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[Unidentified]: Hello. Hi. Yeah, it's superintendents birthday today.
[Ruseau]: Oh, I know. Okay. I did. Okay, no worries. Now everyone does.
[Unidentified]: Well, not everybody heard, but some people did. Hi, everyone. Hello. Just message. Let's check in on with Member McLaughlin before we get started. I know she was going to be on the phone, so it's entirely possible she is iPhone. Paul, it's Nicole Branley. That's me.
[Ruseau]: Hi, Nicole. OK, then you are not.
[Ruseau]: All right, let me. Give it one more minute. Actually, it's 734 we should get going because Time, time, time. Oops. Right posting. Good evening, everyone. Today is what is today, Wednesday, May 17. This is the rules and policy subcommittee meeting. To discuss the bullying prevention and intervention plan. I will read the full posting. Please be advised that on Wednesday, May 17th, 2023 from 4.30 to 5.30 p.m. there will be a rules and policy subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via Zoom. The meeting can be viewed through Memphir Community Media on Comcast channel 15 and Verizon channel 45 at 4.30 p.m. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log or call in by using the following link or call-in number. Memphir Public Schools invites you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. The meeting link is https://mps02155-org.zoom.us.j99633576663. The meeting ID, if you'd like to call in, you could call 1-312-626-6799. The meeting ID is 996-335-76663. Additionally, if you have any questions or comments that you'd like to submit in writing, you can send them to me during the meeting at pruseau at medford.k12.ma.us. Please include your first and last name, your Medford Street address, or if you're an employee, indicate that, and your question and or comment. I'm going to call the roll. Member Graham.
[Unidentified]: Here.
[Ruseau]: Thank you. Member McLaughlin is not here yet. And member Rousseau is present to present. So in the last meeting, I think everybody here was on the last meeting. Excuse me. In the last meeting, we had decided to pass the document that we had at that point reached, we had gotten to. over to Member Graham to work her magic on it and produce something hopefully more coherent than what we had. And so I believe it probably makes sense to let Member Graham go from here and perhaps share the document.
[Unidentified]: Sure, I can do that. Give me one second. Can you see my screen? Yes. OK, great.
[Graham]: OK, so I thought I would start by describing what I tried to do in terms of the organization of the document, because we talked a lot about that component. And then I will just take us through section by section and point out some particular places where I think we just need to make sure we're all in agreement with like how the evolution of the document has come along. And there are some particular places where I have questions. I was able to integrate like all the notes from the minutes of things that were supposed to be added, removed, et cetera. I added the links that member McLaughlin asked about in the last meeting. I integrated comments from our special ed attorneys that Joan provided that is all in this one document. The one thing that's not in here at the moment is the flowchart that we've been discussing and I think primarily because Peter did, Dr. Cushing did share with me a flowchart but I wanted to make sure that we were all in agreement with what this document said, so that then I could go and take the final step of making sure that the flowchart lines up with what this document says before we put it in. Because once the flowchart ends up in the document, it gets a little bit harder to manipulate. So that's sort of the starting point of reference. And then we removed lots of sections that we talked about being removed. And what I tried to do is, make this substantially more simple than the prior document was. It's certainly fewer pages. I think we're headed in the right direction. But I will, unless anyone has any questions about any of that, I will just sort of scroll through and tell you what I've done. Does that work for everybody? Okay, so in this introduction, what this sets up is sort of our definition of bullying, which throughout the policy, there was like a lot of inconsistency of where we said bullying versus bullying or cyber bullying. There were some inconsistent references to what happens when the bullying happens like outside of school, but then impacts what happens inside of school. So the best way that I could come up with to sort of make this not duplicative and confusing was to set the frame at the beginning of the document that for the purposes of this policy, when we say bullying, we mean bullying, we mean cyber bullying, and we mean action or activity that happens outside of school to the extent that it creates the same conditions within the school. So just to sort of set that frame up front. And that sort of is what is here in this introduction. And then if you see here, it also says at the bottom of this section, it says for the purposes of this policy, bullying will be used to broadly include cyber bullying and out of school behavior that leads to a hostile school environment in school throughout. So just to sort of set that frame rather than trying to constantly be like adding all the right words in all the right places throughout the document. The other thing that I included in this introduction, based on some of our conversation and I would be interested for you all to weigh in on this, I pulled this out of the policy somewhere that talks about what conflict is and what I have heard repeatedly from parents is I filed a bullying report and it was determined that it wasn't bullying, but it was conflict. And I think that certainly in the community leads to lots of confusion about like what happens in these instances. And I'll show you a little bit later on sort of how I tried to define that. But in this policy upfront, I felt like it was important to outline what conflict was. This is largely the definition that existed in the document. I would be interested if there are changes to this definition that would make sense. So it says conflict is an equal power quarrel or problem between two students. Investigations may reveal that an incident or incidents are conflict rather than bullying. In contrast, bullying is abuse. It occurs when a socially powerful, popular or feared student mentally or physically abuses a weaker fearful student for the purpose of making them afraid and hurt. That is pretty straight out of our prior policy. I don't personally love it, but I think it's important that we set the framework that there are lots of interactions and some of them rise to this like definition of bullying and some do get ultimately sort of classified as conflict. And like, what does that even mean conflict in this situation? So I would be interested if anybody has any reaction to this definition of conflict that we could talk about.
