 Great. Then I call to order this meeting of the Amherst Palom regional school committee at what looks to be around 634, maybe 635. Apologize for the 634. Apologize for the delay and I hope also everyone's been able to make it here safely. I hope they get home safely and depending on how efficient we are we'll hopefully try to find a way to get people out while paying appropriate attention to all the important work we have to do. With that I would seek approval of the minutes of December 12th and December 20th that are in your packet. I move to accept the minutes that are in our packets. Moved, is there a second? Second. It's been moved and seconded. Yes? Just one minor correction on the notes of December 12th under the second heading public comment improvement. I believe that Elisa Melnick was a community member. Her name is misspelled. It should be a Y instead of an I. Thank you. Right. Anyone else reading this? Hopefully as closely as it is. Anything further? Yes, please. I'm sorry. Where are you? Okay, so sorry, I had to find it. Minutes of the 12th, section B. Yes. So towards the bottom there are five lines from the bottom. Miss Boatie noted that concerns about equity are pervasive particularly in the math department and I remember this part and to me that kind of doesn't quite represent the intent to think of what she was trying to say which was I think attention to equity or something along the lines is pervasive. I think that I think that is true. I believe her message was we are paying attention to this issue and are concerned about it and focused on it. Not that there were widespread concerns about the sort of the inference might imply that she was suggesting that there were concerns about the ability to meet equity needs as opposed to hey, we're paying a lot of attention to this. Right. Is it a suggested editor? Do we think we could find it? What if I said Miss Boatie noted that great attention is paid to concerns about equity. Yes, Miss Hernandez. I actually although we were talking about math in some of the math department, I actually understood her comments just more general. So maybe even striking that phrase particularly in the math department. Because I had the same reaction as Mary at Devin and I was reading this and I was going to want to pence about it. Okay, is that otherwise the good? I'm sorry, can you explain the issue again? There isn't a lot of. So not not I think my interpretation of what she said wasn't that she was saying when we're the other whether or not their concerns are not concerns but she was I think saying that we at the middle school are paying a lot of attention to equity in general and in particular with which we can strike. But to the math in the math department as well because I think we're talking about that in general and she was saying this is something we're really focused on versus the way it reads to me I think you can interpret it as something different and I think what her intent was release how I interpreted her comment she made. Can you say would it be does it sound comfortable to say Ms. Bodie noted that Ms. Bodie that there are concerns around equity in the math department. Not that they're pervasive but that there are equity concerns because the second sentence sort of blends itself into yeah so the way I remembered it wasn't her comments weren't that it was about concerns was about the intentionality of the focus I don't I think she was I recall her comments not kind of being neutral about concerns that wasn't really what she was aiming at it was that I think what she was saying is that they have a consistent approach that includes a focus on the topic not concerns or no concerns I feel like the concern piece wasn't actually I'm making no judgment I just didn't hear that her statements focused on that it was more about the attention that the middle school staff are paying to equity issues which is essentially my recollection so could you read back what if I changed it to say that there is a consistent approach in the middle school with a strong focus on equity. Please. Maybe I'm not good at this you know that that would be good that middle school staff maintain a focus on equity as they're now I'm getting lost in the sentence. Facing a focus on equity as they approach their work sort of like in layman's terms what I got from a much longer or detailed statement it wasn't like a value judgment it's just right what I recall did you read that back okay I think it I think that does you know I am fine with that change but could I suggest maybe you know we can make that change and I don't know if the chair wants to go ahead and approve this committee's permission but maybe also that they could go back and just double check to make sure that's accurate I think that sounds good because to be honest with you my recollection of what she is that the reason why that statement stood out for me was that I felt she was actually making a fairly strong assertion that equity concerns were being attended to in a diligent and energetic fashion by the staff that's not a quote by the way I'm just saying I think that's I'm saying it's an effective paraphrase which which really is distinct and the reason it struck me is because it was a strong statement or assertion that stood outside of the question of whether there were in fact any concerns people had about whether you know those equity issues were being addressed effectively you know I mean so without objection to that okay anything else there's a lot of stuff in here so I recognize the problem whenever you think you're gonna rush there's always gonna happen that there's a lot of text a lot of stuff to fix okay seeing I pause for two seconds I say seeing none all those in favor of approving the minutes of December 12th and December 20th as amended with the little footnote but I'll be checking the video but please raise your hands signifying I they're approved unanimously with the again two absences yes just one note that could be off-base on this but I think the next time the region gets together we might want to call it union meaning just to approve the notes of December 20th because the union may not be getting together for a while so just as a mental note you know more for daddy so announcements and public comments we're now open for public comments you have up to three minutes please step forward to the microphone and stage any and then we're happy to hear from you my name is Kathleen Anderson I'm a former school committee member for the town of Amherst the 15th generation you lesser I'm a fourth generation college graduate and a third generation master's degree holder I'm also a former social justice anti-racism educator in the district professional development work with staff and doing work with students there's a strong need for all of our staff to be focused on social justice issues particularly as it pertains to whiteness and how it interrupts the social justice intention of educators in the school district one of the ways that the school can also pay attention to itself as a social justice school system and a multicultural school system is to address ways in which discipline is dealt with across the school system I'm a former employee of the school district I have worked in the library here and I have substituted at all of the schools in the district I have witnessed a number of situations where educators have unjustly targeted brown-skinned students I'm also currently a member of the subcommittee of the school committee the school equity task force and one of the ways in which the school equity task force has recommended the district deal with its discipline issues is a program called RJ thank you I was seeking RJ hearing racial justice yes racial justice okay member of our committee the school equity task force committee is unable to make it here tonight and she has a statement that she gave to us and I told her I would read it here so I'm going to do that now as school committee members you are elected by the community comprised of parents mothers fathers grandparents grandfathers foster parents step parents and others to serve our children all of our children the program of restorative justice restorative justice presented and endorsed by the school equity task force a subcommittee of the regional school committee will do just that restorative justice will empower our youth with life skills the skills to see conflict resolution will carry our youth into today's world with knowledge and understanding of why there is hatred and resentment towards marginalized people in the first place by this I mean it is no secret that the vast majority of people in the United States are oppressed and have been throughout the history of the country restorative justice seeks to address the suppression as it plays out in the classroom restorative justice will empower our youth with confidence and leadership to address conflict in the in a safe environment to share feelings and experiences that will help our youth blossom into productive members of the greater society restorative justice is a lifelong tool that can be used in all areas of life because after all conflict among humans is as old as humanity and time itself however as responsible adults it is up to us to keep our children safe especially while our public schools while in our public schools restorative justice is a means to that end with restorative justice strongly in place I believe the disproportionate measures of discipline against our youth of color low-income students and students on IEP's will stop which has existed for far too long and too many years in the Amherst, Pelham and regional school districts our youth will be lifted instead of turning the street turning to the streets they will have the skills to overcome the disparity stacked against them and prosper isn't that what we want for all of our youth if you as holders and distributors of the funds needed to this to keep this program running deny the money and support being sought well then you simply become another entity causing our youth more harm than good and this was written by Mary Lou conca and so I thank you for your time thank you any further public comment seeing none any announcements from the school committee sir Demlin why don't you do that during your superintendent any other announcements seeing none hey look at those super subcommittee updates you have to wait I'm just gonna be as you notice this is now a abbreviated agenda that simply says we want to hear updates from subcommittees so this is on a volunteeristic basis if you happen to be on a said subcommittee you have to jog your memory raise your hand otherwise we're gonna move forward on the agenda yeah so the superintendent evaluation stuff is on the agenda okay yes please yes so we were at a budget coordinating group meeting and I don't have those points in front of me I would I would say is an introduction and this is something which is going to end up being I think a challenging honestly the next couple months are going to be really challenging for all of us and challenging for our community because for a variety of reasons our our budget news isn't very optimistic isn't very positive and the meeting we went to have what's called to BCG went through I think in fairly good detail a lot of the reasons why that's the case and regardless a lot of it has to do with frankly health care costs less less premium increases than payouts that are needed to be needed to occur to pay for medical expenses as a as a self insured municipality and our employees within the school district are members of that same municipal health care trust fund and so there we have handouts we can we can share next week or something that show the decline in the reserves of that trust fund then increase in demands on that trust fund and some of the interim solutions that have tried to and this is painful because of the solutions that try to stabilize the balances in the fund involve increases and payments for of course the district and puts pressure on our budgets but it also includes increases in payments by employees in the district and so it represents a real strain on people who have not received significant salary increases over the last few years I think there's a general recognition at that is very very challenging for everyone involved but unfortunately the the fund has to balance and the promises that have been made obviously to people who have needs for health care services also those obligations have to be met it's both legal a bit obviously ethically and morally they have been met as well and so the point being on that is simply that regardless of how one does any kind of deep dive to understand how to get there or even where we go and the town manager talked about in the meeting the ways in which the insurance advisory group I think it's called is working which includes members of unions so it's a broad collaborative effort are trying to understand different ways of structuring health care plans on a going forward basis but unfortunately that doesn't change the fact that both for this fiscal year as well as also for the next fiscal year there's going to be a challenge to balance and that's going to affect really everything we're doing it's also going to affect frankly conversations in which we talk about the regional assessment for the different towns in the formula we use that's not supposed to be a subject of budgeting and needs supposed to be you have the formula you apply the formula whatever the budget is the towns pay what's supposed to pay anyone has been following this discussion recognizes that that really isn't how it's been working there's been sort of a back and forth about both the propriety or rationale or equity of the assessments but also then how we're doing budgeting and so that's going to get even more complicated the the vote already happened at the finance committee and I think it's been publicized so the I guess you call it good news I mean it is certainly good news for the school budget is the we had had a two and a half percent guidance for an increase in budget from the finance committee from the town that we were governed by and due to this pressure the finance committee and town manager and select board are recommending a three and a half percent increase that represents a three point one percent increase I think for the Amherst school district not to get into that but I'm just saying it's following the way that normally works so that eases the pressure a little bit but not completely I don't want to go further on me other than whatever comments you guys want to make I don't want to go further on this well as Mary was there too only because we have an next meeting is solely devoted to this topic and so I don't want to spend more too much time knowing that we're going to dive deeply and also that a lot of the information that the committee and the public should have before them to allow them to dive into that you know it's not fair to have a conversation which is an asymmetry of information but having said that I'll kick it this way and then any other way I'm just looking at the points that were made and I I think I think it was Mr. Steinberg added that point which I think is worth mentioning just in terms of you know the potential reason reserves to cover the gap and expenses and that you know while there are some you know we've done a good job with you know having a having reserves available that to to use them for ongoing operating expenses is not a wise strategy so I think that maybe we could send these out yeah yeah that'd be great do you do you have that for that to set up yeah thank you anything else on this guarantee you next week we're gonna have a lot of fun 20 there a lot of conversation any other committees seeing none super headache so first it's no school tomorrow schools cancel because the storm so kids are already rejoicing from what I understand so that's the first thing to mr. Demling's question last Friday the acting commissioner happened to be in the same space as him so I got a little bit of a heads up early which was neat but he is not recommending that the expansion request from pbc ics go to the board so you all were involved in some advocacy around that issue and writing letters and and so there is an appeal process possible but it wouldn't be anytime soon it would be anything the next board meeting is January section next Tuesday and it was clarified to me that even if they do appeal it would get notified and it wouldn't be kind of the day before kind of thing also the commissioner relate and both this was in the press reporting as well that there he's recommending that they the school wait two to three years to resolve the concerns of the board before they reapply I won't make any judgment on that that's been you know publicly reported so that's where that stands turn any other any other questions on please I just figured we pause on that yeah thank you big issue okay I'm gonna skip around a little bit name of time I'll just mention the logo things getting a lot of feedback on that positive feedback for the process that was an iterative one and more than 700 people already responded to the poll today by noon of today it's closes Friday Friday afternoon in the newsletter will announce the new logo which is majority vote but a lot of the comments we're just kind of appreciating that multiple options well feedback different options presented that's gone well the Martin Luther King holiday events was this weekend on Saturday three seniors much in this in particular related someone who's in the room of evil wine bounce a hard Douglas K. R. R. Hardnett Barnes were honored as the scholarship Martin Luther Dr. Martin Luther King scholarship winners and our own high school teacher Tracy Vernon was awarded with the citizens award for 16 years of dedication to students and this is a regional meeting but I believe it's the first time or first time in a while that we had an elementary group also present and perform there so just as I'm gonna skip these except all that time sensitive well I'll mention the shoots Barry one because Steve Mr. Sheldon is not here but he attended and actually kind of was the lead introducer we had a great event we talked about in this room at shoots barrel elementary last week we're supposed to be at Leverett tomorrow night but that's not going to happen because of the wet weather about 12 people come which for the size of the school people forget about and I think the larger pieces of Patty Bodie Mark Jackson myself 1015 minutes of presentation or and then an hour and a half of discussion about the middle school high school and the thing that was the most notable was the number of times someone said we're really happy that you came up here we didn't think that people from Amherst would come it was always the other way around and so I think that messaging was really important that that's what they're coming back and reporting back there was also a piece of a number of people couldn't come tonight and they really appreciated this was the talk of the school that kind of like the people from Amherst go up the hill instead of them having to come down the hill so as a side note we enjoyed ourselves mr. Selvin Bakes really good brownies they're enough where it's worth mentioning they're not stored but a couple times the group of that so I think the only other thing I'll mention and then this is kind of going to do an introduction the Fort Towns meeting that's a typo it is Saturday January 27th my apologies for that just as a reminder I know this was swollen set it out but I want to say at a public meeting and it will be talking an awful lot about this next Tuesday but it is Saturday January 27 9 to 11 in the middle school library and well again that'll be a major topic not just the content but also the process pieces we talked about next Tuesday night I was cutting him as an introduction okay so I believe I mentioned before that we went through this vast screening process to find our facilities director so it was a combination of having the town employees who he would be supervising as well as school district employees come together and just meet with our potential candidates and these candidates went through about four rounds of interviews so they had the screening then they had the actual interview and then they met with other people and then finally they culminated it with a meeting with Mike and Paul Backelman so needless to say we have chosen Jim McPherson as our new facilities director he started on January 3rd and hit the ground running because January 4th was a snow day and he is here with us today so I'd like to welcome him to our school district and maybe you can come and say a few words Jim. The federal government 30 years experience designing and overseeing construction projects have been working locally as well and I'm looking forward to working with the school questions there always are welcome thank you we you know Boiler's break roofs need to be fixed this is either I don't know what our bubblers need to be like completely overhauled we find your life this no this is I'm just saying this is at a very practical level one of the most popular positions I think in the entire school district again I'm not sure popular just send money we'll be okay thank you it's many and I'm hoping 30 years of experience are going to help you spend that money efficiently thank you thank you very much anything else thank you very much for the introduction so one actually speaking of brownies and going up the hill I just want to make note of the fact that we have our we have our leverant and our shootsbury committee members who were not able to attend tonight and that was a subject of some discussion earlier with Dr. Morris and myself because I'm not super comfortable with the fact that they aren't represented and I mean you weren't either by the