 All right. Seeing the presence of a quorum, I'll call to order this meeting of the Amherst Pellum Regional School Committee at what looks to be around 6.34 p.m. And as always, or as typically the case, this is being taped by Amherst Media for later broadcast. Our first order of business is approval of the minutes of March 26, 2019. And if the committee has had a chance to review the minutes, we'll entertain a motion. Is there a second? Second. It's been moved and seconded. We have to move with an unusual dispatch when I gavel this environment. Any updates? Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the minutes of March 26, 2019, signify by raising your hand. Is there any nays? Any abstentions? Abstention, Spitzer, and Adonis. Otherwise unanimous. So the next item around our agenda is announcements in public comments. Are there any announcements from the school committee? Mr. Dunlop. Just a brief reminder, the autism awareness night is this Thursday, 4.30 to 7, the high school library right here. I've been there the last two years. It's a really great way to engage with people on the autistic spectrum. If you don't have any friends or family members who are autistic, it's a great chance to just talk, have a conversation, and really just get a real consciousness expanding experience I found the last couple of years. So that's at the high school. It actually bookends one of the principal search meetings, which is happening in the Coral Room. So if you show up early or leave after that's over, you can stop by here, displays of art and all sorts of things, and it should be a great night. Wonderful. Are there any other announcements? Seeing none, we'll now take public comment. If there are comments from members of the public, please come forward. If you identify yourself, please, and you'll have up to three minutes for any comments you want to make. I'm assuming to grab a ninth grader, Carolee, to grab at the high school. And I brought with me a copy of a letter I wrote up, which is, I'm not sure if it's the right format, Freedom of Information Act requests for the curriculum vitae and cover letters of the three candidates for principal at the high school. Because I have some concerns about the way the high school's been run. I've had a couple of interactions that I wasn't entirely in agreement with. And I also went to the interview last night and I want to go to all three of them. And I feel that I'm at a disadvantage not having the curriculum vitaes. I was told by the assistant superintendent that the reason that those are not being disclosed is because people will exhibit implicit bias, which I don't understand what that means. I think she said pertaining to where someone went to school or other things, but I had to look up to candidates myself and I have a couple of questions about the resumes and some things I found out about if someone left their job or why and so forth. Also on the issue of, it's my understanding that this was decided by a committee of parents and human resources people from the school. And that it stemmed from the interviews with prior candidates from middle school, which I attended and I supported Joseph Smith, who's now the principal and I greatly esteem him. And someone had asked him a question about a typo in his resume. I feel that he was completely capable of responding to that and dismissing that person and he has had many jobs and he got this job. And I feel that it's somewhat, how should I say, disempowering to the candidate to say that they can't handle any questions that the public may have. So in this regard, I feel that these three candidates should answer as well because while I have gotten some information about two of them, the middle candidate who's the dean right now at the high school, I don't have any information that I've been able to obtain and I require it. So if I could hand the letter up to the superintendent and to the school committee chair. Sure. And in the letter, I just kind of looked up the freedom of information act. And it said that you have 10 days to respond. But time is of the essence because the other interview is tomorrow night. So I've asked that the documents be produced by 4 p.m. tomorrow. Perhaps they could be posted. I know I recently got my master's in teaching after another career. And UMass posted the curriculum vites and the letters, cover letters, of three candidates for director of student legal services. So everyone could go on and they could see and they could prepare prior to having questions because I'd much rather ask people like I did last night with Mr. Strauss, how having a severely disabled son has informed his, you know, practice in terms of special education, a lot of things like that. I think that's the kind of question that we'd like to ask, not how many years were you in this job or what's your degree from. So I appreciate the time. Thank you. Thank you. Are there further, are there further public comments? Hello. My name is Michael O'Connor. I am an employee of the district. I am a social studies teacher at the middle school. And in full disclosure, I am a executive board member of the APA. I am here. And it's just coincidental that the superintendent's evaluation is on the agenda for tonight. And I don't know if I can make it till 8.50. But I'm here to ask. It has a question. And that is that in the past, at least at some point in my 14 years in the district, the staff, the faculty, and the community were given an opportunity to offer feedback or input into a previous superintendent's evaluation. And I haven't dug deep into the desi regulations, and not that that's the most significant aspect of this question. But I was wondering if such a thing would be or could be included in the superintendent's evaluation, or if that evaluation is being completed now and up for approval, was it included in that evaluation process? And that's my question as a teacher and a community member. My question as an APA executive board comes from some input from our membership, as our staff, teachers, and paraprofessionals are going through the evaluation process. They have questions about what is the evaluation process for building administrators, central office administrators, and other people who might be in other positions that are not teaching or not specifically designated as management. And they were hoping to maybe receive either from the committee or the superintendent some outline of how that process is carried out. And whether or not there's an opportunity for staff to add input into that process. I don't need necessarily a response, although if any one of you wanted to get back to me, I'd appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any further public comments? Seeing none, we'll close the public comment period. The next item on our agenda is subcommittee updates. There are subcommittee updates. Just real quick, the policy subcommittee met last Monday, April 4th, and we reviewed the design selection procedure which we're reviewing tonight. We also have a couple others that we want to bring back to the school committee at probably our next one, which is the student-to-student harassment, which we now have the written legal opinion on that. And so I want to discuss some of the recommendations that they're making and the student-to-student policy. Is she not one? Yeah, so CPAC has met a couple times. There are a couple of items CPAC president want me to share. First, and I think we mentioned this actually at the last regional committee meeting, but she just wanted to emphasize it again. How extraordinary, she found, that we had the special ed audit from DESI and that there was no findings of any corrective action. If you know a secret CPAC president, she's been engaged in a long time. She knows her stuff in terms of talking to other districts and other programs, and it really is a rare mark of achievement for the district and shows just a tremendous amount of work and dedication from staff at all levels. Because if you have great administration, but your teachers aren't doing so well, you'll get cited for something. If your teacher is doing well with administration, you'll get cited somewhere and sort of have nothing is really extraordinary. So I know we did emphasize that, but she wanted me to make a point of just thanking the district and the administration and the teachers and the staff because it goes all the way down to teachers and powers, co-teachers in the classroom, everybody who works with our students. So that was one nice thing. The other update is, so the board is hopefully starting to come together for next year, but we still really need additional board members on CPAC. So other parent volunteers to come join the board. I guess the one thing I would say is to try and pitch membership on the board is that it's really make your own level of commitment. If there's an hour or two that you feel you want to volunteer and dedicate to listening and doing some work for special needs students and how special needs of service to our district, that's great. And there's a place on the CPAC board for you. It's really a trying to have this be a big table kind of everybody supports each other and the many things that CPAC does. So we're looking forward to getting that board established over the course of the spring. So I'm going to save the updates from the superintendent evaluation subcommittee to later, but we will be discussing it later on this evening and we're just in the early stages now, so that's a great time to get feedback. And I wanted to also just announce that I was just elected chair of the Oathhead Board of Trustees about 15 minutes ago when we signed the trust agreement, which was approved by the school committee previously. Cool. It's like one of those hidden super important things that most people in the public have no idea about, but it's actually mind-eventually important. Just very briefly, the collaborative for educational services, so we had a meeting last week, I believe, and I just wanted to mention to the committee, I spoke with Dr. Morris briefly about this, the executive director bill deal, his evaluation process is actually, we're going through the evaluation process for him now. And so, you know, if anyone on the committee or in the community has had any experience with Mr. Deal or services, I welcome any feedback and put into that process and we're hoping to get the evaluation done sometime in the early summer, so soon the better. Right. Nothing on athletics. Facilities use is done, so labor is not in the labor agreements. Yes. Two things. One, on the CPAC, I'd like to give a big shout out to Nancy Stewart, who is stepping down as a president of CPAC. She has worked at least four, if not the five years that I've been somewhat involved with it tirelessly, and I just want to say thank you and not to worry that parents will pick it up and it will go forward. And also, parents, students and parents guardians of the special needs, please fill out the STARS applications and, you know, please highlight those teachers and staff that helped your student on a daily basis, so that the CPAC can pat them on the back, give them a high five, and say thank you. And a balloon. Yes, and a balloon. Yes, that's pretty good. Wonderful. I was wondering, do you, I know this could be doing the superintendent's updates, but it's probably not in the updates, do you include things in your weekly newsletter like recruiting members for L-PAC or CPAC? Yes, we have for L-PAC, CPAC, we certainly can. We'd sort of rely on CPAC to give us the messaging for that. Yeah, I could take that back to the board. I mean, it's just a little blur of paragraph. I think it would be great. It just seems like that would hit like an amazingly wide audience of folks who might not be thinking about it otherwise. Great. And as I attended my first collaborative meeting last week, and I just want to give a shout out to the Mount Tom students who showed up and shared some of their story with us. It was quite enlightening. Cool. Any other subcommittee updates? Seeing none. We'll move to the superintendent's update. Sure. So there is a written copy of that to be in front of you. Just want to note that last week the commissioner was here at our my monthly round table meeting, and I appreciate Chair Nakajima and Chair Hall from the Palland School Committee for attending, and really was about where he sees education going, and kind of, as he's done a listening tour that has lasted most of the year where he visited schools, including the Amherst public schools anyway, not the region. He's just going to come out with some information in June, is what he shared about next steps of how he thinks the commonwealth can move forward in terms of public education. I don't see anything like that. Yeah, I mean I was, I don't know, I mean if people interact with the state and around school funding issues, regulations, high stakes testing, any number of things, you meet lots of really wonderful people, but you also sometimes worry that those who are leading the educational sort of endeavor of the state may not be as well aligned as they could be in terms of what their daily priorities are, as a lot of our, you know, our teachers and building leaders and things like that, and people we have a community who are really engaged in education. And what struck me favorably, and we'll see I guess in June when he said the desi educational plan, that aesthetic plan essentially that he's going to unveil should come out, we'll see the proof will be in the pudding to see what happens then, but he talked a lot about the importance of arts and play and creative activities to integrate learning, interdisciplinary learning, a really a child-centered approach that seemed to me to be moving away from or recognizing the limits and the deficiencies in a test-driven environment, high stakes test-driven environment, and I don't know where that's going to go, but it seemed refreshing to hear. And by sheer coincidence, a good, one of my best friends actually used to be a building teacher under him when he was principal of the Edwards Middle School, and told me that as a principal, he's somebody who walked the walk very much in terms of how he engaged. So it's just, what I like about it also is that depending on what comes forward later is, life is complicated, right? You can have lots of things you argue about and lots of things you disagree about, but it's all, but it's, but if you can find other things that you agree strongly on, you can find a shared commitment, then it gives you a sense you can actually move things forward as a state, and that would be in the environment, we have an education policy and really funding and charter schools, it would be welcome if there were areas and other areas in which there could be a broad shared agreement where we could work together, which would be great. But we'll see you in June. We will. A couple other quick ones, just a reference earlier, but the principal search updates, so there's one candidate came yesterday, we have another candidate tomorrow, one candidate Thursday, and all of those public meetings, I believe are 5.30 to 6.30 at the high school. 5.15. 5.15, thank you. Much better. Apologies. And window into ARP, so the latest episode involved are included, Evelina Kino, who's the middle school climate coordinator, who's done work both at the middle school and high school as you met her, I think at the December, one of the December meetings. Another person you met there was high school student Petua, and it was great. So that episode is live, I think it was emailed out to the committee as well as the community, but gives another more in-depth information about the resorted program at the high school and the work now and the work moving forward. There was a question at the last meeting about high school climate service that was completed, I guess that would be last week. For all two grade levels were done, the other two grade levels had the survey that came through with the MCAS and some other tools, so there's only so much surveys that we can ask students to do, but we'll have lots of rich data sources moving forward. Sorry, Dr. Morris, can I just ask a quick question on that? So when will the information or the data from that survey be released? So our survey was completed last week, so probably a little later this spring we'll be able to bring it here if the committee wants and talk about it and look at it two years ago. MCAS one that we looked at, a little bit of strategic planning that takes them quite a bit more time to get that back to us. Next month, vaping is certainly a topic across the commonwealth that's influencing the health and well-being of many people, but including teenagers, and so I'll be attending and there's some other staff members who are also attending a conference. That's a statewide conference, the Mass Health Council is putting together with the Commissioner of Public Health and someone who's really in charge of substance abuse and addiction, Boston Children's. So if anyone's interested in attending from the committee please let me know and certainly it's a critical issue for all of us and that's why I'm choosing to go as well as bringing other staff members is that everyone knows it's an issue and because it's a rather younger issue everyone's trying to figure out exactly what are the best steps for prevention and education and so I really appreciate the State Health Council for having an organized way because otherwise you're looking online, you're looking at you know curricula and I'm talking to other superintendents but it's not really this is the first one I've seen that's truly organized and orchestrated for statewide conversation on the topic. Regional budget discussions so just an update that we've Mr. Mangano and I were with the Amherst Finance Committee and then the Amherstown Council of the last few weeks and the conversations in the regional budget were both you know were relatively productive and slated to be voted next week after I think next but all indications are a broad support from the council and just a note because there isn't a town meeting they had to do it out of order so there are other budgets just for people who might be wondering it's there are other budgets which are the town budget is is being presented in a different order but based on where the warrants of other town meetings and the charter they actually had to take it up and out of order of the rest of the town budget so people might be wondering oh haven't heard anything about the elementary schools or the rest of the town this was actually a standalone item for the council and the finance committee um last there's a night to success after high school group of opportunity meet over in the family center and Mr. Sheehan was able to stop by and see that group really trying to support students who are trying to think about where they want to go after high school and for many of the students it's the first generation potentially first generation college students so it's providing an extra support and guidance for them so Dr. Gavar for organizing that and the last one is um in anti-semites and workshops so this is something we talked about earlier this year and just close not closing loops but getting back to something that was discussed that we're working with Karen Rhodes who is the education coordinator youth and family education director at the Jewish community of Amherst she's come in and done multiple workshops after school for high school students and that was sort of the action plan that the students had developed after Dr. Mackey and I met with them after the incident and the general consensus that I'm hearing is that they've been very positive productive and providing a broader education for high school students and not just for Jewish high school students but for allies as well so they wanted to come back to that one and that's the update. Have any questions? So back in the day when Amherst had a town meeting we