Speaker 1: Got a quorum. So we'll start the meeting at 6:02 PM It is Monday, September 8th, is that right? It is. I'm looking at the online. That's right. I'm pulled up the wrong agenda. Monday, September 8th. And this is the school committee and we're gonna do roll call. Mr. Patel. Present Ms. Lathers. Present Mr. Brand Present. Dr. Fugman present. Ms. Collins here. And I am present. So we have a quorum. I'd like to make motion to enter executive session to discuss strategy with respect to litigation.
If an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigation position of the public body and the chair. So declares and I do declare and to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with non-union personnel or to conduct collective bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with non-union personnel. Second, we vote on that. Mr. Patel? Yes. Ms. Lathers? Yes. Mr. Brand? Yes. Dr. Fugman? Yes. Ms. Collins? Yes. And I am a yes. So we will now enter executive session
and we will return to open session at approximately 6:35 PM and open session. Speaker 2: Okay. All right. Speaker 1: So I will, I'll call us back to order. Thank you everybody. We've reconvened at 6:48 PM So prior to executive session, we had done roll call. So we will now stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silence. Speaker 2: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God individual with liberty
and justice for all. Speaker 1: We take that moment of silence to honor our troops serving us domestically and abroad. So we'll now go to, before we get to announcements, I guess I have an announcement. So during the executive session, we realized that we had two agenda items that we, we needed to add to the main agenda. So we're going to bring those forward and if we get a two thirds vote of the school committee, they'll be added to the agenda. The two agenda items are a vote on an side letter with EAN, unit A. And the second agenda is an item to update the director
of communications position to be the director of communications and community engagement and to change the salary range. Speaker 3: So, so moved. Second. Speaker 1: Okay. So we'll vote on that. All in favor? And looks like we have a unanimous vote. So those two agenda items will be added to the chairman's report. Okay. So now we'll now move to announcements. Sure. Speaker 4: Well, with great pleasure. I'd like to congratulate and announce that two of Natick seniors have written a book on chemistry. They were featured on Boston 25 and now 10 tree books in downtown Natick will be hosting
them this coming Sunday, September 14th from one to two for a book signing. The book is called Have to Look At It. Building, building Blocks of the World Around Us. A Kids' Guide to Chemistry and there's really interesting and fun chemistry experiments you can do from home and you can come meet these two lovely seniors. Both Michael and Addie are seniors at Nataka and they're willing and happy to sign your books at 10 Tree Books. So thank you to our partner, 10 Tree Books and great job to the students. Speaker 1: Awesome Dr. Fugman.
Speaker 5: So this is just on behalf of Spark Kindness, but they have a great program this week, September 10th at this Wednesday, September 10th at 6:30 PM in Wilson Middle School screen readers growing up in the digital age elementary school edition. So they've screened this movie before and had programs before for the middle school. I believe this one is focused on elementary school students and it has among the panelists our own NA public schools own Dr. Ferguson as well as principals, Carney Cohen and Gani, who will be there to talk
to parents after the viewing. So again, Wilson Middle School this Wednesday at 6:30 PM Speaker 1: Excellent. Thank you Dr. Fugman. And anybody else? Oh, Ms. Lathers. Speaker 3: And we had a very successful NAIC days last weekend and we did our annual put in your name to lead a Pledge of Allegiance at a school committee meeting. We are gonna pick two names because we have so many meetings and we think everyone should get the privilege and I'll let the odds are as good as possible. Jamon pick the, because Speaker 4: We had so many entries, not because we have so many meetings. Speaker 3: Your wedding spreading the love. Catherine spreading the love. Here we go.
Sasha. Mad, mad Sasha, just say Sasha. Sasha is there Community. The first one is Sasha. We will be in contact with you. Nice job Sasha. Nice job. And the second they're sticking together, this is Speaker 1: Very, does it say what grade they're in? Speaker 3: It doesn't has it Speaker 1: Unfortunately. Speaker 3: And this one is Edward. Alright, so if you, Edward are listening, you will be called Speaker 1: Congratulations. And congratulations to a successful Natick days. Thank you to everyone who was able to volunteer and attend before the rain took out our table.
So thank you. Yes. Okay, Dr. Stash. Speaker 6: Good evening. I wanted to provide an update on outdoor athletics and activities. Following last week's guidance from the Department of Health, we recognize that some community members remain disappointed by the decision made on Friday afternoon to reschedule the Natick High School football game to Saturday, September 6th at 10:00 AM and to suspend outdoor athletics and other evening events until after 7:00 PM Until further notice, this decision was made following the Natick Health Department advising us on Friday at 12:28 PM via email
that all athletic and outdoor activities be strictly concluded before dusk. It's always our priority to protect the health and safety of our students, athletes, and community members. And we also know how important ath athletics and team sports are for our students, our families, and the community. They bring people together, provide structure, and are an essential part of the school experience. That's why we're working to minimize Disp disruption while ensuring safety. We've also been proactive in addressing mosquito risk. Spraying was completed at Natick High School and West Street Fields on August 14th at all remaining schools on August 18th, again at Kennedy
and Brown on September 4th. And we are asking for additional spraying to go take to take place this Wednesday for all schools. Combined with anticipated cooler evening temperatures and expanded community education about mosquito related illnesses and prevention, including signage at all. Lighted fields we're hopeful the suspension of evening events can be lifted as early as next week pending updated guidance from the Department of Health. In the meantime, athletic director Tim Collins has been coordinating with coaches, administrators, and neighboring districts to adjust schedules.
Thanks for all of these efforts. All the games and practices will continue this week in earlier time slots or alternate locations. We appreciate the community's patience and support as we follow public health recommendations And take every step to protect our students and families. We ask that people please monitor email and social media for updates. We will notify you as soon as decisions are made. And finally, thanks to athletics Director Tim Collins, NHS Principal Speaker 1: Josepha Blocker, Newton Public Schools and our town partners, including the police department and the Health Department of Health for their swift collaboration in safely rescheduling the
football game and adjusting outdoor events this week. Thank you Dr. Fash. Okay. Any other announcements before we move to public speak? Okay. 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 speed is not a time for debate or response to comments by the school committee. I did not receive any emails of people wanting to do public speak. I don't think we have anyone in the room.
I see somebody online. Okay. So I think we have, sorry, one person online. Okay. Mr. Mangan, are you able to unmute him? Linda? Speaker 7: I think I unmuted myself. Did I? Speaker 8: I can hear. Speaker 7: You can hear me? Yeah. Great. Thanks for fitting me. And I know I didn't make the one hour cutoff for public speak, just with the workday and everything like that and realizing that, you know, both the committee can't debate, neither can school administration. But I did spend a fair amount of the day discussing the,
the current situation regarding West no virus with many of the captain's parents. So certainly I don't wanna portray anything that I share as an opinion that's comprehensive of all parents. All scenarios fully vetted and it's nice to hear that it's, it's a certainly a topic that came in sideways, unexpected from the mosquitoes testing positive. And I appreciate that everybody's doing the best that they can. And perhaps, you know, this is more to share a message that would also be well directed at the Department of Public Health, which, which I'll share with them.
But I think as we think a little bit about the, you know, the countermeasures that we deploy, that we have control over within the school department, I do think it's important to realize that the West novel virus is not something that is entirely not novel or highly contagious. Like other recent pathogens that hit the school department sideways in an unexpected way, it's not transmissible from person to person. Mosquitoes carry it. And adequate me measures can be taken on an individual basis for those that are at most risk being the immunocompromised and the elderly to protect themselves from
dire outcomes or mortality. It's really not a situation that, from what I've been able to see up the CDC or some of the other public health websites have had a de a detrimental impact to the younger otherwise healthy. And those folks that are immunocompromised or otherwise in a fragile immune state are used to these sorts of measures 365 days a year in all settings that they're in. You know, lastly I wanna say that I think this is not a NI novel virus. So it's not the type of situation where we have to be stepping cautiously through the countermeasures
that we deploy, given that the West Novel virus is endemic across the United States in many settings and communities that look like ours, that have the outdoor activities that we do. And in my knowledge and research that I did over the past three days, there's not any evidence that either we saw dramatically increased mortality or that any sort of healthcare system was overwhelmed creating public health emergency in communities that are more densely populated, that have high, much higher prevalence of West Nile virus being
tested positive in mosquitoes. Texas, Illinois, New York, North Dakota, believe it or not, Florida. And many of the areas down the southeast come to mind. So I do realize that the school department has to defer to the recommendation of public health, which is why this is a, perhaps a shared message, not a targeted message. And also a message that acknowledges the hard work, the complicated nature, the unexpected introduction of something like this into what we need to be thinking about from a school operation standpoint. That being said, I do think it's worth
carefully revisiting any future changes to the schedule pursuant to a risk about the West Nile virus and the potential impact it could have on those that attend or participate in Natick public school events. And I'll try to send the same message as, as best I can with the health department. I also mentioned we tried to collaborate over the course of the day being the captain's parents for field hockey, football, both soccer teams as well as Natick cheer. I don't think I left anybody out. And there seemed to be a a, a similar sentiment that it's something
that if there is a way to reconsider and recalibrate the intervention, it's something that would be appreciated by the parents. And we believe the students, there is a petition being circulated. I think it has almost over 700 signatures at this point. And I think that further speaks to the, the will of the community. So that being said, I appreciate your consideration. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you. I don't see anybody else. Is there anybody else on the zoom? Okay, given that we'll conclude public speak. So we'll now move into the next section of the agenda,
which is the consent agenda. Do we have a motion? Teacher, rep? Oh you are right. Welcome. Welcome to our new school year. Yes, Mr. Wood. Speaker 9: Thank you Madam Chair. I don't have any prepared remarks, but that's not gonna stop me from not speaking. No, I just, I simply wanted to say welcome back to everyone. It's, it's that wonderful time of the year when the air is starting to turn crisp just like it did back in the old days. School has started, our staff is back at work. We are thrilled to have all contracts set and in writing and shared out.
