 Let's begin. First, I don't see any members of the public, so I'm going to assume there is no public comment. Next up, consent agenda, which would be the minutes from the previous meeting, is anybody have any adjustments to those minutes that they'd like to talk about before we approve them? All right, so silence is consent in this case only. So we're going to approve the minutes from last meeting. You want to give me visual thumbs up, so I feel like we've actually done so. Awesome. All right, next up, committee membership updates. And I want to say a warm welcome to Meg Vosin, who you should be visible on your screen. Meg expressed interest probably almost a month ago at this point, but because of the the order of events and process, the board appointed Meg to this committee last week. I sent Meg a metric ton of things to read, and I'm sure that she's read through every one of our minutes and all the other things. Welcome, Meg. We're very glad to have you. If you have any questions at any point this evening, feel free to raise a hand and we're happy to read you in a little bit further. Glad you're with us. I think I already said Joe cannot make it tonight, Rhett cannot make it, and Kale and Merrick are anticipating being a little bit late. Next up, outreach efforts. How are these going? What support can we offer? I'm just going to read through the other two points, reflections and learning from efforts to date. And then report on the my thought exchange work from Libby, a report that I think Libby and Anna or Anna pulled together. And then we'll move as quickly as we can to we'll move as quickly as we can to planning the next steps. I did do a little teeny bit of the updating of the calendar before this meeting started, but it may not be completely accurate, so we'll try to double check that. I especially want to get to tonight nailing down where we're going to be for the 25th and 26th. I see Nancy Reid just joined. Nancy, we blasted through public comment because there is nobody here, but if you have a comment and you want to address the group, let me know. Thank you. Just listening. OK, great. Thanks for joining us. Yep. All right. So membership updates we just did. Meg, yes. I reach efforts. How are these going? It's so my head's a little bit spinning on this. Libby pause for a second on the my thought exchange. Let's see. Yeah, my head is really OK. So since the last meeting, for example. All right, I just wanted to put in the chat so people had it while I was thinking about it. Didn't mean to throw you off course there, Nathan. No, no, no, no, you didn't at all. And thank you. That's good. So except that now everybody's going to click on and be reading and they're not listening to me and it's all about me, Libby. So since our last meeting, Dottie, Rat and I met with students at RBS and I think four groups of students on an exercise that Dottie had designed. And I think that went pretty well, you know, sort of all things considered, given that some of those folks were kindergarten first grade. And so that's encouraging, Beth, the principal there and other staff, Tina Young, were super accommodating. And so, Dottie, when she comes back on screen, if she wants to reflect on that a little bit, I would love to hear her thoughts. We had, let's see, we were I met with teachers at MSMS. Did that happen before the last meeting? OK. I had a second meeting with teachers, the staff at MSMS this afternoon, and I can talk to that later. If need be, Nick Connor was going to meet with Roxbury Village School's teachers this afternoon. But we are really hurting for staff in the district right now, a lot of people out. And so Nick was subbing at the middle school and we have punted on. Yes, thank you, Nick. Libby is clapping. We punted on the staff meeting with Roxbury Village School until a week from today. And I think Nick and I may team up and do that one together. Seiji was at the farmer's market. Seiji, do you want to talk about that? It was much more successful in the winter market. Got a fair amount of feedback. Unfortunately, there wasn't really a common theme to the feedback. It was sort of all over the place, but it was good to engage with people and meet more people. I think I told you last time I saw you, it was much more difficult than anticipated tabling. People don't want to give you their time, but it was it was good. And the the market attendance had a sticker board for people's ages. So when you walked in, you had a little round sticker and put it on your quadrant for your age. And that actually worked really well. So I think if we can identify a good single question to ask and have that format, I think it's good because people don't really have to give us too much time. It's, you know, put a sticker on the board and move on. Yeah. And I think maybe, I don't know, something that just to draw people there. My face isn't enough. So, you know, something shiny or. You didn't come get some swag. I had it ready for you. I got the swag. Yeah. Anna gave me the swag. You mean the key chains and draw people in? You know, maybe maybe. I own a brewery. We could work on that. Yeah, let's talk about that. But we this week, I was next to the band. So that helped out with the traffic a lot. The week prior, I was kind of in a corner and no one really stopped by. But yeah, being being next to the band was was key. OK, so I one of the things I'm appreciating about this and the work with Dottie at RVS and Rhett and Kaitlin and myself at the race race against racism is we do have a chance to refine this and sort of try some different strategies. So, Seji, I'm appreciating that feedback. And if you want. Collaboration on sort of the one question in the quadrant and letting people vote by sticker, I'm happy to collaborate with you on that or hear your, you know, hear your ideas and then help make that happen. Right. Sounds good. Tina, I see your hand. Go ahead. I just wanted to know, Seji, could you pick one thing you've got out of the time you've been there that you think is significant or not for that matter? I would say the one piece my main takeaway has been when you talk to people about school, it's hard to. Or it really it becomes personal instantly. So everybody's feedback is very, very unique. And it's it's it's about them, which, yeah, that's what I'm asking them. But it's so I've found it hard in my time so far on the board to get a common piece of feedback. I mean, COVID's a struggle, that's one common thing. But otherwise, the needs are very different, very specific to the people's backgrounds, to the children's abilities. So, you know, they're their goals and everything. So it's really wide ranging. So unfortunately, that's the feedback is that it's been kind of scattered. Not surprised. Thank you. Yeah. Seji, when people are sharing those things, is there a do you are