way not suggesting it was like a conversation that was the nature of the dialogue is that we we know we needed to meet frankly earlier in the day when the weather looked like it might be a little lighter this evening the only reason we went ahead was a the sound that we've got we were told to let it up be a little lighter and be that would have meant that mr. Sullivan had been able to be here because we know Miss Kosenski couldn't be here anyways and so I just think that out loud because you know anyone watching or anyone picking up on this stuff you know we're trying to make an effort to make sure we're all working together and we are all listening and hearing from another and you've got to be present to be able to do that yes I also want to acknowledge the Amherst media for also making the effort in the track to be here absolutely absolutely they are superheroes and superheroes and just another note by the way I I got buzzed the other day from the mass association of school committees that there's some interest in pumping additional life into their regional schools committee and of the of the association and to make sure that over the next year or so that that that work is very visible and so stay tuned because it was really just her outreach as for me as chair around what level of interest I guess we have and the topics and wanting to engage but I thought that was very promising and very good other than that everything before you was what we're doing right so yes when I add to that last shirt so when I was with the acting commissioner one of the topics that was raised by one of my colleagues this was with Western Massacre and tenants was exactly that about regional schools in the state auditor's report which was forwarded to you by state doctor bump on regional schools he's only gonna be the commissioner a little while longer finalists were mentioned that were announced today for that post but he was he said it was highly empathetic highly supportive of the state auditor's recommendation and highly limited because it's more in the legislature's hand than it is in the department's hand so he kind of all did all but encourage us to encourage kind of local elected officials to get involved because he seemed very amenable to working with the legislature and with superintendents and school committees on the topic but right now where the changes are recommended would make is mostly not in desi's belly work it's much more in the state legislation which is interesting because that was the nature of the engagement yeah that we need to essentially that we need to recognize them we need to engage the legislature yeah so to that so we had a table item for previous meeting advocacy the state auditor's report on regional school finance and I don't know if we're circling back to that soon or whether this is the time to talk about that no we will I mean we will it's just the reality having there are a couple items that we would have let me need to move on our agenda to their number there are a few things that we wanted to talk about that we thought in the interest of not having meetings that go to 11 there was going to be we had to cut different places and I don't want to give the laundry I think there are members of the committee sitting on the table all of them I can apologize to individually that their items are on here and I'll do that sometime if you really want me to so so we will definitely circle back as the point so with that who would like to introduce the CPAC presentation so I just want to you've heard me say this before but I want to say it again how grateful and appreciative that we are in Amherst and collectively I'm not talking about that we are on the table I mean we including students families and staff to have highly active and engage CPAC and so this is a presentation that was planned I think for late October early November I might be mixing it up but I know that we had a scheduling and thankfully the snow held out long enough for the three of you to be here so I want to introduce Dr. Fred Brady who met before soon service director Dr. Renee Greenfields who works in that office and our CPAC president Nancy Stewart so I think collectively it's I think this is a model of how they operate all three or work together and collaboratively it's not that there's always agreement but it's always a commitment to work together collaboratively to improve our district so thank you all for being here in the snowy evening and we have a visual for the yeah I'm gonna yep can I provide a disclosure Nancy's though my my son's basketball coach that was new information for me so it's really my husband just I'm just there for the world support right no you're the kind that she has oh here so thank you for having us join even on a snowy night and we'll keep time in mind as we do this but we're going to try to focus just a little bit on a presentation and really give you an opportunity to engage with us about any thoughts any comments any questions and really have a discussion more than a presentation if that's okay so and I do want to apologize in advance in your packet the papers you got the nice pretty color ones that are there we added some slides to that so the black and white one that I put at your tables tonight have the new slides included so you can go back and forth but there's just a few slides left at the end so tonight our plan was to be sharing with you the results of a survey that we did last spring in May which was a repeat of a survey that was done back in 2010 before I was here actually when I was hired in 2012 I was given the report from the public consulting group and said this is really important for you to read and to dig into as information to guide your work so to kind of take a dipstick and see where we were seven years after that we didn't engage in the full program evaluation but we chose to use that same survey seven years later so that we could have some comparisons people have changed personnel have changed students have changed well the some students are still here they've just gotten older some families have changed but some are the same but in order to really be able to compare a little bit even though some of the variables have changed so this survey we wanted to share with you we've said share the full report with you as well as the executive summary and I might want to tell just kind of the people out there who might be watching either tonight or at some other time that these reports are also on our website so if you look under student services there's a link to the 2010 report as well as the two south 2017 report but in addition to going over that survey tonight we and some of the points of that survey we're not going to go through the whole thing tonight we also had a request from school committee I don't know if it was collectively or if an individual to give an update on co-teaching and I think that that really ties in well to the survey in the survey there was a fair amount of responses about co-teaching so they make sense to talk about together so mostly Nancy and Renee are going to talk in a little while and give you this but I do want to say the reason and Joanne Smith who's our administrator in the student services department she was not able to join tonight otherwise she would be sharing some of the survey results but I think it's important that Nancy Stewart who is our CPAC president present this because it was on Nancy and CPAC's recommendation that it was time to do an updated survey so it would in our work as Mike referenced we have a really good partnership well that's what I would say and we work really closely together and Nancy is also really good as well as all of our CPAC participants to ask us questions and to ask us really to reflect and look at our practices and look at what we're doing so that we keep the positive outcomes for students as our goal so Nancy is going to do most of that tonight so this is just a cover slide which is a little bit what I've already covered I just want to share with you one thing that's I think important to note the in terms of the responses where you see 203 parent guardian responses this time that is a reduction in the percent of responses from 2010 2010 our parent response rate was about 58% and this reflects about a 39% decrease I've asked public consulting group to please explain why that might be there's no way for them to really know what that might be in reference to we sent out reminders many many times teachers sent out reminders so it wasn't for a lack of kind of asking people for responses but they still said 39% is a when you're talking about surveys is a reasonable response rate to be able to take the data that you get from that and make some assumptions or projections based upon that the flip side the 370 response rates was significantly higher we in 2010 had a 52% response from personnel and a 64% response this time in the last spring and we did include para educators this time which was an explicit decision we thought their responses and their views on how we're doing was important to include and that wasn't back in 2010 so again I'm not sure why the increase or why the decrease but I thought it was important to note for you so we're going to go right to our responses which you're going to see that they're in categories if you're interested in more specifics feel free to read the whole report or when we get to questions you can ask us questions so Nancy is going to share all about our responses here great thanks for having me here again tonight I appreciate it I want to first say to you that we have a ton of good news to share with you as far as this survey goes you'll see dramatic improvements but I just want to share for that family that is out there and not feeling the way that the survey says that many other parents feel I want that family to know that they have me as a resource they have you as a resource they have dr. Brady as a resource there there are many they have the building principles as a resource they have their school liaison as a resource because we're truly not you know we truly want to make everybody feel good about the education that they're getting here in Amherst like that's the goal that's the goal but you'll see if you were to comb through this survey that there is improvement in every single area since 2010 you'll see that the rates for parents went up by 90 percent which is huge you know back in 2010 we weren't feeling so great about having our kids in school when they needed specialized instruction it's changed over time is it perfect no but it's heading so much in the right direction and that has a lot to do with the leadership that we have in our school the leadership that we have in our buildings the teachers the teachers work so very hard you know the one thing I wish that I could give our teachers a find is extra time and you'll hear that as we go through and look at the some of these survey results you know parents today they really feel like they have an opportunity to participate during the IEP meeting most of the teachers the most of the parents feel so their general education teacher is very involved at every IEP meeting the general education teacher is at that meeting so that's something that happens on a regular basis they also feel as though that the future looks brighter than it did beforehand there's a 30 percent increase that people feel like my child is going to be headed for a brighter future that's that's important I will tell you that as a parent of five children back in 2010 I had a son on an IEP I still have a son on it's the same son I still have a son on an IEP as well too so I mean I think that I represent lots of different hats but I just want you to know I was here in 2010 so I can I can appreciate the fact and see the growth that is happening in many of the schools progress you know progress gets updated every single time a progress report gets goes home and you can see those are being more measured in an accurate way to show that students are making progress you know the way that goals is set and benchmarked are so much better today than they were back in 2010 an area one of the areas that we have to work on is transition services and when we think about transition some people just think about transition from high school on out but transition truly happens all the time it happens when you have a child in preschool go to kindergarten it happens even from from a parents point of view when you go from kindergarten to first grade then first grade to second grade unless you get lucky and have somebody who loops but this transitions that happen all the time and they happen very differently from school to school and that's an area that we have to do some work on we can talk about that some more later you can just flip if you don't mind being the official flipper this flipper parent guide in responses just as a synopsis of the strengths we talked about a highly skilled staff I will say that from my perspective that we've spent more time trying to train our staff and making sure that people understand what is you know different things that we can do different skill sets that we can provide to teachers to help our students learn in a different ways again the time is an issue but you know we're really when you think about the amount of time that you devote for training it's not as robust as I'd like to see it personally I will say but we do the best that we can with the time that we have and again that's a budget thing training time we have strong support for inclusion and when you think about inclusion we're you know we're talking about you know having a student in the classroom with their peers learning with their peers not just in the classroom but actually in the classroom and learning and I will say that I think co-teaching has really helped with that you know it's really opened minds it's open doors you know those minds and doors aren't just open for the 20% of our population roughly on an IEP but also for the students who aren't on an IEP you'll see if you were to look again through the data more thoroughly that staff serves as advocates parents feel as though that you know our staff has our kids back and it's going to help us through this process and especially here in the high school they do a lot to teach students how to advocate for themselves and that's something that if you were to go back and compare seven years worth of you know 2010 to now you'll see that the high school is doing a tremendously good job and supporting our kids and helping them advocate for themselves and our parent communication is a lot better than it has been in the past as well too so this is a tough one right because areas are improvement not that that part of it isn't hard the areas are improvement but trying to make them more terminology friendly though wow you know you could have a cheat sheet right there like for parents because there's just so many things like some of the testing and all the different things that are being done it can be a lot for a parent if you've never sat in on an IEP meeting it's a lot it can feel really overwhelming you know parents wish they were sort of like a cheat sheet unfortunately you know there are there are pockets of them per se but there's really nothing that has everything there for people to understand it's hard another area for improvement is more gen ed teacher involvement and co-teaching opportunities again that's talking about some collaboration and Renee will talk about that I'm a little bit more and some people would like to see more communication outside of team meetings and for the families that I work with and that the families that I support I found it to be that it's knowing who to call it's not that the staff isn't willing to go ahead and communicate with the person it's just that sometimes families get stuck you know they're not sure who it is that they need to call who is the next go-to person so that's an area that we have for improvement staff responses this this feels good the staff responses you know these are the people that work with our kids day in day out they almost all people agree that students are kept as according to law and the least restrictive environment and that as far as a process goes we there's a pre-referral process that happens when a student is being deemed to see whether or not they belong on an IEP or not and they feel as though that's an area that we need to take a look at and I think if you have some questions dr. Brady can talk to you some more about that as far as communication and support go you know back in 2010 I will share with you dr. Brady was not here and you know the staff was doing the best that they could with everybody that they had but I think having dr. Brady as part of our staff has helped immensely that I don't think this it's obvious that she's helped immensely she works really hard at trying to make sure that we all communicate with each other and I think that that's why you see on there for communication support that there is such an improvement between general education and special education because I really go hand in hand we're talking about 20% of our population how can it not go hand in hand not to be the dead horse but the collaborative planning time is not sufficient it's a huge issue this is an issue I don't know the solution to it but I will let you know that training and having time to collaborate is an issue it's not that people don't want to do it it's not that we don't have tools identified to do it you know we need to be organized about how we go about making sure we're providing this for our teachers and we've had very very positive responses from teachers about co-teaching in general and as reflected back in 2010 the staff feels positive about its interactions that it has with families and I will you that it's not always easy you know it's not always easy so strengths we're talking about collaboration again to between special education and general education co-teaching inclusion and the staff recognizes that the team that they work with you know are really caring you know it's not just about collecting a paycheck it's about you know really trying to educate a student creating access and letting them follow their dream areas are improvement where the pre-referral practices that we have we've been working on a para educator training and I'm so glad that Dr. Brady made the decision to include their feedback because it's critical they work with our kids so so closely but we do have room for improvement in para educator training and support for co-teaching that meaning talking about planning time and you know co-teaching really honestly in my opinion has really opened the door for so many kids I'm not talking about just kids on an IEP as I said I have five kids and I have a child at the middle school and in one of his classroom he's a co-taught he's on a co-taught classroom he'll tell me I got help from so-and-so and I was like oh wow that's great that's the special ed co-teacher he has no idea that that's a special ed co-teacher but he'll share like how she helped with like a writing piece or some other sort of piece so and I think Renee will talk about some of that as we move ahead with us you failed who is our this is a new title because we didn't have this position for I'll let you do your own clicking a specialized instructional coach and one of Renee's responsibilities is coaching the co-teachers training and co-teaching them including there's many other ones but tonight she's going to really focus on the co-teaching work so awesome nice to meet you collectively so I'm gonna give you three things like a quick update because I'm not sure how much people know about co-teaching so I figured I'd start at the basics and then share some ongoing data we've been collecting I've been here since 2015 so some ongoing data and then some hot off-the-presses data just collected right before the holiday break and then happy to answer any questions so where is co-teaching happening it's happening everywhere in every building we have about 25 elementary pairs or teams or triads there's different iterations in different buildings depending on what kids need and then we have about 13 pairs between the middle and the high school co-teaching came out of the work originally for teachers who special education teachers and Jenna teachers and what we found in the district is that many of our English language many of our ESL teachers we're doing a lot of inclusion work and wanted to engage in more in more co-teaching and the same is true for just a few speech and language pathologists so what started as a gen ed special education co-teaching model has morphed in this past year to include some ESL teachers and some speech and language pathologists at the elementary level so people asked me like so what's co-teaching look like and the answer is it depends on what kind of classroom you're in and what age group you're teaching here at the high school I have five different pairs that I work with so Krista Larson and Ralloon co-teach a bio course in 10th grade and they do that one period a day and then you may go to an elementary class and spend time with the first grade parent for River and they spend the majority of the day together so it could it's sort of defined as one period or one hour and it could last to multiple hours for most of the day part of what we know about the research about co-teaching is that in order for co-teaching to really work teachers need two things they need non-evaluative coaching and they need professional development so as face that before part of my job is to do both of those things and one of the things that people have co-teachers have had ongoing professional development this year we've generated a co-teaching institute that met in August we just met in the winter in the spring teachers are invited to come and participate