We are happy to have the, some stability even with some new faces in central office and with our administrators. And as always, we appreciate the collaborative nature and the support that we get from central office and from the school committee. I think it's gonna be a great year. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Wood and our student rep. Speaker 10: Thank you. I think just on, again, the whole mosquitoes thing, I think obviously we understand the board of Health is doing their job and trying to keep us safe, but at the same time I do think a lot of students are frustrated. Especially I think Friday night games are a big tradition in
the school and it brings a lot of students together and a big sense of unity under the lights are a big part of high school. And I think it's a, those moments for a lot of us are like the most memorable moments of high school. And again, we understand safety has to come first, but I think what the students would really appreciate is clear and regular communication about how long these restrictions might last and just ways to keep the same spirit alive this fall. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 6: Yeah, I just wanna say thank you for speaking on their behalf and we plan to communi communicate this week for sure. And students will be included. So thank you for eloquently expressing how students are feeling.
We hear you. Speaker 1: Okay. And do we have Ms. Gomes on the Zoom for METCO rep Ms. Gomes? Oh she did. Oh she got disconnected. She, she said she was having some internet issues so, alright, if she comes back we can circle back to her to see if she'd like to make, make a statement or an update. Okay. Alright. So moving on to the consent agenda. Do we have a motion? So Speaker 11: Moved. Motion to approve the consent agenda. Speaker 1: Second. Okay. All in favor? Anyone against consent? Agenda passes 7 0 0.
Okay, so let's go first to the agenda items that we added. So in executive session we made two votes. One was to approve a side letter with EAN, unit A. Could someone give just a quick summary of that? Speaker 12: Sure. I can give a quick summary of that. Which one? So, oh Speaker 1: Yeah, do you wanna introduce yourself? I think you Speaker 12: Sure. My name is Jackie Menza. I'm the director of human Resources here at Natick Public Schools. Back when the unit a contract was being negotiated, there was an agreement
around music educator and concert events in terms of anything outside of two evening events needing to be approved and teachers needing to be compensated for their time. Both sides agree that that was a discussion and agree to the language, but it was inadvertently left out of the, the contract. And so I have been working with the unit A presidents and we drafted up this side letter to just make sure that that language gets into the contract. Additionally, there was just a very little,
a very quick oversight and a, a table of intramural rates was left in the contract when it was just supposed to be in the appendix. It's an easy fix, but we also added that to the side letter. So we're just memorializing those agreements that had been made back in the spring. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Any questions from the committee before we vote on this? So if I could have a motion to approve the side letter that was approved in, I guess in executive session. So moved second. Okay. Any discussion before we vote?
Alright. All in favor? Anyone against? Anyone? Abstaining. Okay, so that passed 7 0 0 and then the second item we added was an update to the non-res schedule. And again, if we could just have just a quick overview of the changes that were made to the position, to the salary, would that be possible? Thank you. Speaker 6: Yeah, we're, so we're just recommending an increase in that based on a market analysis that puts it at a, a range of one 20 to 1 45.
And that's really the reason we have taken a good look at the job description and making sure it's appropriate in scope to kind of the work we're doing in the future in terms of a long-term plan and visioning and really being a systems and and strategic leader alongside of us. So that's the reason for the change. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. And then the second one was the, just to change the name of it, to be director of Community of Communications and Community Engagement. Right. So it's slightly expanding the role as well. So, alright, if I could have a motion from somebody to approve this
Speaker 3: Move. Approve the change in the non-res schedule for the director of communications and community engagement to one 20 to 1 45 Speaker 6: Second. Speaker 1: Okay. All in favor? Anyone against? Anyone abstaining. So that passes 7 0 0. Thank you. Okay. Okay, so we'll just go back to updates. I don't know Ms. Gomes, if you wanted to give any update as our METCO representative and it's fine if you do not want to as well kind of putting you on the spot.
Speaker 13: No worries. Hi everyone. I apologize. My internet is not cooperating with me today. No updates other than I reached out to Audi this morning and kind of was just like, hey, you know, I'd love to connect to with families and kind of introduce myself so that I can kind of be the voice for metco. And we're kind of, I mean I just sent the email today, but that's kind of where my focus is just to connect with the families so that I can kind of forward any of their questions or comments or concerns to the group. Speaker 1: Okay, great. Thank you so much.
Speaker 13: Thank you. Speaker 1: Okay, so now we'll move to, do you wanna, do you want, should we wanna go back and forth? Speaker 6: Any way you wanna Speaker 1: Order? Okay. So I think it might be timely actually to talk about the decision and vote tracker that we've been proposing. So I don't know if, if everyone saw it in the agenda, but this was a suggestion from the administration that we could keep an additional document in addition to our minutes that would be a tracker of key votes that we've had just so that they're easier
to find without digging through minutes. So just wanted to share that with everyone and see if there's any discussion on that or any concern about doing that. Speaker 13: Okay. Speaker 1: Awesome. Where Speaker 14: Would the responsibility lie Speaker 1: In in keeping it updated? I think that would be with Ms. McGrath. Speaker 14: Yeah, it's, it's certainly easier if there's something like that when you're not finding something in minutes. Like the food service contract where I had to read through in nor in minutes to find out it wasn't there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I think we, we make a lot of decisions and, and I think this will really help us to keep organized and be able to refer back to key documents in a timely fashion. Dr. Speaker 5: Fugman, just a question. So this form that the example specifically mentions policy, but would this be used for any votes? Speaker 6: I can answer that. Yeah. So this was, we actually took this framework from the accept collaborative and they had it populated. It's every vote and every policy that gets updated. She just pre-populated the policies and we'll pre, we'll populate the votes if the board wants to move along with this.
Speaker 5: So it just an example, the last two votes we just took tonight would Yeah, yeah, Speaker 6: Exactly. Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's great. Speaker 1: Mr Brand, Speaker 11: I mean we might be nitpicking here. Would we be putting things like every single vote like consent agenda and what was in the consent agenda or I mean I, this sounds silly but like motions to adjourn, those are votes. No, Speaker 1: No, I think this is more key pieces of information. Speaker 6: So I think we should decide what the committee wants and would find useful. I think a journey, although it would be fun to see your name on that vote all the time. Constantly. I'm feel, I'm feeling I say
that in very nice way. I think it, I think it would be the core votes of the committee. There's a page for obviously executive session votes as well. So this would not be shared beyond the committee. This is an internal, I think tool. And I think what we should do is play with it. If you wanna give us guidance now regarding consent agenda, it's a great question but otherwise anything that happens in main session and off the consent would be on here. But it's up to the committee how you wanna handle the, the consent. Speaker 1: Did you have a suggestion Mr. Brand? Yes. Speaker 11: Not to include the consent agenda. Yeah. And so essentially things that are action items on the,
the public agenda are the things that, I mean you have to draw a line somewhere. Yep. And so that's where I guess I would draw the line. Speaker 1: Yep. I see some nods. Thumbs up from Ms. Lathers. Yeah. Any other discussion about that Mr. Patel? Speaker 15: What kind of dis what kind of detail this is gonna go into? Is it going to list who voted what or it's just gonna be total vote score? Speaker 6: Again, we're gonna, we wanna go look at the exemplar from the other, but it will be the score. Like it'll be seven, like the votes we did today were 7, 0, 0, but I don't think it would put names that's in the minutes and we link to the minutes. It'll be fairly abbreviated.
I think if we keep the same width of these columns, I don't think it would ever be deeper than an inch. Does that make sense? Who? Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. Ms. Ms. Collins. Yeah. Speaker 14: I see the value of this in directing me to which set of minutes I need to go look at not to being the end all and be all of yeah. Information. So I think the briefer we keep it a more likely it is to stay updated and B, the better it is 'cause we are not doing it in depth for one and we didn't do it for another.
And I just think it consistency would be helpful there. Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with that. Sort of treating it as an index to our minutes. Exactly. Some ways or key key parts to our minutes. Ms. Brunell, Speaker 4: I just suggest then changing the second column instead of saying policy just say subject or vote. Topic. Topic. Thank you. So date, topic, synopsis and then under the column vote I think it should say passed or failed and then people can go into the di the the minutes if they wanna know what if the vote passed.
So you don't even have to write 7 0 0. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 4: I, I really appreciate this 'cause I think it's very difficult and that is one thing I hope we can improve on so that people can find things easier. Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Do we feel like this is something we need to vote on or are we comfortable just moving ahead as it is? Speaker 4: Would we put it on the vote tracker? Speaker 1: I don't right. I I, I feel like we don't need to vote on this but if there's a desire to have this memorialized I would go with that. Okay, great. So thank you very much Ms. McGrath for doing this for us. We appreciate it Speaker 16: Constantly. Speaker 1: Okay. And then the second agenda item that I wanted
to talk about was this, the meeting calendar. And we actually had, this is my fault, we have two, it's on the agenda twice but I think it's under the, let find the right one. It's under the school committee annual agenda and reporting calendar. Speaker 16: Shorter. Speaker 1: So this is, Yep. So this is something we started Ms. Brunelle and I started working on with Dr.
Fash was just trying to sort of map out what needs to happen and kind of the different seasons of school committee and sort of have a rough guide as to what types of items need to come to us on an agenda when we need to do key votes, which pieces of information the administration would like us to have, which pieces we would like to have from the administration. So this is just kind of a first draft of that just for your input.
In consideration. Happy to open it up for discussion unless you wanted to say something about it. Dr. Stash. Okay. Ms. Brunell, Speaker 4: Thank you. Thanks for following up about this both of you. One item that I think could be added would be in January, a mid-year report on goals, that's part of the superintendent evaluation, that's part of the recommendation around superintendent evaluation. So that could go either on the school committee side or the, currently you have the superintendent evaluation on the school administration side, but I would add that
and I, I see the capital budget update, but I also wonder on the school committee side, if we should, sorry, if we should have capital a discussion of capital items or if that's enough just to have it on the budget. Speaker 16: Would that be the right timing? December? Speaker 17: Yeah, I mean I think we, Speaker 4: Well tell me more what you meant about capital budget update. So Speaker 17: This one would be for the fall meeting, but I think you, if you're gonna vote on any budget items,
you're always gonna discuss it. So we put compile a capital budget request list. I, I would expect the committee would, would have questions about the items, maybe hear some presentations and prioritize how we proceed because sometimes our number of requests exceed the, the amount of funds that are available and that's not just the school department. That could be many departments in town. So some direct feedback from the school committee on that is, is helpful. So later in the meeting I further down on the agenda,
we'll go over the, the revision for fall town meeting. Speaker 4: So are you saying that that would happen in the spring then? So that in the, in the fall this Speaker 17: Right, it would happen later this fall for next year but because okay we have a fall town meeting and a, in a spring annual town meeting, you know, right now we need to make an adjustment for the fall town meeting at the end of September. Speaker 4: And the November update would be, or sorry, the December update on capital budget would be what passed at fall town meeting.
