--------- well welcome everyone it is 5:05 uh we would like to call to order the committee of the whole meeting for February 25th 2025 those who can please rise and the flag where is flag the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one
nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all you please have a roll call Mr Stacy brons Rizo Mr Anthony kajan here Mr John Kingston here Mrs Aisha Milbury Ellis
here miss jacn montoso here M frerick salala pres mayor Patrick absent we have a forum uh it is the mayor's birthday today so very happy birthday to him he will not be able to attend and Miss Bron and Rizzo
just received notice that her grandchild is being born so she's on the way to the hospital so we wish them all well wishes um that is why they are not here so we will go ahead and get started as Vice chair I will be chairing today's meetings the first order of business is the approval of the minutes any
questions on the minutes from last month no no next are the warrant any questions we'll try to best to answer them we know Matt Cruz isn't here today but questions on warrant and financial reports
I I um Dr Kelly with all the talk and the news of Title One any idea or give us a ballpark like how much how much is how much of our budgets Title One money you know uh it's uh several million dollars okay I was just concerned because I've read a lot about that and I
was a little concerned about if that was what coming would yeah we're still hopeful that um it is going to be forthcoming we haven't heard uh as of yet that it that it's not but what do you think it like two to three is a estimate we're not even hearing that
it's going to be reduced or anything it was just I'm just trying to do worst case oh worst case scenario would be that they pull back all of the title grants which would be even more than that because we receive funding from Title One title two title three um and title seven okay so um if
if that happens it would definitely it would be devastating to the district and we'd have to really think about um a complete reorganization but okay what what I'm hearing in um my state and federal circles is even with the threats
to uh dismantle the the Department of Education at the federal level that funding would still come into States and would be distributed in a manner similar to what it has been in the past so we're all just going to have to keep an eye on it um but right now we we've heard
nothing that it's going to be pulled back okay thank you and we haven't had any promises but some members of the legislature and the governor have mentioned the potential of using State Randy day funds if t one is pulled um to help cover the budget for the state once approved thank
you uh since Matt's not here but you are Mr King um Kingston I just wanted to ask um where we are with the start of the fiscal year 26 budget kind of what's the timeline we haven't had a meeting yet um Mr Cruz he lets us know when he's at a good point to start so when he does that
I'll way I it's going to be the next couple Bei sometime okay the last time I spoke to mad about he kind of sets the tone for when we want to start and as soon as he ask us to meet we'll meet perfect so I can uh give you some information on that we've uh finished reconciling the turnover of the fy2
24 um sorry fy2 into FY 26 for level funding Services um The Next Step that we have to do and we just got some data from the city that will help us finalize the proposal for schedule 19 but we have to negotiate that with the mayor's office um and we're hoping to have that
done in the next week after which uh Matt will reach out to uh Mr Kingston and schedule a budget subcommittee meeting thank you so much anything else on finances okay we have no no questions on
these I okay all right uh we have nothing on Food Service financials or Communications any questions on the enrollment update provided I just want to say the last time we received this update we requested um class sizes for the high school and I
know that get extra work High School is very big so I appreciate you and your team Dr Kelly taking the time to give us what the average looks like at the high school level no problem did this did you feel like this gave you needed yeah yes I'll apologize if it's here and I
don't see it and that's I'll apologize in advance are we ahead U total um this year to last year that type of I know that you know obviously the funding is based on number of students so how are we doing with uh and that's actually indicated on um the financial memo that
Matt gave if you go to the pages just before the enrollment numbers uh we're actually down 48 students um from last year to this year okay was that on the high school level or just I would have to dig into it a little bit but
it's across across okay thank you okay uh any questions on personal items and then we'll move into the acceptance of donations we have two including a late communication but good newsl communication is always great so
excited to see we got an award last minute as well yeah and so the first award should have come in your packet and that was um The Early College support Grant we had already received the Early College support Grant itself and then uh for whatever reason desie
reached out and said we they had a little bit more money I don't know if one of the districts who initially had been uh given money for an early college program then withdrew uh but we were able to apply for more funding um and so we're receiving an additional $30,000
through that early college support Grant and um um uh Miss Finn together with the guidance staff are going to use that to help kids complete the mycap uh online program which helps kids prepare for um
college or career and helps them identify areas of interest and uh what in the high school resume is going to accentuate certain applications and and P like that so that's very exciting wonderful great otherwise how would that work
would students have to do students usually have to pay for that themselves or is that something that we would put the bill on anyway um it it's it's a it's kind of a hybrid of the both what we can do is give the kids tutoring services to help them get through so they have the mcap already as a free
resource from the state but this is going to let us they have kids have adult sit with them and work through some things and um more and and help them because a lot of kids might not understand what exactly um what resources they do have
available to them when they're making decisions about um you know I want to go to college or I don't want to go to college or uh whatever the case may be and so having somebody there with them to say well you know you can still go to college you can do this or if that's
really what you're interested in he has a program that is a uh Technical College that can give you lure in particular areas or you know places like that guidance yeah thank you great uh School field
trips any questions on these three exciting trips coming up okay so that be approved in the next meeting the consent calendar the next item can I mention one more thing Jackie sorry just the second Grant under um was for the finance department uh this was
the late communication uh we didn't get it on the agenda because we just um Reed the final communication today but this is going to be $5,200 a reimbursement Grant from the Rivia cultural Council and so that's going to help fund um a lot of the
finance programming um and that lets you know that that you can the the purpose of the grant is to help kids access outof classroom experiences so the plays the concerts all of those pieces that we have going on across the district um
that that helps um uh Miss Williams financing financing with all of all of that stuff awesome Y and then the next item uh was requested by Mr Kingson an update on Chromebooks actes in the Anthony school
so I'll pass it to you I had some parents reach out that the kids were assigned atba the kids were assigned a research project but there's no Chromebooks um I don't know if it's a budgetary problem or I don't know what I mean that's why I want to bring it up I mean if it's something that has to go to w the means and we need to buy some more but I guess there's a short of
Chromebooks at SBA um there's not and I did reach out to principal um wette to confirm that and I don't know do you know who the parents were I can have her reach out to them directly it was a phone call voicemail basically and I couldn't really okay I had three parents
call me and say that the student was given a research assignment but there's no Chromebooks and I thought we pretty much had like one to one across the district but that's not what they were we we do have one to one um I know they don't all take them home but it available but my understanding is yeah
that at SBA there was an issue of um they didn't have them supposedly one of them did go to the principal and they were told that you know sorry they didn't have enough one of the parents went to the principal supposedly yes that's what the parents said parents said I that that was the only I didn't I didn't get a chance to call them back I
tried to call them back and I had no luck um there was just voicemails left on my um on my phone it came up as an unknown number so I didn't answer I didn't know who it was okay yeah and when I tried to call back I had no lu and I left a message but no one called me back so um none of them left a name or
anything it was more like a rant on the phone okay I didn't know well I I would say for in case anybody's watching um at home or if you get such a call again they should be reaching out to the principal who can solve whatever problem
they're having agree um but there are more than enough Chromebooks um at all of the schools including Susan B Anthony would have a card or something uh maybe not every single classroom but I know that the math and science CL rooms all have a cart and then there are cards
that any teacher can just sign out at any time okay I yeah yeah I'm just trying to respond to youcis yeah okay okay that was it given that we're ending this one early would
folks be interested and moving agenda item 11a which was discussion about attendance at the high school now or we can just end and save it all for 6 pm. yeah we he that yes because I don't
think this there's no vote right there's no vote just new business okay yeah okay so we um according to our regular meeting agenda we'll move item 11a to this this is also an item from Mr Kingston so I'll pass it to you my concern is um about students coming up
every class I live very close to the high school um I couldn't tell you how many cars it's gotten so bad that there's cars on Beach Street um kind of blocking the intersection of Beach Street in the central lab coming to the high school well after school stopped
and it's a lot of days um it used to I mean I've lived in the same place for a very long time but it used to be just like on a rainy day you'd see cops but now it's every day so there's no way these kids are get in a school on time um you know you can blame traffic blame whatever but they have to be late for first period they have to be because
it's after the time School St um so I'm just concerned about um you know the the the fact that they're not in school and they should be and it's not like a snowstorm or something like that it's not extenda circumstances it's almost every day well I can say that I on days when I
don't go to the office early maybe say around like 9 o' a little after 9ine I've seen like groups of kids not necessarily together but that I know that they're going to school I can't say it's all the time but I but I've seen it
myself on occasion kids late to school when y the window but um should but I know but what's so is is there an issue with the kids being late that we need to look at that we there's something that we can do
to um make it clear that what the expectation is I'm sure that you and your team are doing that but if there's something more that is needed from the school committee then yeah know I can I can ask um we can do an analysis of attendance first period versus second versus third
versus fourth um and look at it that way but we still have the policy that if you're not present in class you're not going to pass the class you know so but what about um so so what about students who maybe come to first period and then
skip second period or third period like what is the attent does it show that they've been in school like for these numbers that we're looking at for our purposes does it look like while they've been in school even if they've only shown up to the first class no that wouldn't they wouldn't get a daily attendance credit they'd have to be in
three periods to get a daily but um there are also a lot more kids who are doing internships dual enrollment and that kind of stuff and they don't necessarily do them at the end of the day some of them do them in the morning and then come in later and if they have a dual enrollment like right now there's
a dual enrollment class happening across the hall from us those kids might not have to come in first period because they're taking their dual and removement class right now in the evening so there is there are a lot more programs that we have going on that would create
flexibility as opposed to every kids's coming in at the same time and every kid's leaving at the same time um I'm sure you see a lot of kids leaving at 1 o'clock that's the end of third period and that's when the bulk of the kids go out to do their internships and um and Pie like
that yeah not every day the city so maybe if we could do that analysis I'll do that analysis BYOD see which one and if and if you look at it and you say hey these kids are all in dual enrollment there's justification for it but if not and there's an issue there that maybe we need to look closer at and and um you
know do some further messaging then yeah um I will say that as a general Trend and that's this isn't just in rier it's everywhere um High School attendance is has not return to where it was preo um and that even even at the
elementary level where we used to see almost we had so many kids who would have perfect attendance all the time people just have a different sensibility around um the need to send kids to school every day uh and that's something that principles have been reaching out
to families directly uh on those issues and at the high school the students the student engagement coordinates the student support Specialists have been reaching out to kids who are Trent or uh coming L any of those pieces but we can definitely take a deeper dive and have
that the next month yeah or maybe even after we if we schedule a a subcommittee meeting under um whether it's policy or wherever else it falls we can have those people who are making those calls appear the principles the Liaisons who areis because yeah I'd be interested to to
hear from them what they what the feedback is like what they're getting from students and what they're getting from parents maybe that will give us an idea to brainstorm on ways in which we can engage them okay could we do that during the day so it's on the work all I'm fine with that yeah just help
you and then along the lines of attendance when is the next um data submission to Desi on attendance um there's one in March and there's one in June uh would you be able to share that I'm more curious about if attendance has dropped given just
changes and a national level of things to see how I know other districts around this have seen a sharp deas January 20th so I just want to see what the data shows yeah I can pull that together too um I can tell you anecdotally that I did
um there was a media request uh about if about exactly that question if there's been a shop decline um so I compared our data um from last year to this year uh and it's down slightly but not
significantly um I looked at the last week in January um last year we had 9 2% attendance this year is 90 overall for the district um at the elementary level it went from 93% to 90 at the middle school
it went from 92 to 91 and at the high school it went from 87 to 86 so that was for the last week in January of 2024 to the last week in January of this year 2025 and then I also looked at the
first week in February um because often what had been a pattern from usess before is that we would have an influx of kids at this particular time of year because of changing seasons in different countries we have not seen that influx of kids that we've seen in previous