[Unidentified]: Anybody?
[Ruseau]: I guess my only comment on it is there's this, the definition as written, how it intersects with bullying, the law. You know, the law is, you know, three, is it three or more or multiple? I'm sorry, I'm forgetting suddenly this part, but three or more incidents And I guess three or four or 10 incidents that are equal power quarrels individually may be conflict, but is this implying that those can't be considered bullying? I guess how they relate to bullying is sort of the part that still kind of confuses me. And I don't know what the answer is. And I'm not, do we as a district have a consistent answer that we all agree we do understand? Because I mean, in like in our real lives, there are people we might have conflict with and we might have conflict with them. But if it's a professional setting, for instance, we may have conflict with them way more than three times regularly. And it's not bullying because that's not what's happening. Just like, you know, we have conflict one time, two times, 15 times, and it'd be nice if we worked it out so we didn't have conflicts, but that might be just the normal way that relationship works versus bullying. And I just don't understand how they intersect with bullying.
[Unidentified]: And I would love to know more.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, I, I just was going to say that with bullying as well it's, you started to answer it. It is repeated, like a repeated pattern so it's just not one off, not that we would want anything to happen 10 times, but it's like a repeated pattern of like targeted abuse. That's one of the, I think, the key distinctions is that it is repeated. And I don't know if any of the other administrators or principals on the call or assistant principals want to weigh in on the difference between the two. But the definition member Graham that you provided for conflict, I did agree with it. And I just was thinking maybe the inclusion of the word repeated in contrast, bullying is repeated abuse. I don't know if that's too similar, but just that would be my only recommended tweak.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I would agree with the definition. And I think what makes bullying different is really the part of the definition where it says socially, I can't, it's really small, socially powerful, popular or feel student mentally or physically abusive of a weaker student. I think that's what makes it more bullying. Like there's some kind of power differential that's very clear. Because, I mean, at middle school, conflict happens all the time. They're friends one day, next day they're not friends, the next day they're friends. You know, and there's not this differential in, you know, who's more powerful or who's weaker. So we deal with, I mean, at the middle school level, I deal with conflict a lot, but I think it does, you know, what makes bullying different is that socially more powerful person or physically more powerful person.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Mr. Fuching.
[Tucci]: Hi, good afternoon. You know, and I kind of concur with, you know, Farah and Maurice to as well but let me just highlight a few, and I like the definition that's in the documents, but with conflict. It's more of a I see it as a disagreement or an argument where both sides have the opportunity to express their views and there's that equal power between the parties that are involved. But one thing I'd like to point out with conflict. Generally, when there is a conflict and we realize that there is a behavior that is unwanted and it's hurting someone, it stops. Where we get into bullying is where there's a continuation of that behavior, where people realize that there is a problem. It's been presented to both students and parents and others, but it continues. And I think it's important to highlight when you're talking about the difference between conflict and bullying, is that there's that difference in the power dynamic. The person bullying has more power over the other person, and there's a goal usually to hurt, harm, or humiliate that particular person.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. If there's no other comments, I think we can move on.
[Ruseau]: Senator Graham actually wants to talk about that more.