sometimes when the regional budget was being approved there would be regional members there as and we would be encouraged to be there do you know how that's going to play with the town council like should we come is it I mean I'm sure we're welcome to come but is it what's the what's the point of attack? So this is the maiden voyage as you know and so Mr. Manganot did the first two we let the chair be aware but the indication we got from the town manager and the town council was that they didn't see a need for broad school committee representation unless they had questions that you know probably Mr. Manganot and I couldn't answer and not financial questions but broader questions and we've been told that we don't need to return for the next meeting or two for this to talk about because they have the sufficient information from the budget documents and the presentations that have been made so the short story is I want to give you a long story because I want to answer it fully but unless we get some additional information that more presence is needed I think we'll just update you on that. It's interesting not really I don't know how the other town meetings operate but in Amherst there was definitely the sort of the dog and pony show aspect of getting everyone there to sit together and demonstrate that how much we all care and agree with one another and apparently this is like the exact opposite it's like I've looked at the spreadsheet I understand the spreadsheet I don't need to hear from you. I think it's it's worth noting that both I don't want to speak for for Mr. Manganot but I found and I think he would agree that they asked really good questions right it had that similar feel of people really digging into budget looking at you know on page 63 of this long document help me understand school choice that was like for instance a question that came up that people wanted more information I'm looking at Mr. Manganot there was a couple other topics. The roof yeah so there were definitely topics I don't yeah I also don't want to paint a picture that we weren't there for we were there for five minutes and left so I really appreciate the robust conversation that was that we had with the town councilors and their interest and involvement in it and also their use of the four-time meetings as a backdrop to understand better the regional assessment method which is you know I think I might have said it's about as complex without a clear reason unless you understand regional funding a topic as they will receive but I thought they were really productive units. A further question to the superintendent feels like most of my work through the schools is engaged at a different level of level of the schools so I'll move on from the chair's report other than going to that cool meeting we might have. Um okay process to explore educating six grade students in the middle school uh if we could have come up with a title that was both more descriptive and somehow still convoluted but if you read it it's it's kind of exactly what it sounds like. Yeah yeah no I stressed over the title actually and that's the best I can come up with I don't know if that's a positive or negative thing to say about oneself but uh yeah so I want to um actually have some some kind of introductory comments before I go through slides. So the first thing I want to be clear on and we're trying to do this in our meetings is to be clear on what the purpose is of this topic and for me the purpose is that I'd be asking I'm not asking for a vote but asking for general support that this is a topic worth studying um exploring sixth or eighth grade and an educational model and so the reason I'd be asking for that is I want to be clear that there's some two most precious things we have in terms of resources which is time and money both yeah. You're not asking for a vote tonight right? I am not asking for a voter. Okay didn't you just say something similar to that? I'm sorry I'll restart so um what I'm asking for is support but not a vote okay because I don't think one is but you're not looking for support tonight directly either yeah. No but just a general I think it'll make more sense. I'm not trying to be dumb no no it's just you know we've talked about announcing what the point of a particular item is when we start and part of the point was to be really concrete yes it's either a discussion a presentation or a vote yeah and you know yeah I want to know what you know. So it's a discussion um but one of the things so let me restart given that I appreciate the feedback so what I what I want to have a discussion about and want to leave the meeting feeling is that um that the committee is is more or less on board um that um we can that I'm going to spend I'm I'm recommending that we spend resources but time and money to explore this topic and so if there was broad concern at the regional level that no this is this is not something worthy of study we wouldn't engage in that's why it's a regional topic it's not an Amherst school committee meeting tonight it's not a Pelham school committee meeting tonight it's a regional topic because I think this is at this point a regional issue and so for me and I think that Square you've all seen the slides already um that for me I do think there's value in exploring this topic and not value and I'm not recommending moving sixth grade to the middle school tonight I want to be uber clear about that before I even get through slides what I am suggesting is I in my opinion it's worthy to study this topic and so that's the kind of feedback I want if at the end of the night I'm leaving and I'm feeling like wow you know no one is with me on this that this is worthy of study that's information I need because it's about resource management uh for me I also want to um say uh particularly for Mr. Sullivan I know Mr. Kacinski is in here that I met and shared this slide deck with Jen Hagerty who is the superintendent of union 28 in Leverett and Shootsbury so I met with her on Thursday at lovely Shootsbury elementary school no less and I wanted her even though this is a regional topic I want to be as inclusive as possible as we talk about this and I don't want anyone in any of the communities to feel like where did this come from the superintendent of the committees wouldn't know and you know we talked about this loosely at the Pelham school committee not loosely it was on the agenda we talked about it not the slides but the general concept that the Pelham school committee me last week as well because one of this there's a lot of politics involved in this and I don't mean like Democrat Republican politics but the politics of making sure everyone feels included everyone has the same information there's no conspiracy there's no games here it's actually frankly just do we want to study this can be an inclusive group to study it and then let's see where that the chips fall at the end of that I think the last kind of um introductory comment I went made is that uh two times last week once with central office directors and once with principles we get a 12 I went over the kind of earlier draft of this presentation because again it's about resource management and if there was concerns that principals or central office directors had about spending resources to explore this I needed to know that and what I want to say is there's broad support for exploring the topic again not making a change but exploring the topic and and really helpful feedback that shifted the presentation from where it was last Tuesday morning to what what's in front of you and I just want to thank the administrative team for being so highly engaged in the topic so all that being said we can now get to the slides so really what I want to present is what's our current model what's the work that we've done to date um around this what is the rationale for exploring grade six through eight middle school model what are concerns that would need to be addressed a timeline and an exploration model those are the types of things I want to talk about I also want to be clear that um this is a tricky balance because what I'm trying to do tonight is to share my perspective and my recommendation of exploring it and to do that I have to say what why it might be a good idea to do it but I want to be again very clear that those are reasons that a threshold that I need to meet before we put the resources into it it's not a game to say that we should do make this change so I know I'm like beating that drum very loudly but I I think it's worth beating um so just a little history that we're currently a seven through eight middle school prior to that for great many years we were a seven through nine junior high school I don't want to ask look around the table and ask anyone miss Kaczynski's an ad here but I know she attended a seven through nine middle school and there's a mother yeah I wasn't looking at you specifically Mr Matthew you're a bunch of us okay yeah yeah um but uh that attended so it has a cool thing is you're saying 1998 yeah that gives me lots of lying where you hit when I actually graduated that's right so it has a longer history actually being a three-year school than being a two-year school or just about the same and I think it's a little longer at a three-year school level and it had a population of north of 700 students at that time it has been a major you know infrastructure changes in the last bit Ellis is he coming in is the most probably the most significant and just a little bit of local and national context the great set seventh rate middle school is a less common model so I put up the data from Massachusetts thanks for community member who actually were sent me this uh unrequested which was great but you could see that grade six through eight schools are about five or six times more common than seven eight and and even five through eight schools are about twice as common as grade seven eight schools which doesn't mean that seven eight schools can't work it just there's a lot of models that we can draw from about what could work down this line so none of that is to say so grade seven eight schools are wrong but clearly other communities have found other models that can work for students and we can learn from so the work to date the regional facilities master you study by the way the full 608 page document is now online and it's huge so it you download it and you'll probably get a message like oh my virus scan can't work but that's just because of the size it's not because it has a virus and so it's a really helpful document of describing the study that you all had two presentations about but for the community as well there was a consensus and advisory board there to pursue an analysis of a grade six through eight model and that the study also found that sixth grade can be moved to the middle school without capital projects or cross required I followed up with uh we have a superintendent listserv and I just said hey who's got like a grade six through eight model and how's it working so this is a listserv that it goes out to all superintendents across the commonwealth at 35 responses which is pretty good and the it's a bad analogy perhaps but um I when I get those as much as I like my colleagues it's like a jet blue how's your flight like if you have a normal flight usually don't respond and if things are really good or really bad you tend to respond so that's whenever I put things out that's typically the responses that I get and other people as well and so at 35 responses again urban suburban eastern central western massachusetts what was a surprise to me is that all the responses were positive about having sixth grade in the middle school schools use different models just a little bit of information on that some schools have them fully integrated in a middle school team model where there's four four core teachers on a team very similar to our grade seven eight from safe seventh and eighth grade model some schools have a more modified model where there's two teachers of one teacher teaches math and science one teacher teaches language arts or english and social studies so it's like a smaller version of that and there was some variations within those two those are the two kind of big groupings several districts made the change in the last 10 years dracon and randolph in particular one of those districts shared the quote that stood out to me is while we were said we were a middle school before adding sixth grade we now realize we were a junior high school before that shift so it's just an interesting piece of feedback and a little more than I was expecting frankly in terms of the level of responses I got and details so that was helpful information for me so I want to go into that again the rationale for exploring a grade six through a model not making our school a sixth grade and I know I'm banging I continue to bang that drum but I think again I want to be really clear so from a curricular perspective and some of this you all know and have heard before we have a math report with recommendations around that our state frameworks are in grade six through eight bands opportunities for earlier starting world language and other elective programs which we've heard from the community there's a strong interest in starting before seventh grade the lack of continuity for grade six through eight staff you'll hear later that mr sheen is working very hard to think about the math report and responding in a grade six through eight way and frankly it's really hard with students in lots of different places to even have that conversation and then finally the content load I was a sixth grade teacher at that grade level it's it is challenging to teach as many subjects as some of our teachers are teaching and that's a challenge from a curricular basis most elementary school teachers like I was had one course in math methods and all of my teacher prep courses and most of it is focused typically on the primary or kind of middle grade levels of the elementary school there's not a tremendous amount of training that our teachers elementary teachers receive on teaching fifth and sixth grade mathematics and science second rationale piece of rationale is deepening the middle school community and continuity in relationships again none of this is a critique of our current middle school staff or families or do a wonderful job but there are comments that are made pretty often about the middle school being a transition school because you transition in in seventh grade and then students transition to high school after eighth grade and that that's a structural challenge it's not a about the people who do a wonderful job with those managing and supporting students in those transitions and one of the things that that I know from research and I've heard in the community is that it's hard to build relationships when you're a student's only in a school for two years and we think about the achievement gap and the importance of students building that one-on-one relationship where if x happens they have an adult they can go to for some students they can walk into a school and find that adult very quickly and for other students that gets developed over the course of years and not so much months and so one of the things that that is important to me when we think of opportunity gaps in our schools is are there structural barriers right now that might shift uh if our some of our structures shifted and I think that's another reason I think this is worth exploring the third reason is that we have declining enrollment you all know this and you've seen the enrollment projections so our projected enrollment in 22 23 is 398 students um from the nasdaq before the most up recent one of us just came in a month or two ago that's about a two-thirds capacity of the school building so uh we've concerns I have concerns about inefficient energy usage it's a lot of heating and cooling uh one of the things you'll see in the latest in that final report from JCJ as they did explore based on community feedback could you like mothball a hallway right we have this extra space in the middle school and it's not designed well to be able to do that and you still have pipes that could burst and um it's not a wing of the school that you sort of can close off because of the design um so even if we we aren't at close to full capacity it's not like we can realize much energy savings that way um inefficient space usage you know as I just mentioned and then once we start getting down to under 400 students we start getting into some difficult budgetary decisions because when we get down below right now we have two and a half teams if that number continues to fall then we get down to two teams and then really some of our elective offerings there's not necessarily the students to fill the seats in them and so we have wonderful elective offerings that's one of the things that's incredibly important to our community um and just I am concerned about the future I'm just based on the declining enrollment that we have and I wouldn't and you've heard me say this before I'm not one who advocates for huge increases of school choice students to fill to make new seats it's really to fill the empty seats that are there so it's a concern and lastly there's developmental considerations all the way going all the way back to Piaget and there's a hyperlink on the slide to adolescent development that there really is the thought is that there is this thing called early early adolescence where students are out of that kind of what's called middle childhood age where there are really developmental shifts that happen around age and age 11 and 12 some of that's biological some of that's puberty related some of that from a Piaget perspective a really academic and cognitively related that aren't necessarily about the puberty piece and so I think it is worth exploring where the best place to educate 11 and 12 year olds are and that's really the core question for me is that is that a middle school environment is that an elementary school environment and what what do we want for those students what's in the best interests of those students I think Mr. Doniz and Mr. Demling were with the commissioner and I back in November or December walking into a sixth grade classroom in one of our one of the elementary schools that feeds into this district and the first question students chose to ask is sort of why are we here why are we in elementary school setting which he wisely turned to us and said it's not me but I do think having students opinion and student voice in that matter is going to be critically important as we move forward and there are a lot of concerns to be analyzed so the first is what is that academic model what do we think is the best interest of 11 and 12 year olds about how they're taught if it was a sixth or eight model would they be sort of the integrated in or what level do we want them having their own unique experience the second concern I've heard is that bullying and role models right so there's older students there are they at an impressionable age where being with students who are further along in their adolescence you know could have a negative impact and the last one is just the governance models as we know this is a seven through 12 regional district and opening that door there's going to be a lot of questions as to all towns want to participate to some towns want to participate in either scenario how does that actually functionally work within our governance system so proposed timeline and then I'll get into the process I went back and forth on the slides but I actually want to start with a timeline because I think it sets a better context for the process so what I'd like to start is next month to keep this ball rolling that has been started a couple months ago at the facilities you study so have about an eight nine month study of program models and then bring that back to you in February of next year with a consultant supporting the work and a community engaged process excuse