you able to ask a follow up question or, you know, sort of lead towards something that's that would be concrete to us, you know, ask them, you know, given your experience, what would what do you wish were different? Some, you know, something like that that would. Yeah, I think I need to work on my my follow ups to when I interact with people because I don't really push for more details, but I'll do that going forward. OK. Yeah, nothing too actionable. But, you know, people some people walk by and they they didn't have any feedback immediately, so to ask them what they liked about their school if they were in a different district or something, just trying to get some some conversation going and get some information. OK. I'm also happy to brainstorm, Schwag, even if it's, you know, something straight forward as lollipops or one of the things that Rhett and I talked about. But I think you and I talked about it also is, you know, we do have we have gift card, we have a budget for gift cards. If they as far as I'm concerned, if they fill out one of those just one sheet green card stock, you know, answer that one question and hand it into you, they can fill out a pink a pink slip that would allow me to send them a gift card. OK. You know, maybe we just need a poster that says gift cards. Yeah, you know, that would get a penny for your thoughts. OK, so, you know, I think that this is. So for one thing, gift cards were imagined, I imagined gift cards as an enticement for people to fill out the survey. We've got a ton of people who fill out the survey, who are sort of as we described within a demographic that's not a surprise. And so I think that it's time to, you know, up our game and be a little bit more aggressive and maybe at the farmer's market, if I'm there, you know, we can just get out in the crowd and say, hey, would you fill this out? If you come back to that table with this filled out, we can give you a gift card or something like that. And I can I can buy a bunch of gift cards so they're just it's instant gratification. OK. What else do we have? We had. Susie, I don't know if you've done made more progress at the elementary school. We're not. Not really. OK. And I don't know if you've gotten, you know, people responding to the when you were there in person or when you talked to the staff meeting. But I haven't I haven't heard anything else. OK. I think that did create a bump in the survey response. And then the two the two public gatherings that we have nailed down as of now are the 12th and 17th at the US playground from six to seven 30. And so I'm hoping that those are easy and accessible. But we'll circle circle back to that. Let's see. Mel, how's our and I go ahead, Susie. Oh, no, you're not talking to me. Sorry, three kids just came home and I'm trying to direct traffic. That's fine. Let them know that I want some popcorn, too. Mel and I had a good brainstorming planning conversation for how to work with or try to connect with students who are on 504 plans or IEPs. We have reached out to professionals in the district who are in that area. And Bill Dice got back to us this morning, indicating that that he sees our idea as a viable way forward. So Mel and I will follow up on that. Dottie, I did not get a chance to dig into your email this morning, but it looks like Dottie has some ideas for refining the exercise that she designed. And I have a list of teachers' names from Linda Bullpray at UES. So Dottie, you and I and anyone else who's interested can start to schedule some UES student sessions. We're excited about that. Mel, go ahead. I saw your hand. I'm just curious, because we we could get maybe we can get feedback from this committee, because what we had talked about for the sessions with with kids who have IEPs and 504s, it would be similar to kids who do not have 504s and IEPs, which is that we were talking about how would parents like like choose what format for kids to to participate in. So what we were proposing was to via the special education staff sending out correspondence to families to be able to pick whether they're going to do something in person, virtual, whether the parent wants to be part of it or not. Is that like I just I wonder for the parents on this committee, like, is that a you think that would work? Like, if you got a letter about this. With this letter, say to me, there are these times I could go somewhere to talk about this, or I'm not sure what the letter is saying, you're asking the letter doesn't exist yet. But I get the letter that here are the dates. If they're like there will be by the time the letter goes out, there will be dates with times, you know, and you pick you pick whether you're giving permission for this and whether you, you know, which which date you want and whether you want to be there for it or not. You mean permission to talk to the kids now, is that what you mean? Sorry, I messed up hard. What's different, so so what what Nathan brought up that was different, perhaps different for kids on 504s and IEPs is like without getting permission ahead of time, families may understandably flip their lids if they're getting pulled out from services or pulled out from something that's not a service, like the timing ends up being something that that the school may hear about. And so proactively collaborating with families to see what's going to make sense. So like if they don't want their child, even for like 30 minutes, going to have a conversation and missing something, then perhaps they would choose an after school thing instead. But we can but but but I think that it sounds like we maybe need to get more feedback, including from you about about what that should look like. Yeah, I'm just worried about purple violations. I mean, we have we I'm worried that. Go ahead, too. Well, I'm worried that if I have a child that's special ed, I'm wondering why you're just asking them. Why is that special ed child not part of a community of a group of kids? That are also not special ed. That's what I'm not sure what Libby thinks about that. We have I mean, we have targeted, which is like an awful word, but I don't I don't just identified intentionally people intentionally grouped. Letters to go home to groups of people with special ed being one identifying factor. BIPOC being another to invite or to encourage responses. And we haven't been very successful from that. We find that the most success happens when it's a friend reaching out to talk to people, not when it's even a case manager. I don't think would qualify as a as a friend. I don't I don't think you'd get the traction on that. I think any if we were to go down that route, it would have to come from the district because of FERPA. We don't we don't want to break any FERPA violations. So that that gets tricky with a with a community group. Am I making sense now? Absolutely. So