[Graham]: Nope. We're moving on. Okay. So the policy, what I did then was I took the section, the actual policy is like the next like meat of this document and just set up like at the top of the policy, that we do not condone acts of bullying of any kind, that we sort of set up that students and staff may not engage in bullying, that we prohibit retaliation, some of like the very big sort of Headliners there and then the way that I sort of broke out the policy was to talk about it in components, so that it's clear like what component of the policy we're talking about and try to be like. discrete about things so that they only sort of ended up in one bucket. So, for example, the first bucket is prevention. So the law outlines quite a number of things that we must do from a prevention perspective. And I actually did go back yesterday and reread the law to make sure all the components are in here. So, for example, This first paragraph, it says provide enhanced support, recognizing that certain students may be more vulnerable to become a target of bullying or harassment based on actual or perceived differentiating characteristics, including race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, socioeconomic status, homelessness, academic status, gender identity or expression, physical appearance, pregnancy or parenting status, sexual orientation, mental, physical, or developmental, or sensory disability, or by association with a person who has or is perceived to have one or more of these characteristics. That's straight out of the law. But I put this comment in here because the law goes on to say that this plan, which we are required to have, shall include specific steps that each school district, charter school, non-public school, private day school, whatever, shall take to support vulnerable students and to provide all students with the skills, knowledge and strategies needed to prevent or respond to bullying or harassment and. We can come back to this at the end, but one question I had was, I did not see anything in our prior policy that really to me sounded like specific steps that we are taking to address this requirement. So I'll just like put that bug in your ear now, and perhaps at the end, we can come back around to this. Other prevention items, the district will provide age appropriate instruction on bullying and intervention. The district will provide annual notice as required by law on the plan and the curriculum. This is what written written notice will include many, many, many of these bullets I don't want to read them all to you, but they these by and large come either out of our prior policy or directly out of the law, usually both because our prior policy was sort of a. mash up of the the model documents so that's where these like sort of big long list come from, and I think we can talk about how to best integrate comments and feedback after we go through all of this. Other prevention items ensure district staff are aware of this policy that this policy requires that all staff will model interactions with others that demonstrate tolerance and respect for differences, even if the issues being discussed are controversial at all times when acting in the individual's professional capacity or representing Medford public schools. This idea was buried somewhere like, you know, 25 pages deep in our prior policy. And I thought it was really important to talk about from a prevention standpoint that we also are clearly describing to all of our staff that we expect You know that they model good behavior that you know they model behavior that is consistent with this policy. You know anytime they're acting in their professional capacity or as a representative of the district and then final prevention item post the approved bullying prevention and intervention policy on the NPS website so. That is the prevention section so. Any questions about broadly what I outlined there?
[Edouard-Vincent]: The, the only suggestion I was going to say member Graham to one of the comments in the sidebar about what are we doing to address. I do feel that with our nexus classes, and some of the focus on the responsive classroom work. And during those blocks of time where it's self focused that students are being given strategies for self regulation strategies to be able to address. you know, being cognizant or more aware of what they're feeling and what their reactions are. So I do feel like that the cell work that is happening, it was never maybe explicitly called out, but that it definitely is addressing, like getting to the root cause of behaviors that start bullying so I just wanted to say that that is something and I could get work on getting the official cell language but I do feel that the intentional focus on social emotional learning within the district is. At the same time, addressing bullying, giving equipping students with tools to be able to self regulate and to be able to identify behaviors, whether it's their own or the behavior of someone else that like this is a dysregulated behavior. And I need to speak to an adult like to see something, say something, talk to a trusted adult, all of those, it may look different at different levels. But we can specifically call those out. Like what's at the elementary level? And you know, what's the equivalent at secondary?
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Mr. Tucci.
[Tucci]: Yes, on that line, I want to just note, I think it's important to know about the, the intentionality of these topics during school assemblies, how they're also followed up in school guidance classes through the Michigan model to as well. As Dr Vincent had mentioned to as well. We've rolled out the say something campaign and curriculum, as well as the reporting tool that is the anonymous reporting tool that's posted up on our websites, where anybody can go ahead and post a concern of theirs to a trusted adults, like a person like myself, or whatever, you know school specific team. It might impact. And finally, I'd like to say that it's not just our guidance Councilors that are teaching this to our students. It is intentionally embedded with certain strategies and techniques from a social emotional perspective for all teachers, no matter which classroom that they teach. So I think that's really important to note that we have a focus and we embed these strategies into every single classroom from math, English, social studies, science, et cetera. Thank you.
[Graham]: Awesome. I will integrate those comments that one of these bullets. Sorry, this bullet that talks about staff training. It does have a whole list of things in here. And so what I will do is I will work Some of these particulars into this component around staff professional development and and because it's it leads with age appropriate instruction curriculum so that I will put that all in there and consider that. I think sufficient to address this requirement, so I think that should work nicely. Thank you for that extra information. The next session is on. Did I lose it? Let's see here.
[Unidentified]: Okay, incident reporting.
[Graham]: So I start off, and what I try to do throughout is frame this in terms of what Medford Public Schools will do, because our policy talked about like things parents must do before, and the truth is like, we have no say. We cannot mandate parents do really anything. And the more important thing is that we as a district are clear on what our responsibilities are. So you'll see like all of these things lead off with Medford Public Schools as well. And I did that to broadly mean that this is a cohesive effort and I tried not to differentiate like what central administration would do versus what a principal would do in various ways. if the intent was broader. So hopefully that sort of works as you all get a chance to read and digest all of this. But when it comes to incident reporting, Medford Public Schools will designate a person in each building who's responsible for receiving reports of bullying. In most cases, this will be the school principal. In all cases, the individual responsible for receiving reports will be listed in the school handbook. The next bullet was actually something that I added in. I wanted to make sure that we had some discussion about. I know that we have talked multiple times about the bullying incidents that are related to athletics. And I wanted to suggest for this group to consider that assistant principals will not be designated as the investigator for bullying reports that occur as the result of participation in an athletics or extracurricular program, because the reporting structure is such that those assistant principals don't really have any authority over the athletics director or programming, right? That typically sits at a higher level. So I wanted to offer that to this group for some thoughts. I mean, I think that particularly is relevant at the high school, I think to some degree at the middle school, but I know that we have had a number of bullying-related situations reports surrounding athletics. So I wanted there to be, at least for me, I wanted there to be a clear distinction around how we handle reports of athletics bullying so that they are investigated thoroughly. So I don't know what you all think about that.