Speaker 17: It would be that and what our requests are likely to be to the town in prioritizing them Speaker 4: For the next year, Speaker 17: For FY 27. Yeah, Speaker 4: So I guess that's my point. I think that it should probably be on our agenda more than once in a year. Speaker 1: Ms. Collins, Speaker 14: I would support Ms. Weber. Ms Bola I think is going and states should be there three times one for what's actually being proposed for fall town meeting. One of what's actually being proposed for Springtown meeting and the capital budget is due December 1st. So somewhere before that we should have some input on
what we want on our capital budget, what programs administration is suggesting and what things that we as the committee really wanna push towards. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 14: That would be how I would view it. Ms Bri obviously can speak for herself but no I think that's Speaker 4: Good. I never knew that about the December 1st. Yeah, Speaker 14: That's when the capital budget is due December 1st. Okay. To the town, like the whole town supposed to be released on December 1st according to bylaws or the charter one or the other. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Collins, that's really helpful. Ms. Lathers Speaker 3: Going you take a moment to express my ignorance that I have realized on this whole capital planning in general, I, you know to plus years in, I think, you know
we've spent a lot of time in the operational but I'm just still really unclear about the overall and that's maybe just point me to the right education, the overall process for our capital plan, our capital budget with the town who approves and when. Plus I think I know where it comes out of because what I feel like is it comes out, we have a meeting, we look at a spreadsheet that says these are the things that we wanna prioritize. Then I get a little bit blind to it and I feel like a lot of the items on that list are kind of the must have immediate needs emergency. We need cameras, we need cameras at such and such
or we have, we got a grant for, it's like kind of more urgent needs and, and then we have an M-S-B-M-S-B-A process for like big new schools. I don't really know where and how and what the process is to talk about strategic capital planning that are not like $500,000 emergencies or a hundred thousand, a hundred million dollars schools. Dr. Sp. Speaker 6: Yep. I actually asked Mr. Gillis to kind of talk about this a little bit in our item called capital asks in the superintendent, but I'm gonna steal a slight bit of thunder
and then he has a memo to kind of share too. I've had the same question and so we're undertaking Mr. Gillis has like initiated a, a form and some messaging with all of our principles to submit strategic capital asks. I think our operations or facilities side would say we have operational capital, capital covered and I believe that they do and that's a process they manage if something's with the AC units or filters or windows or things like that. But that's strategic capital kind of flow and ask is probably something we can improve upon.
Part of me says we should really be thinking that about that and addressing it in our long-term plan, but I think Mr. Gillis was willing to kind of move in and start that process now. So we're gonna cast a bigger net and actually just hear from people. And in addition to that, Ms. Bel is going to work with our ADCO this Thursday in a process of kind of as we think about MSBA and vision, what we want there, really asking people what would their dream school be? What would the, what are the pieces that are missing right now so we can kind of capture some, some ideas about capital
that's a little bit more creative process to hear a voice, some visioning. So we are taking on a few things this year to build out the start of that type of work. And so I'm sure Mr. Gillis is gonna talk more about that later. But I think I I have some of the same questions. Speaker 3: No, that makes sense. And in the memos covering the things that we've been talking about that are kind of the immediate needs and I think we, it sounds like we'll get, be more proactive about pulling those out, but I also think we're not gonna pull out when are the, when are the module like what's gonna happen with the mods at like Loja Brown and when are they gonna be not usable? And, and like I I'm just, I mean I'm a broken record
and I know I'm a broken record about the plan for, you know, our elementary schools in this town, like as fundamentally critical part of anything we're doing with MSBA. 'cause I don't want, you know, there to be more, I mean we know you only get new schools every like 10 years it feels like. And I don't know what the, I don't know what the runway is for those two schools. So Speaker 6: We heard, we've heard you, I I want you to feel heard. It's not a quick, it's hard. Visioning is hard and voice of people in the system is hard. And so I think we're really taking that on
honestly in an extremely busy launch of a school year. A very aggressive and appropriate I think vision for the year, but still kind of make carving out time to start to hear people so we can vision better and bring that to the committee. So we, we really have heard you and we're actually excited about that work. And I think part of the process that Mac can can describe that whether at this meeting or maybe in more depth at a future one is us submitting kind of a five year vision and and each year we get to do that. So this year, next year, if we start the long-term plan might be even deeper look, but we would have some stuff
to start putting in there on the more strategic side even this year for, for the five year vision window. Speaker 1: And that would be for the December 1st deadline or? Speaker 17: Yeah, we, so I I guess we're, we're shifting the agenda item a a little bit here. If, if you want we can, Speaker 1: Well I think we're talking about when to put it into the school committee agenda for our attention. So if that's going to be something that's submitted, we'd wanna have some discussion as a committee well in advance of any deadline to complete that. Speaker 17: So we'll be asking the staff to get their requests
and, and you know, ideas back to us by October 14th. And by staff I mean the principals or the budget directors, the people that have a responsibility for managing portion of the, the school's budget. They'll bring back some things and before they even sort of finalize it, they'll have the opportunity to meet with me, Deborah Shatz or Arlene Morris in my office to help them sort of structure what they're ask is and you know, we can, we can provide some feedback
for yes this is capital, no this is not really capital, things like that. Then we'll compile them and we'll have a bigger list to sort of whittle through. We can bring that, you know, somewhat edited to the school committee. 'cause if somebody's asking for a window re repair and they put it in capital and it really is just a repair, we're not gonna have you guys review that, bring it back to this group. So we can do that for the second meeting in October or the first meeting in November.
Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. Yes, Dr. Speaker 6: Sp just very briefly, I'd recommend, you know, I think our, one of our first budget subcommittee agenda items would be probably to go over the schedule for budget and we can include capital in that and make sure that the committee likes the timing inside this agenda for anything to do with finance. It might be a nice place to start just to get the wiggles out. Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. Ms. Brunell, Speaker 4: Just really quick to go back to big picture. I, this, this document was,
we put this together honestly I was like why do we meet so often? What, what do we do in our meetings every time? So we have about 22 meetings scheduled a year and so this document was a start this year to look back to look at big picture to say like what is it that we need to do or want to do throughout the year. So I really appreciate the effort or like the product that has been created here and I think that it will probably change after we do it for a year and say well that's not as much value add as we try
to refine and refine and refine and just make this a tighter experience for everybody around the table. Speaker 1: Yeah, no thank you And I would invite the entire committee to really go through this and if you see things that you think we should take off, propose taking them off because I think we all want our time spent here to be of the highest value and to provide the most like efficient and effective work for, for all the students here in Natick. So if we can whittle this down to the really the essential work that we need to do, then I think that that we're doing everyone a good service.
So this is a draft, so please feel free to email me with any modifications you might want to change. It's a living document so we'll post it publicly somewhere and just like we had in the past and we can make changes. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Good discussion everybody. Appreciate it. Okay. And then I have an one update before we turn to superintendent's report and that's, there's a FinCon meeting scheduled on
September 30th at which the warrant article for the MSBA project is going to be discussed. So just putting that on everyone's radar that we are likely gonna need to speak to that, but we're also gonna need, need to be mindful that we don't have a quorum if we're gonna debate at that meeting. So we should coordinate in advance who's gonna attend the meeting and who might be speaking as a committee member versus a citizen meeting. Ah, that is a good question. Generally seven o'clock meetings, seven o'clock. I don't think we have that yet. Yeah, they don't.
No, I think they just alerted us that, that we were on the docket for September 30th, so, and was there anything you wanted to add about the content of that meeting? Dr. Sash? Speaker 6: I don't think yet. We're still working with town administration to get their town council and bond council to approve of an updated motion. There's still discussions about the funding and all of those details. Then it has to go through MSBA. I do have a draft memo for fin com that we're working on. So I feel like the pa, the packaging of it is quite tight, but we're just waiting on kind of the movement from the town
before we can get to exact motion language. It's gonna change a bit. Speaker 1: Yeah. And our next meeting is the day before the FinCon meeting. So Speaker 6: Yeah, if I get an update before then I'm happy to send an email if that would work. Sure. With a memo update. Speaker 1: That'd be great. Thank you. Okay, super. Okay, so we'll retain the last two items on the chairman's report for later and we'll move over to the superintendent's report. Speaker 6: Great. Do you have a preference on the order I go into? 'cause Not at all. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna start at the top and really just, we did have some people coming to our opening days,
but I felt like we, I'd really like to just take a few minutes to explain the bridge plan for the year so that as you see all of the SIP plans that are come to you next, the next two meetings that you really see that alignment and cohesion between the vision that we've built for the district for this year, which we're calling a bridge plan and the SIP plans or school improvement plans. So going to the bridge plan overview, every single one of our teachers received this presentation in opening days as we can kind of did what we called our roadshow. Can you put it in slideshow mode please?
Great. And then the next slide. Okay, so briefly, I think everybody's seen this because I showed it last year. These are the priorities. Our staff were very relieved when they saw there's no changes in district priorities for the school year that made them relax and there really aren't, these are huge buckets. Psychological safety, relation building, instructional excellence and communication and leadership development. So we kept those, that's steady. These will be our buckets for quite a while. The next slide, which I did present to you last spring, so I don't, I'm not gonna go into the detail here. This was the details when we said it was a 30,000 foot view
of what we're calling strategic objectives or things that are bite-sized for the year. And I'm gonna go into it in a minute in a visual, which I think is a little easier to read. Let's go to the next slide. So this is all predicated on a theory of action. There's a little jargon here, but I'll explain it. The theory of action is that if we strengthen tier one, and I'll explain what those are in the in a minute, but they're those foundational systems around instruction, social emotional learning and behavior systems within multi-tiered systems of support. While we set clear leadership expectations and align our professional learning, then all
of our students will benefit. Can you hit the next button? So those four objectives that were on our prior page are shown in this visual that I hope will be something that kind of gets repeated throughout the district. The first one, psychological safety. That's one of our big priorities. The strategic objective for this year is tier one, social, emotional and behavior systems. Can you hit the next? The next is really a lot of the school committee work around in partnership, I hope with me around unifying a vision and values with stakeholders in a long-term plan. So that's around relationship building. The third one, instructional excellence is
around tier one academic instruction. So you see on the left and the right of heavy focus on tier one. And then the last one is all about building leadership capacity with professional development. And all of that will lead to student success. So this is a visual that sort of represents our bridge, bridge plan. And the next slide, MTSS, that's a framework behind this bridge plan. It's important to note because tier one could sound jargony. Tier one is around core instruction for all every single student. We should see every single student in that.