it sounds like we should have a have have more conversation about what are the different options for this identified group to to be reached and where is this allowed to take place and from whom does the invitation come and all of those logistics to make sure that we're FERPA compliant and that we're giving people freedom and choice. And just to clarify the genesis of that process that Mel and I were going through was, you know, I think I think Mel's point, which I still agree with is it may be it may be more difficult for students in. Five or fours or IEPs to engage with our process. So let's make a special effort. I pointed out that, you know, the the time sort of in classroom. That that in classroom experience and that in classroom learning is pretty precious and that sort of any time folks are pulled out of class that's sort of high stakes. And so we were trying to navigate a way through this and I'm so I'm glad to hear more feedback. Libby, maybe Mel and I should follow up with you after this meeting, so that's not OK. And I think that Tina, your question is, Tina, your question, you know, we are our approach sort of to the general population is to try to find teachers who are willing to meet with us with their classes and give some class time to just the whole group. And obviously, that's not a that's not a FERPA issue and we're not going to be identifying kids and our results. All right. So I should say it seems to me that that's not a FERPA issue. I will confess that I don't know the ins and outs of that completely. Go Mel. A few months ago, maybe maybe even a long time ago, I think I ended up connecting with Ryan Heridy, the former UES principal, is now superintendent in Memorial, and he had done some community like some student focus groups when he first became superintendent. And I was very curious about that when I learned about it and I asked him, like, what would you learn? Like, like, what was a successful forum? And he said that, like, the critical variable was that the group needs to have been a group that was a group already. So, like, the idea of doing a focus group of a class is way better than a random group. Because you really and we talked about this last meeting, like safety is a prerequisite, regulation is a prerequisite for engagement. And so I don't know, I think that it's not necessary. Like, you know, we want to have these big community opportunities, but that's not safe for all brains. And so I think that if we want to double down and like focus on outreach to individual classes, I think the Tina's point that might really be much more, I don't know, like a really good use of our time. So that that is that has already happened at Roxbury and it's going to happen at UES and it's going to I got a bunch of names of a bunch of teachers volunteered for that today at NSMS. So I think that's on track. Let's table the rest of the smell and you and you and I can follow up with Libby. Is that okay, Libby? Okay. Other outreach. Let's see. So I think that that I think that's sort of where we're at in terms of active things that have happened since last time. The the the cards I described, I don't have an example with me, but when Rhett and Caitlyn and I were reflecting a little bit after the race against racism and thinking about Seiji at Farmers Market, I came up with a design to an eight and a half by 11, one page, just, you know, single question that had a drawing of the thought bubble. And then the second the bottom half of it had some simple demographics that match the demographics from the my thought exchange. The idea being if we're only getting a little bit of some of these attention in a little bit of time, just ask one question. And I did that for four different questions. You know, a vision one of values one thrive and I can't remember the fourth one, but so that if you're Seiji at the Farmers Market, you can sort of curate which ones you're handing out or ask people to respond. So we haven't it sounds like we haven't really tested that yet. So let's we'll see how that goes. I want to jump in unless there are other questions I want to go to Libby's presentation about the my thought exchange. Libby, do you join me to hand you the rain so you can screen share? Yeah, I want to see that. We see what I need to do that. Share options. Okay. I think I can do it. Yep. I just changed it to all participants. So go for it. Oops, hold on. Let me just get my usually I'm the one in control. Nathan, you messin me up here. I can also share my share my screen and just advance when you want me to advance. You can be there too. Okay. Um, so I apologize that this didn't get and now that I'm sharing, oops, stop. No, I'm sharing. I can't see you all. So just interrupt me. Um, I apologize this didn't get out earlier to the group. The thought exchange ended today and we had to wait until the whole thing was ended before we could create anything. And so I can pull up thought exchange here so you can see all the, all the fun things we can do. Um, my assistant and I went through this with me today and we created this, um, relatively quick slide shows so you can see what happened. So here's what, here's what our question was. What are the most impactful things our schools can do to prepare the students for the future? Um, you can see the breakdown of the participation, which pretty much matches the survey that went out. Um, mostly female, mostly highly educated, uh, mostly Montpelier. So you can, you can see all the demographics that answered this survey and Nathan asked if this was a, how was this response in comparison to other community thought exchanges that we did? And it, it's pretty, it matches the participation in other thought exchanges that we've done. Um, so let's get to the good stuff. Uh, you can do all kinds of fun things with thought exchange. So here are the big words that popped up from all of the, the answers. Um, here's a theme. So Anna and I went through, you can thought exchange does it two different ways. You can compute, they, they like do an AI theme, which don't really match what people say. And then, or you can go in and make your own themes. So these themes are ones that Anna and I created today as we are going through all of the thoughts, um, that came up. Uh, other is just a bucket. There's only two or three thoughts in there. Um, it's just a bucket that they, those thoughts didn't fit into anything else. Like there was no other group that it matched to. So you can see the top themes, um, by total thought, social emotional learning came out on top. And we can talk about that more of what that means in a second. Critical thinking was by far the next, uh, biggest thought. Kind of basic life skills was a catch-all phrase for reading. Kind of that college and career readiness. We probably could have said that and said that instead of basic