[Ruseau]: Well, I like it. I think that if we do change the structure of the organization, and some of these things would probably have to be looked at again. But in the current structure, I think it makes sense. And I don't know, on the ground, what that looks like. And if there will be challenges around, well, this is about the investigation. So who's going to be the person that takes the report wouldn't necessarily be different.
[Unidentified]: But
[Ruseau]: Um, you know, we wouldn't want to have a middle school person, a student trying to report something and have to go to the high school. That would be terrible. Um, but, and you do say investigator. So it's not that the person who is going to be responsible for receiving the reports would be any different. Right.
[Graham]: Correct. And actually this might belong somewhere else, but, um, I will make a note of that and we can circle back to that at the end.
[Tucci]: Mr. Yeah, just feel like I can offer some perspective on that as a former assistant principal at the high school level to as well. Maybe perhaps to consider some sort of language where, you know, maybe an assistant principal and athletic director would operate in tandem in during the investigation stages. Part of the reason why I actually like an assistant principal being involved is because they might be considered a trusted adult to be able to be a person to take a report like that. Plus, they have a perspective of how that might or actions may be taken off the field or on the field in the athletic arena might impact the school environment to as well. Um, and they are kind of the boots on the ground and might be able to set up an action plan. So as to, um, you know, kind of prevent any further type of retaliation or incidents to take place. So maybe just the consideration of, um, having people operate in tandem, because I understand the dynamic that's being pointed out about how our assistant principals don't have oversight over athletic coaches. That's more of the athletic director and the current structure we have. But I think, um, you know, operating in tandem in a situation like this may be something worthy of consideration.
[Ruseau]: Thank you, that's really excellent point. Anybody else on this one? I don't know why I'm suddenly decided to try to drive a little bit, but it's clearly running.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's okay. I would agree with Nick. I think it is important as a previous athletic director, you definitely want your AP doing the investigations right along with your athletic director. And sometimes athletic directors don't always have the clearance to investigate. So it depends on the district and the role. But I would highly suggest having the AP in tandem with the athletic director on that.
[Graham]: And I guess, you know, as I was thinking about this, I think these are all really good points. What I was thinking about was that these situations might rise to the level of being appropriate to say the principal will be the investigator rather than the... So that's sort of where my head was at, was like, is this assistant principal work or is it principal work? So I don't know if you guys have thoughts about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it depends on how big it is. I mean, you might have to interview 20 kids. In that case, I mean, you're gonna have a team and your principal will probably be part of that team. So, yeah.
[Tucci]: So my job would be, you know, having the language of principal or designee, you know, maybe be fitting for the language we're looking for.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do, I could only jump on for 30 minutes. I have another obligation at five o'clock. If that ends early, I'll jump back on. So thank you. I'm sorry, I have to jump off, but if I can, I will jump right back on. Thanks. Thank you.
[Graham]: But this next bullet I think is really, these next two bullets are really important. So one of the things that I think we've danced around a little bit as we have talked about this policy is I'll say confusion on the part of parents about like, what do they have to do to start a bullying investigation? And I think we've heard from lots of parents who say like, I've been reporting these things and then suddenly I get a form and this has been going on for months, right? And so why did I never get this form before now? And to me, as I thought about that, What I think is happening is there's not clarity around what constitutes a bullying report. Is it a form? Is it some amount of information? What is it that officially starts the clock? And I wanted this policy to be really, really clear about what starts that process. So I'm totally open to like what this sub bullet list is, but what this bullet says is Medford Public Schools will consider an allegation of bullying as submitted regardless of whether official forms are completed or if the allegation is anonymously reported. An allegation will be investigated as an official bullying report if the allegation is reported to a staff member and includes the below listed minimum information. The name and school of the target student, the name and school of the aggressors. The date and location of the incidents, a description of the incident that is believed to meet the criteria for bullying behavior and contact information for the reporter, which obviously required but not recommended in the event that this is. an anonymous report. And then second bullet, Medford public schools will complete required bullying forms and collect missing information and signatures when a report of bullying was made that did not use approved forms. So what the spirit of what I tried to lay out here based on all the conversations we've had is that a report is like in the queue when it meets a certain amount of criteria. And that we can and should encourage parents to use the form because I think it provides guidance to like that sort of completeness. But that if that doesn't happen, then it is the responsibility of the school district, the investigator, whoever that is, to do the paperwork on the forms. So what I'm trying to do is be crystal clear about what starts the clock for parents in particular and students. I think we should definitely encourage the use of the form wherever we can, but also sort of recognizing like we do need consistent documentation around these things, which is why the second bullet of like whoever is doing this investigation will complete the paperwork if that hasn't already been done.