Tier two is around targeted small group supports. We do that pretty well so that we're not shining the light there this year. We're shining that light on tier one. And then tier three, again we do pretty well intensive individual individualized supports. This bridge year plan focus is all around strengthening tier one. When I presented this to staff, I said, you're gonna have to have the elevator speech where you walk away and you know what it is. The answer is tier one and the next one. So the way these are DESI visuals around tier one and tier one are those universal, universal supports for all students. Every student should get them in every classroom.
They're grounded in inclusion and universal design for learning. Our focus this year on instructional vision is around formative assessment in every classroom. I'll talk about that in a minute. And this focuses on all three things of academics, social, emotional learning and behavior. And they're very critical. The better we have tier one, the less kids we move into tier two and tier three supports. Okay, the next one is, represents the kind of priorities around tier one. The first one is an instructional vision. If you remember my entry findings, we didn't really have a cohesive instructional vision.
So we're making one that is centered on formative assessment in every classroom. The why to strengthen our daily teaching by using real time evidence to guide learning. We should know in every single class whether kids are getting it or not. And what we're doing in response to that. In PBIS, our positive behavior systems, this is around SEL. So we wanna make sure we're implementing those in every single school with fidelity to ensure consistent expectations and support and a and a system around incentives and and asset based thinking. And then the last one I've spoken a lot about this last
year, again, this is tier one on the behavior side, developing, co-developing with our staff, students and families. A code of conduct that would be K to 12 and very systematic for every school. That's to build shared agreements that reflect our values across every single school. So that's the tier one, those are the three projects. You'll see them also in my goals. This is another reason I'm showing this to you now. The next piece is around building the capacity. So that's that strategic objective. Number four. The first one, we already launched this. We've hired a partner that I've worked with in the past who's fabulous at coaching
and he's working already with all of our coaches across the district, providing really targeted PD for our leaders around coaching to make sure we're strengthening our instructional supports to implement tier one. So we're supporting our staff. The next one is around evaluation. It's been a very long time, my understanding if ever that we've done a PD on evaluation. So Sue is launching this module on the 11th of September where every single person who evaluates a teacher in this district or any employee in this district goes through this training. It's aligned to the contract and it's aligned to DSI rubrics.
So that's already started. We want every single teacher to feel they, they all have the same system about evaluation no matter what school, no matter what leader they work with. And last year's that three to five year long-term plan so that we're leading a district-wide process to establish the unifying vision and shared values and ensure that we have kind of district coherence for the next several years. So those are the core elements of the bridge plan. And this piece kind of gives, this is the cheat sheet to the elevator speech, which is really the bridge plan this year is focusing on tier one, building leadership capacity and really staying strong on the things we are strong
with tier the tier two systems. And that should lay right into a three to five year strategic plan that we would start next year that has instructional, operational and governance. Priority. Priority. So think budget, think policy, all the things we do together that aren't so much internal facing to our staff who are focusing more on the teaching and learning and social wellbeing of students. That we will co-create this and it will be system led with school connection. And then the last one is just a message that instructional vision always evolves. Once we're done with formative assessment, we'll move on to the next thing, whatever the data is saying we should focus on.
And that's really the overall bridge plan that we wanted to make sure that you were, you had the elevator speech too. Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. Questions from the committee? Comments, Ms. Collins? Speaker 14: Thank you. The training for evaluators, that's regardless of union, Speaker 18: Correct? It's following the current system that we have, but we are working with the, we are following the new contract with the labor management group. Mr. Wood and I have already met and we are pulling a labor management group together to talk about the evaluation system moving forward.
So we are continuing with what's already in the contract and what is already agreed upon with the contract for the evaluation system. So it's just calibrating what's already in process and what we already have agreed upon in terms of the rubric. So our goal setting that we already have, our timelines that we already have and calibrating what's already agreed upon in our contract. Speaker 14: I just wanna push back a little bit. You say contract, we have six of them. Speaker 18: This is for unit A for unit B, the teacher rubric.
Yep. That we have. Speaker 14: Okay. Because the paras, I believe in their contract have an evaluation form that is part of their contract. Do they not? Speaker 18: They have a different evaluation. This is around our goal setting and our unit A and unit B. Speaker 14: Okay. So that goes back to my question, is it regardless of union? And the answer is no, Speaker 18: Right? Sorry. It is unit A and unity B. Speaker 14: Thank you. That's what I was trying to understand. I know that's the majority of our, of our staff, but I just want to Yeah, Dr. SP had said all employees who are evaluating
and I just wanna be clear that Yep. Speaker 6: Educators, I've done this in a previous district and when I did it, we rolled out the para version of the eval training the next year. So that's fair. That's fine. Speaker 14: I just don't want a para to be sitting at home going, wait a minute. Yeah, nobody talked to me about this. That's all. That's all I'm trying to do is head that off. Speaker 6: And technically it's the eval for unit B as well because our principals are receiving this for, for evaluation of unit B. So I say unit A and B that, Speaker 14: That's fine. I just, Speaker 5: Okay, Dr. Fugman, so I have more of a comment. So there's a lot here that I'm excited about,
but I'll just talk about one thing, just not because I'm excited about others, but just 'cause there's one thing that I, I'll just mention, but I'm really excited about the, the evaluation piece being about growth focused evaluation. I was recently reading a book about organizational structure, sorry, organizational culture. And they said that the first thing you can learn about any organization culture is by looking at how they evaluate staff when the evaluation is, even if it's perceived as punitive or about what am I doing right or wrong? It negatively impacts your relationship
between the evaluator and the EV p no evaluator the tid. Whereas a growth focused evaluation. Yeah. Promotes professional development from not, sorry, not professional, professional growth. It tells people who work in the organization that this is about, that it's an organization that cares about them, that cares about their growth, cares about where they're going in their career. And therefore it also clearly strengths the relationship between the evaluator and the evaluated, which is oftentimes people who work every day together, right? So it's, it's not just about the evaluation
but the relationship, the ongoing relationship throughout the year, even when it's not the, the valuation can impact the relationship throughout the whole year. So I'm excited about it. It just says a lot about our organization and, and how much we care about growth, professional growth. Speaker 1: Other comments, questions? No, thank you very much. Great. Exciting year ahead of us. Speaker 6: Excellent. So the next piece is superintendent goals. I feel like what I wanna say here is what I say to principals and to other in my cabinet is my belief around goals. 'cause these are huge, but I, I feel like as a leader
I should have the why wouldn't my goals not exactly mirror those that I'm asking the staff to do. And so last year was a lot about kind of entry plan in my first year. So I didn't ever explain how I lead my team and have led teams in the past, which is around this concept of stretch goals. I really believe in stretch goals and I do not mind if this year I, I'm crazy for saying this, if we don't hit exemplary on every single goal, I'm okay with that because I'm much more authentic around the process we take because I am so convinced this bridge plan and these details are the right work, but it is big.
So I'm just gonna acknowledge that. I mean the, the first goal here could is the bridge plan that's out that's facing towards the educators. So I'm naming that I could have made it three goals and left it there, but I felt like I would be missing a couple other important things. So just wanted you to understand that when you read them, if you had a reaction that these were fairly large. So I know you've likely read them the first, I'm not gonna go into, it's the same exact format, format as the prior year. But what I propose for the committee's feedback is the first one
around strengthening tier one academics, SEL and behavior. And you see that whole line of items that I had in the first page. Those around instructional vision around SEL and PBIS and the code of conduct. I'm not leading every single piece of this. That's what, as a superintendent, I have people on my team who are leading this and their dips, what we're calling dips or department improvement plans all align directly to this, all the sips for the schools. You will see when you hear align directly to these goals as well. It's, it's very threaded this year in a way that we haven't done I think in the past.
So unless you want me to, I'm not gonna read through every single piece of this. Okay. Goal two, the district improvement goal is around development of the district's long-term strategic plan. I definitely don't see myself doing this in isolation. Isolation, especially with the goals that I think the committee's starting to think about. And especially because we've already named a liaison or the committee's named Dr. Folkman as a liaison for that long-term plan work. So this is really just cementing my own focus on it for the year. And this one's around the superintendent and school committee will collaboratively develop
and adopt a three to five year district strategic plan that sets long-term priorities for teaching, learning, equity operations and resource allocation. So that's that one. And then the last one is around strategic budget development and alignment. And this is just because one of the core pieces I need to do is make sure we're in good financial shape as we move in out of this year and into long-term plan. And as we, as I kind of said at our most recent retreat, as we absorb the realities that we're very grateful for, which is the passing of the override, but also with some new fiscal realities.
We have a new contract and we have a new override and, and we're gonna see where we land with projections from the town and I just wanna make sure we're absorbing that really strategically and well for the organization. So that's the elevator speech. I'll give on that. Happy to answer any questions or take any feedback. Oh, I have a fourth one. Forgot about that. I'm a little extra building capacity for coaching and evaluation. Again, this is that I wanted to make sure I got every single one of the strategic objectives. So this rolls out kind of ensuring that the team builds that capacity around the coaching and evaluation. I'm extremely excited about it. Ms.
