honest, no one's really looking at the town website, going into the school committee and then checking their agenda on their own. And this might be something where, you know, if something like the cell phone policy was on there, I think we would've had more input from the community. Speaker 5: And what I'll add is we were thinking that could be, not to put too much on your plate, but to be the responsive of the chair, whoever the chair is moving forward. And in terms of turning off the comments, one, it could be explicitly stated, you know,
we are turning off the comments to avoid breaking open meeting law, but if you have comments, come to our meeting or email us. So as as in to say it's not, we don't want to hear the comments, we just don't want 'em through Facebook. We want them through other means. Speaker 1: Yeah. So do we have, we don't have a school committee Facebook page, do we? Oh Speaker 5: No. Speaker 1: Because if we had a page we could post things there and just never have any comments open. Right. Just spurred something else is, or also maybe an and or an and like should school committee have an Instagram
account that actually like some of the things that happen with all the other groups and follows the different sports team. Like just Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah. That can help populate the events so we know what events are happening. Speaker 1: Yeah, that came up in our goal discussion too. Ms. Purnell, you had that suggestion too about social media accounts. Speaker 19: Weston is one of the committees I know that has a social, they have an Instagram account and they post about their school committee meetings, things like that. Just as a way to just, and you know, and there is good thought. I think that if you're only waiting for people to come
to you, you're getting only people that are either able to invest that time, like have the privilege of coming, you know what I mean? You're like, it it can, it's not like full engagement. So there's a lot of support in other school boards across the country where they really try to push in more than just sit back and wait. Speaker 1: I mean nice to have an account that actually likes the celebratory things. Yep. That happened. Speaker 5: Yeah. So just to keep going with, so then the, the,
the rest of the document are the five specific populations or subgroups that we identified and the specific methods by which you wanna engage with them. So one is the senior citizens in general through the senior center. A couple of of specific ideas include, try and figure out how we can attend some of their events. So I know this leg board has a table or, or something along there. So see if we can go and discuss, have a conversation with 'em once a month on issues that are important to them if they have a flyer
or a newsletter or, or some sort of communication that we can include Nick Public Schools events. I think Ms. Flas, that was one of your ideas that we took and put in. We pretend like it was ours, which is not only letting them know of events but also providing free tickets to events like plays and musicals to bring them closer to the NA public schools community. So that's the senior, senior citizens medical parents. And Ms. Gomes, I dunno if you wanna say more about what we came up for the medical parents. Speaker 6: Yeah, so what we're kind of thinking about
and brainstorming ADI and I, and I think, I think a good time to present it would be at the back to school night, but doing some sort of open link like Google form for people that kind of asks parents like what they would like to hear or how they would like to hear from the school committee and what they would, you know, wanna share with us. And like I said, just making it, making it open and ongoing so that as things get brought up in real time, it's kind of like an open forum in a way.
Not forgetting anything shy. Speaker 5: No. Oh, sorry. Speaker 6: Okay. Speaker 5: No I think that was perfect and actually a good segue to the other groups, CPA PAC and Community with Q, which is the think L-G-B-T-Q group is to go go to the these groups and, and much like Ms. Gumm said about medical parents ask them how would they want us to be involved with 'em? How would they want us to be engaged with 'em? What will be most helpful to them? And and also ask them kinda a baseline starting now what has their, what has been their
experience with school committee. And then a year from now we can go back and ask them what has been your experience like this past week, this past year. And see, you know, that's kinda a measuring a measure of success with CACI know that we know that the chair of the current chairs will reach out to her with elpac. We were wondering that Mr. Tracy gonna Speaker 1: Help us? No, I've been in touch with Liz. Oh you have? Okay. Yeah, so, and I haven't been great so far this year, but they have a really nice calendar with all their events and I try to, I'll generally try to make, I mean you guys or I can hand it off to one of you guys,
Speaker 5: Well we can chat with you about how to engage with her. Like what are the kinds of questions you may wanna ask Speaker 1: With her. I hand it off from Danny and then they have really nice calendar and they have all their monthly meetings kind of laid out and I try to go to them but I'll check in with her too. Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean one of the things I was wondering is like how would they, you know, for example, I know in the past CA has come and presented, you know, what are some of the things they would want us to do? Yeah. Speaker 1: And you feel free to reach, reach out and you already did that. Feel free to reach out to her too or we can talk about it. Just to let you know that that's Speaker 5: And idea is to do that with all the groups so that we're asking the same question to all the groups. Speaker 10: We'll get back to you but there is an LPAC