[Unidentified]: Thoughts?
[Edouard-Vincent]: I think in the spirit of providing clarity, one of the things when we were up, I don't know which page it was on, when we were, where you gave the definition between bullying and bullying being the repeated abuse. And when there are other situations that are, deemed like an incident. I think that our hope would be that false reports or false bullying reports are not being generated. But sometimes, unfortunately, when you're working with young people, young adults, sometimes people do things out of retaliation. we could end up with situations where false reports are coming in. And there have been situations where people have been accused. And when an investigation took place, it was found that the information was not credible. And so I'm just saying, as we're creating the official policy, that we're not opening an additional door for this to be abused.
[Graham]: We do, a little bit later in the document, we talk about false reporting, false allegations.
[Unidentified]: So maybe hold that thought until we get there. Okay.
[Graham]: Incident reporting also, we also sort of frame up that staff are required to report incidents that they witness or become aware of. that staff follow the same reporting responsibilities as students and caregivers. And that Medford will accept and investigate allegations of bullying or retaliation that are made anonymously. However, no disciplinary action shall be taken against the students solely on the basis of an anonymous report. And that's like, right, that anonymous language was right out of the law.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, member Graham.
[Ruseau]: And the staff are required to formally report the incidents I don't know if we want to add some kind of wording here. I don't know how to put it. So maybe just a note, but, um, you know, You know, when you drive by an accident. The best dial 911. It doesn't matter if there's 20 other people there because they're all standing around thinking somebody else dialed 911 And, you know, I imagine scenarios perhaps in a lunchroom where there's multiple staff members and they all see an incident happen and somebody, they each think somebody else is going to do it. And, you know, whether that's based on like, oh, there was an assistant principal there and I'm just a teacher or whatever, like, you know, whatever the stuff that goes on in someone's head as to like, oh, somebody else is obviously going to take care of this report. If there are five adults in the room who work for us, there should be five of them making sure that the report is written. And it doesn't matter where they are structurally in the organization, they are all responsible to make sure that one is done. I mean, if they go up to Mr. Tucci and said, are you going to do a report? And he says, yes. I'm not saying we need five separate forms filled out, but short of an affirmation that somebody will be doing it and they know who it is, they are on the hook to make sure that it gets done, whether that's by them or not. So I just really worry about that, similar to the car accident where everybody stands around and waits for the ambulance and never get called.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Graham]: Okay, let's move on to investigation. Medford Public Schools will promptly investigate all reports of bullying impacted parties and caregivers will be notified within two business days of receipt of such a report. We have talked about timeframes. I think this is what we have talked about, but open to some discussion there. Remain impartial through the course of any investigation. In the event of a conflict of interest, the investigator must disclose the conflict to their immediate supervisor within 24 hours of the receipt of the bullying report. Conflict of interest may include family relationships and or supervisor-supervisee relationships among other possible conflicts. Take immediate and necessary action to ensure student safety while any investigation proceeds and will take care to reassure those who report incidents that their involvement will remain confidential wherever possible. Document interviews conducted with all relevant parties. All notes shall become part of the record of the incident. maintain a central student information system to store incident investigation forms, determinations, and disciplinary action, remediation, target safety actions taken alphabetically by aggressor for their graduation date. That came out of the last policy. And then discipline information is also came out of last policy, whether written or electronic is part of the temporary record and be kept for six years after the graduation of involved students. Temporary records must be destroyed no later than seven years after graduation of involved students. That came straight out of the prior policy from a record retention perspective. Ensure copies of all bullying investigation forms, reporting forms, if any remediation agreements and behavior plans are placed in the student file. This last bullet I would like to discuss because it came out of the prior policy. It says, and I did not update, I did not change this at all. Your personal notes can be kept indefinitely as long as you don't share or consult with them in the presence of parents or students. And that felt super alarming to me, but I didn't know if there was something I didn't know, but I, wanted to specifically point that out and recommend that we strike it.
[Unidentified]: I certainly am alarmed by it as well.
[Ruseau]: And, you know, the days of everybody keeping a little journal that they are jotting notes in are over. These are going to be notes that are probably largely going to be electronic And the average person, certainly the average employee's ability to maintain top-notch security on their own electronic content is not encouraging. Not a dig at our staff, most people are really actually quite bad at it. So the notion of confidential notes concerns me greatly. Also, what are you gonna do with them? Write a memoir someday about something you can't write about? Why you would want to keep them is also concerning. If it's important enough to be written down, put it in the official notes.
[Graham]: I couldn't think of any legitimate reason to keep personal notes like this, but I don't work in a school, so I didn't wanna just delete it, but it felt like really, really concerning to me.