years um but in terms of attendance for the first week in February last year we're at 92% this year we're at 87 so it's 5% decrease overall which is a lot um but at the elementary level it went from 93 to 88 the Middle School it went from 92 to
87 and at the high school it went from 86 to 885 but it has been a tremendous cold and flu season it has been right no I'm not trying to I'm not try yeah no I agree and so I I don't know that I can associate those changes with any one
particular issue but I think it's like you said it's been horrible cold and flu season people are more inclined to stay home when they're sick since we've had covid before you know how many of our parents said get dressed you're going I don't want to hear it have an arm
falling off y you know and because we don't want everybody getting super sick parents are keeping their kids home when they're sick you know so um so we have not seen a huge significant drop off um but we still I still monitor it I get the attendance report every day from um
Jamie FL by school on what their percentages are and um we talk to the principes about it we look at the trends over weeks and so how how you know how is a student considered um attending school with the
high school is it you're in first period or three three or more classes three or more classes yeah for the daily attendance and that's what we look at in our attendance report is the daily attendance their attendance is taken every period so their parents know their
parents can go into power school and they know if they've been if they were missed first period and came in second period or came ination too for each period that they do yeah no I I was just curious how how we how we report to desie for instance I'm just saying
students in first period goes to class doesn't go to the just human me go doesn't go to the other three classes I don't know walks around the building for three paers just saying yeah absolutely he's so but he's so he's a Desy absence of the day okay yeah so just so you don't have to do another data report for
us just whenever you report to death I'm curious to see what it's looking like by then yep that's and one more thing if I could I'm not dismissing that there could be a January 20th with the attendance but it also has been I mean you know there's a lot of factors there but I just want to mention the C flu because a lot of people have been sick
you know my work and other places yeah read that in the paper every day okay okay uh folks are okay with it we can talk about 11b now as well you have time Mr Kingston that was yours um I I think
it's because of the busing because of the an enormous amount of money that we're spending on busing I really think it's time to have a discussion about eliminating the Middle School Lottery um I realize and I've given this a lot of thought I realize it would only affect the sixth grade because I my I mean at
least in my view I wouldn't move a seventh and eighth grader even if they lived across the street from the school I just don't think that disruption would be a good idea but I think for the incoming sixth graders to try to settle them into the school closest to them um I think there's there's an opportunity
there not so much the first year to save a lot of money but once once that once the it all filtered through and that would take three years um I think there could be a tremendous cost savings um not shifting kids around um the city to go to a different school um I know
there's some pros and cons to that but I think um I'm worried about three four years from now when maybe we don't have the money we have today how we're gonna basically footp that bill so are you envisioning you said no lottery for sixth grade or lottery for sixth but not
seventh and eth right they would stay I just think I mean that's just my thought I'm not telling what we don't have Lottery seventh and eth though no but I'm I'm saying if if a student we eliminate the lottery but a student that may live across the street from the SBA in the seventh grade isn't going is is and going to gothfield Curr isn't Gonna
Be Moved yeah right no no I'm just saying nobody would be moved so so the cost savings so someone said to me John we're only going to save x amount because we're only talking approximately approximately 600 kids sixth grade class so the first year savings wouldn't be
that significant but year two um now you're talking the seventh grade would be settled in their I don't want to call it neighborhood school but school closest to their home and now the sixth grade would in 26 and then the following year would be all three so the first year savings will be minimal I'll agree
but going forward we could I think there's a potential to save some money there yeah you make a good point I mean aside from the the financial um benefit to doing away with the lottery I think the lottery doesn't serve the purpose it initially did I see that we may have
issues with what is considered you know the neighborhood school for certain for certain areas but I guess that determination would have to be made but I think would you agree Dr Kelly that the original purpose for the for the
lottery system is no longer necessary no I was just going to ask you what you thought the original purpose was um for me I thought I always thought it was because nobody really wanted to go to Garfield people wanted to go to the newer schools and people didn't want to send if they lived say in West Rivier
they didn't want to have to send their kids over to that neighborhood to the shirle ad neighborhood at least that was my perception as a kid who who I don't even know if I went through the water but I went to Garfield and I lived way on Washington maybe I did but the point was to diversify the schools and and to
but I just don't think that diversification is necessary because all of our schools are diverse now um whether there's still that sentiment about having to send kids to Garfield I don't think that exists anymore I thought that in my in my opinion based
on what I heard from parents and from kids Alik Garfield was the middle school to go to this this time around as far as you know the the Preferred Choice it is the highest performing I thought I was I thought the reason was um because Susan B Anthony school open and it was so new
and everyone wanted to go there I think that's part of it it's the new person now they're all basically you know several years old granted Garfield is the oldest but I don't think that stigma is attached to Garfield as it was Madam
chairperson years past yes go ahead Mr s um I I I think this goes back a little deeper than last year the year before there was a program at the onset where they would go to the closest school and once the schools filled up then they had
to attend the G field whether it was whatever the reasoning and the Garfield leadership would get the rest of the remaining new students they felt it wasn't fair to get
the influx of students halfway in the school year not knowing what the grades were and all that jazz so if you're looking into it again you're going to have the same outcry uh I'm in favor of keeping the neighborhood school when I
was at the whan we had you know my people live Liv across the street and parents put them on a bus to go down to the G field there was talk that no one wanted to go to the G field but it you look into your Administration they're all new now so I I have no idea who or
what but you're going to have the same play out because whether it's the um Garfield or whatever school is going to have no room then they're going to have to be bust somewhere so I think I look at my numbers first to see if that's
quate they used to have um an allocation kids from the Wayland would so many would go would could pick the XY and Z the other schools could pick X Y and Z and they try to filter them out naturally everyone wanted to be close to
their own especially people moving into the area buying a house next to a school don't understand why they're being shipped all over the city so I I would recommend that the superintendent uh PLL her principles and see if that problem
still exists it may not you know there may be seats available so I mean it was tried to it was tried to work out time and time again and the school committee president which you people are uh attesting to now and past
School committees were always in favor of keeping them local but it was mostly Administration that that wanted whether they felt that the students coming in later W in't as bright and then we have an abundance of maybe special needs or
whatever I don't know but that's what kind of always put a crink into it so for what it's worth thank you Freddy thank you Mr sella I'll have Dr Kelly and then Mr kajo had pocks do you want to go first no but I was just going to reach out to you and said maybe you can
give us a breakdown all the uh students involved in the geographic area and then we can look back at it again yeah we can we can definitely do that there is still an imbalance in enrollment across the city so uh if for example we were to
look at um you know maybe Garfield Middle would be the neighborhood school for Garfield and Beachmont and um SBA would be the neighborhood school for Susan banthony and Lincoln and Hill
and Paul reier go to the rumney right there would still there's still a significantly different proportion of kids in those different areas of the city where there would be more kids going to um SBA and rumney than going to
Garfield so you still end up with the disproportionate class sizes that were really all of the things you said Aisha were right and and Fred you're correct also um kids that move into the
city um often are coming from somewhat disjointed histories um and they don't necessarily have the continuity and education of the kids who have been in ReRe from K through uh whatever grade they're and
now um and so that presented a challenge when all of those kids were funneled into the Garfield because it had the lower enrollment they ended up with a higher proportion of kids who had learning gaps that needed to be filled and it's not that we couldn't fill them
but I would think that if the committee is going to go in that direction you're going to have to think about giving more resources to the Garfield um in order to help with that because what it did was it showed up in all of their mcast scores and everything else and they were um struggling AC
struggling academically because of those challenges um but the other piece of it that I want to um make sure we're considering is going to Neighborhood middle schools doesn't mean that it eliminates all of the transportation because you still have the kids in North Rivier
that will need to be transported because of the distance to the school and the kids in the pointed Pines and outskirts of Beachmont would still need to be transported um the same as we do for the elementary kids right now uh in order to
get them safely to a middle school um we can look at that it probably does as Mr Kingston said eliminate some of the busing needs because right now we have buses going all over the city for all any kid in the city who wants to take a bus we wouldn't necessarily with if they
live more than a mile away from their school um so I'm sure it would reduce some of that but I don't know what how significant that savings would be because our internal non-sp specialed Transportation isn't the bulk of our transportation costs it's a very low
percentage of the transportation cost the the expensive ones for the kids who are outplaced um in special education schools have door to door where the bulk of the transportation cost is coming from um and that's a challenge we have to tackle but the other thing that I
like about um kids getting to know each other at the elementary level sorry at the middle school level is that they're more inclined to get to know and like each other at that age than they are at high school and when kids are sectioned
off that way at the high school level they come to high school and it's this is my crew from Garfield and this is my crew from rumney and this is my crew from the Susan banthony and those kinds of differentiations among groups tend to
persist instead of oh I know that kid from the Hill school and that kid from the Beachmont and that kid from the Paul rer because we all got to know each other at the Garfield Middle School um you lose all of that sense of community
that happens when the kids come to know each other younger than high school age so just you know things to think about but I can I'll take a look at the data and see what the numbers are in each of those three different regions do we agree that
that's the right way that I think in general the greater question is in addition to transportation is just do we eliminate it I think this we would need a bigger visibility study because like you said we just go by the elementary neighborhood school we go by War like
it'll still have to be strategic and what how we divide it has to go beyond that so we don't create that so I think what we need is a bigger study of like how what would be the best way to do it to so one school isn't overcrowded compared to the other and then probably
refer it to policies and procedures because it's a policy that we're looking to amend so that we can really like digest it like I think we've talked about it so much we're all looking to create a Next Step that I think this is time to do the first one so we could start with
the seeing what the division would look like if we went off of elementary schools and then meet within our subcommittee and see if we need to order a bigger feasibility study for other options to divide so then the whole committee can have that discussion and and if I could just add
um we should also think about the timeline for that and consider the timeline of the new high school and what that means for this building as well because it may be counterintuitive for us to go through all of this to eliminate something
that's going to be eliminated anyway and for which we have a a solution here with a Central Middle School good point yeah I think um we've spoken about it enough so it's good to take next steps to see what actually has to happen so thank you
mixer Kon for bringing it up and prompting action just because it will take time it's figuring out how we want to divide it what are the impacts of the new school then engaging stakeholders and saying what they want to do and then making sure we do this all in timeline for when the next ideal Lottery would be
whether it's for next year or the year after we also look at too what's the cost associated with it because if it's a minimal cost why are we doing it so well the first year would be minimal savings because you're only talking one group but as the years but I'm just saying even with the progression if we
can look at the six and then seventh and eth then we'll have a better idea of looking at it yeah I think the finances I think we all can agree that we we really need to be um a little bit more conservative going
forward in all areas you know and just be mindful of our spending anything else on this agenda item okay well then with that uh we can actually adjourn so can we have a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn
second uh all in favor I any opposed okay we are done we'll see you all at 6m we'll see you at 6 Part: 2
e okay ready okay uh it is 6 PM we are now live I would like to call to order our February 25th 2025 meeting of the school committee the time is 6:00 those who can
please rise and salute the flag flag of the United stat United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you I do want to know uh it is the
mayor's birthday so very happy birthday to him he is not here today and miss bronz and Rizzo um her third grandchild is currently being born so wish sixth sixth third from her that one son but wishing them all uh just a safe delivery and that they can walk up home a safe um
baby and her daughter-in-law can also do well and so that's why they are not here but with that could we please have a roll call Mr um Dodger Garcia Mrs Stacy Bron Rizo absent Mr Anthony cajano here Mr John
Kingston here Mrs Aisha Milbury Ellis present Miss Jacqueline monteroso present Mr Frederick salala pres mayor Patrick ke abent we do have a quorum so
with that we will get started uh first uh we have any recognition from any members no okay then we are going to go ahead with the consent calendar can we have a motion to