what we know now three years in is that teachers are spending lots more time sharing with one another about effective practices and the time thing that we know about so here's what we're gleaning at this point around what the benefits that we're seeing in Amherst data that comes from students when I go in into visit classrooms I talk to kids because they're there all the time and oftentimes people don't talk to kids and they know lots and so what we what I find is that kids report two really strong things when I say how's it going they often report I get help so much faster so I call that the efficiency model right well there's two of them so I get what I need faster okay that's good and then the second most common sort of description is that if I can't figure it out you know the way Miss Cunningham's teaching it then when Dr. Morris explains it then I have two chances of understanding because they explain it in two different ways so that specialized sort of way around instruction we know that kids are experiencing station-based teaching in all levels and that they're having access to skilled educators so that we know some of the challenges is balancing the demands of teaching discrete skills in the context of a gen ed class as you know a few of our buildings are louder than others so the noise factor and the attention factor certainly comes into play and teachers are working on ways to fix that am I going too fast okay okay so here's some data so in 2015 we in the spring of 2015 some teachers have been co-teaching but in a formal way we Mike and Fay launched sort of co-teaching off and we surveyed teachers before they began and so some of the data you're going to see tonight is about what they perceived was going to happen and then you'll see data in 2016 in 2017 about what's actually their lived experience and I just selected and I'm happy to share any of this data with folks but I just selected some key questions that had interest what I would call interesting things this teacher perception data you may be wondering like why are we asking teachers what they think and one of the reasons why is because what we know is that oftentimes what teachers perceive and believe is what they enact and so based on their perceptions we can make some inferences about how we think they may how that may influence their practice so I have a couple questions I want to show you and I do want to show you the number of teachers we're talking about and again some pairs have changed but in 2015 we just had Jenna teachers and special educators and same with 2016 and it's just this year that we've included six ELL teachers and two SLPs these are surveys that teachers are encouraged to complete but they're not required to complete so this year we had a completion rate of 46 so let me show you the questions because I think the pictures are pretty actually so I'm not like a neutral person so when we survey people we ask you to strongly agree agree or disagree or strongly disagree so we're asking teachers to make a stance because to me neutral feels a little neutral so we want people to sort of make a make a statement about what they believe so what you'll see is the the light blue line here is in 2015 so remember that was before they actually engaged in the practice with their partner 2016 was after they had in the spring of 2016 when they were finishing their first year and then the yellow is just what was reported in December of 2017 so again question 8 says you know do you work well together so not more than 93% of teachers either reported strongly agree or agreeing in that so this is anonymous so they hopefully felt safe enough to answer so we have a 93% strongly agree or agree 82% you know so you see a little dip there about like what they maybe thought and what's the reality in that co-teaching enhances their practice we spent a lot of time last year because the data we use the data to drive the professional development so the data came out that 45 you know less than half of you feel like there's equitable roles between special educators and and Jenna teachers why is that how do we unpack that we had some really difficult conversations that I helped to facilitate around around that that topic oh that's a great question thanks for asking me that so if you look at a job description thank God Dorian's here if you look at a job description for an elementary teacher versus a special education elementary teacher they have different kinds of roles that they have to do and different responsibilities so an example would be a special educator has to write the IEP and maybe a general education teacher has to complete the classroom report cards and so when you're co-teaching together all the responsibilities sort of come together and so that is a response to whether or not the teachers feel like the roles that one another has feels equal or equitable is that good yeah that would be a great way to restate that yes okay and then question 14 is this question around mutual planning time the questions phrased how much do you value mutual planning time not are you getting it are you not but how much do you value it so no one disagreed and we're up almost 98% said they strongly agreed agreed any questions on these slides this slide yes Phoebe well I could answer it now or we could just keep people on the edge of their seat so one of my thinking's I mean these are just thinking's is that you know at the time it was like well I think I need that time perceiving that and then they actually started doing the work and then their lived experience was it was pretty clear that without this mutual planning time the work that we want to do can't can't really be done so that's one of my theories okay so this is a question so that's over the last three years and then the next two slides they this is what have has just come back because now we're wondering okay so what now you've had to some people one two three years co-teaching and many of you have taught alone before so compare the two experiences for us and over 97% of teachers reported they strongly agree or agree that co-teaching compared to teaching alone allows for better access to the curriculum and over 90% right around 90% of teachers agree that it provides increased time on task or active learning and so that sort of corroborates what the students say about like I have a question and they can get to me faster so there's a lot of variables at play certainly this is one piece of data from a group of teachers but I just think it's interesting and then we asked a series of questions around academic benefits and social emotional benefits for co-teaching because people are wondering and we asked teachers what do you think you know if in being in a co-talk classroom how does it serve particular learning profile so if we look at kids with disabilities if we look at bilingual learners and then we look at kids who aren't bilingual and don't have a identified disability how does co-teaching serve them and this I find really interesting really really interesting why do you find it interesting Mike yes please chime in so one would and I've done co-teaching so I find it somewhat surprising but not incredibly that the the reporting is that for students without identified additional support services I'm linking I'm loop you know linking disabilities or language needs the benefits are slightly higher than the students with disabilities or bilingual learners right so I just find it interesting also with these questions came space for teachers to provide comments you know this is just quantity of survey data but I find it really interesting that that there are both academic and social emotional benefits that teachers can identify in their students across all three profiles and in particular for kids without any identified needs for whom the model is really crafted for end up you know I just find it really interesting okay so here's like you don't have to read this but these are my takeaways sort of what Phoebe was asking before like so what so some suggestions you know that they're I'm at the second bullet that you know teachers predictions around practice may have been higher than than their lived experience or vice versa we say we see trend data over time around that equitable balance if we provide professional development and coaching for teachers could that be one of the factors that allowed them to find a more equitable place to do their work and this and this bit about time and I would say qualitatively I meet with many teachers every week and it is something that is a strong something that they talk to me about all the time so this issue around planning time suggest that if it's offered and teachers experience it there's a high value for them and then this is the narrative around compared to teaching alone how teachers report out and that the data can indicate that teachers perceive that co-teaching can provide both academic and social-emotional benefits for all learner irrespective of their learning profile so I went really fast because I'm trying to read the room and the end the snow I can't see but wondered if I should flip back or people have particular questions so thank you for this for me this is the corporate level deep dive okay great excellent balance great I find it really interesting the benefit to students not identified need the benefit there because I think there's a perception that co-teaching is for special like kids and so we invest all this extra money in time for the special population and that's certainly part of it but for all the other kids benefit as well I think it's pretty revealing so I guess the general question I have I don't know if this is for you or Dr. Grady or Dr. Morris you know I tend to look at these big initiatives terms like cost benefit analysis and most of this is on the benefit side so I'm thinking about the cost and so very simply I think to myself okay double the number of teachers in every classroom you're gonna see these bars right that doesn't come without a cost and so you know without getting too deep in the weeds you know what what's the general alternative to this model and and does this is this model much more costly than the alternative so that I can start and then so a couple things that I think are worth stating is that the model works so let me take a step back so we're places a model where there was what was more prevalent was pull out classes for students I'm gonna focus on special needs although I know you lost it and so kind of over time the district kind of shifted from having more para educators involved to having more licensed teachers doing that and there's so that there was some trade off and cost but there was a financial there are financial implications I think the other thing to note is that co-teaching and I actually think that explains some of the chart that you were talking about with the differences no one here is stating that co-teaching or an inclusive environment is the right environment for every single student right so one of the things about how you scale it is it has to be based on the student needs and students needs evolve and change both individually over time then collectively in terms of what a great level of cohort of students need and so I think as our good friends in special education know that you know the needs are gonna change and we have to be agile and changing with them so I think that's the we think about scaling it may not be that this is the best thing for every student special needs and I think that to me that's I wonder if that explains some of the data but I also see those numbers is really high and some of the differences not being super statistically significant in the end size I'll turn to Dr. Brady go a little deeper I just want to say one thing or maybe a couple things actually about that so I think there are some reports from people that they're concerned sometimes if their student that doesn't have a special need doesn't have a known disability or some other learning challenge that if they're in a classroom with students with disabilities that not only will their child not maybe get all their needs met but actually that that might slow down the pace of the instruction so I think this data is interesting that way and I it's been supported by a number of different studies that say that actually all students can benefit from what we know in special education so I think but that doesn't mean you have to have two educators in every classroom probably more so at the secondary level because that's where you will see a general education teacher maybe teaching one period a day or two periods a day with a special educator and the rest of their schedule they're going to be teaching that same subject maybe but alone and and Renee can probably speak more to this but what we hear from those teachers is what they are learning and their own development in their instructional practices are shifting so that they're taking what they're learning from working side by side with a special educator and applying that to their other classrooms so in that way it's not like you have to put two educators with different professional backgrounds in the same class for to benefit many and you'll see that even at the elementary school where teams of teachers not everybody has a partner but when teams of teachers get together what they learn about in terms of instructional practices or assessment practices that that can influence all classrooms so it's not always that you have to have to you need to have to when there are students in the classroom that have IEPs that a team of people have identified that for them to access that curriculum that's what is needed for them to make progress so does that really kind of just like I wouldn't say like go out and if money was unlimited let's put two educators in every classroom I don't think that that's what would be needed I don't know that everyone would agree with me about that but I I think there's probably better ways to spend that money screen this question reveals how little I know about high school teaching are you saying there's a subject matter teacher and a special education teacher mm-hmm so but what I will say though and then I'll let Renee answer that so there's a general education subject matter teacher and in our high school we are really fortunate that our special education teachers who are partnered with that general education teacher are also certified or highly qualified in that subject so they're not in chemistry having no clue what to do they're in there and we've been really explicitly in our hiring practices making sure our special education teachers in the secondary level also have a content area specialty did you want to jump in that's exactly what it is okay yes um so I'm sure this is something that you know varies depending on the makeup of every cohort but in terms of composing classes and considering you know what the population up is within a class that the teaching class I assume there's going to be a grade where you might have two classes that are not for time one that is and you know okay and this of course does reference the concern that would be the initial concern I would expect it of parents of you know so-called different learners or whatever you know how what does that mean if my child is in the class where there's a higher number of children you know with with special needs or with the needs just just maybe you can talk about that class composition is vitally important whether you're talking about co-teaching or whatever the place where we have less information in terms of putting classes together is in kindergarten sometimes we know some of those children but most of the time it's like well let's hope this goes together well but you don't have a whole lot to go on but when you're putting together your classes you really have to think about a real heterogeneous mix you don't want to put all your students with needs in one classroom that's not going to be good for the students it's not going to be good for the teachers it's not good for anyone and I might say that not every student that has an IEP needs to be in a classroom in every subject area with a special education teacher so there can be a tendency when you see oh this this great pair working together let's take you know all these kids that we say would benefit let's put them all in that class it's really incumbent upon the building when they're doing their classes and putting that together to shy away from that and not do that it will not work out well so we're really careful and I think we stay pretty good with that. I also think just to go back to I think something Nancy said that we're talking about 20% of our population in terms of students of special needs if you look at ELL varies more of the elementary it's more and Amherst less so the secondary we're not talking about a very small percentage of our population so I think I mean I've heard those concerns from parents as well I agree with everything Dr. Brady said about carefully balancing the classes so that all the classes but you know it's a pretty decent percentage of our school population so there's going to be some variance for doing co-teaching higher or lower but it's not that every student with special needs will be in a co-taught class even in a grade level if there is one. Bless you. So I just think sometimes when you say that number 20% which I know some of the social norms campaign that CPAC worked on it really helps contextualize this is one of every five students in the district where some of the state averages so you know there's variations on that right some higher some lower but it's it's it's not an insignificant percentage of our students in general and it's worth noting that some of our students who have IEPs are also exceptionally talented in certain areas so we don't really get a full picture if we think of all those students that 20% as being kind of needy across the board some of them are exceptionally talented some students with their math reasoning maybe their calculation skills are challenged but reasoning like they could be in some of our top classes and that's where they should be actually. So I just want to make some comments on the chart that's up here I am student taught in a second grade and it worked out so well that I ended up in a three years co-teaching situation and those that doesn't sit the students without disabilities doesn't surprise me at all because if you've got two teachers in the classroom you're giving every student just that much more support so they're all that you know the entire class is lifted up socially emotional because you've just got that much more attention being paid because if you can walk by a desk even in the middle school and just like tap the desk and just smile at the you know where a single teacher can't do that but with the co-teaching that I that's a I think that has a big effect on the entire classroom so thank you for sharing that I think that's important you live that life you know and there was a slide there were two most important things about co-teaching it was one of the very first ones it was I don't even need to see the slide it was one of the biggest thing to actually for a co-teaching to succeed is that the teachers need to be able to check their egos I just want to respond to that because we have a lot of students teachers that come to our district and one of the things that I think we talked with the universities about it pre-service teachers and having experiences where as a student teacher you're in a co-teaching classroom so you don't come out of school always thinking I can't wait to have my own classroom I think that that's you know people go through school think that they can't wait till it's just all belongs to them and I think we have to dispel those myths that it doesn't belong to anyone person also the ones with the the charts the co-teachers that between 2015 and 2017 you've been working with them so their comfort level with both each other and the support that they're receiving now I would hope that it would everything would continue to climb right the peers haven't stayed the same so it's hard to it's hard to know for sure but what I would say and like anecdotally having coached them is that the pairs that have been together since 2015 and are still together now have made pretty tremendous progress in their own personal practice and in their work with kids so I want to make sure everyone can get in who wants to so I want to go to visit Donnie as them take a look around they go back to Mr. Mead thank you so just very quickly I also want to say thank you to the three of you for presenting tonight I really appreciate this and I think this has been wonderful just to really understand not just about co-teaching just the work that's going on there are schools around special education so I have two questions and a quick comment the comment I'll start with that first is actually more for Dr. Morris and it's around the the comment about the IEP terminology and how confusing it can be and I actually would like to make a recommendation that that's included in the communications plan that was shared about the district because I actually think there's enough confusion around that that having some sort of regular you know definition around the terminology would go a very long way in helping parents and families to more engaged in the work that's going on around their students education the quick questions are so one I really appreciate the surveys and think it gives us a good snapshot of where people are but there's a lot of things that happen in between of course especially when you have long periods of time like between 2010 2017 changes you know perceptions all that changes right and so I'm wondering what can be done to gauge where parents families and educators are on a more regular basis so not just surveys