meeting I believe next week. Oh. So we'll make sure we notify you of that. Yeah. Okay. Speaker 5: Yeah. And who the chair or the main contact person is so we can have an initial conversation. Speaker 10: I'm not even sure 'cause it's the first meeting. Oh. So I think Joe is kind of, oh I don't know that they've selected a chair yet. Oh. And our assistant director is helping to organize that. So we'll just make sure you know about it in case you'd like like to go. But I think that'll be a very early step that they do. Yeah. Speaker 5: And Jeremy, I dunno if you wanna talk about community. Speaker 11: Oh okay. Nope. I've just been to a couple community events with a Q events and they just meet
and they talk about, you know, the pressing issues that matter to them and I think it'd be great for us to have a presence there in case they wanna share something that impacts them. Speaker 5: The other thing we talked about, I don't think we actually wrote it here, but this is actually an overlap with the other group's goal, is the strategic plan is gonna be obviously one of the things that is on our minds in terms of getting community engagement. So obviously all this is meant to be about developing long-term engagement with these groups, with the community as a whole and with specific groups. But its planning is definitely a great entry point.
So we can have these general conversations but also make sure that one of the things we focus on this year is pulling these groups or getting their feedback on the strategic plan as one specific kind of short term way of engaging. Speaker 1: Great, thank you. Any questions about this goal before we move on to the other communication goal? I think this is, it's, I think it's great. It's really comprehensive. There's a lot lot happening here that's gonna be really productive. So yeah. Alright, so I don't know who, oh yeah, go ahead. So Speaker 19: In terms of the attending the school-based multicultural
events, I love that idea. I, I wonder how we can be proactive about making sure that we know about them. And I, the outreach spreadsheet was one way just to start to get items on our radar, you know, like for example the, this isn't a multicultural event, but the METCO back to school night is again, like, is next week I think so I don't know, like if any, I, it was a great experience for me last year to drive into Boston and like meet, actually meet families. I think the reverse commute is a,
is a really good thing to experience. And so I wonder if any of us have that in our, on our radar. But like, it would just be good to be more proactive so that we're not caught off guard. Like, oh shoot, can anyone get to this? Because I, you know, it's like, obviously we're all stretched thin and we, but we all care about this community so deeply. So, you know, at one point in our discussion we were talking about in years past school committee members passed, we each took on one school to be the liaison to one school that didn't move forward with the group
that I was speaking with. But I, I don't know if a practice like that would be helpful to have like somebody that had their eyes on Speaker 1: Schools Speaker 19: Or programming so that we could bring it to the awareness to the rest of the committee. Or if this tracking sheet is just enough, Speaker 1: Can we, can we just put events on our calendar and add school committee two of them and then people can yes or no? I mean like, it's so handy me on my Google calendar that just, if there's an interesting event, you just put it on there and then Speaker 19: That's a good, so instead of a tracking sheet, just have it put put on the Google calendar. Here's
Speaker 1: Just put it on the Google calendar and add school committee to it and then Speaker 19: Like that idea, I think it's a good Speaker 1: Idea. Can I just turn on and off my calendar's on my phone and I just, I'm like, ooh, there's the red thing. Yeah, maybe because Speaker 19: Red who has access to the school committee calendar? We all Speaker 1: Do any, we all do we all any of us can just add an event. Speaker 19: I'm gonna book you all up. No, I'm joking. I think that's a great idea. And then it's, Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm wondering, there's Speaker 1: Not much on Mike. I mean it's really only these meetings on the calendar and so, I mean it might not be perfect, but it's fa for me it's a heck of a lot faster to just pop in and click and add a meeting
and close it out than go to spreadsheet. Speaker 5: Yeah. What I'm thinking about is, is there a pro we can think about it, maybe Jim Khanna and I can think about like how do you, not just for the three of us to do it, but to be responsible, but how do we distribute responsibility? Like to your point, Catherine, like if we each take a school, I make sure that I put in all the brown events there or all the Benham events there and then was groups, you know, you put the seat back events, I put the Spark Kindness event. You know, like, so we just to make sure everything is there and, and we don't have any one person having to do all the work.