approve second can we have a roll call Mrs Stacy Bron Rizo absent Mr Anthony cajano yes Mr John Kingston yes Mrs Aisha Milbury Ellis yes
Mrs Jac monteroso yes Mr Frederick salala yes mayor Patrick absent okay the consent calendar is approved before we move to the student rep report I know there's some members of the public here to speak just so you know there's a signin sheet in the back if you haven't
just you have time to sign in and with that we'll pass it over to our student rep all right um it is good to be here since we weren't able to give our student rep report last time in which I'll go into depth about um so basically
moving forward um this year we are um we have the student Advisory Board um as per General law of Massachusetts uh making sure that we're in with that um I'm just going to have for my next part the junior student rep come up here
because recently we had um members of the student Advisory Board go to AC whan along with the RMA to go visit the uh School the student councils and student governments there and basically talk about what that experience was
like um yeah so me and our other member a luati we went to two middle one Middle School one Elementary School we went to the AC whan first the kids were filled with Curiosity on like what we did and they were very excited to hear from
older kids in school I know they had a lot of ideas for clubs and they were working on how to work on their student council since it's all new and they haven't had one in years but overall they had a lot of ideas for clubs like a wellness club that they wanted in all of
schools and they also wanted more like cultural things so that everyone could gather together and celebrate and those were some of the ideas that I wrote on the board while we were at the school yeah um and then we went to RMA where
their student council is new as well and they had different ideas for the future like similar to the whan when we brought it up they showed their support for it which was Community engagement nights and they haven't done anything so far yet for their Council because as I said
um these schools are newly implementing these councils but yeah yeah it's exciting to see advocacy from all of these schools I know recently we also went to the Garfield and as somebody who was in the student gar government in uh both AC whan and
Garfield during my time there it's exciting to go back and see the new students who are going to be advocating in that school um moving on we have even more advocacy we have um advocacy for menro products so Rivier high school has
our feminist empowerment club which has been advocating for menstrual products in all public school buildings and um in our school we do have flow at in installed in all of our bathrooms and essentially flow is is it is um these
dispensers that have Menor products so you know pads and tampons um essentially these uh the Fe feminist empowerment movement want um all menr products to be in public buildings so they are going out to the city council uh meeting which
that was dated for yesterday and of course big thank you to the uh teacher advisers Mr Carlson and Mr noo who are helping these students along with their Journey for advocacy um Club reports I'm just going to speed along with it um basically very
briefly uh the our model United Nations club uh recently attended the Bosman conference and along with that the class of 2026 is setting up their junior prom I know there's there's a lot of exciting things that are happening in multiple student councils and now with 3 months
remaining left before seniors leave the class of 2025 is getting everything ready from prom to getting tassels and robes and all of that all right moving on to the next part we've had some excit we have an
exciting month for the jrc so the jrc CMP team competed at Camp Perry over a February break and they were able to take third place in the Army Regional March so very very exciting uh along with that we also have the jotc archering team who competed in the coal
competition at East Boston high and they were able to rank number one and ranking overall and along with that um it seems that there was a duplicate in both of those slides but uh what I will say is I guess just um bringing this up now that
the revier high jotc patri Battalion will be seeking school committee approval for the drill team to participate in the USAC Army drill national competition in Daytona Florida so just coming up and just making sure that the uh is aware that that is
happening another thing that I do want to mention that is not on the slide is uh I just want to bring up the the topic of accessibility of school committee meetings I know we've had a couple of talks about that in the past but recently um as I mentioned at the start uh the student Representatives including
me and Jala were not at the meeting last time because there was a miscommunication on the school committee times so uh we rely mostly on the rever minutes and agenda's page which shows the whole schedule of meetings including
City Council meetings and school committee meetings we had checked that page numerous times only for it to have not been updated and talking to other students and uh Consulting with other teachers and people who are interested in coming to school committee meetings
I've got I've heard from a lot of people that when it comes to school committee meetings that they simply just are always unable to figure out what the times are or things are not updated to the way that they should be um even for this meeting up until recently I had to double check and confirm to make sure
that that meeting was on the schedule and um Robin was super super helpful on making sure that we were able to make this deadline for this for this meeting so that's something that I just want to bring attention to and make sure that we are putting a larger effort into making sure that um the dates are posted the
times are posted and that the public is knowledgeable on when these committees are and that's it for the student rep report so um uh on that point just our meetings have always been at 5: and 6:00 p.m. and it's always posted at least a
week before every meeting so if you do run into any issues on seeing it on the screen please feel free to email because our times are always posted and the agendas are posted according to open meeting law with ample time for people to know so our meetings are always at 5: in the library for the committee of the
whole and at 600 p.m. and here always on the 3D Tuesday unless there is a break like this month and we move it to the fourth um I did oh first any questions on anything else before I um no questions just a comment I just wanted
to um say that I'm happy to see the um student Senate working with the elementary well the middle school and elementary schools and seeing that come to fruition we had talked about it at length and um you know Jackie was good enough to to make the recommendation
that we have a a unified um collaboration between the schools so it's nice to see that you guys are visiting with the schools and and getting their feedback I think it's empowering for the younger students as well as for you and it it gives them a sense of support and um mentorship without even realizing it so this is all
wonderful stuff I hope you guys stick with it I know you're some of you will be gone in three months but maybe let's have it in place so that way um there's a second you know followup with them to ensure that they're they're staying on track thank you good report thank you
uh just a few more from me on terms of accessibility we also want to share that our public comment policy was finally updated and it was translated thanks to the district team into all our prevalent languages so now people can find it in their common language on our website to know how to participate in our meetings
as well and this is really spearheaded by the student Senate ensuring accessibility so thank you for working with us on that I did have a few questions when it comes to the menstrual products my first question is are these products being restocked in a timely fashion at the
schools um from my information and partially occasionally helping out with fem restocking the products uh the products are for the most part restocked in a timely fashion it is done right now
by the students of fem um so basically what happens is that uh the advisers get a shipment of flow products and then the students are able to with a key unlock the dispensaries and fill it up with whatever product is needed whatever
whether that be tampons or pads is able to be filled um of course uh if there's any qu other questions I could get you in contact with a fem member but that's what I know from what I've been seeing thank you and then I just want to
Echo the shout out to Julia and her sister who's in middle school where they both spoke at the city council meeting yesterday and left our city councelor members members of the public very impressed with their public comments it was great to see our young leaders and they also sent in 12 letters of written
testimony from other students who really gathered together their voice and uh just a moment of appreciation to Mr Carlson and Miss denolo who also stayed at the meeting the entire time after teaching all day to support the students and making sure they had chapon there so thank you to all our teachers for all
they do okay uh with that we will move to public comment if there are any members of the public who wish to speak on anything on the agenda whether via Zoom or in person I ask that you please um you can start to stand and line up and
I'll ask Robin to pass me the sign up sheet and then we'll call people the way public comment works is that you have 2 minutes we ask that you start um by stating your name and just the street you live on you don't need to say the number especially if you're a minor and then and people can continue to sign up
until the end of public comment comment so there's extra Shades in the back so with that uh the first person we have signed up for public comment is Jalia figeroa okay Jamila and and then when you come up there's a little button with like a face
and three lines that's what you click so that it turns on so once you start speaking I will start the timer hi everyone safe havens in schools are important because they help students feel safe which can lead to better academic performance and mental health
for many students especially those with immigrant families school isn't a place of safety it's filled with fear because they worry about being separated from their families while other being dropped off at school when border patrol is allowed near schools it creates stress
and worry for students they can't focus on their work or feel comfortable with their friends because they're always thinking about what could happen no one should have to feel like that when they're try just trying to learn school should be a place where all students feel safe and supported every kid should
be able to focus on their education with the fear without the fear of being taken away from their family that's why it's important to make school safe for everyone no matter where they come from thank you thank you next we have uh Julia
figuroa um my name is Julia Figaroa I'm from Bain Street I stand before you today to advocate for a vital resolution the establishment of our school as a designated safe haven for all students regardless of their background or circumstances every student deserves to
walk through these stores each day feeling secure respected and empowered to learn by establishing our district as a safe haven we can Empower every student to reach their full potential and create a truly welcoming environment for all admidst the uncertainty and
Chaos of our current state of society establishing ourselves as a safe haven school is not just a policy but a commitment to creating a space where every student can Thrive learn and dream let us stand together to make this Vision a reality for our school Community thank you
thank you next we have is it Jam yeah yeah hi everyone I want to talk about why school should be safe place where border patrol can't come some students especially with those with immigrant families are really scared that while they're at school someone could come and
take their parents away this fear makes it hard to focus on learning and enjoying school when border patrol comes near schools it makes kids feel unsafe and worried they shouldn't have to be afraid when they're trying to learn and spend time with their friends school
should be a safe place and safety and support not fear every every student deserves to go to school without worrying about being separated from their family let's make sure all that that all kids can come to school
learn and grow without fear of immigration enforcement thank you thank you next we have Emily hi everyone I want to talk about why school should be a safe place where border patrol can't come some kids like me have families who aren't from here
and they're really scared that border patrol might take them away while they're at school when border patrol comes to school it makes kids really scared they can't think about their homework or play with their friends because they're too worried no kid should feel scared like that at school school is supposed to be a place where
we feel happy and safe so we can learn and play every kid should be able to come to school and not worry about being taken from their family thank you thank you next we have Edwin who I believe stepped out so we
can wait till the end um and then we have one more member signing up so you can just come up after you've signed up do we have anyone on Zoom Dr Kelly no okay while they finish signing up I'll pass it over to our student rep who also
wants to to have some public comment my name is salel Mendoza uh I live on filamina Avenue in early August of 2007 my house was raided by ice or Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the time I was only 5 days old my grandparents from
both sides of my family coming from El Salvador and Morocco were staying at our home in Riv while while I was obviously not old enough to recall this event my parents and my grandparents recall this vividly my abolita who witnessed her own
grandchild my cousin being detained said is this the freedom that America is offering if so I want to go back home my grandmother on my mother's side a devote Muslim was equally horrified this is the reality that the kids of America are living through today
this type of experience is extremely traumatizing to anyone especially my mother who is sitting in the audience who still flinches when somebody knocks loudly on the door nearly 18 years later our students are not criminals who are a threat to National Security but rather
those who carry a legacy of their families by studying in the United States an undocumented student has the same potential as a documented student they have the potential to change society and America for the better I'm speaking out for the P passage of
resolution for Safe Haven as as the intrusion of ice in our schools is pure distraction towards learning I'm speaking out because families don't deserve to be ripped apart for the sake of Education please vote in favor of this resolution thank
you thank you next we have endurance hi sorry um my name is endurance and I leave on Pearl AV and revier I am a senior at revier high school I am the daughter of immigrant parents I am the sister of an immigrant
and I myself am an immigrant I was born and raised in Cameroon and I moved to this country when I was 11 years old I went to GMS I've I went to sixth seventh and eighth grade in GMS
um when I started High School I found my place Rivier high school is so diverse and so rich in culture and I never felt more at home in all the years that I've been in this country country this school has been my safe
haven for the past 4 years and for the past couple of months it has been anything but that it has been a place where I have been terrified to walk into every single day because I'm not sure what could happen I am in this country legally my
entire family is in this country legally and yet that fear does not leave us do you want to know what my 10-year-old brother asked me as we watched the inauguration he asked me if we're going
to get kicked out too you have no idea how heartbreaking and terrifying it was to hear my 10-year-old brother ask me that question and the worst part of it all is that I could not tell him