life skills, but it's basically the basic skills of reading, writing, be ready for adulthood, that kind of thing. Uh, advanced coursework were people who really wanted their children pushed or accelerated. Um, there were some staffing concerns around either teacher effectiveness or paying teachers. Were the two big, big parts of that accountability. And when it says accountability, it's not, um, it's talking specifically about discipline and behavior of kids holding kids accountable for their behavior. Uh, there was some themes around hands-on learning, global citizenship, STEAM, um, which is STEM with some arts thrown into it, so it's science, technology, education, arts, mathematics, uh, mathematics. The other piece, a little bit of a creativity. There are some people who talked about nutrition and then there are a few people who talked about climate. Um, these are just some of the cool ways how you can look at it this way. So this is the, uh, tile view of all of those themes. You can, so it's basically the bar graph put into more of a tile format, so you can see how big certain themes came out. Here's the star score. So when people went into, uh, indicate which they agreed with most, that was given a star and critical thinking in global citizenship had the top two slots for star score. So they were, they were the ones that, that spoke to people most, those two themes. These heat maps are pretty cool. Um, when we were talking about, um, I think we were talking about last week how you can disaggregate the data, you can disaggregate the data with these heat maps in pretty much any way. So in this way, it was through the town of residents from the survey respondents. So you can see in Montpelier, if you were from Montpelier, um, you answered in critical thinking and accountability and behaviors, advanced coursework, global citizenship, the ones that are really dark blue. That's what really spoke to the citizens of Montpelier or the residents of Montpelier in Roxbury. Similarly, you can see what came through with the dark blue marks, um, there. And then the other are people who, uh, had access to the survey but may not live in Montpelier or Roxbury. Um, so I'm not exactly positive who that might be, but my assumption would be that they're grandparents or they're, um, just citizens of community members who are people who just care about our education system. Here's another heat map in response to, um, I am a, so I'm a student, I'm a caregiver of a Montpelier-Roxbury student. I'm a Montpelier-Roxbury faculty member and you can see how they ranked according to theme as well. Um, again, the darker blue are the ones that popped for those people. So for instance, if I look at global citizenship, that really popped for Montpelier faculty members or staff and caregivers of Montpelier-Roxbury students, um, so that's just a way to read these heat maps and another way that you can, uh, disaggregate the data that we got from this thought exchange. And I can, I can go into thought exchange if you want to see others there. And then just some top five highest rated thoughts for, um, this is just overall, the top five higher, highest rated thoughts on the entire exchange, not by theme, um, but just by thought. And, and everybody in the community can actually see, see these thoughts. They're, they're live and you can see it, but we'll put this web, we'll put this presentation up as well. This is, puts it into some nice buckets. So there's top thoughts by, uh, critical thinking. This is what people said. Just a second there. The top thoughts that people said for global citizenship. The ability on children's behavior. The other thing to keep in mind is that a thought can be attributed to two separate themes. So you may see thoughts in two different themes, um, in terms of advanced coursework. Yep. Can you back up one? Yeah, sure. The, uh, the accountability one, I'm not sure, I'm not sure if we, I'm not sure if we have the tools yet to sort of pull that apart, but it's, I'm struck by, you know, one of these says, uh, teach challenge and respect, hold kids accountable for their actions. Um, and then another one says consequences and accountability. And, you know, some of those bend towards sort of a, uh, I, what I'm going to simplify is like law and order, like indicating that somebody feels feels like there's not enough rule, um, adherence to the rules. And then others are maybe, you know, it's, it's about tolerance and it's about healing and so I'd be very interested to, if you have any thoughts on that or, uh, that might be something we can dig into a little bit at the community gatherings to hear people go into that. Yeah, I think that's what you just find, right? So they're all around the same theme, but they're coming at it from very different avenues. Um, some more from an appreciative inquiry avenue and then others for, from more of a, um, top down kind of discipline and rules avenue. So that's what's interesting about any kind of feedback from community, right? You get, you get the differences and we could do a differences analysis through this thought exchange. Um, and Anna and I looked in, looked at that and we didn't find it productive for this particular exchange because there weren't enough opposing views. There are just a few that pop like the ones that you notice there, faith in. Yeah. Okay. Um, advanced coursework, those are the top thoughts by advanced coursework. Um, creativity getting into some of the lesser. Here's what people said about stopping. Can you back up one once again? Yeah. So I just want to call out the top one here under creativity says elementary equals play based middle equals project based high school equals interest based. Um, and I, this is the kind of comment that I find fascinating and a little bit challenging in this process because um, sort of halfway between vision and sort of educational program design or something like that. Um, yeah. So the, you know, as just a shot, I uh, heads up to the committee. As we get into June and we start sort of trying to make meaning out of all this information we've got, we're going to start with, uh, what do comments like this mean and how do we, how do we distill them into a vision and then how do we take what's not vision and put it into a parking lot that's still information the district should have but isn't directly relevant to this process. Yeah, it's a good point, Nathan. Um, stopping. You know, this is another one that you get anywhere from um, increased teacher pay to raise the standards of teachers because they're not, they're not, some aren't doing things effectively right now. It's the same piece of dichotomy that you were talking about earlier. Uh, social emotional learning. Here's our top thoughts. Uh, basic life skills. This was kind of tricky to nail down but I think basic life skills is the