but also you know active engagement soliciting information from from all these different parties so you want to go first and then I'll jump right I think that CPAC is certainly one huge area where people can do that you know when we have our monthly meetings like you have your month you know monthly beings that you have a weekly sometimes you guys but we always have public comment at the beginning of the year we had a nice sit down like right over there with the new furniture that you had there and welcome families in and just made ourselves known we had some building principles pop in make themselves available Dr. Brady was there Joanne was there so we're always touching you know we try to reach out to people through email and try to make ourselves know that families can reach out and try to communicate with us so that I know that you know very often if a family is having a difficult time some people will call me and I will work directly with the building and that parent I will also if need be work with Joanne or Dr. Brady because these things pop up not when you have a meeting back in the fall or not when we plan to have it in March but if your family's in a situation and they need help you know CPAC is a spot they can go to and parents you know can reach us in a variety of ways but at every single IEP meeting that is held we make sure that CPAC information is giving out at that meeting as well too so we're really trying to make sure that there are check-ins there for families I just want to add because I think we do all those things and unfortunately I guess I kind of live my life thinking about that one person who may be out there who feels that they're not being heard so what we do do also is ask every staff member certainly every special educator who is working with the family to have routine regular contact with families that they initiate not just by email so that we are seeking and just checking in with people certainly we know everybody has at least one team meeting a year and what we've instituted instead of just sending home a written invitation that comes in the mail and if you're like most people's mailboxes you know that envelope can be kind of lost somewhere we ask people to call to make a personal contact to say your meeting is coming up just wanting to remind you of that making sure the time is a good time and checking in to say is there anything particular you'd really like to make sure we include that information there's nothing worse than getting to a meeting and really wanting to have talked to the English teacher and the math teacher is there the English teacher is not there so we're trying to do take more initiative that way as well as every time we send an IEP home because we know a family needs to read that or they hopefully read it but they need to sign something otherwise we're going to keep at them to say sign something and let us know where you are with that we sent home a team meeting feedback form that's not on the computer nobody's doing it that we ask people because they're all ready with a piece of paper in a pen we ask them to fill that out and send that back and we're getting a fairly good response rate so that information is given right back to the staff at the time as well as then we tabulated at the end of each year and send that out so that people have that trend data to look like last year you know people were telling this school this and this is what we're hearing this year so people can really reflect on their practice so we're running up against the time of our item anything else I just had one this is more for Dr. Morse but the issue of time is coming up a lot I'm just I have some ideas but I just like to know what are the impediments or what it or what is the plan forward maybe to work on issue or again the impediments you know preventing progress there sure I can start and you know Renee if you understand please do I think it's really different you know so this is a presentation a regional meeting but the data we're seeing is spans three districts so I'm gonna respond if it's okay with the chair to talk about the difference between elementary and secondary please do so at elementary and not that it's perfect and I wouldn't claim it but if there is a little more flexibility because we have things like recess and we can we've made amends and kind of informal agreements with folks about recess coverage to provide more time for co teachers there's not that same flexibility at the secondary level of this time where other people can cover and there's not instructional implications so I think it is a more complicated picture at the secondary level than it is at the elementary level and some of it comes down to resources so I think Mr. Deming's comment and some others at the beginning that if you know we had funds to change the FTE allowance for co-teachers to you know how much they teach versus how much they're planning you know in a perfect world you know I'd love to think about how that how to implement that that's fair and equitable that's not our current scenario and so one of the challenges is the Bell schedule at the secondary level doesn't allow for tremendous flexibility on a whole host of fronts this being one of them and there is a resource issue and then frankly there'd be an equity issue as well because how do you judge how much more planning time a co-teacher needs than non-co-teacher that's not an easy math problems to solve and that would be a lot of conversations with our association to try to work on that if we had that level of flexibility which unfortunately resource wise we don't I don't know if there's anything you'd like to add can I just if we're again and can I add on a positive note so I just wanted to tell you that we're part of DSAC which is a subsidiary of DESI anyways there's a whole inclusive practices network which is a series of professionals that get together throughout the valley to receive support around inclusive practices co-teaching one of it one of them and so we've been working together regionally around how to support area districts and what I will say is that we are doing the work and not many people are doing the work and area universities are paying attention and we have three student teachers that are here with us this year because their universities are identifying this model as one that they want their pre-service teachers to be around and to see so I think that that's sort of like an outside-inside thing that you should know and and that's it so that's that's a story a very positive and I think a great presentation and I don't I don't know if the delay in being able to schedule you ends up being a good thing because it seems like you were extremely well-organized and I'd even more information to bring there I mean if we kept waiting you'd probably do it more and actually in I was gonna say on that note I mean to me this is really a terrific conversation it's all it's something I sort of echoing something as I already said in which I wonder whether in your sort of out out calendar you should look maybe three years from now to do another survey instead of another seven and you know but but in that in the spirit of some of the planning or strategic planning exercises that I've talked a lot about with the superintendent it would be really wonderful since you've done essentially here's the journey we've been on here's what we're hearing here's how it's improved and also I'm saying this again echoing the fact that the budget is kind of tough and actually I would argue for this item as well as frankly the next one we're gonna be talking about I actually don't think budget times bad bad budgets are times where you give up on your aspirations there are the times in which your aspirations are most challenged right because if you have all them not that you have not the ever had all the money in the world but if you had all the money in the world then you can throw money at problems and see if anything works out and just try a bunch of things when time budgets are tight then you're sort of doubling down on what you think is working effectively and what you think your classrooms your educators and your students need the most and so my point on this is that coming to where we are now in this conversation you can talk to amongst yourselves about when the next time would be it could even be this coming fall but I think there's there's a logical next point of conversation with the school committee on not only what have you learned and reflected but now that we're taking stock and looking ahead for the next you know till the next survey I mean you've made so much progress from as you started at the beginning from where you were seven years ago to where you reported to be now what's the next aspiration what's the next goal and in regardless of the budget how do we support you and gain visibility around that I just think that's a really we didn't get a chance to do that here and maybe you're not ready to do that now but I think there's got to be a next opportunity it could be sometime in the spring it'd be next fall whenever it is I think it'd be a wonderful thing to do yeah I mean I don't need to extend the time to but I don't know if we if we did enough to thank you and to emphasize and you mentioned this couple times at the beginning how dramatic improvement that is between the surveys the two surveys and it's when you compared I mean other districts across the state across the country that are really struggling many in crisis over how to deal with increasing percentages of special ed and this is this is a real success story you know in a public school district that's in a fairly progressive way and so you know whether that's sharing with the the regional group that you mentioned or at the state level promising practices it's definitely something I think as a school committee we want to continue to shine a light and aspire to do even more as we're able to and I just want to say we thank you for your support to help us do the work I think you know we are fortunate enough to be in a district that keeps students at the center and makes our decisions based upon our students when you do that success usually follows so thank you for your support thank you have a safe trip home if you're leaving now thank you so much so the next item on our agenda is the school eddy school equity task force goal discussion is what it's called on our agenda we as the it's kind of funny we had a joint regional school committee sc tf meeting in November November 14th and so the awkward thing is I've been I mean since the numbers of people were the committee were there at that meeting I don't feel like I need to remind you that we have the meeting but for anyone I guess like for the myriad of people watching at home I just want to put this in the context that we've had a couple of meeting couple of joint meetings with the school equity task force this fall I personally enjoyed them learned a lot from them and it inspired with the work of the sc tf the the the I want and I'm also by the one hand is to misdemean the cage to introduce but the to me the meeting we had in November in which we were given the opportunity to review memo that described a series of goals or or broad scale objectives or visions that the sc tf had compiled some which have been around for a while but for years and worked on for years but this was an excellent my opinion an excellent summary of of the objectives that the sc tf been working on and an opportunity for the community to be able to engage around that and then I think more importantly one of the things that was described in that meeting was I think I don't think I'd be speaking out of turn to say first ration at some point but also just a concern that that it's it's it's fine to pick a particular item on an agenda push it fund it make some progress or whatever but then the question is you know nine months from now do we make any progress do we bother reviewing that progress to the extent that these are interrelated goals are those goals ever ever discussed or looked at in a holistic way integrative way are they benchmarked since I mean we just signed a contract so we're hoping you're here for a long time and we love you that's great but but the reality is leadership comes and goes to either from individual schools or overall and one of the concerns was that when you look year to year or even decade to decade is their continuity of the terms of a structure of the strategy benchmarking your progress and then being able to review that progress in a way that's both aspirational engages the community in a way that's really helpful and then also engages the staff and leadership in a way in which you're making concrete crowd progress so that you're not talking about you're not always talking about aspirations it's kind of give me for saying this day after Dr. King's birthday but one of as much as I think I really revere Dr. King deeply revere admire Dr. King one of the things what can be very frustrating and challenging about the holiday though is that see people focus on the dream and they focus on the dream speech and they don't focus necessarily on the organizing or actually the concrete legislative and other practical accomplishments that were actually done either during Dr. King's life many other civil rights leaders or in the decade subsequent right and the bottom line is you can have a dream that's great but if you're not actually making real progress for families that can feel in touch and see all as it is all as it is is a the dream deferred to paraphrase or quote someone else so my point being on this is I think I think this was in my mind I'm just introducing the fact that we received this document we had I thought a very good conversation but then the challenge for the committee and then the conversation I think with the superintendent this isn't superintendent is in fact what's next and what do we want to do about about about this that too long I was probably too no no goodness that's kind of tick me down it's like sorry he was a moment ago so anyways I just want to offer offer just don't make it an opportunity and also introduce discussion I really don't know how you how the committee would want to proceed and but I just would want to give the framework perhaps that I think the document we don't have it in our packet but you don't I don't believe we have a copy reader but it lays out you know essentially how do you build out a restorative justice program from a position that the district has secured we have a person DW who's in the high school how do we support the success of the of the position how do we build out a program around the position and I was part of a working group meeting session that a couple of school equity task force members were a part of that I was able to join in with the principal and with with the DW and so I was able to see the timeline and all of that and I guess why we're having this conversation is is that the the school equity task force wants to get that type of it's going to require money money for professional development for the position and also for trainings for students because we want youth to be trained we want youth to be exposed to other restorative justice programs that are nearby and so you know we there is a it's not apparently ready yet for to to be shared publicly however this as Mary Lou's letter you know sort of outlined nicely this is imperative for the social emotional experience of students in terms of how do we provide students the tools to do conflict resolution to mediate disagreements and also to to do that reflection about how we interact with each other in the world and and you know even with teachers and adults in the building like there's a lot of the support that's outlined in this memo that I think was electronically shared at some point before also talks about making sure that the entire you know sort of the building not just the building but just you know what makes up the community in a building that we expose people to that restorative justice practice principles values and training so so essentially that's that's what we're talking about and I just want to say you know outside of what the school equity task force has outlined I think that since this is not a district-wide you know sort of layout of that you know definitely one person doing it is is a challenge so you know ideally you know we would have other people in other buildings doing similar work to share you know the the the the strengths of restorative justice so I'm I thought we were talking about something different to be honest with you I mean that restorative justice is a strong component of it but I when in in November we got a memo in which there were outlined five different top of the line goals and then underneath them were a series of requests for things that that would need to be implemented and funded and so it was a question of the dialogue I think with the superintendent around around the feasibility of them what we're doing now and just among those just to give examples number one was broadening deep in the learning of faculty staff at administration about race and racism the special emphasis on systemic racism and unconscious bias and item a in there was to direct the administration at $30,000 the f by 19 budget in ear market for professional development to support that activity for example their other examples number two was broadening deep in the learning of students about race class and other equity issues and item a for that was to fund and essentially spur the development of a high school course on a race class and other equity issues as it says here this would most likely be an elective course that might become part of grading a graduation requirement that all students take at least one course that would fill this overall goal the other items number three was increased the enrollment success of students of color and low-income white students and honors and AP classes in the high school and item a which I think would be extraordinarily useful for us to do is to ask the administration to provide data and have a presentation on what the current enrollment is and honors and AP classes was broken down by a variety of demographic characteristics including income and race is available and to come up with an action plan to expand participation in those courses number four was eliminate racial disparities and discipline for students at both the middle school and high school and this includes obviously speaks directly to restorative justice and includes among other things as the administration provide data that show the quantity and duration of all disciplinary actions that involve students missing instruction disaggregated by grade race and gender including longitudinal data if it's available and then five increased the percentage of people of color in each category of school district employees annually until it approximately equals the percentage of students of color which again we talked a little bit about this already but there are a variety of things we're listening here some of which are data and others which are based on reporting and goals and objectives in that category so it was it was my thought and I apologize this wasn't in everyone's packet to refresh the memory of the meeting we had it was my intention one to have an opportunity for the committee to discuss for those especially who were able to attend the goals that were there I'm gonna speak out of turn by saying that in my mind if you start with the top level goals that I mentioned I read first under each one of these I I'm speaking out of turn I apologize but I'd be surprised if the committee wouldn't endorse all of them but I think it's actually a useful step for the committee to endorse all of them if the committee's predisposed to do so and then to me the next question underneath that which again I was hoping to encourage with the dialogue with the superintendent of Superintendents was essentially what where do we go from here to try to make meaningful public continuous progress on these goals in a way that also and I'm forgiving for saying this but breaks down a dynamic in which sort of we're over here and you're over there and we're saying you should do this but rather the question is how do we create a team approach that that creates with the public and with us and with all of you and the professionals again transparency clarity around goals and objectives and progress and so I was hoping we could do that at least as a starting point in this meeting so that we could also look at over the course of the spring about figuring out both how do we build this into the budget where it's relevant and a tough time but also how do we and forgive me for picking on them but sort of the the the Rick Hood challenge which is also actually a bit the Kathleen Anderson challenge of hey I've been at this a long time I see stops and starts how do we do something that actually feels like an honest-to-god collective collaborative strategy in which we're really making progress in benchmarking our accomplishments and so that's why I was bringing it up because I thought it's a SCTF can ask us to do stuff to the cows come home the committee's got to decide whether and work with you to decide we want to actually do something collectively and if I can just make one additional comment I thank you for that mr. Nuckabee my name is so many cage I think that that's exactly the conversations that we've had in the equity task force meetings but also I think you know from my own perspective at the end of the day we really want to integrate the equity task forces work wholly into the work of the committee right in the work of the district so that there's no longer a need for a separate subcommittee but in fact that it's actually part of the work that we do on a regular basis and a lot of the work I think that