me spicy food for dinner and it just you know doesn't work well for speaking right after it's my lesson and then really for that process then to come back to this body and for you all to weigh is this worth bringing to towns is this something that the regional school committee says no we we don't want to go down this road we don't want to engage the communities we saw the model it's not not an interest of the region that's fine we've then exhausted our possibilities we've gained a lot of information my hope would be actually we'd get a lot of information that could support our seventh and eighth grade programming so I don't see this is all about the sixth grade I see it about how do we think about what education do we want for our 11 to 14 year old students what does that look like and then coming up with models that support that so I see this is both looking at the sixth grade but also kind of having some opportunity to think about middle school students in general you talked about our mr. machine talked about previously that the timing of really digging into achievement gap challenges at the middle school level was something where unlike looking at the curriculum that might be adopted this fall for math that was something that is going to take a little there's things can be done now but it's still going to take a little longer when you're looking at this process of exploration is that also the kind of thing that will at least be aligned with this work or included absolutely yeah and mr. sheen will be heavily yeah he knows he'll be heavily involved in this work because there's there's ramifications for the curriculum you know there's it's a two-way street this conversation about what's the structure what's the meta structure and then how does the achievement gap go as it relates to teaching and learning so if the regional school committee wants chooses to engage the four communities it can certainly choose to do so and spring 2020 it seems like a logical time to at least start that engagement process and then we really want to give time for the towns to make a decision at least the first decision because it could be the case that some towns town or towns choose to go and other towns say well if there's an on ramp a couple years from now like keep that open that's not a decision how will the town decide that it's a town meeting is it a vote or what how can i answer that question at the end of the slide because i think i'll yeah i mean that's the right question there's multiple answers to that question so i think answer right now is it depends and hopefully i'll have a better answer about 90 seconds from now um and then if towns decide to change their models of sixth grade education financial and governance agreements have to be sorted through right so there's one example which would be to mr minot's point town meetings would have to amend a regional agreement in one model another model would be a rental agreement that would really be the regional school committees to sort through and the elementary school committees would certainly need to be involved so there's multiple players at this multiple seats of the table for elected officials uh to play that out i don't want to pretend that one of those is better than the other now because i think it'd be way too preliminary we're not i'm not in a place to part of the structural too right absolutely what's being done right if all four towns choose to make this decision that changes it versus if one town or two towns one or three towns even want to make it so that's i think there's too many variables that are unknown at the moment so the point i want to be clear and it's why it's underlined though you don't love this style or formatting but i wanted to be really clear that the earliest i could see any change happening would be the fall of 2021 um and it could be the case that is a reasonable timeline for some communities if they chose to to make a change it could be the case that it takes longer because that second to last bulleted point about education finance really the financial and the governance piece takes longer than we're anticipating um but i know people oftentimes in the community want to know what's the earliest you could see this happening so i wanted to at least put up a slide i can't see it happening earlier than the fall of 2021 yeah not to put a fine point enough but based on the way you're describing it even when many times properly after the first iteration of engagement with the regional school committee that you described there there would have to be additional discussions and presentations just with the regional committee to understand i know it sounds funny because i guess all of us sit on both depending what time you're from i'm so it's a weird thing to say but one point you have your hat on as the regional school committee we got to say what's really the implication for our operations for our budget for these buildings facilities and then you put the other hat on and say is this something i want to do and there are going to be a number of moments my point is between February 20 and winter 2021 or something in which you'd undoubtedly have to come back to this body to update and have a conversation about how did these however the proposals are shaking out if it were to happen what are the implications pure and simple for the regional district absolutely yeah and one of the things that i want to also comment on and one of the reasons i felt really clean because we had conversations with the chairs of multiple committees is that this was a good topic for the regional meeting is that one of the things i heard from superintendents is the a clear warning don't just focus on the impact in sixth grade actually think about the impact on seventh and eighth graders because it functionally changes the school and whether that's good or bad we don't know right we can only go from models we develop but that the focus can't just be on sixth grade it's actually on the school and what we want for the school and then drill down to the different grade levels but it's not like you add a grade level of students and everyone else is unaffected that's that's not a realistic scenario it's not what we want do you want to wait for questions until the end i'm great okay so just a clarifying question so one one thing i'm not understanding from the may 2019 to the february 2020 phase is if if that's all regional school committee only and there's no involvement from the school committees the four potential school committees that include sixth grade the the the problem i'm i'm seeing is like say if say you're giving us an update here or i'm participating in one of these working groups whatever and a concern comes up or a benefit comes up for sixth graders i can't talk about that because none of us on this committee in our roles in this role have any responsibility for the education of sixth grade students right and like we we own the building and we have responsibility for the seventh and eighth grade education but not for the sixth grade and so it to wait until february 2020 maybe i'm confused about what your vision is but wait for every 2020 to have input from a sixth grade responsibility perspective seems really late yeah so um i think the engagement would have to go beyond the regional school committee before february 2020 i agree with you it's just since it's a regional building and be talking about expanding the grade levels in a regional building i wanted to start it here but that's why i met with jen hagerty that's why she's planning on updating the leverant and shoot spray school committees and i've done the same in paloma will continue to do it um i think i had a hard time imagining and i'm open to feedback from the committee uh how often we're going to get five school committees together to talk about this on a regular basis you know i think that was something that was hard for me to think about two of which i don't work for so two things one i'm going to go through a couple questions and then we probably want to get through the rest of the presentation because we're going to run up against the deadline for this item mr menino then i think it's a related question your presentation talks about some of the benefits of moving the sixth grade how are you going to find out what's currently being done and the current outputs because unless what if we we gain something but we lose more i don't know what that more is because i don't know how you define the outputs of the current configuration yeah i'll briefly answer so i think that's part of the study is what's the program model and again reimagining what do we want for students 11 through 14 years old and it might be that we want for 11 and 12 years it's exactly what they have that's entirely possible and that could be a reasonable outcome that a group comes up with but i think asking the question is worthwhile for me is it right just a quick question uh so we started this meeting we're talking about town meetings and uh the fact that you know amherst doesn't have one anymore but the other towns do changes i think a little bit sometimes some of these kinds of timelines right so you mentioned fall 2020 as when the towns would actually decide but i i'm not sure about the other towns in the district i know for amherst this was the case that there were only certain types of of topics that were taken up or issues that were taken up at certain town meetings so i would just be wary of putting down that one date it might be fall 2020 it might actually be spring 2021 for a decision like that once the information comes back unless a special town meeting is called but i can't imagine that being the case for something like this anyway just you know in thinking about this timeline and communicating that back out to the public into the individual towns um i don't know that we can actually put a hot you know sort of an actual date down that like that yeah and i think making a more general date makes sense i mean paloma does have a fall town meeting uh all discontinuous town meeting i think right um in the same location um it's a very small town it is um but um i think it's an open question whether town meetings the decision maker it depends on there's too many variables so i think to your point i think it's a good one and making that date more flexible it's just not an absolute date yeah yeah yeah yeah no that's really helpful great so you know what i'd love to do um keep going with the rest of your since we actually basically went through half of it yeah then we asked a bunch of questions because they asked me to do the same thing and have the discipline to save up again letting me because i think i started this ball wrong until you're done and then we'll jump back in yeah there's only four more slides so it should be brief um and so i've already engaged um they wanted to have an articulated plan to share with you uh there's an organization called the association for middle-level education so they're national organizations from middle-level education they're based in ohio as lovely as ohia is you know i'd rather work with someone a little more local who knew massachusetts and and just from a cost perspective frankly as well and so they do have a consultant who's relatively local london regas he's a former middle massachusetts principal of the year and um he's a middle school principal in frayingham which is a diverse community he also was an elementary principal and was involved in a school that added sixth grade so he a skill set that seemed very appropriate for what we're trying to do i was also incredibly impressed in speaking about him about kind of the types of things that need to be considered and thought through as one would be considering the the pros and cons of this of a model so it was really helpful and again it was his frame that i repeat something as it earlier is that you want this process to end where even if sixth grade doesn't move you've still learned a lot throughout the process that's still going to inform and improve your the education that our middle-level students are receiving and so i think that's really important because you know who knows where the lead but we want to if we're going to put resources time and funds into it we want it to be positive no matter what the outcome is it's really the goal was to define what education as i said we want from a middle-level students and what the model would look like if sixth graders were included in the middle school and i think i'm going to read them out loud although i try not to read too much of my slides um but the key topics and this is really in conversations with starter egas was communication about the potential move with separate communities and stakeholders understanding that each community and by community i'm referring to town at this point is going to have different set of variables and different set of circumstances and perhaps different set of matrices to make decisions by i really want to think of three areas the academic the social emotional and the procedural all of those need equals kind of airtime and equal planning that budgeting staffing budget staffing space and resources like how do we actually articulate what that would look like academic program of studies and preparing the middle school for the sixth grade arrival so this is if we are moving forward how would one actually map that out so that that first year that second year we have an articulated plan and transition plan for students and for staff um and then again the just transition program for the sixth grade um because you'd be presumably staff would be transitioning as well as students um so we tried to do because i think it frankly it works so well isn't it was the advice of this committee to come up with an advisory board to start this process and i think you've heard from members of that board and mr. kassenstein has spoken about it that we'd want to have meetings once a month from and we tried to pick a time where students and particular students could be involved in this process so we tried to say three to seven um and what we'd like to include is four to five students in the district at first this is some of the feedback i received from principals we were thinking middle school students particularly seventh grade students because they'll be in middle school next year and some of the feedback i received from principals is really want to be more open that if there's high school students who want to participate that's great and they might actually have a broader set of experiences to draw from and if there was a way to get elementary students there three o'clock then we can try to do that too the alternative idea was to have sort of focus groups at the elementary level as the process continues which is probably logistically the more likely scenario that i would participate that i'd love to have one or two school can remembers participate we'd certainly need a human resources person again that staffing piece is talking other superintendents is particularly challenging around not just licensure but interest and having a hr person there from the beginning would be helpful we'd love to have five administrators six to eight staff members and six to eight parents and guardians um you can see that's inclusive of union 26 which is just for people don't know that's the amerson helm supervisory union union 28 is the supervisory union that levered and shoots barrier in and then the region um we'd also want to for staff have one member selected by the the teachers association um i think it's worth noting too in my conversation this hagerty and she's not offering an opinion on this but in some of our other elementary schools that feed into middle schools there are mixed models where some towns have their sixth grade in their elementary and others don't and they feed into a middle school at different points so this is not something that is um atypical or never happens um it certainly does and and talking to miss hagerty was really helpful and just thinking through some of those steps but she's been a willing participant in communicating with the shoots barrier and levered communities on the topic really last slide it's just the intended outcome is engage the community on this uh develop a model that the community the larger community can then say this is good or what about this and really have a dynamic process that way try to get something back to the region in the winter of 2020 and then we'll see what steps are taken after that but really the first step is just engaging having community members come together reimagine or imagine what this might look like and put pencil to paper and actually get something written down for people to respond to at this point people have very visceral responses in my experience i'm like people think it's a good idea or a bad idea and i don't really have a vision of what it would look like so i don't i hear all that and i take it in but i think it would be more helpful for the communities actually to have something for them to respond to that's that's tangible and that'd be the goal great uh start around move around the table with any questions or comments at this point comments as well anyone has uh crap um i'm having a hard time like my my learning disability is starting i need my i need my accommodate agents my ip my liaison sitting here because my mom is over here the town is over here and then i'm over here with my own thoughts and they're just trying to hold them all together it's really hard to offer them from any any one of them you want to pick i'm going to start my mom so my my mom was a um a middle school home act teacher for 20 something or 18 years and i can remember almost every night when she came home she said i wish they would put those it was a six sixth to eighth grade model which i survived along with my three siblings and um she felt that the sixth graders belonged in the middle school but they really needed to be treated differently and in their own space because she felt that they weren't ready to just be thrown in with the seventh and eighth graders and in marshfield where i grew up there were five elementary schools that fed into two middle schools that were split up by the alphabet and i also laurence o brian who was a former chair of this committee survived that also but so my mom she felt that it was good to have the sixth graders in the middle school but really have them separate from for the most part from the seventh and eighth graders and the town is shoots berry i know that for a long time they were adamant that no we need to hold on to our sixth graders but the last two years that every single school committee meeting in shoots berry the principal is reminding us because there's a number of us that have been on the committee for a while that shoots berry is changing that the uh it's the town is like in flux or in transition that the older families that were hanging tight to the old traditions most of those families are now gone and it's a whole new batch and the shoots berry may i mean i can't speak for the town at this point but it's more likely now or in 2022 than it would have been even six years ago i'll come come back to my myself again okay uh oh this is a hard one for me uh i'm not your mother uh but i've seen the sixth grade for 45 years in the town of bellum and i stand outside the door three times a week for 15 minutes while they transition and imagining those kids in a middle school is beyond my comprehension starting with the backpack would be heavier than most of the kids um i've made this point before uh i still i know you're going to consider the issues but uh how do you protect the sixth graders from the eighth graders you mentioned mixing them up did they take the same courses uh the sixth graders should be separate from the seventh and eighth graders i thought they maybe only shared a lunch room if they did normal class whopping um but most importantly the consultant it's going to be a fact gathering i i