B's leading it with her team and I've every bit of faith that's gonna go well. Speaker 1: Thank you. Comments from the committee. Ms. Brunell, Speaker 4: Thank you for giving us us your rationale. 'cause I I, my comments to you before the meeting in our form were that the goals are that the first goal could be your goal for the entire year. That that could be broken out into three different goals. I hear your rationale and so as I said in my comments, I would support your goals. If I do have a couple suggestions though, in goal two, I think that we should be including facilities management and improvements in capital planning
in the language explicitly. Okay. And I think you were, you were probably speaking about that when you talked about operations, but I just think we should name those items And that then relates to my comment on the professional practice goal goal number four. And this is again, I will support what you have here because I think a person's goal should be, should come from the person. But the professional practice goal that we've seen in the past have been about specifically the superintendent and where that person wanted to deepen or grow. And I know you're such a team focused person, so I
understand why you wrote the professional practice goal the way that you did. I do wonder about a totally different type of goal for you, for goal, that professional practice goal that would, and I'm, I'm not sure if you still are doing the coaching this year. Yeah, you still have the coach. So I, I would, again, I'll support it. But I wonder about bringing in what the coach and you perhaps, or an area that you may want to be thinking of just for your personal practice. I have an opinion, but again,
I think it should come from you. Speaker 6: Okay. Good feedback. I, I mean I'm doing NIP and I feel like that I could readily put that in here. I think that I'm, what I'm really asking my coach to help me focus on this year is the long-term plan, the strength of hers. I think she has a lot of good artifacts related to it. So I think there's some nice overlap with that goal. I'm sure there's many, many things that I could grow and learn from, but I think right now, in a second year really the, the first year that's not like as much listening is just to help my team land the planes on their, the other pieces of their goals.
That's what's gonna keep me up at night, to be honest. But I'm open to any, you know, I could readily write one on Nsip. Speaker 1: I wanted to circle back and I see other hands as well. But I just wanted to ask a clarifying question. So about the strategic plan and adding the capital, I thought we had had that discussion over the summer and that that wasn't going to be part of the strategic plan. So I'm curious, I guess Ms. Brunell, where you think that would fit in here? 'cause I thought we, I thought we had the discussion that that would be sort of the next phase and if somebody else on the committee remembers things differently. Speaker 4: Well I, I would not support a ca a strategic plan
that doesn't have capital in it because strategic plan to me is a three to five year plan about the whole district. So I don't, what I heard in our this summer was that we weren't going to approach capital this coming year, but that I think our strategic plan would a hundred percent have capital in it. Speaker 1: I saw Ms. Lather's hand as well. Did you have, did you wanna speak on that topic Ms. Collins? I don't like whore you we first. Okay. Alright. Speaker 3: I can hear both. Thanks From my recollection of the summer in that when we talk about this being a lot, and I'm speaking as the person that is the broken record
around like our strategic capital planning and I think that Melissa, you said I can't take that on this year. I have to draw the line somewhere and I will begrudgingly respect that and which is why So I mean I think the question, Catherine, you're raising is whether or not our plan to talk capital planning should be in the strategic plan and what the timeline should be around that. So that likely seems reasonable that we say, okay, we're gonna have a plan for element like if we don't do it this year. So I that that's kind of just the feedback up to you. But that's my recollection is like, no, you can't do it.
I mean my only challenge there is it's gonna make some very hard voting for me personally if we start hitting MSBA deadlines without it. But I, that's just my recollection. We heard this summer be Speaker 14: Back to where I was gonna jump in before. Go ahead Ms. Thomas in the microphone in the first present. Oh, thank you. In the first presentation you talked about the strategic plan being a next year thing, but now you've got it in your this year goals and Speaker 6: Develop to develop it. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 14: Are, so is your intention then
to have a completed strategic plan by June 30th? Speaker 6: I think we'd have an outline of a strategic plan by June 30th and having, but not implementing it, not beginning the implementation of it. Okay. Speaker 14: So what you said in the first presentation about was about the implementation of the three to five year plan, not the creation of the three to five year plan. Right. And I think that both Catherine and Kate are right, that you can't do it without talking about capital, but doesn't mean you have to talk about capital in order to do, you have to just make a provision that you know, these are the chunks
in year two, we're going to do this expanded piece on this topic kind of thing. You just can't ignore the fact that capital is an important source for us. It's vital. Speaker 3: Dr. Sp Speaker 6: Very fair. Very right. Thanks for the clarification around like bridge plan into long term. I think we could probably just, this is semantics to be honest, because I a hundred percent know capital needs to be in a long-term plan. And honestly it's what I heard in my entry plan findings that there was a lack of that. And so to me a lot of the engagement, which would even start with kind of a summary of the what was in the findings
that didn't apply to a bridge plan, but like more applied to a long-term plan. Shy and I already talked about this, that we'll pull those out as a first step and capital is alive and well in that story. It's just not mentioned explicitly here, nor are many things mentioned exp like what it's mentioned in, as in the top line is it set long-term priorities for teaching learning equity operations and resource allocation. Which resource allocation I would say are staffing, its capital and operational budget. But we can be more explicit 'cause we wouldn't want people to read this and think it was omitted, especially because we had an entry plan
where people raised it as a concern. So I I'm saying it's semantics. It was always in my mind in, in this plan. Speaker 1: Okay, Dr. Speaker 5: Fugman, so I have two comments, one about this conversation and then just about the, the goals in general. So I see GOLD two, which is the superintendent's goal as being, first of all being separate from the school committee goals. And so obviously we can have a capital plan of our own starting now in terms of what the goal is. Goal two is development of a strategic strategic plan through an in depth community engagement process,
which I envision the school committee as a whole playing a really important role as well as all other community stakeholders, educators, parents, community members at large. I can't imagine on one hand I can't imagine that capital plan is not gonna come up. But on the other hand, I'm also concerned about picking one specific element and saying, because it, it also, you know, we could also say I wouldn't approve a strategic plan that doesn't talk about academic growth for students. You know, that's, in fact that's maybe even more critical.
'cause that's the mission of education. So getting to a point where now where before we even developed the plan or before we even engaged the community, we are pre-populating things is a little bit concerning to me. Again, not because I don't think that capital planning is an is shouldn't be here, but just because then we get into whole debate about, well what else should be pre-populated? So if we're gonna say capital plan, well I also definitely want, you know, student social emotional wellbeing here 'cause that's important or family engagement or transparent budgeting. These are all really important values and that's exactly what the strategic plan is gonna do.
And to Kathy's point, I think Dr. Sp clarified, but this year the implementation is implementation of the bridge plan and the development of a, of a long-term strategic plan, which we implemented next year. So we're taking a whole year both as a administration and school committee to work on this together. So I'm just a little bit concerned about pre-populating items again, just because there's all all kinds of other things that I would put as critical as capital planning. Having said that, I, you know, what I like to do is, as I just did before, is not to comment on everything,
but like what things jump in me, all four goals. And I'm not just saying that to be nice, but like if, if I were to write them, I would probably come up with the same ones. I live breathe MTSS in my professional works. Obviously goal one makes sense to me. Goal two, we've already discussed. And goal four I've already mentioned. What I wanna focus on is a goal is goal three. And, and I'm especially excited and I think this is important for the community to hear the fact that you very boldly talk about this concept of post override fiscal realities. 'cause I feel like we spent last year, many of us
both in this room and outside this room asking the voters, the, the taxpayers to pay more taxes for an override. And implicit, if not even explicitly in that ask is was to the voters we are asking you to pay to have taxes go up as part of a broader plan to be more fiscally responsible. We, this demonstrates, we did not forget, we're not forgetting this promise. This promise is still very much in our well for you.
These are your goals. So in your forefront, I I I share that to say yes, we very much need to be focusing on how do we continue to find the right balance between excellent education system and a fiduciary responsibility, which is a very challenging balance, but an important one. So this is, I I think it's, I I'm excited. This is explicitly stated demonstrating I think to the community that that promise we made pre override to be more fiscally responsible is, is very much still there.
Speaker 3: Thank you Dr. Fon. Ms. Lathers, just two quick comments. I don't, I'm not overly concerned even go against myself about having capital planning listed in goal two because a lot of my concerns are around equity and equity is explicitly listed. And if we don't have a plan that ensures equity across all our schools, then that already starts to, to come out super knit on goal three is just the dates. I mean I, the first time I read it through, it didn't jump at me, but I mean town meeting is approved, like the budget has
to be done before springtown meeting. And so just the wording around by June, 2026 deliver recommended FY 27. Yeah. Budget. Yeah, I think there's some date, maybe it's semantics again, but I think it should more clearly reconcile to that. And then on the professional, honestly, like I don't really, I feel like in year two, being a superintendent successfully being a superintendent for the first time is enough of professional development. So I feel okay about there not being a particularly like these are, these are basic things that have to be done
by a superintendent that a lot of them you're doing for the first time. And so succeeding in doing it the first time, I feel like love to, like, I think what Catherine was saying is supporting your growth as a professional and wanting you to make sure you like, have that reflected for your own benefit. But totally on board if that's too far for next year. Thank you. Speaker 1: Anybody else? Okay. Yeah, no, I, I'll, I'll just chime in. I don't wanna repeat anything that anyone else said, but I can just say that I'm super excited about these goals and I really love that you've just drawn us a really
visual picture combining this with your bridge plan slides to where all this work is happening and all the people that are gonna be engaged in doing this work. And I just, you know, really appreciate that. So thank you for, for parsing it in that way and I'm looking forward to hearing about all the many, many people who are going to be bringing us pieces and reports that will support these, these goals being executed. So thank you. And did you want to bring these back to us
for the next meeting for us to vote on them? Did you want to? Yeah, Speaker 6: I think that's probably right. I mean the next meeting you'll see it's really up to the committee if you wanna hear all the sit plans before voting 'em. I also wanna acknowledge that I took the liberty of mentioning subcommittees the budget subcommittee or the committee in general. So if there is feedback when the committee finalizes goals, I think it might be smart to vote these after you are sure about your own goals. So we make sure they dovetail nicely. So this is the work I'm doing, right? So I'm, I have every patience to make sure
we get the cohesion that we need. Speaker 1: Okay. Alright. So then does the committee have a preference? Our next meeting is the 29th or it could be the meeting in October where we bring these back. Speaker 3: When are we getting the sip? Speaker 6: You'll have four on September 29th and four on October 6th. Speaker 3: I mean I guess it feels like, I think we're all directly agreed upon if we could, could we finalize our goals in the September 29th meeting and then vote these at the end of the October meeting so we would've heard them all. I wouldn't expect there to be any changes, but if something we hear, does that make sense? Speaker 1: Yeah. Anybody else in the committee have a thought about that or an opinion disagree with that?