that needs to get done if I may be so bold is to ensure that each one of our agendas right around our meetings on a regular basis reflect these goals and reflect the needs of our district in terms of equity and trying to achieve racial social justice and I think we've all agreed across the board that this is important this is a priority and that we want this to happen and the very fact that Miss Cunningham is here sitting here today reflects that that commitment and so I think a lot of the you know the again Mr. Hood's repeated conversation has really been about what are we doing how do we know we're getting it done and I think a lot of the the answer in that lies in tracking this progress right and making sure that we're reflecting that on a regular basis it's not just once in a while that we have a conversation around some of this but that it's really integrated into your goals the superintendent's goals that's integrated into our regular agendas and integrated into a lot of our conversations on a regular basis yeah not just hazard I was gonna jump in on this okay well I just at our last superintendent evaluation subcommittee we actually have us in it as an agenda item so I if I may read a little bit from our minutes because it kind of describes a discussion that we have which I think is right along the lines of this so the subcommittee agreed so this that we sort of were looking at okay how looking at these goals which are you know ambitious and we have you know about six months left in this year and sort of what what that might look like for this year the subcommittee agreed that a helpful step could be to get a thorough report on what is being done how it can be tracked and how the public can keep tabs on this work it was noted that the goal for this year could be to set the stage for the work ahead for a thorough report that looks at trends and frames these goals as a multi-year process is very expressed that it might be a good step to have updates around these topics built into the yearly school committee calendar providing check-ins every year on areas such as achievement gap, disability, etc. this hazard suggested that there be a map of professional development that is currently happening or a racism of social justice, implicit bias, etc. and this would allow the committee and the public to see what is currently being done and where there may be gaps it was agreed that we need to clear sense the baseline so we can determine where we need to improve and how the school committee can help an important question to consider is how to make this process successful so that the SCTF administration and the school committee can work together effectively. That's great. Let me add the thing I was going to add to that is because I've had a little bit of dialogue with the superintendent around this and if I could do a minor betrayal of your confidence that whatever that means no that I mean no I'm kidding only because it's not going to be it's not going to be a mystery that looking ahead at this budgetary year one of the concerns you had is that it's kind of what I said earlier it's it's easier to talk about aspirational goals when you're saying budget ads position ads and all that kind of stuff right it's much harder to I mean just objectively it's harder to have a conversation about this stuff when when you're either doing levels but the level of funding in some areas are even cuts and in our conversations one of the things we discussed was that you know at least in my view and I think you shared it I mean that in some ways it's actually an opportunity right because in a situation where you know you're not talking about it getting specific grant not that that isn't valuable it is valuable you're not talking about particular hires in saying what's the profile of the hires isn't this great we're moving our objectives you're actually forced to describe a strategy in greater detail and scrub what your year-to-year efforts are and I'll give an example within hiring professional development faculty retention well stuff you do you know the reality is you're doing all this work anyway right and you're going to be thinking about all sorts of ways that you can match the objective of improving the effectiveness of the Alana cabinet and the different programs that fall out of it professional development where you where there are any hires or something that filling the positions that needs to occur thinking about ways of aggressively looking for ways of doing hires that that could advance this objective I think there's a great teachable moment an opportunity to break it down and make it plain and help people understand what it what does it actually look like to have a three to five year effort in a situation which is probably not going to get financially a lot more generous to still make it advances on these these goals right like that I mean it's a challenge it's hard but I think it's an opportunity to settle to get very very real and have really great dialogue between the leadership the administrative leadership of the district the committee and the public parents and staff and that followed by what I'm saying this because it echoes and adds upon what Ms. Hazard Mr. Donies and how Ms. Mary was quoted so maybe towards the end of this discussion we can better articulate what the specific action item our next thing is as opposed to just we're going to discuss it yeah next because we have as you foreshadowed a lot of budget stuff about to hit us right and so you know I agree the general sentiment we're talking about about let's set out the plan let's make it more transparent and defined than it's been in the past let's get the baseline track progress I just want to make real sure that we're setting expectations with SCTF and with the public appropriately as we go through this because so especially without the goals in front of me from the memo but in particular without an in-depth discussion about each one of those goals I wouldn't feel comfortable saying no or yes to any of those requests I mean some of those requests were very specific about funding for specific line-on specific amounts and you know that's a whole context of the budget and so I don't want to I want to be cautious about giving the wrong impression as we go through a pretty volatile budget cycle I guess it's just I think that I think that makes sense I mean I probably wasn't speaking as bluntly as I could have a moment ago our budget stinks and there's not going to be a lot of money for anything from what I can tell we're going to learn more next week in detail and so in that context this is actually really about digging deep in your values and in your expertise because it's actually probably not I mean I'm sure I'm very serious about this is there's two elements to it one when you look at some of the specific requests for ads if we're not at an environment for ads then the likely answer for this coming fiscal year is well I'm not sure we can do that now I'm not sure we can do that now right I mean that may very well be the realistic answer we get to budgeting and so the question ends up being and I think frankly one of my outcomes of this meeting would like to be to actually define a question or a challenge for the superintendent to say we would like that X meeting in the future a wide meeting in the future for you to come back with your thoughts about how you'd like to proceed you know on what's your response and I think even a good baseline I think Mr. Donis might have said this one was one of the two of you made the comment that you can start as a baseline of what are we doing now and what is the data telling us and then but my point is the framework of it it seems to me could reasonably be a lot of the top line goals that are here and so there has to be my point is there has to be response and to me that's goes back again to make it speak very plainly that goes back to my point a moment ago about building trust by being extremely transparent breaking things down and being really clear about what you're trying to do if we look out over the next three to five years this is probably not the last lousy budget we're going to have and there's also going to be opportunities where they're going to be potentially good budgets so if we have a conversation with the superintendent with the assistant superintendent and others and then with the public at large that's focused around are you going to recommend allocating $15,000 for the set of the other thing then what we're going to do is we're going to get into a sort of a broad discursive fistfight around specific line items and dollar figures that if especially in a situation of constrained budgets is going to miss the point of wait a minute what are we're guidance counselors doing now well how is there a way they can optimize what they're doing is there a way in which we can optimize the engagement of parents or teachers and students with them now with the staff we have now that could substantially object advance these objectives even in the absence of budget meaning my point being to end this because I don't want to try to fill a filibuster this item is that if we're in a tight budget year and the superintendent you never said this I'm pretending the words you might say say well you know the budget really stinks this year therefore you know it's not realistic for us to really address any of these goals if that were the answer then I would say well that means you're not committed to them at all because there's always going to be times where you have tough budgets right so so the point being on this is I suspect some of the items and I'm not going to pick on them because I'm not going to pick on them some of these items will may not be able to fund this year what I'd like to know from the superintendent and the assistant superintendent others is all right what's your response how are we are how are we in the engaging and making progress on this and how are we doing things that could build between this year and next year where we can see progress and I don't think that's too much to ask I think that's what we need and it's what we need frankly to know that whenever we have money again or if we could seek additional I mean I think the pair of things great by the way I love that meaning the steps educational program pathways I think it's a wonderful thing to do that's a wonderful grant to go after but my point is unless grant unless we just willy-nilly take whatever grants come that grant that fits beautifully within objectives that are expressed right here right so it fits with the strategy and so my point is how would you even know if the next dollar was spent well if a dollar came available unless you can already articulate what's working and how you're how you're moving and how we're making progress on these goals and that's what we need to do sorry please you have your own 25 minutes now if you want no I don't actually thank you so so a couple things first of all this dialogue is really helpful I don't want to speak for this kind of hand but it's helpful for me to process kind of where the committee is our individual members are I think a couple points few points that I'd like to make one is there's no disagreement on the five goals that listed as being really important and to the last point that was raised the way you approach them is probably the dialogue that needs to occur right is I don't feel personally like there's anything in terms of those five goals that that we disagree with they're very consistent with the districts values and core principles and I think to mr. Nakajima's point in challenging budget years right what I read is ABC you know the letters going down are certainly reasonable ways to approach it that may or may not be feasible that doesn't invalidate the importance of the goal right so for me it's a way how are we currently approaching it how do we get a benchmark of where we are and what's the strategy what our strategy is moving forward that's the dialogue that I think would be most helpful I think another person commented it's mid-January and I think that's both an opportunity to do some benchmarking as well as to some strategic planning to get that process which I'll speak a little later on a different agenda topic about going in terms of what are the future kind of aspirations of the district and how do we kind of how do we codify that work not only this was referenced earlier to be an sef piece but part of the district practices and how does that actually intersect in or weave with other things that are on this list that are also truly important to the district and I think there's some benefit to looking holistically at what we wanted to do as a district bringing these and bring the SCTF into that strategic planning process so the outcome is not there's SCTF goals and there's these goals and there's that goal they all may be really good but if they're not woven together into a more comprehensive plan I don't want to isolate things because it I don't I don't think it'll work well it's not because I am opposed to this group or that group or these plans we could come up with a hundred goals that would be all look great on paper and I think the reality is we need to figure out how do we do something comprehensively very publicly with incredible amounts of community but not just the people in the room but lots of people aren't in the room including students and get to a place of what is a tangible finite number of goals that we then can build moving forward the last thing I want to say and certainly if you'd like to jump in is I took the five recommendations to be very affirming the work that and the efforts that we're making right now and not that we have it all figured out or not that things are perfect if they were we probably would be having a very different conversation at the same time feels very supportive to read this document and to hear this dialogue because we want to be in step and in sync with the committee on these matters and the SCTF so you know I really appreciate the work of the SCTF as well as the work of the committee to kind of engender more dialogue that's iterative and involves people you know this again this we might push not just the people in this room but lots of people not in this room to engage in it because one thing we know is top-down kind of style of management where people don't feel engaged and aren't able to interact with the ideas doesn't have a great track record of success in a domain you know equity being one of them that doesn't it prevent us from having urgency on them but how do we engage a larger group of stakeholders to understand the concerns to understand the direction we want to take and then to take part in it because people in this room aren't the ones directly teaching kids on a daily basis or being counselors or being involved in the restorative justice the last thing I want to say and then I'll really turn it if this Cunningham wants to add is it's just interesting you know I'm glad the group met with DW thank you for that that update miss so this afternoon I was doing Amherst media was doing kind of one of our tapings this was in the update I didn't say it out loud and what was interesting was two elementary school principals and said you know what's going on your school the community might want to know they might not be aware of and both of them spoke about restorative practices and restorative justice in their elementary school settings and how that's changing the culture around consequences discipline and my question is really this kind of generic softball you know get people talking about their schools and that's that's where they went so I do think having at a high school large comprehensive high school having someone who owns a program it's not to speak against that but I also think a lot of it's around and DW say this around changing culture right in changing climate and how that operates is going to look a little different in the different schools based on size based on current situation and a host of other factors but spoken more than I thought I was going to so I do want to also thank the SCTF and the goals that they put here are our goals that we have been working towards one of the things I'd like to say though is that we need to make things more transparent because there's a lot of things that are listed here that we have been working towards and making progress with however we have not made it transparent to the community or others at large to say this is what we're doing this is how we're doing or even to once again get the input from those stakeholders who are not in the room so yes I'd like to thank you guys for this and just know that we are making progress and we'd like to find ways to make it more transparent for all to know that we are doing this work so the other day was Mary I think you started to articulate a meeting with the superintendent some things you might like to see happen this spring well I think we've touched on what I was what I was talking about was and I think it's along the baseline and some of and kind of feeds into the transparency part you know some of these goals have a lot of requests for data and I think that's something that that we can do very soon right and that's probably a good thing for us to tackle in this shortened period and then again finding you know ways to regularly share and read and come back to these topics so either sharing out what's going on but also just let's get an update where are we and make sure that it's constantly on the radar and not something that we check in once about once a year but or every other year or something but on a regular basis so I think operationalizing some of that stuff would be would be excellent to accomplish this yeah I 100% agree with that and I think that that was I was gonna ask because I think Mr. Nakajima had just mentioned something about maybe requesting that the superintendent you know sort of share with us their thinking about when we might be able to expect some feedback on these recommendations and these goals I think just having that concretely as something to look forward to would help a lot with the conversation and the agenda setting for ourselves and I think you know that the data request again is something that has been continuing for such a long time that if that information is already being collected it would be great to hear as soon as we can and for that then to become a regular part of reporting back there's other things of course that you know are going to have to be considered more within the context of the budget setting and so you're probably going to need a little bit more time or that you know there's going to have to be input from the committees on that but I think at the very least beginning with that and then the other thing that I would just pitch is one thing that we keep hearing over and over again is in this comes to Ms. Cunningham's sort of bailiwick is a professional development piece and so the pathways thing is extremely important but then also other you know aspects of professional development staff training around equity and racial justice and how they perhaps it becomes incorporated into the regular PD kind of work that goes on training throughout the year looking at other programs that maybe are not just strictly you know quote-unquote education based but also you know incorporate an aspect or elements of equity in that you know that that would be your decisions to make right but I think having some kind of regular reporting on the progress on that piece would also be extremely helpful just in understanding what's going on so yeah I was just gonna add I was gonna add to that just say so and a moment I'm gonna look around the table to see if people are nodding I don't know if they can vote on this but I'd love to see if people aren't who's that we're in a stadium oh I can hear that that is weird Steph on dig scoring the touchdown I'm just gonna continue even though that is kind of weird so that may be that said I don't know the interesting question so I was just gonna say that I agree with what was just said I also want to try to find a way to make this workable from a schedule standpoint I think there's so there are a couple things I'd love to see happen and see if this is makes sense and just get your feedback on this I mean one I think you should just take pick some data points on here although if I can pick on one that I really want to hear about I keep hearing for a really long time I'm broke a year ago I was on a candidate forum and I was hearing about the question of whether or not all children are sort of equally participating and benefiting from AP courses and sort of in ripped courses and I haven't seen any data on that and so if I'd love to see data on that I mean you know that's here I'm sorry I'm picking on one of the things and sort of prioritize it but if you have information on that it's just one of those things where like there's already lots of common knowledge or popular knowledge around discipline rates and things like that and challenges where it's sort of like known that that's a problem in reality and statistically there's also a known sort of challenge around staffing patterns and the diversity of staff this is one where I actually haven't seen the data and if it really I'd love to see the data and it's my point is though but the point is if that isn't ready or can't be ready we should pick something on here and start talking about it and talking about it in a really grounded way ideally with data and then also what are we doing now and how's it working because I think that'd be a good educational process for us but also the community I think it goes to something that Miss Cunningham was saying a moment ago around if there are things that are happening now that actually fundamentally reach some of these goals but the public's