Speaker 1: Do we already have a calendar though? Doesn't the district calendar have all the individual school events on it? Or is that not, is it still school by school? Speaker 10: We're working on that. Okay. Okay. Among other things. But we do have a, a calendar, you can look at it right online and you can sort by schools. So if you just look up Natick Public School's calendar, you can actually select whether it's district or what school it is and you can see all the different events that the school has chosen to list there. But like, I just went to the district one and ELPAC isn't on there yet, so we're,
it's not fully populated. It's something that Dennis just kind of figured out that we had and set up in recent weeks. So Speaker 1: That would be ideal. Speaker 10: We're working on it and it would be ideal. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But that's a good resource to get information from to then put in our own school committee Google Calendar for things we want to sort of be aware of. Right. So, okay. No, thank you for sharing that Dr. Sp Yeah, I, I like that idea of having it in the calendar. 'cause I do think it's easier than having to remember you got that email about event three weeks from now.
Yeah. Okay. Super. Who, Matt or Catherine does one of you wanna speak to the, the goal work we did? You don't, Speaker 19: I I was gonna say the same thing. I feel like I've talked a lot, but since I wasn't here initially, I'll, I'll, I'll step in. Well, we started the conversation hoping to align with what the goals we have heard from Dr. Bash, the district goals and the school improvement schools. So our document starts with those and we really zeroed into this strategic objective number two and Dr.
SP's goal number three. So then if that you go down into the second page, the goal that we formulated is to is during the 25 26 school year communicate about the strategic plan MSBA and budget processes to stakeholders in multiple ways to ensure the school committee maximizes engagement with all stakeholders. So the idea, I shy, when you were presenting your goal, I was thinking you were like really talking about the people and the process and this goal does work really well with that. It's more about the content.
And so these were three items that we feel like we really need to make sure that we get really good feedback about. And that would support doctor's fashion team in their goal number two and three. So short of reading the actual items. Yeah, Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think we wanted to build on some of the success we had with what we did in the superintendent search and the communication around the override where we were out there in the community and we were talking to many, many people who we don't usually hear from. So we definitely wanted to, to try to use some of that,
you know, go to that model of, of really reaching out to multiple stakeholder holders when we have like a high important item like the budget, like the strategic plan where we really do want a lot of feedback. I think there's some overlap here with some of the activities, right? About going in person to meetings. I think you've listed a lot of the actual places where we want to be. We also thought about doing sort of more sort of in depth communication in, in terms of like a community workshop around the strategic plan was one idea potentially,
you know, really trying to support the MSBC committee with, you know, helping them to get the outreach that they need for the input of the community as they, you know, move that work forward next year. You know, I think Catherine pointed us to other communities who have like a budget 1 0 1 workshop when they're developing their budget to really sort of teach the community and stakeholders about what the school budget's about and what circuit breaker is and what those other components are. So I think those were sort of three big pieces of communication that we thought might need a lot of
work to get people invested. Ms. Flas, you look like you, I just think that Catherine should do tiktoks on how the budget is Speaker 19: Developed. Speaker 10: Second, Speaker 19: Some would argue Speaker 5: That's a motion. Speaker 7: I think it was a motion. Speaker 19: I, I decline the offer, but thank you. It's Speaker 7: Too late. It's been seconded. Speaker 5: Let's Speaker 19: Vote I vote against myself again. Speaker 1: So, yeah, so ours is a little, it's a little drafty compared to the other one that has the more detailed action items. But I think that the substance of this is, is again, just, I, I like the way you put it, Catherine, about the content
of what we want, the sort of key engagement to be with, and of course we wanted to make sure that we were fully aligned with Dr. SP's goals and, and that anything we did would be in support of those goals and not in any way in conflict. I feel like it's Speaker 10: Very aligned. Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Yes. And then I just shared with Elise and Linda, an updated version of the budget one, which is basically a copy and paste of the goal in terms of timelines and deliverables. Yes. Okay. Did you share, did you email it to all of us?