best way to put it hands on learning and seeing. And that's pretty much the slideshow. I'm happy to go if everybody wants to see some other things that um, the differences or um, some other heat maps because we could see I am a Montpelier Roxbury faculty. We could go into that much more deeply if we wanted to. Um, but there's, there's lots of other ways you can disseminate this data. Any thoughts people have on that? It's fun stuff when you start segregating it. I can walk out on it for a while. So I just want to say out loud, uh, when Libby and I composed this question we we tried really hard to make this question a new question that wasn't being asked in the survey. So we so even if we people responded to this we were not getting uh, double counting more or less and uh, so just grateful to Libby for that time in that thinking. Um, we go to the tops. Well, actually I can go to the top side. Hold on a second. This had uh, uh, 138 participants, 69 thoughts and 1,964 ratings. Is that right? Okay. So just you know in raw numbers our our big survey is up to 258 respondents. This was 138 participants. We've got some students, we've got some teachers we're about to get community members. Um, so you know one of the things we're going to be thinking about as a group is now we're going to be getting into the in-person meetings and feedback that's not easily sorted because it's not in a survey and it's not an thought exchange and so we're going to be we're going to have this pretty big amount of quantitative data and then we're going to have a big amount of messier stuff where we have to make some interpretation about, okay, what is this what is this comment speaking to? So what I'll go ahead now. Do we have any like a baseline demographic data for the district so that we can compare percentages of what we get to like what we should expect just to see that like this so I might look at this demographic data, there's not a lot of this population but I would want that to match like the makeup of the district at least. Right. Libby, if you have this. Hold on now I'm pulling it up. Yeah, I'm pulling it up right now. I'll link it in the chat. Hold on. Yeah, thank you for that. So we had to we had I'm sorry we had to pull that information for for our professor. And it's on our website and putting in the chat right now so you can get it easily. You just go down a little bit on this document. It's all there now. Thank you for that. This is just a nitpicky thing but Libby was categorizing the things from the thought exchange and one of the ones was basic life skills. But to me basic life skills are different than reading and writing and arithmetic. I think that those are basic academic skills. So just if we're going to be kind of trying to like, you know group all the information and organize maybe we can just add like academics to that subtitle so that that's what that's about. I just think of basic life skills as different things than that. I would push back in that yes there are much there are many more broader things than basic life skills and basic reading, writing and math would be part of those as well. I think it's a larger bucket but that's what people responded with speaking to the reading, writing, math because we're talking about schooling so it makes sense but I'd push back that that's part of that bucket. Not the whole bucket. Maybe if we could just add like academics and like parentheses or something. I don't know. I just think that that way like people we're all talking about the same thing. Oops to me that seems like a different thing so I just want to if we're like quantifying people's ideas that way it's we're recording it the right way. Mella see your hand. It's just a clarifying question about this so it might be helpful because I agree with both of you. So it's there if people only talked about reading math like basic those kinds of basic academic skills and they weren't talking about things like like taking care of your self type basic skills like self care type basic skills. If they weren't saying that I guess what I'm kind of hearing is like maybe it's concerning to like the communities said that when they really only meant math and reading I don't know but I think that's kind of how I see all of those new points balancing. Yeah or the other way around to people are saying like you know self regulation self care and they're not talking about math. So yeah either way can I ask you a question to be because I haven't done the deep dive that you and Anna did are there is it possible that this could be a way to base it you know sort of basic academics and then I guess my no my question is what other things where people mentioning that weren't math and reading and stuff like that that are still in this bucket is probably put into social emotional learning if we're talking about emphasizing perspective taking you know all of those things were put more into social emotional learning than basic life skills so I'll confess this is I'm going to date myself right when but again you can put things into buckets right so it may have shown just the way the slides were showing right so those were the top themes but those could have also bed in somebody else's bucket does that make sense well and I caught myself when you said basic life skills you know back in the day when high school we had home economics and some of that was how to cook an egg and some of that was how to balance your checkbook like things like that that's what I feel like basic life skills are too so maybe I'm old school too Nathan well so I just wonder I mean this is to Libby you know would you feel okay shifting that title to something that is that does point more towards I don't know if it's just basically I don't I don't particularly care absolutely do that I'm not tied to it that strongly there was I do remember one thought that was that was basically like teach kids how to be an adult or the skills that they need to be an adult which would be much broader right then reading writing math so I'd have to look at that one okay thank you very much for that are we okay to trust Libby to look at that one more time and then we can keep moving I trust Libby to look at that one more time okay so next up for me is looking ahead and planning ahead and I'm going to pause for just a second because Carmen is on Elliot is on and I and Meg just do you have any thoughts or reflections I know we're going to talk about some tabling at the high school and things like that but I just want to hear from students for a minute I haven't had any thoughts that haven't been repeated by someone else tonight so I think I'm okay for now I don't know if you get away with a thumb there Meg I agree with what Carmen said I have been having a very hard time hearing everything's been going in and out so I've caught maybe a third of what's been