no I could not look him in the eyes and lie to him of for the past couple of months since the Trump Administration and Ice has been raiding schools everywhere not a single member of of
the sorry not a single person who I look up to in the in the office in the school committee has mentioned a single word about this not a single person has spoken to the students or the teach teachers or the staff in
this school about how terrifying it is to see schools like eff to see schools in Chelsea get rated and wonder if we're next not a single person has come up to students or staff to just have a conversation about
it being a safe haven school is not a want it is a necessity you say this will put a Target on our backs with all due respect you have no idea what it's like to have a Target on your back I have had a Target on my back since I
moved into a country where my skin color has been a crime I have had a Target on my back since I heard that Trump was running for president I have had a Target on my bag since he was
inaugurated this R Public Schools need to be a safe haven because students should not be terrified of walking through the doors that they have walked in through every single day thank you thank you endurance any
final public comment or members wishing to speak I want to also acknowledge we received over 30 um written submissions of public comment via email also asking um for passage of the resolution and some members received even more emails
um oneon-one also asking for support of the resolution so I'm just entering that into the record with that can we have a motion to close public comment all in favor any opposed public comment has now closed thank you all for speaking the resolution will be voted on
later um in the agenda for those who can still stay we will now move on to the superintendent report as Dr Kelly pulls that up the first um item under her report is the Wheeling presentations so if there's any members from the school who want you can go
ahead and start to stand up um the first item on the superintendent report is a presentation by the Wayland school and I want to um welcome our principal and the staff that's that's joining her here today I'm sure they'll all introduce themselves um and share some
information on the monthly morning meetings thank you so much good evening school committee members good evening Dr Kelly good evening to Dr Garcia as well my name is Rachel Shanley I am the building principal at AC whan my team
and I are really proud and excited to be here to share about a structure that we have set at the whan school called monthly morning meeting also known as mm m m next slide please thank you so a few years ago we had a teacher
at the whan school that came to the admin team with an idea to have a schoolwide zoom once a month where a really big Elementary School we set up a committee of folks to kind of join in
comprised of admin teachers um some coaches some interventionists as well and Specialists and we spent some time with lots of discussion around what that might look like for this whole schoolwide Zoom
teachers staff um office staff everyone joins in including all classes we all Zoom once a month and it's really a time for us to spend building Community um for like I at a really large school for
each monthly morning meeting we spend time growing as a whole school learning together time to celebrate we celebrate students um and achievements and we always finish each Zoom with a dance and a song at the end so it's a lot of fun
next slide please so a few of the things that we blend into the mmm are academics social emotional learning also called seal and Community Building as
well at this time I'm going to introduce our math coach candy Conley candy will come up and spend some time discussing the core values and the monthly themes that we cover with mmm thank you good evening um so the
monthly Mo oh next slide please sorry oh NOP sorry back I'm sorry yep all right the monthly morning meeting has really um sparked joy for the whole Wayland School community and it's really great to be able to connect the whole school through these monthly
Zoom meetings to help promote academics seal and community and it's a great opportunity for us to all learn about and practice the same core values through these monthly themes next slide okay so we choose one core value
as a theme for each month and focus on it through stories songs videos audience participation games and activities for example in October we discussed friendship and the closing song that month was You've Got a Friend in Me from the movie Toy Story in November we
focused on kindness since World kindness day was November 13th and we talked about ways to be kind in the classroom at home and in the community December's theme was respect and the focus was on respecting self others and
things students participated in an activity where they gave a thumbs up a thumbs down to different scenarios as they decided if they were or weren't respectful and then turning the focus to growth mindset in January was the perfect way to start a new year and last
month's theme was compassion and just having this common language around these themes throughout the whole school Community has been very beneficial to all and next um grade three teacher Juliana naso will speak about the current processes of and monthly morning
meeting and teacher resources that we use good evening everyone my name is Juliana naso and I'm the third grade teacher at AC whan so I want to speak a little bit about the celebrations that we do during monthly morning meeting the students get really excited to see if
they're going to win an award for the stmath um the golden tray award or the literacy highlights so for St Math Awards we like to congratulate students who are either getting really really close to 100% for the year or we also
really like to focus on um students and classrooms who are making the most progress in the last month so we kind we make sure that we are celebrating everyone we we also look at the golden tray um winners where we like to make
sure that we promote um positive behavior in all places in the school and one of them is in the lunchroom where we make sure that there's high expectations so that students are cleaning up their area they're being respectful to the workers and they are really excited to
find out if they're going to be the winner for that year for that month and they're able to get a golden tray that they can have in their classroom for the month and then they we pass it on each month we also have literacy highlights because we want to make sure that we're
focusing on math and literacy so we always choose a classroom who is doing really well in reading or writing and we make sure that we congratulate them by being specific like the Miss naso's classroom is doing really well with their
expository non-fiction unit something specific so that they can celebrate and hear about it and also connected to literacy we also have a digital um bookshelf which is connected to that monthly theme that I will show you in the next
slide so this is an example of the mindfulness bookshelf so there are links to each book so the teacher can use it as a resource But the teacher can also give it to the students to use as a resource if there's any time during
reading to do independent reading it's directly connected to that theme so that they can get a better sense of that theme through Ela and I will now introduce Nicole cassetta she is the um assistant
principal good evening everyone um so a new element we added this year to MMM is the celebration piece and this is based on the monthly core value the celebration has been widely received by
staff students and families the first the theme is introduced um on the zoom in the morning at mmm the students will listen to a read aloud watch a skit or participate in an interactive
activity next the teachers are presented with the look for to connect the theme um in award the student then the students are chosen by a teacher or staff member and announced over the intercom by Mr guchi and the
students wait patiently to hear that um announcement over the intercom the final piece and the most exciting part of the mmm is that the students are awarded with a parent letter that goes home and they're really proud of that to take that home to their families letting them
know um that they've received this award um and they are given a small token of appreciation and a 20 minute celebration a activity with peers that are also being um celebrated that month and I'm going to introduce Mr
guchi assistant principal thank you everyone um so I am here to talk about sort of the end of that cycle we like to kind of start the planning process for next month but we also like to share out with caregivers um and we've been doing
that in two ways one of which um Miss cassetta just spoke to is the parent letter home um this parent letter home just kind of goes home to every kid that was nominated and selected for their core value um one of the kind of key phrases that speaks out to me out of
hundreds of students you are student was chosen um really kind of personalizes it and then um in italics in the middle there is the um reason from the teacher on the right hand side um is the reason from the teacher why that student was
nominated so I think we have a student shown for the growth mindset celebration so that teacher um gave us some input as to why that student was selected and that goes into the letter to be sent home um the other way that we're sharing with all caregivers not just the ones
that are celebrated but all caregivers is through parent Square um at the end of each celebration um I typically will post um a message to let people know how many students were chosen and by who so that's an exciting part too is we don't tell the kids who's nominating so
sometimes it's the classroom teachers sometimes it can be um Specialists interventionists calf staff so we like to keep them on their toes and guessing who's going to be the the ones that are selecting them um and then they find out in the letter so that's another nice
piece of that um and then also in the parent Square post we talk about what the activity entailed um which on the next slide um has some visuals of that so um we have three of our celebrations here starting on the left is our growth mindset
celebration um we took a picture with each of the kids um and they were each had a growth kit so this one we were really excited about they got home with some small gardening tools um some seeds some instructions of how to plant them
um and some aspirations of warmer weather and spring ahead so um that's nice we just had that one at the end of January um in the middle there is our respect for recess so the core value was respect I think Specialists and interventionists nominated these
students um and we had a 20 minute additional respect recess where students got to celebrate um for respectable behavior and then lastly on the right here is a picture of um taken from our kindness celebration that was held in
the calf students got to make bracelets um do some drawing some coloring and at the end we had them each take a picture with their classroom award and that's another piece of this is that we've not only shared with the caregivers but we want to recognize it
within our school so you see Sabrina there and she's holding her classroom award teachers have been posting that outside on the doors inside the classroom and it's just another way um to recognize all that the the wonderful achievements our students do um and
lastly I kind of want to go back to the parent letter and share one in particular and I'm going to invite Mr Robert up here um Robert Newton uh was a student that was nominated by Miss zabilski who is one of the people that
brought this idea to us Robert if you want to come over here I want to share what Miss zabilski said she said Robert is always working um so hard and is very positive each and every day he puts forth 100% effort in every
assignment he's a role model to all students in my classroom so proud of you Robert Miss sibilski so I wanted to ask you Robert um maybe how did it feel to be nominated and what's your favorite part of the mm that we just kind of
shared about my favorite part of the mm is the end song it's a really good that's awesome that's awesome and do you have anything else to add about
the mm you got the growth mindset right yeah and that was a what did we do for an activity did we have um people do the um snowball race yeah yeah so I can share we had um a for the growth mindset
celebration Robert and um his fellow students were able to go into the gym and we set this awesome relay race up with colorful snowballs papers um and in each paper had a message right and what you had to do with that message is you had to figure out is it a growth mindset
or is it a fixed mindset right yeah yeah and that was really fun students did such a great job on that and and did you have fun yeah yeah awesome well I'm glad it sounds like we're doing an okay job on this thing right H awesome well thank
you so much for being here thank you so much thank you school committee members that's right okay thank you so much any any questions Mr Kingston um if you could let us know
when the next one is I I if I can I can get it into my schedule I'd really like to come by I think it might be fun all right thank you well the the celebration or the the zoom we have two parts right I'd try for I would try for both parts if I could but if I can get one yeah I mean you know schedule permitting I
don't want to promise but I would do my best thank you problem yeah sure I would just add that um I think you can all attest to the power of positive reinforcement you know we try to be um I know I'm a huge advocate of firmness and
um in but at the same time we have to strike a balance right with the positive reinforcement and you guys are a great example of what you're doing over there so thank you this is wonderful this brought a smile to my face and it's it's it's good to see and it's good to see happy kids learning so thank you Mr Kingston I just also wanted to thank the
teachers who put the extra time in to make this happen I really appreciate that you what you're doing and I know the kids do and I just want to say thank you I don't think we say thank you often enough and I want to make sure that I do thank you thank you thank you all Dr Kelly
next item thank you thank you very much great job whing team um the next item on the superintendent report is a presentation from Mr Bowen and this is uh kind of a an update from um the different status
reports that we've had throughout the last year um and changes that we think that are starting to emerge from the redesign of the high school that's the school committee supported a year ago uh and also I know Mr Bowen is going to bring us down um the path of some future
planning to see what's coming next so I'll get that um here if this thing will cooperate with me [Music] all right all right good evening everyone um I've passed out just some handouts this
of the slides as well as some data that I'm going to refer to I figured it was just easier to see kind of up close on paper um I was hoping to bring you through sort of a quick tour of uh some data that we've been looking at and are just kind of proud of in terms of some impact that we've seen over the course
of the this past few school years um give you a little bit of insight into sort of how some of the structural changes and programmatic changes that we've made have led to some of that impact um and then talk a little bit about where we're headed uh this spring into next school year because we've got a lot of uh kind of interesting and fun
design team uh work going on and I'm excited to share that out with you um so the first thing I just want to highlight is uh I believe you asked in the summer as we um returned to having um homogeneously grouped classes for honors designation as well as continued with
allowing students to earn the core or the honors designation in core classes I just wanted to share out at the end of semester 1 um where we landed with that so you'll see um the percentag of students who opted to take honors sections um across different grade levels um and you'll also see in the right hand column um the percentage of