hope you consider them asking a question that would require them more than spending a perfunctory 15 to 20 minutes at a elementary school and then walk away with the recommendation upon the future of that of that elementary school when the math group to my knowledge only spent 15 to 20 minutes at bellum school and made a decision which i find somewhat questionable um and um i just think they're too small too small to go to middle school um so in terms of the actual question of the item is this worthy to explore yes for the reasons you cited i won't belabor them um my my concern really is is with the the question i brought up before about when and at what level you opt to engage the four pre-k to six districts and i'm being very conscious that right now i have my seven to 12 hat on but there's this other pre-k to six hat there that i'm not going to put on right now so i'm just talking about process um but you know i'm looking at this the goal slide of intended outcome of the developed models for consideration if if you get to that point and there hasn't been full involvement of of all constituents all parents guardians school committee members of those potential feeding districts of sixth grade then then that's going to feel like it was it was baked before they got there so so that asterisk that you have on the participants um on on a few of those items i think should be on all of those items and and and i really think that it has to be approached with the intention of being as having as those committees involved as as much as possible you know it may involve some cumbersome joint meetings may involve a lot of cumbersome joint meetings and that may slow down the process but if that's what has to happen i think that's what that's what has to happen um i i can see myself getting very frustrated if i'm having a meeting at our region and i see that pre-k to six hat there and i can't put it on and just having to bite my tongue it's going to feel really bothersome that i can't have that engaged discussion uh until you know the the winter comes and things are more or less done so that's my main piece of input um i just wanted to add that i think it does make sense you know i would support continued investigation of this i'm not going to take a position on whether or not i think it's it's the right um model to pursue yet because i think for all the reasons you stated it's too soon um but i think you've presented plenty of evidence that we should especially compelling to me is just the the declining enrollment and the concern about having i mean i like i was there when it was the three grades and i been there recently it's just it feels different when it's empty and i think that's an important thing to think about and i think if if we've been deciding we're not going to be moving folks up to the high school then we really are stuck with the dilemma and i think taking action now is the way to do it and getting as much information as we can so thank you um so i i also would echo and say yes i think this is definitely worth exploring um and i like that approach that phrasing because in anything you we have to explore before we make any decisions anyway um but i would echo very strongly what mr. demling was citing is that um about this is as much on regional decision as it is the elementary decision and gavel me if i'm breaking protocol here i i don't even imagine that i could even separate consideration of us from the sixth graders perspective from the building perspective and i think to separate that out as we get the updates throughout the year of exploration is really looking at this complex um idea from one side and a very handicapped one side and i think um it's it's as much going to benefit the overall school and impact the seventh and eighth graders but okay this might be wearing my elementary hat that i see you know impacting the sixth graders almost more if not um you know at least equally to impacting the seventh graders and the experience in the school building itself so i strongly agree that the exploration committee and the advisory committee should include representatives from each and i wonder if there's some sort of steering committee maybe pulling from the model that you have with the ameraston pelham elementary regionalization board that might pull from the representative town elementary committees and create a group that is so that we don't have to have these cumbersome update meetings and then those folks have the responsibility of updating their respective committees but it there there has to be a way to solve both and um that we don't get caught up in the bureaucracies and of our peculiar governance structures so i think uh i think this is worth pursuing uh and i actually uh i'm not putting on another hat it happened at a public meeting i had a public meeting the other day um the the president of the amerastan council raised raised the question of you know aren't we you know talking about our elementary schools um impossible expansions of them said well aren't we gonna just move the sixth grade to the middle school um so if we're doing that why are we talking about different models of expansion at the elementary level and um colleague to the left had a lot of good things to say but one of the things that i said about it was that um that no actually that's not what we're doing we're actually i understand there's a concept or a model out there um there's been a strong argument made for it but that what we're trying to do is sincerely structure a process in which whatever sort of energy or momentum appears to be existing for an idea that it is being sincerely vetted thoroughly thought through from multiple different angles uh and is going to engage the whole community because one of the comments i made is you know i can tell you i kind of made said then was i can tell you for effect superintendent doesn't know that he wanted to do this or recommend this uh but then i also said even if uh he and his colleagues in in central office and elsewhere went into a room and decided it was a good idea it is deeply meaningful as a as a as an as an actual substantive input into the process what the rest of the staff would say at different levels what members of the public would say what parents would say what students think and it's not it's not it's not a good idea until you have all of those elements together and synthesize in a way and the only way you can do that is if you build trust that is being done authentically and really it's not you know that there's no freight train moving um but but on the other hand i also like the idea that if a good idea is come up with and it is mixed around a little bit and makes sense yeah we're going to do it you know what i mean like the in so there's cognitive dissonance right you're trying to keep two things digging your head at the same time it's it's an idea to explore it's not big the conversation analysis is real but if it if it ends up being a good idea it's not this is not just an exercise it's being done to actually improve our schools and their operations um i know that we are sometimes tortured here by the language we use and the substance that we discuss because of the different committees that we sit on um and i know this is hard but you gotta you gotta figure this out because um i don't i don't nobody needed to be gaveled because if we're here talking about a regional school that has a sixth grade in it you can't be gaveled for talking about the sixth grade because the plan potentially would be for sixth grade in the middle school so it's germane right um but i also understand that if they're countervailing principles that would are arguments that would lead you to say that that isn't the case you'd immediately feel itchy right you'd feel like well i can't really argue for the current model unless i feel like i'm putting that hat back on again so uh either uh uh huan uh you're you're a consultant an expert or you or someone else has got to figure this out but it doesn't make any it doesn't make any sense to go you know close to a year without it fully and also i'm gonna say something even more provocative i don't think you mean that and i don't think you intend that so just come back to us with a model that what you think works so i just wanted to say thank you for for bringing this to the committee i uh actually do also agree that it's important to explore this topic um i think from the moment that i got on school committee probably not too long after joining school committee i started hearing from community members telling me repeatedly that they felt like their sixth graders were too old quote unquote to be in the elementary school and it came about as a you know a reflection um regarding the previous you know building project that happened here in amherst around the schools um but just i think the community has been thinking about that for some time right and for me it's you know it is a sort of a novel idea because i grew up in a k through eight model you know where by the time you got to eighth grade wow you were so ready to leave um but you know you were also i think in many ways felt kind of responsible for these younger children that you were you know sort of keeping an eye on so i can see how all of those different models can work um i do think that it is important to have uh you know various milestones throughout this process and during this timeline that accurately reflect how people are going to be engaged you know we've talked about this before all these documents become public documents and people will start reacting to when they hear something but i actually took away from this that not that you were going to be excluding the you know individual elementary school committees but rather that it was going to be something presented to the regional school committee because that's the conversation that we're having tonight with the regional school committee so i think i understood that from this um but i think again for you know for all the purposes stated it probably helps to or definitely helps to have those other touch points included in there um i am a little bit concerned about uh the at this point the way that you described all of this and from the conversations that i've had with you know some educators and even administrators in this district and other districts about our or anyone's ability really to bring something to fruition in just a year and a half or two years it feels like a very short amount of time to make such a massive you know curriculum change and structure infrastructure change and you know uh systems changes like we're talking about um but again i think that the whole point of this is to have an exploration to better understand what's possible what's feasible i have to say that i really appreciate the uh the advisory board that you've outlined here and making sure that we have various staff which i understand to be educators and others in the district um also including parents and guardians so there is actually quite a bit of input beyond just one consultant and a superintendent and that's actually incredibly important to highlight that you know this is not a process where one or two people will be making a decision or even a body of nine people but really this will be you know the way that you've outlined here where they're probably flush it out even more during the the process you know you're talking about a significant number of people whose ideas and opinions and experience will be weighing in on whether or not we decide to move forward with this so i really appreciate you putting this in here i really appreciate the way that you're thinking about this and i think it's a good idea to explore it is gaston um yeah i also support continued exploration of this topic and um like some of my other school committee members i would support earlier involvement of elementary school committee members you know and let me just elaborate on something because i think it combines a few of these comments and something that was just said um and what i hinted at where i said i suspected you were going to have more engage on part part of what i mean if there's something substantive that's great that you're coming up with around how to engage the different committees in the community but one thing i'd say is even though i respect how you framed this presentation today i would argue that when you're if you're doing a dog and pony show on this um this effort is harmed by being overly hermetic it actually is helped by showing what i mean even if we then the chair has a heavy responsibility to them to say no no no i see it on the slide too don't talk about it i would rather go that direction than then get into a conversation in which you might very well opine no no no i've got all sorts of stuff planned with the amherst committee i just don't want to talk about it tonight because this is a regional meeting it's like that all that does is so public confusion yeah about what's going on that's sort of what i didn't you were getting at it more clearly than i was that's sort of what i was saying you got to figure it out and you can do that with the chairs or whoever is is how to make sure that people are seeing the whole picture even if at a particular meeting we're only talking about one part of the puzzle that makes sense it does okay do you have anything to say back to all this i mean i wanted to get through it because otherwise we could take another hour yeah if we just dribbled it through i think i just have two or three quick comments so i think one thing i want to be clear on because i realized it wasn't before based on the comments is that the consultant wouldn't be charged with making a recommendation it's not a math report where someone we're asking someone to look at our programs the consultant's charge would be actually to facilitate this group to come up with models for the consideration of the community not to make a recommendation so i want to be i didn't say that before but but based on feedback i want to make sure or comments i want to make sure that's really clear i agree about kind of how to engage the elementary committees and that's why i met with you know miss hagerty and perhaps mr selvin and whoever replaces miss kaczynski will be good conduits to those because i'm in amherst and pelham at the elementary communities just so i think it's worth saying so there's an imbalance right because for the amherst and pelham school committees i have like super access right and we meet regularly i'm connected in all sorts of ways with those committees and with levard and shootsberry it's not the same and so the challenge for me and challenge also work out i agree is how to engage the shootsberry and lebert school committees at the right level um and um because i don't have any quote-unquote right uh to be engaging them i mean in any like technical sense i mean not that they're opposed i'm sure and hopefully mr selvin would make again be a warm host as he always is but um so i think that is a little bit of the challenges how to engage for elementary committees two of which know me i know them we work regularly we have logical times and agendas that we can talk about this and two that i don't so you know in addition to chairs i think particularly for the shoots band lebert representatives i think just outreach to figure out what's happened in addition to their superintendent with the committee members is going to be really important i think that's all actually okay then uh we're going to move on let's see you want to express your own opinion briefly uh i'll just say that i like the i i really like the idea having spent five years in the shoots for elementary school and being a licensed elementary school teacher pre-k through six and also infant toddler through pre-k through the early ed um that i struggled with watching the sixth graders being speaking to your point the sixth grade at least in shoots barrier the sixth graders are treated exactly the same as the preschoolers they have to line up the exact same you know exact instead of letting them line up by themselves at recess and bring themselves in they have to just like pre just like preschool and kindergarten they have to wait and they do the exact same model of the entire where they really need to be let go so that they can grow and expand um so and the other thing is that i'm going to find a way in shootsberry the school committee the superintendents update is just before the regional school committee members so i have to figure out a way that i can speak to this first before the superintendent of union 28 gets to it on next thursday so it's going to be a conversation monthly in shootsberry great great so we'll we'll stay tuned and keep engaged um we're so we're running behind um but i have a feeling we're going to pick up speed i don't mean on this item much time as you want uh math reports follow up i feel like i have to talk like this like one of those announcers at the end of a like a pharmaceutical commercial gets all the legal stuff out there right good evening well i can actually say on the last topic that i grew up in holyoke and i was the very last class that did grade seven and eight in a junior high school the transition was happening around us i started in seventh grade and that year the ninth graders got pushed out and then when i moved up to eighth the sixth graders came in behind us so we were sort of this oddity where we were a junior high model class with middle school following us behind in the same building lots of opinions to share yeah it's good that was 1989 or something like that all right well good evening i'm here to talk with you about math again and this my at least my part of the presentation should be briefer than the last time and probably won't have anything new to say until sometime in may after this point um so i've been very busy with math lately um so just to sort of get you up to speed can i just actually do the framing piece again so this is really as a and i'm not sure if you're gonna get this but really the goal for this is to update the committee on the process that's being used um kind of on three topics the high school curriculum the middle school math high school math curriculum the middle school math curriculum and then some of the achievement gap issues that were cited in the report so that's the framing and purpose of this is that the committee gets that um those particular piece of information i but ask any questions uh but it's primarily about the process there's not going to be oh yeah we made this decision right that's not the goal of tonight since i snapped about it earlier i apologize for not snapping mr shane sorry please continue so and i did say to dr morris earlier today that and please feel free to to uh to speak up i've been steeped in all of this uh for a while now so there are some sometimes i get to talking and i assume that other people know something because it's in my head um so if i breeze if i breeze through something and you're not sure what i'm talking about shout the math working group met last week it was a very productive meeting dr morris joined us for part of that time and reviewed a number of documents and the math working group is made up of teachers k through 12 administrators as well as a parent guardian representative um and so we looked at a theory of action document that that group had developed last year we looked at some other vision type documents our elementary math specialists had been working off of sort of a simple but very instructive vision for their work for the last several years we had some sample vision documents to look at and other things from the district that were helpful um a good discussion about what are the essentials in math education and some of those are regulatory they come to us from the department of elementary and secondary education some of those are part of what the fabric of what we do in amherst um and so that it was a lot of discussion it was sort of pouring everything out