said Meg do you have anything to add Emery is just tuning back in Elliot if you can hear me I wonder if for the next meeting you can be at the high school either in the library sort of not too near me or something like that in a way that you've got good service because if you're only hearing a third of this I'm concerned I want you to have more complete access than that Emery I was just I just sort of hit pause on all the adults talking and I was asking for any reflections you all have as students alright so Emery do you have something sorry I'm trying to read your face no okay alright so looking ahead the 12th and the 17th so the 12th is this Thursday we're holding a community gathering at the UES the weather is going to be gorgeous if not hot we will have snacks and refreshments I have made posters that I'm putting up around town which may be backwards in your view also put it up on Facebook on the Friends of My Pealier group but I want to make sure that we get this out through multiple networks I haven't done it on but I'll put it out on front porch forum Suzy do you want to continue to be an avenue to front porch forum sure I will okay this first one is what time six to seven thirty both on the 12th and the 17th and then the poster the link on front porch on Facebook and we can do this on front porch so has an opportunity for folks to let us know if they need childcare and to let us know if they need interpreters I'm aware that for the 12th if people need interpreters for example we're pushing it in terms of having enough notice childcare I think we can probably muster but that was something that Libby and I talked about before we had a committee as possibly coming from the school to bring high school students Libby is that do you think that's still viable and should I go through you or should I try to gin up my own version childcare for Thursday yeah I'm not sure if we have enough time now for childcare for Thursday I'm sorry that wasn't on my to-do list I'm sorry I'm sorry because it wasn't on your to-do list and that's not on you okay so I'll see what I can do as far as that goes I think we can probably manage to pull that together if only somebody had two amazing kids who would be great childcare providers hit up your lovely children so then what I would love is if some of you want to join us for the 12th and the 17th partly to just participate but also partly to see how the community gathering like this can go that we are we've got some facilitation design around and that you know because it's pretty those conversations are pretty exciting it's not a ton of time but I think it's about what we can expect to get in terms of people's attention on a weeknight and then as has happened with every other piece of this there will there's always refinement there are always things we can do better things we learn there's two more coming up on the 25th and 26th of May and I think those will probably be better partly because they will have more notice ahead of time and because we will refine our process one of those I would like to hold in Roxbury and it's out from talking with folks in the Roxbury community there's not a strong preference for the 25th or 26th down there I would really like it if some of our committee especially my peculiar folks come join us in Roxbury because I think that it is important to show up for that community if we're not from there and to listen so tonight I want to nail down which of those nights we do in Roxbury in which we do in Montpelier again that's the 25th and 26th and in any minute now I can tell you what days of the week those are Wednesday and Thursday thank you Tina so do folks have any strong thoughts about Roxbury or Montpelier for either one of those dates how about this is there a better date where more of us could make it down to Roxbury I can help drive if you're a student what time is the event shooting for six to seven thirty for these weeknight events they're for either day yeah um how far away is Roxbury I mean I can also just look this up but it's far that's not that far twenty thirty minutes depending on an hour yeah either day works for me which days are they tentatively scheduled for so far so in Montpelier the 12th and 17th you know elementary school playground and then the 25th and 26th one date at Roxbury Village School and one date probably again at UES unless we choose to have a different venue up here and we do want to join us for one of those definitely be available the 25th and possibly the 27th I don't know if I could get it right I heard you say you're available the 25th and maybe the 26th uh yeah definitely the 25th probably the 27th okay so let's um and Meg is saying either day works um so Mel is saying could go to UES on Wednesday um but Mel you have a five year old but there will be childcare and it'll be fun because if there's I don't have the kind of five year old who will um find that accessible fair enough okay so what I'm shooting what I'm hearing is let's go down to Roxbury on Wednesday the 25th and then stay up in Montpelier on the 26th um because I think it'd be it'll be fun to have um Meg, Emory and Carmen and Nick down in Roxbury on the 25th okay um Mel if you feel like Thursday frees up and you can come to UES or uh you know be great to have you there um okay so and then I'm going to try to get a couple more dates in you know I'm just keenly aware that we are approaching the end of May it's effectively summer it's the end of school so we're going to lose people's attention but I'm I'm feeling like we haven't quite cracked the cracked the code on especially getting to some of our marginalized groups um I am doing outreach with uh the folks in the schools who work with English language learners either to attract you know folks who are English from English is not a first language to one of these events or to create a different event uh that is specifically designed and accommodating around that population because I think that's pretty important Tina I see your hand go ahead um I'm since you're talking about timetables I'm a little curious the last time we talked you said you were giving a presentation to the board on the second board meeting in June which is the 15th and um for us to have these groups talk about a vision and values and as I see it we have a meeting on June 6th but that's the only meeting before the 15th so how are you pulling that off Nathan so I think this falls into the category of the expanded timeline for this process and credit to Tina for asking this question be email ahead of time to which I said I'm really focused on the public engagement I don't have an answer about June um so I think Tina that the our two meetings of this committee in June need to be where we try to so I want us to prepare I want me and some of us to prepare a bunch of the information we've gathered