unaware of it let's start making people aware of it. Not that it can't be improved but it's just way too bad a disconnect if we're actually making progress on some of these things but nobody knows it's happening and so we should close that gap and pick a couple of them but then the challenge also then and I think unfortunately as educational leader you're stuck with it is you've got to come back with us with also then a sort of more holistic framework around how we organize an ongoing very pract tied to the budget, tied to all those other stuff how do we organize that and we need some sort of framework to respond to as was suggested I don't think we need to hold up hearing some of the data and some of the updates on these items for that framework if it takes a little longer to do. Does this make any sense by the way? We're nuts just let us know. No, I don't know. So I just want to quickly respond so I think when I look at the goals things that we haven't talked about this but goal number one and goal number five seem like the ones that probably the data is more there and that we're actively working on. It's good. We agreed. The thing on the data more generally that I do want to state is that we have two analysts, data analysts for the district to work for three districts so essentially of 1.06 FTE dedicated data that have to do an awful incredible amount of data reporting. We used to have more as a budget cut years ago. We are not in a situation where our resources towards gathering data and like number three I don't disagree is a very worthwhile what you were talking about that. Our capacity to do that quickly is pretty limited and that's something that we may have to talk about in the budget process but I think there's been a large public interest in having more access to data. I personally have more interest. I think the current budget situation makes that kind of challenging situation. I'll talk a little bit more about that next week not just the budget situation but this particular aspect of it but is one person essentially one FTE that dedicated to not just gathering the data for us. Most of their job is around power school and state reporting and those types of things. So I think that's some of our limitation is not lack of desire or interest. It's how much can one person two people split between three districts however you want to frame it. Take on to do longitudinal as well as current data analysis and that's not to say we don't want to do it. It's about the time in us and that's our current reality. That's what kind of as a district we've chosen to put funds more directly tied to children's daily experience than we have in that realm and whether that's the right choice or wrong choice probably should be a discussion we have sometime this winter even despite the challenges it's a current limitation and it's a point of frustration. You think, what do you think of I think I'm getting lost in the trees instead of the forest. I apologize. So do you think the idea of being able to do some near term presentations on what we're doing and what the data shows is realistic and do you think that the longer term but not forever term because sometimes your announcement is here's how we're thinking of going about it then you go about it. Do you think that idea of helping to give something for the committee to respond to and again I'm not asking you to do this now but at some point you're going to have to sort of give reflective feedback on is this like a March presentation? Is it a February presentation? Is it an April one? I don't know but the point is we'll figure that out together based on what else is going on. Yeah I think I'm number one and number five I'm not tremendously worried about gathering the data or doing that in a very timely way. I am concerned that once next Tuesday happens and we start talking about budget the metaphorical space that we have to talk about things that aren't budget will be somewhat reduced not eliminated but I also don't want to do this at 9.30 after a meeting where we've had members of public comment talking about potential budget reductions I don't think that is a justice so I think I'm not so worried about the timing on our end of being able to put something together for the next couple months it's more just is that the right fit in terms of time and I don't think we'll know until we get there to a certain extent until you know we get to the next week's presentation the 4-10 meeting see if we get resolution on at least what our current situation is in the response to the proposed budget reductions so I don't want to game it by saying well it's March because maybe things will work out as challenging as they are smoother than what's in my head right now. I mean I don't really quite mean it exactly that way I think in terms of sequencing the meetings and how packed are the agendas and where do we fit things in we can figure that out right because we're going to have things we have to do we just we're going to have to work that out but it's also if we if let's say I don't know the January 30th meeting you come back with something that's going to give some thought to this here's the general way I'm thinking about proceeding and we get some opportunity to respond to that then then you know that gives you a chance to reflect for a little bit and road map out what things would look like between now and August or whatever and because the entire point is I mean I'm not to be funny about this but if you never go through that process because we're trying to we're limping crisis to crisis then we're always kicking the can down the road in another couple months right because my point is I'm being respectful of the fact that if one in five things you could talk about sooner then we've got to put item number three somewhere on the calendar right so that maybe that is something you don't talk about until September because it takes time to do but at least if we have an agreement that you're going to do in September then the one FTE or 10.06 FTE they slotted in at different points and then by the time we get to September we have the data we have the conversation and that's exactly what I that's what I meant earlier when I said you know this is what to me this is what it means to slog through the work of making progress is that is being a reality based knowing that there are going to be staffing challenges it is going to be tough to do something at a given point so then the question is how do we figure out when we're going to do it and then let's hold collectively our feet to the fire that when the time comes we're able to engage and so on January 30th if you're able to come back to some kind of a whatever feedback you have essentially that would be extremely helpful in terms of format I think that you know working out of this document I think there was another document that followed this that was specific to you know the RJ priority if you will because I think we want a sense of what is priority and also that this is a living document that you know we've presented and then you know what is the response from the district in terms of where we are and that would be written and then we would you know be able to see what was the response in 2018 you know end of the school year and then you know what happens in the end of 29 you know like tracking progress and you know so that way we can check off you know when things are done or we're making you know progress towards that goal and also I think this is you know I think the school equity task force is aware that you know it's a lot of this is very detailed in the very weeds sometimes but that we're requiring you know your big picture knowledge and wisdom about how to execute it in a way that's doable so thinking creatively like if we're paying for Greenfield Community College courses for example here you know can one of those courses be a racial justice or restorative justice class where we can pull some students to be trained I know that Amherst Education Foundation grant money is being pursued to help with some of this and you know so that type of commitment towards you know getting you know these things into our district you know being able to track that in you know in one document that's what we're going for we have a challenge to have a committee conversation and discussion I think at this point you know we didn't we don't have that full you know we haven't had the ability to have this full conversation but maybe if we can see what your response is officially on this with you know in terms of number one or A and this is the response then that way the committee can actually see you know and go deeper that would be helpful and also at some point you know Principal Mark Jackson and DW can come in and sort of do their presentation that some of us were privy to in that smaller working group I think that would be helpful very very helpful because that is an identified priority for do you feel like you have feedback? I do. Right? So we're we're on time and now we're running long but I mean I appreciate your taking the time to do this so that eventually it's really important and I think actually if we I think we have an opportunity over the next few months to get to put a conversation right that if it does is going to be extremely productive over the next couple of years. But that doesn't belittle the importance of the Van Pool contract. Is this one of those things that if Sean were here you'd be talking about? I gave Sean the night off but he's back at work but I feel fully confident to talk about it. So this is something that we're going to ask you to vote on one of the next two meetings so to make you know I know just the contractors in here I want to give it a little bit of scope so Van Pool is a company that supports us to transport students mostly students with special needs to out of district placements. It also does support us with Bikini-Vento which is the Homeless Act which supports students who don't live in Amherst but attend our schools as part because they are homeless and so what we've found is they are incredibly flexible they work well with some of the students who are struggling the most significantly with a whole host of factors. They're also frankly the only, there are other companies that do this but our scale in terms of Hampshire and Franklin County is pretty significant and we've had really good success with them. This would be a contract that would extend the length that we work with Van Pool and in exchange for that they're offering us a significant reduction on rates so it's kind of awkward a segue because perhaps it felt like when we're talking about what our priorities and values are if we can, we have a vendor that we enjoy and then can save money both in this year's budget and next year's budget hence the push for a vote on the sooner side we, that's what we're asking you to do because this, to be very blown about it, this will be a budget cut that has no impact in next year's budget if the committee is amenable and agreeable to supporting us to sign the contract so we are trying to, given the situation in every single place we can that has no impact on students this being one of them or the least amount of impact on students, this was literally a no impact that is our current vendor and we're happy with them but it does require a vote of the school committee that we wouldn't ask you to take certainly if you feel comfortable taking tonight, we're not going to talk you out of it but if there are other questions that you want to follow up on, I told Dr. Brady to go home giving the weather but she also highly endorses the contract and continuing to work with them. I think particularly noteworthy from Dr. Brady's point of view is their flexibility. I can think of one situation with all the snow in the winter because I usually don't get super connected to this work where we have students in out of district placements that are some distance away and the weather patterns as you know in Massachusetts can vary within our four towns of our region let alone driving to out of district placements and their ability to be in touch with us and be aware of who is delayed, who has transportation, what's safe but not safe in terms of transportation, we've been incredibly impressed with their communication with families and with us so that's what we've negotiated with them for your consideration. I'm just upset that you need an ample to shuttle home just yes, in terms of the focus and very sobering. Yes it is. Are there questions? Were you anticipating it's our usual practice to discuss one meeting and vote the next? It's certainly up to the committee. It won't throw us off if this gets signed next week. I mean once it gets signed we do actually save money in this fiscal year but I'm certainly comfortable putting on the agenda for next week. I mean I don't think it'll be a long agenda item before we get to budget it's not going to make or break our budgets if it's the later we return. Or it will entertain a motion. Mary? Yeah I'll move to the, can I talk to the Van Kool contract? Yeah. The Van Kool contract as presented. Is there a second? Second. It's been moved and seconded. Is there a discussion? Yes. Just one question on ballpark cost. The history position is for the lower cost action but I don't see anything there. So the cost savings for our district would be $20,000 for the next fiscal year. Thank you. Seeing no further discussion, all those in favor of approving the contract is presented with your hand. It carries unanimously with again one absent for the meeting. By the way, Ms. Sullivan, welcome. Thank you. I mean we got caught up in a lot of the stuff so it wasn't never appropriate that Secretary here, I hope the good people to shoot Spurry are doing well. I hope they're all upright. You're talking brownies too. Yeah we're doing great brownies. I'll bring them next week. Yeah. Honest evening, I'll say it in front of you because I said it without you here. I thought I was really bummed out you, the weather wasn't permitting you to be here because I don't really like the idea that we'd have a meeting without either lever to shoot Spurry present but I mean it just doesn't feel good. So I'm glad you're here. Original meeting that broke out on July 26. Everyone else is lovely too, just fantastic people but the point is they can't represent shoot Spurry. Superintendent evaluation subcommittee update. Just if you don't mind, I'll just say that this is, we weren't actually able to convene our subcommittee in a timely manner. So this is just thoughts from two of us. We're just throwing out there. They were seen by all, the draft of it was seen by all but. Is this the same? That's old people. But you're right. Lights too. I mean let's not just sound funny about this but since there is actually a subcommittee for the purposes of this discussion is it from the two of you or who's it from? Who wrote it? I drafted it. Bibi and I have talked about it and Steve has seen it as well. But Audrey's seen it as well. I mean we've seen it to Audrey. We haven't heard from her. Well I know but I mean it can't be, unless you've met officially it can't officially be an act of the committee. Exactly. It's not. It's thoughts from some members. Exactly. So let's just leave it, that's my point. Let's leave it at that. And so would you like to present? Sure. Okay. So this is just pertaining to one aspect of the evaluation we had talked about before, which is trying to formalize guidance on who is going to complete the evaluation each year. So we reached out to both Glenn Kutcher and Dorothy Presser of MASC. Who both of them shared some thoughts with us about considerations options that other schools have entertained, but neither one were able to kind of point us to any specific protocols or policies that other schools have adopted. So we just had some kind of conversations that helped us think about it. So some of the things that they mentioned were school committees consider setting a minimum amount of time that school committees members have served before they do the evaluation. Some committees have thought about requiring that members were present for the goal setting in order to be able to complete the evaluation. Some think about giving guidance to the aggregator as to weighting different evaluations differently. And I assume that would be, one way would be based on the amount of time the person has served. Another thing they mentioned was that the evaluation is a public process. So regardless of what you decide to do, all sitting members would have a chance to make comments at that public evaluation. And one kind of note was that regardless of somebody's impression before they served, when they felt the evaluation, they should just be thinking about their observations as a school committee member. So if you have somebody come on late maybe and haven't served that long, they should still keep their evaluation pertinent to their observations as a member. So we kind of in thinking through some of those things, we thought we would just throw out one way to approach it that the committee can discuss. And so Mike, if you can scroll down. We could think about making a requirement that school committee members need to serve for at least six months between August 1st and May 31st in order to be eligible to complete the evaluation. Even if they're not currently a school committee member at the time of the evaluation. And then we would, we were thinking that we would recommend that the aggregator would wait all completed evaluations equally. So some of our thoughts behind that were with a requirement of six months then anyone completing the evaluation will have been present for at least some of the evaluation cycle. Some of the milestones like the goal setting and or the mid-year review. And then also thinking through the election cycles in the towns, that would mean that currently like members who served from the beginning of the school year and would have completed the goal setting in the mid-year review and then were not re-elected would complete the evaluation. The new members wouldn't. And if Amherst changes to November elections then it would be the newly elected person who would end up completing it. And for people who come on board at wonky times you just have to do that. But that would be the outcome. So the two things that pop up in my head in terms of thoughts, you know one is you know in terms of observation we typically get artifacts to review so it's not necessarily me watching the superintendent do his work but it's reviewing the evidence that's provided for each whole. That would be one. And then the other thing is in terms of the as a school committee as an elected official school committee member one of the things that we get to do is you know evaluate and if the committee decides to deny that you know like if that's not the person is not participating in the evaluation does that can that be challenged in you know can that be challenged and then you're providing somebody who is no longer a school committee member the opportunity to do an evaluation. So that could be challenged by the superintendent for example you know what I'm saying like I'm just thinking of case scenarios if Mr. Demling's term expired but he can insert his evaluation can the superintendent object and can I object if I was just recently elected and I didn't fulfill my six months can I say the school committee member have a right to evaluate and are there you know with their challenges so that's my only those are my feedback are you thinking it makes sense to me by the way if you were but it makes sense that we should talk to our attorney and try to get feedback on some of these questions is a baseline because I mean that makes a lot of sense to me just to say something positive what you wrote I love the fact that you said you want to keep all the evaluations weighted the same so I think it's an absolute it's a tough enough question to suggest that somebody who's been on the committee for a month or something isn't going to be involved in the evaluation although I think I'd love to know the legal answer to this but I think actually if somebody's only been on the committee for five or six weeks it's actually perfectly reasonable to say that they might not participate in the evaluation and that someone who has been on the committee for the majority of the year does I think the idea that you'd have two evaluations from people who have legally cited school committee members and you count one as a quarter and one as three quarters or whatever gets you in ridiculous trouble just as a practical matter I think waiting there would be a disaster that's off the cuff by the way, I apologize for being off the cuff do you want to, what's the next step? so I think we put this out here just to start the conversation obviously the committee could decide as a body that this is completely the opposite of what the majority felt but this was based on our discussions and sort of our sensibilities this was something put out there, I think that's a really really important question would it be appropriate, I mean I'd be happy to reach out then I will do that as our next step and so would it be realistic to suggest that for a meeting in February we get a revised proposal on this question not the question but the process but everything you learn is like that and share with the committee and come back with a revised, and actually if you want you could come back with scenario A and scenario B come back with a couple scenarios that the committee can respond to everyone okay with that? Superintendent Gold's discussion I saw the model that I thought worked reasonably well on Pellum which is you know I have a very loose draft that's emailed late, sorry just to get to it as early as I'd like today you can blame the weather on that as well for that as well and I got