on the table and then a smaller group volunteered to work on crafting a vision statement because one thing that was also very clear is that a group of 12 people was not going to be able to write something together and so actually that group sent me just today hot off the press their draft of a vision statement which is not ready to to share in this way that the larger group is now going over this for comments um but they've they've included it really the gist of the conversation that we had and have done some good work and so we're hoping to have another draft by the end of the week that will be instructive enough that we can move forward on other decisions based on that while we're vetting it with the larger faculty parents guardian school committee and so forth this is around can i just ask a quick clarifying question maybe you mentioned this one over here at the last meeting um can you remind the the committee who sits on this working group yes it is i'm on this group um Dr. Morris and Dr. Brady are both sort of ex-officio members of the group um and then otherwise it is teachers from K through 12 so the elementary math specialists that's three of them there are a couple of middle school teachers there are a few high school teachers Nancy Stewart who's the president of the CPAC group um and i think that pretty much captures the group thank you you're welcome um and so what i've done here is to try to break down the timeline for you with a little bit more details than you've seen before and sort of taking out some of the other things that are not directly related to textbook selection um and so this slide and the next one both have information about the high school component because you remember there's sort of two parallel processes going on here the high school and the middle grades grade six through eight i'm trying not to say middle school because it does include grade six in fact um going back to your previous conversation um and so at this point i've been in contact with publishers as far as sort of getting some doing some preliminary vetting and getting some materials sample materials sent to us and also as of today setting up times for publishers to do presentations to a textbook review committee um that committee is going to be for the high school be made up of the high school math faculty including special ed teachers who teach math as well as where we've reached out and we're trying to assemble some parents to be of parents or guardians to be a part of this committee i've reached out to some faculty in the high school about getting a couple of students to be part of this committee um and so that committee as it's formed will then look at all the materials the first step in that process April 22nd and 23rd is going to be to meet with the consultants from loony math and they're going to help as far as framing the process of examining textbook materials um so setting criteria using the vision document to do that using the massachusetts curriculum frameworks for mathematics to do so um using what they found in their review um to help us guide that process because what will then be faced with is whenever you look curriculum materials you have very knowledgeable salespeople essentially who will come in or who will virtually show us what their product has to offer um there are some resources that we've been using to narrow down choices because as you can imagine everybody publishes algebra one textbooks um so there's a website that you may want to look at at some point it's called ed reports um and this is an organization that is grant funded by some of the very large funders in in the game the gates's and Hewlett Packard Foundation and so forth and they have been rating materials in math and language arts actually for the last several years and it's not the end all but it's a very helpful tool um and in fact you can sort it and the first thing i did in looking at it was sorted by high school texts and then sorted by um alignment to the standards and they use the common core state standards which the massachusetts curriculum frameworks are based on and that's sort of a quick way to get rid of a whole lot of options that just are not standards aligned and then you can start going through what is a very extensive study of the curricula that publishers have submitted and they have responses from publishers so in places where they've sort of dinged somebody's textbook they do give publishers the opportunity to respond and those are equally instructive to read because um there were some that i read and then read the publisher's responses that publisher has a point um so there's a lot of good information to to begin the process and uh loony math consulting will help us as far as setting criteria um to move forward from there if there were parents or community members who were interested in serving on the textbook review committee how would they who should they get in touch with um they can email me yep and and i should say if any school committee members want to participate in that you can also email me um it will be um a a compressed process i mean there will be time during the school day or just after school gets out as far as i mean our time is limited as far as scheduling meetings so i know for some people that will immediately mean that they're not available to participate in that process but we will also have a time where materials will be available for the public at large to examine and give feedback on and that will probably be a combination of print materials that we can set up at the jones library and online access that some publishers now don't send sample materials the way they used to um and you know to cut their costs they make things available online and that's sort of the way of the world at the moment and i should also mention that the math department has been collecting data as well one of the math teachers over the weekend sent this extensive spreadsheet it really was amazing and very helpful she had gone through and collected information on comparable high schools and and and as a math teacher she set a criteria for what would become a comparable high school and did a survey of high schools websites across the state and had sort of disqualifiers and and broke it down into different course sequences and text materials and student demographics and it really was it was very interesting to read and helpful and has triggered some more ideas from there and so this is the next piece of the the process and we're aiming for the end of may to to have a recommendation to be able to bring to the superintendent with the intent of being able to get materials so that we can do some professional development with staff after school gets out in June and that's something else we've made publishers aware of that this is our timeline and we would want at least the necessary materials to be able to do that again now most everything is available online as well as in print so that that isn't as challenging as it may have been five or ten years ago. Mr. Minato? Are your recommendations on any way dependent on whether the sixth grade moves to the middle school or stays in the elementary school? No, not at all. So I will say though that through part of this process with the the middle grades portion of it I'm also looking at ways to make sure that regardless of what happens with the study of where sixth grade is housed that we have better connections between the faculty who teach math in the elementary schools and the faculty who teach math in the middle school for lots of different reasons because the curriculum is connected because Dr. Morris alluded to it in his presentation secondary level teachers have content level knowledge that is more developed because that's all they teach where elementary teachers are generalists and their training is different and so it really makes sense for someone at sixth grade to be able to interact with their colleagues at seventh and eighth because there's knowledge sharing that that needs to happen there. Very briefly, Mr. Sheens also invited the curriculum coordinator I'm not sure her title from Sheetsbury and Leverett from Union 28 to participate as much they want right it's obviously not a decision that we would offer any recommendation for them but at least they had the opportunity and there's a lot of willingness and interest in at least engaging to learn about this process and take advantage of the resources that are going to be used in this process. Great, yeah absolutely and as far as the middle school process right now we're looking at is a slightly different process than the high school and and I believe that I mentioned it at the last meeting there's a resource that's available is open up resources math curriculum that has been receiving very strong reviews by people who are knowledgeable in the field and that's something that we're going to take a look a more extensive look at right after the school vacation week get an introduction and have some time for grade six to eight teachers to dig into it and see if that might be something that we want to go with for that middle level and normally we would never look into jumping into a curriculum without extensive vetting the difference with this one is it's free and so there isn't a risk factor as far as spending tens of thousands of dollars now it's free we wouldn't jump into something like that normally either except I mentioned ed reports and there are other sources that have looked at this and it's it's getting very strong responses and it's also being used by other school districts so there's experience out there. Newton and Franklin in massachusetts I'm told are already in there at least their second year of implementation with it and I got a list that a colleague in another town got from desi of districts that have sort of in a pilot phase or exploring it and it's there's about 10 different districts here including Hamilton, Wenham, Acton, Boxborough, East Hampton, Boston, Easton, Stoughton, Nattleboro and I spoke to the curriculum director in North Hampton and they're looking at it for their middle school so unlike some other things that that we've looked at in the past that it there are actually peers that are using this with experience so if that's something that looks like it could fill the need it's something that we could use and say for the next two years we're going to spend a lot of time with this and if during that time we decide this is not the curriculum for us we can do a full textbook review now it would be nice if this were this easy of high school level and and we'll see it could be that the teachers look at this the week after vacation and say this is not going to meet our needs in which case we will shift gears into a different style of textbook review with the middle grades. So that that's actually what I wanted to ask about is just a I know you're going through it but just to step back for two seconds um how are you gonna decide I mean what what's the unlike most things we do and most things you've been describing and most things I'm hearing about it's it most of it's so incredibly you know stepped that you basically the one thing you're guaranteed is no one's making a decision anytime soon and this is sort of like nothing that's a bad thing but it's sort of just true. This is sort of like all of a sudden the reverse it sounds like something that sounds like almost like a decision that's already been made but you're going to take a couple steps to think about it. So I'm just wondering about how you do you do diligence and assure yourself in this next period of a couple weeks that you really know you haven't already gotten yourself too deep into something that you wish you'd done this sort of ordinary let's look at all the curriculum and think about it and either one of you could talk about it. Sure yeah so I think some of this came out of a meeting and I tagged along with Mr. Sheehan with middle school faculty who have been through a number of curriculum in the last 10 years and I think the other unique thing about this product as compared to the other ones it's anyone could go home and google it and people probably are right now if they're watching on tv or in the back of the room you get an account for free and you can see the whole curriculum so that's a real difference in terms of the review process is that uh by the time we'd met and the middle school staff, math staff knew we were meeting with them most of them had already been through the curricula and not that that's sufficient but I think it's it actually function changes the conversation and what what I heard and you can jump in from them is they really wanted to have a curricula that was aligned to standards that gave them the tools they needed to to work with the diversity of students they had that any curricula they had they're going to have to adjust and work with so they weren't it's a very veteran you know math faculty they're I think they're strong teachers and what they've been what was articulated at the meeting was the curriculum they have and have had have not been all well aligned to to the standards and that's an additional layer of work has been a significant challenge so what I heard was they wanted a product that that met with their philosophy of teaching which was again that balanced view of computational fluency and and math problem solving and thinking and so it felt very different than the conversation with the math high school faculty along those lines but we're still going to do the due due diligence and I'm sorry if I'm taking more time of of having them more formally go through the grade six or eight teachers go through this sharing it with the community seeing if the community is on board but I think the other thing to note was they you know cost wasn't the only factor but they were highly aware of how much I mean just to be very blunt about what we heard how much has been spent on textbooks that have been ill aligned to the curriculum and have not been functional tools where a one-to-one middle school at this point where every student has a chromebook every day and even if the first couple years we buy some student workbooks and things like that there was a lot of positive energy towards moving forward in a way that supported their professional development and what I heard was if we have a tool that's aligned to standards what really we want is more time with that tool with each other to further develop our skills instructionally and that seemed to be the focus that I heard that I was looking for yeah that's exactly how I would describe that meeting I mean one of the teachers sort of pointed the shelves and said we have we have these books that were from 10 years ago and and I still draw on resources from those and those over there and and essentially that was it like give us something that's aligned to the standards it's a useful tool that's helpful to students and let us use all of our skills to make it work I think the only other thing sorry to jump in is the ad was the particular focus that I heard in the meeting on the cheap the opportunity gaps that there were the items in the report made a lot of thoughts on and without their permission I don't feel super wonderful trying to characterize them but I think what they're looking for is something that was aligned to standards with the level of the ability to differentiate it for English language learners for students with special needs and so that's the lens by which they want to view the curricular by the and the big interest even in having like Katie Richardson who's our ELL coordinator could she participate in some of this review and have the right people looking at the tools but they were really focused on if we have a tool that's aligned to standards and really can focus on the instructional aspects of teaching mathematics they felt really strongly around that so I that was a surprise to me going in and Mr. she we've spoken about as well but there was strong consensus in the room to explore this one in great depth and let's see what they well I appreciate the I'm glad you guys digressed and you kept answering I think it helps understand the slide what you're doing much better please continue and the committee can ask questions as they now and this would absolutely have the other components to review the public feedback that this one will not have books that get to sit at the Jones library but would have a website that that families could go to and um and actually I would encourage you in your free time um to to take a look it's it's one thing that it does have and I'm seeing with other curricula as well is components specifically for parents and it's which is nice to see where they can parents who want to can parents or guardians who want to can go and take a look and and there's a description here's what your child is learning in math this week here is why it's taught that way because most parents of I guess anyone from first grade on up will say I didn't learn this that way when I was in school and that's a reality and it's nice to see that publishers are responding to that because the teachers try to but obviously that's not the bulk of what they're doing they're working on teaching the kids so it'll be it'll be very nice to have some tool that also provides guidance for families where is this explanation for parents um in this particular curriculum you'd find it on their website open up resources yep in some of the others I've seen it's the same sort of thing there's a portal on the web that it's handled in different ways by different publishers but that has descriptions and guides so and then um achievement gap which doesn't this is sort of separate from the other pieces but also important to sort of keep bringing up and and I put a whole lot of text on this slide and then included some other notes for myself um so in terms of the curriculum materials this is something that we're very focused on is knowing that we have a extremely wide range of students um and we want something that is going to be the best tool for teachers to be able to teach all of those students so providing intervention for students who are struggling providing challenge for students who are achieving at a faster rate and it's that's a big ask um and I mean one of the things that in the current curriculum at the middle level at the big ideas curriculum that was one that has never been terribly responsive from what I've gathered from teachers to particularly students who are struggling in math um and and there are some who will say that when it was chosen the goal was more at looking at challenging advanced learners um and and that may have and some of that was sort of the the politics of what was going on in our community at that time um so it didn't necessarily answer those things um support for English learners so Katie Richardson has been working for a while and working on some curriculum and PD work on the language of math because we know that this is a challenge for a lot of our English learners and we're hoping that some of that will happen in June um a gathering information from other schools that have addressed these challenges um and now some of that has come out of that some of the research that the math teacher did this weekend and some of it there are others of us that have been doing some searching what have other places done to address some of these things um the focus professional development and so this is something again Looney math consulting is going to work with us on guiding us through the textbook selection process and then separately we're also bringing them on board to do some professional development um and one piece of it will be working with struggling students differentiating instruction teaching styles that allow teachers to spend time with smaller groups of students and provide more direct attention because those things are really going to be key um and and some of that is the curriculum and some of that is the the teaching methodology that's