ahead of the June 6th meeting get it to the group so that we can address a few core questions at that meeting and at the following meeting and so that between these two meetings we generate a draft uh the best conclusions we can from what we've got to that point I know so I don't expect this community to stay engaged past June at least not in a sort of you know bi-weekly meeting um it may be that the we come back to the board with something that's further refined in late August but I don't have a firm plan on that yet I think it's too bad Nathan as you know that the board doesn't have it ahead of time to think about it so that when you come back in August they're ready to talk about well I'm not saying the board won't have it I'm saying as you're saying it's tight okay yeah so let's let's pause and talk about that a little bit further the you know we just had looking at the my thought exchange and we called out a couple different statements that were challenging uh in terms of how they would fit in and how we would interpret that feedback as a committee you know if especially we have full attendance 17-18 people that's a lot of discussion and a lot of work uh our meetings have been 90 minutes each which is not a ton of time to sink our teeth into those questions and then achieve some resolution so question to the committee are you up for some longer meetings in June that allow us to sort of work possibly even in person which might be an easier way to do that than virtually where we can sort of break into groups we can write things down we can draft some things uh I'd love to get to that point hopefully this current COVID wave will be passed or maybe we can meet outdoors um I'm game for longer meetings I do think it's going to be complicated work but it's also exciting work how about this if you're up for meetings that are longer than 90 minutes give me one thumb up that's kind of not fair is it um I'm up for that also if you're up for meeting in person in June even if it's outside to try to be safe give me another thumb up okay uh Libby you find without prior to June 17th Libby are you out after that yes I'm taking a well-deserved vacation what schools great so it's possible then that we may also try to cram we try to reschedule creatively so that we can accommodate the most people on this committee to be participating in this process maybe we could meet two Mondays in a row in June instead of every other yep I think that makes sense because Libby's voice is pretty valuable and she really didn't have anything planned for the uh 13th anyway just laying around eating bonbons um okay so what else do we have so other things that are on our docket uh Nick is still here so Nick and I are going to try to do some neighborhood outreach and that was something that other folks had expressed interest in Nick and I haven't nailed down days for that to happen yet we have talked about some of our methodology I do have that list of folks who indicated interest in that so once we have that together we can reach out and sort of open that door Seiji it sounds like you might have some company at Farmers Market uh anybody interested specifically in committing to coming to join me on the 12th or 17th for the community gatherings Susie yeah I'm pretty sure that I could probably do both I have to look at my actual paper calendar in the kitchen and see about stuff but I want to do both and I think I can probably do both okay I'd be thrilled to have you anyone else want to join me for one of those Carmen um sorry my mic was on I can do I can do the 17th I can't do the 12th though excellent okay Dottie um I am not able to um I'm on too many committees at this point and we're just getting our park construction going on and I just don't have any time that I'm not involved at the end of the day on those days I'm just glad you're able to do the in-school work with kids so I'm grateful for that oh I love doing that that was fun and I would be happy to do it for one failure school too okay I want to circle back to something in the chat Mel you said I think if I drop if I send you a poster you'd posted in the office did you say that okay um I printed some out of capital copy I could drop one by or I could just have them print a couple more and you could pick one up would that work okay um I'll do that tonight and they'll have it ready by 8 30 tomorrow morning so I need time tomorrow okay um so I'm just conscious that a lot of the outreach is sort of you know either through the schools uh you know Libby and Mel and I are going to talk about 504 IEP folks um Nick and I are working on sort of neighborhood outreach um I am I'm in conversation with Amanda Garces who's a board member and who has been leading some a number of affinity groups especially around the SR funding and she um her interest in what she thinks is the interest of some of those affinity groups is that they not sort of repeat sort of similar stories or experiences that they've had once again but that if we organize conversations with them or either one big conversation or several smaller ones that uh I do the work or we do the work to sort of take the um comments that they've already added to about experience in schools and in the district and we start the conversation from there and move forward which I think is great uh and I'm waiting to hear back from Amanda about sort of dates and times that might work for those groups uh if we pull that together or is anyone interested in riding along in that conversation on that conversation now I'll go ahead um yeah I if you can keep me in the loop with that I think that's probably something that I can help with anyone else Nathan I'm happy to join you whenever I'm a little I'm a little worried about my positional power and I don't want to stifle any voices with my positional power so just let me know when you need me somewhere and I'll see if I can do it but uh but I'd love for other people to join it prior to me if you know what I mean yeah I do I've thought about that also and I think that I'm really torn between the value of you being able to sort of hear directly versus whatever you know if if your presence has a distorting effect and I'd you know let's talk about it on a sort of case-by-case basis and I appreciate the ear conscious of that okay um I'm just looking at the agenda where remarkably cruising through this uh housekeeping items uh I still I haven't gotten stipend checks out for April so I'll do that in the next couple days um the if folks are not part of that yet if you haven't filled out a W-9 to receive stipends for committee participation that's for members of the community who are not staff or board members contact me if you want me to resend that stuff let's see and then I just want to circle back to something that Mel said earlier in the meeting which I thought was really