kind of general feedback and then some Pellum members have given me individual feedback on the goals for that district so I don't anticipate to prove them wrong this being a long agenda item it's just some initial thoughts, here's some initial feedback but that feedback can be continued like they wouldn't come back to this to the 30th I'm thinking I wouldn't want to necessarily put a heavy topic on top of the budget for the 23rd is that okay? I'm strongly against putting it on the agenda for the 20th but also just this is really just an overview of some of the projects and even just the conversation we had tonight I think it's healthier anyways because I don't think you want a dynamic where you're coming in with something you think is fully baked and what do you think and then what do you think is well I wrote it up already, here it is this might be a really dumb question but what's the beginning time frame for these goals? I feel like we're really late we are this is basically a fallout it's a fallout based on her decision to hire Mike as permanent superintendent and then negotiate a contract if we hadn't done any of that we would have had this conversation months ago and this same thing came up in Pellum as well I don't want to model everything in region on Pellum but I thought it was a very healthy dialogue we had at the Pellum committee last week because there's some things on here that you know that I've already done because you've seen them really complete and I think it is awkward this time of year to come up with goals when evaluations a couple months away so I made an attempt that probably wrote too many but again it's not baked, whatever the analogy is I'm really careful with that one these days baked like Mr. Sullivan around here actually make cookies or something noble oxes it's all scratch just doesn't have to be anything untoward about it so maybe I thought I'd just walk through just a minute a piece just the general thinking take some relatively brief feedback because the snow is starting to accumulate I'm getting some messages so I want to make sure everyone's safety is I would say go for it feedback tonight at communications plan so that's up and running and there's active work happening and I think it's a critical need in our district we talked about that last year with the survey that happened so it's nothing new in terms of theme which is a good thing sometimes goals should be based on multi-year plans we got this data now we're doing X and we'll come back and share that the second one was strategic planning process one thing that the chair and I have spoken about with the committee is given the budgetary situation we pushed the start of that off to later in the spring because starting that once we start talking about budget reductions felt like the wrong timing to start that process so we'll start the spring and to connect back to what our conversation earlier is how do we get lots of people involved lots of people not in this room including SCTF, CPAC, two groups that happen to be here today because each of them have met differently with me at different times with me and I just kind of have thoughts about goals in the future that need to be integrated into a larger plan and I think the goal that we originally talked about that being completed in May I don't think that's feasible given the budgetary situation and how much energy and time and collective not just us but collectively that's going to take but I think it's critical and I'm not willing to say that it starts in the summer I think it needs to start this academic year and one is going to be a lot of our work in the next couple months is how do we manage these challenges these challenges are not going away we'll try to ameliorate them we'll try to work as best we can like things like vanpool but the vanpool things frankly aren't going to get us into seven digits of savings and those kind of things they do chip away they do make a difference but how do we kind of have these budget challenges be true to our principles and also invest resources towards long term sustainability because if we look at this challenge and the chairs alluded to this a couple times tonight we're going to be in one year budget challenges every year how do we look at how do we manage this challenge with an eye towards future years and future challenges and that will be it's already taking up a lot of our collective energy as it should and that'll continue four five and six is things where I'm not sure you can think about this a little differently to not have maybe there's a larger umbrella that can be done maybe not but the Alana cabinet we've spoken about the racial equity professional learning community that kind of drew out of the undoing racism workshop that a funded that many of our staff and Miss Cunningham were involved in you know really building a successful keyword here is differentiated social justice professional development we're starting with the day or half day in March and then also looking to have a more long term vision of what that is and this day in March both has content but it's also going to give us kind of what we would call an education circles formative feedback or formative assessment is a district where directions do we need to go in and how do we formulate a plan that's not just kind of again professional development day by professional development day but much more holistic and long-ranging on that efforts the fifth one it's not an SCTF document but it's certainly been some of the dialogue that had and we do we are some of this was informed by our workshop in California in the fall that we spoke about is the school climate survey that'll serve as a baseline we plan is to do annual school climate surveys we've got some feedback from staff and other stakeholders and we want to implement that to form a baseline and then commit to do that each year with you know there may be some slight variation based on the feedback we get of how it goes but to have longitudinal data on school climate I think it actually well not explicitly mentioned that SCTF document I think informs a lot of some of the critical features of that at all three of our secondary schools one is really on the hiring of retention so you know being I'm a value in the spring before all the hiring decisions are made we're trying to think about it'll be actually sort of defined that we're doing a lot of work on this without it being you know you get into the end of the year and say okay where's the proofs in the pudding and we say we're still in that hiring cycle so we still are working for wording I think Thoreen did a great job trying to figure that out which is cultural refinement so and some of that's working with the Alana cabinet because one two subsets Alana cabinet decided to break into two groups and one is working very much on the PD and they're assisting Miss Conaghamas or Sheehan on the planning of that and others working directly with me on this culture piece and how do we how do we actively work on that and see ourselves as a district where staff members will encourage other staff members to come because it's a supportive environment it's a little harder to measure so I need to think a little bit more about that but these were the six thoughts I had in my head as things that were tangible that we're actively working on that are in our estimation critically important for this spring. So sync does that do it. One thing I'd like to give some thought to is in terms of how you manage these goals as an effective guideline document and the SCTF goals because the first time I read this I look at two, four, five and six and there's immediate parallels to a number of the goals. I mean again I don't have a number of partners from SCTF but from what was discussed and so Mr. Omicage talked about possibility of written response, a living document and then in parallel we have the superintendent's goals going on at the same time so I worry a little bit about too many goals going on and so it is their possibility of merging some of these how it looked like you know without collapsing one. So I don't know how you do that but just in terms of what's efficient for you and as an effective pull-up transparency document. Thanks for that. The other comment I had, I don't know if this is something that would rise to the level of a superintendent goal of this level but we heard about it in the co-teaching presentation tonight, this need for increased teacher collaboration and it really struck a chord with me because when I think about many presentations I've now seen on school committee and the others that I've attended in public along with just money and budget, the need and time for teacher, the need for teacher collaboration and that sort of joint time. As a variable that affects positive outcomes, it just keeps coming up again and again it came up during the IMP implementation with MAP, MAP it came up with the schedule change at the middle school and again and again you know I wonder if you search articles, what are the things that associated with outcome and it seems like a huge factor for the way administrator support teaches and obviously that's also tied to budget but you know I don't know if you could maybe get that thought about how that would look like Sarah? Kind of thinking from the evaluation subcommittee we should evaluate on the four standards and I'm just wondering is there a standard one you asked this question in column two I know, I appreciate that you're right, both places I'm sorry I didn't mean to cut you out so what's not on here particularly a lot of these are standards three and four so standards one and two and I will look at that and try to figure out how to resolve that because I don't want to have an evaluation with half of the elements, half of the standards let alone elements not represented. I'll say that you know some can be weighted more than others and I think this is what happening if you think about tonight's earlier conversation it really wasn't across necessarily all four standards so yes it's a really good piece of feedback that I'll work on. Yeah so I really appreciate ambitious and based on reality I'm just thinking about the discussion we had earlier today with number four and maybe this is already part of the plan or idea around this one but this idea of really getting a baseline around where a professional development is already could that be you know like have I mean I think it would be extremely helpful to have come out of it like this is really where we are in terms of what we do here is I picture you know a big map of our professional development all the different ages how is it hitting the different teaching cards throughout from K to pre K to 12 I don't know if that fits with but to me that seems like that would be a helpful piece and I think number six I mean you said it but when I re-culture what you mean but I don't know how but could that be stated in a way that was you know specific how could you get more specific about this so we really understand what it is that we're assessing on what we're looking for. I have a question actually that goes with that when you're looking at these goals do you have already sort of a broader thematic objective that this nests under and the reason I say that is one could imagine that if you said to support the objective of doing X and Y and Z my goal for this year is to do these three specific things that would be helpful because I mean if that makes sense to you that would be helpful only because it would provide clarity about what activities are being done but then how did these activities nest within a broader objective and I'm saying that partially because it might be easier to figure out how to write Senate 6 for example item 6 if you weren't packing so many concepts a really succinct sentence I think it's a good effort but I'm saying if you pull out it kind of echoes something that Mr. Demling said earlier is that I think it might even be I'm not just trying to bake in the SCTF goals but I think the interesting element about how that document was written that I actually kind of liked is the first sentence topical sentence and underneath it there were some specific things that were being done and I just think there's some utility to that right because it actually helps people focus their mind on what am I actually trying to accomplish and then here are the things we're trying to do that get there yeah I think in a different context I'm quite envious of that I think of doing that and so the short answer to question in terms of theming is the way I frame it is what's new what's continuing work and what are we actually implementing and wanting to be nothing's ever done but done so that's how I'm trying to view a form I mean I know it's over the year but I'm trying to view it as you know it's mid-January these will be hopefully presented and voted in late January at that point in terms of the kind of 12 months of the academic year you know from July 1st right we're two thirds in you know we're a little more than you know I think it's about right two thirds so when the communication that's certainly something we've talked about but it's very new for the district right we haven't had a communication plan we talked about when I think about strategic planning that's also new when we get down to some of the other ones they're really continuing work so climate survey we've done before we've been in this kind of dialogue how often should it be and can we have longitudinal data so for me that's like we went we went to a conference we got good feedback we've down vetted it we've had staff vetted right so that's sort of an implement you know and it's a longer term implementation because it's not just a one year the commitment is that it becomes part of our annual practice so I tried to mix things that were kind of more new to things that kind of were old hat and we've talked about them for a while and then there's stuff like three and four that are sort of in the middle right we've had budget challenges before I think this is sort of a unique year of budget challenges both in terms of where the challenges are coming from and also the sheer quantity of challenge and the lack of clarity we're receiving hopefully things improve about four member towns and agreeing on assessment methodology we've been in that this boat before but not quite this boat we've been in a similar looking boat but not the same one so I tried to mix things that were really new and things that were like done we could say at the end of the year we completed this task with ones that were going to continue into next year because you know what I would anticipate is next year's goals will be much more comprehensive and kind of further reaching hopefully we'll get there like in September that would be the goal for me is that we have goals approved if not sooner so that's a little bit of a question. Do you see four, five and six as being related in terms like if you looked at this from 30,000 feet what are we trying to accomplish that there's a relationship between those goals? I do and that's I'm struggling and we talked about it this afternoon we're struggling a bit with what to include in this document and what you know to Mr. Demling's point that you were commenting on what goes into more kind of a connection to SCTF goals and reporting back to it I think if there was one that I felt frankly less committed to in terms of being on a goals document and probably be number six not because I'm not committed to the task because I think it's hard to measure and I think it can be part of a larger effort and frankly because at the regional level we're just not going to do much hiring this year so it's not to say that we shouldn't look at the culture and how people are experiencing it but in terms of hiring and retention a lot of that's going to be driven by factors outside the control and commitments that we have. But isn't, forgive me if I'm asking this for one second isn't number four part not as the only objective but isn't a significant outcome or objective of item number four improving the retention of diverse individuals as part of the work for us or does that mean something totally different? Not on the hiring side but on our retention side. I think it can be woven into number four in that way but I think the primary, my primary outcome for that is not quite that I wouldn't say we're doing professional development to increase retention I think we're doing professional development to best prepare our teachers to effectively work with a diverse student body. So an outcome of that can be in terms of the way that we're going about it in terms of including many staff members of color as well as white allies in the work is an attempt to do that but in terms of the actual PD I don't want to go long-winded on it but I think I could figure out ways to integrate those to make it more succinct and more clear. So I mean I can look at this and see some of the evidence that you're doing to make progress in some of these goals. For example I could see for number six the grant that came out of the district to support professional development for paraprofessionals that are already in our district to become licensed teachers, classroom teachers. I think that's something that I could see fit there. And I could very easily see some of the school equity task force what we're doing as a district to make progress towards some of those goals as very belonging in here as well. So I think there's many things that already fit here that we're doing like the regionalization grant that was for the study that was awarded fits in with number the budget supporting three. It's pretty easy but I think that there's these things are, I think they could be aligned, not aligned, but I think it could reflect the expectations that have been put out there already that the superintendent is committed and is making study progress. That's where I think just thinking when you're coming back with it of simplifying some of the language in ways that sort of echo our map to some of those without being overly wordy would probably be helpful just because I think sort of as a document but it's also ends up being a publicly faced document you don't want to make it too hard on people to figure out what you're saying. I'm sorry, Ms. Cunningham? No, I agree. When I look at number four, I just looked at that as something where we're increasing the knowledge and understanding of our staff. And number six going to Ms. Demani Cage's point, when we look at the month that was written, we know that the focus group brought to our attention that there were paras and individuals who did not feel accepted within the district or did not feel like they were equal with the teachers and or part of the staff. Therefore, number six was more where we would embark on trying to help make it a more inclusive environment so that we're retaining. So if we move aside the word hiring it's the retention and the making the staff feel more welcome as part of our community and with what we're doing and that they're supportive. So not just mentoring and offering those things but removing whatever barriers they feel are keeping them away from being more included in our school system So that's what I was looking at with number six and yes, we can make it more specific to include some of the SETF goals and where it can be measurable. By the way, I apologize. When I was looking at item four, I think I obviously just misunderstood or actually don't have any understanding of what a racial equity professional learning community is because that sparked in my mind more peer-to-peer learning among teachers staff than it did educators than it did necessarily between educators and students. And so if it's professional development to improve practice like in classroom or school that affects the learning environment, that makes total sense to me. It's just that literally when I read that that term of art, it made me think more of six than it did of four and so it's my own ignorance. I'm proud to declare publicly on camera. I actually had read it very similar to you so I'll include myself in that. First I just want to say thank you for preparing all of this and also for working in the conversation with Ms. Greenham to develop these. It's really helpful to see your thinking and also to invite feedback at this stage as opposed to waiting towards the end. One thing that I would encourage you to think about is providing some continuity from year to year on your goals so that I see here when I think back really hard because it was a whole like nine months ago to the previous goals that we approved the communications plan and the Alana cabinet of course were two of the things that were incorporated in there. But I think even just using language like building upon the continuing goal of improving communications for the district or building upon the continuing goal of professional development among diverse educators, etc would help us see some of that continuity and be able to evaluate your progress based on that. Otherwise I think a lot of this, I agree completely with a lot of the comments that have been made about incorporating the SCTF goals into these and trying to figure out ways to be a little bit more clear. And then also while staying in alignment with the recommendations from the evaluation tools that we've previously looked at but I would be looking for continuity in these because that is sort of the way that I think about evaluating progress is just how well are we doing from year to year not just are we coming up with a new set of goals every single time. So last chances to comment before we move on our agenda. For number three I would state what the promotion is. I would state it in a public document. I think it's on the little soft to just say the promotion. I think you get more