used um practices around progress monitoring and adjustment of intervention groups um this is something we'll have an intervention teacher at the middle school next year so this is something that right from this start we're going to be able to look at how are we doing this how are we addressing these needs the elementary schools have had intervention in math and language arts for quite a number of years and this past year one of the things that that they've looked at is is the progress monitoring and i think this provides a model to look at at other levels um they actually it i know for sure at one of the elementary schools i think all three they modified how they looked at student progress and actually managed to when you work in let me back up when you work in intervention groups you assess students you pick up the students with the greatest needs and it might be in-class support it might be some pull-out support it happens for a period of time you reassess you adjust your groups sort of the cycle begins again the elementary school looked at figuring out how to compress those a bit so they can actually get a whole additional cycle in of intervention and and it wasn't by cutting out anything that students were getting it was by looking at the assessment and trying to sort of compress that and make a more efficient use of time so that they could have more days working with students and the principals and the intervention teachers are both feeling very good about this right now so that's going to be something to look at let's see at the middle school teachers currently take a lot of time after school at lunch time before school to provide extra support in fact the day that the math working group met we had to send somebody to page a couple of them because they had forgotten and they were upstairs working with students in their classrooms after the school day that'll continue but look but hopefully we'll have better ways to bring about the instruction during class so maybe that won't be as necessary for some students and yeah so I really appreciate this slide this is like a excellent like detailed level addressing what is a priority finding of the math report I just Dr. Morris I just sort of wondering now we're sort of past our budget discussion you talked about adding the intervention teacher which is great I'm just looking at at this kind of work this important work there's a lot especially in that right column of bullets of staff time and initial staff time to meet these sort of individualized learning needs like do you feel like this is staffed appropriately do now that we're like we're getting more into the meat and potatoes of what's going to be required do you feel like have you had any second thoughts about staffing levels in terms of being able to fully meet like a lot of these bullets oh I think let's say this so I think last time we talked some about I prepared a document related to the strategic planning work and there's a lot of synthesis well that wasn't talking about math extrude instruction specifically was talking about a number of these things about the opportunity gaps and how to and having that be the priority so I think the reframe I'd have is that some of this certainly we're trying to do in June because we don't want to wait till the next school year but some of this is actually just being very intentional with early release days like we're having tomorrow and other professional time that staff are already here to be very intentional of our focus that this is this is a primary focus of it that it's not the change in the curriculum isn't simply the change in the curriculum it's actually an opportunity to reevaluate and reassess who we're reaching who we're perhaps not reaching at the same level who's underserved and how we do that so from a staffing perspective I'm not I'm not concerned because we do also have in addition to intervention teacher I think the other key component of this that I would be concerned if we didn't have is a grade six through 12 math you know I don't want to use the word coach because that means lots of different things but Mr. Sheen remind me what it's called curriculum specialist thank you who can really lead a lot of this professional development organize it facilitate it and schedule an organ and so that it's not only on Mr. Sheen but actually someone who is a licensed expert math teacher to be leading this work is there on this yeah just to follow up on that I mean I was having very similar questions while Mr. Sheen was presenting on this piece especially just in relation to the level of support that would be needed right potentially for some of these students and I think that you know my concern and I think this was articulated at the last meeting is that the degree to which some students are underperforming if you will in math is so high that it feels like the extra supports are warranted even if it means an increase in resources you know temporarily right so when you mentioned intervention specialist I also agree I think it's great however you know I question if an intervention specialist is one person for you know however many students is enough right especially if we want to make sure that kids are feeling supported and most importantly that their families are also and caregivers are also feeling supported through this process right because I think it's one thing to hear that your child isn't doing well on testing it's another to hear that they're kind of falling through the cracks and you know in their day-to-day math instruction and I would imagine there's going to be a lot of families that are very concerned about that you know but I think beyond just their concern it's also what can we do as a district what are we what's our responsibility here to make sure that these kids are actually being well supported through that struggle so that they come out on the other side with the skills that they need in order to do well in life right and so I do think I want to keep pushing on this because I do think it's really important that we actually are you know supporting this and staffing this properly I also have a concern about you know I hear when when we put this in this way where you know materials designed to support all students right I think on its face it's a good thing but you know when you when you really kind of dive into it the all students aren't the problem right that you know that the concern here is actually with a subset of students who need additional support and so I want to be very mindful of that and thoughtful of that I think as a district and as a committee that we're adequately addressing the fact that we have these major gaps and that they are primarily among a certain subset of students and that we want to make sure that we're giving those students the support they need and it even if it means going above and beyond a certain level to make sure that those those kids have what they need in order to do well so I don't think we're talking about supporting all students I mean I think you know we are a certain level but we're not on another level right and you know so I do think that we have to be mindful of that as we're as we're communicating around it and then I would just say that you know the the it's great to hear about the small group work and the station teaching and all the individualized strategies I do want to think a lot about how we are supporting the elementary school staff as they're transitioning and helping kids transition into the high school right because it seems like that's you know you and I talked about that before there's big gaps there between those those two phases so as kids are transitioning into middle school and into high school how are we helping staff get through those transitions so they can actually hand that baton off so to me that doesn't just say you know it's it's it's having perhaps you know small peer mentoring among teachers right so that they can support each other maybe you're already talking about that but I'm not seeing it reflected here so I just want to articulate that just you know in case we can have that conversation so one of the three jump in two things one we're running out of time for this item and I just want to put a fine point on that two there was a lot just thrown at you and I don't actually think that I the year Dr. Morris need to answer all of it right now especially because some of it was actually more a matter of I would like to think you'd I'd like to encourage you to think about theirs or I'd like to see it better reflected or even something you rarely hear which is if you need more money to do this we should talk about how to get it to you which is if you look at it from that perspective I think that it's about helping the students achieve so the teachers teach effectively but still at the same time although Mr. Magano might lose his mind over this it's sort of a nice problem to have that people are saying we want to try to find a way to appropriately resource this and support its outcomes so if you have additional thoughts please do but do not talk for 20 minutes or I'm going to hammer you you can say yeah I just had one more that it isn't on a bullet but goes to a lot of what was what was talked about and it was earlier today I actually had a conversation with Dr. Guevara and it was about sort of the the larger issues because the opportunity gap the achievement gap is not just math and and it's not going to be solved by just math we could be teaching at a one to five ratio and it is not going to solve those problems and and so that's something that sort of outside of the direct curriculum piece that I've also sort of begun that discussion of how to explore and and some of it is exactly that those transitions and that support through those sorts of things the helping families that particularly families who are more marginalized and don't deal with school in the same way that that other families do helping them understand what what's going to help students at home what what does my child need to know when they enter seventh grade before they get to the point that they're not passing the MCAS and and other ideas are there I mean one that that we talked about there's some ways to get peer mentors for students where there are older in particular older students of color who are strong in math who are college students or high school students who could somehow support younger students and guide them through this so there's a lot of ideas out there and things that that I think we would like to to work on bringing about and so I thank you for those comments because it's it is important and I think for the comments on the the language in the slide it's sort of a challenge when you write a PowerPoint slide that's going to end up on ACTV like how do you how do you spell this out um so that somebody doesn't send in the email and say what do you mean you're only doing it for one group of students so thank you very much for that Dr. Morrison yeah I'll be very brief just so I think in terms of additional resources and intervention staff I do think one of the explicit strategies is to improve what we would call tier one instruction so the core instruction and if we don't do that we'll never have enough intervention teachers to to to do that so I'm not suggesting that we you know there's not a conversation to be had but I actually want to reemphasize that that having more intervention staff isn't the only approach and and really if we're doing our work well with the tier one instruction that actually is the most important thing we can do and it's great to have more intervention staff I totally agree with that I mean we've talked about in the budget uh but I can't emphasize enough that improving the core instruction is the number one thing we can do to improve outcomes for kids it was a primary goal of trying to look at the math I just want to sort of put a little finesse on on some of the comments that were made about this particular side so I understood this to mean that we're you know that all the work that's being focused on closing that achievement gap and that opportunity gap and and I endorse and support all of the conversation that we've had about making sure that you all have the appropriate resources to do that but I want to go back to something that you said also that you know when we chose one curriculum I don't know 10 years ago our focus was on providing appropriate challenge for for students that might be achieving at or above above level and I don't want us to be swinging all the way the other way as well so yes and right like we need to not take our eye off of that we need to so I do actually think that it is all students though in this particular slide in this particular conversation we are talking particularly about the students that do need more of that intervention and making sure that we have those resources right you know one of the things we need to move on but one of the things that I was reminded at our last meeting actually and I talked to the superintendent about is that our conversations for us as a committee feel cumulative but the reality is any individual person who's sitting out there in the public it is just trying to dial in and say I hear something important happening with math I want to obviously particularly for a lot of parents and stuff but also we have like retired teachers who probably care deeply about what's going on lots of folks in our community communities and and so in the case of last meeting the issue that came up was the question that we previously went out of meeting in which we said this is a yes and conversation in which for example at the high school level no one's talking about abandoning a commitment to problem solving and helping students acquire significant levels of mathematical literacy about the concepts of math but that the question was how do you open that up in ways that have different different modalities different methods and are able to reach all students who may come with different learning styles or like we do with the reading recovery math recovery at the elementary level might have different places that they are and places that are stuck that they need to be helped. The reason I bring this up is just because I mean I don't want a half an hour discussion to become an aeronautic conversation because we're always repeating things all the time but I actually think some of the key themes it's worth highlighting again because I think because we're because we can go down one particular avenue and then someone pulling in might say oh so we're doing that now and what they've missed is the context that we were setting out because this is such an incredibly critical and deeply felt topic but thank you you're doing a lot of work thank you thank you so what I'd like thank you very much so what I'd like to do with the committee's indulgence they'd actually like to reorder our agenda I'd like to move advocacy to the end I guess before accepting gifts we have any gifts then it's moot you can move it there with there anyway and then I'd like to move the superintendent evaluation up to be the next item we were discussing now I still suspect that some of these items we're going to be able to go through very quickly but I just I think this is a better order of of discussion to try to make sure that we get what we need to get done in a reasonable fashion I see a scent great who is are you are you leading our conversation with superintendent evaluation awesome so um and I apologize I'm having some trouble today because my left ear walked so I'm a little flustered that's the reason um so um we met as the superintendent superintendent evaluation subcommittee about I think it was a week ago I can't remember the exact date but four of us met including Andra who's not going to be continuing on as a member of that committee but she was one of the members with kind of the extensive knowledge of the process I'm going to apologize in advance because this is my first time kind of going through this process so I'm learning as well but what I wanted to get feedback from the committee on today was support for the timeline and also um it sounds like there's some questions about the process that came up in the conversation I don't know if it's appropriate to go those today but since it's on the agenda I think we could at least people had a strong feeling in response to the comment public comment I I think it would be useful to the subcommittee to hear it absolutely um so the timeline you've got in front of you this is a document that Audra shared with us about it from a year ago and I'm bringing it back today just to say that when we met as a group we felt strongly that option three was the option we should be pursuing in the future and this just lays out the timeline for when the superintendent starts without effects but you know generally you should start with goal setting then sharing the artifacts doing the individual evaluations and then having an evaluation vote and so the shaded lines indicate changes in the members and also the budget vote so we're proposing option three which in practice would mean that on April 30th our next meeting we would share with the committee the instrument that we'd be using for the evaluation on May 14th we'd talk about doing having Dr. Morris share the artifacts and then also I think at the same time voting on the instrument on May 28th around about then we'd be conducting the individual evaluations then on June 11th or potentially yeah I think June 11th we were talking about doing the evaluation vote and then potentially doing some goal setting at that time or doing the goal setting separately on June 25th along on those lines we'd want to just keep in mind that there's also all the work going along with the strategic planning and we I think it's really appropriate that we have strategic planning conversation be at least at the same time and as we're getting the information from the strategic planning because ideally the goals should be aligned with the strategic plan so we would just want to know if the committee has any and Dr. Morris obviously has any reactions to this proposed timeline concerns questions or the individual evaluations so I think that's what I wanted to go through just remind us of the dates sure so today's the 9th on the 30th of April we would present the instrument for review we'd vote on that instrument on May 14th at the same time Dr. Morris would potentially be sharing the artifacts we remember last year he produced a word document with hyperlink so that that's what we're referring to at some point between the 14th and the 11th of June we would do the individual evaluations I was given the advice that we should make it a fairly short window to encourage people to complete those evaluations and not kind of keep pushing it off so a two week window ideally and then vote on the evaluations on June 11th June 25th or also on the 11th to do goal setting okay Dr. Morris it was just going to say Miss Spitzer just you may have said this but I'm not sure you did has been in touch with me I'm very comfortable with the timeline from my perspective so I just wanted to it's not new to me yeah okay uh are there uh let me just I guess for the sake of argument I guess I'll ask the question um how many members from different towns do you think we're likely to be carrying over at that point on this schedule for the actual vote I'm here okay um and you're here yep okay you're probably not here I'm not here you could be right um I'm sorry I'm just I'm sorry I forgive me I'm only starting with that all right so let me the one two three four five six seven all right that's that's a pretty good number yeah maybe we should remind the public that those who are the new members often um don't participate in the evaluation and if they were to choose to participate in the evaluation they'd only be able to really remark on the period of time that they were sitting on the school committee yeah and I was I was going to go in