Okay, that makes sense that if that's okay with you Dr. Stash. Yeah, that's perfect. Super. Speaker 19: Okay, Speaker 6: So this is just wanting to go through it. I almost put it in the consent agenda but I, I put it here because anticipated you might wanna talk about the, the one change that we wanted to kind of highlight. This is on the student handbooks. It's exactly the same deck as last year because it's kind of the same message around the first, the slide number two, which is around approval of handbooks and directives.
So every school has their own one. The superintendent and team review those, we have to make sure they're very aligned to school committee policy. We have done that and they are, which is the main big thing. If, if there were any disconnects we'd be bringing a different conversation here. So this is all in alignment with policy CHCA and we're confirming that these handbooks reflect the standards expectations set by the committee and the district the next, I gave a presentation on June 16th around the big changes we were making. If you imagine getting to one handbook for students in native public schools, that takes some time.
So this is kind of our first dip in that where we really align the student discipline sections. Anything that's really we're calling phase one of the code of conduct. Anything that had to do with legal like 37 h and a half, which there's legal laws around that. We kind of changed those sections of the code of conduct already. We have cell phone use, that's the same thing for everybody. AI piece. That's the same for everybody. So this is the piece we've kind of systematized. The piece that changed that we just wanted to highlight was a change to the preschool lottery process. Last year's handbook had a change. This one has a tiny change. This is an evolution
of just making sure we're infusing this process with equity. So this year the three big things are we're extending that advertisement period to give more people time to learn about this process. They're randomizing the lottery selection. We started that last year, but the biggest thing is we're actually adding a wait list because some people pull out or don't have it. So this way it's not at the discretion of anybody in the preschool. It's actually a lottery process because there's a deeper wait list. They think it should be around 15 because usually they go into about 10. So this is the really the addition is the wait list.
And I think it's, it's an excellent idea. So I was happy to support it. And then the last slide is just the links. We have the links over time if you really love diving deep. But these are all the handbooks that are already done by every one of our schools. And you have the links to them. Speaker 1: Thank you. Questions from the committee, Ms. Collins? Speaker 14: Thank you. First, thanks for the clarification on this preschool process because that always gathers a lot of discussion. Yeah. In negotiations we were gonna make some changes to the handbooks somewhere to the staff handbook.
And I thought a couple were to the student handbook. Have we made sure those got in? Speaker 6: No, not yet because we did the handbooks a lot in the spring and we just kind of finalized it. So I would anticipate we could either, we can go back and look at that. You're exactly right. Some of them had to do I believe with conferences, things like that. So I think what we'll do is take a look at what those were and bring back to the committee the timing. 'cause we can always change handbooks in the middle of the year as long as we kind of talk to you about it. We have not done anything with that yet. Okay. Speaker 14: I just wanna make sure we don't, we didn't leave that at the negotiating table, that's all.
No, Speaker 6: I mean it's our intention to actually make kind of what we're calling like a tickler of all the things that are supposed to be done from the contract so that we can stay on top of it and that would be one of them. So thanks for the reminder. Speaker 14: Well it engendered so much conversation and negotiations to finally decide we're gonna stop talking about it and put in a handbook. I don't wanna lose that Speaker 6: Fair. Speaker 20: What are we gonna Speaker 17: Talk about in three years? Speaker 6: Handbooks, we shop conferences, Speaker 1: Taking things outta the Speaker 6: Handbook. Said he'll be here in three years. That's what I heard. I did too. Get a signature Speaker 1: And vote that right away. Mr. Wood. Yeah, I just have one question about the wait list.
Is that wait list anticipated? Like would that carry throughout the academic year? So, or is it just for over the summer period? Do you Speaker 6: Know what I mean? Like I think it would come from when they initiate it until they populate the preschool class. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 6: I, I'll ask Cory about that. 'cause it might, Speaker 1: Because if you have new students coming to the preschool partway through the year on EAPs, sometimes you have to add more community students, right? Speaker 6: I mean if we depleted the wait list, we could always in, we could go again. I was just curious. Yeah, I don't know. Do you know Sue? I think that the preschool director feels very confident
that a 15 person wait list would be sufficient. But we'll learn 'cause it's the first time we're doing it. Okay. Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. No, I'm excited about that. 'cause my kids went to the preschool and they got off a wait list to get in there. So it was very exciting. So good stuff. Awesome. Okay. And you, okay, so we'll conclude the discussion. The student handbooks. Speaker 6: We have two more items. The capital ask memo. Do you wanna go over that briefly, Matt? And then we can go through the vacancy report if you wanna do those still. Sure. To finish my report. Speaker 17: One second. So with the, with the fall town meeting, we've got the feasibility study
for the more memorial school project on there. We believe that's the, the top request. But wanted to make sure folks weren't accord with it. We have some school building routers to upgrade then it says that some of them will be coming off of their life cycle and they won't be supported if he has a problem with them. And generally those things do start to break shortly after their, their warranty and, and service is, is available, support service is available. And then high school classroom audio system replacement
is is the next item. We think these are the asks we had. We had more things on the list, but we think these are the ones that are most pertinent for right now MSVA because if we don't ask, we could lose our place in line and you know, keeping the numbers simple. If it was a hundred million dollars project N-M-S-B-A has a 45% reimbursement rate, we could lose $45 million if anybody's suffered through losing the wireless internet in their house for a little while. Imagine what it would be like in a school.
So we really don't want to have the routers go down when that's something we have some control over whether or not we're gonna replace them before they, before they start giving us problems. And then the audio system replacement. We have some workarounds going in the high school in some of the rooms, but it's getting to the point where we we're gonna have more problems. So that's why that's number three on the list. So if there's any questions or if the school committee wants to, you know, support this, that this is the way we're proceeding with sharing this
information for fall town meeting. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Gillis. Questions from the committee? Ms. Collins? Speaker 14: I don't have any problem with the three that you've listed. What didn't make the list? Like what's number four? Speaker 17: I'd have to go back and look but for exactly what was number four, but kind of a long-term capital plan, there were also some other technology items, speakers for the stadium. We're not asking for the field project to, to proceed at this point. We're really just trying to keep our requests to the more immediate must haves or people will will feel it
or it will cost significantly more to wait. Speaker 14: Thanks. Speaker 17: Sorry I don't remember the orders after. Speaker 14: After we That's okay. Got the top three. That's okay. I was trying to gauge some immediacy. You know, if we don't do number four and are we looking at a huge problem? It would be nice to have speakers updated at the field I'm sure. But it's not mission critical. I can necessarily, they're Speaker 1: Sure. Thank you. Speaker 6: Yeah, so I have it from the town's capital book and there's two pieces, a firewall replacement project at Kennedy
that was already completed because they got a grant for it. Dennis, he's so good. And then the school switch replacement district-wide. So that's something that Dennis had in there and he felt that he could lower the priority on that for this year. So this was all something Matt and Dennis went through Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell. Number Speaker 4: Two. Is that across all of the schools or in particular a certain school? Speaker 17: I think largely it's across all the schools. It might not be at Kennedy 'cause it's a newer building, but I think it covers pretty much everything else. Speaker 4: There's just one school I drive by where I always lose cell phone
and so I'm curious about that. Speaker 3: I have to try your route. Speaker 4: No, every time I drive by it I'm like, I'm so curious about this. Like my phone call drops every single time. It's like I'm in Wellesley. I'd rather be a Natick. So I'm just curious why that's happening around that school. Speaker 17: It's not the inside. The inside routers aren't connecting your phone. It's, it's a wireless tower. Well Speaker 4: If you could work on that building. Speaker 6: We have tried hard, Speaker 3: I just, I know that they've had some wifi issues at the high school. Is it like same or different? Some Speaker 1: Significant ones?
Speaker 17: I haven't heard anything new. Speaker 3: Okay. Just curious. Speaker 6: What I can say is helpful here is we don't see this in any of the years after this for the, I'm looking at a five year plan and it's 150,000 in this year, which makes me think it's everything across the district and 'cause a lot of the other ones extend as like multiple years. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you very much Mr. Gillis. Oh did you have, did you put up your hand Mr. Brand or were you just stretching? No. Okay, that's fine. Good, good. Just didn't wanna miss you. Thank, Speaker 6: All right. Last but not least is the vacancy report
that we have from Jackie Menza. Speaker 12: Hi. I am looking at the time, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna make this a little bit quick, but we decided to, to give you a, a vacancy report about where we currently stand with our staffing and we put it in the format that should be familiar to you. It was in the budget book, but it's also how Desi, we report to DESI our staffing. So we're trying to kind of keep the format and the language consistent to what you're used to seeing. So as you can see in terms of teaching positions as the way DESI categorizes them, of course we think
of a lot of our positions as teachers. But as DESI is categorizing it, we only have 0.8 of an FTE open. And that is a long-term art teacher. Speaker 6: Yeah. Yes. Speaker 12: What did you say, Sue? Breaking news. Speaker 4: It was filled today. Speaker 12: Oh yes. Don't we Speaker 6: Have zero? Speaker 12: So it's not, it's not all the way through, but we have the person. So that is, so that is gonna be a zero very soon. Probably tomorrow. Well Speaker 1: Done. Speaker 12: So that is fabulous. And then in the next portion where it says non-teaching positions as categorized by desi,
this is something the entire state and the country are dealing with in sitting in these positions. It's, it's really hard right now to get people into these positions, particularly the para position. So as you can see in our interventionist tutors line, we have 4.5 FTEs open. We have one administration position, which was Ms. Kerr's position who just resigned. We have one school district-wide school psychologist position as you heard Melissa talk about. And that decision is being made to possibly not fill it
and utilize money in a different way. We have one it, oh sorry. Yep. One IT support position and then we have 8.8 FTE paraeducator or paraprofessional positions. And again, you know, in comparison to this chart, 'cause Natick is pretty well staffed, that seems like a lot. But in the reality it's something that almost every district is facing and it is not something dramatically vast. It's actually pretty decent. So, but we are being, trying to be as proactive as we can
to get some people in those positions. But in the meantime we're trying to utilize some daily subs and other, other magical ways that principals and staffs work together to, to cover that need. And then finally again, this is another kind of crisis situation in, in Massachusetts or school nursing. And right now we only have 0.7 FTE open, thank goodness. Let everyone knock on, knock on wood. And so that brings us to a grand total
of 17.8 FTE that is currently vacant that we're working on Speaker 5: Dr. Fen. This is great news overall, especially given how difficult it's across the country. Does this doesn't include ASEP staff, right? No. And so is that a different purview, like how that is how ASEP staff or Yeah, Speaker 12: ASAP DESI doesn't necessarily, I don't wanna say they don't care. That's kind of a fresh way to say it. But they don't, we don't keep tabs on our asap. That's a completely afterschool funded program
and staffed program. So, and there are leaders in that program that work to hire and and organize all of that piece. Speaker 5: And I'm just curious if anyone knows how that's going. 'cause I know that's always been a challenge is the ASAP staffing. Speaker 12: It's very similarly to the para Yeah, the para transiency particularly these are, these tend to be positions that people come in and out of. I do think they're struggling with that. There's a lot of kind of promotion from within and then they're trying to fill from the bot. Like that's, it's currently kind of a, a moving target.