[Edouard-Vincent]: If I do, in a different context, there are, uh some things that are kept personal that are not part of the official record or the official file um so i i am aware of that on the on the school side and that's usually when we're working with legal counsel um and so i don't i don't know if that's something that i you know, should just get clarification on. Not everything is kept electronically. So I wasn't part of the creation of this first document, but I'm just wondering if it's related to that.
[Ruseau]: Thank you, Dr. Robinson. I mean, you know, If there's a valid reason to be keeping your own personal notes, the word indefinitely particular is the part that would bother me the most. I mean, we have a whole thing about making sure this stuff is destroyed. And so even if we, if there is a valid reason that we find or can figure out better, which, by the way, we should include something in here to explain that, I think, for the next school committee in 10 years trying to figure out what this means. But indefinitely is just scary. I mean, our kids already, their whole lives are going to be many of our kids' lives are going to be derailed by the digital content created in their teen years. And I just don't think we should have a policy to not making it worse or enshrining it in policy. So yeah, thank you.
[Graham]: And we can check with Attorney Greenspan as well about whether there's some, I didn't read anything like that when I reread the law top to bottom, but I am not a lawyer. I will defer to him so we can ask him that question. The next section is on decisions and findings. So this is one of the references that was added from our special ed attorneys so that we will act in accordance with Master in Law Chapter 71B, Section 3. around when the IEP team determines a student has a disability that affects social skills development or the student may participate in or is vulnerable to bullying, harassment, teasing because of his or her disability, the team will consider what should be included in the IEP to develop the student's skills and proficiencies to avoid and respond to bullying, harassment, or teasing. So that is in there to say that we know and we understand that there are potential impacts there. Also under decisions and findings, this, so what I did was I put two structures in here. One is complete the following steps if the investigator determines that bullying or retaliation has occurred. And so there's like notifying the police or if the principal believes there are criminal charges that may be pursued. take appropriate disciplinary action consistent with the policies and procedures of Medford Public Schools, notify parents, notify them of any action taken to prevent further acts of bullying and provide victims and aggressors with significant opportunities for counseling services. This can take the form, this is like right out of the prior policy. I then put in a structure here that says like if if bullying if the investigator determines that bullying has not net has not occurred, but that the incident warrants action to to avoid progression of the relationship to one where bullying does occur so this is the conflict. component that there are a set of steps here as well in terms of, you know, any disciplinary action, notifying parents, etc. So it's largely the same except for the part where we're going to notify the police in some instances. One thing I think we heard from parents as we have talked about this is, I think there's a belief that if bullying is not the end finding, and I think we had a related conversation about appeals last time, that means nothing is going to happen. And I think that's actually not true at all. If there is conflict, there still is a requirement on behalf of the district to act to prevent this conflict from escalating to a repeated pattern of bullying, right? So what I tried to do was sort of lay this out so that there were clear responsibilities of the district, whether bullying has occurred by the determination of the investigator or whether conflict has occurred. And so that's the structure here that I tried to set up. And then act to create a stable environment for victims and aggressors, regardless of whether bullying or conflict has occurred. Interventions may include, this table was in the prior policy. I think it's helpful for people to understand that these things could be the kinds of things that happen in both cases, bullying or conflict. And then there's a bullet here that, you know, when we're talking about findings, Discipline any student who knowingly makes a false accusation of bullying or retaliation per the approved disciplinary policies of Medford Public Schools. If the false allegations have civil and or criminal elements, further actions may be referred to by the appropriate law enforcement agency. This set of references and links is was provided by our special ed attorneys, I think we also have some links to our policies that will need to be added in here.
[Unidentified]: And. We probably we probably.
[Graham]: We probably need to just reframe this a little bit, so this is not just simply about false accusations, although that's important. but also that discipline could be the consequence of an investigation, right?
[Unidentified]: So that would go there.
[Graham]: So we'll just clarify that, that discipline is a potential outcome here, whether it is a consequence of the investigation, whether it's bullying, whether it's conflict, whether it's a false accusation, whether it's retaliation, discipline is a possible outcome and that the district will administer consequences that are consistent with discipline under the law and consistent with our policies. So I think we have a couple of other links that we'll need to go in here. And the only other thing that we talked a little bit about, you know, false reporting, there was a, there was reference to like what happens in a situation where there's false reporting. And when I thought about like the involvement of like parents, caregivers, community members, et cetera, who might be involved in false reporting, it struck me. And I, again, I'd be interested in how this works in practice that, there's nothing you can do to somebody who falsely reports something to you that doesn't, you know, that is not a student in your building or a staff member, right? So if a person in the community provides a false report, like there's not any recourse the district particularly has against that person because of this false, you know, this false report, but that I wanted to make sure that there was a reference that those kinds of things might be reported to the appropriate law enforcement agencies. And to know that that's going to be really situational, like what you all decide to do about it, but that there is accountability for that kind of thing. It just is not accountability that the school district has. So your responsibility would be to get it to the person who can actually take action if necessary.
[Unidentified]: Questions about that?