students that also chose to take or pursue an honors designation in a core class um for a variety of reasons so there Stu there could be a student in the left column and the right column that check off both boxes if that makes sense um you'll notice that as we get into the 11th and 12th grade those percentages decrease that is not
students taking fewer Advanced coursework it is just that they're taking other kinds of advanced coursework um which is what move on to the next slide um we have um and have continued to have um a very high participation rate in students who take Advanced course workk whether that's advanced placement courses Early College
courses dual enrollment courses um the uh breakdowns are sort of by different different subgroup um and I think what's interesting and what I'm particularly proud of if you if you go on our Desy website and you look at sort of how our schools participation in advanced course work compares to surrounding districts
surrounding schools districts that we work with um we do well we have a very high percentage of our students um that are taking Advanced course work and we get sort of credit from the Department of Education for that in our accountability and and and so forth so just wanted to Sure share that about honors and about other forms of advanced
course work for last year um advanced placement also is another one of those we had you know close to 600 um tests taken last year um almost 60% of students that took tests earned um passing rates um of either three four or
five as that score um which we're just very proud of so we've got students taking dual enrollment courses advanced placement courses other Early College courses and doing well when they take them it's not just that we're having lots of students take these courses but um they're prepared for that um test and those scores have increased just um sly
since our return from pandemic um if we go on to the next slide um I wanted to kind of reference a little bit of mcast data um not the only thing that drives our work but it is something that we look at um and I know there's been a lot of talk in the news recently about just sort of like the
state of student learning in the four years since the return you know from the pandemic um in the return to inperson school and I think one of the things that I like to focus in on is this uh metric that the state gives us what's called student growth percentile I think many of you are familiar with that and
what that lets you do is sort of not compare the total um total level of proficiency of an individual student or an individual school but it helps compare students um students growth from where they were the last time they took the test compared to students who performed similarly on that test the
last time if that makes sense um and one of the things that I'd like to just point out is if you go back to the first year we administered mcast right after the pandemic um the growth that we saw from the previous time was around 43 for ELA um and pretty low 30% um uh growth
shown in that first year post pandemic um and if you look at where we were last year our growth in the ELA test for those students that took it last year um was at 54% which is outperform is above average Above Performance in the state um and 51% for math um so like our our
growth over those four years um not in the overall proficiency but in terms of the growth individual students have shown um compared to where the growth we saw right when we turned returned from the pandemic I think is pretty um pretty striking we had a 75% increase in our
math growth um since that first year that we returned back and about uh 25% increase in that growth Ela so I just think that um some of these unique measures of how students perform are worth talking about and I wanted to lift that up um you'll see um on the slide on
the paper that I gave you I think Dr Kelly um there's uh a handful of slides so you can go back to the one the list of schools I threw together just some data from um some local schools that we often kind of compare ourselves to not in a competitive sense but there's a few ways we compare so there's schools that
we work with closely like for example in the five district partnership there's schol schools in the glb the Greater Boston League um in terms of who we compete with um there's schools that Desi um basically identifies for us as similar schools right similar in terms of the size in terms of the population
of students in terms of a variety of factors um and then some other schools that I just thought were interesting comparisons for us to to look at and so I just wanted to share some data in relation to some of this uh that I shared in terms of how we're doing compared to some other schools if that's
okay so if you go I'm going to go um uh sorry Dr K can you go one slide before I sorry one slide P continue into the into the present I'm sorry so go back I apologize go back to the one the um the
uh growth percentile Slide the one that we were looking at right before one more um what no sorry there you go um two points that I just want to point out um to folks in the room and on on the committee um when we the two pages that show us the um kind of change in our
growth for ELA and the change in our growth for math compared to all of those other schools that I put um we are second in highest growth for those schools in math and we are uh first in those schools for highest growth in
ela I apologize about that sorry so this this what we're looking at now um that isn't the next thing that we are going to look at and so it will um we we'll talk about sort of our attendance as well um when we look at how um our restructuring and the work we've been
doing to try to decrease chronic absenteeism um one kind of area of focus that I want to zoom in on is u a metric that the state gives us which is called the lowest performing student subgroup and what that does is if you picture um let's say there's 100 students in a
school um the state sort of Zooms in on the bottom performing 25% or 25 of those students sometimes remove students who are maybe very newly arrived or have moved around students who've been with us for a period of time um and uses that cohort of students to compare how
they're doing over time um and if we look at sort of the uh change that we've seen for that bottom or the the lowest performing subgroup of our students our chronic absentee is among that group of students um in the
2223 school year was uh almost 55% of students being chronically absent in that subgroup um and at the end of last year um that went down to about 33% um that's not that is not our change in chronic absenteeism schoolwide right we're still that is absenteeism is
struggle across the board in in all schools and we're still working on that um but I think that the point I want to highlight here is that we've kind of been very intentional using our support structures our programs some new roles to sort of Target our energy on a certain group of students that are in need of support and we've used this sort
of lowest performing subgroup to to Target um and it's we've had some really good results not only in terms of their growth percentages that we've seen um that I was just referencing but also in terms of that attendance um Improvement and so uh this same this larger packet
just sort of gives that same that same metric across all of those schools um and you can kind of see how we compare um the work that we've done that has impacted The Chronic anism for that lowest performing group compared to the
changes seen for that same group in all of those other schools um if I may just one of course what uh what have you done what are the things have it done to allow you to decrease The Chronic absente so I mean I think that the point that I'd like to make here is that we've sort of like targeted or Target it
sounds like the wrong word we focused energy and attention on a group of students um that was I think pre iously sort of slipping through the cracks right um that's also not to say that there are plenty of students who are still struggling in school right but I think that we were in our other
structure we were sort of putting out every fire that popped up right and I think fire still pop up obviously and we're still dealing with that but we sort of have a a a more cohesive structure for how when a fire pops up and someone's dealing with that that fire that popped up um people are not
dropping the ball on the other group of students that is sort of like not necessarily on fire but still struggling right and I think that that group of 25% that lowest performing group was a group that in prior to our structure sort of really slipped through the cracks the the 71% of kids that are taking Advanced
course work they were doing fine right and the students that we were focusing energy on that were really struggling we were putting a lot of energy into that group I think what our restructuring has let us do is sort of be more steady and more consistent with how we focused on a core group of students still not
everybody and I think that's a thing that we'll talk about in a bit but that um that was slipping through the cracks before and so I think that's sort of what I attribute um to that change that we've seen thank you yeah um good um I just if you go to the next slide I think a few three sort of
key things I just want to highlight that kind of um Mr kiano sort of answer your question there um our student support team so the assistant principal leads their team and they meet together on a weekly basis for about 80 minutes part of that work is really meeting with kids with families kind of having developing like support plans sometimes they'll
meet and they'll talk about a bunch of students that they have they're concerned about sometimes they'll meet and they'll case conference one student and they'll bring the family in they'll bring some teachers in they'll bring the student in and they'll make a pretty thorough plan of what they're going to do to support that student what the student's going to do kind of circle back to that plan about six or eight
weeks out and so uh we've had about maybe 45 50 of those plans across the five teams this year we're halfway through the year and those are sort of like intense support plans for a group of students so that that kind of proactive planning is part of I think what contributes to that um we have the
support specialist role which is the interventionist on each team they work with they uh work with all of the students who are on their team in various different ways that that pop up but they also sort of carry this case load of about 20 to 25 students each and they're sort of doing sort of more intense case management of that
particular group and if progress is shown they might work a little bit less with that student and take on someone else it's not it's not like they're working with the same group forever they're but they're sort of able to dedicate time to that but if you do that across five teams we're talking 125 students right um on top of students that are also having these more
comprehensive support plans that are just multiple people involved in um and then we have um the bright program which is the transition back from students whove been hospitalized often for mental health concerns we've only this is through January that's only six months of school and we've had 13 students who have transitioned back this year um
after having some mental health concerns um that obviously interrupts their schooling and I think that's a that is a very time intensive support um to help students in terms of their mental health and in terms of getting caught up academically um if we go to the next slide um there's a few other uh programs
that we've um worked on building with your support um we've launched the sort of career development program as like an extension of our internship program um and so this uh the career development program works with a group of students who are struggling to balance school and work at the same time um and so we have
a cohort of about 30 students 28 currently this second semester um another 28 first semester um who are um they take some courses in the morning they have some work study experiences and then they have a seminar with an adviser who really keeps on them um in terms of their academics but also doing
career exploration and and so forth to kind of keep them engaged um another 35 students this semester who doing like a work study experience with them on top of the 60 students um that we have doing internships um who are typically maybe a little more um academically inclined and don't need sort of like the academic
support um and I just this is less um support but I just want to highlight we've had um 100 students this school year taking dual enrollment courses we've had um 10 students through the Gateway to College program which is sort of an alternative program at North Shore Community College which you support
there's 10 seats that we have there it helps students who just sort of this isn't the thing for them uh in terms of the big high school they get to start their college classes at Northshore early and they do a really great job there it's a great sort of Dropout prevention program um and we have right now we're proud to have we have 120 students enrolled in our early college
program um since last spring when that launched those students have earned 645 credits total um saving if those students were to transfer to say um Boston this was the number that um Caroline garer and I were looking at this morning um if they were to transfer to uh ums Boston they would have
collectively saved $516,000 um and so those are sort of kind of giving students options of like how they build a portfolio of what courses they can take um and so oh yeah um just quick question um the 10 students that have
taken advantage of the Gateway to College are we doing anything to to promote that more or are we limited in the number of spots that we have so we pay for seats I believe each spot is thank you yeah there it's a great program and so if you're if if you want to give me more seats i' love that um no
it's a great program all right thank you um and then if we go to the next slide I'll just talk a little bit about some sort of uh oh this is a good one thank you um we are doing as part of the career development program in our internship Fair um we we doing a career and Trade Fair um and I just wanted to give you all the date because I know
this was a thing that happened last spring and people were excited about it so I wanted you to mark your calendar so it's March 18th um we have a bunch of different folks coming in from different unions from different um different career areas um so that students can kind of uh get a sense of what jobs might be out there after college what
training programs are out there after or After High School um and we're very excited about that so that's our career development program coordinator Tara Mitchell um and is collaborating with uh Mr wiconi in the in City Hall um to to to host that so we're excited about her work here to get that
done um this is just a little celebration these are all the colleges that students in the class of 2025 um have been accepted to early early decision so we've still got more rolling in but this is where we are right now we'll get a full list to you in May but um these are our early decision schools
so far we're excited about about many of those um there's a full list I think I gave you the full list on in the packet um and just four sort of quick updates on some future planning that we're doing and I'm just very excited about all four of these projects so um we are working
with an organization called redesign um which is a group that helps schools design new school models this is from funding that you've given us the past few years um and we're really looking to kind of coordinate all of the different programs that we have when we talk about internship we talk about Blended
learning online we talk about college classes we talk about work study trying to kind of like be more cohesive about how do we provide personalized learning Pathways for students who the four period block schedule like isn't the thing right um and I firmly believe that we don't need like an alter we don't
need I feel like people often talk about alternative Pathways as oh we need to like send these students over there like no we need to provide flexibility we need to provide engaging experiences and we need to provide wraparound supports for students who just need to do things differently and I think one of the things I love about working in a in a