And when you're talking about very part-time after school positions, it's, it's often gonna be something we find. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: Thanks. Any other questions or comments? Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. I need to stay that long for that. Apologies you had to stay that long for that. Oh welcome to, Speaker 21: Welcome to the school committee meetings. Speaker 1: We're doing really well. Ms. Burnell. Come on. Speaker 21: We're doing great. Speaker 1: We're doing great. We're doing great. This is meeting one of the year, let's be positive. Okay. It's before nine o'clock. We're still good. Yeah.
And I'm, I'm seeing three agenda items left too. So if we could move to the policy subcommittee updates. It looks like they're both for yeah. Two policy subcommittee updates. Let me hand it right over to Mr Brand. Speaker 11: I'll just start by saying that we have a meeting tomorrow at two o'clock in this room. Very exciting. So you can see the, the agendas posted as it would always be. We are gonna continue work on a cell phone policy that we started talking about in the well in the spring.
We most recently talked about it. Got a couple of other things including some procedural conversations similar to the thing that we talked about, the decision vote tracker. Sort of a similar kind of like audit trail for, for policies in a procedure around how we get those posted. And we'll probably also talk about, I think this is the second item on the agenda tonight as it relates to policy is, is sort of how we host policies and making it easier for people to find policies and find things in policies. Unless you're like me and you love clicking on a bunch
of different PDFs and doing fine and doing searches in those for words that you're looking for. So that's where we're gonna start. We are gonna get to a point, 'cause we talked about this a year ago, we're gonna get to a point soon where we will bring a list of policies to this, to the full committee so everybody can sort of see what the, what our list of policies are for the year with a reasonable amount of margin for error as things and to say nimble as things come up through the year. So that's, again, everyone there, for those
who don't know are tuning in for the first time. Policy subcommittee meetings are posted, open meetings, they're available for anybody to come and join us. It is two to three tomorrow, I believe. We have a hard stop at three o'clock and which I have no problem with. So that's, we'll be right in this room. Did I leave anything out? Anybody who has an interest in policy subcommittee? No. Great. It is still before nine o'clock. Speaker 1: Okay. Alright. And it's not that I wasn't listening, but did you say that the,
the policy hosting discussion will happen at the policy subcommittee meeting as well or Speaker 11: We have on our agenda tomorrow a, an agenda item that is called, the title is procedure Updating school committee policies after approval or review. And so that is a big umbrella. So yes and Speaker 1: Okay. Awesome. Love it. Love it. Thank you. Mr. Brand. Any other subcommittees or liaisons who have any updates to share today? No. Okay. Sorry.
Okay. All right. Okay. So I think we're down to our last two agenda items, which are an update on the school committee goals and then a proposal that Ms. Brunell has brought forward about the student, a student advisory committee. So I would propose that we talk about our school committee goals first. So sounds like we sort of made a decision a little earlier to finalize them at our next meeting. And I just thought this could be a little check in to see if people have made any progress on sort
of flushing them out, what direction they're going in, what do you need any input from the rest of the committee before sort of submitting a proposed sort of final goal language at our next meeting. And I'll start by saying that my group actually hasn't met to discuss our goal yet, but we, we were on community engagement and we had a very successful time at Natick days. So we're okay. We, we don't win but we are, we're thinking about it even if we haven't worked on our goal language. So yeah. Ms. Brunell,
Speaker 4: I would just, now that I've seen DR. SP's goals and understand that this S sips are the school improvement, school improvement plans, what are they called? School, school improvement plans. Oh. 'cause improvement has two, has an I and a P already. So it's okay. Anyways, you get me anyways because of those, I think it would be great if we could merge as much as possible into their goals. And goal two and goal three I think actually go really well with an engagement goal and a budget goal. Did you do that on purpose? So I think that we could probably reevaluate some of the wording
that we've talked about and, and maybe try to make it look a little bit more like the goals that you've presented. We also have not met, but I think our budget goal is going to change given that we're not going to pursue a capital, any action on capital this year. Is that what I'm hearing? Capital Speaker 1: Planning capital Speaker 6: Like I kind of said at the the, in the beginning, I think there's two big things we are trying to do. We definitely are gonna, we're prepared and we're gonna need to, through the MSBA work, start to talk about a vision for elementary schools. Now will it be a locked in, you know, vetted plan.
I think that's gonna be a little bit developing and that would be a lot to do this year. But we already have a plan to kind of start work with the principals, start work, asking them to vision what a great, what the, what their ideal school would look like. So I think we're gonna be part of the, that's gonna be part of the school district's community engagement with the committee about what their ideas are for that. So I think it's almost like an input. So I don't wanna say we're doing nothing. I want, we want to engage around it, but are we gonna like lock in and commit to a plan? I, that's the thing I feel like would be hard to take on. Or the other elements like an athletic audit
or many of the other things that we start to ask the questions, what problems are we trying to solve? And really getting, how would that look over a course of several years? I just feel like that's, that takes a bit of a deep dive. That's how I'm seeing it. Speaker 4: But the goal this year could be articulating what are those problems we're trying to solve for, I think. So that in itself could be great. Huge. Yeah. Okay. So I think I'm good. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you Dr. Fugman. Speaker 5: Can I ask, I think this might be helpful for the public, but for me also, to be honest, can you go over what the goals are? Like what were the goals that we selected? Speaker 1: If I had those notes in front of me, I could detail them.
I can, I can tell you. Do you want to, do you have them in front of you? Speaker 5: No. Speaker 1: Okay. I know what our goal was. So we had three, right? We had a capital Capital. Do you wanna just describe the capital goal and then I can speak to the community engagement one, Ms. Grinnell. Well that's Speaker 4: Why I was asking for clarity because the capital goal is gonna shift now before it was, I'm looking in my notes, but it was, it was more about coming up with an ele, a plan for the elementary schools. So now I think it's going to be more of an engagement goal around capital
Speaker 3: Budget was separate from that budget was its own and is very much aligned with goal three. I know because I'm super interested in capital and sadly had to not be on that work stream because I'm the budget's up. Speaker 4: Okay. So here I pulled up the notes from our meeting school committee goals. Ms. Gouss gave the committee a recap of the goals from last year. You suggested, I'm just reading the minutes, you suggested that we have fewer goals this year and then we discussed having an MSBA capital plan knowing that we have a plan to Yeah, so the first goal was MSBA slash capital plan.
The second goal was budget. And the third goal is outreach to community subgroups to listen to their experience and concerns and to hear input about NPS. Speaker 3: Yes, Speaker 4: Those that's, those are the notes I took. Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. That's why I was wondering. 'cause the third one I believe Mr. Patel, Ms. Gomes and I, yes are, and I'll be honest, we have not met clearly 'cause I didn't try to remember what the goal was. But one of the thoughts I've had, and I could have, I probably should discuss it with Comb and Patel first. Mr. Patel first. But our, well that's why I,
I was wondering at least when you mentioned the community engagement, I was trying to figure out are there two separate groups? Because our group was not thinking so much about, or my understanding of the group is not to think about things like naked days, but more like how do we engage marginalized populations, right? I think that with, to your point Mr. Bonnell about aligning things with what the district, what the administration is doing, aligning our goal more with Dr. SP's second goal, which is around the strategic plan. I think in general it's important to find ways
to deepen our engagement with certain pockets of the community. I think the strategic plan is a wonderful way to start that. So it's, you know, we would start that conversation about the plan, the strategic plan. So we have something specific talk about, but in doing so, also developing a relationship with certain members of the community anyway. But again that, that's my initial idea, which I'll discuss further with my subgroup. Speaker 1: Yeah. Would it be helpful if I sent out the form again that we used last year? I think you shared it with us, Dr. Fugman, that had the little structure for
how we should write a goal, A goal language. Everyone's nodding. Okay, I will send that out. 'cause I found that really helpful when we did it last year. So thank you for introducing that to us last year. Okay. So let's come back then. Oh Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think, 'cause we mostly knew what, what the, what the school's goals were gonna be. And I think we all, my recollection now that it's all coming back to me it was August, which is its own thing, is that it did align in that the goals one in four are really, you know, that's really on the schools.
And then I think we did talk about the strategic plan aligning to the community outreach particularly since if we're focused on maintaining tier two and tier three, that kind of outreach will be really important 'cause it's not as much the day to, it's not the tier one focus. And so I think that aligns, so I think we talked about the strategic plan line for community engagement, the budget subcommittee being very involved in the goal three and that being that focus and specifically creating the goal around the M, the Speaker 1: M-S-B-A-M-S-B-A Speaker 3: Process tying into there will have to be work around kind of the elementary school stuff.
So that's kind of the goal. That's not tied to a district goal. Speaker 1: I Speaker 3: Think that's what we covered in it, but it's needed and it's just work that's Speaker 6: To be done. It's not in mind. So it would be a great place to Speaker 1: Make sure we have. Yep. Okay. Like Speaker 3: That the school committee's holding accountability that that stays front and mind, front and center as we go through the MSBA, knowing that the administration has to be focused on other things this year. Speaker 1: Yeah, and I just to add to that, it, I also think that we were thinking, we hadn't heard yet the recommendation about the capital items. So the idea of the field project at the high school was sort
of still in the mix there. And we were thinking that if that was going to need more work, that we could also focus around that and additional to MSBA. But since that's not proceeding, I think we can really focus on MSBA and that'll be plenty. Yeah. Dr. Spesh, Speaker 6: I was, I, I agree and I'll be grateful if the school committee kind of made that you're, you guys are sponsoring the article as well, which also makes it nicely aligned to being a goal. Speaker 1: True. Okay. Speaker 4: Can I say one more thing? Yes. I just want to at some point also revisit the work that we did over the summer with Dr.