[Graham]: Retaliation, so Medford Public Schools will discipline any student who knowingly retaliates against another student as a result of a bullying allegation or investigation per the approved disciplinary policies outlined by Medford Public School Committee and as further described in school handbooks. If the retaliation acts have civil and or criminal elements, same language came out of the last policy. Some other, any questions so far? I'm just trying to keep an eye on time here. I think we're doing okay. The responsibilities that are in addition to what we've described. So there are some central administration. Responsibilities here around reporting to DESE. There's a survey that must be administered every four years under the law. There's outreach required. So there's some central administration responsibilities here that are outlined. Building leaders really was just to say a couple of things. that our building leaders will take proactive steps to avoid escalation of incidents into bullying behaviors. They'll document incidents of student behavior and treat these incidents with standard school disciplinary procedures, and that our building leaders will amend handbooks to reflect policy and plans herein. And then the school committee's responsibility, and again, this is sort of additive to everything else that we've talked about, is that this plan needs to be updated biannually according to the law. We're almost done. The last section is a procedure for what happens to receive and investigate a bullying report. I did my best to not change the process that was outlined, but the process that was outlined was admittedly a little bit like helter skelter. So I think I put it all together the right way. I would definitely want you all to like review that and make sure that you're in agreement, but this is a step like from the top to the bottom that we would be expecting to follow because the law does say that this policy needs to include procedural steps. which is unlike most policies, but that is what the law says. So this is, you know, a series of steps. I think there's like 15 steps that go from, you know, the very top of like receiving a report to all the way down so that there's just one place that you could go and look at that, particularly if you're a parent. The one comment that I had in here, and Joan, I want to point this out to you. This component of if the student has an IEP or 504, work with his or her liaison to determine whether the behavior is a manifestation of the student's disability throughout the remainder of the process. That language was in the process in the prior document, but it was much, much, much, much, much, much further down in the sequence of steps. And it struck me that it should be happening at the top of the funnel and not like many, many steps into the process. So I would ask that maybe when we turn this over to you all for your review, that you just take a look at that and make sure you agree that that's in the right place. And then last couple sections here, support for families. These are some of the links that member McLaughlin talked about in terms of additional information from DESE and regarding discipline for students with disabilities and this problem resolution system, that's all here. There are a handful of other definitions here that are relevant to the topic. And then the final thing that I wanted to talk a little bit about with AllView is, I was sort of of the opinion, all of these forms are important, but sort of seem like they didn't really belong in the bed of this document, but instead they belonged as their own discrete documents, so that a reporting form can be made available on the website and we could put it in the, document as an option for people to report and that those the incident investigation forms obviously don't necessarily need to be on the website, but they need to be available for staff. So it felt clunky and cumbersome for those to be here, especially if we're going back to the premise that a bullying report does not need to come in on any particular form. So I would recommend that we take these out and house them separately and that they become really the responsibility of the superintendent as would sort of any operational items in a typical policy. So that's my thought about what to do with these forms at the end. I read the forms. I thought they were generally fine. My bigger issue with the forms was again just making sure that it's clear that we don't have to wait for a form to consider that we have received a report.
[Ruseau]: I agree, we should put them elsewhere. I think we can actually add just an item near the end of the document with a sort of an appendix of forms and just literally describe the form and a sentence with a link to wherever it would be on the website. I think that even actually the investigation forms, I think, actually should be available to the public, because a parent might want to know what is it that's going to happen. And while reading this will tell you that, seeing the forms can actually be kind of helpful too. and grasp that. And then up in the definitions, I just saw that you had, I had created a document that I shared with you with definitions. I wanted to note that we have aggressor and perpetrator. We, I think, had agreed that we liked aggressor, but perpetrator is the language in several sections of the law. And so that's why it's also here because in places where the law is actually literally typed, you know, the language in the law is in here in some places, and the law says perpetrator so we're going to keep that, but I think that's a good question is, can we just use aggressor instead. Thank you, Dr Vincent.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, I. The only piece, and I know we can consult with legal guidance, but when a district finds officially, you know, declares bullying, all formal bullying documentation is reported to DESE. And on those forms, it does have like the Massachusetts general laws that are stated on those forms. So I do believe even if someone were to do an initial form saying that they're reporting it, that at some point, even if that clarification is given, it really should go on that legally binding document because it's an official document that needs to go to DESE. It's like a legal document. So I just wanted to say, if someone were to start the process and put it down that they eventually be given the official paperwork so we are in compliance from a paperwork perspective. So I just wanted to say, I don't know if that could be added or an asterisk somewhere in this new policy that I do believe we're gonna have to, we need to submit that official paperwork and have it down properly documented with the official general law, et cetera.