school that is focused on being competency based and awarding thinking about Competency Based progression is that we can really work with students where are they at what do they know what do they need to learn how do we get them credit for what they know and help them move on to the next thing um and so we've got a design team our kickoff
meeting launches this Thursday I invited Dr Garcia I think he's going to join us um and I'm very excited about getting that um Pathways program up and running next year um we are have another group working on Career concentrations that's for sort of in in our foresight to the
new High School we've got the five different career areas that we're trying to build out um we spent time this year thinking about like what does a pathway look like we're starting to design a little bit more clearly around what are the different five pathways look like what Partners might we want to be partnering with what electives might we want to start offering um next year
we've got a few grants we're looking at to support some of that work and so um that's a spring project it's kind of getting a a Clear Vision for our future career concentrations by the end of this spring um to be able to at least have a rough idea of what we're building towards um we are launching uh tomorrow
a schedule redesign team so we've got a handful of Educators in the high school who have uh volunteered to be part of this group to help me um and my administrative team look at like what changes to our current schedule um might we want to consider to uh provide more flexibility to provide more options and
so there's like a whole contract process we go through with that but the first part is launching this design team so that kicks off tomorrow um and we have our accreditation visit um at the end of the month early April so our visitors from nas will be with us um and what I am very excited about particularly with
this visit is how sort of three things con calide or well Collide here we've got the feedback we will get from them on the progress we've made the past three years and things we need to do next we have the district's strategic design plan for the next five years District plan and like those the timing
couldn't be better right because we get to take their feedback incorporate that into the district's plan and then we're like working towards building the new high school with all of these things so like we have three sort of separate design feedback plans happening um that will I think come together to be a really nice four-year plan for like what
takes us to close out this building and and move move to Wonderland and so very excited about all that Mr Kingston Mr Bowen could you explain the the pages aren't numbered so I I apologize about that no no it's uh
um school year 2002 for AP exam performance at rhs can you explain the two columns I'm just not getting it oh of course y um that is in the slideshow um so the these are just um the one big table just split into two column so you can see so you'll see that like um for
example you know we had 597 tests that were taken AP exam tests and 58% of those students who take those tests got passing scores um students did best in our AP US History course um with 90% of students who took that course getting a
passing score um if number of students in the course correct right there were 10 students that were that took that course we looked at the English Lit comp lit comp course there were 27 students that took that course and 85% of those 27 got a passing score of three four or
five does that make sense um so it's just kind of sorted by that was confusing me was the number on the left is the yeah the number on the left is the number number of tests taken and the number of right is the percent score that I apologize I know the three to five is passing I get that I just didn't
see the so okay yeah I was just trying to figure how many cuz the the top number was a little the 597 and the 58 was yeah so 58% of those 597 tests were passing scores okay anyone else Mr
kajo uh since we instituted the honest program last year how is that working out I mean as far as turn off turn off my SL my microphone um we've had a I think two things that I'm happy about like we've got a lot large number of students who have opted
into taking those classes right and we've had a large number of students at each grade level who have also chosen to pursue an honor designation in that core course right so I think to me what that speaks to is kids having options of what they do and how they pursue Advanced course workor um and and doing that so
students who want to take that a separate honors section have been doing that in pretty good numbers students who wanted to maybe maybe in math they wanted to do that but in ela they wanted to work it a different way that's kind of how that's playing out and then we l on college classes dual enrollment
classes as well so overall well thank you um if I could add also a Comon for that um a lot of the freshman and sophomore that I have talked to uh this year when it's come to uh thinking about
advanced placement courses is there there is a high interest so not only is the introduction of these honors classes super effective for students who want to try out a course or see if they're interested in the high course work it is
also helping students to direct themselves towards advanced placement classes uh such as apus history in which I've gotone uh the pleasure of telling students about and trying to advocate for that class more so that's just like an extra comment that I wanted to add
but I think that along with that the honors classes have made uh trying out certain subjects very flexible in our school excellent one comment I to say in response to that I think it's also inter interesting though to think about as students have had the option to maybe take an honors course versus an AP course as they've taken honors courses some of our enrollment and some of the
advanced placement courses has gone down a little bit right so when we think yeah we might have the honors course numbers raised um that when we when we look at like our accountability and what counts as advanced course work and honors course doesn't count as advanced course workor what counts as the college course or the AP course so it'll be interesting
to see at the end of this year how many AP tests were taken compared to the 597 when students had some option to not take the AP course and take the honors course we could we we'll we'll see that probably in July or August thank you yeah thank you so much
of course thank you Mr Bowen great job um next up on um the superintendent report is really just a series of uh brief updates that I wanted to give the committee um the first is on the new High School uh just a reminder that we
do have a school bill building committee meeting tomorrow night uh anybody who would like to attend can do so via Zoom um but the good news is that the owner project manager uh Finance consultant and the
construction manager Finance consultant spent the day today reconciling the anticipated costs and it looks like we're coming out right at or right below the anticipated budget for construction the this is just for construction not for the whole project the whole project
is still budgeted at um 493 million excluding the 4 million we've already spent on feasibility uh but the construction budget is coming in at about 411 to
412 million which is what we anticipated so that's good news that we're coming in on budget for the construction itself um and we are on track for bidding to go out uh next month in March to send bids out to start
Contracting the subcontractors who are actually going to do the demolition work and we anticipate the site demolition will begin in late April or early May so On Target on budget onward we
go um the next was just an update on the rney mash Academy and um I'm going to pass the sheet out can you can reach that um it's just a it's just a quick summary and um just to review what we talked about before with their
accountability status um we've been working with the Department of Education and with the Great Schools partnership um and the focus in O of their work has been on um making sure lessons are grounded in materials and tasks aligned
to grade level content standards and practices lessons uh are grounded in a clear purpose that is visible and or shared or co-constructed by students and that all students are doing the majority of the thinking during the
lesson in service of grade level standards so rather than the teacher um doing all of the work we're seeing the students do the work so that they're actually learning um and with grade schools and with desie the two main uh
tweaks that we've made at Remy M Academy the first is a weekly coach meeting um with case loads for cycles of observation support and the roll out of new planning routines during PGT where teachers are planning together on
structuring their lessons so since January 13th um you'll recall that we spent the first half of the Year figuring out what the focus should be and doing Learning Works to understand that better um since January 13th we put into practice the weekly coach meetings
and the rolling out of the new rout in PGT the administrative team has done 140 classroom observations and the coaches have done 120 PR observations um and Dr mokaba myself and
um the team over at Romney uh did a second round of observations with desie on January 30th and just some brief data on the bottom of this page um when we observed in all of those observations the 140 that the administrators did the
120 that the coaches did and the walkthroughs that we did with desie um we were all focused on these three metrics what did we see in these three areas um and for each one of them we asked ourselves um you know are the
lessons tasks rigorous and allign to grade level standards and practices yes somewhat or no and um if you look at the table here the answer to that question in January when we first started collecting the data we only saw Yes the
lesson tasks are rigorous and aligned to grade level standards in 35% of the classes by February 10th that had jumped to 50% yep I was feedback provided between January 13th and February 10th yes yeah
thank you yep feedback was provided every time there were observations done um and then likewise for that same question cuz you know we we you're you're often to see somewhat these things happening because different things impact how a lesson goes or what
exactly we see when we observe maybe the maybe something had happened earlier that we missed or was coming up so we try to take that into account but um I'm really excited that the the answer no to that question our lessons tasks rigorous and align to grade level standards the
no went from 11% to 3% so that's impressive um and then in the second metric the lesson grounded in clear purpose it's uh visible shared or co-constructed um you know agenda with students when the yes went from 32% to
45 which is great we've seen some increase there still room to grow of course um and the nose went from 7 to 13 so that was uh a little bit of a one-off um we're not thrilled with that metric but you know we'll keep collecting the
data and see what happens over time um and this is this is comparing one particular week January 13th to 17th all of the observations that happened on that week to all of the observations that happened the week of February 10th to 14th which I will point out is it was
the week before vacation and that can sometimes create some irregularities also but it was the most recent week that we had a full set of data for so we'll see if these Trends continue as we continue to collect the data and just quickly reviewing the third metric are
all students doing the majority of the thinking during the lesson in service of grade level standards went from yes went from 14% to 32 um so almost doubled which is great and the no fell in half from 16% to 8% Dr Kelly other dates scheduled for
the next round of observations already the with desie um whoever whether admin so the admin and um the admin and the coaches have a regular schedule that they do every day they're in class class rooms they rotate through it's a different class different rooms every
day that's how they have so many the 140 and the 120 okay um so they're doing that on a daily basis and then um the rounds of observations that Dr Moab and I are doing with our Consultants from Desi uh and grade schools and with that
team the coaches and the and the administrators walk with us as well um we'll do another round of those in the late spring and so the idea is to see where we were in the fall when we identified here here are the things we should work on where are we now at the midpoint of the year and where will we
be um in probably may I think is when we'll do the the last thank you few Mr Kingston if we if we don't achieve growth again what happens next um great
question um I think if we don't achieve greater growth this year on mcast um then the state will continue to work with us us um they've been a phenomenal partner they're not coming at this work with a stick or a carrot it's
more we're Partners let's figure this out let's do what's right for kids um so it's been great to work with them on this endeavor and it's nice to have the little bit of money that they've given us which is actually paying for the Great Schools partnership for them to
come in um and there's some money there for Teacher professional development as well and curriculum development um which we we've been able to hire teachers and we'll be able to hire them this Summer to do some of that work outside of the school day U because there's not a ton
of time obviously to do that during the school day um and naturally teachers should be paid for the work that they do um so we appreciate that partnership and the opportunity that it provides that we wouldn't otherwise have um and I would say that if we
didn't come out of the area where we are we're below 10% um then then desie would maybe give us some more supports or but I'm confident that the teachers and the staff at the rumy are making the kinds of changes that are
going to help our kids achieve at higher rates thank you thank you um the next thing I wanted to share is actually just a little bit of foreshadowing we got the um uh as you know desie comes in and does a massive evaluation of all of our
program work every 3 years um and it's called the program quality audit um which they conducted over the course of the fall and we just got the preliminary results I don't have the final results yet um I will share those
once we have the official report from desie um but on the preliminary report they measured Us in let me see here I should have counted these before 7 8 9 10 11 12 31 different uh
criteria um and they cleared us on 29 of them and said everything you're doing is on point keep doing that um there are two areas that they uh gave us some um corrective action for and the
first one was the use of physical restraint on any student enrolled in a public funded educational program um they said what we had in place is appropriate and correct um but our policy to date has been that teachers
sign off on the faculty handbook which includes our restraint policy at the start of the year and they said that's not significant enough evidence that they actually read it so what we're going to do uh what we've proposed for that corrective action is that the principles will actually review that
policy with the principal at the opening day meeting and that should sign off yeah hopefully that that will clarify the next step in this process is that um we get the official report from desie and then we meet with them and say this is what we're planning to do to correct
that issue and they approve it or not um the second area that they CAU that they cited us for uh was curriculum review and the statute this is actually in Massachusetts General law not in the Federal um is that the district ensures
that individual teachers in the district review all educational and instructional M materials for simplistic and demeaning generalizations lacking intellectual Merit on the basis of race color sex gender identity religion National or origin and sexual