the other direction of saying you know the the key issue which which parallels that obviously is that those people who have been on the committee who leave are not allowed to do it so that so I was I was just looking at the calendar and trying to remind myself who does that leave us with and the answer is almost everyone so that's not this actually not so bad are there are there questions or comments from the group yeah I mean I think there's no perfect way to get around the problem that every year you're going to have people cycling off before you actually do the evaluation um and really looking at this at this colored chart the only way to avoid that is to have the evaluation vote in April which would essentially be now and and just I think I think there's probably a informal consensus that this feels really early to be evaluating the end of the year the goals that the goals then would be really off cycle with the school year so I mean I think I think the option is presented is probably the best available it also having it be later in the year gives a lot of the committee the probability of still being on so if the members cycling on in January you're at least there for five and a half months before the the vote and then there's then there's probably so are there any other additional questions or comments as I agree with this timeline I actually think it works really well at the only question I guess I have it maybe just because it's different is the June goal-setting timeline it feels so soon after the end of or not even but almost the end of the school year to be thinking about what is coming next and I'm just wondering if the subcommittee had any conversations around that you know and sort of what you're thinking was with that because it feels like we've done it for so long around the August sort of September time frame you know kind of squeaching into the we did talk about that and I'll defer to Mr. Sullivan if he has a little bit more historical knowledge on it and it looks like Dr. Morris had a comment as well yeah we discussed this last year because previously it we've been letting it slide sometimes even like until October November when we finally set the goals and last year the committee decided to try and get them done by the end of June or even if we or whenever our last meeting was for the school year because that way it gave Dr. Morris a chance to work with his administration and let and teachers and let them know what he was working on for the for the upcoming school year because it really was it was slot we were letting it slide where his goals were being presented in November right um and actually I should add that one of the things Dr. Morris and I were talking about a couple days ago was trying to sync up engaging around the strategic plan um relatively soon like in maybe in our next meeting the matter of fact I'm correct so that we could start syncing up um how that plan and how some of the things are coming out of it could inform a dialogue between the superintendent and the committee around our goals the next few years but also literally just for next year I'm bringing that up only because we've already been thinking about how do we organize our discussion so that we can be better able to incorporate and think about those goals but you're gonna say yeah so just supporting what Mr. Sullivan was saying I mean I think one of the things that even if it doesn't get to you know and this is up for the committee even if it doesn't get to a vote on goals but having a clear sense of the priorities of the committee it helps me because summer's really the opportunity I have to work with the admin team at a quieter time or frankly we can get more done um sometimes and it sets the stage for the next year it's not like oh and we get together in October and late August and decide the plan so it's been it's felt awkward and ill aligned for me that to have goals even if they're past in September at that point the stage has been set um so you know whether it's a formal vote or just feedback and we have some pretty detailed discussion that really helpful for me and eventually the goal is where the superintendent goals administrative team goals and then eventually teacher goals actually are pretty synced up but because that timeline has its own contractual obligations the sooner I at least get some broad overview of areas of focus would be very helpful for me and I think it'll actually make the goals more tangible and real for the people in classrooms as well great so I think you have your marching orders on that great um I just wanted to just point out why I recirculated the goals and that's just that um in the subcommittee review we noted that there wasn't anything aligned with standard three so I we went back to dr. Moran fast if you could make sure that that was reflected here so we've added um standard three a dash up one two three so that was the only change but just wanted to highlight that for anybody who was wondering um so I guess that since the question came up um how uh how do you engage staff in or others in stakeholders in feedback or so what we've done the last two years anyway is that I've done um a survey of the people I directly supervised or kind of on second tier um supervision so assistant principals were included in that even though I'm not their direct supervisor um we work collaboratively um in similar ways um to me that's very good proxies I find them the very good proxies they're anonymous surveys so I don't know who has filled them out I don't know you know who has done them and to me they've been pretty honest right I mean just to be very candid there's been it's not like everyone rated three out of four or whatever the rating scale was there were areas that showed um things were going smoothly and areas that showed that um that were needed for growth and has read plan to do to continue certainly I'm open to other conversations but um I find that the feedback of people I interact with and you know close to a day-to-day purpose at our day-to-day level um to be incredibly helpful and that that's my thoughts on that okay okay well we will um we'll march forward so going back to uh now we're going to get back sort of on the regular order and the next item arms, roof, discussion and potential vote and and uh I'm going to acknowledge the fact that for our committee we typically see something first talk about it and then don't vote on it that meeting and I don't think this is particularly an issue that is compelling that it needs a vote tonight it was on in this way simply because we contemplated the possibility of both and as a little background um I think everyone on the committee has has been through conversations and a vote are in a statement of interest for the middle school roof from the MSBI discussion of the roof itself um some members of the committee would have been around when we got back an analysis of the middle school roof that when it was at first um authorized or developed included the question of what's the suit what's the suitability of the roof to receive solar panels to have them being put on the analysis that came back to to cut it in a very simple way said the roof as originally constructed and is currently maintained um cannot support um the deployment of the mounting brackets for solar panels um but that they could in fact be installed during um the construction of the new roof um and to be candid uh the just though the school committee has expressed some interest in the possibility of solar panels being deployed um I'm going to I'm going to out my conversations with this with the staff the sense was they never felt like they got a clear direction from the regional school committee whether this is something we really want to do or not and um my sense of this just speaking for myself although this thing echoes some conversation with the school committee is that I think a lot of people wanted to do it but we also want to know it's a good idea meaning we'd like to have a further understanding about what the actual cost would be involved um what the process would be involved and then even maybe what the operating model would be um for actually deploying and what the what would be the benefits would be the carbon benefits what would be the cash flow benefits of it yes so just a quick question I mean I think aside from a breach in protocol if you will is there any reason not to vote something like this I mean if the committee agrees uh no that's why that's why it says possible vote okay I just want I just wanted to cut to the chase to make sure that we're understanding I just don't think there's no reason not to either it's just uh I think since I put it on here I wanted to I wanted to like introduce it by saying if you want to wait an extra meeting for the heck of it go ahead and and so so this is basically the point of this is in other words as drafted and I've talked about this with Dr. Boris as well as Mr. Magana was to try to basically put the committee on record that yes we're interested in the idea but we'd also like back some kind of analysis that shows us what you know how would it actually be done what the what the cost and benefits if it would be so that we could make an informed decision around the investment. Mr. Dillon? Dr. Morris what's what would be the cost and time the the time and dollar cost of such accessibility today? So the cost would be roughly $20,000 um time would be having a consultant do that work in a little procurement probably from our business office I don't I'm looking at Mr. Magana I don't think it's the procurement time is exorbitant but I'll let him ask you a question that goes in that though I'm assuming this is triggered by them by the project moving forward we're not doing this absent working on the roof right? Right so it wouldn't be our staff working on the roof and if there was no if we weren't intending to replace it we wouldn't be doing it as part and parcel of the same thing. Okay thank you. Yeah I think the only thing I'll add is we had a question of whether we would do this now or way until we got into the MSBA process and do it as part of the MSBA process and I think we're still looking at that what the pros and cons are doing it now would give us sort of the sense of is the cost so astronomical that it's not something we should even be thinking about or or not so that's sort of this decision we're still with but in terms of the timeline to just procure somebody to look at it it's not that long of a timeline. Notice the cool thing about the motion is it doesn't constrain you from either doing it now or waiting depending on what you think is most practical. It's appreciated. Spencer. I just wanted to ask whether or not this feasibility study would do a comparison to say do something like oh you've got it right there but options for leasing and or purchasing panels but I was also thinking about like the arrays over parking lots at places like UMass and things like that would that be something that would potentially well I'm assuming would be included I just wanted to confirm that it would that's it. So there's there's sort of a separate process that's going looking at that. Oh okay. There was a sort of a request for funds I was submitted to look at the high school parking lot and what an array would look like there so there is a process sort of moving we don't know about the funding yet but this one I think would focus on the roof because of the the replacement piece. There's no parking lot replacement imminent which is sort of a logical time to look at the array over the parking lot. Yeah and just just to be really clear about it to Edwin Smarcano said when we talk about funding that's actually through the state appropriation process not MSPA but actually the state representative has engaged the school district about requesting that from the state budget so that's not actually local it's not something we're requesting from capital from the towns that that that project would be either funded by the state as from the our state representative's request or not. From the parking lot. The parking lot. Yeah absolutely. Just a follow-up question for clarification the $20,000 or so that you mentioned that would cost would that be potentially part of a feasibility study if we are approved by the state because my understanding is that typically the the town ends up paying for a significant portion of the feasibility study. Yeah and I think that's the question that that Michelle Magano was was talking about earlier so the question is whether we want to do that now if we have funds available or wait till that feasibility study process starts. Well my question I think is specifically about the money itself so the $20,000 it doesn't matter if it's being spent now or being spent later we would we would still pay for it no matter what right. Yeah I don't think that would be a reimbursable cost. So would you say the downside is we spend $20,000 we get the results back and the answer is it's either not feasible or it's so astronomical that we would never pursue it and we're out $20,000 that would be the worst case scenario. Yes. I just want to make sure I understand that. Okay. I'll just say you know we are supportive of this motion so in case there was any lack of clarity from the staff and we think it's the right thing to do. Appreciate it. Would you entertain a motion? Yeah sure. I move that the Amherst Pellum Regional School Committee requests that superintendent Morse present a recommendation to the committee as to feasibility of making the middle school roof solar panel ready with the intention of installing solar panels on the roof when the relevant credits and or incentives are next made available by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Further the recommendation will include an analysis of the financial cost benefits of the solar panel project including potential options for leasing and or purchasing panels. The recommendation should include apart from the superintendent the input of the finance director facilities director and a community member with relevant expertise in addition to students and faculty. Tara second. Second. I move 10 second. Any further discussion? Seeing none all those in favor signify by raising your hand carries unanimously. Thank you. 10th grade MCAS exam letter to desi possible vote um if I'm guess well first of everyone saw the letter but I'm guessing also most people are aware that there was a pretty significant and meaningful controversy around a particular letter a particular question an essay that was included within the MCAS exam um that I'm guessing without speaking to the committee because you get a chance to that bothers you as much as it bothers me. Dr. Morris do you want to introduce this? So the goal is that you know there was this question as the chair mentioned and um number of committee members um have read that to me and I think I shared it I can't speak for the committee but there was a concern about um what we were doing and what I was doing as superintendent was a community was the school committee going to make a to provide some advocacy um on behalf of our community to express real concern about this and um and to let the powers that be in this case the commissioner and the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education know of our concerns and so it's as possible vote um because you know we want to present the letter and timeliness perhaps matters but if we're not you know the committee's not ready to vote certainly you know I'm not pushing for that. I do think a couple things I want to share one is that I believe to my knowledge this is the first school committee that's formally taking this up as an issue certainly there's been a lot of public comment towards this if you've followed Boston Globe articles the MTA has been involved the author of the passage Colson Whitehead is an incredible author so separate from this passage I highly encourage you to read his his works I've all had public comments but I don't believe that I've heard of any school committee to date taking action so I just think it's worth mentioning. Yeah and actually one of the things when Dr. Morris and I were talking about this on Friday um there's nothing wrong with this but in the past we've had a tendency for the Dr. Morris to write a letter and send it off and then if the school committee chooses we vote some resolution and then we mail it off and I just felt like this is one of those issues where there's a particular power in having the chief educational leader and the school committee jointly expressing a statement to the commissioner and I just think I think it has a power to it that hopefully would have some level of impact and attention but anyways that's so that was that was the thinking behind it and conveniently if you want to call it that this crazy Brujaha came up really disturbing question came up when we could get it on our agenda tonight which normally doesn't happen but normally have to wait two more weeks to even talk about it so is there any is there any if you hopefully had a chance to read the letter I don't know if you have any comments on it otherwise it's certainly I mean I'm not sure to push you but I'd entertain a motion to approve it as well so I'm very thankful that you put this together in as timely manner as you did I'm very thankful the opportunity to act on this as quickly as we can it's it is truly remarkable thing that happened I mean just to quote one line from your letter deaths and this is quoting a high school teacher who wrote desi has required our students to think and write in the voice of a racist in order to graduate high school and so aside from how unconscionable that is you know the obvious question that you articulate later is is how could desi you know overseeing and running education from from across the state be so disconnected and so lacking the point of view of educators and you know this thematically relates to several issues in advocacy and it's this whole ideology of of assessment and control and input and what what the state who and people administrators who aren't educated are telling educators to do and so I think it's a I think it's a really articulate letter and I'm very happy to support that motion I'd love to I move to accept the letter as written by chair nakajima and dr morris on behalf of the regional school committee to commissioner riley and desi is there a second second moved and seconded me further discussion seeing none all those in favors and if I carries unanimously you've got like a copy that can be signed or something this is cool awesome great people can do it at the end of the meeting yeah we don't want to mess it up at the moment yeah I'll mess it up I'll start that great it's good to get that out of there uh so then now we're going to move to design selection procedures so we move out of this down next after this it seems topically linked so this agenda item looking for a vote so this is getting that out in the beginning it's a second reading the policy sub committee reviewed it last week that's a quick refresher these are selection procedures for architects and other designers when a project when a construction cost of a project exceeds three hundred thousand dollars and the architect fee exceeds thirty thousand dollars so it has to trigger both of those thresholds for these to kick in although we typically follow them anyway these are the procedures that we have followed in the past but we're just trying to formalize the adoption of these procedures and these are the model procedures from the state so it covers everything that's in the law essentially is there any further is there further questions or discussions about this item I know people are busy signing things right now so I don't mean to take your time but design selection procedures any further discussion entertain a motion if one is forthcoming I move to approve the designer selection procedures is there a second a second it's been moved and