[Ruseau]: Yes, I think that's definitely in here. I mean, I see that Memogram has actually highlighted the requirements that DESE has. And I think that earlier on there is this, you know, if the incident is coming in and it's not coming in on a form, like get the form, get the form going is definitely the goal. And I mean, it's even if DESE didn't require it, that makes a lot of sense process-wise to have, you know, even if the starting points are a little bit, different as quickly as possible, getting everybody into the same exact process, I think is ideal for staff. I mean, we'll have to manage all this, so.
[Unidentified]: Anybody else have any thoughts or questions?
[Ruseau]: So I think last meeting, I might have said this was gonna be our last meeting. I think we have to have one more. I also think we need, so the notes that our Graham has made I think are all things for which she could get an answer and then just make, yeah. And so what I think makes sense is that, remember Graham, I'm giving you work, so hopefully you're okay with this. makes these updates to the document that we've just discussed, and then sends that to the administration to comb through it in detail, because looking at it on screen isn't the same. And then if you could send me your thoughts in an email, this is okay, this change here or there, and I will review your thoughts And then if I think your thoughts are tweaks and tiny and can be changed on the floor, that we just go to the school committee meeting and we make those changes there. If I think that your comments, questions, changes are things that require the kind of dialogue that happens to subcommittee, I will instead just have another subcommittee meeting. And I just want to make sure that we don't default to let's just have another subcommittee, because if you read it and you're like, you know, there's two or three words that are spelling errors or something like that. Having a meeting for that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And, but I also want to give the opportunity for you to go and read it and be like, this isn't going to work for us. If this isn't going to work for us, or you have a reason why you think this whole section is not going to work. the floor of the regular meetings isn't the right setting for that. So, does that sound okay, Dr. Robinson, to you?
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, that's amenable. Yes, it sounds okay. Great. So, sorry, Margaret.
[Graham]: I also just wanted to say that the document prior was 34, 35 pages. And I just wanted to point out, because I love when we can accomplish this, We'll be like clear, concise, said and done in 13 pages instead of 34. That's a big deal. From a readability perspective, from a translation perspective, all of those things, I think this gets better when it is much more simple. Thank you, Member Graham.
[Unidentified]: I really appreciate all your work.
[Graham]: Yeah. I was hoping to be under 10, but I didn't, we didn't make it.
[Ruseau]: I mean, trying to make that, shrinking that down in the meetings was not working. It was just too much. So I think, so the, I'll, let me, literally write the motion down so that I can send it to Markey. So the motion I'm gonna make is that member Graham will make updates based on feedback from this, from the May 17 subcommittee meeting, and then send the document to the superintendent for review. The superintendent will provide her feedback to the chair of the subcommittee. Given our quickly ending school year, do you think a week is sufficient time, Dr. Edmondson, just to give me your feedback?
[Edouard-Vincent]: By next Wednesday,
[Ruseau]: How about next Friday?
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yeah, next Friday, I was going to ask for the just the additional two days.
[Ruseau]: May. So by May 26. Yes, thank you. And at that time, chair will decide if the feedback from the superintendent requires another subcommittee meeting or
[Unidentified]: if the new policy can be sent to the full committee on June 5. Thank you. On June 5 for final. For first reading.
[Ruseau]: Thank you. First reading. I'm actually going to say for minor changes and then first reading because there's little I mean we will not have seen the final actual document here so.
[Unidentified]: minor changes.
[Ruseau]: And then, and first reading of the new policy. So i'm going to read that one more time so that. Everybody knows what we're voting on, even though it's just two of us. And Barbara McLaughlin does send her regrets that she was not able to be here today. She was dealing with a child. She was being a parent, which interferes sometimes with our other responsibilities, as we all know. So member Graham will make updates based on feedback from the May 17th subcommittee meeting, and then send the document to the superintendent for review. Member Graham, when would you send that so that I can? Tomorrow. By May 18th. The superintendent will provide her feedback to the chair of the subcommittee by May 26th. At that time, the chair will decide if the feedback from the superintendent requires another subcommittee meeting or if the new policy can be sent to the full committee on June 5th for minor changes and then first reading, the first reading of the new policy. This, I'm just gonna make it a little longer since I'm typing.
[Unidentified]: This, it's kind of weird. This motion reflects a reporting out of the new policy, the amended policy favorably. All right, I'm not gonna read it a third time unless somebody wants to hear that. Any other comments?
[Ruseau]: Okay, I'll take the vote roll on that. Member Graham?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Ruseau]: And Member Ruseau? Yes.
[Unidentified]: And Member McLaughlin is absent. Excellent. All right.
[Ruseau]: Thank you, everyone. I think we got a lot done here. I really appreciate, Member Graham, your hard work on this. And all of you all, I mean, this is meeting four or five, I forget, but a lot of meetings and for good stuff. So is there a motion to adjourn?
[Unidentified]: Motion to adjourn.
[Ruseau]: And I'll second that. Member Graham?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Ruseau]: Members, so yes to the affirmative. This meeting is adjourned. Have a great night, everyone. Thank you.
[Graham]: Thanks, everyone.
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