orientation um Etc and uh although they appreciated the work that we've been doing in our curriculum review panels um they said that it didn't meet the metric to show that every individual teacher for every different individual lesson
that they're giving um has actually engaged in that kind of review um I struggle with this one a little bit to be honest with you because um I don't know how we would collect that data other than to ask teachers to just sign
an affidavit saying that they do it um we're we're still trying to figure this one out and hoping that desie will have some guidance for on how we can better achieve that metric um and maybe track the data without putting my concern is I don't want to put more teachers burden
on teachers exactly they're working hard enough without um having to somehow demonstrate that they're doing these kinds of reviews um when we know that they're doing them well and unless I'm mistaken
isn't that what we have a curriculum director for is to is to review the materials before it even reaches we do and that's what our curriculum directors do and that's what they are saying that's all great you're on point there um I'm going to use Mr fellows as an example because he's sitting here
tonight but um what they're saying is how do you know that Mr fellows didn't give out a worksheet that somehow was biased or discriminated against a student because we don't monitor every worksheet that Mr fellow is using in his class that's his decision so we we have
to work with the state on this metric a little bit um we'll see what they come back to us uh and see if there's a reasonable solution to that um but my my push on the state is going to be looking for something that is reasonable and
doesn't overburden teachers right yeah Mr Kingston could is it I think your solution about having the teachers sign something that they're not but would they have to agree to that or that the state would have to agree to that so no but would we have a hard time getting the teachers to agree to that I guess oh I don't think so I I I mean I
no I think that's a good solution cuz I don't know how else you could do it yeah yeah well would be something saying that the materials are compant exactly right yeah so I don't know more to come on that and I'll let you know as soon as we get the final report
yeah um and then the last item on the superintendent report is um just an update on nesk which we've talked about each month the dates are quickly approach approaching um they're going to be in District as principal Bowen
mentioned from March 30th to April 2nd um and one thing that the chair did ask of us is that um there'll be availability for them to meet with at least two school committee members um more than two can meet with
them if you want um but if it's but we should think about whether or not you want this to have to be a public open meeting if there's a quorum of the committee or if you want to identify a couple of Representatives who could attend the meeting it would be virtual on Zoom um
they're looking to do that on March 31st late afternoon or early evening um and they're looking for a time from the committee that would be appropriate for that meeting and then also a decision of if you want it to be everybody with an open meeting or did
you want to identify a couple of Representatives who could speak for the committee I think we have members who aren't here so I can send an email see who's interested and then based on that if it's a quorum then we can decide if it's an open meeting or we can just have
one or two people who may not have as many responsibilities as others join in so we can really divide and conquer all that we're doing so I'll send that email out to coordinate everyone for scheduling purposes um and then just a very last thing I just want to thank um Jackie and
Stacy who have agreed to be on the strategic planning committee um that committee is meeting tomorrow night for the first of their six sessions um and uh we're really excited to move forward we had um 27 parents and community
members join the virtual um focus group last night um and the consultant said that that was I I was kind of thinking I was wishing there would be more but she said they normally only get seven or eight people so she was pretty impressed that we had um almost 30
so um the process is underway and we'll continue and then the other audit that we're doing on um the school safety audit the consultant reached out to Richie yesterday and said he had a few of his team members who were on vacation and they'll be in touch by the end of
the week with a schedule so moving forward on both of those fronts M milber Alis on the strategic planning I I may be mistaken so forgive me if I'm wrong but I received notice in the morning that the meeting was happening that night so if there if
there we sent three notices okay then forgive me that's okay that's all right so that was the third one um that we sent out yesterday morning we sent out the third notice okay then I take that back I won't take it back I didn't see the first two either I know you guys say this to me
but I can't I mean I can go back into the um portal and they're in they're in John's newsletters so you have to read through the newslet letters that are put at the square well it was for it wasn't for
school committee members specifically it was it was for the community community and parents it was also um posted on our website and on the uh school calendar website uh so we don't have any hearings next is just uh we only had one
subcommittee meet between our January meeting and this one so I'll pass it to Mr kajan if there's any updates from Safety and Security okay thank you madam chair uh we had a meeting on January 29th it was attended by myself the Safety Committee which was John Kingston
Miss mber Alis along with Dr Kelly Dr soluchi Chief Callahan acting Chief James cullin our sros and principal Bowen uh what was on the agenda was to review what would happen on 2024 and our s deployment deployment on
2025 I think the committee felt we needed to have a me on this because let the parents know and the public know exactly what's going on and what we've done in 24 and where we're going in 25 and uh we're all in agreement that it was we are going in the right
direction but we still need more work to be done Mr Bowen made a presentation of all the stats as far as discipline goes um expulsions and so on uh Chief uh uh Callan spoke on the a as well as far far
as what he did in 2024 and how it changed a lot of the school environment also Dr Kelly spoke as far as an overview and going forward uh as far as the safety consultant in 2025 and
we did add uh add an SRO that uh in 2025 also and so far it seems like the t uh the temperament of the stud you know the students in general everything everybody feels safe that's one of the most important things when we got elected was
people talked about student safety as well as quality of our academics and I think we are going in the right direction and I end my report thank you so much any questions from the committee okay hearing none uh we don't have any motions listed is there any unfinished
business from the committee uh members if I may I do have one item that I was thinking about as we heard the high school report specifically around uh the cell phone policy so I think as a committee we've tried our high school leadership team has tried our teachers have tried to do
their best to implement this policy but the issues persist and so I realized at this time it's not the policy that's the issue or the lack of effort for implementation but just how widespread the use of cell phones is and so I'd like to make a motion for the ways and means subcommittee to conduct a
feasibility assessment on the cost of Yonder pouches to see if we could afford them and include them in the next next fiscal year and so if they say you know the ways that means say we can afford them then we'll come back we'll have a conversation with the whole Community we'll open it up to folks we'll then you
know meet in the policy subcommittee to revise the policy but first I want to see can we afford this and is this a step we need to take because the adults are doing the best they can and I really don't want to hear more teachers say I'm rethinking High School grades because I don't want to be the cell phone police anymore so that is my motion do we have
a second for discussion second any discussion or questions I Mr Kingston if not put Mr Bowen on the spot but I'd ask him what he thinks about the Y P if you want I think that you should speak to the superintendent about these
matters before okay it wasn't my motion I just thought he was in the room and I thought it was a propo that's fine anything else so this will just be the first step let's see like is it something we can afford
before we have the conversation so we don't have to backtrack and then we have the conversation we decide it but we don't have the money so just to start it yeah no I'm I'm all for exploring ways in which to improve um upon this policy that you know we put into effect but it
it still comes down to enforcement and so I I am sorry if teachers feel that they're being the self cell phone police but sometimes as the adults in the building that is that is the job you know if if it's a matter of they're not
feeling supported by the administration and I'm not saying that's the case then that's a whole different issue because only I'm only saying this because we're talking about enforcement in the chain of command and how that works but I I I'm not giving up on enforcement by any
means the adults in the building need to enforce the policy there are children and there are adults and young adults but we need to we need to enforce our policies um but I am open to exploring and doing whatever we can to help the teachers and and the adults in the
building and I just I want to add to that that I am very much aware that there are some teachers who don't have these challenges right okay um thanks so can we have a roll call on the referral to subcommittee for exploration Mr Stacy Bron
Rizo Mr Anthony cajano yes Mr John Kingston yes Mrs Aisha Milbury Alis yes Miss jacqulyn monteroso yes Mr Frederick s salala yes mayor Patrick ke
AB okay motion to referral to subcommittee passes um the last item on our agenda for under new business is the resolution for saf Haven this is um something that I propose so I'll just give the background for it and then I'll make a motion there'll be a second then
we can discuss um how people want to move so I propos this resolution we've heard from students today we've uh gotten so many emails over 30 emails and not a single student teacher parent or Community member has spoken out against it this resolution isn't something
that's out of the ordinary uh but a simple restatement of the law a restatement of the guidance already put up about the state attorney general and our district policies while it's nothing new or controversial because we're just restating the law um and students rights it does speak to the volume and message
that it sends of support and solidarity to our school community community Brown versus Board of Education states that all students have a right to equal education in 1982 the US Supreme Court ruled in plyer versus doe that the right of undocumented students to attend
public school is guaranteed in the US Constitution if we have students students and parents in fear just like they share today because they don't know where our district stands because almost every District around us is stated publicly that they will uphold the law but we haven't said anything publicly to our community then we're failing at our
job this resolution simply states that we're here to uphold the law and create a safe and welcoming space for all our students so I hope that my colleagues can join me in passing the resolution so to enter into discussion and he thoughts I make the motion to pass a resolution
is there a second second okay any discussion questions or thoughts from colleagues Miss wberry Ellis um so I've thought about this for some time because you know
sometimes sometimes initiatives at first glance look like um The Honorable and the right thing to do and listening to the students who spoke today what is apparent is that we are not we could do
a better job with informing students and families of what their rights are and of the protections that are already afforded um as Miss monteroso stated the proclamation itself does not offer any
additional protections that are already afforded by the law it restates the um civil liberties that we all have and undocumented students have in our schools that are already declared safe zones because of the law that are afforded to the
students um I will say that this is this is nothing new as Miss monteroso indicated this has been the case since the early 80s um I am concerned however that the very people that we're intending to protect are going to be the
people who could be harmed by this resolution um I say that because I am giving consideration to The Climate that we're in and my fear is that we will um place a um I don't want to say highlight
but a a strob blade on the very people we're trying to protect and I don't think that's something that I'm comfortable doing I don't want to broadcast and get over a megaphone what it is that we're already doing to draw our
attention the type of attention negative attention that can come down on these very people our students and their families I can go home and and sleep well at night without that type of fear but I cannot make a decision that is
going to place students or their families In Harm's Way I think our best Avenue is to inform educate and Empower families and the students with the information they need to to um uh
diminish those feares that they have but schools are safe zones that's mandated by law federal ice agents cannot come into our schools without a warrant absent exting circumstances I'm not
aware of ice agents entering schools or other sensitive spaces such as churches so I think we just have to be careful with the misinformation that's out there and with feeding into the fear because that can do us no good I cannot be a
part of something that I feel is going to put the attention on our students and our families in a negative way let's think about what that looks like let's think about media retention let's think about protesters
from opposite sides of the political Spectrum I I don't want that for our students right now we're protecting our students we're doing what we're supposed to do by law we haven't had the occasion where we've encountered this but we have a plan in place it is outlined in Miss
monter Roo's um Proclamation however I think when you start using political terms like Safe Haven which in public policy and and the political sphere equates to Sanctuary I think we are
putting a Target on us I do not want R and our students to be the target of CNN and Fox News we have the bordar coming to Boston why would we put ourselves out there to me anyone who knows me will tell you
that I am not a political person this is a a elected position but I am no politician I don't subscribe to either the left or the right but to the issues as they're presented to me and I use reason and logic and thinking this through I am I'm just not comfortable I
agree with the substance of it but I think that we're even having this discussion right now even this being on the agenda we're putting our students at risk that this is going to be something that blows up and it's not going to affect it's not going to affect many of
us and the ones who we're trying to protect are the ones who are going to feel the brunt of this that's how I that's how I feel about this um Miss monosa with all due respect I do believe that this is coming from a place of sincerity and the mo
motive behind it um is Honorable but I think we could do the same thing by giving our families the information that they need so our students don't feel the way they do based on what they said it's clear they don't have an understanding
of the law they don't have an understanding of what our procedure is and how we would respond and I think once provided that information they will feel empowered and less less afraid to come to school so we have to do our job in
educating each other about what's real what's not real what's fact what's law what protections we have and I just can't I hope I hope you all understand I cannot in good conscience I took this office and I said that I would