Am Jackson and I don't, we don't have any explicit ways to do that. So I don't wanna just like let that like have done that and then never revisit it. Speaker 1: Thank you. No, I, I was thinking the same thing. Dr. Sp looks like you have an Speaker 6: Idea. Yeah, just before I lose it, the idea would be, I think there might be an opportunity to weave this into the long-term plan and how we develop measures to know how successful we, that's data, right? If we were able to make a, a dashboard or something that was intended to measure
that long-term plan over time, I think that would be a nice place to put that and would be aligned with Issa's work. Speaker 1: And I, I think, I mean I have, I feel like I quote Darsa like every week with somebody I work with, especially what she said about, you know, people not fearing change but fearing loss. I feel like that completely changed my perspective about how people react to change being communicated. And I feel like there are pieces of that that we could layer into our goals and how we approach the community engagement, for example, to be, you know, proactive in knowing
how some things might be received. So I think that there are ways that we can, and I, I think we should challenge ourself to try to try to find a piece of that to include in our goal. So. Okay. Alright. So I will send out the form and we'll reconvene on the 29th. Okay. Super. Alright, so our last item, I'll turn things over to Ms. Brunell who's gonna share some information about the student advisory committee as defined by mask. Speaker 4: I I, this is not an action item for tonight, it's just something for us to start thinking about and to see where it fits into our, maybe it fits into one
of our goals, maybe it fits into the policy subcommittee. Nathan, I would definitely want to have your opinion here on this and have you have your perspective. So that was just a sheet that Ms. Goeth asked me to put together. These are from emails and things that I started sending to Kathy and Shai probably back in 2022. I did research. This is a current research with, so basically big picture mass, mass general law states that every school public and private will have a student advisory committee.
And it explicitly states how that student advisory committee will be formed and then gives them a way to access the school committee. That is a way for students to come to the school committee and have items on an agenda and to, and to speak to the committee, there are committees that do this. For example, Worcester and Weston. There are two recent examples that I found. And then there are committees who don't do it at all. And it's, while it's on mass general law, as Mr. Wood knows that there are certain things like if you cross over from
Connecticut and you are a Tory, what is that rule? You can kill a Tory that crosses from Connecticut. I, Speaker 9: I believe that has been changed as at this time. But okay, yes, for the longest time, that was one of my favorite obsolete laws. Yeah, you could, it was legally allowable to shoot a Tory crossing into Massachusetts from Connecticut. Speaker 4: See I listen. So while we know that there are laws that are on the books that are not always enforced that this this language is, is shall have. So it is a law that is on the books and it is something that I think as a Yeah, exactly.
The book that we got today, you could look it up in there. I I personally think that in a school committee that wants to increase engagement among subgroups, this is something that we should be pursuing in a way that works for both the students and doesn't make our meetings. I don't know that that, you know, keeps everybody in communication and creates places of problem solving and not just places of frustration. So I'll just let, I don't know, do you want me to go into more detail? Speaker 1: Maybe we should pause and see if there's any questions
from the committee at this point. I, I have Well you maybe you wanna continue 'cause I do have questions. Yeah, Ms. Flas, Speaker 3: I mean I I I would like, I think getting more engagement from the students and making sure the students have voice is something we wanna do as much as we can. So I mean I open to ideas that promote that and would want, I would have fewer questions that I'd have more questions of my own kids who are in high school about what their, you know, what they would think than I can answer personally. Speaker 1: Mr. Brand, Speaker 11: How do we
obvi, I like the idea of as much student representation as possible. How do we make sure that this isn't in practice high school representation? So, I mean it is kind of entertaining to me the idea of having a few kindergartners show up and if like there like, but they're equal student, you know, members of our community when it comes to the student body. And so like what I would wanna avoid is in a, in a world where we would expand our student representation that we leave out a majority of the student body.
And I also don't think that they wanna be here at eight 30. But like I, so I'm, I'm not a, I just want to like be mindful of how do we do that? Because if we could figure out a great way to have elementary and middle school and preschool representation in any way, that would be great. And I don't know if that's a proxy or some other way. I just don't know what other districts have done. So I don't know if you've come across that. Well Speaker 4: That's what I was gonna say. I mean if, if I, I'll give you the two examples that I know of. They're all focused on high school because I think that the idea is that the children
learn the skills, develop the ability to get to a place in high school that they're communicating. And that comes from, you know, the earlier years Weston, they meet with school committee during a certain block. They have a, on Thursday mornings every Thursday at Western High School you can come to school early. And so that's the block that the members of the school committee meet with the advisory committee, the Worcester school committee sets aside time at the start of their second meeting of every month for the student advisory committee to come. There are other committees like us who have sort of no
this get a pass with this law right now because we have a member of the student body sitting at our table. So were that to go to court one day that wouldn't probably pass this exact law, but would that ever come to court like of Tori getting, you know what I mean? Like it's like it's all about, so what's like, what's the intention of this? The intention is getting student voice in a real authentic way at the table. So those are the two examples that I know of. And for some reason charter schools were left out of the bill and so that's why or the law.
And so that is why right now in the senate there's a bill to include charter schools because charter school students have brought it to the attention of the mass general government. So that's all I'll say. Speaker 1: And the law does just say high schools. So I like the idea. Yeah, yeah. I guess the, the question I have is that this is like, this is something that if, if as a school committee we wanted to do this, we're asking the high school to create a new student advisory group
and to run it at the high school and that feels like something that would need to be done with like collaboration and intention and to figure out if that's even something that's desired at the high school. Right. That we couldn't mandate this, that, that's my thought. Ms. Lathers, Speaker 3: I, I also don't think there's an urgency to, and I think it can be a question that's asked of what I know there are a bunch of different advisories at the high school already and so it could potentially just be another remit of them. Just a couple of things that I find intriguing is Nathan, I don't really think, do you wanna be like,
would it be better to have, you know, 40 minutes of every other meeting are dedicated with a little bit more agenda eyes And so you know like obviously always welcome to come but would would this be a better experience for student reps and could we expand it past just the two individuals to like really be targeted in that way? I also just was you were saying, and I'm like I'm intrigued by the idea. I think I read it talks about five, I mean it would be great if there was a high school student assigned to every school who like goes and visits and talks to 'em. So I mean I think there's a lot of opportunities here
but I think would have to be driven in collaboration with just whether they'd want it. But yeah Speaker 4: And like one, one like re so I spoke to Weston today and they, he referenced their use of their cell phone policy and how they developed that with the student advisory committee so that then when they rolled out their cell phone that Weston went bell to bell this year and because they had time to communicate with the students about it, they've had very little pushback. But so there are benefits, right, of engaging the students and having a way then hopefully students also were listening
and the students are listening, right? There's a mutuality. So it's mutually beneficial. Now it's late and I'm repeating myself but Speaker 1: Dr. Fuchs then Speaker 5: I'm wondering if a good next step would be to reach out to the student council and ask to be invited to a meeting. 'cause it, it would be, I mean the law is one thing but in terms of the intent, I mean I would want to know from the students what do they want? You know like this is more on the disability side and the student side but there's disability state community always says nothing without us. Without us. So it's like this feels like a conversation
that should be happening with them. Like do you want this advisory council and not just put it all on poor Nathan but anyway that's just an idea. Fine. Speaker 1: Yeah, no I think 'cause there could be an element of education there. 'cause there are expectations of this committee, right? Like there's training from mask about these student advisory committees and there is real expectation that they are going to be aware of and wanting to participate in the business of the school committee. So I like that idea. Dr. Fugman, thank Speaker 5: You. Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you think that could roll into one
of our marginalized population goals? Speaker 5: I don't know if students would consider self marginalized but Sure not Speaker 1: Marginalized. Only marginalized with respect to the school committee. Speaker 5: The school committee, sure. Speaker 1: I don't know. Ms. Brunell, Speaker 4: Would you feel open Nathan to taking this back to the school your your student council and getting feedback from them? Speaker 10: Yeah, I think, I think the student council would really like it. Like if you guys joined us, I think we definitely have like we do a lot around school and I think it would be cool to see like you guys see how we do what we do. I can definitely bring it back for feedback.
I think we have a meeting next week and I can see if people are interested in it, Speaker 4: Invite us. Just send it to the school committee and we'll see who can come or not next. It doesn't have to be next week, but we're all coming. When you're ready, invite us. We're all coming. As long as your meetings are shorter than ours. We like to Speaker 10: 20 minutes usually I Speaker 5: Like to make some, is there food? Yeah. Good. Okay. I'm there. They can Speaker 1: Teach us 20 minutes, 20 minute meeting. Exactly. Show Speaker 11: You how to make it three hours. Speaker 1: What Speaker 4: Are you guys doing wrong over there? Speaker 1: I do think it would be nice if we do do that, that we have like a very short presentation that describes what this committee is,
the student advisory committee and what the remit is. Speaker 4: You're saying that what I say or tonight was not short. Speaker 1: I'm saying maybe it doesn't actually include all of the goals of all of the remit. I think something should come from the handbook. Speaker 4: I think Elise just volunteered to redo what I did. So Speaker 1: Enhance. Enhance I. I can do it. Sure. I'm happy to do that. Yeah. Okay. So I think we have some next steps. So thank you Ms. Brunell for bringing that to us. One Speaker 4: Last thing though, I, I don't know how our student council works so at the same time it would be really helpful and educational to me.
The last time I talked to one of the student reps about this, she's like, I have no idea how I ended up at the school committee. So I think it would be good to know how the process works from your end too. Your Speaker 1: Uncles above the head. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. I think we only have one agenda item left. Oh Speaker 4: Yeah. Motion to adjourn. Speaker 1: Was that all in favor? Anyone against? Anyone? Abstaining. We are adjourned. Thank you everybody.