I didn't email it to all 'cause I, okay. I think I can forward this, just share it. Speaker 19: Are we gonna have the strategic plan on an agenda item in the near future? Speaker 10: I think the intention, and it's in my goal number two, is to get a memo out prior to the October 7th with what Dr. Husman and I have been working on, which is essentially getting bids from different people to help us facilitate this work. And I think we're pretty close. It's really a matter of money and kind of negotiation a little bit. We have one more to receive, so we'll give an update on that.
But I hope the school committee finds it to be like a much more liftable thing based on how we've organized it. I don't know if you wanna add more to that. Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean looking at the goal that you developed, I think some of the ideas that you came up with are things that we would, were proposing a consultant help us with. Much like the superintendent search. So actually I keep telling Dr. Sp like, oh this reminds me exactly of the superintendent search. So a lot of what is being proposed by the different vendors is very including but, well, let's just leave it that. But is, is very similar in the process
to the superintendent search and is really, relies heavily on community engagement. Speaker 10: I didn't wanna move forward on that until you guys actually voted Michaels in, which is tonight. Speaker 1: One final comment. The only departure from your goal in the goal suggested is aligned to actually explicitly review and approve new fee structures. Speaker 7: Yeah, perfect. Speaker 1: In March or whatever. Other than that, okay, how do we feel about these goals? Do we want to do any more work? Are we happy with sort of approving them in their current format and revisiting them with an update?
No Speaker 19: Move to approve the school committee's goals as presented in the October 6th agenda for the 25, 26 year Speaker 7: Second. Speaker 5: I just a quick comment. I I I will support that. But Mr. Patel, Combs and I as an example, like we talked about getting together again just to make sure that we are operationalizing it. We, we already kinda did a lot of that. Part of what we talked about is making sure we're incorporating the feedback that we got from the committee, which I don't know if we got a lot of it,
but, well, some, we got some feedback but, and I'm wondering if in general we wanna make it kind of a practice that the groups to develop the goals also kind of keep track of them and kind of help push them forward just to make sure that there's action, there's like accountability behind the goal, not accountability. Just action. Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I, I think that's a great idea and I was gonna propose that we have this on, you know, on our school committee agenda for an update maybe every other meeting or every third meeting, whatever we think is a,
a good cadence so that we're having that regular check-in and we can hear about any updates or if, if any changes need to be made to the goals too, we can make them. Yeah. Okay. Any other discussion or questions? Yes. Speaker 11: Sort of unrelated but I see a lot a senior center in both the goals. I was wondering if there's a possibility of doing a school committee versus select board pickleball tournament or something at the Speaker 7: Senior center. We would crush them. Speaker 1: Oh would Speaker 19: I did practice this weekend? Yeah, I'm ready. Speaker 7: I was a var C 10. We crush them. Let's do it.
Speaker 11: I think, you know, I think it'd be something fun we could do as a, an event between the two boards and Speaker 1: Okay. Could we play Scrabble instead or something? Speaker 7: Well we can do both Speaker 5: Pickleball. It doesn't have to be a team sport 'cause pickleball is two by two. Speaker 7: That's a team sport. I don't know where you two people as a team Speaker 1: Stations. Yeah. Speaker 19: I picked Matt be my teammate Speaker 7: Doing I wanna win badly. Okay. Speaker 1: Alright, well we've got our lead pickleball player. I don't even know the terminology for pickleball, so, so, okay. That's actually a really fun idea. I mean, yeah, we can explore with Bruce tomorrow. We can do some Olympics. Absolutely. Yeah, we can do some Olympics.
There can be, you know that's a good idea. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, we used to do lab Olympics in the lab and Speaker 5: The winter gets to figure out the budget. Speaker 1: Oh, Speaker 7: I dunno if I like that idea. Speaker 5: No, no, no. As in like we get whatever budget request we want. Speaker 1: I think I needs some. Alright. Alright. Any other discussion before we vote? Okay. All in favor? Anyone against? Anyone? Abstaining. Okay, so school committee role goals are approved. 6 0 0. One last agenda item. Speaker 7: Motion to Speaker 5: Adjourn. Speaker 1: Second. All in favor? We are adjourned.
Thank you everybody.