useful about her conversation with Ryan parody back in the day or maybe a more recent conversation about his listening sessions from back in the day which was um and something Libby said also which is that generating turnout or generating participation in some of these uh conversations is most effective when it's within groups that already exist and so that's my my ask to you all as we look for these community gatherings to be you know populated and we're you know have a good turnout please promote them to people you're connected to a personal ask the sort of social capital of hey you know it'd be I think it'd be really great to have your voice here or I think you're a really valuable perspective whatever script you want to use uh leveraging social capital is a really important way to create turnout and participation in these things so please do that for the community gatherings or any of the other opportunities all of these community gatherings are going to be in person so people if they're worried about COVID cannot be on zoom is that correct as designed right now that's part of why we're trying to hold them outdoors um however I you know at least one if not more than one that's virtual and I think that's a good point what do you Tina let's let's drill down on that for a minute do you think a similar time frame six to seven thirty on a weeknight would work for a virtual version I would think so I was trying to decide if it's possible to do both at once I guess maybe not I think it's really hard um it's it's you know with a group like this where we've got some established relationships I could pull it off I think with some integrity I think with members of the public and I don't know who's going to show up and it's that's very difficult yeah agreed um that said I think your point is a good point especially given I'm astonished by how many people seem to have COVID right now um so Tina you had given me a couple dates uh uh Tina's dates the 18th 19th and the 25th right do you want to try to let me look at my calendar you want to try to create one of those for the 18th or the 19th I'm not sure I can do those anymore Nathan um but I missed my window um and the 25th is your Roxbury meeting right that's correct let me think about that one um I'm going to circle back with you in the next two days because you know I want to be able to promote these and get the word out um Tina you know through the senior center for example if I send you either just basic information about these gatherings over a graphic is that something that could get into a newsletter um the the newsletter just went out Nathan but if you give me a poster I could put it up at the senior center okay I may just do that myself tomorrow because I've got a stack of them you know put it in the glass in the glass enclosure in the side on the way into the building where the poems are put it there that's yep people come and go there okay good um just to speak on that I want to get down to once now that we've got the 25th and 26th I'll remake the poster with those dates on it get down to Roxbury and put some up there you know metamart shaws co-op all the schools other sites for sort of in-person posters aside from Charlie O's any ideas thanks Suzy that was for you alright I'll come up with my own poster in locations um so this will be on it's on the friends of my paler schools uh Suzy and I will collaborate on getting it on front porch forum um this is another example where if I I'm going to send out some sort of easy link to all of you via email and ask that you circulate it to either select group or a bigger group um again the social networks are one of the most effective ways to get people to turn out for these things any other thoughts or topics to cover go mail is it possible to make like um a comprehensive list of all the dates and times and locations all in one place like a little table and have it go out through the MRPS emails I have found that when things are only advertised on social media electronically I mean like I understand they're being advertised all over the place in posters but when you live in a COVID bubble um you don't see those places necessarily so you rely on your electronic correspondence but there's a lot of people who like don't check social media but they do check the emails that are will be very carefully crafts and gets to the people so like that might be another place to send and like not a whole bunch of emails but like one email. Yeah so I think the way I'll do that which is on my list anyways to use the um you know the Gator news from Katie Barre at the middle school um the communication from the elementary school that goes to that cohort and then the Solon Salute Solon Salutes from the high school um each of those you know I don't I don't know what the readership is but that seems to be pretty good and we got I think that the 12th and 17th should have been in each one of those for this week because I know that I think Renee yeah Renee at the high school put it in the Solon Solon Solon Salutes on Friday uh so that went out already and then I did not check the other two pieces but I assume that would have gone out today from middle school and elementary school for the 12th and 17th yeah so again I haven't checked one you're on the UES one Mel it was on Katie's it was on Katie's from MSNS I didn't I admit to not looking at RBS's or UES's okay Mel will you check and you might be looking now okay I'll wait um Carmen uh Emory Elliot Meg where are you all on this oh so sounds as though students will be tabling at MHS this Friday is what I'm hearing from Joe who couldn't make meeting Emory's nodding Carmen nodding what time and can I join you uh we're trying to coordinate to have tabling in the cafeteria during all three lunch blocks which is from until 1pm and then also during Solon block probably in the library which is from 105 until 140 but um I think so far only um Mr. Carroll um myself and Eli are like for tabling I for me you cut out on the lunchtime blocks for can you tell me the lunchtime blocks again sure sorry um the lunchtime or the the times yeah uh so lunch is typically from 1115 until 1pm okay so and then uh just Solon block is from 105 until 140 okay is it okay if I come and join you for those and then I can be the I don't know if it's necessary to have an adult in the room but I can be the adult in the room uh yeah yeah absolutely okay and we'll coordinate about materials and such okay that's awesome um okay reports in the text in the chat rather that it was not in today's scoop scoop uh so I will turn I'll come back to Linda will pray um especially now that we've got two other dates not locked down okay thank you all for coming this evening any final thoughts okay good to see you all thanks for committing to a little extra time in June see you then see you next meeting