substance if you stay with this. Personal. I'd like what Dr. Faye Brady brought up in terms of bringing it back and centering it to the students that everything like all the goals somehow should be connected to serving our students. We could make this a lot more challenging if we keep going by the way. It's really helpful feedback. That's something nice to think about on the budget, right? It is. Okay, next. Grant, can you give us by the way? A sabbatical request. You want to initiate this? Yeah, that's okay. So just for people who haven't done this before, we're using the same process that we've used previously and that process generally involves that we do get sabbatical requests in the teacher's contract and those processes are followed. It goes to Ms. Morland who sent forward it to me. I meet with the person who sent the sabbatical application, ask them some clarifying questions, then meet with the chair of the relevant committee to share my thoughts and talk through with the board or he or she about that. I then come to the committee with a recommendation for your consideration and then you can ask me any questions and then a vote occurs. I think just as a caveat, because we've mentioned budget a couple of times, there are contractually some reasons why the dissertation is free. Sabbaticals can get approved or not approved. Budget is not one of them. So with this good budget bay or bad budget year, we can either approve or not approve a sabbatical request. If it's a great year hypothetically and we haven't experienced many of those but we've got money to burn. That can't be a reason and the flip side in a challenging budget year, we can say it looks fantastic, we just can't afford it. But the key thing is I didn't hear from anything we met. You never raised that as a consideration at all. Absolutely. It's not supposed to be a part of the process but it wasn't. It wasn't, yeah. I just want to say that for people who haven't been through this before, absolutely. I did meet with the, and I also want to say this comes up every year, it's awkward to talk about it. We have staff members who have put a lot of time and effort whether to support them or not. I always let them know it's going to be on the agenda in January if they would like to come. And it has to be. Yeah, right. It's just the nature of it. Everyone's always been very respectful and I don't anticipate any challenges with that. So I met with the applicant, it was in the packet. My professional opinion is there's a lot of value and particularly the experience you'd like to have the travel. She has with students, it's a course that is as noted in the application, it's true. A very popular English class for upper level students at our secondary school. I think there's a lot of value in the approach she takes in terms of reflection as well as really getting deeper into in this current context going to Alabama and learning from the history which is different than reading about it. At the same time when we think about the kind of balance we have for sabbatical request for me as much as I appreciated the effort, and I did have this conversation with the applicant, I think there are ways to perhaps achieve the goal that she is citing of integrating the museum and those pieces perhaps even having a student trip without having a full sabbatical offered. Typically what I look for in sabbatical is really the clarity on what that time will be used for, how it will benefit students, and when I read this I saw a great idea that perhaps is implementable on a scale without a full sabbatical and I had that conversation with the staff member, I was pretty explicit about it. And so my recommendation to the committee would be that the two fold, one is that sabbatical is not I wouldn't recommend supporting the sabbatical and I would recommend encouraging me or tasking me with going back to meet with the staff member to see what ways can we still support the work that she wrote about in the proposal to see what's possible sans a full sabbatical. So that's my two cents on it and certainly I shared that with the chair when we met. Right and when we had the conversation I generally concurred with both points meaning not simply on the sabbatical but also the idea that there are things of deep value in here that I think would be fantastic if they could find ways to support alternatively including potentially a student trip down to the museum. I think that'd be terrific. Just in general we have to cite hard stuff How often are sabbaticals approved or how many applicants do we get typically and I just wanted to be general sensitive. Yeah I'm sorry I meant to mention that at the beginning when I was talking about the process. I apologize. So we've had kind of a low of zero to a high of you know I think there's one year we had five applications. You know in the three or four years of being close to it I think our approval rate has been 50% maybe a little below depends on the district because Amherst has its own set of applications and even though the contract language is the same probably merging some of that in my head. So I think it's a very rigorous high bar both in terms of the value to students and also the high value of having someone be gone for a semester because they're separate from any of the financial pieces. These are valued staff members we want to support in terms of their professional development and we want to really ensure we're providing only when we can link and see a one to one correspondence in the sabbatical and the student learning piece. And so every applicant that comes in for me in the last two years, two and a half years that's come in I always ask if the sabbatical is not supported what would be the plan. And it's not because I've made no decision of recommendation at that point but I'm always trying to figure out how do I support this staff member regardless because I don't know what the committee will do. And I do I did have a conversation with the applicant. I do believe there are ways we can actively support the experience for her and for students perhaps without the full semester sabbatical. But I would say the average level I can only go back the last three or four years is below 50%. Further questions? I don't have a question. I have a comment I just want to say that I my daughter took this class and as part of her parent IEP I read everything that she reads and the reading material was amazing. It really was that all the books that everyone should read them. I actually love to know sometimes what are the books in the African American literature class and this is out of selfishness because an exceptionally long time ago in a galaxy actually right here I took the African American literature class with the teacher who was then in charge, Connie Matthews and it was easily one of the best courses and most influential courses I took while at Amherst High School. I experienced with probably some overlap in books and maybe some differences in books the same sort of experience that they were extraordinary literature profoundly moving in the interweaving of literary culture and literary arts I thought was exceptional at the time being and I'm sure it still is exceptional. Sorry to riff on it for a second but open the door a little bit. Think about one of the SCTF goals around courses and what courses we have that talk about equity and perhaps for another meeting maybe we'll schedule this on January 30th. To look at what our current courses are now and where the strands are not as saying we've got it all figured out but to understand the current context and I think this is a good example of of course it's incredibly popular and meaningful for students as Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Neckajima pointed out and how do we, I love it that our teachers are continually looking to how do we enhance that experience not being saying oh it's great so it's going to be a wonderful experience really popular what's the next step in my work, what's the next step that we can offer students and I just want to kind of cite that admirable. Do we need to vote on this? Yes you do. You start to see like you'd prefer that we do and it's like no dude it's not a preference we have to do it. It's hazard in the Mr. McHenry case. I just want to make just a quick comment that I read through this and I looked at the links that were provided and I just it's very impressive the passion and depth and caliber that we're seeing coming out of our high school. I mean it's just really is staggering so I want to express that you know my appreciation for the kind of work that's happening in this particular digital and what that's going to do for students and I do hope that we can you know there's a way that this kind of work can be supported because this is not you know this is not an area of history and literature that I was aware of as it started emerging really important really important piece that is being brought to us. Is this so the individual is trying to pursue a degree doctorate or what's the educational level or is there a goal So I think her goal I don't think it was about her educational level in terms of letters. When I met with her it was really focused on how does she enhance the work that she does with students in her courses not just her upper grade course but also the 9th and 10th grade required English courses so I don't think there was I didn't receive any focus from my meeting with her that this is focused on professional advancement in that regard but I think it was more about professional advancement in terms of the practice and the curriculum that she brings to students on a daily basis. Cause typically some people take sabbaticals to you know get through their their degrees. I'd say that's more the again my history of this probably only goes back realistically about six years since I was more aware of it I think that's more the exception than the rule. I think there was one individual whose application both met the professional development needs or degree that she was focusing on but there was that dual benefit to the district as well. I'd say that I can't think of many other examples that match that serendipitous one that I think we're referring to. And to be clear you think that the district can still support the work? That's what I would, in my conversation with the author of the application I think we had a good dialogue and we need to continue about how to fully support the work but I do feel confident that we can figure out a way to support the work. Yes. So I'd accept a motion. I personally will offer a motion for the committee that I move to decline approval of the sabbatical request as contained in our packet. Is there a second? It's been moved and seconded. I think the committee members have all expressed you had asked us, I want to appreciate the fact that you asked us to encourage you to find a way to support the work. You didn't have to push very hard to hear from pretty much everyone that we would encourage you to find a way to support the work as well as also that we have a great deal of admiration for the work of this teacher and for the course. In my experience with the course itself it's been a valuable one for a long time but in short still is fantastic. Better than ever. Any further discussion? Just one comment. I mean I think I thought long and hard about this application and I also clicked through the links and everything and I felt in some ways applications for sabbaticals sometimes benefit from being a little more general and a little bit more expansive because it allows for instead of a predetermined decision about what it is that you're going to learn that you are opening yourself up to the experience and saying I'm going to bring back as much information as I possibly can to the school or the environment where I'm currently working. I feel like and I'm saying this out loud because I think it may be you know I don't know if others would be in agreement with me or not but from my perspective an application like this would probably be more successful if it had been about going down to live in the south for some time and maybe work or study among African American communities with experience in dealing with either desegregation efforts and or some of the lynching trials that happen that were also being perhaps they mentioned the Civil Rights Museum here but just a combination of different experiences and sort of pulling together as broad an experience as possible to bring back then to students here at Amherst High School I feel like that may again from my perspective be more successful and be more in alignment with a lot of the other requests for sabbaticals that we've seen previously and I'm thinking specifically about the one teacher who we approved last year to go and spend some time in sort of the acting and sort of educational theater group and the other teacher at the elementary level who went to Finland these are broader experiences right that you get so much from that experience and you can bring that back to your students so I just wanted to say that I think this is a remarkable attempt at trying to get a very specific piece of history and information which would definitely benefit the reading of students in literature but perhaps a little too specific more about a research type project and maybe someday in the future come back and look at it in a slightly different way. One thing, whatever your vote is, is one thing that I did last year and I plan to do this year share some of the general feedback certainly someone could watch a video but because some people do want to apply again and I do that in my individual meetings with them and I share that feedback which I won't share publicly because I feel like that would not be fair but that's really helpful all the feedback has been very helpful for me whichever way the vote goes. I just have a quick question. How many applied this year? This is the only one. Because there were two or three strong ones last year and they chose not to. So we have a motion to decline approval of the sabbatical request without further discussion. All those in favor of that motion please signify by raising your hand. Okay, it's going to end. Thank you. But with all the comments you've already got. Absolutely. Many of them are very positive. So who wants to raise their hand to read GIFs? Somebody who hasn't spoken much today? It's Hazard. I can do it. I don't know if I've spoken or not. It's pretty equal today actually. So I move to approve the following GIFs from the ARHS PGO, Lawrence bank number 189555 Let's see. I'm not sure what. But this is all the same one. On behalf of the Help for People Foundation, Robert J. Lyons to support the ARHS principle discretion fund for a total of 15,000 dollars. Is there a second? Second. It's been moved and seconded. Is there a comment? Discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of accepting the GIF, please raise your hand. It is unanimous. So next meeting is going to be all budget. We are going to talk about the four town meeting and other things. So bring your questions, bring your comments, bring your thoughts bring your thinking caps, all of the above. So it does not have to be any time soon. But we talked at one point about as we set future agendas, some sort of item a cue. Because sometimes I feel like I'm asking too much of the chair. Either this chair or the other chair. When I'm bringing up an item a second or third time, it's probably already on your radar for a future meeting because we don't have multiple agendas. So just some sort of like it's not yet on an agenda, but we haven't forgotten about it list. Yeah. I think there's two things. One, we've tried we probably need to do this again sometime in the near future. We've tried to create sometimes dummy schedules for out meetings where some of the items just listed on the out meetings and saying we can't get it here, we're going to get it here, we can't get it here, we're going to get to there. I think if there are some items that seem to be falling out of that, then there ought to be a running list of topics we need to get to underneath it. I'll give you an example of one because I don't think we've shared anything about the January 30th, right? We've got to get going on our new member orientation packets. So the funny thing is that's actually on the January 30th agenda. You guys don't know this yet, but it is actually on the January 30th agenda because we simply have to talk about that and more importantly get to work on it if it's ever going to make any use of anyone in the future, right? So yeah, we can do that. Meaning we have a list of near term agent meetings we have scheduled and then a running list. And you don't have to feel like you have to segment that granular level if it's too much even just a straight up list just so I don't feel like I'm bothering you with these could be two different things then because my point simply is if I don't just going to sound dumb, but if like there's a running list of things we should get to, but I already know that one of the things on the running list is scheduled for like February 13th. I'd rather tell you what's scheduled for February 13th than you just say, hey, why isn't that it's on the list, but what's it going to, you know, it just makes my life easier, frankly, and maybe Mike's if there is if we have an indication we can deal with some at a certain point tell you and then if it's on the rest of the list then it means, you know, yell louder and we'll find some way, you know, we'll just meet till 11. Are we in planning? We are in planning, yeah. Sure. Can I just follow up with that? This is just a brainstorm because I'm thinking where could that list be because we don't really have a spot where everybody can just weapons. So I'm just thinking about that because that would be great if you could just click on something and check and see what's there, but maybe it could be that on every agenda and packet is included you know the list or something like that. I wouldn't mind if every agenda packet we actually have a list of topics for identified meetings and then a running list of things that are topics that have come up. So a little bit of both, we just have it at the back of the packet every meeting. So the other totally unrelated is it was just brought to my attention and I know that we talked about this sometime recently was having a student rep on the school committee. Do we have that on the list, or how we might make it? It's been a work in progress. So, you know, Mr. Jackson has been in touch with Ms. Haygood who does student you met Ms. Haygood late at night and she's wonderful and so they've engaged in a process to solicit people, students who are interested in that process and hopefully wrap up in the next two weeks. So that is something that has been in progress. Yes, Mr. Dunlake. We're excited that we don't have to decide on tonight for just the rest of the thought. We currently have a school committee scheduled for March 27th which is going to be a date of some import in Amherst. In fact, it will be very strange because a new school committee members will be voted on if we have a meeting in the middle of the meeting. So I don't know if we want to move that in the day. Not something we have to decide on. I'm fine with it. Mike, let's just look at it. Hey, they can't be sworn in that fast and you know better than that. So you're stuck being there in the meeting. You can't leave halfway whether or not Steve Briggs brownies. And B, just as a practical matter, more for the Amherst members than others. There may be people who have particular passions that are being served that evening and so we might want to move the date if we can just so that we don't get in a situation where I don't know, people are too busy working their smart phone figuring out how vote totals have gone instead of paying attention. This is an end. We can figure that out, right? We'll figure that out. Sorry, Amherst meeting. Oh, I'm sorry. Alright, so we're done, right? That's great, alright. The first one is I missed the last meeting, but I want to thank all those committee members that asked questions of the IMP presentation because they were some of my questions and I appreciate everyone asking them. And the other one is thank you to Dr. Michael Morris, the superintendent for traveling up the Hilda Shootsbury with Principal Jackson and Principal Bode because it turns out that the feedback, I've gotten quite a bit of feedback from people that weren't there, that just appreciated the fact that there were representatives that made the trip up the hill because it usually happens at town meeting. That's wonderful. That's great. And as I mentioned before you were here, you set the bar very high for Leverett with the snacks and home goods. Oh, I'll bring them. I'm happy to bring them snacks. I'll try and bridge that to Leverett. Before you became Mike was waxing poetic about how much he absolutely loved the Shootsbury meeting. The feeling was mutual. And I really appreciate, I said this before but you weren't here, but I want to say it with you here. I appreciate that you came and introduced the meeting. I didn't say this explicitly. It really mattered that the Shootsbury Rep on the regional school committee was introducing the meeting instead of and I saw that in the response of the folks who were there, so thank you very much. You're welcome. I've been dreaming of that meeting since I was doing day care in 2001. Well, that's cool. You've got to find another dream now. I'm going to bask in that one for a while. You should. So Steve, since you're speaking anyways, I'd like you to give me a motion. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Is there a second? Second. It's moved and seconded. All those in favor? It is unanimous. We're adjourned. Thank you. Thank you Emerson Media. Drive safe please.