always do what's in the best interest of all of our students undocumented documented all of our students my own included that are in these schools and this I do not feel is in the best interest of our students so for that reason I cannot support it and I hope
you understand if you have any questions I'm available to to explain further thank you thank you miss m as anyone else I do have kind of my own perspective on it and of course I respect your opinion 100% AA um my I
guess maybe you can say that my perspective is something that is more optimistic and as previously mentioned in this meeting we have talked about how unlike our neighboring districts Riv
Public Schools hasn't really let or put out a public statement uh discussing the things that have been happening in our everchanging society and I think that rather than putting a Target on students
backs it's reaffirming the protection that our students have making sure that our community is knowledgeable and understanding of the protections that their students and families have along with conjoining in solidarity with the
other schools who have chosen to put out public statements some examples that I have is the Chelsea Public School District in which the superintendent had even posted an oped in the Boston Globe and along with that the Lynn public school district has also posted a
statement directly to their Community discussing the situation and bringing it to light I am trying to keep this as a political as possible but in my personal opinion I believe that staying silent is
not the right way to go about this I believe that our students and parents should be notified about what their rights are should understand that what is happening can very well affect our community I have seen from friends and
other students that ice is close to our community I have seen ice raids in Chelsea I have seen ice raids in Lynn how I've even seen ice raids with like within our own City in previous years it is something that is in our Community it is something that our our community
should be knowledgeable about and it is something that we should be able to speak out against and talk about be comfortable talking about rather than being worried and put into fear of being s and basically scared into being silent
I mean that is my personal belief of it and again not to sound like a broken record but I truly truly truly believe that this would only be beneficial for us coming from somebody who is Hispanic um and has had experience in the past
with ice thank you anyone else Madam chairlady yes Mr sella uh yes just a point of information previous speaker made reference that um a neighboring Chelsea has um come out with a statement to
protect etc etc but she also mentioned that ice AG have already been there I guess my question is we passed this tonight is it given false hope to our citizenry I mean if
Ice shows up do we stop at the Gate of the doors and prevent them from entering uh previous speaker made reference that it's the law so again I'm I'm just wondering it's kind
of a yes no oh yes type situation we want to protect them how can we protect them I mean does this motion prevent ice from coming or any federal agent can anyone answer me that question yes Mr
sella so this motion is only restating our policies which is that whether it's ice or police like let's say there was a warrant for a student who committed a crime no one can come into the district without first going to the superintendent the superintendent speaks to legal councel and they're verified
that there is a Judicial warrant signed by a judge the purpose of this resolution is to make a statement to the community that we are here to uphold such law because a lot of the concerns I have gotten are that every other district has said we're going to abide by the law but we haven't said anything
publicly we've stayed silent yes we can have our district policy on the website but a lot of people don't know to go to the website if we're not putting out districtwide communication to our community then a lot of parents or students who aren't engaged don't know that we're willing to uphold the law so
there's an actual policy this isn't about false hope it's more of a statement reaffirming that we are here to uphold the law and here to provide a safe space for all students does that answer question you're mentioning we're going to uphold the law how can we as a
school committee uphold the law aside from verbalization which this motion apparently is is trying to do um it it's been mentioned we will protect them we cannot physically protect them if they
come in with the warrant but that is legal matters I'm I'm I'm missing something here so if there is a warrant and it is signed by a judge then if it falls into the district policy and I'll I'll pass it to Dr Kelly she oversees that part but it's protecting from
anything that doesn't follow the law like the ice raids or just walking into a school without an actual warrant so I'll pass it to Dr Kelly if I may ask if I may ask the student representative seems familiar with Chelsea when the ice agent showed up did they have warrants to your
knowledge when I said uh ice raids in Chelsea I was talking about not in Chelsea Public Schools I'm talking in Chelsea as a community in general I am sorry for not putting that reference in at first okay thank you I may thank
you yes Mr kajan okay thank you um I read the resolution and on the safe haven and like I said I have some mix emotions but through the chair I want to talk to Dr Kelly if we vote in favor of this what
changes um it's it's really hard to say and all I can do is give the committee the guidance that I already have given which I've received from both state and federal officials and people who do this kind of work a lot more frequently than
I do and that and their advice was do the work keep your head down protect the kids do the work keep your head down that was their advice and they're speaking from
experience and I I don't know what else to say other than that I have clearly articulated to all of the administrators in the district um that that was what we were going to do we would continue to do right by kids because we always have uh
we have the policies and practices in place that protect kids we have the policy that prohibits anybody regardless of who you are from loitering on or hanging around a school property it doesn't matter what what kind of a badge you have in your pocket if you don't have school business there you don't
belong there um as you mentioned there are some um pieces for if there's a signed warrant by a federal judge um then somebody can try to gain access only through my office they can't go
directly to a school building um I feel like the kids are very well protected we did uh Dr Garcia did a great job in the fall we held multiple um meetings for parents so they could understand what their rights were we had over 200 families come in um and get and get the
know know your rights information from Mira who's been a tremendous partner to us um we know that we have more than um 200 families in the community that are immigrants but I don't know that more than 200 of them might be undocumented
so I don't know what percentage of um the people we needed to reach with that information we actually did reach but I would get it guess that it's a pretty high number and I would also guess that um they would have shared that information with their um with
their uh friends and family that they knew might need that information as well um so I can continue to stand by the premise that we can help our kids and protect our kids and keep our kids safe um with without any kind of a grand
gesture um I understand how it can make people feel like that's a little bit more transparent uh when we stand up and say here we are and this is what we believe but in this particular climate in this particular time I don't know that that benefits the kids that we're trying to
protect because if it brings more scrutiny or it brings people with radical ideations and and thought processes and we have people standing in front of our school buildings with signs what does that do to the kids what does that do to their families how many parents are going to say I'm not sending
my kid to school with that nonsense happening out in front of it uh and that's I think Echoes a little bit what um member Milbury Ellis was talking about it's the advice that I've been getting as I said from colleagues at the state and National level um we
are trying to communicate I know that all of the principes held voluntary meetings with all of their staff members anybody who wanted to come and talk about and hear a little bit more about the philosophy was welcome to do that I know that in each of their schools they had a handful to a dozen um teachers
actually attend those meetings um we've had our family Liaisons reaching out to families who might need some specific direct support um and we've asked our social workers and guidance councils to make they're engaging with kids uh and providing
resources to those kids who are upset or feeling nervous or unsafe uh make sure that they have all of the information um to share with the students to understand what our position is um so I guess I'll just leave it there so we have reached out to parents
and so on communicated with them we have one onone okay we've done one-on-one but we also sent them the guidance from the state from the governor's office and sent them the the links to the governor's website that had other resources there um and identified that as um
strong information from the state so we're basically doing everything on the resolution for the safe haven like I said my one of my main concerns was to put all these kids in the Limelight and they would be focused at percentage of kids that we're trying to
protect so that's where um not agreeing with this I agree with the resolution but I'm not agreeing with putting our kids in the Limelight and coming out as a school committee and just instead of staying lowkey and
second too is who knows if there's retaliation when we go for funding you know everything's we don't know we're we're all in our outside you know ched territory so I think I think silence right now is the best but to
to uh reach out to our students to know we are there and we are we do want to protect them if I could add just one more comment um the reason I am still an advocacy uh I'm
still advocating for this resolution or um is is mostly because of the students that I'm with along with some of the stories that I've heard not just in R but W throughout the country so nationally and occasionally I do like
listening to uh podcasts from The New York Times sometimes CNN and other things like that and there was an interesting episode in which a teacher I believe an elementary school teacher was discussing um how these new policies
enacted by the US government has affected the student population in her school and she was basically talking about how students in her class were missing school one day one day two day three and after a bit of concern once
they reach out to those parents and found out that the reason that they are scared of bringing their kids is is not just because of this fear that ice may come and try to raid a school or come
into sensitive areas but the possibility that their parents could also be affected um I've heard that some parents are scared of bringing their kids in for possibility of being caught I mean what's the worst case scenario is that
you drop your kids off and all of a sudden there's nobody there to pick your children up and I think that personally not making a statement is going to like leave the community in the dark first of all and I think it could also we talked about chronic absenteeism I think that
it can also add on to those rates that we are seeing if people are unaware of what Riv is going to do to protect their rights there's a higher possibility that people are just going to say actually know I'm too scared to go to school for
my safety for my parents' safety I'm going to stay home right now it's a dangerous time that's ultimately going to lead to a hike up in my opinion on chronic absenteeism and again this is from my experience talking to students
my experience of listening to uh discussions from outside of this committee and I think that this is a way way more nuanced perspective that I honestly believe that we should talk to not just students that you know are hearing these
things I think we should talk to the students directly who are dealing with this students who have undocumented parents or students who are undocumented themselves I think that that's very important for this discussion because we are doing what is for our community and not exactly what we think is best for our Comm uh Community from our
perspectives if that makes sense um yes and then I have a few thoughts as well um so I just want to say that I completely agree with you and the sense that we need to do better with educating parents and students on what their
rights are I think that my biggest issue with the proclamation is the language that was that we're using when we when we try to when we say that we're designating ourself as a safe haven what that equates to is that we're um
designating ourself as a sanctuary district and what that does is put the Limelight on us that is a that is a um uh right now in this climate if you turn on any news channel we see what's going on in different parts of the country
what's happening in Maine what's ha you know I just think that if we're this is not the time for us to to make a declaration like that unless we are ready and want to deal with the
repercussions which like I said I I can go to sleep at night and not worry about certain things but I cannot make a decision that does not give the the the whole student population that same benefit thank you so a few points I want
to add first there's conversation about protest or retaliation dozens of cities and districts in the state have already passed similar language and not one has had people standing outside protesting it or having a spotlight shown on them we're not the first district but to that
I'm aware of Jackie I want to say have been absolutely email bombed relentlessly thousands of nasty nasty emails all over their schools because they stood up that's I didn't interrupt you so please wait so then we haven't had their protest the history isn't
there we've actually received communication from students and parents asking us to pass this not one member of this community has said no we don't want this I think also if the issues the name of the resolution we can change it we could resolution for safe schools
resolution for something else if that's a specific issue is just the name then we can change that I'm not tied to it but I'm not proposing a resolution to make us a sanctuary city they're not conflated because we're not a city we're not a sanctuary School Chelsea passed a
resolution that said for Sanctuary schools that's not what I'm asking for and so I think it's also making sure that we are not enabling fear we are called to be bold and courageous leaders to ensure a safe and welcoming environment for all students I am the
daughter of immigrants I come from a farm worker Community I taught students who were 5 years old separated from their parents when they walked the Border were put in the detention center and then put in my classroom and only because they had someone who looked like me did they feel like they could walk into the schools so I today and always
will choose to be The Bold and courageous leader I was chosen and elected to be and I can only hope and ask the same of my colleagues if there's no other thoughts then we can do a roll call vote Dr
Garcia roll call Mr Stacy brono Mr Anthony Pano no Mr John Kingston yes Mrs Aisha milbery Ellis no Miss
Jaclyn monteroso yes Mr Frederick sonala no May Patrick if motion fails on that anything else under new
business okay then next we have an executive session so I would like to make a motion to meet an executive session pursuant to Massachusetts general laws chapter 30A section 21A for purpose 2 we will not be returning to
open session is there a section second can we have a roll call for executive session stacon miss Anthony ciano yes Mr John Kingston yes Mrs Aisha Milbury Ellis yes
Miss Jaclyn monteroso yes Mr Frederick salala yes mayor Patrick he okay so we will not be um returning like I said to open session so this is the closing of our public meeting and
we'll now move to Executive session