seconded put by castinson seconded this bit sir any further discussion seeing none all those in favor signify raising your hand for voting if you want to you don't have to carry unanimously thank you this is what I meant for the middle of something you know it's like it goes around right for any object and also very significant I think it's I'm not to go back to it but I'm very pleased that we're able to make this statement speaking of which by the way we might actually we might still actually go and jinx this we might still actually get out of here on time we've now started to move we started to accelerate back on the schedule now unbelievably so there's a lot cooking on advocacy you know I'd like to ask about I'd like to ask about the transparency in charter school act that I saw Mayor Narcowicz was testifying on today you know what this I have no nothing of it really transparency in charter school you know something about this don't you like this is this mma's s14 yes or hoech 14 it is for it I'm sorry for you sorry you want to talk about it certainly we're on we're on advocacy by the way yeah and I mean well I forgive me what I actually did is I just jumped in with a topic on advocacy without the usual preamble and it's because my understanding is there's a very interesting bill that is for the legislature that I think does a couple things I think one it actually literally creates more legal and regulatory transparency enforceable transparency on charter schools and I think it also changes the funding pretty substantially yeah yeah so it tries to mirror um the foundation budget with an increment if for districts that go over the foundation budget amount so that the cost of the cost the district bear of students attending charter school is more aligned actually with what the state says we district should be spending on students it's trying to create a kind of synergy between the foundation budget and charter school funding cool just a quick comment on that I mean I think that the challenge with you know just like we've seen with the foundation budget is we can push to get the state to agree to pay to to fund at a certain level but actually getting them to do that is important for school committees and for districts to come out in support of this you know particular legislation but it's questionable about how far it'll go I don't know if that's your impression or not you know okay dr. Morris and this comment yeah so I think I'm gonna make a broader statement it's related to mr. Doniz's point that this topic came up at the Amherstown council and I think what's relevant is that they explicitly two members explicitly stated that if there are school committee members who are involved in advocacy around state funding for schools that they would actually like to partner on this topic and this bill particularly the one that mr. McChair brought up was one of the ones and it's an interesting one because usually they come from not the MMA side more from you know superintendents MTA, MASC, MASS so that was what was novel about this one it was actually where it originated from and that piqued the interest of Amherstown and I know the other town board of select men or select boards might be interested as well but there was there was a explicit statement that school committee members who wanted to be involved in advocacy they had partners and wanted to connect and anyone who like we could do that. Yeah so forgive me for throwing this out by the way I would a we can't do anything tonight so the couple things we need to do is we need more information about the bill but we I didn't actually get a chance to read here Narco is the statement today it's testimony but I saw it and then I was like cool I want to read this then of course I ran off here and didn't bother so I'd love to get that testimony and share it with all of you and then I think it would be great certainly members of the committee want to do this connect to the town council and see if there's something we could do and something we could even put on our next agenda here where we could maybe approve some letter or some action that would then go forward I think these kind of bills don't move fast enough that it's like it's an absolute emergency to get something out right now and if there's a hearing today then guess what we already missed the hearing so it's like so the point is we have we I think we have a couple weeks to get a letter together if we want to I'm sorry to jump in on this step but I'm just excited. Yeah yeah yeah that's good um so yeah so this so H414 so this is I would put this in the category of no-brainer of course it's doing the right thing it has very little chance of passing because what it does is it shifts hundreds of millions of dollars out of fund charter schools away from districts into the state right and so it requires that and so just because of that price tag it's never going to go anywhere um but it's the reason to push it however yes however it's very important for the MMA in particular which is um I mean to be direct is a more powerful lobbying organization than MASC or school committees typically are because it shifts the idea and I think Mr. Jack in academia you mentioned this last meeting that we talk about charter funding in terms of the pocketbook for the taxpayer because when this shifts what's what's happening is that the with the drain on school budgets from charter schools you get a drain on municipal budgets from the schools which then taps the taxpayer you know so that's the dotted line and so when you have a municipal organization advocating for essentially a school funding formula that that should definitely peak our interest so there's there's no reason why we should not be in support of that and pursue that that being said I think there are some other more urgent um legislative issues going on right now that we could we could also talk about in this topic yeah um but uh but yeah we should certainly it's I almost I almost um forget sometimes to to you know start an advocacy in conversation but we have to fix charter school funding just because I I automatically assume that we can't so it's good to always be hammering it that long letting it I it's like prop two and a half or prop 13 you there are these big tectonic structural things that are absolutely crushing towns and yes it's really hurting our school budgets that's what we focus on and for with good reason it's a lot of the argument we had around four towns meeting where the fiscal pressures are starting to really um you know pull apart the towns in ways that are really unhealthy um and I and I also think I agree with you I think the political power is precisely when you get boards of select boards and town councils across the state town meetings across I mean I still think I've said this before in other venues but the reason why question two lost was not just because people love their schools and love their teachers it's because every single town meeting city council and select board the entire state had a practical experience about how charter expansions were devastating their budgets and they said we want to do more of this um no think of something else there was a very the very direct felt pressure to put this on so I'm sorry to jump on this but this is like this is one of the things that I'm like massively passionate about and the fact that somebody actually moved the bill that we can it's one thing to wave a flag and say I'm upset about this it is much more powerful to say oh that bill over there let's move that bill and even if it dies let's push it again this session the next session right but what now let us know the other things we should I don't want to do other things we should be writing so soon or doing some few suggestions first two should be will be pretty familiar so the we already passed resolutions for the for the promise act which is the omnibus fixed to overhaul the foundation budget which we've you've noted before won't we won't be one of the districts that primarily benefits front but not only is it the right thing to do but when you have a sea change of funding for educational funding it's like a sea that lifts all boats you know we'll start to get more attention to the to the other items so on may 16th that's the big get everybody to boston day there is also a rally at springfield on the same day at 4 30 and so but the primary one's gonna be in boston I talked to several people a few weeks ago at the initial hearing just about you know well what is the secret sauce about how what influences people you know do we have to write to the governor do we have to get people out and it's it's really is there is no secret sauce it really is about getting everybody out there and as much of a loud you know raucous pro education crowd as possible so may 16th 5 p.m. in boston that that is the the simple date that anybody can contribute to the second thing so we always talk about regional transportation reimbursement and advocating for getting that broken promise fully funded we've we've done lobbying efforts in the past to our local legislators I was about to kick off something like that when low and behold the first legislative letter that I saw with all the signatures from the senators and reps already had senator joe cummerford mid representative dome and representative Natalie play every representative who represents our district so that's a great position to be in so I was going to suggest to mr. donia is that we just reach out to them and say thank you and is there anything else that we can do to support that that effort I think by the way I would I would do that right away it's already sort of been done informally but yeah no because I just mean that's saying thank you and knowing you're paying attention yeah and respect that they're doing the most important thing um the third item is I think we've talked about this once or twice before but in governor baker's house 70 bill there is a proposal to change the way that charter mitigation is is doled out and essentially this is the transition aid that if your charter tuition increases year over year right now the master in the law says that in year one you you districts get reimbursed for a hundred percent of that value and then 25 percent in the succeeding four or five years the proposal in the governor's budget which he took him and the secretary piezer and also commissioner Riley interesting we're all nodding heads in support of so they were testifying to the joint committee on education what it would do is essentially um only fund that change in tuition if you're at a five-year peak in your charter cost if you're not at a five-year peak of your charter cost you get nothing and they were pitching this as a way to meet the commitment because this is one of those line items that's subject to appropriation so it's constantly underfunded um but what that would do is actually from from a statewide point of view would reduce the amount the amount obligated to be funded from about 71 million to about 36 million and a lot of districts would be really devastated uh we would be our obligation would go down from a hundred forty seven hundred forty seven thousand so the first year would be 147 thousand this would go down to zero um there's the reason why i i thought we could focus on this is because unlike some other things where we really struggle to get uh political traction because we're out in western central mass we don't have as much concentrated political power this hits the bigger cities with a lot of representation so boston would lose over 11 million dollars places like Worcester and Lowell would lose over a million dollars so we could potentially reach out to other school committees other select boards and say here's this thing that during this very busy time of education funding you need to pay attention to and make sure that this doesn't happen so the motivation is so i so i won't go on too you know too much further but essentially there there's an ideology in in my opinion in the opinion of many that um there are those who do not want to see education fully funded and those who do not want taxes to be raised and those who would like to see a reduction in the funding of public schools uh so that things like charter schools and privatization of schools and social services take a bigger hit off of public services and that is their ideological game i i'm i'm gonna present evidence for that ideology but you can read into the interior lines about but why that is but anyway that's it's also being to be is a practical matter it's a way of eliminating an embarrassment every year somebody says to you you underfund this account so you change the formula and eligibility for the account and all of a sudden you say no actually we're full it's not to be more like administratively bureaucratical but it's like but there's many other things that are done including actually the entire baseline formula for funding charters which are deeply ideological this one i think is actually more bureaucratically cynical than that it's like i want to make this problem go away how do i tell everyone it's fully funded without without raising taxes or spending more money you know i just i just simply change the formula so all the all the language in support of this is we want to be a better partner to schools we want to meet our commitment and what they're doing is cutting it in half if you change the formula to the commitment they suddenly are exactly so anyways we should probably so just sorry to interject i'm just wondering you know what would be helpful for the chair and for the committee from you know presumably me and mr. demling uh to to bring you know for the next advocacy report right because this is felt a little disjointed and we you know we haven't reported we don't have a plan that's what should there be a plan right like should there be something that we're presenting to the committee to approve you know is there's something that could be potentially helpful beyond just the work that yeah i think i think there's a couple things i mean one i think we actually should have more of a plan i mean we know what the roadmap is for the various budgets that are going to be released by house and senate ways and mains and then the process of going through the voting their budgets and then reconciling their budgets we know the timeline right so it's every same within a few days or a week of each other they're the same every single year so we know what the roadmap looks like in terms of this stuff um what we what we really need to know is um i think there are a couple things one i actually think it'd be useful if we could draft a letter um and then forgive me for saying this it could be with the superintendent without him depending on how because i don't think there's much partisan in this i think most of it's actually i don't mean partisan meaning an elected retort an elected official's rhetorical statement as opposed to sort of the facts and depending on how we want to swing it i think we should actually develop some kind of a letter that includes sort of in his omnibus all the different elements that we think are actually really important for our district it should include language of support for our legislators where they are already working or supporting or doing things so we should be gracious about it and we should be prepared to submit it to to our representatives but also any relevant committee as well and then i think beneath that if there are particular items of advocacy where we could be pull something out around for example what you're describing mr demling um we should probably find out where we're getting traction you know what's what is msc working on on this what you know how does it sync up with mta is doing rural schools or whatever so that we can you know i mean so that what we're doing is strategic if we think we can do something where we can lead or champion that's great but i wonderfully have the uh the time and the energy to that i mean if we do we do that's awesome but if there's a bandwagon to jump on and to amplify we should probably try to do that and then if possible i would suggest next meeting we get some sort of an outline or of where we go okay that's great that's helpful direction all right cool thank you um one idea is that forgive me if the letter in the bulletin is exclusively for the local amor schools but it seems like if there are really items on the agenda for advocacy where we'd like the public to get more engaged i think potentially a letter in the bulletin might be a good way to make the public aware and encourage participation sure just also advertise that we're paying attention to this and it's on the top of our agendas um can i speak to that so the the letter in the bulletin because it was the amorous bulletin was specific to the amor school committee but i think if the chair and if the committee wanted to maybe work with the other you know representatives from the other towns and try to see it some way of of coordinating something across the different you know papers maybe because that carries something and then you know probably do something like that too but we can certainly help draft some language that could be used in all those different ways i think that would be great i think i think that'd be great you can certainly get more attention yeah and potentially action yeah that's great and actually we you know we should do if we can't actually do it before me 16th yeah that's feeding to getting right yeah right yeah i mean why the heck not uh so that sounds great okay uh okay at the risk of moving things along we're gonna move things along and there are no gifts as we said earlier super in school committee planning so other than math update um what do we have next time so i have superintendent evaluation tool there's two policies one for a possible vote one for a first read that i received from mcdonald from the policy subcommittee an update in strategic planning seems like advocacy probably should be oh yeah third quarter budget yep there's another one and just as a preview for may i've got superintendent evaluation evaluation a bunch of stuff artifacts and others a seal of biliteracy so the seal of biliteracy is not to go into detail but just so people know what that is the state with the look act created a pathway for students to graduate with an additional what it sounds like skill of biliteracy for bilingual students we've been our staff have been doing a bunch of work on that we need to actually bring it to the regional school committee to keep you in the loop and eventually for a vote that vote probably wouldn't be in may but just we want to update that vaping prevention i'd like to put that on after that meeting the PD that i'm attending in may that you were all invited to not literally all core issues but you were all cordially invited to attend homelessness and lead start with two other topics that i have from previous meetings that people had shared and the other one was how work load at the secondary level that we'd like to get to in the two main meetings and it could be later maybe in june but we wanted to round out at some point it is a presentation on food services and a preview of anything actually thank you i did not have that but you're 100% cool as always if there are other topics people are interested in they can email me the superintendent there's a yes with the vaping i feel like it could potentially intersect with the conversation that we still haven't had i don't think on marijuana just putting it out there though i think we in a while ago talked about that okay substance abuse more generally perhaps okay want to broaden that out great without losing vaping i think i know there's a lot of discussion about it but there might be an intersection uh i think it would be um great wonderful is there a move to adjourn so moved is there a second second it's like no one wants to all those in favor it's like we it's unanimous we're adjourned three minutes early